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A.V. Shvets (Moscow)
IMPROVISATION AS A READERLY RESPONSE IN AVANT-GARDE POETIC PRACTICES (GROUP "41°")
Abstract. The paper focuses on the poetic activities of "41°" circle (A. Kruchen-nykh, I. Zdanevich, I. Terent'ev). Communicative interactions between the author and the reader take center stage. Russian Avant-garde communities are considered to mobilize the creativity of a reader, to turn the reader into a co-author (see Ioffe, Bobrin-skaya, Feshchenko), and, as a community, "41°" was no exception to the rule. In the community of "41°," a particular readerly response (W. Iser) becomes prominent and is foregrounded: an active improvisation on the part of the reader. The author casts himself as a pedagogic persona initiating the contact with the reader, yet it does not appear to be the case that he aspires to take on the role of a poetic authority. Rather, the poet invites the reader to engage with the poetic text, so that the latter is able to actively re-write the text, tp re-create it and to use the text as a foundation for improvisation. Improvisation as a readerly response is analyzed in three communicative interactions involving the presence of three types of readers, the readers being the actual reader, the actual reader aspiring to fill in the role of an ideal reader, the implied reader. In all three cases improvisation is projected as a readerly response. The possibility of such a response is closely linked to an emphasis on marginal, epiphenomenal characteristics of the poetic utterance. This implies an emphasis on the look of the word (font choices, letter size, the combination of these parameters in a word), aspects of poetic performance (the way the text is articulated). These characteristics are considered to be particularly expressive, emotionally charged, so that the experience they convey lays the foundation for the improvisation on the part of the reader.
Key words: avant-garde; futurism; 41°; Kruchenykh; Terent'ev; improvisation; readerly response.
А.В. Швец (Москва)
Импровизация как тип читательского отклика в поэтических практиках авангарда (на примере творчества группы «41°»)
Аннотация. В статье анализируется творческая деятельность группы "41°" (А. Кручёных, И. Зданевич, И. Терентьев); в центре внимания - коммуникативное взаимодействие между автором и читателем. Авангардные сообщества (сообщества русского авангарда) делают ставку на мобилизацию творческой активности читателя, превращение читателя в потенциального соавтора (см. работы Д. Иоффе, Е. Бобринской, В. Фещенко), и сообщество "41°" не было исключением. В рамках этого сообщества практикуется особый тип читательского отклика (В. Изер): активная импровизация со стороны реципиента. Автор выступает как учитель-педагог, который инициирует взаимодействие с читателем, однако не задает авто-
ритетный образец, а приглашает к осмыслению поэтического текста и призывает к работе с ним. Читатель призывается к переписыванию и пересозданию поэтического текста, свободной импровизации на его основе. Импровизация как тип читательского отклика анализируется нами в коммуникативных ситуациях, которые подразумевают присутствие трёх типов читателей. Это - реальный читатель, реальный читатель, притязающий на приближение к идеальному читателю, имплицитный читатель. Во всех трех случаях импровизация обозначается как тип читательского отклика, ожидаемый от реципиента. Возможность импровизации обеспечена переносом акцентов на эпифеноменальные, маргинальные характеристики поэтического высказывания, такие, как черты графического облика слова (шрифт, размер букв, сочетание этих параметров), особенности исполнения слова чтецом на поэтическом вечере (артикуляция отдельных звуков). Эти характеристики переосмысляются как обладающие особой выразительностью, моделирующие эмоциональное переживание - основу для импровизационного поведения со стороны читателя.
Ключевые слова: авангард; футуризм; "41°"; Кручёных; Терентьев; импровизация; читательский отклик.
Russian avant-garde experiment was not confined solely to the realm of literary invention but could also be described as related to literary communication. More precisely, it is meant to transform the author-reader relationship [see also Швец / Shvets 2020]. Here one might routinely refer to a body of scholarship on the pragmatics of avant-garde communication [Иоффе / Ioffe 2012; Фещенко / Feshchenko 2009; Бобринская / Bobrinskaya 1998; Шапир / Shapir 1995], with a strong emphasis on the role ofthe reader as a co-author and a co-creator of the textual meaning (and sometimes the text itself). In this paper, we will try to illustrate this premise by exploring an avant-garde project aimed at a transformation of readerly habits.
The project was originally designed in the "laboratory of poetic writing" in Tiflis (modern day Tbilisi) by the group "41°". Its goal, briefly summarized, could be described as "unlearning to read" and then learning to read the poetic text again, against the grain, to discover a range of expressive possibilities, unthought of before. The execution of the project involved communicating the new way of reading to the reader based on participating in the poetic experience through improvisation.
The group "41°" (its key members being Alexei Kruchenykh, Ilya Zdan-evich and Igor' Terenti'ev) is often characterized as a local (Tiflis-based) parochial community, with an insignificant outreach. It emerged in the aftermath of a great wave of Russian futurism and the First World War that pushed some Futurist poets to the margins of the empire. The community clustered around a small network of like-minded poets residing in Tiflis after having fled Moscow and Petrograd in 1916-1917. Namely, these poets were Alexei Kruchenykh and Ilya Zdanevich, seasoned in the battles of Moscow and Petersburg futurists and fairly sophisticated as far as Futurist ideology was concerned. Zdanevich entered into correspondence with F.T. Marinetti around 1912; Kruchenykh took
the role of an educator-poet, while participating in Hylaea public events (debates organized by "Jack of Diamonds" and "Union of Youth"; "Victory over Sun" premiere). Established by Kruchenykh, brothers Zdanevich and Igor' Terent'ev in 1918, "41°" (originally baptized as "the Futurists Syndicate" in November 1917) pulled into its orbit local Georgian poets, friends and acquaintances of Tiflis-born Ilya Zdanevich (Kara-Darvish, Nikolai Cherniavski, Lado Gudiash-vili and others). The members of the community would gather in cafés, such as "The Fantastic Tavern," on a weekly / bi-weekly basis from the end of 1917 till the beginning of 1919 [Chikhradze 2014] [Никольская / Nikolskaya 2000]. The Tiflis poet Sandro Kancheli, the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper "Republic," helped spread the word; the newspaper journalists provided a meticulous account of the event for a wider public (which, sadly, remained indifferent).
As T. Nikolskaya observes, "(the futurists of '41°' - A.S.) mostly enlightened the circle of poets and those dabbling in poetry, interested in the new artistic trends" [Никольская / Nikolskaya 2000, 62]. As a result, the actual readers were to be found amongst the poets and their allies. The relationship between the authors and their readers (the poets or would-be poets themselves) could be seen as sympathetic. Thus, despite the lack of a wider readership, the community boasted strong ties among its members and their friends-readers. The audience of poets and amateurs paved the way to the vision of an ideal, implied reader of a poetic text.
In the paper, we intend to profile three types of recipients in order to reconstruct and analyze a particular readerly response, improvisation, the crux of author-reader relationship. Reception spans three types of readers: the implied reader (theorized by W. Iser) [Iser 1993], the critic as an empirical reader (theorized by S. Fish with regards to "affective stylistics") [Fish 1970], the actual reader (theorized by J. Radway) [Radway 1997; Radway 2009]. The first reader corresponds to an ideal vision of the reader projected by the author onto the text. The second reader is the critic conceptualizing his actual readerly experience as the experience most readers are likely to have. The third reader is a reader having an individual, idiosyncratic readerly experience not necessarily fitting any standard of reception (yet subject to post-factum generalizations). In our analysis, we will proceed from the actual reader to the critic as the reader and then we will pass on to the implied reader.
The communicative interactions between the actual reader and the Futurist authors were played out in a friendly setting of the "poetic laboratory," brought about by "41°" poets. Poetic gatherings turned into poetic soirées and included a public lecture by a poet on a new ars poética, a discussion after the lecture, with poetic readings closing the evening program. From theoretical conjectures the poets seamlessly transitioned to poetic practice.
This thesis could be substantiated by V. Katanian's account of a typical poetic soirée. Kruchenykh would read a lecture on how to write verses, accompanying his view of poetry with examples. In doing so, the poet would "mar-velously... d e l i v e r t h e s p e e c h" (Katanian's emphasis; all translations from Russian are mine, unless otherwise indicated - A.S.) [Катанян / Katanyan
1994, 53]. Kruchenykh "would raise and lower his voice, shout some words out, and then skip or, more precisely, swallow whole utterances... [so that] the tonalities that were remotely related would reveal a connection, unexpected modulations surprised (the listeners - A.S.)" [Катанян / Katanyan 1994, 53]. When Kruchenykh went out of breath, Katanian would read for Kruchenykh (so that the lecturer could take a break), trying to reach the same level of expressive artistry.
Other poets also had a chance to participate in a poetic performance, like Katanian did. For instance, A. Poroshin would accompany Kruchenykh's lectures with a parody poem. His poem includes such details, as "high pitch" ("голос петушиный" - A.S.), zaoum, or "unfamiliar words," the fact that Kruchenykh's poetry was "perhaps interesting but incomprehensible" ("Оно, быть может, и занятно / Но только слишком непонятно") [Никольская / Nikolskaya 2000, 64]. Composing parodies in verse was a common practice among the viewers of "41°" poetic events. When Zdanevich delivered a lecture on zaoum ("the transrational language"), a local poet Paolo Yashvili came up with a parody of Zdanevich's poetry, insisting that it was a poetic rendition of Zdanevich's speech. Other viewers also argued with Zdanevich, offering their own views of his poetry. The poet performed a reading of a zaoum poem, noting that it was a portrait of a famous critic Breshko-Breshkovsky. Promptly, a voice from the audience emerged saying that the "portrait" indeed might have born some resemblance to Breshko, although the critic seemed to be "more brazen" in real life [Никольская / Nikolskaya 2000, 42].
As we might see, communication within "41°" community could be reduced to a script. The script involves presenting a theoretical view of the new poetry, supporting the view with an example (which often meant a poetic performance) and then handing poetic agency to the reader. In that scenario, improvisation on the part of the reader lies at the core of aesthetic communication, as it was the case with Katanian and Zdanevich's opponents. Interestingly, a poetic foundation of zaoum does not appear to be accidental. The language, devoid of conventional meaning and vested with evocative power, serves as a platform for poetic collaboration and the recipient's improvisation.
Igor' Terent'ev's take on that communicative model was neatly summarized in "17 Nonsense Instruments" ("17 ерундовых орудий"): "Futurism lay the ground for improvisation: it demanded a lot from the reader and nothing from the writer. Everything is refuted by futurists! But they did not refute themselves: so they remain too focused on themselves (так и стоят за-я-канные -А.Ш.). All the authors go aboard! To say the word of the other we must (Надо сказать чужое слово - А.Ш.)" [Терентьев 1988, 190]. Saying "the word ofthe other," or, rather, acknowledging the other and endowing the other with a creative agency was at the core of poetic practices in the "poetic laboratory." That distinguished "41°" from its predecessors, the futurists authors, hyper-focused "on themselves" to the detriment of a readerly creativity.
The discussion of that communicative model and of improvisation as a vital element of poetic practice with a critic as the reader took place in Kruchenykh's
correspondence with Andrei Akimovich Shemshurin, one of the first critics and advocates of the Futurist poetics (mostly known for his analysis of Kamensky's ferroconcerete poems) [Шемшурин 1915]. This is an important step forward (although chronologically it partly preceded "41°" experiments). Before that, we have been mostly analyzing public events, or encounters with actual readers. Here, the poet also communicates with the real reader, the critic, but the poet addresses that reader as if the latter, with their education and critical acumen, could impersonate the ideal recipient.
In one of the letters, Kruchenykh makes a confession: "I am more and more convinced that the letter (and the word in poetry) - is a picture - painting - it is a secret from everyone" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 29]. "If someone likes the way 'Te li le' is written in terms of its painterly look (с живописной стороны - А.Ш.), not in terms of meaning (toothless meaning, of which there is none in zaoum opetry), it appears that such a reader is right" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 29-30]. Kruchenykh's meditations on visual poetry are supplied with a package of "painterly poems," with some of them written presumably in co-authorship with Olga Rozanova. The emphasis on the look of the word, or its performative aspect (the way it is rendered on a page), translates to the auditory realm as well. Kruchenykh asks Shemshurin about the meaning of a sound of the letters ("u," "tz," "f," "kh"), expecting the latter to define the meaning as a set of associations: "What does the letter u mean? In my opinion (it's a secret), it means a flight, a sense of depth... a feeling of anxiety. What do letters tz; f et el. mean in terms of their emotional content (со стороны эмоции - А.Ш.)? Write me up" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012,43]. The performative dimension (the way words are printed on a page or articulated in speech) comes to the fore and, moreover, is seen as a ground for a creative readerly response (involving a free flow of associations, or, again, improvisation). Thus, improvisation is based on the foregrounding of the performative aspect of the poetic word.
Asked to pass a judgment on Kruchenykh's conception from the reader's point of view, Shemshurin prefers to disagree with the poet. He offers the following explanation: "in affective complexes (комплексах ощущений - А.Ш.) one might find parts that are important, essential and parts that are not so important (части важные и неважные - А.Ш.)" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 156]. For instance, if one wants to know more about tactile qualities of an object, one relies on one's sense of touch. However, other senses also participate in the process of getting to know the object, although playing a marginal role and being on the periphery of sensory perception (we also see and smell the object in question while touching it). Touch could be described as an essential part of the affective complex. However, this does not apply to eyesight, an epiphenom-enal part of the said complex.
Shemshurin insists that the same division could be observed with regards to aesthetic affective complexes where one might find essential and marginal parts, the latter being, for instance, the perception of an image in a letter. For Shemshurin, the performative dimension of a word, the basis for improvisa-
tion, appears to be "negligible" in terms of its "practical value" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 157] (here it refers to the effect on the reader). "A graphic image is an element of a letter and of a word. That element is also present in the process of reading. However, having a weak mental system, you cannot hold this element in a neutral position, and it takes center stage" [Кручёных 2012, 157], elaborates the critic. Shemshurin hints that an emphasis on the performative potential of a word (the way it could be rendered, executed, articulated) could be interpreted as being deranged and not possessing a clear frame of mind. As Shemshurin puts it, such a poet / reader thinks that "there is only one important thing: what I want it to mean! (хочу! - А.Ш.) (the author's italics -A.S.)... Thus, I want to put stress on an epiphenomenal part of a complex, and I do; let this part be dominant" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 158]. The result is that "the impression of an image, not of a meaning of the word dominates" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 158] (or, developing that idea, the impression of a sound).
In Shemshurin's view, assigning the primary role to heretofore epiphenom-enal parts of an affective complex makes the meaning of a word dependent "on something closely related to memory," or purely subjective experience. The message of an utterance appears to be context-dependent, performance-oriented, malleable and changeable. In one of his books on Futurism Shemshurin complained that "this malleability of a meaning, its fluidity, or, better yet, a capacity to shift (изменяемость смысла, его движение или, лучше сказать, передвижение - А.Ш.) (the author's italics - A.S.)... is the common denominator of Futurist poetry" [Шемшурин / Shemshurin 1913, 10-11]. This is the reason why "in each.. .combination the key element is missing, namely, the authorial permission to consider the meaning that we are focusing on our attention the definitive one" [Шемшурин / Shemshurin 1913, 9]. The absence of definitive meanings and authorial guidelines, the attention not to the meaning itself but its shifts and changes proves to be a source of discomfort for Shemshurin as a reader and a source of poetic creativity and improvisation for Kruchenykh as a poet.
In his response to Shemshurin, Kruchenykh defends the importance of the emphasis on marginal parts of the aesthetic complex. By shifting the focus to the aspects that used to be peripheral and refusing to attribute a single meaning to these aspects, Kruchenykh underlines the evocative power of the performative dimension of a word. The evocative power mostly resides in the fact that each new reading (as performance) yields a range of new meanings depending on the context of the performance, readerly experience and so on.
Thus, the poet introduces the readerly effects of "serendipity" (случайность - А.Ш.) and "riddle," "mystery" (загадка - А.Ш.) to his texts. An experience of meaning as accidental, partly random, inferential and indirect (as is the case with riddles) lays the foundation for new, unanticipated readings. Without these two effects, "we rob our texts of what is the most prized as we leave only what has already been regurgitated, well-learned, while life is being wasted" [Кручёных / Kruchenykh 2012, 30]. As we can see, the poet tries to replace
the obvious, conventional and agreed upon ("well-learned and regurgitated") meaning with the meaning that is performative, context-dependent, experiential in its nature. Such a meaning presumably reflects the complexity of life experience.
As it can be seen, one of the first actual readers seems to be skeptical with regards to the improvisation-centered communicative model. However, the dialogue with such a reader allows the poet to hone the model in question. By discussing improvisation-oriented poetic practices with the critic, the poet (the poets) is (are) able to better imagine a way of engaging an implied reader, the ideal addressee of his texts.
The interaction with the implied reader resulting in a collaborative improvisation is played out in Terent'ev's book "17 Nonsense Instruments" (the book was printed in a a few hundreds of copies in 1919). The book appears to be a guide to writing poetry. It consists of a theoretical preface and a series of poems ("practical exercises," or poetic "instruments," "орудия"). The implied reader of the book is subjected to poetic education, firstly, by being exposed to a theory of poetic art, secondly, by coming to terms with poetic practice (represented by the "instruments" of poetry). The poetic education, however, should be taken by the reader with a grain of salt since it is predicated on the use of "good-for-nothing tools," "picayune things" ("ерундовые орудия" - А.Ш.). Thus, the reader, first and foremost, has to invent a creative way of dealing with the poetic instruments which means turning poetic writing into a performance and improvising.
Terent'ev's poetic theory has strong ties with improvisation as a poetic practice. "When there is no mistake, there is nothing" [Терентьев 1988, 181], as we read at the beginning of the book. The key principle underlying poetic art is gravitating toward deliberate mistakes and slips, playing with intentional shifts and distortions in language structures. It is mistakes and distortions, "absurd, nonsence, and bare miracle" [Терентьев 1988, 181] that undermine routine meaning-formation habits and facilitate readerly improvisation. Poetic craft lies with the "ability to be mistaken" [Терентьев 1988, 181], to use a wrong and unexpected turn of phrase and direct the reader's attention to its creative potential. The mistake becomes a source of a creative performance and allows the reader to claim the creative agency necessary for improvisation.
"The ability to be mistaken" depends on the skill of "using one's ear, not one's head" [Терентьев 1988, 181]. In other words, the text is perceived as an auditory entity, and the sound could be divorced from the meaning. Terent'ev substantiates this thesis by "the law of poetic speech": in poetry, "the word's meaning is in its sound" [Терентьев 1988, 181], and "the words that sound alike mean the same things in poetry" [Терентьев 1988, 182].
Terent'ev advocates for the way of reading in which the acoustic impression determines the meaning of an utterance. He compares this way of reading with the way children master the language. "The children often stumble; but, at the same time, they are great dancers" [Терентьев 1988, 181], says Terent'ev implying that children often stumble and are mistaken about the meaning of the words because of a lack of a conventional knowledge. At the same time, chil-
dren are not scared of a natural expression with regards to physical and verbal activity and could be inventive and creative, unfettered by conventional laws and dogmas.
The law of poetic speech involves unlearning to read, as it were, or perceiving the linguistic utterance not as a container of message but as a performative, auditory event. The meaning here emerges through time, accruing new overtones with each new sound. The utterance here does not refer to the ready-made message but rather to an experience unfolding temporarily, through articulation gestures, bodily movements, associations. Para-verbal and pre-verbal context starts playing a vital role, and poetic language is reconsidered as a performative and artistic activity, involving improvisation on the part of the author and the reader.
Terent'ev's conception of poetry is supported by a series of examples, with the most illustrative ones based on a reading of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin."
Если вслушаться в слова: гений, снег, нега, странность, постоянство, приволье, лень, вдохновение. слова, которыми восклицаются, желая характеризовать "настроение". станет несомненно, что они вызваны звуковым гипнозом: Евгений Онегин, Татьяна, Ольга, Ленский.
If we pay close attention to the words: genius, snow, delight, consistency, being at ease, laziness, inspiration. the words, which are used for exclamations, in order to give a description of a "mood," an impression. we will see that all these words are evoked by sonic hypnosis: Eugene Onegin, Tatiana, Olga, Lensky [Терентьев 1988, 183].
Here the poet picks up on a sonorous alliteration "n-l." Terent'ev posits that this sonic structure has its origins in the choice of a name (Onegin) and implies that this stricture refers to a pre-verbal and para-verbal creative impulse. This impulse is the moment when the poet conceives of the name of the hero being mesmerized by the sound of it and the impression it connotates. "Onegin," with its emphasis on sonorous sounds, communicates a feeling of simultaneously being at ease, enjoying delight, indulging in laziness etc. That creative impulse and the sounds that convey it infiltrate the text. Sonic patterns form an almost autonomous plane of meaning used in order to invoke a certain "mood," grow the seed of a creative impulse into a fully-fledged poetic experience, rich and varied, ranging from inspiration and delight to laziness. This plane of meaning could also be considered a pragmatic dimension of the text since it is used to elicit a certain response from the reader (an experience of a mood) and establish contact with them. The reader is invited to be swept away by sonic modulations and discover an experience of delightful inspiration, relaxed creativity, and appropriate this experience.
The appropriation of a lyric experience occurs due to the improvisation on the part of the reader. For the performative experience of sonic patterns to unfold, the reader has to pay attention to the sonic patterns, often to the detriment of meaning (which becomes the key to readerly improvisation). Terent'ev in-
troduces another example to support the point, drawing our attention to the line "все те же ль вы, иные девы." One might read as "все те же львы" (italics -A.S.) (i.e. "the same lions" - A.S.) deliberately introducing a shift in meaning unaccounted for by the structure of the phrase and, thus, improvising while performing a reading. Developing this line of thought, Terent'ev continues:
А дальше поэт (т.е. Пушкин - А.Ш.), слуховое воображение которого поражено словом "львы", рыкает и ворчит: "узрюли (выделение Терентьева - А.Ш.) русской Терпсихоры", "устремив разочарованный лорнет", "безмолвно буду я зевать". не буду настаивать на том, что "узрюли" означает - "ноздри льва". но произносительный пафос этого слова.доказывает основную правильность догадки: торжественный зверь смотрит, раздувая ноздри.
And then, the poet, with his sonic imagination being affected by the word 'львы,' roars and grumbles: 'узрюли (Terent'ev's emphasis - A.S.) русской Терпсихоры,' 'устремив разочарованный лорнет,' 'безмолвно буду я зевать'..Л would not insist that 'узрюли' means 'lion's nostrils'.. .yet the way this word is articulated.. .proves the point: a magnificent beast is looking at you, with its nostrils flared. [Терентьев 1988, 183-184].
An accidental misreading allows for a discovery of latent sonic patterns, suggestive and expressive, yielding an intense affective experience (thrilled by the presence of a beast). In order to live through that experience, the reader has to unlearn to read, to perceive the poem as if it were written in a foreign language, with its sounds being devoid of any known meaning and at the same time evocative. That resembles the way a child would interpret Pushkin's poem not being able to separate "ль" from "вы," occasionally misconstruing the utterance and arriving at a vivid image of a lion. Such a counter-intuitive, childish, improvisational way of reading leads to the proliferation of meanings, often unanticipated, experiential and affective in nature. Commenting on that way of reading, Terent'ev says:
Это не ключ к пониманию поэзии: это отмычка (выделение Терентьева -А.Ш.), потому что всякая красота есть красота со взломом (выделение Терентьева - А.Ш.).
This is not the key to understanding poetry but rather a picklock (Terent'ev's emphasis - A.S.), since any beauty is a hacked beauty (Terent'ev's emphasis - A.S.) [Терентьев 1988, 184].
Improvisation, construed as reading against the grain, reading as "hacking," does not yield a definitive interpretation (the one Shemshurin might have dreamt of). On the contrary, it opens the text up to new interpretative possibilities, unthought of by its author, expanding the range of readerly uses of the text in various contexts. Such a way of reading allows the reader to rewrite the text, re-create it in the moment of reading, conquering back the creative agency from the author.
Such an act of unlearning to read in traditional way enables reader to become more sensitive to the material dimension of the utterance, i.e. sounds of words and its look, sonic and visual rhythms, yet invisible substrates of poetic speech. Rhythms serves as a basis for creative improvisation: "Each artist has to learn until he becomes a complete fool: discoveries occur when fooling around happens. Rhythm! Rhythm! Rhythm!" [Терентьев 1988, 186], as we read in Terent'ev's book. Rhythms of everyday movements on a means of transport change the way we think and prompt us to act in a different way: "It is the matter of regular stops occurring every minute (tram[way]), impulsive slow-downs (airplane), it is the matter of seconds adjusted to the beat of a metronome (в размеренности по секундам - А.Ш.)" [Терентьев 1988, 187]. The same applies to poetry: an unorthodox sonic or visual rhythm infiltrates the reader's mind, makes them privy to a certain emotional and bodily experience as a basis for improvisation.
Poems, so-called "nonsense tools," figure as exemplary texts for exercises in improvisation. They are prefaced by the statement that "[a]ll that has been said above about mistakes, craftsmanship, sound, rhythm will form a basis for the future school of poetry that is now at 41° in Tiflis, replacing futurism" [Терентьев 1988, 189].
One of the most illustrative examples is the sixteenth poem, the twelfth tool [Терентьев 1988, 208]. On the page, we see a few words: "rewrite" ("переписать"), "re-read" ("перечитать"), "cross out" ("перечеркнуть"), "change place" ("переставить"), "imitate" ("перенять"), "jump" ("перепрыгнуть"). Put together, these words seem to refer to a writerly procedure: rewrite the text, cross out what seems to be unnecessary, swap some words, imitate someone else's technique and then transcend it ("jump"), avoid the influence.
The graphic rhythm of the text functions as a superstructure evoking a string of additional meanings. All the words share the same capital letter ("П"); also, one might see graphic accents within each word, i.e. capitalized letters in the middle of the word ("ПЕрепиСаТь," "ПереЧиТать," "ПеречеРкнУть," "переСтаВитЬ," "ПЕреНЯТь," "ПеРепрЫгнутЬ и УДРАть"). The emphasis on a common capital letter, "П," makes the poem look like a list of random words on a draft. It reminds of looking for a rhyming word when a set of words is written on a page in a column so that the poet could try each word and make a choice. The visual rhythm, modeled by graphic accents, makes the reader stop from time to time and enhances the sonic rhythm. A certain irregularity of the visual rhythm corresponds to an irregularity marking the sonic rhythm (see the scheme below; / - a stressed syllable, _ - an unstressed syllable):
/_ _ /
/_ _/
/_ _/
/_/_
/_/
/ / /
The first three lines ("переписать," "перечитать," "перечеркнуть") correspond to the same rhythmic pattern (a dactyl plus a stressed syllable). Each of these lines refers to an element of poetic routine (first, one re-writes the text, second, one re-reads the text, then, one crosses out the lines). In the fourth line, referred to by the word "to swap," "to replace," "to change" ("переставить"), the rhythm changes (two trochees), and in accordance with that the poet "changes" the stressed syllables. The same pattern might be observed in the fifth line ("to imitate") as if the line indeed imitated rhythmically the previous line. In the last line, we have two trochees followed by anapestic tetrameter so that the regular rhythmic pattern breaks down. The speaker seems to "transcend" ("перепрыгнуть") the conventions of rhythm. Thus, the rhythmic irregularity models the creative process vaguely connoted by the words of the poem.
The visual rhythm does not mirror the sonic rhythm yet functions as an addition, highlighting sonic pattern that might have been latent had it not been for the visual accompaniment. In the first, third and fifth lines the first "е" in "пере" is capitalized ("ПЕрепиСаТь," "ПЕречеРкнуть," "ПЕреНЯТь"). In the second, fourth and sixth the same letter is not capitalized ("ПереЧиТать," "ПереСтаВитЬ," "ПеРепрЫгнутЬ"). One might speculate whether such a variation in odd and even lines is related to rhythmic variation.
This irregularity could be traced throughout the text if we pay attention to the capitalized letters in the middle and at the end of the words (see the scheme below; / - a capitalized letter, _ - a regular letter, the first letter is not taken into
account)
/_ _ _ _/_/_
_ _ _/_/_ _ _
/____/__/_ _
___/__/_ _/
/_ _///_
/ / / ////
Here we might observe an absence of regular visual rhythmic patterns. However, that absence appears to be productive as the reader projects a meaning onto it, revealing a link between the visual rhythm and the variance in sonic patterns. Irregularity might be seen as a site of potential interpretations and meaning choices, a dimension filled with possible readings, each of which could be actualized by an attentive reader. Such a reader is the reader who has successfully mastered unlearning to read. As the result of that, this reader pays attention to marginal, epiphenomenal aspects of the text improvising and turning this poem into a meaningful utterance.
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Anna V. Shvets, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
M.A. in Philology (MSU), M.A. in Comparative Literature, (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA), Ph.D. Graduate, Discourse and Communication Department at MSU.
E-mail: ananke2009@mail.ru
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1492-2511
Швец Анна Валерьевна, Московский государственный университет им. М.В. Ломоносова.
Магистр филологии (МГУ), магистр в области «Сравнительное литературоведение» (Университет Джорджии, Атенс, Джорджия, США), выпускник аспирантуры кафедры общей теории словесности МГУ E-mail: ananke2009@mail.ru ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1492-2511
