Fragmentariness as a key aspect and meaning-making principle of the poem. On Fedor Matejov’s art of interpretation

Abstract

The paper focuses on the issue of the semiotics of the fragment, its meaning-making function in the figurative and semantic structure, or semiosis of a particular lyric text, with special attention to the close and key connection between imagery and memory. The poem “Spamäti” (By heart, 1957) by Ján Ondruš (1932 – 2000), one of the most distinctive Slovak poets of the second half of the twentieth century, interpreted by Fedor Matejov in his 2018 essay “the lonely boy leaning against the wall” (Ján Ondruš’s poem “Spamäti [By heart]”), serves as an illustrative example. The paper has a meta-interpretive character – it is an interpretation of an interpretation, a reading of a reading. In this sense, it addresses not only the poetics and semiosis of the text but primarily seeks to analytically grasp and characterize the interpretive procedures, strategies, methodological specificities, and the overall logic and significance of Fedor Matejov’s approach. Matejov is considered one of the most original and erudite contemporary Slovak literary scholars focused on the interpretation of Slovak poetry after 1945 and this paper wishes to elucidate the distinctive features of his interpretive practice.

Keywords

• ján ondruš
• interpretation
• fragment
• memory
• evocation
• meaning of the text