Experiences in translation: the text as a pattern, the pattern as a text

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the methodological prospects of using the term ‘pattern’ in the analysis of a literary text. We identify the semantic and categorial field of the term, propose a definition of ‘pattern’ as projected on language material, and correlate the terms ‘pattern’, ‘repetition’, ‘recurrence’, and others. The linguistic ontology of the pattern as a text-generating mechanism is determined by the fact that the pattern problematizes the relation­ship between repetition and variation, singular and plural, a norm and a deviation. A text has a pattern nature if its basic pattern does not coincide with its textual realizations, provided the latter are very similar at the prototype or model level. Therefore, the relationship between the pattern and a resultant text is isomorphic to the relationship between language and speech. Our analysis of poetic texts by Andrey Monastyrsky and Dmitri Prigov demonstrates the possibilities of studying a text as the realization of a pattern from the perspective of vari­ous literary strategies adopted by authors.

Keywords

• pattern
• literary text
• generative poetics
• invariance
• variability