Abstract
<jats:p>The article examines the combination of the Russian spirit as an element of the modus concept “we/they,” which is presented in the poetic discourse of the 19th and 20th centuries in diachrony. This interpretative concept conveys units of new knowledge that arise from the processing of general ideas about the world through the lens of the poet’s personal conceptual worldview, enhancing the emotional and figurative nature of the text. Decoding the “shifting” poetic meanings requires a specific hermeneutical method of analyzing deep-seated patterns. The relevance of this approach is undeniable and is due to the need to describe the modus mechanisms of meaning formation in the context of the era. The purpose of the study is to identify the specific features of the use of the combination “Russian spirit” in poetic discourse, which is influenced by the evolution of the modus concept “we/they” in relation to the discursive and poetic portrait of the era, and to describe the peculiarities of its functioning in diachrony. The combination “Russian spirit,” as presented in poetic discourse, is examined in several aspects based on data from the National Corpus: its place in the dichotomy of “one’s own/strangers,” its relationship to the opposite member of the opposition, and the correlation between imagery and axiology. It is revealed that the projection of the combination “Russian spirit” on the binary scale of “ we/they “ is constructed by the worldview vector of the subject of discourse. Modus shifts related to the evolution of the dominant “Russian spirit” as the highest value of Russian culture, which structures the worldview through spiritual paradigms, have been identified. This reflects the worldview shifts in the context of Russian poetry, from the positive axiology of collective mentality to individual meaning-making with the loss of unambiguous interpretation. The novelty lies in the diachronic hermeneutical approach to modus concepts.</jats:p>