Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

The hidden idea of *PROGRESS can become the intitulation for the 32-th sonnet that can be regarded as a kind of the circumscription though the very name has been coined (in its modern meaning) just in the epoch by Fr. Rabelais. The circumscription of the idea consists in combining and confronting its antonymous qualities: <growing age – bettering the time – churl Death covering bones with dust – reserving poor rude lines for love – outstripped lines>. The enumerated idiomatic series gives grounds for the statement that it goes here more about the bitter irony of “bettering” and “growing” where “bones” and “lines” become victims of the TIME that stands behind the supposed progress/

In the 108-th sonnet the poet’s statement, “I must each day say o’er the very same” contains its ambiguity in the very repetitions’ contradictions: returning to the same presupposes renovation. It is due to the ETERNAL LOVE mentioned among the sonnet’s idioms that the cited line is continued with “counting no old thing old”. It is noteworthy that the idiomatic couple <brain & ink> is here used to designate the temporal provisionary things that attest the independence of Love from time. One can see here the disclosure of the very principle of circumscription where the newly discovered details provide the incessant renovation of the mentioned “sameness”. Perhaps not occasionally here the idiom <conceit of love> is used referring to the early baroque idea of “concept” (read here as conceit): it goes about the old idea of the Latin proverb “semper idem sed non eodem modo” (always the same though not in the same manner) applied to the Love as one of its periphrastic attributive circumscriptions.

One can regard the legacy of W. Shakespeare as a paragon for the generic peculiarities of idioms: dramatic idioms demonstrate their attachment to action and respectively to axial and lateral lines of textual development; lyrical idioms become periphrastic circumscriptions of the problematic core of the work. One can repeat Shakespeare’s own words from the 105-th sonnet where the Love is praised: “Fair, kind and true, is all my argument, - / Fair, kind and true, varying to other words”. Here the idiomatic law of lyrical genus is exposed overtly: the three words can be varied infinitely with ingenious circumlocutions. Both lyrical and dramatic idioms become then the devices for mental experimentation: it is periphrastic transformation that becomes explorative device for the discovery of the unknown sides of the artistic problem. Meanwhile the borders of such experimentation are in drama strictly delimited with the faculties of solving the presented puzzles, as one could see in the cases of final scenes. In lyrical poems such limitations (associated usually with the poetical conventions) consist in abstraction that opposes to dramatic dependence upon concrete action. Extraneous and intrinsic viewpoints attested with dramatic and lyrical works demonstrate also difference in respective idiomatic means.

The cited examples show that to find out an appropriate title for a textual passage is the decisive step for its description. It means that any description begins with the corollary that the describing person adds to the described text. The intrusion of an observer is presupposed with the very fact of textual existence as a message addressed to anybody’s comprehension. Therefore any description being different from pure reproduction, it becomes also a kind of the distortion of a primary text. In the sited examples the analysis was restricted only with attributive tasks that can’t be solved without the disclosure of functional destinations of the described segments. Therefore the possible implications from the explored textual latencies were given although other opportunities of transformations weren’t taken into account here. Possible lacunas weren’t regarded either. Idiomatic motifs as the principal object of analysis are easily associable with what is commonly understood as prototypes. Intertextual and contextual referential ties appertain to the attributive analysis as it contributes to the correction of the disclosed connotations. It is situation as a correlate to scenic etude that becomes the principal textual unit endowed at the same time with essential non-verbal features. It is situation that determined invariant of textual interpretations both for proverbs and for dramatic works. Meanwhile it is not possible to trace the transformational effects within the broad dramatic text in the same way as it has been carried out within the proverbial area. In particular one needs elaborating special devices to examine the possible alternatives & questions in textual transformation delivered with performing practice. Dramatic text contains a broad space of interpretative opportunities and their exploration demands special efforts. The conclusion available here is that the methods of the description of dramatic text are applicable for lyrical poetry in regard both to soliloquy and idiomatic motifs.

As far as description is distortion, it entails also the perturbations that become necessary for the experimental exploration of text. In this respect description can be regarded as the zero degree of experiment in the same way as reproduction is the zero degree of transformation. Each description even as a pure quotation arouses the satellites or epiphenomena of the described text as the inevitable corollaries and comments, and these derivative products of description are also the initial points of experimental exploration. Any reproduced description (in particular quotation) as well as produced corollary must be examined as to their adequacy to the described text. Therefore each analytical work ultimately comes to the indispensable experiment (with the examination of the results as its crucial moment) even limited first with description.

Experiment in poetry can be said to be ubiquitous and bilateral being together the creation & exploration of text. The act of textual description becomes always its “creative interpretation” (to use the term of Gisele Brelet) in particular as a performance of a dramatic play that can be regarded as its widened description. While creating a text the writer conducts an experiment with editorial versions that come to the terminal version. In the performance one deals with experimental interpretative versions of conceiving this terminal variant. Editing versions precede the canonic text of a work while performing versions succeed this text. Moreover, they both are liable to the examination. There arises therefore a succession of interpretative versions, both of the editing preceding and the performing succeeding ones. Edition and performance being the two sides of creative experiment, exploration as the interpretation continues them both. This experimental bilateralness presupposes the emergence of indispensable derivations that arise as textual epiphenomena resulting from the general property of transformability. It is already a simple repetition of dramatic a role that can’t coincide with the slightest details of meaning that attests the inevitability of such arising interpretative derivations. If a proverb implies the already discussed “invitation to invention”, still more does it a whole dramatic play already taken with the descriptive tasks. These “inventions” are inseparable from “imitation” of pure quotations. Thus in the broadest sense mere descriptive tasks turn out to be those of the mimesis with invention and simulation as its constant satellites, description being only a moment in the whole process of the tradition’s life. The question remains therefore only as to the admissibility and the limits of interpretative intrusion resulting in the transformation of the explored text, any quotation being already the case of transformation (namely of dividing a text into parcels). The crucial point is here the examination of transformed versions both in performance and in exploration.

As to the special task of such experimental descriptive transformation of text with the aim of disclosing the role of phraseology in poetical work it is to remind the role of “connective nodes” (M.L. Gasparov) or “nexus” (O. Jespersen) as the unit for description. With the transformation of “cite & cut” one makes a cento of quotations of the explored text, it becomes filled with “dotting & bracketing” (including the inverted commas) where the described verbal substance will be included & excluded (with the consequences of accumulation & elimination) so that primary textual ties become omitted and replaced with the marks of references. The compilation (indexation) arises instead of the text together with the intitulation as the compressions of the subdivisions of the description. Such dissection or dismembering of textual anatomy makes up a kind of cento so that text looks like a direct speech of quotations. It is here that the decisive link of interpretative procedure comes into play, that of reflection. This preparative descriptive work aims art the disclosure of the implicit essence concealed behind the immediately observable & describable data. Instead of homogeneous listing index with field structure of center vs. periphery the asymmetry & anisotropy appears disclosed already with actualities of message and emphatic stresses displacing the eccentric axial sequences as the alternative to potential field structure. It is this representation of the mediating mission of poetical work as an alien speech of quotations that enables producing corollaries disclosing the implicit contents. Thus reconsidering the explored text as a cento one carries out the mental experiment resulting in the disclosure of its latency. The “voices” obtained in the descriptive representation must be out to examination. Therefore it is not merely the fragmentation of text that is carried on: the experiment consists in making this text an alienated utterance to be the object of estranged reflection to produce the indispensable derivative corollaries. In its turn due to these experimental transformations it becomes possible to disclose the genuine code reproducible in the studied idioms due to their examination as to the reproducibility. Through the production of consequences the imitable or reproducible foundations of the text become explicit.

Here it is again to stress that within the broad concept of mimesis the descriptive tasks turn out to have the outlook of those existent in the performing practice. The fundamental mutuality and reciprocity of description & performance (attested in particular with the above mentioned case of the producer’s sketches where dramatic plays are endowed with the extent commentaries making up actually a the restoration of a novel). Description can by no means be restricted with the representation only of the manifested data. Vice versa it must reveal the latent implications of the described textual entity that include connotations not attested with explicit means. The opposition manifestation vs. latency is constantly to be born in mind while accomplishing the descriptive tasks. It is connotations that become therefore the main target of descriptive efforts. The description must be not the reproduction of the manifested but the production of the connotations concealed behind the surface of the manifested data. The disclosure of the latent connotations is the main descriptive task.

The descriptive representation of text includes necessarily the moment of its imitation (reproduction, in particular, quotation) that also indispensably entails the productive moments of corollaries and comments concerning the implicit layers of text. Thus productivity of description of poetical text is comparable top what has already been discussed in regard to pro verbs. The productive transformability of textual data is here of the similar nature as that of proverbs, the difference consisting not only in the textual scopes, but in the sources. If it is the intertextual conditions of codified conventions that provide proverbial transformations the contextual referential net gains the priority in regard to dramatic and lyrical works. Respectively it is the deixis of drama or poem as the factor of their integration that determines the arising corollaries. In particular it is deixis that enables revealing the phantom of action in drama or the latent problems in lyrics. As the part and parcel of mimesis any description is carried out as the interpretative performing activity acquiring its terminal outlook in scenic performance. The paragon for the descriptive procedures can therefore be found in the already cited producer’s notes of K.S. Stanislavsky.

Chapter 3. Phraseology as the Substance of Poetical Genera

The prerequisites for the formation of otherness as we have already seen, are deeply enrooted within the inner textual structure namely in the predication as the fundament of textual structure. It determines the first step towards textual segregation that remains still implicit and reveals itself through the conversion of a sentence into catechetic structure of [S? – P!] or [S! – P?] types . The segregation acquires explicit forms in direct speech with introducing reciprocal reflections of the voices that the respective textual segments are ascribed to. Thus one can say of catechetic structure as the universal textual property given implicitly or explicitly. With the transition to direct speech this catechetic textual segregation becomes visible. The first attempts of systematical researches of direct speech undertaken by M.K, Milykh dealt not with the cues of quotations but only with the remarks that introduced them. It was not still the inner structure of direct speech but only its environment that had been studied. Respectively a detailed classification of the verbs introducing cues was elaborated that included those of perception, speech and mentality [Милых, 1958, 43-80]. Further researches have been carried out within the general communicative approach where the conclusions about the interpretative essence of communicative activity and the special status of quotations are confirmed⁹¹³.

While considering direct speech within a broader perspective of textual segregation it becomes necessary to account for aggregation that “invites” for experiments with the further reintegration of textual entity where the segment of direct speech could be incorporated. The problem of experimental examination always arises already within the creative work. It is the editing practice where the generic peculiarities of the examining procedures are revealed. The author of an epic narrative work puts under examination the plot and characters (let be mentioned here only the numerous cases of the “unforeseen” conduct of the heroes, as Pushkin’s Tatyana or Flaubert’s Bovary). Lyrical poet examines own confessions and revelations that disclose the unforeseen sides of the soul. In drama such disclosures are referred to the supposed action and examined as to their effectiveness in this action’s progress. In all these genera it is utterances that become put under examination, These utterances are regarded as the quotations of different persons from different places and moments that are communicated in a dialogue. Examination & dialogue become therefore the most significant parts of poetical experiment. It entails the necessity to trace communicative model of the poetical exploration of world where the alienated utterances become the initial textual sources. Only being represented as alienated and adopted the utterance becomes the object off reflection as the basis for interpretative activity. The connection between such reflection and experimentation has already been demonstrated in proverbs (conceived as adopted quotations). It is the creative examination that supplies the arising work with productive opportunities developing in particular in the performing practice. In particular it includes the triad of “question – alternative – inference” discussed in regard to proverbs that gives rise to developing the derivative locutions as the admissible transformations of the original text. Adoptions of direct speech can be regarded in the same manner as the proverbs or refrains that admit the conjectures concerning their evolvement in an extent textual entity. Direct speech’s quotations behave as refrains so that their attachment to textual codification & stratification can be regarded as an apparent analytical feature.

This attachment reveals itself within textual liability to descriptive transformation and representation as it discloses also its propensity to approach a code concealed behind its surface. Descriptive transformations reflect textual stratification and therefore achieve its inner codification (in particular of artistic conventions arising in the text and displaying themselves in quotations). The prerequisites of this codification concern communication in the broadest sense as the interpretative process. Textual communicative devices of location & localization promote stratification in speech registers. In particular it is already the property of quotation (in direct speech) that imparts to text the quality of metatext with the succeeding proximity to code and outer form. The same concerns meditative lyrical digressions of epigrammatic proverbial utterances as the foundation of generitive speech register. It is reflection that involves location & localization; therefore they are to be united with semantic transitions ensuing from problematic contents as the both sides of reflexive attitude. In particular both personal attributes of location and spatial temporal dimensions of localization disclose textual motivation as the integrative device in generation and codification. Together with the already discussed textual stratification in generitive vs. informative (and mental vs. narrative) registers it is now to take into consideration still another division into communicative vs. informative registers (suggested by N.S. Pospelov in 1952)⁹¹⁴. Therefore the devices of direct speech as those appertaining to the communicative register become still one dimension of textual stratification and entail the involvement of other dimensions.

Location & localization presuppose the existence of respective prerequisites, that’s of personal otherness and dimensional distance. Therefore there must be different partners of communication as well as the distance between their deeds. Localization ensues from location as the result of the discernible positions of these partners, in particular of their proximity or remoteness. The deep interdependences of location & localization becomes apparent already from the fact that each person to which a cue is ascribed needs must possess and disclose one’s own playground so that the cue’s contents indispensably must be localized. Personification ascribes speech to a proper name while spatial & temporal attributes impart the definiteness of moment to it. Together with persons the moments (resp. spatial places loci) come into play so that speech obtains distributive attributes. Thus the dimensions of textual temporality and spatiality display outspoken intentional nature so that the motives of action come into play together with moment. This interdependence between location & localization can be exemplified in particular with the structure of Shakespearean drama where the temporal continuity is represented with the personification of action⁹¹⁵. Chronology thus depends here upon personification so that portrayal determines the sequence of “numeric” structure.

Thus one would say that together with the aspects of LO (location & localization) those of MO (momentous & motivational analysis) are indispensably to be involved. One could remind here also the LA (latencies & lacunas) aspects presupposing their disclosure in extensive & intensive manners respectively (that’s with replenishing the vacuous places or with detecting the implications). Then the direct speech’s segments as those with personal attachments build up the P aspect concerning personal vs. positional connections of textual segments. Meanwhile all they represent only particular cases of a more broadly conceived referential (intertextual and contextual) parameters of textual situations generalized as deixis. Each utterance of direct speech is of situational nature: it refers to a certain situation arousing the speech act. Therefore direct speech is not only the device of portrayal; it discloses the situation of interpersonal relations and refers to their types. Replicas become then the features of categorical situations.

It is to bear in mind the whole intentional load that presupposes personal temporality (as well as locality that has less importance and can be reduced to moments). Together with persons of direct speech with their motives of action it goes about the segregation of the moments (with the respective localities) of their enunciations. In its turn it is motives & motifs that are at hand in such moments because there are no intentions without definite task and goal so that intent & content sides build up unity. Motifs are to be regarded as the representations of motives that are to be found in personal and momentous parameters of direct speech. Meanwhile within textual space they both are none other as the functions of the whole. Intentions and goals with their objectives can turn into elements of contents within textual transformations, and reciprocally what has been declared can become the objective of intentions. To remind the reciprocity of cognition & volition attested with the already sited ancient scholastic rule <nihil volitum nisi cogitatum>, one has to regard them as the functions that demonstrate their changeability within the integrative processes of textual generation.

It is here to stress that intentionality as the textual feature has nothing to do with the usual personal approach to this term. In this respect intentions are conceived as the functional parameter of textual situation without being attached immediately to dramatis personae⁹¹⁶. Still more does this reservation concern the terminated textual entity (as a literary monument) where there are no immediate goals of a speech - maker⁹¹⁷. Thus intention as textual property does by no means coincide with goals and purposes of a person as a hero’s or author’s image. It is the vestiges of contents chosen for communicating and of the respective means that don’t coincide with personal features of portrayal. This abstraction of intentions as textual feature from personal attachment can be exemplified with the phenomenon of the interaction of categories within the depictions of the same situation. In the cases of interaction the intention is shown without involving individual portrayal so that one can say of personal attitude represented with impersonal means⁹¹⁸. Thus one can say of multidimensional deixis as the prerequisite for textual integration where direct speech gives only personal dimension of referential net. In its turn it gives grounds for a very significant conclusion: it is out of question to take quotations without their referential ties. Quotation is inseparable from deixis where it builds up an indispensable element.

The necessity of taking into consideration the referential net of a quotation can be exemplified with the interpretation of dramatic speech. It is the functions of the scene (and intentions of the person) to which the speech is ascribed that determine the destination of the arguments involved in the discussion and therefore the objects that the locution refers to. Such overt reference to the external information appealing to the partners’ competence can be found in the cue of Salieri from A.S. Pushkin’s work: <«наследника нам не оставит он»>. It is the accusation of the sin of pride that endangers the creative continuity⁹¹⁹. That it goes just about pride is affirmed with Mozart’s cue: <«нас мало избранных, счастливцев праздных»>. These words overtly refer to the known quotation from Gospel. One must reckon with the function [ACCUSATION / JUSTIFICATION] of the given situation to comprehend the utterances adequately. Meanwhile Salieri refers to a plausible reticent argument [* any tradition can be reproduced and continued with pupils] so that the advancement that are not reinforced with the school can become only something wanton. It is therefore the unmentioned ideas of [VANITY] that are implied and support the accusation of [PRIDE]. Thus one can obtain the latent imperative [* stop Mozart’s destructive activity] behind the utterance.

One can suggest still one dimension that would become commensurate to the personal parameter of quotation. It is aspectual (with modal inclusively) characteristics that unite in particular temporal and personal properties of enunciation. One can say of aspect as the basis for the unity of motives & motifs. Of a special importance is the fact that aspect contributes in imparting idiomatic properties to the enunciations of direct speech. One has in particular observed and marked that “die neuere Lyrik in Deutschland aus den Gesetzen der Verbstellung eine neue poetische Wirkung zu ziehen gelernt hat” ‘the newest German lyrics have mastered to obtain new poetic effects from the distribution of verbs’ [Weinrich, 1977, 162]. It goes about the effects ensuing from aspectual attributes of verbs (as the examples from the works of J. Bobrowski give grounds). The involvement of aspect in its turn enables detecting the principal difference between temporal and spatial qualities. It is temporality that refers immediately the predication while spatiality concerns circumstances.

Aspectual properties of enunciation ensue already from the interpretative effects of illocution and perlocution. In particular it is irony that becomes inseparable from these properties arousing already the dubitation and the necessity of verification of the utterances ascribed to a strange person. It entails the problem of aspectual ambiguity arising immediately from the ironical connotations inherent to each problem of location & localization’s determination. This problem gets intensity under the conditions of lyrical passages (esp. in the so called improper direct speech when it remains indefinite to whom the utterance must be ascribed that is to be dealt with further). The effects of ambiguity concern still more the temporality when it remains still to decide on the moment both of speech act and on the temporal parameters of the events mentioned there. The very fact of quotation entails the question on temporal attribution (in particular in simultaneity) of the cited phrase. A special problem arises within the narration of the first person as the necessity to discern the cues of the narrator addressed to different persons and to detect the genuine addressees of the speech. Thus the aspectual features of the possible and supposed addressees are to be taken into account. Thus the personal dimension becomes only the outer side of aspectual problems involving temporality of the utterance and coming back to modality as its primary functional feature.

This approach to direct speech as a particular aspectual attribution within the taken situation is to be correlated with the generic peculiarities of the direct speech that are especially evident in drama. A dramatic text stands as a rebus for the explorer who has to disclose its referential net. There arises the problem of idioms as the basis of such rebus. In particular it is dramatic triune as the quality of localization that contributes essentially to the growth of the importance of rebus-like periphrastic particulars. Idiomatic attachments of localization can easily be disclosed in the retardation or acceleration of action attained with the means of phraseology. One could only remind the role of commonplaces as the retarding conversational device. Such retarding effects become in particular the indispensable moment of dramatic exposition. From another side one can find turning points where the passwords initiate action or discussion thus accelerating the stream of dramatic process. Here one has to stress that it is usually the opposition of events vs. customs that correlates with acceleration vs. retardation of action. This “normal” opposition is inverted in the “new drama” where events build up a background for action (as in the works of A.P. Chekhov). From here the effect of retardation and the state of suspense (or of expectation at M. Maeterlinck) ensue. One can say that retarding effects are usually connected with abstractedness and therefore with pronominal destination of locutions with their references to something existent behind the discussed abstractions whereas acceleration presupposes the growth of details’ density involving intensive idiomatic use of familiar words. Such issues of condensation and rarefaction give grounds for comparative analysis of different genera.

Textual incompleteness as the common peculiarity of dramatic and lyrical poetry opposes to epic textual plenitude. This incompleteness reveals itself through the prevalence of particulars, of details that let be perceived as the means of the circumscriptions of keywords (vocabulae). The heterogeneity as the main property of dramatic dialogue can be also conceived as the device of gradual disclosure of events. This heterogeneity contributes to the rise of cognitive dissonance as the essential generic feature of drama. Direct speech always entails tension of heterogeneous confrontation as the consequence of this special kind of conflict. Dramatic mixture () represented in the form of such confrontation demands the movement towards the growth of homogeneity that is achieved in the gradual disclosure of circumstances. In this mixture of dialogue both contamination and fragmentation take place as the sides of eclectic moments that also contribute to the tension. In this respect dramatic “otherness” appears as the force of increasing tension with textual diversification that is to be removed with overcoming disharmony. These qualities of dramatic dialogue are comparable with folklore text that almost doesn’t know pure monologues. If a text in folklore looks like a monologue it usually turns to display the change of addressees that are implied therein showing thus the respective fragmentation. The recited text changes its addressees with such frequency that it loses sufficient coherency. For instance in the song <«Гей, та хто лиха не знає»> ‘hey, who doesn’t know harm’ [Грица, 1975, 109] that is built as an apostrophe one can discern the community, the oxen, the innkeeper, the foes and the girls that the lyrical incognito of an author appeals to. Such alternation of addressees is still more observable in the seeming monologues of ballads and tales.

Vice versa it is lyrical enunciation with its culture of solitude that creates appropriate conditions for the development of seemingly monologues that turn out usually to become actual soliloquy as the inner dialogue. The otherness is always implied in lyrics together with incognito. It becomes especially evident in the suggestive lyrics with its genus of apostrophe. Meanwhile it is also the meditative lyrics where the prerequisites for the rise of alien person appear. It is the dissociation of a narrator into an author’s image and the image of a witness that gives comments of proverbial statements (in particular, refrains or other epigrammatic enunciations). One can say of an oracle’s voice that comes together with that of incognito and represented with the informative and generitive speech registers. Besides, it is enigmatic verve of problems that betrays the division of voices within the meditation. In particular the devices of refrains and those of parallel constructions and various kinds of repetitions and references (from concatenation to zeugma) impart to lyrical poetry the features of stratification proper to direct speech.

Due to the devices of the kind paratactic confrontation of utterances (that is seemingly peculiar for dialogues) transforms itself into a hypotactic sequence of clauses where they serve as the arguments for intentionality of a text. In drama these intentions being explicit, one can say of the assignment of meanings to idioms, whereas in lyrics all it becomes much more complicated due to the ambiguity of the words’ location and first of all of the addressees of text. Dramatic words are addressed not only to a partner of the dramatic persona and to the audience, but also to an invisible observer hidden in the bottom of an actor’s soul. Perlocution and illocution can be said to interlace inseparably. Vice versa in lyrics there lack such observers or addressees so that the “mist” of ambiguity prevails. Quotations as the only stuff of dramatic text (as well as of a lyrical one taken as something being reproduced and reflected) always entail idiomatic comprehension. The inherent interdependence between citing and reconsidering a locution arises so that even a mere repetition (as of a refrain) poses this locution from a new viewpoint. Thus even a tautological frequentation results in idiomatic shift. Therefore quotation is idiom as far as even a mere reproduction and repetition of alien word entails semantic shifts. For instance, when weather is discussed in a conversation, it is not weather that is meant!

In its turn quotations promote textual codification where dramatic text gives especially favorable conditions. Irony ensues from reflection as the promoting force of idiomatic shifts too. Quotation as an alienated textual segment entails thus semantic transition together with the opportunities of becoming the codified reproducible unit and the object of ironical idiomatic interpretation. It is here that the difference between dramatic and lyrical interpretations arises: be dramatic one attached to portrayal and personification, the lyrical one would remain impersonal and attached to incognito. The consequences as to the localization entail also lyrical ambiguity & ambivalence in opposite to dramatic definite action.

In the most immediate form the connection between direct speech and the idiomatic derivation is to be encountered in the already discussed phenomenon of “wellerism” (introduced together with the “jingloisms” by Dickens in “Pickwick”). This derivative potential of the utterance taken as the quotation ensues from the priority of reflection in regard to communication considered as a mere interchange of utterances. It is the act of reflection that makes a quotation assigned to a certain or uncertain person, and it is with a wellerism when an unexpected addition of the reference to the author of the cited textual fragment entails radical shift of its meaning. Therefore the message is endowed with a marker that imparts to the message the qualities of the object of a reflection which bears the represented and rendered thought that can’t be taken with its direct meaning. Thus an innocent observation in “Pickwick” (Ch. 23) “it’s a amiable weakness” radically changes its meaning after the added information “as defended the gen’lm’n as beat his wife with a poker”. The grotesque image appears, and it is idiomatic shift of the precedent words that accompanies it.

The very introduction of wellerism attests the intentionality of converting a mere direct speech’s quotation into the tool of idioms’ coinage. An important aspect of wellerism is the negation that is always implied in the confrontation of the utterance and its comment indicating those pronouncing the cited words. Actually this comment behaves as an objection to a cue in the dialogue so that dialogical relation arises between the quotation and commentary. Then the problem of dialogue as a semantic net arises where the quotation of a cento manner would be transformed into a coherent narration. Apparently each cento can be converted into a soliloquy so that replicas as quotations become conceived as the utterances of the same person. Such net is based on