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Organic Avant-Gardism of Gennady Aygi
Irina I. Plekhanova* and Sergey R. Smirnov
Irkutsk State University Department of Philology and Journalism 2 Chkalova str., Irkutsk, 664025 Russia 1
Received 10.05.2012, received in revised form 22.07.2012, accepted 27.07.2012
In this article the philosophy of Gennady Aygi’s poetry is discussed: metaphysical conception of his lyrics, theoretical explanation of evolution of avant-garde forms, search for essential grounds for unprecedented expression, spiritual contents of a visual text, chronotope and chronosophy of a visionary type of poetical reflection.
Keywords: Poetry of Gennady Aygi, poetics of avant-garde, metaphysics of creation, chronotope of a visionary, temporal composition.
Gennady Aygi is the successor of the avantgarde tradition. His role can be determined as metaphysical development of creative forms of futurism, when the objective is to develop natural contents of a new image of a statement. Invention of unbelievable techniques, play with a strange language should find a ground, i.e. become the form of a dialogue with the world. This means moving away from previous - anthropomorphic, metaphoric and emotional - forms of identification with familiar, recognizable nature and getting in harmony with the origin of insightful, unclear, conceptual and spiritually infelt infinity.
The strategy of a break presented in futurism by a metaphor of discovery-forcing out (when Pushkin “was thrown overboard the steamship of modernity”) is changed for the imperative of a dialogue; and revolutionary potential of the form should serve for development of the harmony of intellectual-sensitive coexistence with the world. For G. Aygi this means “filling in <...>
* Corresponding author E-mail address: oembox@yandex.ru
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
the territories passed along by avant-gardists in a combatant march... <.. .> To fill in with spiritual contents (one cannot live by “landmarks” alone, but should live by the earth itself, no matter whether it is fruiting or not)” (Aygi, 2001, 89). The metaphor of “territories’ vivification” does not mean earthing of the spirit, but finding the ground. The ground is not a harsh matter of existence, but the harmony of connection of everything in this boundless world. The focus changes from the cult of forms’ creation as a revolutionary way of thinking to manifestation of its internal metaphysical potential. Thus, the purpose of breaking with the customary becomes the synthesis with something not so clear, but absolute.
The content of this search is the subject of this article. The objective is to reveal the notion of “organicity” in respect to avant-garde, and therefore comment on the philosophy of G. Aygi’s poetic art. The main statements of this philosophy
are given in the written interview the poet gave to the journalist Zbigniew Podgorzec in June 1974, which was published under the title “We had our own unwritten “manifests” ... (Conversation with the Polish friend)” (Aygi, 2001, 16-27). These ideas were developed in essays and speeches collected in the intravital book “Conversation at a distance” (2001).
The main theoretic problem of describing avant-gardism is not only revealing of heuristic potential of new techniques, i.e. mental revolution that stands behind it, but looking at psychological contents, spiritual process that provides humanistic meaning of this discovery. Poetic and theoretic reflection of G. Aygi gives invaluable materials for this.
While avant-garde is mainly intellectual art, i.e. critics of previous experience and searching for new ideas and means of their implementation, the problem of avant-garde organicity is focused on natural-sensitive sphere of self-reflection. The main issues of the organicity of newness are connected with clarifying its naivety, “inevitability” i.e. naturality of the techniques creation. The essence is in recognition of the objective importance of the author’s fantasies, personal experience and the language of expressing it. But to what extent are these techniques artless? What is ingenuousness? What world-view implication do these techniques have? What philosophic conception lies in the basis of the new image of the thought-statement?
The first evidence of organic attraction to avant-garde of G. Aygi himself was the revolution in the mind of a 14-year-old poet from Chuvash village. In 1948 he occasionally receives a book of Mayakovsky and he abdicates “pseudo national ethos” for the sake of yet “faint imitations” (Robel, 2003, 18). The period of study in the Literature Institute (1954 - 1959) is characterized by intensive communication with the guardians of the avant-garde tradition (Ye. Kropivinsky
and some poets and artists from Lianozovo), with B. Pasternak, music composer A. Volkosky and artist B. Yakovlev. At the end of the 50’s
- beginning of the 60’s he studies works by V. Khlebnikov, art heritage by K. Malevich. From 1961 till 1971 G. Aygi works in Mayakovsky Museum, prepares exhibitions and meets the latest futurists (A. Kruchyonykh, D. Burlyuk), begins to communicate with S. Krasovitsky and other representatives of underground or “shady avant-garde” (Robel, 2003, 36). Therefore, art self-consciousness of Aygi develops by means of intensive communication both with poets and artists, through learning Khlebnikov’s poetic philosophy and suprematism theories. Visual and word thinking are equally active in the formation of the statement’s image, the text itself becomes an image.
The second evidence of “organicity” is G. Aygi’s transition to non-standard, but not the utmost radical poetics, i.e. vers libre. In the 50’s the free verse was perceived as the challenge for socialistic realism, but from the point of view of the theory Aygi’s model is referred to “heteromorphic verse” (Orlitsky, 2008, 731), while due to his fear to lose music in the verse, he constantly used “traditional accentual- syllabic fragments in his verses, mainly equal to one/ two lines” (Orlitsky, 2008, 733). The first vers libre remind something average between pownie from Chuvash and surrealistic experience in the style of beloved P. Eluard: “и когда перестану я верить в себя / пусть память жил / вернёт мне упрямство / чтобы снова я стал на лице ощущать / давление мускулов глаз” (“and when I stop to believe in myself / let the memory of veins / return me self-will / so I can feel again at my face / pressure of the muscles of my eyes”) (“Ovary (from Chuvash poem with the same-name title)”, 1954) (Robel, 2003, 26). Thus, in the age of 20 Aygi chooses the way of free art and it is notable that his support is his own self, synthesis
of body and spirit (“the memory of veins”), understanding of special, physically felt energy of contemplation (“the pressure of the muscles of
my eyes”).
The third evidence of the favour for “organicity” is antagonism to social utopia’s ambitions of futurism and admiration of existentionalism of V. Khlebnikov’s poetry and liturgiology of Mayakovsky’s verse. Thus, Aygi separates social and creative mission of avantgarde: “It’s been long time I consider myself antifuturist, while I consider it criminal what relation the futurists have to the human as to the means of gaining their aims, aims of “elitist” leaders. But I am beholden to the heritage of Russian “avant-gardists”, especially I am beholden to those, whom I do not accuse - Khlebnikov, Malevich ... <...> I consider achievements of Russian “avant-garde” to be the property of all Russian poetry, all Russian literature” (Aygi, 2001, 23). Moreover, following this poetry brings closer to the contemporary European art saving from provinciality and absence of “literary style” understood as conservative, away-from-life esthetics.
This is the fourth argument in the favour for “organicity”, i.e. philosophy of existentionalism of the art itself as direct continuation of nature: “I have never considered poetry as the way “to reflect life”. Art for me is one of the ways of life manifestation” (Aygi, 2001, 16). Here Aygi speaks not about simple imitation of the evident, but about the flow-over of the energy of the universal existence not in the subjective, but personal implementation of these forces. Therefore, the new image of the statement standing against “anti-literary style” is esthetics based not on the standard (i.e. estrangement from nature), but on the search for coincidence with the existing, on the absolute organicity of the text.
The criterion of identity for the poet is feeling presence of life in the text. This experience of the
mystery of existence, i.e. special, indestructible time in the state of the world expressed in words. This is the way the internal dynamics of the space seeming stable is messaged in the poem “Outskirts winter” (1985):
Спалось и снегом заносилось -/-/---/и жизнь «чего-то» - что со смыслом -/-/-/-/была в пред-молвии всё так же близ меня --/-/---/-/-/
сиянье белое держалось в поле рядом -/-/---/-/-/как обморок
всё отдалённей гаснущего дня ---/-/--- /
(Aygi, 2001а, 59).
Thetext hasa temporal composition: the whole text presents floods of time. It is “пред-молвие” (“pre-saying”) of “чего-то” (“something”), and lasting “сиянье белое” (“white shining”), and extension - “всё отдалённей” (“more distant”) -of the said/imprinted in the future. It is more likely that Aygi refers to physical, energetic immortality of the memory; not personal one, but general and finding its extension in the poetic image of existence. Regular iamb with different feet and rhymes (“заносилось - со смыслом”, “меня -рядом - дня”) preserve traditional contour of the text, which is not finished syntactically, thus creating an image of spontaneity, eternity and incompleteness.
According to Aygi the main wickedness of “anti-literary style” is introversion. This happens because of “insufficient bravery to turn to reality <...> to reality of essential. Art in general is realism, but essential realism. Presence and continuity of the essence, which does not disappear with the death of the ephemeral. A person died, by my pain for his passing away
is not only “my personal business” The person continues to live in my pain” (Aygi, 2001, 23). The term “realism” here refers to the mysterial part of life and not the history of literature; the mysteries of the world, i.e. miracle-event and miracle-equality of the person to it, have become the theme of the poet’s works.
The miracle reveals in the moment of the utmost tension of psychic powers - tragic and sacred. This is how the death of the mother is lived through: “А снежинки / всё несут и несут на землю // иероглифы бога...” (But the snowflakes / keep carrying carrying earthwards // the hieroglyphs of God...”1 (“Death”, 1960) (Robel, 2003, 33). Not vers libre, but white verse of the whole text includes in itself intonations of all trisyllabic feet up to the accentual verse: thus regularity and immensity of the snowfall, feeling of whiteness of the freezing space resonate with the mystery of passing away. Eternity opens inside the poem as it opens for the dying. “Иероглифы бога” (“Hieroglyphs of God”) is, of course, the sign of immensity turned to the human; contemplation of the mystery becomes its “reading”. Thus, one of the main images in the poetic metaphysics of Aygi appears in the poem: the sign on the white, on the emptiness, on the cleanness, on the silence.
These techniques will make him kin on suprematism of K. Malevich. Inclusion to his ideas in 1961 gave a programme character to the intuitional search. New understanding of the lyrics changed the subject of the cognition and the principle of organizing essential relations in the text: “the thing is not in “imparting feelings” and “reflecting the world”, but a separate “absolutization” of the world phenomena through “a person-poet”, their absolutization in the form of moving “masses” of energy: words are called to create these invisible felt charges by, so to say, “Universe” laws (meaning their “unearthly size”, non-humanly organized scales; meaning
this and not etalon “measures-verses” of the old poetry)” (Aygi, 2001, 290-291). Thus, non-anthropomorphity of suprematism has become similar to anthropological thinking of Aygi: determining the place and the role of the human in the space penetrated with spiritual energies. These energies fill the space with essences, and the destiny of the “person-poet” is to express them with simplicity, which is close to mathematical signs (formulas of words and geometric figures). It preserves in itself the image of wholeness and presents an understatement.
The pure space of Malevich in Aygi’s poems is reflected by the empty space; non-figurative painting by a word-symbol that shows through a white page; composition of geometric figures by relations of word groups; internal tension, dynamics of the statics not by syntactical, but by associative cohesion-reflection. Physical eternity transfers in the text into concentrated immensity of the verse:
ЧИЩЕ ЧЕМ СМЫСЛ
о
Прозрачность! Однажды
Войди и Расширься
стихотворением
1982 (Aygi, 2001, 74).
The title “ЧИЩЕ ЧЕМ СМЫСЛ” (“PURER THAN MEANING”) means superquality, sacred essence of what is called “Прозрачностью” (“transparence”) and ideal indication of the poem, its ability to present something immense, being beyond visible essence. This prayer turned to the absolute excellence that is overconfident. This is observed from the capital letters of verbs. But this excellence is favourable to the poet. The final word “poem” is homonymous: it is both the process of creation and the text as its manifestation. The text is open and does not have a beginning:
the small “o” of “обращение” (“appeal”) comes from emptiness and means “small size” of the speaker, and absence of the dot at the end speaks for the openness of the poem and continuity of the process. Spaces between the title and the main verse and the last line-word are the time of action, transfo rmation of the text-poem unnamed in uniquene sis. The lyric subject is anonymous, but it is guessed as the poet-medium.
Therefore, organicity of the avant-garde form, which is yet quite “moderate”, is a technique aiming to demonstrate not it s novelty, but self-artlessness. But the quality of this artlessness should tie determined in accordance with the radical "version of the modern avantgarde, i.e. minimalism, which also stands for natural expression of essences from empteners or whiteness of a page. There are: almost symmetric statements about one and the same topic by Vsevolod Nekrasov find Gennady Aygi. The theme is determination of Godt solving of the theme is the example of intelleceual reflection of a metaphysicist-conceptualist (V. Nekrasov) and
Об этом
Я. П.
Это
не Спор.
Если же я называю, то это - простое указывание: «Здесь - Совершенство». (Место Намёка.
Тем и Присутствует.
Я умолкаю.)
«Бог»?
Это цитата: из Бога.
1981
(Aygi, 2001a, 44)
clarifying refection of a metaphysicist-visionary (G. Aygi).
The difference of intellectual reflection from clarifying reflection lies in the subject of reflection. Conceptualism as one of the images of culture self-reflection argues briefly and on the behalf of non-personal critical mind taking into
consideration previous experience, i.e. actualizing the intertext. His text plays with the reference of elements, irony is self-worth; it is the principle of cognition and text generation, the rod of the form. As for reflection of the metaphysicist-visionary it is deeply personal: it describes the process of the text generation as self-justification of the poet, as logics of specifying the meaning, as difficult movement to discovery.
The metaphysicist-conceptualist V. Nekrasov starts with a visualized quotation, may be of B o rges, who has followed in “Pascal’s sphere” the evolution of a metaphoric formula of the whole, God or the Universe: “God is a an intelligible sphere, the center of which is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere” (Borges, 1992, 339). Indication ot God’s presence inside the absolutely completed sphere with a point-centre is given visually - “ВОТ” (“HERE”) - and dogmatically, even though it is written in capital letters. But famtliarity is re deemed by sound and visual rhyme of the sacred word and demonstrative pronoun “БОГ / ВОТ” (“GOD / HERE”). Nevertheless, the evident at once is deconstructed by a comment printed in petit. Its “smallness” does not prevent from bringing in doubt the persuasiveness of the perfect form. And now the same words work for discredit of the ideal form: “Вот-вот // А Бог / Больше”. Herewith “Больше” (“Beyond”) seems to grow from “ Бог” (“God”). This is the simplicity of high primitive: its point of view is impersonal, because it is all-human, and its satirical intonation belongs not to dogmatic, but live and merry wisdom.
The metaphysicist-visionary G. Aygi works with words, which are not only bigger and “more functional” than in Nekrasov’s poem, but the whole reasoning is built in vers libre of 7 finished sentences, even though with parcelled syntax. The dotted line from Words comprises a lyric story: “не Спор” - “Совершенство” - “Намёк”
- “Присутствует”. He persuades that the feeling
of revelation, sensitivity to “Намёк” (“Hint”) is important, and not the word expressing its meaning. At the end the poet puts the word “Бог” (“God”) in quotation marks and opens its metonymic nature: “Это цитата: из Бога” (“This is a quotation: from God”). Indeed, everything is like in Nekrasov’s poem: “А Бог / Больше” (And God / Beyond). There is no notional difference between these two texts. Unless one notes that for the conceptualist the word God is meaningful without quotation marks, it is absolute and even does not grow within the sight. As for the visionary, the word “God” for him is a symbol of quoted God from the end line. God can be interpreted as an immense Text beyond the time, Omniscience turned to the human. But all these qualities are present in the subtext of “quoting” and are given by hints.
There is significant difference in communication with the reader. In Nekrasov’s poem the visual and the verbal are counterpoints, the text is unusual but extravert, while its task is to get the attention or even conquer the mind of the receiver. And this task is achieved: the simplicity of the result is indisputable, while infinity is always “bigger” than any of its definitions. Aygi’s text is contrariwise communicatively redundant, but introvert, even though it is “wasteful of words”. The image of the space is not geometric, it is named by general word “Место” (“Place”); Nekrasov’s spaces (pauses of silence between verses) are decoded: “Я умолкаю” (“I enfold in silence”). The compositional idea of Nekrasov’s text is arguing and struggling for the completeness of understanding. Aygi does not argue with anyone, even though the poem is devoted to a specific receiver. The initial set for “Not an argument” indicates the principle of cognition through inclusion: and absoluteness of Presence opens to the poet, becomes his ideal company. In the essay “Poetry-like-silence” (1992) the following is said about this poem: “Silence like
“Place of God” (the place of supreme Creative Power)” (Aygi, 2001, 238). Thus, a dictionary of own notations of the sacred presence is created: silence, stillness, quietness, empty field, “Без-местная Ширь” (“Vastness without place”) (Aygi, 2001, 43), light...
Aygi’s final formula if efficient as an aphorism, but it is not appealing to the reader. The poet himself is interested in eternal Excellence. He has to explain the essence of his non-nominative poetics to the reader: “Если же я называю, / то это - простое указывание” (“If I name it, / then it is simple pointing”). The word almost literary becomes a pronoun, i.e. exploration of the event through the meaning of a chronotope, in which it is performed: unity of place, time and action. The defining word belongs to the poet: this is the basic principle of avant-garde. But this is not in contradiction with the imperative of organicity, if the poet appeals to the distinctiveness of the forever new, creating word. Everything depends on spiritual provision of the experiment-insight.
Thus, in V. Khlebnikov’s works etymology presented his own natural ontology in the natural philosophic system of the unity. G. Aygi was developing existential-Christian natural philosophy, which was opening the presence of God in the world by means of contemplation of the space-time continuum. This is not pantheism and not pagan animism, but a visionary empire confessing energetic nature of the unity and the poetic word as demonstration of the creative power. In 1993 the poet recalled: “.once, in the fields of Russia, I was seeing the Creating Word as a Fire Pillar, which at the end of seventies I dared to call Johnish, having metaphorically referred to the definition of the First Word by the Apostle // I have never rejected the reality of this Vision. And I continue to think that what we call Poetry is homogeneous with the creative powers of the Universe, the Word is capable of becoming our essence suffering in the equally
united lifestanding with everything that exists in nature, thus introducing binding “moments” of humaneness into the world like some eternal Atlas of Poetry: for us to meet, recognize and comprehend the eternal human brotherhood” (AYGI, 2006, 4).
It is not only the message about real contemplation of the original Word as Teophany that this declaration contains. The most important is the statement about ontological essence of Poetry, its co-nature with time-space (“the world like some eternal Atlas of Poetry”, and the mission of the poetic Word to express the mind of the human (“to become our essence”), i.e. fulfil the human’s anthropological mission for sympathy and solidarity. Avant-garde always claims for discoveries of panhuman scale, for revolution in the mind, for utopia of replacing life by art and natural existence by its spiritual quintessence. But in this case the novelty is composed not of a breakthrough to the alien and impossible for the majority, but of manifestation of something seeming to be well known (humanism as divine love, love as Logos), but in local and natural presence. Of course, this requires extraordinary efforts, and the role of the poet, who is not a revolutionary but a medium, is to find a language that would be, first of all, co-natural with the mystery of the continuum and, therefore, different: not human, but understandable for the human. This language should reveal not the future, but the present: experience of co-existence of the soul with the unity.
Retargeting in time, the approach to the space of the local presence is not a choice, but a realized mission of avant-garde in already non-heroic, but introvert history of the second half of the 20th century: “We are in truly “new time”, opposite (by experience and intellectual tendencies) to Khlebnikov’s epoch. // “Not to project, but to undergo”: this is how I would express this contradiction” (Aygi, 2001, 92). “Undergo” is
the duty of the one, who understands existential absurd, when the event of social history turns out to be “an outburst of putrefaction: “В П р а г у! (T o P r a g u e!)” (“Flowers, cut”, August 23, 1968) (Aygi, 2001а, 10), when one’s own existence requires justification: “как будто “есть” “живёт” // (в кругу - как я - ненужности)” (“like “there is” “lives” // (in the circle - like me- in needlessness”)” (“Rain”, 1977) (Aygi, 2001а, 28). “Undergoing” is tuned for the existence rhythm concentrated in itself, for the forms of life performance brought to the utmost simplicity.
This set imposed changes not only in avantgarde poetics, but in the poetics of organicity that was last developed by late Pasternak. Aygi could not agree with his “heresy of simplicity”, while he saw vain confession for modernism in it. Linear clarity of the thought was inapproachable for Aygi even in essaying, when he tried to justify artlessness of his form by relationship with shrill minimalism of local cosmos: “In the 70’s, living more and more isolated in different Russian villages amongst Russian nature, I have come to the conclusion that incredible “simplicity” for me is “incomprehensible -“simple” excellence of Creation” (the most mysterious from everything “that exists”), which is necessarily and antinomically associated with a troublesome problem of its correspondence with “word simplicity” - in “my quite different understanding” (Aygi, 2001, 107).
Poetics of simplicity in Aygi’s poems is the freedom of the word expression, which the poet calls “Johnish”, i.e. original, appearing from emptiness - from God’s silence, from time. The word can be presented by silence and only sound or only symbol, which have eternity behind them. Silence is expressed by spaces between lines or a white page, as, for example, in the text called “Стихотворение-название: / белая бабочка, перелетающая через сжатое поле” (“Poem-title: / white butterfly flying over
the stubble field”): the title is given in three lines and there is empty space below them with the date in the bottom right corner - 1982 (Aygi, 2001, 75). The space between the title and the year of the text creation expresses metonymy of divine Purity and the metaphor of the empty field and invisible image of the butterfly - this is how “White on white (White square)” of K. Malevich (1917) comes to life. An invisible and unheard butterfly is the entirely felt Time, and in this case it is impermanent, weightless and nonlinear existence over the ground space, which has already fulfilled its duty of birth and gets stockstill within s-ght. Movement, process is expressed in the poem; the butterfly lives only in the present but it is the messenger of ihe future: snowfall, energy of freez-ng silence, penetrating quietness of tfe cold and death.
It is interesting to compare two art solutions of the theme “phenomenon of original sound”: one is at the end of the poem “Close: meadows (Event - 1947)” (1970) in which the memory about a mysterious voice of fte space that was heard in childhood comes to live; the second is
discrete speech: there are only two verbs in one line (“были” (“were”)), everything else is images of the state indicated by a range of impressions (“так прямо и ярко / страшно” (“so straight and bright / frightful)) and a chain of associationsdefinitions of the “ничейного” (“no one’s”) (“света-пустого-огня” (“light-empty-fire”), which is revealed by an unrenderable sound:
“.............................!”. In the second
text originality of “a” does not base on anything but purity of the space, which renders purity of the sound. It is singing by itself - like harmony of the world, while the resounding “Voice” of meadows does: oot consent to musical interpretation. There is no other key to its mystery, but a separate and, therefore, original, “no one’s” word. Symbols “-“ and “:” dooor fulfill a syntactic, i.e. ordering function; they present movement of the time and determine the relation of meaning as the balance of forces: as rhe poet used to say “one can counterpoise on thg coloo” (Aygi, 2001, 289).
Aygi’s rimplicity is difficult to understand, while it reproduces not nominative notional relations, but “absolutizarion of the world’s
а там! где так прямо и ярко страшно в ничейной раскрытости света-пустого-огня -
гласные Бога (всегда через миг уже чистые вновь беспрерывно) -
! _
те же - как были (а были т а к и е) -гласные в Голосе: гулко: поляны
СПОКОЙСТВИЕ ГЛАСНОГО
а
21 февраля 1982
(Aygi, 2001а, 13-14)
the famous minimalistic text about the energy of harmony.
In the first case the source cel" the sound is rhe space, in the second case it is the sound itself, i.e. rime of iis self-birth. The time of the npatial text, its pulse are expressed through a
(Aygi, 2001, 69)
phenomena <.. ,>inthe form of moving “masses” of energy” (Aygi, 2001, 290). In his poetry, like in music, they are represented by “sound masses”: “For me the untts of measuring the poetic material are not lines and strophes, but separate diffeient-size “monoliths” of this or
that amount of words, “different-calibre blocks” of rhythmic “constructions” (Aygi, 2001, 291). Such understanding of the verse contraposes the “Johnish” word of avant-garde boffinry, but significantly specifies the conception of Word-Logos, while the focus is transferred to powers interaction and equally great reflections of meanings.
Continuous communication of G. Aygi with A. Kruchyonykh did not influence his skeptical relation to self-worth tone-painting. The creator of the formula “дыр бул щыл” justified its meaningfulness as follows: “I concentrated the most typical sounds from the Russian language tone in these words!” (Aygi, 2001, 197). But Aygi sees in the mantra of the poetic avant-garde not synthesis, but degradation of meaning: “Pure, autonomous boffinry is the “discovery” of Kruchyonykh. <...> And what has the impudent “boffinated” experiment of Alexey Kruchyonykh proved? Only that it is possible to divide the word, but useless. Dividing the core of the Word-Logos ceases the existence of the word” (Aygi, 2001, 197). In this statement the rejection of the analytical strategy of avant-garde is important. But defending sovereignty of Logos, Aygi at the same time does not acknowledge its autonomy, i.e. the creating will of the Word appears not in self-expression through naming, but appearance through interaction of energies.
The example of naming-metaphor from the “Book of definitions” (1994-1997) is the poem “Picture”: “и поле / одно - бессловесное / письмо ... - “Заявление” / ( ... Богу ... )” (“and the field / one - wordless / letter ... - “Application” / ( ... To God ... )”(Aygi, 2001, 178). Syntactically this is a simple sentence with the subject “поле” (“field”), noun predicate (“одно - бессловесное / письмо" (“one - wordless / letter")) and specifi cation и уточнением ‘(“Заявление” / ( ... Богу ... ) (“Application” / ( . To God . )”). But discrete appearance of tetrastich shapes the statement
into parcelled speech. The dashed look of the external picture of the text is expressed with the punctuation symbols “-“, “...” and “( )”, which are more intonational, and in Aygi’s poetry mean powers interaction, image of relations between “sound masses”, “rhythmic “constructions”. Herewith, the relative mass of the last iambic verse “( ... Богу ... )” ‘(“.to God.”)’, i.e. Logos with all symbols and spaces framing it, is equal to the short first verse-amphibrach “and field” and widespread average (symmetric 2-feet amphibrach). Such a balance is determined by inclusion of the time substance into the text, which is expressed in symbols, spaces and atmosphere that surrounds the word.
The second title of the “Book of Definitions” is ‘(Towards “Stopped poems”)’. Thus Aygi’s poetry concentrated the energy in statics, which essentualizes time. The imperative of concentration is also perceived from late Malevich: “By his opinion the World has started to move too much, has become too fussy, too dynamic. <...> The word should not hurry. Avant-garde is dynamic, it is acting. But at the same time the word does not hurry” (Aygi, 2001, 288). The stopped time of the poem is concentrated and spread, thus the immense potential of the moment reveals its ability to “expand by a poem”. Singular time preserves in itself the whole perspective of development: “Sometimes, with the first draft line of the future poem there is a feeling that the poem
I have started already exists “somewhere” in its final form <.> I think that the first draft lines with their character, rhyme already determine the size of the future poem. We already comply with the existing and future size, our task is only to reveal it, to rub through this work” (Aygi, 2001, 20).
This development is non-linear; it pulses, freezes, but remembers its purpose. Thus, the 3rd part of the poem “Former and utopian (in connection with Kruchyonykh): 1913-1980”
based on the polemics with Kruchyonykh’s “р а с щ е п л е н и е С л о в а” (d i v i s i o n o f t h e W o r d”) is circuited with the definition: “Слово
- И о а н н и ч е с к о е. <...> С в е т” (“Word
- J o h n i s h. <...> L i g h t”) (Aygi, 2001, 236). Time like light is open to all ends. Contemplative poems by G. Aygi are written from memory; the present time inside the text is infused on former, but alive impressions. His lyrics is speculation, i.e. the picture inside the poem is not transformed directly from life; its image corresponding to the desirable is taken from former experience, from former spiritual insights: “I do not have “a conversation” with my “object”, I recollect it, I want to make “a conclusion” about it. <.> “The object” is more like a power point influencing creative psychics. The tension that appears between them becomes some kind of a “power field”, where the act of creation happens; where the words are looked for in order for this “power field” to express itself in wordy reality” (Aygi, 2001, 18). Therefore, one can conclude that the “power field” between the “object” and the poetic “self” is the relations of time, and its power lines like electromagnets ones circuit the poles of past-present-future. This is the temporal basis of the composition of the event-text.
The lyrical mind included into the process of these relations is the poet’s mind, but as G. Aygi insists, it lives through the whole fullness of existence, free from any identifications and participation of spiritual powers: “I do not consider myself neither “left”, nor “right”. I cannot imagine myself other creative process except the one, in which all “layers” of the human take part: spiritual, psychic, mental, conscious and subconscious - in a word, the whole human” (Aygi, 2001, 23). Such perhaps almost psychophisiological unity is the essential indicator of the balance of organicity of the creative will. This will does not impose itself like in attempts of radical avant-garde, but is disposed in the utmost sensitivity of perception,
in the state of visionary concentration-aloofness, in a dream: “I wrote all my best poems almost at the edge of falling asleep” (Aygi, 2001, 18). This equality of states is described in the essay “Sleep-and-Poetry” (1975).
The consequence of this visionary, speculative perception is the symbolism of the world picture. The process of the search and the poetic result are free from unnecessary details and even plenty of the substance: “it seems to me that I am “at odds with the material world” (Aygi, 2001, 107). But Aygi’s visual avant-gardism is multidimensional: “I seek not for the abstract, but for the essential” (Aygi, 2001, 19). Therefore, the simplicity understands its existentialism, which is explained in “Poems with singing” (September 22, 1964): “Первый голос: // просто облако есть просто дерево / просто поля и дома / (и все они тут как и ты) / и все они тут же как я” (“The first voice: // merely cloud is merely tree / merely fields and houses (and all of them are here like you) / and all them are here like me” (Aygi, 2001, 28). The “noun” is saturated with the energy of existence and the poet seeks for filling in the hieroglyph with temporary contents: “Turning to the tree I do not try to imprint it in the classic “purified” picture: if possible I want “to say everything” about the tree itself, also including my own feelings caused by it in its “zone”. My aspiration I would shortly define as “giving” the process of life, but not “imprinting” and “depicting” (Aygi, 2001, 16). Thus, impressionism unites instantaneous and existential in their live interpenetration. In the poem “Birch at noon” (1997) the poet lives through revelation-epiphany of the tree: “в горении полдня / вдруг
- // обособившись / сильно / берёза - // ярко
- как некое Евангелие: // (самодостаточное -никого / не беспокоя) - // раскрывающаяся -постоянно: // пролистывающаяся - // (вся - “в Боге”)” (“in the burning of noon / suddenly- // set / strongly / apart/ a birch - // brightly - like
some new Gospel: // (self-sufficing - disturbing / no-one) - // constantly - / opening-out: // and leafi ng itself - // (all - “in God”)”2 (Aygi, 2001a, 92). God is presented as a revived metaphor.
1 Translation by Peter France
2 Translation by Peter France.
Natural avant-gardism of G. Aygi’s poetry is energy metaphysics, the living space-time has a mind and speaks itself out loud by flashes of words.
References
Айги Г. [G. Aygi] Разговор на расстоянии. Статьи, эссе, беседы, стихи (Санкт-Петербург: Лимбус Пресс, 2001).
Робель Л. [L. Robel] Айги (Москва: Аграф, 2003).
Орлицкий Ю. Б. [Iu. Orlitsky] Динамика стиха и прозы в русской словесности (Москва: РГГУ, 2008).
Айги Г. [G. Aygi] Продолжение отъезда: Стихотворения и поэмы. 1966-1998 (Москва: ОГИ, 2001).
Некрасов В. [V. Nekrasov] ЖИВУ ВИЖУ (Москва: КРОИН ГАЛЕРЕЯ, 2002).
Борхес Х. Л. [J. Borges] Коллекция: Рассказы; Эссе; Стихотворения (Санкт-Петербург: Северо-Запад, 1992).
АЙГИ [AYGI]: Материалы. Исследования. Эссе. В двух томах. (Москва: Вест-Консалтинг, 2006).
Органичный авангардизм Геннадия Айги
И.И. Плеханова, С.Р. Смирнов
Иркутский государственный университет Факультет филологии и журналистики Россия 664025, Иркутск, Чкалова, 2
В статье рассматривается философия творчества Г Айги: метафизическая концепция лирики, теоретическое обоснование эволюции авангардных форм, поиск естественных оснований небывалого высказывания, духовное содержание визуального текста, хронотоп и хронософия визионерского типа поэтической рефлексии.
Ключевые слова: поэзия Г. Айги, поэтика авангарда, метафизика творчества, хронотоп визионера, темпоральная композиция.
