ĮVAIZDŽIŲ SIMBOLINIMAS JUOZO APUČIO NOVELĖSE
SYMBOLIZING OF IMAGES IN JUOZAS APUTIS STORIES

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine how, in what ways, and by what means the image of the symbolic meaning is being constructed in the piece of fiction (in this case, Juozas Aputis triptych of stories “The Green Time Twist”); to analyze the function symbols perform throughout the whole writing framework; also, to find out the strategy of perception, the codes that readers base on to decode the symbolic meanings. Methodological points of reference are the hermeneutics and the strategies proposed by the reception theory of interpretation. It was determined that many images and words in the triptych are potential symbols in their own accord; however, to make that symbolizing potency unfold and become relevant, some successive endeavour is necessary for both the creator (in the phase of creation) and the reader (in the phase of reading). Perhaps the most instrumental device in changing an image into a symbol is latent in the nearest context of the image where words and images are of similar semantic direction, which slowly condensates and reinforces the initial symbolism of the image, where, eventually, the inter-reflection system of those images forms a secondary symbolic meaning, associated with the to the most essential archetypal elements of human experience. For example, four of eight words creating the first sentence of the triptych are potentially related to the concept of “end” and “boundary”. A particular reading key is presented in the very first sentence. Words and phrases are perceived first literally, but a more general and abstract meaning, orientated into one notional nucleus of the “end”, is radiating from the inside. The semantic field of the concepts “end” and “limit” is further strengthened at the beginning of another paragraph by the image of evening horizon. The latter is associated with death, and death, in turn, with the world beyond, heaven and divinity. None of the first sentence words or phrases initially could be called a symbol, but one directed concentration of meaning predicts the emergence of the appropriate symbolic meaning in the text. This anticipatory expectation in the triptych is realized as a dominant, refrain symbolof clouds, which concentrates the complex of polysemous meanings mentioned above. It is a specific, text example of the disclosure of the initial retrospective (directed to the past of the text) and anticipatory (directed to the future of the text) motion of consciousness and symbolic meaning.

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