Deconstruction of the Postmodern Poetic Language (Metaplasmic Figures)

Abstract

In poetry, the materiality of the signifier can stand for the message itself; nevertheless, writing, as Saussure has warned us, is not a coat, but a travesty of language. After a presentation of the change of perspective regarding poetic language, i.e. the move from the structuralist conception of an anti-language to the postmodern idea of an absolute language, the paper studies the graphic metabole in Deadevă by Caius Dobrescu and the regression towards the primitive forms of the code in Dimitrie Crudu’s poetry. The experimental techniques for deconstructing word syntax are diverse and target either authenticity (we do not write exactly as we speak, while electronic communication tends to globalise writing), either a criticism of language. Dobrescu desymbolizes and dephonologizes, he obtains postlexical symbols by fusing or re-segmenting the words and establishes a playful, paradoxical relationship to the reader. The deconstruction of the Romanian language is an ironic game aimed at the rigidity of literary norms and at the same time a metaphor for the danger of losing one’s identity.

Keywords

• experimentalism
• graphemes
• metaplasmic figures
• orality
• postmodern poetry