MODERN POETIC DISCOURSE: THE LINGUISTIC NATURE OF HERMETICISM

Abstract

The paper provides review of the monograph by Ekaterina Evgrashkina The Semiotic Nature of Semantic Uncertainty in Modern Poetic Discourse (based on German and Russian poetry), published in the Russian language as part of the series NEUERE LYRIK. Interkulturelle und interdisziplinäre Studien. Herausgegeben von Henrieke Stahl, Dmitrij Bak, Hermann Korte, Hiroko Masumoto und Stephanie Sandler. BAND 5. Berlin: Peter Lang, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2019. 173 s. ISBN 978-3-631-78193-7.The monograph deals with the main trends of German and Russian poetry of the last decades. The focus is on the phenomenon of hermetic poetry. Modern authors consciously choose writing strategies such as literary improvisation, language play, and various intermedial inclusions.The first chapter ‘The problem of poetic meaning’ provides a theoretical framework for the field of research. It introduces the definitions of discourse, the concepts ‘language games’ (developed by L. Wittgen­stein), ‘text / discourse’, ‘text / work’, dialogical dimensions of poetic text.The second chapter ‘Semiotics of modern poetry’ covers the concept ‘mobile semiosis’ (J. Bau­drillard) and some others. In hermetic poetic discourse, generation of meaning is based on mobile semiosis, in which the relationship of stability between the signifier and the signified is called into question. In The Role of the Reader, Umberto Eco describes two models of the reader, different strategies for interpreting text. Susan Sontag denies the possibility of final interpretation of a text, she suggests eroticism of art instead of hermeneutics.The third chapter ‘Linguistic installations’ considers various manifestations of poetic Hermeticism in modern poetry, the experience of concrete and visual poetry in German: Timm Ulrichs (1940), Klaus Peter Dencker (1941), Barbara Köhler (1959), Werner Herbst (1943–2008), Anatol Knotek (1977), Herta Müller (1953).The final chapter ‘The self-reflexive discourse’ deals with the trend of modern poetry towards free verse and construction of new complex poetic forms. The process of occasional word formation is shown in the lyrical texts by German poets Thomas Kling (1957–2005), Lutz Seiler (1963), Konstantin Ames (1979), Lioba Happel (1957), Thomas Böhme (1955), and by Russian authors Polina Andrukovich (1969), Alexander Ulanov (1963), Dmitry Vorobyov (1979). In poetic discourse, the constitution of the poetic subject correlates with the introduction of new elements of culture into the poetic text. Such innovations do not lead to a mechanical increment of the elementary meaning, but to a structural transformation of the whole picture.The reviewed monograph is significant in that it provides theoretical understanding of individual poetic practices and the analysis of specific empirical material – the latest German and Russian poetry.