The article focuses on three areas that have so far attracted only marginal attention from researchers. It looks at the unusual pattern of word-formation, based on metonymy, employed by Mayakovsky ...especially in the creation of new adjectives. The study then concentrates on Mayakovsky’s motivation for coining neologisms (beyond the usual need to find names for new objects and phenomena), focusing on those neologisms created by Mayakovsky in pursuance of rhyme. The study also examines the afterlife of Mayakovsky’s neologisms following their use in his works, to identify which of them made their way into current Russian. The three-level comparison of two authoritative works on Mayakovsky’s neologisms (Humesky, 1964 and Valavin, 2010) with data from the Russian National Corpus demonstrates the survival of several of Mayakovsky’s neologisms in ordinary Russian. The Corpus also reveals that some neologisms traditionally ascribed to Mayakovsky were in fact created by other authors and may have been only “borrowed” by Mayakovsky. The comparison of the works by Humesky and Valavin also revealed interesting facts about the evolution of the study of Mayakovsky’s neologisms.
This article delves into Tommaso Landolfi’s evolving translation strategies in regard to Russian poetry, with a particular focus on the influence exerted on him by two Italian slavists and ...translators, Renato Poggioli and Angelo Maria Ripellino. During the initial phase of Landolfi’s activity, the profound influence of Renato Poggioli becomes evident. This is exemplified by Landolfi’s translations from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the rigid prescriptions expressed in his reviews of books translated by others. Subsequently, Landolfi undergoes a phase of re-evaluation, as evidenced by his review of Ripellino’s ‘literal’ translations and, most notably, by his first volume of translations of Pushkin (Einaudi 1960). In this book, Landolfi explores a wide range of strategies, particularly regarding the metrical organisation of the texts, without adhering to one specific approach. Ultimately, in his last two books of translations, Landolfi successfully amalgamates the contrasting models of Poggioli and Ripellino, culminating in the development of his own distinctive strategy.
The borrowing of certain principles of text structure or other elements from drama are typical ways to dramatize a poem. Dramatization became a widespread phenomenon in Russian poetry of the late ...20th and early 21st centuries. Dramatized poems can be divided into two groups: 1) texts in which we can clearly see elements of drama, such as stage directions, dramatis personae, the names of characters indicated before their speech, etc.; and 2) texts with no explicit dramatic elements but divided into conversational turns in which each utterance can potentially be attributed to a different speaker. Both types of dramatization allow us to see the creation of a new kind of subject in Russian poetry – the multiple subject. In dramatized poems we see a subject but not a persona (liricheskii geroi, according to Tynianov), because the utterances of multiple speakers cannot be united in a non-contradictory image of a single persona. At the same time, they can provide a basis for reconstructing the subject. It is important to emphasize that both strategies of dramatization imply a communicative space represented in the text that is similar in structure to space in drama. We can postulate the correspondence between the multiple subject and dramatization as a formal tool (priem).
This article discusses different versions of subjectivity in contemporary Russian poetry. De-subjectification ‒ i.e. the use of different forms of indirect statement – is often deemed to be the most ...important tendency in modern Russian poetry. This tendency is, meanwhile, put at odds with an attempt to preserve a lyrical “ego” as the carrier of catastrophic, transgressive experience. In this context, to be the subject means to experience painful metamorphoses; to claim to be in the act of transgression; to transition through the limit of trauma and pain. This article identifies some aspects and strains of such subjectivity: the “constructive,” which creates the illusion of a conventional “masked” subject; the “orphic,” which implies reference to the fragmentary nature of the “ego” and the value of madness in poetic experience; and the “parodic,” which combines intense painful experiences with an ironic attitude towards suffering. All these variants consolidate the multidimensionality of the world and the interpretation of the “wound” as the “eye,” which allow us to establish new cause and effect relationships.
When Marina Tsvetaeva lived in exile in villages surrounding Prague (1922-25) and in Paris (1925-39), she wrote extensively in verse and correspondence on her personal and emotional relationship to ...Czechia. Scholars have demonstrated how Tsvetaeva created a Czechia through poetry that could serve as a second or surrogate homeland; this article will show that she also imagined Czechia as a personified figure who could actively participate in that relationship. Theoretical reflections on experiences of exile provide many ways for displaced people to attempt to re-create a center of identity and alleviate the devastating loss of their homeland. In Tsvetaeva’s case, creating a poetic Czechia capable of mutual engagement allows a dynamic of guardianship or protection to develop. First, while Tsvetaeva lived in Czechoslovakia, this imagined Czechia served as her protector from the destruction of identity posed by exile as seen in the lyric ‘The Prague Knight’ (‘Пражский рыцарь’). Then, while living in France, Tsvetaeva turned to serve as Czechia’s protector from destruction at the hands of Nazi occupation as seen in the cycle ‘Poems to Czechia’ (‘Стихи к Чехии’). In our own time, concerns of mass displacement and lost centers of belonging are more and more urgently prescient.
This pocket-sized paperback is one of the thirty titles published for 2019 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2019 is Speech and Silence. From 19–24 November 2019, 30 invited ...poets from various countries will be in Hong Kong to read their works based on the theme Speech and Silence. Included in the anthology and box set, these unique works are presented with Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.
This pocket-sized paperback is one of the thirty titles published for 2019 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2019 is Speech and Silence. From 19–24 November 2019, 30 invited ...poets from various countries will be in Hong Kong to read their works based on the theme Speech and Silence. Included in the anthology and box set, these unique works are presented with Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.
Traditionally, the phenomenon of the semantic aura of the verse metre was regarded exclusively as historically determined; the question of a potential synaesthesia (the imitative potential possessed ...by the rhythmic structure of a poetic text) was essentially disregarded. This paper aims to approach the problem of “metre and meaning” from the perspective of possible actualisation of certain language forms in the metrical structures of binary and ternary metres; in other words, to analyse how the metrical nature of verse determines its basic semantic model. We have come to the conclusion that the fundamental difference between Russian binary and ternary metres lies in the level of rhythmical prominence of metrically dual words, the majority of which are pronouns. The very structure of binary metres suggests a constant possibility for pronouns to be in proximity to an unstressed syllable and to receive more or less heavy stress. In ternary metres pronouns find themselves inside the circle of metrical stresses and, being inevitably adjacent to either the preceding or the following one, lose their accent and are swallowed during pronunciation. The latter, in turn, results in weakening of deictic and anaphoric language functions and undermines the established logic of textual development. That is where different, i. e., poetic, mechanisms of creating meaning come to the fore. Ternary metres put rhythmic stress on notional words, creating — in accordance with the law of poetic analogy and via omission of intermediary elements — linguistically unpredictable associations between them; binary metres emphasise semi-notional and functional words, stressing the logical and grammatical order of text development.
"In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between power and poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of ...Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch’s power. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine’s reign (and some major literary works) that give a broad framework to discuss the evolution of important recurring motifs and images."
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