Tsarskoye Selo text in Russian Poetry: Structure and dynamics

Abstract

The article examines the Tsarskoye Selo text as one of the local supertexts of Russian literature. Researchers identify a complex of mythologemes, images, and motifs that make it possible to combine the texts of different authors into a supertext based on semantic criteria. The purpose of this article is to trace how the invariant structure of a supertext can be transformed in the course of its functioning. For this, supertext is considered not only at the level of semantics, but also at the levels of syntactics and pragmatics. The semantic core of the Tsarskoye Selo text is made up of two mythologemes (the city of kings and the city of poets). These mythologemes are presented in the text through a system of images and motives (images of a nightingale and a swan, images of Tsarskoye Selo statues, motives of memory, sleep, death). The key mechanism of dynamics is the metonymic replacement of the whole (Tsarskoe Selo) with a part (imagesymbols associated with this place). At the syntactic level, stable plot an syntactic constructions are formed that regulate the reproduction of semantic elements, the key of which is the plot/genre of the walk. The first phase of the plot is «moving pictures» (visual impressions that are in the field of vision of a lyrical subject moving in space). The second phase is an appeal to the Other (the former resident of these places, a cult figure). The transformation of this plot scheme can occur as a result of the autonomization of the phases, as well as ironic reflection on the objects of description and the addressee (the figure of the Other). In the diachronic aspect, communication processes are important: during the development of the supertext, various communicative registers are formed (the points of view of the author and addressee of the poem, intertextual and intermedial dialogue). At the pragmatic level, oppositions of poetry and prose, verbal and visual are developed. The opposition poetry – prose concerns the idea of an object of description acceptable to poetry/prose. These ideas change during the functioning of the Tsarskoye Selo text. Beginning with the era of modernism, subjects related to the sphere of everyday life fall into the field of view of the lyrical subject. These images are contrasted with the conventional visual code, which includes, first of all, statues of Tsarskoye Selo (a girl with a broken jug, a statue of peace, a monument to Pushkin). Understanding the elements of the visual code occurs during the intertextual dialogue between the case text and its following interpretations. Thus, one of the key mechanisms for the development of the Tsarskoye Selo text is dialogue, which manifests itself at three levels: at the level of the subject structure, at the intertextual level (dialogue with the pretext), and at the intermediate level (interaction of the verbal and visual code).

Keywords

• tsarskoye selo text
• supertext
• intertext
• intermediality
• dialogue