The present work is aimed at revealing the concept of "death", however, the basis of this study is not cognitive, and literary, and linguistic and cultural approaches. The paper discusses various aspects of the concept "death", its evolution in the literary vein, we consider how language and historical context. This concept will also be explored in a cultural way. The need to address the concept of "death" in a culturological key due to the fact that in our study the key role played by the context of diachronic analysis, through which we intend to monitor the variability and evolution of the concept of "death", since the era of paganism ancient Slavs to the heyday of Russian symbolism (the end of XlX - beginning of XX century). The aim of this work is the proof that the concept of "death" and its embodiment in the lyrics of Russian poets symbolists goes back to the Slavic pre-Christian beliefs about the deity of death – Marena’s. The peculiarity of this research is the fact that basically is not compared text with text that is customary in most literary works. The analysis is extensive folklore material of the Slavic peoples and the peoples of the Baltic States, and further it relates to the work of poets from the symbolists to identify matches, mates, and potential impact. The choice of the concept "death" as a starting point of our research is not accidental. The image of death, the motif of death, the token "death", etc. in our opinion do not reflect the multidimensionality of the object of study. The concept of the concept adopted in modern times - capacious, multi-dimensional and in a sense is comprehensive, which makes our conceptual solution. The material of this study became folklore and ethnographic material, some of the Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian etc.) and the Baltic peoples, the poems of Russian poets symbolists (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, Zinaida Gippius, N. Gumilev, A. Blok, A. Bely, F. Sologub, I. Ehrenburg, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, I. Annensky and some others), paintings of some artists symbolists (Jacek palchevskogo, Hugo Simberg). Thus, our work is interdisciplinary at its core and task. For the first time in this research is the comparison of the Slavic pre-Christian beliefs about death with literary reflection of the same concept. According to our assertion, that through this approach it becomes possible to disclose the concept of "death" is unexpected, since this study is restricted to the deepest layers of history of Slavic culture and allows you to find their reflection in the works of poets of the symbolists that, in many ways sheds light on a number of issues about the concept of "death" in symbolism, which still was not lit.