Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

The general poetic transcendentalism reveals itself in particular in scenic actualism & exhibitionism that remains its seal upon all dramatic textual properties. This exhibitionistic seal doesn’t depend upon the phenomenon of phantom proper also for lyrics where it entails no need of scenic representation. It ensues from the risk & hazard as the inherent property of this phantom in dramatic action as the “echo” of experimental examination of enunciations at stage. One can therefore regard exhibitionism as the particular property of dramatic scenic experimentation putting under examination the proclaimed utterances and demanding publicity as the arbiter of such examination. Drama brings together the features of exhibitionism that presuppose something concealed and therefore puts stress upon the confrontation of the implicit and the explicit elements of dramatic text revealing thus transcendental references of dramatic action.

Here the paradox arises: drama aims at representing colloquy with its verisimilitude, meanwhile the exhibited colloquy differs radically from that existent in common practice. Scenic colloquy is not already the primary colloquy. This transformation always entails semantic shifts. The sources of this paradox are in the fact that exhibitionism arises from the approximation of dramatic action to colloquy (in opposite to lyrics where the distance from it prevails). Both lyrics and drama are out of question without the system of codified conventions that offers resistance to poetic inspiration and subsequently is to be overcome and to be reshaped anew. Meanwhile the relationship of drama is here very peculiar. The exhibitionistic verve of dramatic genus involves abnormities as the necessary attribute of dramatic action. Deviations from the normal conduct are the prerequisite of perturbations as the source for dramatic conflict; subsequently dramatic speech always presupposes the presence of hyperbole (as the main subspecies of synecdoche).

The problem of dramatic exhibitionism involves the already mentioned opposition of lapidary vs. ephemeral styles. As the opposite of the ephemeral style the lapidary form can be applied to a very broad field of textual phenomena. L. Reiners with reference to the known thought of Schopenhauer ascribes the lapidary property to written speech as opposed to the oral one due to the demanded time for accomplishing manuscript⁹⁴⁸. In drama ephemeral property can be attested already with the famous classicist triune that just implied the limits of ephemerides’ life. In its turn lapidary style ensues from the necessity of succinctness. It concerns immediately the role of aphoristic locutions in the portrayal of dramatis personae that has been noticed by playwrights⁹⁴⁹. Meanwhile such exaggeration of aphorisms would become deeply erroneous. The characters can’t become personified wisdom in the manner of allegories of Jesuit school drama. One must use commonplaces of colloquy to create vivid dramatis personae. In particular casual phrases are indispensable for the effects of qui pro quo where conversational chaos procures devices for the scenic representation of vanity. It is the metamorphosis of common words into meaningful hints due to the mentioned aha-phenomenon that gains significance instead. Lapidary enunciations easily can turn into ephemeral ones due to the general property of transformability. It is here that dramatic text reveals its peculiar agility becoming liability to diverse derivations (already within the performable versions of the same role). In the manner of proverbs any cue can be continued with the whole list of derivative questions, alternatives and inferences that presuppose respective references.

These consequences of transcendental attachments of poetical speech reach the fundamental antinomy of language as they come to the problem of the codification of poetical genera and in particular dramatic and lyrical conventionality. To begin with, it is to remind that dramatic dialogue reveals (in personal attachments) general textual heterogeneity with the subsequent stratification. It has already been shown that any dialogue can be converted into a soliloquy where dialogical text is to be represented from the viewpoint of a chosen person with its intentional strategy and tactics. The division into scenes with respective positions correlates with this role. Then other voices are insertions and supplements to this chosen vox principalis. Each role represents a sequence of steps as arguments in common communicative interplay with the vox alterius of otherness (be it also one’s own echo). Personal stratification becomes then incorporated within the positional subdivision of the work. It is the encounter and the collision with the otherness as such that determines the peculiarity of textual differentiation and diversification.

The further development of such dialogical conversion into soliloquy can be traced in the invention of ensembles within operatic speech in opposite to dramatic soliloquy. Here the ambiguity of personal dimension arises together with the device of the exchange of voices (Stimmtausch). The speech acquires impersonal features as a pure verbal surface of music. Thus in the following lines from R. Wagner’s “Tristan” the words can be sung by any of the partners of the duet.

<“Isolde: Herz am Herz dir, Mund am Mund; Tristan: eines Atems ein’ger Bund; Beide: bricht mein Blick sich Wonn’-erblindet”>

In difference to soliloquy one deals in ensembles with the impersonal state and not with personal ambiguity. The matter is that the very contents of the utterances can be ascribed with equal reasons to the voices of each of the participants (not to say of the cases of the common singing or of choirs). Such are, for instance, the replicas <Riposate, vezzose ragazze! Rinfrescatevi, bei giovinotti!> ‘take a repose, ye boys, refresh yourselves, ye youngsters’ in the duet of Don Giovanni and Leporello. In another duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina the exchange of replicas prepares the common singing <Andiam, andiam, mio іbene > ‘go here, my sweetheart’ (W. Mozart, Don Giovanni, 20, 7). The samples of the kind are numerous and confirm the relative insignificance of personal attribution of utterance in such cases that gives place to other dimensions of textual stratification. The primary task of this device was to remove the dualistic confrontation of affect vs. effect that’s of the representations of sentiment and action that corresponded earlier to arias and recitatives. Noteworthy ensembles were introduced in the chaotic places of perturbation or qui pro quo as in the works of Mozart who has contributed to the development of ensembles most. It shows the attachment of this device to the problems of order and the ensuing textual codification. The concept of dramatic ensemble (the term itself was used by N.I. Piksanov in reference to Griboyedov’s work in 1928) enables explaining the ambiguous duplicity of cento vs. soliloquy reciprocity: the correspondence of utterances to the definite dramatis personae remains dubious and can be taken for the participants of common chant as in operatic speech. Of a special interest is that these reciprocal possible conversions disclose the inherent peculiarity of transforming dramatic direct speech of partners into integrated stream apt for being represented with ambiguous location. This operatic ambiguity of dialogue’s voices is especially intensified in vocal speech due to the factor of chant where the voices are blended into an inseparable unity. n

With such representation of dialogue as a soliloquy and an ensemble reflecting characters’ voices as echoes one approaches the goals of textual codification. Dialogue becomes the device of textual differentiation represented with referential net of the text. The echoing or mirroring effect is connected with the generated artificiality & conventionality as the concomitant satellites of dramatic exhibitionism. The artificial scenic space is to be continued in lyrical conventions too and opposes to epic universalism and ubiquity. It is the stress on intentional side of drama where one can disclose these generic regularities. Generally speaking any motif arising in poetry entails perturbation in the whole taxonomy because it entails also the rise of a respective taxonomic class and therefore contributes to the development of artistic code. It is especially evident in personal typology: the invented characters as Hamlet or Othello that weren’t before give the name to such newly created classes. Still more evident is the codification of positions: it is typical situations that any drama deals with, and they represent the conventions of dramatic tradition. As the possible behavioral actions situations turn to become reducible to customs and therefore they are codified more easily than the individual characters. Although there are typical roles of emploies the typology of situations or positions turns out to become stricter than these personal types. To sum up, dramatic text displays a much higher degree of codification in comparison with the epic sources. It is conventions that are represented in typical situations as the basic units of drama. Therefore separate utterances of dramatic text display much stronger dependence upon the codified properties of reproducibility than phraseology of epics or lyrics.

These particulars of conventionality and codification entail the respective conclusion that the referential net of dramatic deixis is to be conceived in a different way in comparison to epic and lyrical genera. Transcendental and “metapoetical” phenomena behind the immediate textual data of drama don’t coincide with usual referential net. Deixis as the integrative basis of a poetical text displays common features with what has been called with the Kantian term of scheme. In difference to epic or lyrical works dramatic deixis as the scheme displays very obvious attachment to the outer possible world of action. As far as one can say of scenic speech as a metatext of epic narration it acquires the properties of such scheme. The effect of deixis becoming scheme can be found in asymmetry & anisotropy disclosed with the emphatic means in performance. It is the constant shifts of eccentric actualities ensuing from interpretative lections that disclose the performable deixis as the determining power of phraseology within the dramatic tissue. One can demonstrate such shifts in elementary emphatic means that are distributed differently in different performances of the same replica. Obviously such scheme involves both contextual and intertextual circumstances exerting impact upon the determination of the meaning of particular enunciations.

In particular intertextual issues of the deictic scheme can be found in the connotations that any adopted phrase entails. Each idiomatic motif with the explicit or implicit (and unmentioned) words and phrases that represent it refers to what can be called a certain “ism” of an epoch. It concerns phraseology and respective ideology, its very existence resting first needs in demand of being acknowledged. One could refer to the famous conversation between B. Pasternak and E. Cassirer where such idea had been perhaps for the first time discussed⁹⁵⁰. Meanwhile this statement has been for ages the commonplace of creative production. A very practicable artistic device can be encountered in transforming things of habitual routine into “ideological” markers⁹⁵¹. Being specially marked as a quotation and therefore as adoption the most insignificant locution gives pretext for discussing the whole problems of worldview as the very fact of such adoption. The acknowledgement of the existence of the mentioned phenomena is the witness of the respective worldview. Such little evidences of an epoch’s and a social group’s phraseology betray always something much more essential making up a background for textual development that would disclose and display such mental consequences. The source of all such wondrous transformations of simple words is the idiomatic coinage that procures these stylistic and as a result social markers of verbal masks. Such markers are well known in dramatic literature: for instance, in Chekhov’s or Gorki’s plays there are words of the semantic field of fate while in Hauptmann’s plays it is those of strength or force that are such markers⁹⁵². Meanwhile the conclusions as to the meaningfulness of such observations seem to become too precocious.

The implications ensuing from the dramatic use of commonly circulating phrases entails also generic questions as to the sources of such connotations. It is not epic narration neither dramatic play that would have capacity for producing such markers. One needs lyrical digressions within these narrations and plays to procure substance for bearing the marks. Dramatic motifs arising as the markers of verbal masks must first be produced within the procedures of lyrical meditation. Dramatic text taken as a series of quotations discloses its lyrical sources and meditative background where the idioms with their connotations are coined as the substance for the motifs. Dramatic action needs idioms as the vehicles of the action’s referential net. Therefore dramatic play as an ordered set of collided quotations is comparable to a flow of lyrical digressions. Motifs represent conventions arising in reflexive meditation over the problem and the represented respective contradictions. In this respect meditative lyrics of epigrammatic genus become not only the source for the development of dramatic reflection and of respective conventions. They generate the chain of transformations that come to the rise of motifs exposed in poetry. One can say in particular of the chain reaction coming to the evolvement of dramatic text from such motifs. Therefore the concept of metamorphoses inevitably comes into play. The ideas of such poetical metamorphose have been suggested already by G.E. Lessing who supposed tropes to be the device of poetical painting: “… der Poesie nicht ganz und gar an natürlichen Zeichen mangelt. Sie hat aber auch ein Mittel, ihre willkürlichen Zeichen zu dem Werte der natürlichen zu erheben, nämlich die Metapher.” ‘it does not lack of natural signs for poetry. It has also the means of lifting the arbitrary signs to the degree of natural ones, that of metaphor’ [Lessing, Laokoon, 215]. This statement can now be conceived much broader. It goes not only about common rhetorical tropes but the net of distant references that provides conditions for words’ transformations into images. In opposite to epic narration drama can be said to take into account the experience of lyrical digression as the generalizing means thus confirming the justice of W. von Humboldt’s idea on the lyrical origination of drama. In particular neither epic narration with its demands of totality nor dramatic action can make favorable conditions for isolating abstraction and the segregation of particulars that is the prerogative of lyrics.

Dramatic phraseology thus comes back to lyrics where its sources are situated. It is lyrical conditions that promote the development of connotations and the formation of idioms. Meanwhile it is the dramatic situations where these connotations are correlated with non-verbal action and acquire the mentioned transcendental references. That dramatic genus as the only poetical genus involving the non-verbal power of action behaves in a “metapoetical” manner (to use the above cited term) one can refer to the epic species of epistolary novel arisen under the obvious impact of drama. It is the utmost density of inner reciprocal references connecting together the slightest textual details that differs this epic novelty of the Enlightenment⁹⁵³. In opposite to lyrics always open to intertextual references it is the inner textual condensed state of drama that determines referential load of each phrasal unit. In this respect one can remind the above discussed fundamental opposition of lexical vs. propositional units of language (as those necessary and sufficient respectively) to compare lyrical and dramatic textual structures where the relationship of a separate phrase and the textual entirety can be conceived as the mentioned opposition taken as if with enlargement. The utmost interlacement of all enunciations in the dramatic tissue and their reciprocal interdependence results in explicit particular significance of each phrase for integrity in opposite to lyrics where such interlacement is concealed, and the determination of separate phrases is of latent implicit nature⁹⁵⁴. The above discussed dramatic functionalism entails essential difference of the connotations that phrase displays in dramatic work from those peculiar for lyrics. This peculiar textual functionalism (with its pulse of accelerations and retardations and growing and lessening density) enhances the transformational opportunities of motifs’ representations with the “verbal masks” and ensuing “semantic modulation” of disclosing connotations.

These functional peculiarities reveal themselves through compositional structural differences between drama and novel. This difference has been described by W. von Humboldt as the consequence of specific relationships between the both sides of communicative process entailing the respective forms of conceiving reality so that it is “one-sidedness” that prevails in drama in opposite to the “disengagement” of novel⁹⁵⁵. It correlates with the fact that activity is the attribute proper only for dramatic genus in opposite to contemplation prevailing in epics and lyrics. In dramatic play deeds become explicit presupposing thus the act of conscious decision (and subsequently the leading role of imperative mood). The opposition of drama and novel on the ground of the pair “contemplation - action” entails a series of consequences described by W. von Humboldt⁹⁵⁶. Dramatic action means first of all the interior as opposed to the exterior and therefore the prevalence of subjective viewpoint in opposite to epic objective representation of outer world⁹⁵⁷. Thus one can say of drama as a superstructure of novel where the visible and seeming epic “disengagement” and “indifference” are overcome so that the intentions supposed to be genuine and latent are disclosed and displayed overtly. In staging a novel one carries out the Contents → Intents” transformation disclosing thus the latent goals posed in epic text with making it apparent with dramatic means. Dramatic metatext of epics gives therefore not only its scheme but also imparts transparency to intentional load situated behind the epic narration and partly represented in meditative episodes in the manner of lyrical digressions.

Thus the qualities of drama disclosed within the generic axis of activity vs. contemplation entail semantic consequences of revealing in particular the intentional load of phrases uttered from the stage. The constant attachment to action of every textual detail entails a very particular peculiarity of all motifs manifested in dramatic text as well as all latent connotations to be revealed behind the explicit utterances. These connotations are indispensably connected with intentions of the characters. As far as they must exert impact upon the action the terminal conclusion from these utterances is expected to be made in imperative mood. This imperative modality puts its seal upon all implications although the explicit utterance can be with any mood. Moreover, it is actuality disclosed within the message of a character that determines the disclosure of intention⁹⁵⁸ and therefore comes to imperative terminal form. It is imperative that apparently prevails in the connotations of dramatic text to be revealed with its creative interpretation as a performable experimental exploration. The terminal corollary obtained from the explored textual data must be a command concerning the dramatic action and in this way revealing the respective connotations of dramatic phraseology. Reversely, this reference to action makes replicas not only tropes but specifically the periphrastic descriptions of commands. In particular such periphrastic substitution of direct designations becomes necessary as the consequence of the behavioral strategy of dramatis personae aiming at concealing their intentions in dramatic play. The genuine meaning of a replica is thus to be found among the connotations detected from the reference to action. Due to the constant reference to virtual action each replica gets an outlook of a command to be deciphered. Each utterance is uttered on behalf and in favor for action as a concealed latent command implying still the statement that can be presented in imperative. Even a pure remplissage depends in its meaning upon the effect of retardation exerted upon action.

Another generic axis of participation vs. distance also has explicit semantic consequences. To return to the above cited Humboldt’s statements on the lyrical foundation of drama it is necessary to stress still the peculiarity of dramatic participation and the ensuing “attendance effect” that takes place within the limits of a current moment and is to be taken in consideration while comprehending the motifs’ variable meanings. The participation as opposed to distance entails the role of personality as the central regulative force for temporal and spatial attributes of lyrical and dramatic image. Lyrical incognito and dramatic distribution of utterances among the voices of dramatis personae make up the most obvious distinctive features opposed to the objective epic narrative. Participation comes here as the general poetical feature proper both to dramatic and to lyrical genera concerning the