«Grammar deviations » as a leading principle of Vladimir Kucheryavkin’s poetics and the «oriental» picture of the world in his work

Syui Shuan PhD in Philology Xu Shuang, Postgraduate student, Department of History of Modern Russian Literature and Contemporary Literary Process, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Leninskie Gory, 1, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation 119991, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1 xuxuxushuang@163.com

Introduction

The right of a modern poet to experiment with language has long been beyond doubt. "Deviance in poetry is almost always a conscious author's technique and therefore refers to metalanguage phenomena, since all transformations introduced by the poet have a special motivation and work on the increment of meaning, primarily on its aesthetic component" ^{[1, p. 44]}. Among the effective artistic means that poets have been actively turning to in the last century and a half are deviations from the grammatical language norm that are noticeable to the reader, which can be an important way of forming an individual poetic intonation.

In Russian poetry of the twentieth century, language experiments were, as is known, important for the first avant-garde (primarily futurists and Oberiutes), for some authors of the so-called Bronze Age who worked in the underground; in the post-Soviet period, in the XXI century, such experiments became especially noticeable. It is not surprising that they have become the subject of attention of researchers:"Since the 2000s, the poetics of grammatical categories has come to the fore when considering both classical texts and texts of modern poetry (L. A. Nozdrina, L. V. Zubova, N. A. Nikolina, E. A. Skorobogatova, G. A. Khairutdinova, etc.)" ^{[2, p. 164]}.

About the methodology of the work

Poetic "errors" are analyzed mainly by linguists; for example, L. V. Zubova, who studied the "grammatical liberties" of Russian poetry in the second half of the twentieth and first decades of the 21st centuries, classifying the types of deviations from the grammatical norm, does not discuss individual poetic systems and the propensity of individual authors to certain types of "liberties" (see especially: ^[3]).Literary criticism faces the almost unresolved task of interpreting these deviations, describing their individual character and potential artistic fruitfulness; in this paper we try to find approaches to solving this problem using some concepts and observations of fellow linguists, but trying to explain the artistic meaning of grammatical shifts in an individual poetic system.

The object and subject of the study: grammatical "liberties" in V. I. Kucheryavkin's poetry

We will try to explain how grammatical "liberties" create a peculiar picture of the world in the work of the Russian poet Vladimir Ivanovich Kucheryavkin (born 1947), who, according to the underground researcher S. A. Savitsky, together with a few other poets created "Leningrad unofficial literature in the second half of the 1970s" (^{[4, p. 44]}. Our observations are based on texts written, as can be understood, in different decades and included by the author in collections of his poems published in the 1980s-2010s.

The main types of grammatical "liberties": attempts at classification

Kucheryavkin has especially many grammatical "liberties"; "Kucheryavkin appreciates <...> alogisms and nonsense in everyday life ... he is attentive to the oddities and failures of the established order" ^{[4, p. 46]}.

Based on the classification of deviations from the grammatical norm proposed in L. V. Zubova's work, using some examples found by her and supplementing them with our own, we tried to determine which types of deviations are more common than others. Let's name here some types of agrammatism found in Kucheryavkin's poetry.

Grammatical gender (imitation of Russian in the mouth of an Asian): "What a gorgeous girl with glasses" ^{[6, p. 10]}. We assume that this is a Kucheryavkin imitation of someone else's speech; "The Beast <life will be different for us" ^{[5, p. 86]}.

Grammatical number: "Wait, people, let me whisper in your ear!" ^{[6, p. 12]}; "We are always alone here..." ^{[6, p. 13]}. For example:

Besides you and me today, who else

Maybe he is so happy that he does not know about words,

Small plants that overgrown the memory?

They collected everything that was left of the tribe

("Besides you and me today, who else..." ^{[7, p. 8]})

The lanterns of the corridor are running like a rat.

And when a strict security officer appears,

By controlling the air with the tip of your nose,

They bend over like an artist.

("The lanterns of the corridor run like a rat..." ^{[7, p. 223]})

Grammatical case: For example:

It's not the same now.

Do I lie down on the sofa, go to the boss, to the cashier,

Or I stumble upon myself in the dark,

You won't remember heaven anymore.,

And now you can't be called the decay of October.

("We were all shouting and laughing..." ^{[7, p. 22]})

No one will tell me to leave!

You're not ours here, don't leave, stay!

And together we walk all the roads.

And no one will blame us.

("No one will tell me to leave..." ^{[7, p. 39]})

An addition for an intransitive verb: "A cool wave is in a hurry to fall / The heavy light of night advertising..." ^{[6, p. 49]} (L. Zubova calls this "transitivity of intransitive verbs"). For example:

Get drunk, wink at passers-by with your eye,

And go out into the garden, where autumn is going blind on its side,

Where the rosehip bush blooms, whose roses

They shout the last crowing.

("Get drunk, wink at passersby with your eye..."^{[7, p. 161]})

An adjective with the same root as a transitive verb is accompanied by an addition that is impossible with an adjective, but permissible with a verb: "In a carriage shaking faces" ^{[5, p. 107]} (cf. shake faces).

The method of syntactic parallelism peculiar to poetic language generates constructions that are impossible from the standpoint of grammatical norm: "<...> about a life that is alien to us <...> I will live a wonderful life there <...> and goodbye to you, holy places to me" ^{[5, p. 120]}. Here, in a poem of three stanzas ("I got up without sleeping. Eyes stick together") every two, or even all three neighboring ones contain such a case: alien to us (adjective + complement — personal pronoun in the dative case, correct construction) — beautiful to us (adjective + complement is a personal pronoun in the dative case, an incorrect construction; to express this meaning, an addition in another case and with a preposition is required: beautiful for us) — holy places to me (the same as in the previous stanza).

I will live there (verb in the indicative mood as a predicate + personal pronoun as a subject + adverb as a circumstance, correct construction) — goodbye you are here (an interjection homonymous to the verb in the imperative mood + a personal pronoun in the role of the subject, permissible in a phrase with a verb in the imperative mood, but not with interjection, + an adverb in the role of circumstance, also impossible with interjection).

Grammatical tense of the verb: For example:

A bell is ringing behind the mountains.

The sleepy trees bent their branches.

I wake up and open the windows to the garden,

And the gaze flies there faster than a bullet.

("The bell is ringing over the mountains..." ^{[7, p. 23]})

Occasionalism: For example:

And blood, like a tree, keeps dropping leaves...

But the wind was turning, and the window was knocking.

And the sky is far away with a rocky face

A distant growl revealed itself to us.

("Some kind of wind ran through the wires and roofs..." ^{[7, p. 209]})

The general is walking like a cloud over the roof,

And he hung orders on every barrier.

And the withered ears stuck to the sky,

It's like they want to hear some kind of "oum."

("The lanterns of the corridor run like a rat..." ^{[7, p. 223]})

The only correct form of the present tense of the 3rd person plural of the verb "want" is "want". The variant "want" has a reduced coloration (colloquial) and is a violation of accepted grammatical norms.

There are other cases, as well as numerous semantic "shifts".

Let's return to the question of the frequency of "errors". It turned out that, firstly, "mistakes" related to grammatical ways of expressing animateness and inanimation are especially frequent and obviously not accidental:

But the comrade wilted, he thought,

Folded the heavy wings...

And the monastery, having seen the burning fires,

The heavy bells rang.

("A car carrying mattresses..." ^{[6, p. 35]})

I went in, fell asleep, and stayed listening,

Like: at the front! Did you want to too?

Like a blood-scarred cannon,

Where the professor cut up sweaty bodies

("Procedures" ^{[8, p. 107]})

The accusative case used here instead of the genitive indicates a shift from inanimate to animate.

Written signs are animated in a similar way in the following example:

As soon as he lay down on his sofa —

Then I look at the magazine, as if through a window with a grille,

Where the rats scattered —

It's like they're playing with letters and commas.

("As soon as I lay down on my sofa..." ^{[9, p. 87]})

It's not the same now.

Do I lie down on the sofa, go to the boss, to the cashier,

Or I stumble upon myself in the dark,

You won't remember heaven anymore.,

And now you can't be called the decay of October.

("We were all shouting and laughing..." ^{[7, p. 22]})

A heavy man on the road,

And with a ghostly gaze, scratching the heavens,

We're here. The wheels are moving, and the feet are walking.

And it seems to me a light cross.

("WE WALK ON THE ISLANDS WITH MY SON"^{[7, p. 15]})

There are also reverse situations when the animate is grammatically framed as inanimate:

But I'll leave, but I'll leave

To walk through the clouds with a gentle foot.

And here, for now, with trusting hope

I'm looking at the now wild Finn

And to the gloomy Tungus, to the Russian, to the Kalmyk.

I sing my favorite words to my saltyk.

("Monument. Here he stands, shaking his head..." ^{[5, p. 79]}).

But let's remember, brothers, about the beardless cockroach,

When the alleys are gray, like beads,

We're backing up, blind, after

A blind cockroach for lunch.

("And at six o'clock in the morning, the subway stood on end..." ^{[8, p. 20]}).

Dumbness, dumbness... and snoring outside

A motorcycle carrying people.

Wait, you're a rebellious lackey.,

Listen, rebellious breasts are rising.

("I curtained the window so that the sun would not burn..." ^{[5, p. 63]}).

I was lying there looking at the monkeys.,

There are kind figures on them in the darkness,

Whose skins glittered there.

And it was so wonderful, even if you die.

("Under a lamp in a ceramic mess..." ^{[7, p.81]})

The animation of the inanimate, the humanization of the inhuman is carried out in the artistic world of Kucheryavkin with the help of not only grammatical shifts; now we analyze only one level of the poetic text, which corresponds to others. Kucheryavkin has a lot of personifying tropes, their analysis is the task of a separate study; note that, unlike sharply unusual agrammatism, metaphors inKucheryavkina can be quite traditional ("bare trees dance hopaka"; "stars walk, / sing and dance in a drunken round dance"; "The frost does not end, it breathes. / And the iron tram oh, how it hurts. / Here he is shaking down the street, poor guy, / And on the street, imagine, minus twenty" ^{[5, pp. 80, 83, 113]}). Linguists note the comparability of grammatical deviations and tropes as such, their ability to perform comparable semantic tasks ("there is a tendency to consider grammatical neoplasms not only as "grammatical neologisms", but as "grammatical tropes"" ^{[2, p. 164]}.

The second most important type of deviation from the linguistic norm is associated with the destruction of the hierarchy of objects, phenomena and actions, a hierarchy that is usually reflected in the structure of the utterance. For example, the adverbial part may tautologically repeat the predicate:

When she's chewing on her sandwich,

I was chewing on a sandwich, looking into the distance

And I ate my sandwich with butter, I ate…

("Oh my God, these clouds are beautiful..." ^{[5, p. 30]})

It seems that semantically close to this type of deviation is the destruction of stable syntactic structures, for example, adverbial turns, "shuffling" words in a phrase, violation of their intended order: "And looking back, fearfully presses, / On a strong aging body ..." ^{[5, p. 90]}, as well as ellipses, omissions of grammatically necessary:"And the table under it, covered with <a noun in the creative case?> glass, ringing glasses..." ^{[5, p. 34]}

And the violation of the rule of the adverbial part in its canonical form, that is, the discrepancy between the subject of the adverbial part and the subject of the main action, which is expressed at the formal level - the adverbial part does not relate to the subject of the main part. For example:

Lying on a crooked sofa,

The TV is blaring.

And above the roofs, in the fog,

The snow flickers and flies.

("Lying on a crooked sofa..." ^{[7, p. 29]})

The same "mixing of maps", in particular, the destruction of the system of grammatical tenses and types, is also facilitated by Kucheryavkin's frequent adverbial participles-occasionalisms. In the following example, present adverbs are formed from perfect verbs:

How he snaps his teeth and then grunts,

At the fork, thinking, the knight,

Where did I meet the road sign, where is the inscription besides,

That stone, in front of him, ordered: "Stand up!"

And he became an armpit with a spear

And the inscription on it is readable.

("How he clicks his teeth and then grunts..." ^{[10, p. 19]})

(L.V. Zubova discovers a similar case in the poetry of David Patashinsky, who began publishing in the 2000s: "guessing tight throat" ^{[11, p. 364]}.)

And here, as in the previous group of examples, one can see the embodiment of the principles of Eastern philosophy, for which there is no hierarchy of phenomena and beings, at least in the Western understanding of hierarchy as a rigid structure.N.V. Barkovskaya, without touching on the issue of violation of the grammatical norm, writes about the impression that Kucheryavkin's poetry makes: "There is no hierarchy and perspective in the picture of the world, all phenomena are equally close and significant" ^{[12, p. 208]}.

Discussion of the results

The confusion of grammatical forms of animate and inanimate, species-time "shifts" in verb forms, the destruction of stable syntactic constructions may reflect, as we assume, some important ideas of Taoism and/or Buddhism for Kucheryavkin: there are no boundaries in the world between animate and inanimate, living and dead. Without developing his thought in any detail and without giving examples, even before us S.A. Savitsky had already noted the possible influence of Buddhist philosophy on Kucheryavkin's poetics: "The alogism of verse here seeks a metaphysical dimension like statements from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which the poet translated twenty years ago" ^{[4, p. 46]}. A. Skidan also mentions the philosophical foundations of personifying comparisons and other tropes in Kucheryavkin: "Animals, insects, plants and luminaries are endowed with anthropomorphic features, objects are spiritualized. The way he writes about a winged cow, says goodbye to a caught fish or feels sorry for a dead mosquito, makes us remember Francis of Assisi and the Buddhist commandment about the need to lead all these little ones to salvation" ^[13]. Let's develop these considerations about the possible proximity of the worldview in Kucheryavkin's work to Eastern religious and philosophical systems in more detail.

Let us recall, first, the undoubted presence in Kucheryavkin's work of the image of China, some transformed Chinese traditional symbols and even some artistic techniques - a special way to name poems — which in the Russian culture of poetic translation are traditionally associated with Chinese classical lyrics (see about this: ^[14], as well as our article on the names of Kucheryavkin (in print)). The presence of the "Chinese principle" in the poet's lyrics was especially clear in the title and design of his 2018 book, "A Thousand Li to Yangzhou". As for Eastern philosophy, or rather Buddhism, we can assume that Kucheryavkin is familiar with this system of ideas well enough to use it: he translated (though from English and in collaboration with B. Ostanin) The Tibetan Book of the Dead (first edition in 1999).

In our opinion, Kucheryavkin's poems reveal a clear embodiment of Eastern philosophy, for which the idea of the equality of all things is very important. This idea exists in both Buddhism and Taoism.

In Buddhism, all beings have the nature of a Buddha, and all beings, whether human or other creatures, have an equal right to live and strive for happiness. Buddhism emphasizes compassion and equal treatment of all beings, teaches respect for nature and care for all things.

Taoism also contains the ideas of equality of all things, and Taoism understands everything that is worthy of respect more broadly than Buddhism: for Taoism, everything that exists includes what appears inanimate to an outsider (stones, water, etc.). From the point of view of one of the leading representatives of Taoism, Chuang Tzu The "Tao" is the "Creator" (or "Mother") of all things in the universe: "The embodiment of all things is rooted in the "Tao". That's why Chuang Tzu said, “Without everything there is no me, and without me there is nothing... it cannot be said that some things are more expensive, and some are cheaper"" ^{[15, p. 5]}. (Let's give the last words in Chinese: 以道道，.)

The researcher of Taoism, Nie Weiqi, writes in his work: "In Buddhism, it is believed that people and all animals are equal, and Chuang Tzu believes that all things are equal with people. As Chuang Tzu says: "Heaven and earth exist in parallel with Me, and all things and being are one with Me" (^{[16, p. 30]}.

Kucheryavkin's poems, I think, reflect a similar philosophical view of the universe.

Conclusion

So, we came to the conclusion that grammatical "liberties", "mistakes" are the most important feature of V.I. Kucheryavkin's artistic language.

Among the various types of "mistakes" in Kucheryavkin's poems, the mixing of grammatical forms of animate and inanimate, as well as the destruction of stable grammatical structures, stands out. It seems that this reflects some important philosophical ideas for Kucheryavkin. The picture of the world in Kucheryavkin's poetry is probably partly close to the image of the world in Eastern philosophy and religion.