ТЕКСТ КАК ОБЪЕКТ СЛОВЕСНОСТИ УДК 821 POETRY AS A PARABLE Pedro L. Talavera-Ibarra Missouri Southern State University E. Newman Rd., Joplin, Missouri, USA 64801-1595, 3950 The article examines the evolution of the understanding of poetry as a specific variety of the language arts. <...> Based on materials from Spanish, Russian, and French poetic discourses, the article reviews the analysis of the essence of poetry, and it recapitulates poetry’s systematic interpretation in the works of scholars from different countries and periods. <...> Jorge Luis Borges, who might have been the only blind person in the world that knew about parables, gave us one about the “Yellow Emperor” [10]. <...> After having seen the Emperor's palace, after having crossed with him many luminous rivers in sandal-wood canoes, and after having sacrificed a turtle to break the spell of a labyrinth finding a way out, the poet read a brief poem at the foot of the next to the last tower of the palace. <...> Some say it was only one verse, some say only one word. <...> But the true and incredible fact is that the poem contained the enormous palace, entirely and in detail, with every single piece of porcelain, and with the drawings on every piece, and the sunsets, and all the sad and happy moments of the glorious dynasties of men, gods and dragons that had ever lived there. <...> The Yellow Emperor proclaimed that the poet had taken the palace away from him, and the iron sword of the executioner cut off the life of the poet. <...> Since two equal things cannot exist in the world at the same time, it was enough for the poet to recite the poem in order to make the palace disappear. <...> All these legends are speculations, and the truth of the matter is: the poet was a slave of the Emperor and he died like one. <...> His poem was forgotten because it deserved to be forgotten, and his descendants, who will never be able to find it, still look for the one word that contains the entire universe. <...> To the readers of poetry (the poets themselves, serious scholars, graduate students, university professors, and so on) poetry often seems to be like the enchanted palace of 7 Вестник РУДН, серия Теория языка. <...> Семантика, 2015, № 2 the “Yellow Emperor”, an entire universe deserving <...>