Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

This textual peculiarity can be evaluated with the specific weight of colloquialisms in drama in comparison to conventionalisms. Dramatic action necessarily uses more “earthly” expressions and habitual phrases to pursue immediate aims seemingly without any purposely hidden contents so that textual heterogeneities grows up. At the same time dramatic text can’t be diversified infinitely because episodic insertions and tirades would divert from action (not to take into account retardation or acceleration). Meanwhile there exists still a more powerful reason determining the limits for heterogeneity. It is the structure of dialogue where the subject of discussion determines the boundary for the diversity of lexical stuff (in other case it would be transformed into “a conversation of the deaf persons”). The thorough developmental line is to be picked out under the complicated interplay of occasional and conventional meanings. One has to detect idiomatic meaning of usual colloquial or conventional locutions and to guess the general ideas that are to be presupposed behind them so that implied conclusions would be obtained as interpretative corollaries. This circumstance comes to another paradoxical conclusion as to the radical transformation of chaos into its opposite.

The argument of “a conversation of the deaf persons” (and respectively of the necessity of comprehensibility for a conversational interaction of partners) against the illusion of the unlimited possibilities of the growth of textual heterogeneity entails further consequences. The well known “rules of cooperation” as the condition for the possibility of communication concern dramatic text as the represented and reflected communication. This communication aims at appealing towards audience meets the demands of the so called speech act of perlocution, therefore all the discrepancies of drama must arise from perfectly comprehensible deeds and words; otherwise the very act of communication would become impossible. Drama at the same time can’t be reduced to perlocution. It appeals to the third person of observer that can by no means be regarded as the subject of contemplation only: it is observer which participates in the generation of dramatic text actively. The “mirror” of arbiter enters the communicative process as the necessary constituent for the generation of text itself. Drama can be said to program the presence of observer different from addressee as the virtual agent capable of deciphering the contents as the necessary interpreter of the represented communication. There arises divergence between the competence of observer and of real addressees (partners) of dramatic dialogue that entails textual demands.

There are chiefly banalities that are admissible in drama, and this restriction causes one of the principal difficulties of dramatic genus. It entails an obvious controversy: the plain banalities admissible for conversation must bring forth unusual consequences and conceal deep latent contents. That means that toposes (loci communi, commonplaces, banalities) turn into hapaxes (loci raritati, rarities) in drama, and it is the communicative minimalism of drama that provides conditions for such transformation. Under the cover of banal routine of colloquialisms must be concealed the contents that causes the unforeseen aftermaths. Each text oscillates between loci communi and loci raritati, imitation and invention, mimetic and fantastic elements, those of topos and hapax. In particular formulaic devices of commonplaces are in this respect by no way properties of folklore or rhetoric only, as well as dialogue in its turn is not a self-sufficient phenomenon. The interdependence of formulae and dialogue reveals itself in its peculiar outlook in dramatic text. The communicative conditions of drama put their restrictions as to the interrelationship between these elements. The playwright is restricted not only with the opportunities of circumscribing the selected events with the dramatis personae’s replicas; the means of expression are restricted with communicative demands too. The demands of immediate comprehensibility of dramatic text (the mentioned communicative minimalism) presuppose that together with inferential nature dramatic text displays its minimalistic simplification as the necessary consequence of its communicative nature.

Therefore dramatic action in the form of communication represented in the text of direct speech precludes in advance anything that would resemble a puzzle or ambiguity demanding meditation. There can’t be any delay for solving puzzles in communication, and the partners must easily comprehend each other’s words. The case of Sphinx in “Oedipus” is the exception that proves the rule as the specific device of retardation. Even Ophelia’s songs contain easily recognizable allegories. That’s why the level of sophistication must be minimal, and all words & deeds must be clear and transparent; all utterances must be plain enough to become immediately comprehensible. Thus dialogue becomes automatic in the sense of uttering ready locutions. And at the same time in spite of this transparence the locution used automatically entail unforeseen and unexpected inferences and consequences betraying their unknown and unsuspected latent resources. Dramatic communication demonstrates the formation of idioms used under the disguise of commonplaces.

In dramatic communication there’s place for those words only that are necessary for deeds. Drama demands scarcity of words (and other communicative means) so that the utterances must be minimal in the same way as in proverbial locutions. It is minimalism that is the common feature of drama and proverb. One can’t afford obscure and ambiguous style of lyrical meditations so that meditative passages in dramatic monologues become commonly understandable. And at the same time it is this visible comprehensibility that conceals latent virtual contents. In this respect all dramatic texts must necessarily be obvious commonplaces but their opportunities remain absolutely irreducible to banalities. Banalities seem to be taken in inverted commas. Drama says of mysteries disguised as banalities!

The inferential nature of dramatic textual coherence gets especially obvious outlook in view of such textual randomness and conversational banalities. The disparateness of utterances is overtly manifested in such a unique experimental work as “La voix himaine” (The Human Voice) by J. Cocteau. Actually it is a series of banal phrases apt to be used in any common situation. Meanwhile their juxtaposition must disclose the fatal progress of events towards suicide. The girl says a simple wish for her former sweetheart that he wouldn’t stay with his new girlfriend in the same hotel that they did (Ecoute, chéri; puisque vous serez à Marseilles après demains soir, je voudrais … enfin j’aimerais … j’aimerais que tu ne descendes pas à l’hôtel où nous descendons d’habitude) and in a moment it turns out to become her last will. It attests a very meaningful correction (neutral voudrais ‘I’d wish’ is substituted with passionate aimerais ‘I’d like’). This slight detail imparts to the utterance the quality that gives grounds to identify the respective situation with the category of [TESTAMENT].

Such oscillation and saltation from delirium of randomness to banalities and vice versa demonstrate the general paradox of stochastic processes turning into nomothetic ones and disclosing their inherent regularity. The described simplification attests such transformation of the occasional into the canonic. Drama becomes thus the metamorphosis of chaos into canon (as well as a canon’s destruction). One can say of chaos becoming nomos in drama. As the consequence the relationship of colloquialisms vs. conventionalities gets special solution. The seemingly fortuitous, haphazard and arbitrary sets of words and deeds turn into conventions. The seemingly trivial and banal colloquial phrases get their justification as the special devices or the so called trickeries (Fr. tricheries used in the theory of the so called “well dressed drama”). It is here that the dramatic conventionalism is enrooted⁷²².

The heterogeneity afforded in dramatic text gives rise to a particular effect of juxtaposition that’s of seemingly random confrontation of cues that can be integrated due to interpretative efforts as in the cited example. The importance of this textual property is connected with the opportunity of still another line of differentiation between the dramatic and the epic. The effect of juxtaposition as the species of specific dramatic heterogeneity (mixture or confusion ()) is to be discerned from synthesis. It presupposes confrontation of heterogeneous elements combined in an eclectic manner and thus opposes to epic analysis of reality’s presentation. Thus dramatic text as imperfect and unfinished synthesis (manifested with the heterogeneous tendencies) opposes to the analytical tendencies of epics. In particular the properties of mixture can be disclosed with involving colloquial stuff in drama. Drama vs. epics can be represented as synthetic vs. analytical tendencies. The involvement and confrontation of heterogeneous elements with the risk of reducing to eclectic juxtaposition of the incoherent and unadjusted phrases accompanies dramatic works with the first steps of their scenic life.

Such interplay of chaos vs. nomos entails particular consequences in regard to phraseology. In particular this opposition acquires an outlook of the question of poetry (in particular, drama) vs. colloquy where the habitual speech becomes the inexhaustible source of this heterogeneity. Due to the particular communicative conditions drama gives exclusive opportunities for the transformation of the so called casual (“once-for-the-case” = «разовые») enunciations (the notion suggested by V.G. Admoni) in locutions of deep meaningfulness. The concept of casual colloquialisms has been developed by V.G. Admoni to designate those ephemeral and fluent utterances that appear involuntarily in oral conversational speech; at the same time they coincide with the most stabile commonplaces giving rise to conventions. The locutions of casual type reproduce some features proper for the words-sentences of archaic languages of incorporated type (attested also in “telegraph style”)⁷²³ and are to be found in infantile language void of communicative tasks⁷²⁴. It is especially the destruction of propositional structure of casual utterances that seems to deserve peculiar attention⁷²⁵. But the most important is V.G. Admoni’s discovery of the connection between scenic improvisation and casual utterances so that they are undoubtedly to be attributed to dramatic textual phenomena⁷²⁶. In particular together with the improvised forms the cues uttered apart (replicas a parte) and inner monologues (soliloquy) belong here too⁷²⁷. In its turn in conversational passages it is the links between the preceding rhemes becoming the succeeding themes that are often supplied with casual utterances⁷²⁸. In this respect casual utterances intersect with what the just cited B. Yu. Norman has suggested to call pseudo-utterances (after V.A. Zvegintsev’s pseudo-sentences)⁷²⁹.

Vice versa the transformations in the opposite direction can be attested with proverbial expressions or other used as arguments for the single and particular purpose pursued by the dramatis personae. In particular “casual” colloquial collocations become idioms after being cited as quotations at the stage as it was the case at A. Ostrovski⁷³⁰. Here stamps of social dialects become the main device of personal portrayal⁷³¹. Moreover the dramatis personae themselves refer to the used locutions to attest their affiliation to the respective social group⁷³². That the transformation of occasional colloquialisms into meaningful signs is actually the rule of dramatic composition can be exemplified with the mentioned device of qui pro quo. The accumulated chaotic casual utterances make up “a verbal encumbrance” that becomes canonic scenic representation of vanity. As the canonic chaos of dramatic play such episodes promote transforming casual utterances into amphibolies referring to the fate of characters involved in such intricate interweaving of deeds and words.

The paradox of V.G. Admoni’s “casual colloquialisms” is that they necessarily must be banal and trivial commonplaces already because they must be comprehended immediately. It is absolutely excluded that they would become enigmatic tropes as far as comprehensibility is indispensable. At the same time they acquire unique and inimitable sense peculiar for the given collocation only. Therefore in spite of all banality and triviality they become features of characters’ portrayal that disclose one’s latent intentions. In this respect they can be regarded as “aha-phenomena” (to use the term of the psychologist K. Bühler) or insight (illuminations) because they betray the unexpected features of a person. That’s why it is important to pay attention to short cues of “casual colloquialisms” inserted in dialogue as the witnesses of something unexpected. This “aha-phenomenon” can be exemplified with the discussion of a typical casual colloquialism “well enough” in the conversation from Ch. Dickens’ “Bleak House” (Ch. 17). This locution is used by Richard in reply to Esther’s invitation and is supported with Ada’s exclamation “He can’t say better than that”. Then Richard tries still to add an explanation to this locution that it would mean “do as well as anything else”. After such attempts of justifying behavioral flippancy Esther again insists that the discussion “should be quite in earnest without any reservation” in regard to “the profession”. This makes Richard overtly confess that “I don’t care much” and “it’s monotonous”, the last words evoking Esther’s remark that “this is an objection to all kinds of application”. Thus a simple colloquial phrase grows up to a whole discussion of vital problems of labor and leisure. A colloquial commonplace becomes a prototype for the evolvement of the situation that comes back to moral category that can be attributed as [FLIPPANCY]. The cited discussion exemplifies the effects of the mentioned aha-phenomenon.

Thus there arise in dramatic and lyrical poetry especially favorable conditions for the conversion of loci communi (or species of topos) in loci raritati (respectively the samples of hapax legomenon) and vice versa. Habitual conversational utterances acquire radically changed sense within the tissue of dramatic action or lyrical meditative digression. It is the common property of drama that in the cue of a hero the plainest commonplaces get load of meaningful references and obtain thus unusual sense. “I told him what I thought” becomes a sinister confession in the mouth of Iago explaining his deeds in the final scene of “Othello” – quite different to an absolutely innocent and unequivocal use of the same phrase in numerous cases of daily life. “It will be rain to-night” pronounced by Banquo in “Macbeth” (3.3) just before the assault on him bears radically other sense that the same words in the information of a weather service. The same concerns lyrics: “He mourns that day so soon has glided by” in the line of the 10-th sonnet by J. Keats is not a polite conventional expression of the sorrow for irretrievable and irrevocable motion of time, the words being contrasted to the previously mentioned images of “the smile of the blue firmament”, and the very sorrowful feeling being evoked with this contemplation of the symbol of eternity. Here usual colloquial phrases become idioms, and the force of such a transformation lies in the specific modality of text compelling words to such semantic transition. In opposite to epics with its loosened allocation and comparatively free order of locutions apt to be permuted it is here that periphrastic designations endowed with the load of intentions presuppose more intensive shift and drift towards idiomatic transformation. These particular textual conditions give rise to the formation of meaningful locutions that acquire the mission of passwords initiating the turn of events within a plot. Spontaneously used verbal stamps become fatal words dropped from the lips to give a signal for activity.

In particular it concerns already proverbial catechism and the cognate dialogical forms. For example it becomes observable in the separation of general sentential enunciations in the so called stichomythia that’s in the alternative lines containing each a sentence where actually all the cues are very loosely combined as in the case of the epic “stream of consciousness”⁷³³. Proverbial locutions and catchwords were coined in such passages. It concerns Seneca’s legacy that was the initial point for Renaissance drama’s development and was regarded as the sample of rhetorical dominance in theatre⁷³⁴. It was still to overcome this tradition of monologues loosely connected one with another in the manner of philosophical disputes (presented in Jesuit allegorical school dramas) so⁷³⁵. Such was also the case where the questions and responses were predictable as in the so called amoebaean composition of some folk songs⁷³⁶. It was in particular the form of baroque soliloquy (as that the opportunity of colloquial speech with its chaotic elements would provide conditions for genuine dramatic dialogue instead of epic conversational passages a discussion with the self) where the opportunities of such development had been discovered. Here the border between dialogue and monologue becomes unimportant as the author cites her or his own words as alienated and confronted in the form of quotations though all they remain within the limits of the same monologue. A person carries out dispute with oneself so that it can already concern not abstract allegories but the decision to be taken for future action.

It is just in the last point where the crucial difference between epics and drama is to be found. It is not dialogue for dialogue’s sake that determines the dramatic genus. Neither can general reflection generating direct speech become its distinctive feature. It is neither discussion nor conversation nor direct speech as such that build up the fundament of dramatic text. The discussion of abstract generalities remains in the field of epics if it has no attachment to the events of dramatic plot. These events in its turn always come back to the most fundamental existential problems of chaos vs. nomos. The dramatic is to be seen in encountering and confronting discrepancies of disharmony with the aim of overcoming them. This agony of overcoming chaos must be obligatorily present in drama. In its turn it is only personal decision that can provide such confrontation with chaos. Therefore it is the decision-making process that is to de regarded as the definitive dramatic property. The necessity of interplay and reciprocal transition of the chaotic and the canonic attested with the just discussed transformations of casual colloquialisms into conventions and vice versa allow us to come to the conclusion on the insufficiency of reflection (direct speech, quotation) as such for the textual dramatic features. Reflection is necessary but insufficient feature of the dramatic. This reflection must attach personal decision involving confrontation with chaos.

This involvement of existential fundamentals in dramatic play implies the difference of dramatic conflict from that of epic. Any plot as the evolvement of conflict concerns totality as far as it presumes the ascent towards the final causes of the partial collisions that a narration deals with. Both epics and drama can be said to long for totality though they show it in different manner. The obligatory disharmony of drama (attested in particular in textual heterogeneity of direct speeches’ cento) entails the increased necessity of motivation capable to provide textual integration. One can find the only source that can provide motivation to a seemingly chaotic set of cues: it is action as a personal deed. Obviously actions are retold in epics as well. Dramatic action in difference to narrated action becomes the indispensable condition of textual integration and in this respect it becomes existential condition. If epics can afford retardation without abusing the narration the delays in dramatic action would mean the destruction of the whole⁷³⁷. The dramatic presumes textual teleology and the purposefulness of verbal actions that’s their intentional load. Thus it is not the movements of the personalities but their decisions that are of importance in drama. To perform an action means actually to take a decision⁷³⁸. In its turn such decision can’t be something automatic so that obstacles are presumed to be overcome; besides, it must be tested in examination that builds up the core of dramatic plot⁷³⁹. Then drama looks like experimentation & examination’s model. It is this inner mental test and not demonstrative movements that determine the dramatic as it was shown in particular by Fr. Hebbel who compared mentally unprepared actions with natural phenomena or occurrences⁷⁴⁰. The stress is to be laid upon the mental process of the decision-making and not on the outer circumstances of action. It entails the role of character performing actions.

The crucial moment of obstacles imparting to action its dramatic essence has been for ages conceived as the so called dramatic fault that combines both error and guilt. Such is the meaning of the Greek term () that represents this combination in opposite to another Greek word for guilt without error ()⁷⁴¹. It is here that the above discussed informational deficit (insufficiency & necessity) as the inherent dramatic peculiarity comes into play. Dramatic fault is the result of ignorance⁷⁴² (in particular of the ignorance concerning the partners’ intentions)⁷⁴³ that refers to the general model of trials & errors as the pattern for dramatic conduct. Dramatic hero can be said to be obliged to commit faults as the universal human faculty (in accordance to Seneca’s proverbial statement errare humanum est) in parallel to another universal law of chaos revealed in dramatic discourse as well. The situation with the unpredictable consequences of one’s deeds build up the structure of alienation where the results of somebody’s action become the master of the doer. The unpredictability of the aftermaths of the deeds is always the constantly present feature of dramatic collision in opposite to epic plot that can deal with the well known and constantly recurrent events.

It is not any action that can become the dramatic axis promoting textual integration. In the same way as the genuine sense presupposes veracity of cognition and adequacy of interpretation the action to become dramatic presupposes liberty & responsibility. To become dramatic the action must be performed by a free personality that is responsible for own deeds committing fault and pleading guilty⁷⁴⁴. It explains the well known fact that the development of dramatic art is inseparable from the development of human liberty. Therefore together with the concept of struggle as creative action the ideas of risk and fate come into play. Experimentation & examination become in drama the game with fate & time, temporality revealing itself through its fatalistic consequences. The presence of fatalistic element is connected with the irreversible anisotropic flow of action within the prevailing temporal dimension of drama. This essence of dramatic temporality that can be defined as inevitability & irreversibility & irretrievability of action is represented in the form of the game space of probabilities. In a way a dramatic text can be described as a stochastic game more purely than the texts of other genera, and it correlates to the fatalistic verve. The already discussed presence of chaos in drama (as the obligatory disharmony) entails this irreversibility that is clearly different from epic temporality. If epic distance affords opportunities of returning to the past and of reconsidering the already retold events, dramatic discourse with its permanent participation of observers and performers is void of such opportunities. “Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum” (And as soon as it is emitted, the irrevocable word flies away) – this line of Horace can perhaps best of all define the irrevocability as the principal textual dramatic property entailing the further attachments to fate & fortune. It is the irrevocability, irreversibility and inevitability that mark dramatic action with its results being terminal and unable to be corrected. The lack of possibility to correct something is by far the most remarkable peculiarity of dramatic text that clearly discerns it from those of epics. Finally one can define these properties as dramatic textual incorrigibility. Obviously it continues the property of dramatic unpredictability.

Therefore it would become erroneous to evaluate drama as an unfolded rhetoric figure of correction (correctio) that would correspond to attempts of ameliorations and deteriorations in searches for an adequate decision. Such corrections would seem to correlate with the so called principle of the gradual elucidation of circumstances meanwhile it would contradict with the fundamental properties of irrevocability & incorrigibility. At the same time correctional forms of dubitation and hesitation are necessarily present in drama as the premise for decision-making process. The appearance and removal of doubts builds up the axis of dramatic action as well as the prerequisite for its ramification and the formation of secondary subordinate actions. A discussion can have an outlook of such correction where the decision to be taken is constantly tested. Meanwhile each step in such correcting procedure remains already incorrigible: there are no ways aback so that the whole proceeds to terminal solution, whether the decisions were correct or erroneous.