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Cristian Contraș, Freamătul Edenului scorburos. Scurtă preistorie, Editura Colorama, 2020
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In the article the author analyses contemporary contents of the term metabole, as well as the ways of and limitations to using it. The term has been introduced by Mikhail Epstein with reference to metarealism, one of the largest Russian poetry schools, which emerged in the 1980s. The notion not only helps to understand the specifics of metarealistic language, but also makes analyses of this language more productive. By now, the content of the term metabole has expanded, which allows the author of the paper to look at this type of verbal image from several positions. Thus, from the point of view of linguistic poetics (Severskaya), metabole can be considered as a type of synthetic, contaminating method of word transformation, based on the mechanism of “realising”, “literalising” the metaphor. For example, in Aleksandr Yeryomenko’s sonnet “V gustykh metallurgicheskikh lesakh” [‘In the dense metallurgical forests…’] the metabole ‘metallurgical forests’ has a direct, literal meaning. In Ivan Zhdanov’s poem “More, chto zazhato v klyuvakh ptits, – dozhd’…” [‘The sea, clasped in the beaks of birds – rain...’] contamination encompasses various tropes: the complicating of the constructions of identification with predicative metaphors expressed by the participles (‘clasped’, ‘encompassed’) and the genitive metaphor (‘gesture of a tree’). From the point of view of theoretical and historical poetics (according to Broitman), metabole can be understood as one of the ways to revive the image language of syncretism, which expresses the relationship of identity of heterogeneous phenomena. For example, in the poem “Bortsy” [‘Wrestlers’] by Aleksei Parshchikov, cumulative images and parallelisms create an inversion of the myth about the origin of species. Applying combined philological methods makes it possible to see how metabolic imagery results from the contamination of various tropes and from the interpenetration of two image languages. For instance, in Andrei Tavrov’s poem “Blake i mladenets” [‘Blake and the Infant’] the accumulation of images forms a metaphysical picture, which correlates with the archaic motif of the path. At the same time, the description of the character of the poem is built through a contamination of tropes. The paper shows that the synthesis of linguistic, theoretical and historical poetics allows one to analyse the texts not only of early metarealism (Parshchikov, Yeryomenko, Zhdanov, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko), but also pertaining to metarealism at the contemporary stage (Vladimir Aristov’s idem-forma, the before-verbal of Tavrov, Kutik’s intertextuality, Celtic poetics of Agris), and to various poetics associated with metarealism (the Dragomoshchenko line, etc.).
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The paper deals with enigmatic symbols presented in Biblical allusions in the texts of contemporary Russian poets Bakhyt Kenzheev, Evgeny Lesin, Ilya Falikov and Oleg Komkov. Three types of artistic symbols may be distinguished according to the criterion of their interpretative depth: empathic symbols are connected with the most important characteristics of existence, eidetic symbols remain in our memory due to the exceptional brightness of images, while enigmatic symbols constitute riddles to be deciphered. Biblical allusions in modern Russian poetry often belong to the third class of symbols. The allusions in the poems analysed are predominantly tragic in tone and develop the ideas of Ecclesiastes, with an emphasis on the incomprehensibility of the divine plan. The images of retribution to Sodom and flights to Egypt and from it illustrate the eternal circle of human existence. Bakhyt Kenzheev offers a new reading of the story of the destruction of Sodom, in which God’s messenger comes to the ruins of the city to see if there are any survivors after the apocalyptical retribution. A new dialogue with Ecclesiastes includes an image of an endless line of lanterns which may symbolise an after-death meeting of souls. In another poem of this author there is an allusion to the world’s annihilation as a necessary stage of the development of the Universe. Evgeny Lesin calls his country the last Sodom, and a place which he is reluctant to leave even though he is aware of its imminent fate. A new interpretation of the Exodus from Egypt is given by Ilya Falikov. In his take it becomes an eternal journey in a circle with no chance of escape. Oleg Komkov also treats this narrative in a new way: as a never-ending chain of death and resurrection. These allusions emphasise the idea that after creation, there inevitably comes destruction. The emphasis in the analysed texts is on a tragic perception of the world blended with an ironic attitude to it. Interpreting enigmatic symbols requires from the readers a creative participation in the dialogue with poets.
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The paper analyses visual poetics in a number of poems entitled “Self-portrait”. The author construes the visual in literature as a category of poetics which assumes the visibility of the inner world of the poem for the lyrical subject and for the reader. The visual in the lyric poetry can be expressed in various ways, including allusions to the genres of visual arts, for example, to self-portraiture. The topic undertaken is relevant, given the currently growing interest in intermediality in literature in general and in poetry in particular. What is new about the present research is that poetic self-portraits are considered here from the point of view of visual poetics. The main purpose of the paper is to analyse the ways in which the lyrical subject visually represents his or her own image. The following aspects are touched upon: the interaction of poetry and painting, the common and the differentiating features of a pictorial and a lyrical self-portrait; the use of visual details; the subjective structure of poems and the lyrical plot. There is also an attempt to build a typology of poetic self-portraits, depending on how the lyrical subject sees himself/herself as another. The material of the study includes poems by Aleksandr Kushner, Ilya Selvinsky, Andrei Voznesensky, Osip Mandelshtam, Konstantin Bolshakov, Valentin Katarsin, Nikolai Rylenkov, and others.
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The article is dedicated to the analysis of the poem “fotokamera strashnaya veshch…” [‘a camera is a scary thing...’] by Boris Khersonsky. The analysis is divided into three levels encompassing the sound, vocabulary and grammar, and the plot. The structural features of the poem are identified and it is shown that they conform to the peculiarities of photopoetics, such as transgressiveness, discreteness, isolation, documentary character and metonymic treatment of the object. The sound-level analysis reveals a lack of order, in view of which rhyme becomes the ordering mechanism of the poem. Syntagms corresponding to the syllabotonic meter are broken by enjambements, some of which also violate stanza boundaries. The density of consonants and vowels and the rhythmic scheme allow the author of the paper to highlight the weak and strong points of the poem, as well as the principles of the relations between stanzas: they can form crosswise or regular pairs, both opposed and conjoined. The poem’s vocabulary features two thematic fields, one relating to the camera, the other to the soul. The camera is mostly connected with death and immobility, it can capture only scattered fragments, while the soul, on the contrary, is living, moving, it can see and contains memories. Combining the two groups in metaphors and personifications can be perceived as an attempt to overcome antinomies and at the same time as acknowledging that it is impossible to do so. The initial situation is that of the horror of the camera. Mechanically organised memory (photo album) is lost, and the human soul proves to be more capacious and more perfect, which helps to negate and thus ultimately overcome the initial situation. The lyrical subject cannot appear in the text, and where he strives to do this, he turns out to be helpless, the weakest link in the plot. In the first stanza, the world captured by the camera falls apart and becomes insignificant – it loses its uniqueness due to the infinity of automatic clicks (the camera is alive). The second attempt to collect this world within the framework of the album proves futile (the soul is dead). In the third stanza, the situation is reversed (the soul is alive). The poem ends, in essence, with the death of the camera, because its gaze lacks viability. The turning point in which the subject becomes aware of himself in the process of reflection is the moment of differentiation between his vision and the vision of the camera: it does not see, but the lyrical subject does. Thus, photography, which appears to the reader primarily as a topic, becomes the basis of the poetics of the entire text. Throughout the poem, we are faced with how, for example, metric-rhythmic and syntactic discreteness is overcome with the help of stanzaic unity, how fragmentation of imagery turns into integrity through oxymoronic combinations; grammatical isolation and limitations of vocabulary are not absolute; the transgression of the lyrical subject, forcing him into losing his identity, is overcome by gaining his own vision. Finally, object metonymy – replacing memories with photographs – ends with the defeat of the camera and the triumph of the integrity of the subject.
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The article dwells on the specific character of subjectivity in the poems by Genrikh Sapgir. The features of the lyrical subject’s speech and thinking are discussed on basis of the book Deti v sadu [Children in the Garden]. As the analysis shows, the author’s strategy in this poetic volume is an artistic reconstruction of an adult’s attempt to enter the world of a child’s consciousness. It turns out that texts composed of “half-words” provide clues enough for well- -defined and adequate interpretations. Among the author’s main methods and “signals” that guide the reader, one should mention the context of an utterance (provided by a line or by a poem as a whole) and the operation of language regularities. The poems present a certain poetic experiment, the essence of which is to show the ability of speech to convey meaning accurately even when a significant proportion of lexical units is missing – due to the systemic character of language itself. The result is an attempt of an adult to get into the world of a child’s consciousness, to show this world through “the child’s own mentality”. Moreover, Sapgir’s “experiment” has methodological importance. In the volume Deti v sadu, the poet corroborates the claim made by Aleksandr Skaftymov in his absentee dispute with Aleksandr Potebnya: the subjectivity of a reader’s perception notwithstanding, it is the author that guides the reader. As is worth pointing out, Sapgir may have had yet another reason for resorting to the “half- -words’ poetics”. As is well known, Viktor Krivulin has suggested that as a children’s poet Genrikh Sapgir was a true professional, while in his adult poetics the professionalism sometimes handicapped him. On the one hand then, dealing with the “child’s vision” is one of the ways to avoid “adult professionalism”. On the other hand, such poetics entirely corresponds with Sapgir’s type of creativity – his constant search for new writing methods and new forms of poetic language.
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The possible future of mankind features prominently among SF topics. Despite a long record of failures, like unsuccessful grappling with the scourge of war, present day humanity has come a long way to assume a degree of unity it has never enjoyed before. The process of globalization has its anti-globalist opponents, but its idealistic aim is a better world without racial, social, economic and in some areas even national barriers separating people. This picture of multiracial, multicultural but otherwise ontologically uniform humanity amounts to a vision of a sentient species that is close to achieving its mature form. However, what may look like the final stop of our journey is treated by both the advocates (e.g. Ray Kurzweil) and critics (e.g. Fukuyama) of humanity’s trans/posthuman development as the beginning of a new stage of our existence. A question arises if the new paths of evolution involve a danger that humans will fall victim to a policy of metaphysical laissez faire that will put the race’s unity and continuity in jeopardy. Will the old walls of racial prejudice and social inequality between people that we have striven to break down be replaced by new ones? The objective of this paper is to use Bruce Sterling’s Shaper/Mechanist universe as a literary illustration of the new barriers that the prospective trans/posthumanity may have to face and seek to surmount or leave behind.
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This paper discusses the legend of Ashoka’s hell relating to the ancient Indian emperor of Maurya dynasty and his conversion to Buddhism as depicted by the Hindi writer Ajñeya (1911–1987) in his play Uttar Priyadarśī of 1967 as well as references made by him to a torture chamber in the imperial palace in Pataliputra. The thesis proposed here is that Ajñeya, while re-telling the old Buddhist legend and referring it to the emperor’s material prison, seeks to renew how it is perceived and prove its underlying concept. While looking for overlaps between history and legend and focusing on Ashoka’s prison-hell, he aims to present the truth about the reason and manner of the emperor’s conversion. References to the Buddhist story in Indian and Chinese versions and history of Ashoka are studied to reveal their mutual role in the play. His version of the tale is compared to the relevant part of the Aśokāvadāna, regarded as the most reliable source on the legend of Ashoka. It is illustrated by passages from Ajñeya’s play translated for the first time in this paper and the available English translations of the Aśokāvadāna with some references to its text in Sanskrit. The analysis presented here proves that the playwright emphasises descriptions of torture and terror that correspond to the state of Ashoka’s mind, which is tormented by the phantoms of war against the state of Kalinga. Thus, he provides psychological insight into the main protagonist’s Self. Ajñeya transforms the legend by making the emperor’s regret the main reason for his renunciation of war and conversion to Buddhism. He also changes its ending so that it suits the final message of his play. Priyadarshi’s salvation from hell has to be read as liberation from one’s exaggerated Self, the reason for his suffering, which is only possible once it is renounced. The analysis proves Ajñeya’s skills in evoking an ancient dramatic style, and language while presenting Ashoka’s dilemma as a modern conflict. In the end, the motif of “entering hell” is referred to as one of the oldest known topoi in world literature
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This paper analyses and interprets possible sources of the subtext in Genrikh Sapgir’s poem “Parad idiotov” [‘A Parade of idiots’], namely motifs of the road and marching onward, as reflected in the revolutionary parades of the early twentieth century and in the Soviet poetry for children and for the general reader. In the poetry of Aleksandr Galich and Iosif Brodsky the revolutionary fervour of the parade is presented ironically. In it, the distinctions between military and civil parades, between the jubilee parade and a workers’ demonstration are elided: movement to the music itself becomes a characteristic motif of the poetry of the 1960s, so that the motif of the parade becomes not just a literary signifier, but also a feature of everyday life, suggesting on the one hand joy and celebration, and on the other the greatness of the country and the glorification of the Soviet man who strides along “the correct path”. In parallel with the semantics of a holiday, the motif of the procession acquires an additional meaning (also inspired by the era) of a forced movement, the march of prisoners towards their place of imprisonment. Sometimes the parade motif takes on both meanings: the joyous march and the listless marching of puppets become woven into a single whole. It is noteworthy that in children’s poetry, the parade motif is indistinguishable from its counterpart in “adult” poetry. The lyrical subject of Sapgir’s poem, who walks towards the parade of idiots, merges with it: movement is proclaimed to be the goal of life, and death for a dream with a blissful smile – the romantic idea of an idiot. It is probably no coincidence that Sapgir’s text contains no direct quotes from previous “parade” texts nor clear markers of a genetic connections with them: the poet is quoting not texts, but the epoch.
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Pyotr Vegin’s text “Ya ne zabudu svoyei kolybelnoi…” [‘I won’t forget my lullaby’] is weaved of multi-genre motives. Its analysis in the paper substantiates the conclusion that the writer continues the genre history of “the last poem”, valediction and visionary poetry, and that he adopts a polemical stance toward the Horatian tradition of “poetic monuments”. In classical texts, starting with Horace’s “Exegi monumentum...”, which are rhetorical and open to public discussion and part of a poetic agon, the poet’s posthumous fame is compared with artifacts of material memory that are being belittled for the sake of the author’s self-aggrandisement. Vegin’s “monument” is, by contrast, dendronic (a ‘Lombardy poplar’) and his poetic voice soft, addressless, and not expecting response. In juxtaposing Vegin’s text with Pushkin’s “Ya pamyatnik sebe vozdvig nerukotvornyi” (‘I’ve raised myself a monument not built by human hands’), what is evident is a lowering down of the romantic image of the lyre (Pushkin’s ‘my soul in the sacred lyre’) as the sign of the creative legacy bequeathed to the scions, or, in a broader sense, as an allegory of the poetic tradition. As distinguished from the mainly ironic revaluation of this tradition by Vegin’s contemporaries, his polemic with it is undertaken, as it were, from inside, by means of a metaphoric resemantisation of its stylistic formulas, while at the same time leads to creating Vegin’s individual version of a “poetic monument”. His is semantically oriented not on the immortality of the author’s artistic legacy but on an individual reincarnation, a resurrection that excludes death as such by dint of the poet’s carnal death, which has served as the event around which the poetic text is build.
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Images of decay, both psychological and physical, permeate much of J.G. Ballard’s fiction, creating in effect a unique aesthetic that has acquired the eponymous description “ballardian.” This imagery, stemming from the surrealist tradition, is more than aesthetic affectation; it is, as this article argues, the manifestation of an eschatological theme underlying much of New Wave science fiction. This article also addresses how scientific discourse, especially references to entropy, and surrealist aesthetics intersect in his novels (High-Rise and The Drowned World) to provide a metaphor for Ballard’s frequent use of decay imagery. Though the surrealist component of his imagination has been well documented, what still invites closer scrutiny are the ideological assumptions linking Ballard’s incorporation of surrealism with the work of other surrealists and the way Ballard develops this theme for his own purposes
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The article examines the poetics of the book "Pis’mo v chetvyortoi stepeni" [Writing in the Fourth Degree], published in 2017 by friends of the late author, the writer and philologist Oleg Gorbachev (1980–2016), who wrote under the pseudonym of Knishka Pollok. The book displays such structural features as non-linearity of the plot, fragmentary narration, combining epic, lyrical and documentary genres, meta- and intertextuality, as well as visual and graphic expressiveness. The present contribution focuses on this last aspect, which manifests itself, in particular, in the use of the $ sign instead of the letter ж [corresponding to the /ʐ/ sound, typically transcribed “zh”] – a device mimicking an imaginary computer error. Another paragraphemic element is the use of italics, which marks parts of another’s (extraneous) text representing the genres of the short story, the letter, or the medical document. An even stronger typographic marker is the use of bold characters to highlight the extraneous poetic text embedded in the writer’s own prose text. Distinguishing between the two types of text is possible only thanks to the font differentiation, the meaning of which becomes apparent to the reader not immediately, but in the process of (re)reading. The essence of the experiment is to notice signals of a stricter, orderly arrangement in the groups of selected words and to impose on the structural code of prose a different code – the poetic one. Such combined forms can legitimately be called “verseprose”. This dynamic combination of prose and verse elements, whereby a new theme is added to the main theme, forming a structural and semantic unity with it, produces what may be called a certain “prosametric” counterpoint. Oleg Gorbachev’s book might be turned into an audiobook, if desired, but then the entire semantic layer created by supragraphemic means would be lost. “Writing in the fourth degree” is an example of experimental prose in which paragraphemics constitute one of the levels on which meaning is generated.
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The article is devoted to the study of poetry of Ilya Argentum, a Russian-speaking author of the Pavlodar region in Kazakhstan. The article presents an attempt to identify traits that characterise the creative output of this contemporary author. In the analysis, special attention is paid to how the worldview provides foundations for Argentum’s writing. When addressing issues such as the meaning of life, the true and false values, death and immortality, love, the role of the poet in modern life, the role his hometown has played in his own destiny, the young poet undoubtedly proves his individuality, both artistically and in terms of worldview. The poet’s significant creative potential and his original manner of writing help legitimizing the claim about the strengthening of the position of the local literature of the Pavlodar region in the contemporary literary process.
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