Филологический класс (Jun 2022)
Definitions of Poetry and Poetology of Transgression
Abstract
The article examines the definitions of poetry in the Russian literature of the 1990–2010. The object of analysis is the conceptualization of poetry and the ways of association of social and cultural meanings with it. In contrast to the existing tradition of poetological research, the author of the article does not focus on poetry as such, but on the ideas about it, which he considers changeable and historical. It has been found that all the definitions considered are united by the idea of a profound changes in the understanding of the place of poetry in culture, in the ideas about the lyrical subject, and in the ways of organization a poetic text. The depth of this change allows one to talk about the formation of a new paradigm of poetry and about the revision of ideas about poetry and its typical features. Naturally, on the level of artistic self-reflection, on the level of poetics, and on the level of the pragmatics of the text, the role of the semantic, existential, and value-based boundary is actualized. It seems feasible to correlate the systemic redefinition of poetry as cultural practice in this sense with the con- cepts of transgressiveness and liminality. It is only natural that the concept of “boundaries” turns out to be the most frequent element in all the definitions of poetry considered. The idea of a boundary acts as a sign of crisis of modernity, in which “transition” turns out to be a way to overcome social and cultural stagnation, as well as the inertia of literary development. Transgression as a “gesture that is directed to the limit” (M. Foucault) or “overco- ming the insurmountable limit” (M. Blanchot) turns out to be an instrument of self-criticism of poetry and a way to overcome both the modernist absolutization of the “new” and the postmodern crisis of novelty. Transgression as something that exists outside the linear orientation can be interpreted as an attempt to build a system of equivalent alternatives to literary development. Poetry is interpreted by its modern theorists as a “borderline” practice, experiencing anthropological, existential, and linguistic limits. Such a view, as the author of the article believes, is because in culture there is a request for a revision of the very foundations of writing, for new literature and a new model of “literariness”.
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