Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

Thus the analytical apparatus for the representation of actualities can be said to follow the pattern of L. Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” and to aim at dissolving the text in a series of preparatory rough notes or drafts serving as the source for the generation of its terminal version. Instead of rewriting full excerptions one has to transform text to get own textual description. One can say of a kind of retrospective generation in the sense of making attempts of returning to the initial sources of text in carrying out its analysis. One imparts to textual integrity the features of draft and score (lines & columns exemplifying this simile) with the aim of analyzing and disclosing its inner form. This comparison entails a somehow unexpected conclusion. Rough drafts appear both in the process of the creation of a text and in its exploration as a kind of retrospective generation. Meanwhile such exercitations and repetitive rehearsals are the distinctive feature of artistic culture. They are absolutely out of the reach of folklore. Respectively the statement would become justified that the description of artistic text must be based on the return of its draft. At the same time it is again to remind that the reduction to a telegraph style is equal to the deprivation of the developmental power of language. Such “castrated” text can become only stuff for experimental distortions and must be “devoured” with the observer’s own conclusion. As far as the task of descriptive procedures is the disclosure of textual integrative basis it is to be conceived as the codification’s representation. Description aims at disclosing code in conformity with which the text is performed. One can say of representing  that determines textual . All these means of exercitation or experimentation with the original text and of erecting cripples’ crutches for its representation can be conceived so that all they remain the text’s metamorphoses admissible within its periphrastic transformational continuum. The principal task of analysis consists in generating adequate comments and disclosing the implied contents. Thus data representation turns into textual derivation that makes the implicit functional destination of textual parts explicit. Its task is to continue the given text and supplement it with explanations.

In its turn these procedures are conceived as textual inner possible transformations (in particular as periphrastic transformations such as [Text → Index (Glossary)]). Thus one can say of the periphrastic continuum limited with the ultimate variants of the initial text and the glossary obtained with its compilation. Respectively the initial original text is to be conceived as the particular version of such potential transformational continuum that becomes actualized within the limits of the preferential textual strategy. Obviously these transformational procedures are to be conceived as the aspects of interpretation. The set of virtual variants are not other as the interpretative versions of the original text. Thus it is the interpretability that necessarily generates derivative satellites as textual latent possibilities and involves textual transformability. Structures of the kind are always present in textual mode of existence especially in the form of exercises & preparations together with glossaries as the invisible satellite of textual virtual possible transformations.

It is also to be taken into account that such representation can always be conceived as remaining within the boundaries of textual quality that’s as the periphrastic transformations of the original text. Description (whether compilation or summary) then becomes the limit of the continuum of virtual periphrastic transformations where the original text becomes one of the possible versions whereas actually from the artistic viewpoint it remains the only given. The actual text being compiled, it becomes replaced with a set of possible texts that become variables contained in compilation. The initial original text becomes then conceived in its turn as one of such possible texts that could be restored from the compilation. One can imagine such possible versions to be a set of preparatory exercises for the terminal text. In more general sense such supposedly preexistent compilation (summary) would appeal to the preliminary experience as the prerequisite of any text, and it is from this experience that the inferences would be generated. Finally description gets an outlook of a rebus, the particulars and details playing decisive role. There are essential reasons for this simile. In compiling a summary it is to remind that the description remains a problem to be solved at least for performance. That is why a text’s compression and description represents rebus as a puzzle to be solved. Data representation thus can be called problems’ representation. Such disclosed puzzles at the same time stimulate memory and serve as mnemonic prompts. As the final result the rebus of details of the attributes arises. It is still to stress that all the analytical apparatus that has been discussed above belongs to the inherent properties of text. It is the self-organizing property of text as the revelation of its reflexive nature that brings forth all the devices of this apparatus from simple glossaries to compilations and semantic nets. The exploration of text with the invention of such implements is the result of disclosure of the inner reflexive opportunities of text itself. All analytical implements appear to be textual proper analytical epiphenomena as the revelation of textual reflexive power to be disclosed in exploration and not to be made up anew.

Chapter 2. Generic Peculiarities of Poetry as the Interpretative Problem

Actually it promotes also displaying textual inner form in its transition to the outer form where code can be said to grow up as its developmental product. Codification itself looks like the emanation of inner form into the outer form due to code’s reproducibility involving outer form’s substance. In its turn it is due to the reduction of the reproducible substance of signifiers (direct meanings being also included in their number) that the existence of code becomes possible. Reproducibility & reducibility as the inherent code’s properties are disclosed just within the formation of reproducible idioms as the basis of generitive speech register. Subsequently the utterances of generitive register represent the derivative potential designating a problem as the inner form’s contents whereas their reproducibility presupposes the reduction to code’s conventions. Apparently a special case of reproduction is to be found in the reception (in particular, in assimilation, adoption) off generitive register’s utterances. In particular, codification as the reproducible reduction presupposes also the explicit manifestation of the respective utterances. Therefore epigrams can be regarded as the reduced narrations that are compressed to be apt for codification.

It is one of the paradoxes of language that the basis for epic narration is built with idiomatic locutions of generitive register. The very fact of such foundations presumes something queer, he norm of textual structure being founded upon anomalous deviations. This statement is especially plausible in regard to “bestial epics” of fables that serve as examples for idiomatic enunciations⁵⁷⁸. Meanwhile the same concerns also much broader field of epics. It can be very clearly traced in short novels. Thus H. James’ “Two Faces” can be regarded as the exemplification of the proverb ‘it is not the gay coat that makes the lady’ or ‘foppish dressing tells the world’. For instance proverbial insertions in narration are perceived as the references to the preexistent verity. In a conversation between Clare and Dinny (J. Galsworthy’s “End of the Chapter”, 3, Ch. 5) it is the proverb that initiates the communication: “At breakfast next morning she said to Clare: – Shall we strike while the iron is hot? – Why? – In case he wants a secretary, now he is in”.

The inherent textual duality that reveals itself through the confrontation of speech registers can be represented with the production of epigrammatic locutions within a primary epic text itself. One could designate them with the special mark of inverted commas taking in consideration that this mark means both the segregation of a textual segment (as a quotation becoming the object of reflection) and the indirect derivative meaning disclosed with interpretation. Therefore it is idiomatic locutions that build up the foundation for textual codification. Subsequently there appear grounds to segregate a special class of textual corpuses of such epigrammatic locutions designated usually as proverbial locutions (proverbs, riddles, adages, incantations, fables, anecdotes). One can trace the existence of deep inherent interconnection between such “locutions in inverted commas” and textual integration compressed in plot. When textual compression (summary) is idiomatic  with derivative meaning resulted from interpretations, then its textual evolvement would become a . The necessity of a special class of idiomatic locutions given to interpretation and disclosing textual integration as summaries ensues from the inherent textual duality. The very textual formation is carried out as expansion & compression entailing the necessity of producing plot’s formulae that would be codified. The reasons for such compressive and folding properties of proverbial enunciations are to be found in the very nature of speech production and reception that differ as to their normal speed. It was B.M. Savitzky who had attracted attention to these differences of speech’s speeds resulting in the necessity of compressed textual representation⁵⁷⁹. This circumstance converges with that of a more general nature and ensuing from the necessity of textual codification where text becomes “packed”.

It makes us pay attention to a very obvious and undisputable fact for the first time noticed by Jan Mukarovski: although isolated proverbial enunciations have as a rule the form of separate propositional structures of sentences; they never are used separately as an autonomous textual unit but are always inserted in a broader context⁵⁸⁰. In particular in dialogues it goes about arguments to persuade the addressee where the proverbs are used as the preponderantly selected cited quotations⁵⁸¹. Of a special significance is the fact that proverbs are used as euphemistic locutions to substitute more open expressions⁵⁸². Therefore proverbs carry out the functions of synonymous phrases and the synonymous transformations get here the primordial role⁵⁸³. Meanwhile this circumstance, despite its plausibility, gives a prompt for an adequate approach in studying the proverbial textual genus. It is to remind here that a proposition, though it behaves as a sufficient unit for building a text (in opposite to a word as a necessary but insufficient unit), turns out to be incapable of being identifies with text itself. Therefore proverbial enunciations display their immanent incompleteness. They can never become separate poetical works and must always be included in a more extent textual entity. We always encounter proverbs within a tale or a fable, a poem or a novel, but never as autonomous works. In particular a refrain must always be a part of a poem. It substantiates the statement on contextual determination of proverbial utterances of reproducible at repeatable kind that always entail the conjectures on a set of possible contextual neighborhoods compatible with the text in question.

In its turn this contextual conditions of proverbs’ existence presuppose also their intertextual appearance. It can be very vividly demonstrated with the old poetic device of the so called epiphoneme. The very reproducibility of a poetic line as a refrain or a conclusion creates prerequisites for its further existence as a variable quotation in the manner of a catchword. Potential proverbs as possible catchwords are widely represented in poetry, and the same concerns song’s lines of folklore (examples can be numerous). Of special importance is the attachment of such device to cento that can be conceived as an aggregation of such lines⁵⁸⁴. The lines of proverbial nature serve as a rule to compress and conclude the whole⁵⁸⁵. As the reproducible elements they coincide thus with usual refrains (that become then the ready emblems thus involving non-verbal pictorial elements). Such reproducibility in the manner of tautology paradoxically entails the further comments and inferences: thus, the repeated refrain-like motifs of [blue bird] or [faded foliage] give rise for the further textual evolvement while referring them to the phraseology of the decadent epoch. The phrase “the sky is cloudless over the whole country” is not a simple weather-forecast: it has become the password of the Spain fascists and refers now to the recollections of these events in spite of its outlook of a reproducible commonplace. Banal repetitions do not only exclude the voluminous growth of the phrase’s contents but its peculiar usage has contributed enormously to its expansion.

Therefore bearing in mind these intertextual and contextual aspects of proverbial existence one can conclude that proverbs as those represented in respective folklore collections are only abstractions comparable to lexical units of a dictionary. They belong to code and don’t exist otherwise in a coherent speech. There are no separate proverbs (used in speech as autonomous entities) but only indispensable insertions of a speech’s generitive register. Therefore such inserted segments of speech’s register as the units of proverbial code must be adopted & adapted in a text and, subsequently, reproduced & transformed. It means that proverbial locutions represent the fundamental antinomy of language – that of reproducibility and productivity. In this respect transformability as the inherent proverbial property is to be discerned from that of generative approach: the transformations that a proverb presupposes can by no means be reduced to the variability of representations of some invariant invisible center. They are of productive nature and presuppose evolvement and expansion of a broader text where the proverbial germs of narration would be unfolded. It becomes especially evident in riddles that presuppose conversation (of an answer and a solution) and even a discussion on the ways of solving the problem. That is why proverbs can’t be regarded as mere insertions in something more extent as codified units that would be repeated in a “parroting” manner without reshaping their outer outlook and inner meaning.

The intermediary position of proverbs between text and code is to be seen here not only as the means of compression but also as the vehicles of the immanent language’s contradiction of reproducibility vs. productivity. The repetition (and therefore the reduction to code) of a proverbial statement determines the intermediary position of such statements between text and code. Meanwhile there are no evident existential reasons that a language would have a codified phraseology together with lexical dictionary and grammar so that the very existence of proverbs gives a puzzle⁵⁸⁶. At one side the utterances of proverbial kind build up the indispensable code’s ingredient of each language but at the same time they are not the elements to be reproduced only: they are endowed with developmental capacities and behave as textual entities. Here is the reason for their intermediary place between code and text so that they carry out mediating mission. This mediation reveals itself in the fact that reproducibility is not reducible to “parroting” or “pattering” of a mechanical “barrel-organ”. This so to say “irreducibility to reproducibility” is to be seen in the inherent transformability of proverbial locutions. This transformability is quite different from that of generative approach: it goes not about the variability preserving and reproducing invariant’s identity but about the productivity inherently present in the transformed locution.

The reproducibility of proverbial locutions is connected to their interpretative derivational condensation. One can say of the “condensed state” of verbal substance in regard to proverbs. A separate locution can become a meaningful aphorism due to the inexhaustible power of derivation inherent in each particle of language and procured with the inner form of a word. A bright and persuasive proof to it gives E. Zola (“La faute de l’abbé Mouret”, XVI): “Et jamais ce mot: “Je t’aime”, n’avait eu pour eux un sens si souverain. Il signifiait tout, il expliquait tout” (And never this word, I love you, had for them such a sovereign meaning. It signified all, it explained all). It’s too obvious that such enunciation can’t be repeated in the manner of “parroting”, the very act of repetition giving rise to the detection of new connotations. Subsequently it is the designation of the discovered problem that is associated with such repeated idiomatic locution becoming a proverb. This problem represents the respective situation (be here the term of functional grammar used). The concept of situation as the basis for proverbial semantics has been for the first time suggested by G.L. Permyakov whose viewpoint differs from A.V. Bondarko’s term of categorical situation: it is relational (and not attributive functional) approach that has been declared there⁵⁸⁷. Respectively the four possible “logical semiotic invariants” [Пермяков, 1970, 20] have been constructed where the opportunities of implications of objects & attributes are taken into account and still the relation of preference (as the representation of ordered set) added [Пермяков, 1970, 21]. Meanwhile in this case instead of relational approach it seemed more reasonable to involve the concepts of modality (esp. those of real vs. potential statements) as far as the preferentiality can also be subsumed to modal categories. Then proverbs can be regarded as the “partial verifying statements”, that’s as the answers to partial modal questions as in <не одни злые люди ночью гуляют>[Ковтунова, 1976, 41]. Such modal functional approach seems to become more productive than the relational one as it gives opportunities of conceiving situations more broadly with their attributive representations and without relational restrictions. Thus one can say of proverbs as the representation of problematic situations (as those with respective functional destinations).

In its turn it gives grounds for the usage of the periphrastic transformation as the way of detecting and designating problematic contents capable of disclosing language’s opportunities in dealing with explorative tasks. Proverbs are then to be regarded as the periphrastic designations of the unknown with the known for the defined and indefinite problems. Periphrastic ways of designation become a commonplace in proverbs as they always refer to the remoter meanings. When a proverb says <не для пса ковбаса, не для кота сало> ‘sausage is not for dog, lard is not for cat’ it becomes obvious that one doesn’t mean cats and dogs. The transformation of the first part into the enunciation ‘→*even if there were sausages, they wouldn’t be destined for a dog’ elucidates that the existence of sausage refers to something favorable as well as dog designate those who aren’t involved. The proverb <не мала баба клопоту, купила порося> ‘a woman hasn’t got troubles, so she has bought a pig’ presupposes periphrastic transformation ‘to buy a pig → *to make an inconvenience’. From here a conclusion can be obtained: ‘*if one isn’t satisfied with the existent state, one will get still more difficulties with performing an imprudent deed’. One sees here inferences that necessarily accompany proverbial transformations.

It is in the proverbial space that one has found the demonstrative field for generative transformational procedures. Meanwhile there is capital difference between the inferential and the generative approaches. The classical generative approach presupposes the existence of an invariant that would be circumscribed with the textual versions that betray their variability in opposite to transformability. Vice versa the true transformations would presume the problem to be explored (instead of a definite invariant) within the reflexive activity, therefore transformability implies production vs. reproduction. If variability procures a series of textual circumscriptions of the same invariable object it is the transformational derivations that disclose the new aspects of the explored problem represented as the object of reflection. Transformation (in opposite to variation) is of inferential nature so that if assumes syllogistic procedures

The intensification of reflexive properties of proverbial locutions as quotations disclosing their self-descriptive properties is combined with the development of their