Symbol in the Poetics of the Mystical Cover Image

Символ в поэтке мистического
Symbol in the Poetics of the Mystical

Author(s): Mariana Lanovyk, Zoriana Lanovyk
Published by: Fundacja Naukowa Katolików »Eschaton«
Keywords: symbol; semiotics; hermeneutics; image; transcendental; the Bible; poetics

Summary/Abstract: In the paper it is considered the aspect of symbol as the factor of unification of the different manifestations of mystic: from the world religions symbolism, religious cults and esoteric manifestations to the concept of symbolism in art. Crossing the borders of sensual-material world into the transcendental dimensions is viewed as the ‘common denominator’ of the different systems of semiotic thinking, where symbol became a joint link, means of the transfer, a form of sense coding. The problem of symbol is outlined in the wide perspective from the language / languages heraldic in its connection with protolanguage to the semiotic concept of a culture / cultures. On the basis of hermeneutic methods of analysis and contemporary semiotic approaches the main semiotic concepts (particularly middleaged doctrines of polysemy and equivocation / conceptualism, the concept of the universal analogy of the natural world and the artistic world in Romanticism, and others) are analyzed in their historical development. The dynamics of semiotic thinking is traced in that way that every stage is viewed both as the continuation of a certain tradition and as an evolution of the deepened understanding of the semiotic nature of human thinking. On the basis of these observations it is proved that for the European consciousness the highest level of the transcendental essence of the art are the Biblical symbols as the central point of the Christian culture and arts. Capability of a symbol to express ‘unspeakable’, ‘imperceptible’, ‘incomprehensible’ makes it the means of penetration into divine spheres, to cross the borders between the physical and spiritual dimensions. According to the woks by St. Augustine, Origen, P.Abelard, W.Wackenroder, F.Schelling, E.Cassirer, H.-G.Gadamer, N.Frye it is underlined that symbolic paradigm of the Bible has to be overviewed as semiosphere of metatextual discourse and this aspect has to be in priority of symbolic thinking and art studies.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 19-58
  • Page Count: 40