From word-image to philosophical sense (interpretation of poetical narratives)

Abstract

Background. The texts of philosophical poetry represent complex ontological meanings in the sphere of the world order and human existence, in particular, these are the phenomena of life and death, freedom, and social ideals. The verbalization of these meanings is carried out by the appropriate linguistic-stylistic organization of the poetic narrative, usually metalogical, allegorical, or symbolic. Every national artistic picture of the world has its own lexical and semantic resources capable of transmitting information of complex ontological content and interpreting it relevantly. Selected examples of Ukrainian philosophical poetry of the 20th and early 21st centuries (contexts of M. Bazhan, N. Bílotserkivts, M. Vingranovsky, S. Zhadan, V. Kalashnyk, K. Kalytko, L. Kostenko, A. Moisienko, V. Stus, etc.) contain certain meaning-making universals – lexemes of the corresponding semiocodes with a stable symbolic-allegorical content. It is this that ensures the recipient's relevant entry into the semantic planes of the context. Such a sense-making universal is the lexeme snow, which is frequent in poetic philosophical narratives. The purpose of the investigation is to describe the semantic-stylistic and sense-making characteristics of the word-image snow in accordance with its functions in the author's narrative (realization of philosophical motifs).

M e t h o d s. To achieve the expected results of the study, the following methods were used: definitional analysis, component analysis, distributive analysis, descriptive method, interpretative textual analysis.

Results. The lexeme snow in poetic philosophical narratives reveals its sense-making potential through an actualized internal form. It accumulates the collective ideas of Ukrainians about snow as a natural phenomenon with the following characteristics: white color, lightness, silence, brilliance, density, duration of fall, ability to sweep everything around, etc. These properties of snow in artistic linguistic consciousness have been transformed into metaphysical associations of philosophical semantics: white snow – holiness, purity; falling snow as the fluidity and continuity of being; the white cover of snow that swept everything around, as oblivion and at the same time memory (antithetic); the omnipresence of snow falling from the sky, as the omnipresence of love that comes to man as a gift from God. Such symbolism and allegory of snow is realized in narratives of philosophical lyrics by frequent figurative models with the lexical dominant snow, which are available to the Ukrainian reader in semantic verifications close to the author's intentions. The white color of snow, its lightness, and spaciousness led to the appearance of periphrastic models of snow in the artistic picture of philosophical lyrics: snow – white on white, white shroud, white desert, white feathers, white waltz, White Brotherhood, etc. To create metaphorized metaphysical images of snow (snow – purity, holiness, oblivion / memory, being, love), the authors use the resource of various donor zones, in particular denotations and signifiers, which provide the image of snow with concrete sensory visualization and emotional inspiration.

Conclusions. Research into the meaning-making resource of the word-image snow in samples of Ukrainian philosophical poetry has shown that the lexemes of the biomorphic semiocode are productive in the creation, perception, and interpretation of philosophical meanings, which is due to the nature of the artistic consciousness of Ukrainians – mythopoetic, immersed in the world of nature as an archetypal matrix.

About the author:

Olena Malenko – Doctor of Philology, Professor, Chair of the Professor O. G. Muromtseva Department of Ukrainian Studies and Language Pedagogy at the H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4753-0036

e-mail: malenalingva@gmail.com