Article

Name: Asemantic Aspect of a Text: Boris Pasternak’s “Poetry”

Authors: Yu. N. Chumakov

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Abstract: The presented work by Yu. N. Chumakov is a transcribed recording of his brief theoretical summary of the relationship between semantic and asemantic elements of verse. Chumakov’s intent was to demonstrate the interaction between the semantic and asemantic elements and the resulting lyrical tension within the verse structure which reveals itself in the presence or absence of correspondences and convergences between these two aspects of verse. According to Chumakov, it is the asemantic or phonorhythmic aspect rather than the semantic one that is the dominant feature of a lyrical plot and therefore the only true analogy of a lyrical theme is to be found in music. The emphasis on the asemantic plane of lyrical texts and a focus toward purely phonic, “musical” movement of verse brings about a view of lyrical poetry as a universal rather than rational structure. Following the theoretical summary, Chumakov presents an analysis of the poem “Poetry” from Boris Pasternak’s collection “Themes and Variations” (1923) which consists of a detailed review of the phonic aspect of the text that avoids any discussion of thematic motifs or semantics. Looking at each line of the poem without any use of lexico-semantic analysis, the scholar demonstrates the dynamic movement of verse in a poem that, in accordance with its title and Pasternak’s intent, was to embody the very essence of poetry. Assonance and consonance, phonic repetitions and “reflections” (reverse repetitions), variations of phonetic groups consisting of two, three or sometimes four sounds, smooth or abrupt rearrangement of these groups in the development of the lyrical plot – it turns out that an analysis of these purely musical structural elements is capable of producing an exhaustive and profound interpretation of the poem in question as well as of the nature of lyrical poetry as a whole. This kind of analysis, as applied to Pasternak’s text, is congenial to Pasternak’s particular type of artistic gift which already in his childhood combined both poetic and musical abilities. In Pasternak’s own words from his essay “People and Propositions”, “the music of words is not at all an acoustic phenomenon, and consists not in the harmony of vowels and consonants on their own, but in the interrelationship between the speech and its sound.”

Keywords: Boris Pasternak’s poem “Poetry”, asemanticity, asemantic aspect of a text, phonetic aspect of a text, assonance, consonance, analysis, phonorhythmic aspect of a lyrical poem, lyrical plot, B. Pasternak’s essay “People and Propositions”

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