Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

The reflexive nature of direct speech implies also the existence of favorable conditions for the examination of lexical compatibility (and for the disclosure of the horizon of discernibleness). The effect of “echo” (that’s of quotation being estimated as an alien utterance demanding comments) entails the derivative process of semantic shifts in predicates of taxis of a scene so that their meanings acquire such derivative details that are proper for the given scene. Respectively the measure of compatibility within the textual horizon displays changes ensuing from action’s motivation. One can trace the lists of verb (taxis) appropriate for a scene that demonstrate semantic increments derived from their mutual motivational ties. Such glossary is not occasional and chaotic as it represents not only situational partitive synonyms as a supplementing row for a given scene but also taxonomic classes of broader nature. In regard to the problem of compatibility it would be convenient here to remind that partitive synonymy and homonymous dissociation are interdependent phenomena: word is included in the row of such synonyms not as a whole bunch of homonyms but as the representation of one of its meanings. These relations are to be revealed most clearly in monologues where the sequence of actions is mentioned preponderantly.

As an example the monologue of Cyrano de Bergerac (from E. Rostand’s drama of the same name, 1.4) with the insertions of other characters’ remarks may well serve. Here the culmination is achieved with the consecration of the hero and his pleadings with the threats to his rivals: “… je l’essorille et le désentripaille! ... je vais sur la scène en guise de buffet / Dècouper cette mortadelle d’Italiee!” (I’ll cut him ears off and disembowel him! … I’ll come to the scene disguised as a cook to cut this Italian sausage to pieces). The central position here occupies the pair of very rare verbs “essoriller” (to cut ears) & “désentripailler” (to disembowel), the last being Rostand’s neologism, that make up the figure of situational synonyms (hendiadys) and at the same time attract attention to their singular outlook of hapax legomenon. In other words the verbs have reciprocally got nearer as the designations of a butcher’s actions; that it goes just about butchery becomes evident from the consequent mention of cutting a sausage (mortadelle). In its turn this compression of verbs in the culminating figure is prepared with the series of other predicative expressions that also create a compatible series. All they are united as those concerning the situation of a scandalous event, of a quarrel: <“fesser les joues” (to slap in the face) – “faire tâter la canne a rubans” (to make the rod palm the attire) – “avoir pitié de fourreau” (to pity a sheath) – “rendre lame”(to render a blade)>. As a pattern for such glossaries the roles of improvised dramas can serve. The concatenation of such locutions aims at the circumscription determining therefore their compatibility with the means of periphrastic description. The improvisation itself becomes the reproduction of a set of phrases ascribed to the respective role. The very fact of belonging to the role promotes the disclosure of the compatibility of these phrases.

There are minimal compilations especially as situational coupled synonyms (the so called bifurcations or hendiadys). Their importance can be seen from their role as dramatic motivational devices. As an example the famous scene from Shakespeare’s “Richard III” (I. 3) can be cited where the verbal combat between Margaret and Gloster’s partisans takes place. In Margaret’s enunciation the typical occasional antonymous couple [shame & charity] acts as a confrontation (“My charity is outrage, life my shame”) disclosing different sides of the same subject. The paratactic relations between the bifurcation’s lexical components demonstrate the state of instable equilibrium that easily can drift towards hypotactic relations thus making up a proposition from appositive structure. It is essential that such idiomatic interpretation of lexical couples becomes endowed with the devices of alliteration and paronymic attraction that additionally motivate their confrontation. The words tied with such devices imply usually some tertium comparationis that would substantiate their semantic shift. Such confrontation enables disclosing latent situational synonyms [horse & hostess] in Shakespeare’s “King John” in the words of the Bastard where the caustic verve is imparted (“Saint George … sits on his horse back at mine hostess’ door”).

In its turn homonymous dissociation of meaning represents ambiguity as the immanent dramatic quality. The dependence of a word’s meaning and its idiomatic transformation upon the motivational scheme may be well demonstrated with the changes of meaning entailed due to the split of words into a series of homonyms. It is interesting that such split becomes specific device for the disclosure of hypocrisy of Iago in Shakespeare’s “Othello”. It is game with homonyms that Iago tries to justify himself with in the final scene: “Demand me nothing: what you know –you know” (line 304). Moreover, Iago actually betrays his genuine intentions in the very beginning as he comments the recent events (Othello’s plans for marriage): “… though that his joy be joy / Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t” (I.1. line 72-73). Such intentional ambiguity of speech is acknowledged by him in the very scene in the words uttered apart: “I must show a flag and sign of love / Which is indeed but sign” (lines 158-159). The cases of the equivocal interpretations of the same “signs” becoming fatal in “Othello”, the very device in lesser or greater degree belongs to the universal properties of dramatic text. In the most outspoken manner the cynic game with homonyms is declared by Duke of Gloster in “Richard III” (3.1.82-83): “Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, / I moralize two meanings in one word”.

Each poetic work is in a way a homonym in comparison to colloquial speech. Meanwhile the effects of homonymous coincidences are minimized in epics whereas they grow in lyrical poems to attain their peak in drama where in the same scene different persons use the same words that become homonyms. As a witness of such ubiquitous ambiguity of dramatic text one can cite the bright sample of the play of specialized homonymous meanings in the words of Blanche to her father (in B. Shaw’s “Widower’s Houses”, III): “How is it, papa, that you, who is so clever with everybody else, are not a bit clever with me?”. Homonymous bifurcations and ramifications can be said to become a most essential property of scenic speech. Such interplay of coincident meanings becomes the consequence of the specific weight of colloquial vs. conventional components in drama. The result is that drama promotes very specialized selection of connotations. As a demonstrative misunderstanding arising from homonymous dissociation one can cite the conversation between Trophimov and Lopatin (Tr.: “I can pass you by, I’m pride and strong” L.: “… and the life knows to pass by”) from A.P. Chekhov’s “The Cherry Garden” (act 4)⁹⁰⁵ where the different meanings of the predicate “pass by” are displayed. It belongs to the devices of old rhetoric where the same word repeated with different connotations was used under the term of so called difference (a variant of symploke)⁹⁰⁶.

A particular case represents the homonymous dissociation of ultimate abstractions so that one can’t decide what peculiar meanings are meant in the text in question. For example in Shakespeare’s 24-th sonnet the category of “painting (a beauty’s visible forms)” is obviously one of the infinite set of possible homonymous interpretations of the term. This predicate becomes the subject of artistic explorative activity and thus must be regarded as a problem to be studied and not as a category. Due to such potential homonymy textual essence is to be regarded as a set of versions and not as a constant invariant.

These synonymous and homonymous interactions turn out to become very productive in disclosing idiomatic meanings in dramatic play. For example, the famous scene in the orchard from “Romeo and Juliet” with the rapid development of love used to be regarded as the example of the mutability of characters where the heroes enrich their own experience in the decision-making process. In particular this scene served as the argument against Hegel’s statement on the gradual unfolding of hero’s properties in dramatic action⁹⁰⁷. Meanwhile the idiomatic analysis of the scene discloses some very important particulars concerning the rapidity of the engendered love and the decision to marry. Of a special importance is here the passage from Juliet’s monologue (2.1.75 ff.) that could be entitled as DOFFING THE NAME (with the rare verb ‘doff’ used in the monologue as the abbreviation for do off). Its representation can include the series <refuse the name – deny the father – newly baptizing – call love – name being enemy – hateful name – man’s part being no name – <hand – foot – arm – face> – rose smelling sweet with other name – retaining perfection without title – being the self> + <stumbling on the counsel – tearing the word – drinking words>. Juliet’s objections against the prohibition to love are those of the stream of scholasticism (known as nominalism) but of a special importance is the very mentioning of NEW BAPTIZING: no need to remind that it belonged to one of the principal heresies in the Roman Catholicism. Thus it was an overt challenge to the morals of the time that made the heroes understand their personal independence from society as THE SELVES and entailed the rapidity of decision-making. There arise more general problems of personal responsibility that stand behind the cited idioms of RENAMING taken together with NEW BAPTIZING as situational synonyms. It is remarkable that Ch. & M. Lamb in their digest mention only that Romeo “bade her call him Love” and omit phrase of new baptizing as well as of tearing the words, though they add their comments of Juliet “chiding Romeo for being Romeo” [Lamb, 1995, 247] implying Juliet’s irritation not witnessed with the text. Thus one can detect here not only special lexical combinations but the terms with specific connotations of the epoch.

It would be here also convenient to remark that glossaries and indices as those of the enumerations do often happen to be used in drama as the devices of argumentation especially while being constructed as gradual cumulative structures. One can easily recollect the famous monologue of the Archbishop of Canterbury from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (I.2) where state is compared to a beehive. The enumeration of various social classes («merchants» «soldiers» «singing masons» «mechanic porters» etc.) builds here a kind of the row of partitive synonyms. In contrast to such structures the extensive clusters of attributive clauses (comparable to those of izafet in oriental poetry) remaining irreducible to enumerations without special transformations can nevertheless reveal their special conditions of compatibility. One can cite Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” (III.3) where Northumberland concludes his conversation with Lady Percy with the idiom: «’T is with my mind / As with the tide swelled up into the height, / That makes a still-stand, running neither way». The idiomatic definition is from here to be reconstructed as the list [* still-standing / neither way running / in the height swelled up / tide] representing partitive synonyms built for the single occasion of the mentioned conversation.

Quite a different situation is to be dealt with in lyrics where there’s no need for argumentation of dramatic kind. For a lyrical digest one could take an enumeration of details that would build up an integral entity based on latent regulatory references. Then such enumeration could be folded up as the development of a certain latent problem. Lyrical digest would then become an ensemble of details with enigmatic references hidden behind them. In particular the peculiarity of lyrical digest would be seen in the circumstance that it must comprise the very textual insufficiency and subsequently the seeming motivational inconsistency of a text (the so called “lyrical disorder”). Lyrical text cannot prove or demonstrate anything: it does only mention things. Besides, the process of mentioning the details can’t be conceived as a mere enumeration. There are the inner regulative interdependences and reciprocal references that arise within the text contributing essentially to the retention of textual entirety and preventing it from reduction to a simple list of details. In particular it goes about the procedure of the displaying motifs.

Text to be summarized is to be regarded as a message where the transition from potential to actual meaning plays the crucial role in determining motifs. Especially it is to stress that actualization enables removing the dualism of generalities vs. particulars always present in textual data representation. To overcome the disjointed rows of predicates and circumstances (arising in particular in the mentioned methods of the “reported verses” scheme for data representation) one has to take into account the actual predicates (“rheme”). Actualization looks out as the correction of the previously obtained potential abstract scheme and in particular as the displacement of predicates’ and therefore of textual centers’ positions. For instance in the W. Shakespeare’s 72-th sonnet in the line “O, lest your true love may seem false” the potential predicate of “may seem” is replaced with the actual “true” that potentially remains the attribute of the subject. This conjecture is proved with the next line “… you for love speak well of me untrue” where the same root is repeated and correlated thus with the precedent becoming in its turn the actual predicate (“rheme”) of the sentence. Thus within the actual comprehension of a text all its centralization becomes displaced and respectively the relationship between centers and periphery displays dynamic changes. Not only verbs or nouns but each part of speech can get the emphasis as the result of reflection and thus become the actual center. Thus textual tissue is set constantly in the state of shift & drift being interpreted anew. In particular in this procedure the verbs being potential predicates turn into a kind of auxiliaries introducing actual predicates usually as their complements. Such interpretation can be substantiated with the case of lyrical verse where in the analogous way pronouns appear with the aim of designating the person of lyrical incognito⁹⁰⁸. Therefore actualities making them concrete build here the genuine referential foundation of textual integration.

It is for the sake of motifs that one should refrain from the seduction of describing all the contents of textual passage. As to the lyrical texts the motifs can be here easily reformulated in propositional form of inferential statements or corollaries from textual summary. Thus in R.M. Rilke’s “Der Dichter” (The Poet) <“Du entfernst dich von mir, o Stunde. / Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag. … Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe, / werden reich und geben mich aus” (Thou move away from me, o hour, and thy wing’s strokes wound me … All things to which I give myself become richer and take me out of myself) > one can infer the conclusion “* Time and things are the powers destroying a poet”. One of the possible corollaries to G. Byron’s poem “To Thomas Moore” <“Were’t the last drop in the well, / As I gasped upon a brink / Ere my fainting spirit fell / ‘Tis to thee that I would drink”> would be the statement “* at the threshold of existence the honest desires will be supported” as far as the actual predicate (the center) of the text would concern the extreme situation (“brink”). The corollary from D.H. Lawrence’s free verse “Night” <“… the animals curl down on the dear earth to sleep. / But the limbs of man long to fold and close upon the living body of another human being …”> can look like “* in opposite to animal a human being longs for another as a tangible vs. visible object”. It is lyrical generic property that makes it necessary to disclose the inferential statements resulting from actualities and to regard the actualized locutions of original text as the periphrastic descriptions referring to objects different from direct designations of the utterances.

The motifs ensuing actualities in lyrics can be traced in the structure of prayers as the source for lyrical texts. It can be summarized with the key particulars attested with the common practice of memorizing initial lines (as a kind of actual subjects or “themes”). As a pattern the psalms can be regarded where (for instance, in J. Kochanowski’s translations) such retained key details make up the motifs determining the textual entirety. Thus in 26-th psalm the key phrase “O Lord, I love the house in which You dwell” renders this key motif of the divine space of the God’s Home in opposite to the formal predicates of “love” as well as of the preceding mention of “faithfulness” and the repeatedly mentioned “integrity”. This idea is reproduced in the translation; besides, it is reinforced with the request of “Nie dopuszczaj mi umrzeć … między pohańcy” (Keep me from dying among pagans) that corresponds to “Do not sweep me away with sinners”. If dramatic text refers to invisible implied events that are at least supposed to be known, there remains in lyrics such virtual reality as open to conjectures. Dramatic axis represents the essence of conflict as the key element for drama in opposite to its latency in lyrics. Thus one can regard textual conditions in drama as more complete that that in lyrics. The obligatory explicit presence of motivational and communicative axial moments only circumscribed (and still latently present) in lyrics makes dramatic scene to become a pattern for lyrical work as its reflected abstraction.

That the quality of a part of a dramatic work can be imparted to the entirety of a lyrical work gives ground to elucidate still one generic peculiarity essential for the descriptive tasks. In dramatic and lyrical texts separate locutions occupy places in the whole text that are marked with stable fixation. This property of fixed allocation within the whole is also to be traced in epics, but there it doesn’t have such importance so that places of separate sentences sometimes can be permuted without abusing the sense of the narrative. Meanwhile it is the position of a word pronounced in the unique moment that distinguishes the structure of drama. This fixed allocation of word in a text as the peculiar feature of dramatic text is often stressed in special discussions, in particular by E. Zola⁹⁰⁹. The place of statement is fixed due to referential interconnections within the text. In its turn in lyrics such fixation is reinforced still with the versification’s forces. Thus deixis generates the phenomenon of separate statements’ fixation that becomes essential differential feature of a literary genus. The already mentioned musicology’s and sinology’s formula i:m:t of initial – medial – terminal moments determines here the position of a particular locution as its semantic property.

The fixation of the position of lexical units in a prayer (as the source of lyrical poem) or in a play of catechism with riddles to be answered (as the source of drama) gives grounds for a wider comprehension of deixis as such. In opposite to lyrical lines a scene can’t be extracted & abstracted from dramatic action and respective flow of communication. The scene can’t be separated from communicative conditions. Besides, it is character that is closed in its temporal development and its personal fate in opposite to mutable circumstances of separate scenes. The same concerns not only scenes or roles but also finished works as far as they are intended to be played on stage and represent separate moments of interpretative versions. Lyrical poems are comparable to impromptus or “musical moments” whereas dramatic works represent single links in endless chains of “rehearsals”. There are always opportunities to be extracted & abstracted (not to say of refrains, zeugmas and other devices of the kind) that distinguish lyrical poem (it being regarded as an extracted scene). Lyrical digressions in drama behave autonomously (song insertions taken apart from action).

These lyrical features of partiality have also descriptive consequences. Lyrical text doesn’t depend upon communicative necessities being abstracted from the circumstances of conversational colloquial acts. It lacks in lyrics the logical structures of inferential substantiation indispensable for discussion of a dramatic kind. Lyrical poem doesn’t prove anything (though it presupposes persuasion or dissuasion) in opposite to scenic discussions similar to judicial procedures. It goes in lyrics about a chain of association of details and respectively about the circumscription of an image from various viewpoints instead of the substantiation of statements with subsequent imperative conclusions. It imparts inquisitive property to dramatic text in opposite to lyrical poem. This opposition circumscription vs. substantiation entails the respective descriptions’ distinctive features. Substantiation with the strict necessity of mentioning or avoiding the subjects of conversation in drama differs from indirect and loosened ways of deviational circumscriptions in lyrical verses. The partners of a discussion must necessarily mention the common notions and motifs to be reciprocally understood, and the same concerns dramatic monologues (in opposite to lyrical digressions) where there are no place and time for deviations from the flow of action. At the same time there are no such obligations in a lyrical verse. It lacks here the mentioned communicative axis indispensable for scenic dialogue. At the same time another kind of textual axis appears here: it turns to become latent and must be detected by an attentive reader.

To exemplify the descriptive procedure a text of the lyrical verse from A. Tennyson’s “In memoriam” (1850), XXXIV will be taken <“My own dim life should teach me this, / That life shall live for evermore, / Else earth is darkness at the core, / And dust and ashes all that is; / This round of green, this orb of flame, / Fantastic beauty; such as lurks / In some wild Poet, when he works / Without a conscience or an aim. / What then were God to such as I? / ’T were hardly worth my while to choose / Of things all mortal or to use / A little patience ere I die; / ’T were best at once to sink to peace, / Like birds the charming serpent draws, / To drop head-foremost in the jaws / Of vacant darkness and to cease”>.

To begin with the surface of potentialities, one can obtain such index of predicates making up a taxis: <”teach” (“life’ – “me”): “live” (“life”) – <darken> (“earth”) – “lurk’ (“beauty” – “poet”) – “work” – <unworthy> – “sink” & “cease”>. One can replace it with subsuming them to more abstract generalities and disclosing the