Henri Mesсhonnic's Interdisciplinary Approach: Between the Swiss School and ‘Russian Theory’

Belavina Ekaterina ORCID: 0000-0002-4038-7815 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Faculty of Philology; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119331, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovsky district, Kravchenko str., 12, sq. 22 kat-belavina@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction. Stages of Henri Meshonnik's creative career

The reception of Henri Meshonnik's legacy in our country began in the 2000s.^[1] His works cover a wide range of issues in linguistics, semiology, lexicology, anthropology, art history, ethics, politics, and history. There are three stages in Meshonnik's work. The first is a new definition of poetics that clarifies the connections between speech, the unconscious, and ideology. This reflects a sociological turn in which the speaker, writer, and reader are included in a certain community, positioning themselves for or against, inside or outside of any politics and ideology. “These epochal characteristics turned out to be inherent in their own way to the writers of the present twentieth century, the bearers, for lack of another expression, of the powerful homo ideologicus syndrome" ^{[18, p. 5]}. The new line of thought developed by Meshonnik is closely related to poetic practices ^[33] and to the practice of translation ^[32],[35] and is accompanied by critical works on Nerval, Apollinaire, Eluard, Andre Spira, Baudelaire ^[36].

The second stage is the revision of language theories ^[39], and the third is the monograph “Critics of Rhythm”, which has become his calling card ^[35]. The subtitle “Historical Anthropology of Language” shows that it is a continuation of the epistemological reflection presented in the book “Sign and Poem" ^[36]. Meshonnik is interested in the issues of historicity and subjectivity in discourse. The development of Emile Benveniste's scientific thought is reflected in the works of Meshonnik and his follower Gerard Desson. Meshonnik contrasts the traditional dichotomy of written and oral speech (oral-écrit) with the triad: oral-parlé-écrit, and “orality" (oralité) can be present both in speech and in written text^[2]. Meshonnik's poetic practices and participation in the project of a new translation of the Bible into French served as a source of reflection.

The main provisions of the linguistic and poetic theory of Meshonnik in relation to the approaches of Saussure, Benveniste, Humboldt, Brik and Tynyanov are presented in detail by Yu. Marichik ^[12], we will focus on the sources of interest in consonantal vocal repetitions, the idea of valeur (significance, value) and on discrepancies with Kristeva, Barth, Derrida.

I The concept of “valeur" in the anthropological theory of rhythm

Meshonnik's poetics is not limited to empirical observations; the analysis of texts is subordinated to an epistemological task: the search for literature through the historical anthropology of speech. In his theory, Meshonnik relies heavily on Russian formalists,^[3] but emphasizes that the poem, despite all the achievements of the formal method, is a “weak link” in the theory of the sign^[4]. The poetic text resists the retelling of the content, the form refuses to point to something other than itself. Linguistic concepts borrowed from Ferdinand de Saussure, which represent language as a closed system of elements, each of which is in a hierarchical relationship with other components of the system, become concepts of poetics in Meshonnik.:

1. “Valeur […] Elle est à son degré plein au niveau de la littéralité. Elle y joue le rôle d’un élément du système de l’œuvre, dans la mesure ou l’œuvre se constitue par des différences. Ces différences peuvent porter sur des phonèmes, des mots […], des personnages, des objets, des lieux, des scènes, etc. Il n’y a pas de valeur à l’état pur, mais seulement à l’intérieur d’un système ». [34 p. 176]

2. Système (d’une œuvre). L’œuvre (chaque œuvre) comme totalité caractérisé par ses propres transformations, qui dépendent de ses lois internes. [34 p. 175]

Marichik translates valeur as “significance" (“the concept of “significance” developed by Saussure and borrowed by Meshonnik” [12 p. 138], a term adopted in linguistics, but in the discourse of the French poet familiar with the works of Yuri Tynyanov, there is also the concept of “value” (fr. valeur), which is found in the book “The problem of poetic language”:

So, according to the above, two positions remain: 1) partial lack of "content" of verbal representations in verses ("inhaltlos"); 2) special semantic value of a word in verse by position. [19 p. 8]

The meshbox builds a dynamic concept of shimmering meanings and values, in the center of which the subject is placed. The system, unlike the structure, manifests itself in the process of perception, the Meshbox connects the reader and listener into a single perceiving center (se révèle au lecteur-audieur comme une incessante structuration") [34 p. 75].

Meschonick contrasts Jacobson's reading (lecture-littérature) with reading that reads the act of writing, the genesis of the text (lecture-écriture)^[5], and translates his thought into the terms of N. Chomsky's generative linguistics, contrasting the Saussure dichotomy of langue/langage with the compétence/performance opposition, where the first category means innate knowledge of the language, and the second — the ability to speak (pour parler brièvement en termes pris à Chomsky en performance et en compétence) [34 p. 40].

2 The concept of “subjectivité" in the anthropological theory of rhythm

A special place is given to the works of Benveniste in the theory of Sleepwalker's rhythm, who developed the concept of speech (discours) from Saussure's concept of “parole” (acte de l'individu réalisant sa faculté au moyen de la convention sociale qui est la langue) [48 p. 12]. The related concept of subjectivity, the speaker's ability to position himself as a subject [22 p. 259], is at the center of attention of the speaker. According to Benveniste, the concept of subjectivity includes the concept of socialité (sociality)^[6], which implies the exchange of acts of speech generation, when each speaker in turn becomes a subject (speaker je). Benveniste's article “The concept of “rhythm” in its linguistic expression” ([22 p.327-333],[4 p. 377-386]) is the starting point of Meshonnik's research. Meshonnik sees rhythm as a subjective configuration of meaning in discourse. This is what makes it possible to move away from the metaphor (form– glass, meaning – wine, which Tynyanov opposed [19 p. 9]), to break the dualism of the opposition form/meaning in favor of the unity of forme-sens. The Russian school largely served as the basis for the Meshonnik's “form-meaning” concept. In the anthropological theory of rhythm, which developed in the 60-70s, an attempt to integrate various scientific systems is important, reflecting the reality of the European crucible of languages and cultures.

With the gesture of a poet who is characterized by syncretic, undifferentiated, close to mystical and primitive thinking, he combines writing and existence, rhyme and life, poetry and memory, reading and voice.

Meshonnik, through the experience of collective Bible translation (over the years), felt the rhythm as physicality, historicity, community. He focuses on the practices of collective reading aloud of religious (biblical) texts. Meshonnik talks about the Jewish tradition of reading the Pentateuch aloud^[7]. The practice of reading text and the experience that goes through the education of an individual's hearing allows them to develop the ability to perceive graphic text with reference to previous auditory experience. The rhythm of reading aloud unites and synchronizes the sending pole (reader) and the receiving pole (reader, listener).

The term oral (l'oralité^[8]) Meshonnik defines it as the ratio of the rhythmic and prosodic component of the method of signification (physis-writing) to what the given discourse says (logos-writing) ("le rapport nécessaire, dans un discours, du primat rythmique et prosodique de son mode de signifier à ce que dit ce discours.") (quoted by ^[21]). Thus, through the transcoding of oral and auditory experience into a bodily rhythm (physis-writing, the trace of an encounter with a sounding artistic word), the Meshed Man moves implicitly to understanding the poetics of rhythm as a politics of rhythm, through the community of people, citizens of an organized polis. Meshonnik's terminology contains terms of politics, sociology, and philosophy, as was typical for the generation of the 60s and 70s. Meshonnik postulates that the subject of the poem is the democracy of the poem (“démocratie du poème)" [41 p. 19].

Meshonnik was one of the first to criticize statements about the author's death and developed a theory of rhythm that shows respect, interest and attention to the subject of writing (sujet du poème). In the field of translation, both in theory and in practice, Meshonnik consistently argued for the need to listen to the other, the unity of the writing process and the reading process, which combines the pole of the author and the pole of the reader. Meshonnik introduced the term translation-decentering, based on the "equality" of the writer and translator, which leads to a dialogue between two (equal) subjects, thereby generating a transubject necessary for the text to work in order for the text to have an effect.

Criticism of the most popular concepts of post-structuralism has not gone unnoticed. The reception of the works of French scientists in the USA, which gave the name French Theory, did not capture the works of Henri Meshonnik, who was first translated into English in the XXI century ^[42]. For Henri Meshonnik's theory of rhythm, the questions posed by post-structuralists are of great importance, but the solution to these questions was Meshonnik's original anthropological theory of rhythm, which develops both (mutually exclusive) directions of Saussure's thought.

3. The origins of Meshonnik's interest in consonant-vocal figures

Soviet and Russian philologist, specialist in the field of stylistics, the language of fiction, especially poetry, author of works on Khlebnikov, Viktor Petrovich Grigoriev suggests that the unpublished research of the Swiss linguist would not have gone unnoticed by Russian versifiers: “If Saussure had published these materials and doubts during his lifetime — and maybe already at the end of the 10th century."In the 1960s, O. M. Brik, V. M. Zhirmunsky or another Russian philologist would have paid attention not only to traditional sound repetitions, but linguistics today would have lagged less noticeably behind the living processes in poetic thought and word.” [7 c.252]

The works of Ferdinand de Saussure combined two lines of thought: The course of general linguistics asserts the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, and the “Notebooks”^[9] assume its conditionality.

Daniel Delas, the author of works on Saussure, practical poetics ^[25], and ULIPO poetics, clearly formulates the contradiction between the hypothesis of anagrams and the basic properties of linguistic signs (arbitrariness and linearity)^[10] [26 p. 13]. Meshonnik managed to combine both areas of the Swiss linguist's research to create his theory of discourse and the poetics of rhythm. In his reading of Saussure's works, Meshonnik, unlike the structuralists, draws attention not to binary oppositions, but to unifying concepts (value, system, functioning) for constructing the concept of historicity of speech (historicité du langage).

According to F. According to de Saussure, a linguistic sign does not connect a thing and a name, but a concept and an acoustic image. Taking into account the interest in the sound side of the sign at the turn of the 19th -20th centuries, Grigoriev introduced the concept of a “paronymic explosion” in the 1970s ^{[7, p. 254]}, designating a period when in different parts of Europe interest in sound repetitions, to the convergence of words by the similarity of sound, leads to “scientific poetry” and Rene Gil's verbal instrumentation (orchestration verbale), studies of Saturnian poetry by Saussure, manifested in pantorimes (or pantorithms) Alphonse Alley and Vladimir Mayakovsky, in “sound images” and “sound metaphors” by Andrey Bely and Yuri Tynyanov, in the creative search of Russian futurists and formalists. Benjamin refers the poetic discourse of the avant-garde to "magical" practices: "Magical experiments with words, not artistic games, are those animated phonetic and graphic transformations that have permeated the entire literature of the avant-garde for fifteen years, be it Futurism, Dadaism or surrealism" ^{[5, p. 272]}.

By 1909, Saussure, “after several years of intensive study of anagrams in poetry in ancient Indo—European languages,” having not found clear provable patterns, “almost lost faith in the fact that the object that occupied him was the true one, that the poets of antiquity consciously used the method of selecting words of the text depending on the sound composition of the keyword (see Ivanov 1976:251-267)” [cited in 7 p. 254], in the same year Burlyuk and Kamensky began work on the first issue of the almanac “The Garden of Judges”^[11], which is considered the beginning of Russian futurism. A year earlier, Khlebnikov made his debut, and “the spread of a special type of anagrammatic constructions began — various ways of paronymic attraction" ^{[7, p. 251]}. Meshonnik and his followers are found in the poems of V. Hugo^[12] [28 p. 166] and in the prose of J. Transcription of consonantal vocal repetitions, which turn the text into an almost continuous paronomasia^[13] [28 p.226], based on the work of Saussure on the search for anagrams. Meshonnik's followers see anagrams in texts, regardless of the rhetorical intention, in different types of repetitions^[14] [29 p.210]. However, what Meshonnik and Saussure have in common is not only an interest in the paronymic attraction.

4 Prosody, rhythm, historicity, and Signification processes

Opposing the dualism of the sign, Meshonnik uses the concept of Signification in poetics, borrowed directly from Benveniste, taking into account prosody and rhythm.

The term signification is used by many literary theorists. Michael Riffater distinguishes between sens (meaning) and (signification) as two forms of reading. Sens-reading stops at the level of information provided by the text. The second form of reading sees the text as a formal and semantic unity (unité à la fois formelle et sémantique) [46 p.13], not obeying the pre-established laws of language, the result of this reading will not be equal to the sum of information elements^[15].

Kristeva comes to the same point of view: “The formalists lacked theoretical reflection, and the question of literary practice as a specific way of signification was not raised. [...] the literary object disappeared under the weight of the categories of language, which constituted a “scientific object”, immanent in formalistic discourses, [...] having nothing or very little in common with its true meaning – with literature as a special way of signification” ^{[11, p. 9]}.

In his theory, Riffater is interested in the process of signification when reading (the work of the text that the text produces in the reader, travail du texte), and Kristeva in writing, and Meshonnik talks about the inextricable connection of the processes of writing, reading, interpretation, translation and writing. Kristeva feels a kind of unity in her work with physis writing, which is characteristic of spells and poetry.: "Practical work within the signifier was once called magic, then poetry, and finally literature." Since ancient times, it has been surrounded by a halo of "mystery," which is why it was rated too highly or, conversely, reduced to a purely ornamental function (if not to zero), censored, or ideologically justified.” [11 p.17]. An important clarification is the last member of the triad magic-poetry-literature, taken not in the rhetorical sense (“le reste est littérature” Verlaine “Art poétique”), but precisely in the anti-rhetorical, at the stage of the erased opposition poetry / prose.

In an interview given to I. Bozhovik and published in the journal Tel Quel (1969, N9), Philippe Sollers speaks of the poetry/prose juxtaposition as a sign of the “old world": “It is not difficult to establish the date of the death of rhetoric: the end of the 19th century, this is how we define the turning point, which in the context of French literature was marked, for example, by Lautreamont and Mallarmé. This is the end of rhetorical speech, the end of the rhetorical system of thought, the end of “discourse”. Then the prose went deeper into itself, but I don't think it's appropriate to use the word “prose”, because this word has always been opposed to the word “poetry”. “Prose”-“poetry" is another of the old antinomies that belong to the old world. Now we need to resort, I believe, to a concept that has become important in recent days and fundamental, since it united all the theoretical and even political debates of that time — this is “writing” or “text”. [17 pp.170-171].

Refusing to attribute the object under study to any of the discourses of the "old world", Kristeva uses the term text: "Sanctity, beauty, irrationality / religion, aesthetics, psychiatry - these are the categories and types of discourses that alternately claim this "specific object", which it is impossible to name, so as not to immediately attribute it to one of the restorative ideologies. This object will be in the center of our attention; we will give it an operational name: text”^{[16] [11, p.33]}.

Meaning according to Riffater and Kristeva goes beyond semiology, they contrast poetry with the act of communication. In considering signification, Meshonnik's attention is also focused on the process, on the signifier, on the opposition of the poetic language to the reference language. In developing his terminology, Meshonnik stipulates that the signifier is the present participle (from ch. signifier). The process of signification presupposes the concept of discourse as a significant multiple in order to get out of the binary opposition of signified-signifier significant-signifier^[17].

Meshonnik is interested in supersegmental units: prosody, rhythm. He seeks to show how the system generates meaning, rather than assigning meaning to each element. This feature of the anthropological theory of rhythm, combined with the rejection of traditional text analysis (either by levels of language or by segments, for example, analysis linaire), gives a certain vagueness to concepts, which provokes criticism from linguists.

Meshonnik defines prosody as the consonant-vocal organization of speech (“organization consonantique-vocalique du langage") [37 p. 27], rhythm and prosody are considered key components of the signification process. Historically, the term prosody (fr. prosodie), which in ancient versification denoted the ratio of long and short vowels^[18][43 p.917], is used broadly to refer to French syllabics (counting syllables, rhyming). In Morier's dictionary, the modern interpretation of prosodie is designated as a linguistic term^[19] [43 p. 917]. Prosody is understood in phonetics as intonation, tempo, accentuation, and pauses ^[30]. In the linguistic understanding, prosody lies in the sphere of concrete realizations.

Prosody and rhythm are important to the Bagman as an integral part of speech that escapes the dualism of the sign. From the etymological halo of cultures, Meshonnik identifies images of musicality: singing (prosodia "sings with syllables"; accentus, from cano, "to sing"), melody, dance, constantly present in the poetic text^[20].

The bagman perceives words as passages of meaning (passages du sens [38 p. 259]). In matters of “rhythmic semantics,” he notes the primacy of Osip Brik, who raised the question of rhythmic-syntactic figures. The main provisions of Brick, who opposed the ornamental understanding of beautiful consonances, are brought to the French reader in transliteration (Styk, skrep, kol'co, koncovka). Meshonnik does not draw insurmountable boundaries between versification systems, he combines the observations of Duhamel and Wildrak^{[21] [30]}, Romain ^[24], Aragon and Michael Shapiro, building their concept of continuous signification ^[22].”

When approaching the definition of prosody, Meshonnik relies not only on the Latin and Greek traditions, but also actively draws on the works of Osip Brik, Boris Tomashevsky, Viktor Zhirmunsky, Roman Jacobson, as well as the Czech literary critic Giry Levy^[23], which shows that his thought is not limited to French syllabics, but for French syllabics Meshonnik offers an arsenal of specific the means of analysis that are developing in modern comparative poetry. Surprisingly, in Catherine Depretto's monograph, in the chapter on the reception of Russian formalism in the West, Meshonnik's name is not mentioned^[24].

Meshonnick quotes French verse historians, most often to disagree with them. He collects quotations from French versifiers about the importance of rhyme, which have been refuted by the literary process, showing their inconsistency, for example, the claim that rhyme is equivalent to the end of a verse^[25] [39 p. 263]. Challenging the attitude of Banville, Dirchen, Tenen, and Kishr to rhyme, Meshonnik characterizes rhyming expectations as “school”based"^[26]. It is noteworthy that the publication of these treatises coincides in time with the period of the most active phase of the formation of the French verlibra ^[44]. Meshonnik characterizes this stage of the development of French verse as the academization of rhyme, erasure, disappearance-transformation. (contemporaine de son académisation, donc précisément de son effacement, disparition-transformation”^[27]) [7 p. 263].

The very definition of prosody according to the Bagman involves the subject inscribed in speech, the associativity of the signifier, the subjectivity of memory in the verbal material^[28]” [40 p. 40]. Meshonnik agrees with the poet Andre Spear (1868-1966), suggesting a certain correlation between hearing, articulation, writing and reading, which is described in the book “Plaisir poétique et plaisir musculaire" ^[50]. According to A. Spear's observation, accents are always on the crests of meaning (sur les crètes du sens) [50 p. 47]. Tynyanov, referring to the phonetic experiments of Abbot Russlo, describes the work of the auditory imagination during the genesis of a poetic text: “He [the poet] articulates (articule) his verses and speaks them to his ear, which judges the rhythm, but does not create it"^[29].

The experience of physicality, inscribed in the text, is present in O. Mandelstam's “Notes on Poetry”, a quotation from which is included in the epigraph to the "Criticism of Rhythm" [37 np]. Attention to the physiology of sound is also present in Tomashevsky's “Theory of Literature” in the chapter “Euphony”: “if we use the word "sound", we mean by this word not only the musical side of speech, but also the idea of the movement of the tongue, the muscles of the larynx, the tension of the vocal cords, exhalation, etc.”^[30]. Tomashevsky's works became widespread in France after the publication of Todorov's translations ^[52]. However, a phonetic turn in philology and in the mutual interest of poets in the science of sound and phonetists in poetry is observed in both Russia and France ^[2].

In Meshonnik's terminology, there is an underlying protest against the analyticity of the French language, against the fragmentation of European thinking operating with binary oppositions. For example, he combines the terms discourse, rhythm, and prosody with a hyphen, thereby objecting to the analysis (decomposition) of the work into tiers of linguistic material ^[15]. At the level of graphical representation, the Meshbox represents prosody as an inséparable des mots-dans-leur-phrase” (Inseparable from words-in-a-phrase”)[36 p.67].

Meshonnik is distinguished by his deep understanding of the works of Russian formalists. The French poet often refers to Tynyanov. The concept of closeness and unity of the verse series formed the basis for the principle of distinguishing consonantal-vocal networks of meaning, and the “deformation of semantics” ^[19] of words in the rhythmic sequence exerted by rhythm resembles “valeurs spécifiques” (specific meanings) ^[38], the hierarchy of which is built using rhythm that controls attention.

In the book “The Problem of Poetic Language” (1924), Tynyanov refers to the works of the French linguist Michel Breal^[31] (1832-1915), the founder of modern semantics. Commenting on the poems of Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Lermontov, Tynyanov uses the terms of Breal ^{[19, p.135]}: contagion, irradiation^[32], groupe articulé. Quoting the definition of the articulation group, Tynyanov adds the adverb “closely”, which refers to the term tightness of the sound series, which became the hallmark of his method: “Just as there are gears that we are used to seeing attached to each other, so that we no longer represent them separately, so there are words in the language, which usage has connected so closely^[33] that they no longer exist for our consciousness in an isolated form“, M. Bréal, Essai de Sémantique 1904, p. 17” ^{[19, p. 35]}. Tynyanov's acquaintance with the works of French and German scientists, whom he read in the original, allowed him to create an original concept that has been preserved in Russian and world science. Meshonnik does not refer to Breal's works, but cites Russian formalists to build his own theory of rhythm.

5 Chains of consonant-vocal organization

Three main principles of the consonant-vocal organization of the discourse can be distinguished in the concept of the Bagman: prosodic accentuation (accents prosodiques), figures (figures/échos prosodiques) and prosodic paradigms (séries/chaines/paradigmes prosodiques). Meshonnik uses a variety of conventions and metaphors, for example, in an essay on the poetics of Gerard de Nerval [36 p.33] in the title of the chapter “La carrure du vers” (English: physique, complexion of verse), the metaphor of physicality emphasizes that in the perception of the Meshonnik verse is represented by living matter.

When examining the repetitions of vowel rows, Meshonnik in “Le Christ aux oliviers” writes out the sounds that occupy his attention.:

Et semble en écouter l’enivrante pensée.

ẹ ẹ ẹ

The commentary contains two metaphors: “Le vers est tenu par ses voyelles: l'alexandrin replie sur lui-même.” (“the verse is based on these vowels: alexandrin collapses”), an image of movement, actions of living beings is created). [36 p.33]

After describing the rows of vowels in four lines, Meshonnik proceeds to consider consonant repetitions: “Et les consonnes font une formule d'inclusion: une allitération développée qui enchasuble tout le vers:

Attachez son pied tors, éteignez son oeil louche…

Il appela le seul – éveillé dans Solyme…

︸ ︸

Ce bel Atys meurtri que Cybèle ranime…” [36 p.34]

︸ ︸

Curly brackets under the line highlight the consonances le seul [lƏ-sœl] -Solyme [sɔ-lim] (repetition of consonants s and l) and Ce bel [sə-bɛl] -Cybèl [si-bɛl] (s,b,l). The description uses the author's occasional neologism – the verb enchasubler, formed from chasuble (chasuble). The bagman imagines an alliteration covering the verse with a chasuble. The metaphor is suggested by the religious imagery of Nerval's poem “Le Christ aux oliviers” and by the very form of the attire: church vestments carry the idea of unity, protection, and “non-separation.”

Later, in the book “A Treatise on the Rhythm of Poetry and Prose” ^[28], to analyze the metrico-syntactic structure of verse, Meshonnik and Desson use the numbering of syllables covered by consonantal repetitions and rectangular brackets, complementing the signs of ancient metrics with them.:

Fig. 1 [28 p.169]

The principles of constructing consonant figures are used by Meshonnik and Desson to analyze prose, for example, by Flaubert:

Fig. 2 [28 p.203]

To analyze the text, Meshonnik uses a system of accents that includes controversial “prosodic” accentuation (accentuation prosodique ^[3]). The stress embedded in the text is presented in the theory of the Bagman as a symbolic representation of a bundle of energy, since stress initially concentrates muscular effort in speech.

Conclusion

Henri Meshonnik had an amazing flair for poetic language, a keen ear for the poetic word, intuitively finding the laws that orient the word in the flow of speech. His formulations were often deliberately polemical.: "The last thing that matters in language is meaning. The rhythm perfectly shows this in writing. In speech, everything that relates to physicality, gestures, situation and subjectivity is not said in words, but is transmitted to the interlocutor" ^{[38, p. 13]}. The anthropological theory of rhythm calls for the study of additional levels of suggestion. Gerard Desson and Henri Meshonnik in their "Treatise on the Rhythm of Poetry and Prose" emphasize: "We are not talking about a sounding reality — or musical — in speech, but about a language system that creates semantic sequences using consonantal and vocal units" [28 p. 137].

The anthropological theory of rhythm is polemical towards a culture based on the duality of the sign. It is a valuable attempt to integrate various systems of versification, reflecting the coupling of cultural reading models in a situation of multilingualism and nonlinear cultural transfers characteristic of modernity. Meshonnik has always been interested in what is least measurable and quantifiable: physicality, verbality, rhythm, subjectivity, historicity, the magnetic field that orients words along lines of force in the text. The comments of Henri Meshonnik and his followers are evidence of the work of the text (Riffater), the result of the process of reading-interpreting-writing, which allows preserving cultural heritage.

^[1] His concept is mentioned by G.K. Kosikov[10 p. 6], developed by Yu.A. Marichik ^[12],[13], acts as a translator ^[15]. Azarenkov, a participant in the project "Comparative study of metrical versification against the background of linguistic prosody: the digital analytical platform "Prosimetron", supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 24-18-00913, refers to the works of Meshonnik ^[1]. “Henri Meshonnik's ideas have been developed in the field of translated comparative poetry. In the monograph by James Underhill, a student of Meshonnik, "Voice and versification in translated poetry" [Underhill 2016], the key in translation is the transmission of rhythm, understood as broadly as possible — as all aspects of the dynamic organization of speech. 29 In this sense, Underhill uses the term "voice" and identifies five levels of its implementation: voice 1) language, 2) epoch, 3) literary school, 4) poet, and 5) specific poem. Despite the uncertainty of this concept, an extensive bibliography has already been devoted to it [Taivalkos ki-Shilov, Suchet 2013] ^[16].

^[2] This idea is developed in the books Critique du rythme[], Les états de la poétique, La rime et la vie. ^{[35] [38] [15]}.

^[3] « étendu la conception du poétique, au-delà de la poésie, à tout ce qui est littérature pris dans sa spécificité ».[35 p.36].

^[4] Traversière, [la poétique] prend le poème comme le point le plus faible de la théorie du signe, qui constate ainsi un révélateur théorique et politique » [40 p. 42 ]

^[5] Meshonnik calls the analysis of Flaubert's style given by M. Proust in 1920 an example of such a reading ^[45]

^[6] Regis Debray adds the epithet social to the definition of language. “2) The social code of communication (the language used by the speaker or writer)”; [8 C. 66]

^[7] Mikra suppose l’assemblée pendant laquelle on lit ou on lisait les textes en question, et cette lecture étant à voix haute, la notion conjugue, indissociablement à mon sens, l’oralité et la collectivité dans la lecture. Ainsi le texte, par son rythme […], est avant out en effet littérature orale, et llittérature orale cela signifie collectivité ” [40 p. p. 51—52. ]

^[8] About the concept of oral language in the concept of a Bagman in detail ^[25]

^[9] Saussure does not linger on paronomasia, he writes: “There is a thing in the depths of the dictionary called la paronomase, a rhetorical figure that ...” [49 p. 32]. He does not stop at this concept, because, as Starobinsky notes, this term jeopardized the whole novelty of the discovery that he saw in the theory of anagrams. Starobinski sees the theme-word as the starting point of poetic writing and sound material: “The theme-word that came before the text, hidden behind the text, or rather in it, does not differ qualitatively from it, it is neither higher nor lower in nature. It provides its own material for interpretive creation, which makes it live in an extended echo” [49 p.: 107]. See also Testenoire P.-Y. ^[51]

^[10] “les principes qui sont à la base de ces deux démarchs étaient contradictoires: l'existence des anagrammes met en question les postulats de l'arbitraire du signe et de la linéarité du significant qui servent au contraire de base à l'entreprise du Cours de linguistique générale Delas D. Roman Jakobson. P. : Bertrand-Lacoste, 1993, p. 13. – original for reviewers, delete when printing.

^[11] "In 1909, none of the participants in the Judges' Garden knew about Italian futurism, none of them could have imagined that in just three years they would also be called futurists." [14 c. 29]

^[12] “Le phénomène touche à la paronomase (inclusion partielle ou totale d’un signifiant dans un autre) et par là, à un système de pensée-écriture autant qu’à une sémantique de position ».

^[13] « Le texte, de ce point d’écoute, presque une panomase continuelle ». Dessons G., Meschonnic H. Traité du rythme des vers et des proses. P. : Dunod, 1998. p. 226.

^[14] “ […]des anagrammes indépendamment de toute intention rhétorique, ne serait-ce que par le retour de ses désinences verbales ou nominales”.

^[15] “La véritable signifiance du texte réside dans la cohérence de ses références de forme à forme et dans le fait que le texte répète ce dont il parle, en dépit de variations continues dans la manière de dire”[47 p. 76].

^[16] Kristeva Yu. Research on semanalysis. Text and the science of text // Kristeva Yu. Selected works: The Destruction of poetics. Moscow, 2004. p. 33.

^[17] “In the culture of language, the arbitrariness of a sign is the work of language in relation to itself, outside the cosmic. [...] there is no longer a signifier opposed to the signified, but there is a single plural, structural signifier that creates meaning everywhere, the signified (the meaning produced by the signifier) is constantly in the process of assembly and disassembly, from unity to an element, which in turn can instantly turn out to be unity-meaning in the system of discourse and in interaction with contextual meaning". “Dans une culture-langage, l’arbitraire du signe est le fonctionnement du langage référé à lui-même […] il n’y a plus alors un signifiant opposé à un signifié, mais un seul signifiant multiplie, structurel, qui fait sens partout, une signifiance (signification produite par le signifiant) constamment en train de se faire et de se défaire, de l’unité à l’élément qui peut à son tour être une unité-valeur momentanée dans le système d’un discours et en interaction avec la signification contextuelle » [39 p.512]

^[18] “anciennement : en matière de clausules ou de versification gréco-latine, connaissance de la quantité des voyelles, c’est à-dire de leur durée, longue ou brève”

^[19] “en terme de linguistique, ensemble des traits relatifs à l’énoncé, en dehors du sémantisme. Les facteurs de la prosodie sont donc l’intensité, la fréquence ou hauteur mélodique, et les aspects sonores ou articulatoires qui sont des variations extra-phonologiques stylistiques […].

^[20] La prosodie, étymologique, et, était comprise comme le chant qui s’ajoute aux paroles“ (Othon Médéric Dufur, 1893) Traité de rythmique et de métrique grecques Armand Colin, p. 16 […] c’est-à-dire plutôt qui “chante avec les syllabes”, qui les accompagne, plutôt que de s’y ajouter, et que traduisait littéralement le latin accentus, de cano, chanter. Le Dictionnaire de la musique fait de la prosodie, dans le vers, une “mélodie résultant de la succession de ses voyelles”. Ce n’est pas un surplus, c’est un accompagnement, et pas dans les voyelles seulement, mais dans toute la syllabe, c’est à dire l’accent, l’intonation, dans tout discours, non seulement dans le vers. Elle implique la phrase. Plus que la danse, qui est la métrique. [38 p. 260]

^[21] The treatise is known to the Russian reader in Shershenevich's translation. Wildrak S., Duhamel J.The theory of free verse : Notes on the poet. Technology. Translated and noted. Vadim Shershenevich. Moscow : Imagists, 1920. 48 p.

^[22] “Qu’il n’ait pas de son, dans le langage, mais seulement du sens, seulement de la signifiance, jamais de vide du sens, mais des systèmes qui se forment et se déforment, communiquent ou se cachent, comme des mondes enfantins, c’est ce qui détruit empiriquement le schéma dualiste du signe Meschonnic [38 p. 259]

^[23] Ji Lev? (1926-1967) was a literary historian and specialist in translation theory, the founder of translation theory in the Czech Republic. Doctor of Sciences (1965). In 1950-1963 he worked at the Palacki University (Olomouc), since 1964 — at the Department of Czech Literature at the University of Brno. Research interests and publications: theory and methodology of translation, Western literary studies and aesthetics, Czech literature and

^[24] “Formalism was portrayed as something disembodied, purely speculative, as a trend that was not rooted in history and fell victim to its own aporias. Part of the blame for this simplifying vision of formalism lies with the structuralists, who, although they turned to the formalist legacy, at the same time sought to distance themselves from it in order to establish their own authority more firmly.” [9 from 7.]

^[25] « Rime égale fin de vers: sa fonction est de marquer avec force, pour l’oreille, l’achèvement de la période rythmique constituée par le vers” Meshonnik quotes O. Dishen (Auguste Dirchain L'art des vers, Bibl. Des Annales, 1906, 2 ed, p. 107.)

^[26] Elle [la rime] n’est pas l’élément structurel fondateur du vers, que disaient Ténint et Banvillle. Tradition devenue scolaire, avec Quicherat: ”En poésie, c’est le retour de la même consonance à la fin de deux ou plusieurs vers” D’où: “Ceux qui ont attaqué notre rime prouvaient qu’ils n’avaient aucun sentiment de l’harmonie. En effet, quelle cadence sera sensible dans la poésie française, si l’on retranche la rime? [39 p. 263]. Meshonnik quotes L. Kishr (Louis Quicherat Petit traité de versification française, Hachette, 1881, 7 ed, 1 1818, p. 18.) [39 p. 263]

^[27] Meschonnic H. Critique du rythme, P.: Verdier, 1982, p 263.

^[28] “l’inscription du sujet dans son langage, culturellement et individuellement – l’associativité du signifiant, la subjectivité de la mémoire dans la matière des mots”. [40 p. 40.]

^[29] [19 p.129] translated by Yu. Tynyanova. He refers to the Principes de phonétique expérimentale par l'abbé P.-J. Rousselot, II, p. 307).

^[30] “Euphony is included by B. Tomashevsky in the stylistics section, whereas its inclusion in poetry is more usual. In the science of the 1920s, there was also a broader understanding of poetic phonetics. B. I. Yarkho defined it as "the doctrine of aesthetically applied speech sounds" (Ars poetica, p. 12) and included prosody, versification (rhythm, systems of versification, theory of clauses, rhyme) and sound repetitions proper. [20 c. 214-215]

^[31] Benveniste calls Breal the discoverer of Saussure. Breal taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes from 1880 to 1891, then transferred the chair to Saussure. His “Essay on Semantics” (Bréal M. Essai de Sémantique

Hachette, 1897, 349 p.) formed the basis of Benveniste's concept.

^[32] "Eyes of enchantment" is a group united metrically and phonically; at the same time, the sounds of eyes and eyes are realized as juxtaposed; we have two consecutive moments before us: the moment of recognizing the elements of the previous word in the word "enchantment" and the moment of combining both words into a group. At the same time, the material part in the word "enchantment" is colored by a strong connection with the material part of the word "eyes"; it is as if the first stage of the redistribution of the material and formal parts (irradiation, in Breal's terminology) occurs, i.e. we raise "charm" to the root "eyes". [19 p.107]

^[33] The adverb “closely“ is missing from the original French text, it is an ”increment" Tynyanova. “Comme les pièces d’un engrenage, que nous sommes si habitués à voir s’adapter l’une dans l’autre que nous ne songeons pas à nous les figurer séparées, le langage présente des mots que l’usage a réunis depuis si longtemps qu’ils n’existent plus pour notre intelligence à l’état isolé. C'est ce que j'appelle les groupes articulés.” M. Bréal, Essai de Sémantique 1904, p. 17 [23 p. 17]