Essay_Languagy and Poetics Towards Myth_Katya Zorina.pdf

8/12/2019 Essay_Languagy and Poetics Towards Myth_Katya Zorina.pdf

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Language and Poetics Towards Myth

Essay for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts

Ekaterina Zorina

University of Gothenburg

Valand School of Fine Arts

Gothenburg, Sweden, May 2012

Ekaterina Zorina, Language and Poetics Towards Myth

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Contents

So, what is the problem? 3

Logos is paradox 3

Acknowledgements 4-5

Introduction:

On the poetic world

On structure

On similarity

5-7

Silentium 8-10

Factorial 10-11

We dont hear each other 11

On the Addressee 12-13

Towards myth 13-14

Seme 14-16

Suggestion 16-18

Myth reality 19-21

Backwater

Nausea

21-23

The word

The End

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So, what is the problem?

See you in hell or in communism.1

Slavoj Zizek

Todays world stands on a fracture between language and commodity. In other words

between communism and capitalism. Boris Groys writes in his book The Communist Postscript

that communism is the transcription of society into the medium of language. He understands

communism to be the project of subordinating the economy to politics in order to allow politics to

act freely and sovereignly. Central to Groyss understanding of communism is his notion of the

linguistification of society. This term as used in his book means to organize and shape society

using language. For Groys linguistification entails social practices and beliefs become open to

discursive criticism and challenge, it exacerbates social divisions and contradictions, since any

political decisions are themselves reached in the medium of language. Communist society can be

defined as one in which power and the critique of power operate in the same medium. Under

capitalist conditions every criticism and every protest is fundamentally senseless, for in capitalism

language itself functions as a commodity.

Logos is Paradox

Plato was the first in the Western philosophical tradition to elevate language to the medium

of total power and the total transformation of society. In The Republic he declares the rule of the

philosophers to be the telos of social development. Philosophy uses language in such a way that it

addresses the whole of language. In this sense communism stands in the Platonic tradition: it is a

modern form of Platonism in practice.2

On this basis, it makes sense to look to Plato for an answer to the question of how language

can exercise sufficient force to allow the speaker to rule over and through language. For Socrates,

hero of the Platonic dialogues, the force of conviction radiated by the well-constructed speeches of

the sophists in no way suffices for government. For Plato, at least at first glance, the criterion o f


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1Slavoj Zizeks interview on the cultural show, 2010. Accessed April 30, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtA

2Boris Groys,The Communist Postscript. Translation Thomas H. Ford. (London: Verso, 2009), 2.Henceforce cited as TCP with page number.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtA


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logically valid, convincing speech likewise appears to be its coherence, that is to say, its lack of

internal contradiction. Socrates shows that no speech can avoid being contradictory. If we

understand philosophical thinking to be the exposure of the inner logical structure of a discourse,

then from the perspective of genuine thinking, the logical composition of any discourse can be

described in no other way than a self-contradiction, as paradox.Logosis paradox.3 Socrates shows

that no one who speaks under the conditions of freedom of opinion knows what he actually means.

Speech that hides its paradoxical structure becomes a commodity that invites penetration

into its paradoxical interior. But all speech that is presented as logically valid is sophistical.

Ultimately, every proposition can be interpreted as a proposition about the whole of language

because every proposition belongs to the whole of language. The sophist replaces the whole of

language with the whole of capital.

A paradox is an icon of the whole language. That is, a paradox consists in simultaneously

holding A and not-A in the mind as true. But the whole of language is nothing other than thinking

the unity of all possible propositions A and not-A - which follows already from the fact that,

according to the rules of formal logic, all the sentences of language can be derived from paradox. 4

Acknowledgement

As I have mentioned in the beginning, todays world stands on the fracture between

language (communism) and commodity (capitalism). And there are a lot of discourses

concerning such thematics. I will not go into political theories so far, but it is important to mark the

beginning of my interest in language itself and why it is actual to talk about.

Boris Groys says in his book I have mentioned, that Plato defines the philosopher as

someone who conceives of society as a whole, so to think the totality of society means to think the

totality of the language that this society speaks. This is what differentiates philosophy from science

and art, each of which uses specialized language of one form or another. Science claims to employ

only language that is free of contradiction and logically valid. Art claims to employ language in an

aesthetically challenging way.5

So as an artist, who reasons while writing this essay, I plug in all the three hypostasis. In

this essay I would like to palpate the boundary between Language and Art. To my humble opinion


4

3

TCP, 7.4TCP, 15-16.

5TCP, 1.


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the boarder or their co-existance could be found in Poetry, which is for me a simultaneous visibility

of external and internal spatiality.

Through examples of poetry I would like to show several things: 1. the true meaning of the

poetic piece is determined not only by plot, but also bystructural elements; 2. determined structural

elements can detect mythological component, that exist in any piece of art.

The essay appears as a narration type of rhizome 6 . I would say it contents different

stories , sprouting from a single stem, defined with following themes: art, poetics, language. Each

of them is crucial in my art practice. And it is important for me to deepen the research of my

desires.

My first inspiration, that motivated me to start the essay, was V.Propp and his book

Morphology of the Folk Tail. As Propp I am interested in the structure that remains unchangeable,

while subjects replace one another. Being an artist I am searching for the primal plant, Goethes

Urpflanze. Propp, basing on the Metamorphosis of Plants, analyses fairy tails that take their

beginning in myth, and finds the formula. I am interested in the language itself, and to go further in

understanding contemporary events I need to get to its roots.

The essay is inspired by allied sciences as physics, linguistics, biology, philosophy etc.

And such authors as V. Propp, R. Jakobson, M. Backhtin, J.W.Goethe, F. Tutchev, O. Mandelstam,

F.W.J.Schelling and many other poets and thinkers.

I believe that quite specific things I am talking about in this text, could be easily applied to

the fine art methods of presentation (by which I understand the presence of spatial parameters,

objects, composition). In other words - transmission of methods from the plane of the line to the

plane of the exhibition space, whatever this space is. Visual literacy - rara avis. But that is another

story and the next essay.

I invite you to embrace the entire text with your view, as I am not defending, but showing.

Introduction

Three chapters (On the poetic world, On the structure, On similarity) - the base of

understanding of the bottom from which I repel. A text and where the aesthetics of my artistic

practice draws its ideas are going to be discussed.


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6 Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their Capitalism andSchizopherina (19721980) project. It is what Deleuze calls an "image of thought", based on the botanical rhizome, thatapprehends multitplicities.


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On the poetic world

The poetic world in my understanding - an image/ a set of images in the mind, which is

formed as the result of reading the text. It can be called the phenotype of art, produced by the

genotype (a sign base of the text). If we are talking about particular product, its a poetic world, I

will call it inner world, and if the body of works by one author - the authors world. In general,

the poetic world - is another reality, which I will call artistic or poetic.

The word and, under its influence, the emerging image in the mind can be represented as

two elements of some sort of a system. Obviously, they are connected by a chain of some

transformations (visualization software), about program of which we know nothing. But if we can

follow step by step the implementation of this program, we will understand exactly how the word is

transformed into the appropriate image.

It is a model representation of the authors images and its description on the

morphological level - the level of the structural elements of the poetic world. Related models are

discussed and by philologists which try to imagine a mechanism for the generation of speech, the

nature of poetic reality, a separate art image, or metaphor.

To understand what I mean by the poetic world, we need to know more about the elements

and their connection.

On the structure

The structure in a structuralist sense is not something that is constructed from the elements

but what can be divided into elements on various conceptual bases. The elements are thought not as

a-priori existing bricks, but as fragments of the structure to which it can be resolved. As an

operation of the system expansion into elements different operations are used such as interactions,

transformations, etc. Elements and operations of their transformation, separation, are one unit.

Here are several examples:

When we make paper boat from a sheet of paper, an analog of the structural elements will

be fold lines or pieces of sheet bounded by these lines. These elements are given by the rules of

bending (rules of generation), without which they do not make sense. The same example shows that

almost impossible to identify the structural elements and rules for their conversion, viewing the

finished design. But if we face a series of paper boats in various stages of assembly, by sequentially


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comparing the elements of this set we can found the rules of its generation. Varying the system of

rules, from the same sheet of paper you can get a variety of designs.

Or another example of the structural elements available in the reactions of interaction, are

chemical elements. Chemical element - is not an atom, but one of its properties associated with the

structure of the electron shell. In addition to the chemical atoms possess many other properties.

Chemical elements (chemical properties of atoms) can be ordered as shown by D.N. Mendeleev in

the periodic system. Other properties, such as the spatial features of "packaging" can be ordered in a

the crystallographic system.

The chemical elements in its pure form are found only as symbols, and in nature they are

found only in compounds. A chemically pure compound consists of atoms of one chemical element.

The form of the connection depends on the conditions of its formation. For example, chemically

pure carbon can take the form of diamond and graphite. It shows how many faces may have one

structure, when viewed from a different perspective, not from the chemical, but from physical point

of view.

Such a polymorphism differs structure of a text, if the conceptual basis on which they are

subdivided into elements defined not clearly and the point of view is not fixed.

On similarity

What is similarity while perceiving?

The similarity of the child with his/her mother and father - a constant source of parents joy

and their object of legitimate pride. What other proofs are needed to consider that the child is the

successor of the race? That is why the idea that similarity can due to the no blood ties related

reasons is difficult. Examples of non-blood familiarity are well known: frosting, resembling the

leaves of plants, or spirally twisted shells of mollusks and spiral galaxies.

According to the general system theory, between any two polymorphic7 sets at least one

relationship of similarity exists. The resemblance, therefore, by itself does not prove the existence

of any real connections between the maps of the system, not to mention their relationship. But

ordinary thinking stubbornly resists the introduction of common system principles of analysis of

similarities, because they contradict the prevailing practice, and deeply hidden instinct. In other

words snowflake does not give birth to another snowflake, though there is a similarity.


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7Polymorphic - in biology occurs when two or more clearly different phenotype exist in the same population ofa species.


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A text, of course, is a polymorphic set of features, so it is not difficult to establish any

number of similarities as between any two texts and within each of them. General solution of the

problem of similarity does not exist. In each case a specially formulated criteria of similarity is

required.

Further in a chapter Silentium8 I will examine a text from the perspective of a poem. I

would like to describe some interesting features that characterize poetry, that could give a deeper

understanding of some functions of both prose and verse. To my mind the angle stated in that

chapter could serve as a unique instrument of methodology of working within art.

Silentium

All that is notprose is verse; and all that is notverse is prose.

Molire Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Lyric poem has no addressee in the usual sense. According to me it is not so much the

message as "speaking," a live recording of a human voice. Therefore, the whole structure of poems

serves to disrupt the usual focus on the perception of "newspaper" informative.

The paradoxical structure of a poetry, which allows to express the fact that is impossible to

express in prose. The unique ability of direct transmission of the poetry intonation - hence, the

human emotion: why poems do not lose their relevance, do not become obsolete over the centuries

and millennia? To answer this question I would like to give an example of the Russian poet Fedor

Tutchev, who wrote his poem Silentium in 1829.

Silentium9

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal

the way you dream, the things you feel.

Deep in your spirit let them rise

akin to stars in crystal skies

that set before the night is blurred:

delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?


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8Silentium (lat.sileo) - silence.

9Translated by V.Nabokov.


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How should another know your mind?

Will he discern what quickens you?

A thought, once uttered, is untrue.

Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:

drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone

within your soul a world has grown,

the magic of veiled thoughts that might

be blinded by the outer light,

drowned in the noise of day, unheard...

take in their song and speak no word.

Tutchev says that language face us with ineffability - A thought, once uttered, is untrue.

He says it is impossible to describe the prelinguistic element of sensation using words. Another poet

Afanasy Fet answers us with his poem How poor our language is10(1887).

How poor our language is! -I want, but I cannot

Pass on to either friend or foe,

That rages in my chest - translucent wave.

The heart's eternal languor is in vain,

And sage has bend his mature head

In front thisfatal lie.

And only you, the poet, who has the winged sound of a word

That grasps and fastens on-the-fly

The dark delirium of soul and vague smell of a grass;

As for the boundless to leave pathetic vale,

An eagle flies above Jupiters clouds

and sheaves immediate of lightnings in secure claws.

The expression "fatal lie" evokes Tiutchev's "A thought, once uttered, is untrue". As one

can see from this stanza, Fet discerns the problematic nature of Tiutchev's rhetorical structure.

"Fatal lie" raises the idea of verbal skepticism and simultaneously alludes to the notion that "our


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10My translation from the Russian verison Kak beden nash yazyk.


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language is poor". Hence "And sage has bend his mature head" in front of an insoluble

contradiction.

In other words Fet says that a poetic word is winged, that immediate of lightnings can

hold an elusive inner movement.

By giving you these examples I am leading you to the simple notion that is to my mind

crucial - what cannot be said by words can be said with the means of poetry.

Another question, which I have already talked above - what is theparadoxical structure of

a poetry? What is the difference between poetry and prose? It is not in rhyme, as it was created

nearly 6th century BC, and everyone knows the vers libre - the verse free from the rigid rhyme

composition. So the difference is obvious - the verse is divided in lines.

The poetical text is read fully and consistently - this feature is intensive word.

pic.1 pic.2

For example after reading a prosaic text we remember the last word, and the word before

the last word, as shown in the pic.1.

In a poetic text we also remember the last word, but as it has strophic system, we

remember the word, which falls on the rhyme, as shown in pic.2. So that your attention is focused

in another way.

pic.3 pic.4

In pic.3 you can see links in a prosaic text. But the poem has not only logical and semantic

links - horizontal, as a text - but also vertical links - rhyme, repetitions and other means of artistic

expression - pic.4. The poem reminds of a crystal structure.


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Factorial

There is one well-known legend about a chessboard. The chess game was invented in

India, and when Indian king Sheram met it, he was fascinated by its wit and the variety of possible

positions in it. When he learnt that the game was invented by one of his subjects, the king decided

to personally reward him for the successful fabrication.

The inventor - his name was Seth - came to the throne of the ruler. The king asked about

the award that could satisfy the sage, he asked him not to be shy, as he would not begrudge anything

to fulfill it. The next day Seth came back to the steps of the throne and surprised the king with the

modesty of his request. Seth asked to give him one wheat for the first cell of the chessboard. The

king was astonished - A simple grain of wheat?. Seth continued - command to output two grains

for the second cell, for the third - four, for the fourth - 8, 16 for the fifth, six - 32 ... . King agreed to

give him seeds for the all 64 squares of the board, according to the will. But the mathematics could

not calculate the number for several days. In the end it appeared that it was not possible to find such

a number of grains on the whole of the Earth. The number was - eighteen quintillion four hundred

forty-six quadrillion seven hundred forty-four trillion seventy-tree billion seven hundred and nine

million five hundred fifty-one thousand six hundred and fifteen! So it is 2 multiplied 64 times

(2^64).

What I am actually leading to is the notion of factorial, its sign is an exclamation mark (!).

And the whole formula is (n!), where n - is the number of something. To find (n) you should

multiply natural numbers, for example: 5!=5x4x3x2x1 = 120.

Now lets take a poem for example with 40 words to find the total number of connections in

the poetic text. As we remember from what I have said above, there are many connections in

a poem - both horizontal and vertical. 40! - it is clear that the number is quite huge.

So text potentially can express anything with the potential accuracy.

Ad notam there are ~10^70 atoms in the universe.


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We dont hear each other

Poem is the text written in a column - that is what differ it from a prosaic text. If we divide

any prosaic text in lines and read it as a poem, we will not understand anything (you could

experiment with any newspaper article), as poems impede the understanding of information. Poems

are not a message. Poems tell what only poems could tell. Pauses in a poem fix the intonation with

which the words are read. Intonation is a medium of emotion. That is why poems do not die for a

really long time. For example it is really hard to read ancient prosaic text, but the poems are quite

easy to read and understand, as they bring you into the state of the person who wrote the poem

some thousands years ago. To my mind poems are like talking, you become the instrument that

dubbing the melody of that times. You should become an author to read a poem. As in Velzquez's

Las Meninas, when you look at the portrait of the king and the queen, you find yourself in their

place.

Poems have an antinomic structure - what seems to be the same, really blurry, but what is

blurred in fact the same. The rhyme identifies different words. I think everyone in a theater noticed

during the actors play when they try to highlight the meaning of the poem they read from the stage,

it becomes nonsense. Because semantic pause does not depend on a meaning. About this kind of

semantic saturation I will speak later in a chapter Suggestion.

On the Addressee

Another difference between prose and verse as I said in the very beginning of the chapter

Silentium and to which I was leading is that a poem does not have an addressee.

Osip Mandelstam in his essay On the Addressee compares a poem with note in a bottle.

Whoever finds it is intended to be a reader, a poem is like a last will thrown out to sea to an

unknown audience.

Mandelstam wonders To whom does the poet speak?.11 A poet is like a seafarer who

at a critical moment throws into the ocean wave a sealed bottle, containing his name and a

message detailing his fate. Wandering along the dunes many years later, I find it in the sand, I read

through the letter, note the date, the last will of the deceased. I had the right to do so. I have not


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11Osip Mandelstam, On the Addressee, Works in two volumes, Moscow: Fiction, 1990. (Electronic publication -RVB, 2010-2012). Accessed May 29, 2012, http://www.rvb.ru/mandelstam/dvuhtomnik/01text/vol_2/01prose/0635.htm. Henceforth cited as On the Addressee with page number set in electronic edition.
http://www.rvb.ru/mandelstam/dvuhtomnik/01text/vol_2/01prose/0635.htmhttp://www.rvb.ru/mandelstam/dvuhtomnik/01text/vol_2/01prose/0635.htmhttp://www.rvb.ru/mandelstam/dvuhtomnik/01text/vol_2/01prose/0635.htmhttp://www.rvb.ru/mandelstam/dvuhtomnik/01text/vol_2/01prose/0635.htm


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opened someone else mail. The message in the bottle was addressed to its finder. I found it. That

means, I have become its secret addressee.12

But why not to address a particular source, a representative of the age, why not a friend

of this generation? Because appealing to a particular interlocutor, we cut the wings of the verse

and deprive it of air. The fresh air of poetry is the element of surprise, and in addressing

someone known, we can speak only of what is already known. This is - an imperious, unutterable

psychological law. One can not emphasize strongly enough its value for the poetry .13

When I speak with someone - I do not know with whom I speak, and do not want.

And the only thing that pushes us into the arms of the interlocutor, - the desire to be astonished by

our own words, to be captivated by their originality and unexpectedness. The logic is merciless. If I

know the person I am addressing, I know in advance how he will react to my words, to whatever I

say, and therefore I will not succeed in being astonished in his astonishment, rejoice in his joy, to

love with his love.14 When we converse with someone, we search the face for sanctions, for a

confirmation of our sense of rightness. Instruction is the nerve of prose, of literature, of newspapers.

Therefore the writer needs a pedestal. Another thing is poetry. The poet is associated with only a

providential companion.15So if the individual poems may apply to a specific addressees, poetry as

whole is always directed more or less distant, to the unknown, the existence of which the poet can

not doubt, without doubting himself.16 As Osip Mandelstam confesses - it is boring to whisper

with a neighbor. Endlessly boring to gimlet own soul.

The comprehensive nature of dialogic discourse has been repeatedly stressed in the works

of M.Bakhtin, in the sense that the process of human life has a dialogical nature, the dialogue is

seen not only as a model of interpersonal interaction, but also as a fundamental category of the

processes of human consciousness and cognition.17

Mandelshtams reader in posterity might be an instance of Bakhtins indefinite,

unconcretised other, a particular addressivity, an utterance that is directed towards another who is

not there.


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12On the Addressee. 146-147.

13On the Addressee. 148.

14On the Addressee. 150.

15

On the Addressee. 149.16On the Addressee. 150.

17M.Bakhtin,Aesthetics of VerbalCreativity (Moscow, 1979), 260.


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A poem thrown out to sea for an unknown reader - this is how I feel about fine art in

general and specifically to my own practice.

Towards myth

Introduction

The analytical knowledge is by definition antithetical to mythical knowledge - I break

down the world through discourse analysis - or, I think and perceive it as a myth, in the unity of the

givens.

In the tradition of classical German idealism, with which also Tyutchevs art is naturally

connected, primary importance was not so much the cognition, but the consciousness of ourselves

and the world (cognition - is only one of the tasks or functions of consciousness). Hence the

problem can also be formulated thus, - Schelling writes in the System of Transcendental Idealism,

- how does intelligence come to be added to nature, or how does nature come to be presented?18.

In other words how does the nature acknowledge itself?

As I know in the paradigm of modern European philosophy, the scope of knowledge is

always limited, it really involves the dismemberment of the world. For the cognizing subject the

world appears as an action object of the mind and the reason - and in this respect his intentions are

destructive. But precisely in the era of the 30s, through the influence of Schellings concepts on the

socio-philosophical concept of the consciousness of Europe, doctrines of Saint-Simonians, the

priority of the synthetic forms of knowledge was stated as an alternative to analysis. The synthetic

form of knowledge finds itself in the contemplative and intuitive empathy to the world, especially -

to the natural world, the cosmos. The end result of a synthetic activity of mind is not the destruction

of the world, but his creationist contemplation - the creation of the world as a myth.

The mythical law of correspondence is realized as the law of the subject-object identity in

the philosophy of Schelling: For in this work it will become apparent, that the same powers of

intuition which reside in the self can also be exhibited up to a certain point in nature; and, since the

boundary in question is itself that of theoretical and practical philosophy, that it is therefore

indifferent, from a purely theoretical standpoint, whether objective or subjective be made primary,

since this is a matter that practical philosophy (though it has no voice at all in this connection) is

alone able to decide.19


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18F.W.J.Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, 1800. Translated by Peter Heath (University Press of VirginiaCharlottesville, 1978, Fifth printing 2001), Introduction, 5. Henceforth cited as STI with page number.

19STI, Indroduction, 3.


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Seme

Everyone who is familiar with the poetry, certainly knows poems, the contents of which

are either completely neutral or are difficult to logical analysis, but which, nevertheless,

inexplicably call a strong emotional response. Examples of these poems can be found in the work of

nearly every great poet, regardless of the direction to which he belonged, and the era in which he

lived. Mystery of the impact of these poems is close to the secret influence of spells, so in the future

we will call them shamanic poetry.

Very rarely come to us poets, poems, most of which can be attributed to the shaman (note

parenthetically that shamanic poetry, as a rule, splash in the highest moments of inspiration and

almost never "made"). One of these poets was Osip Mandelstam, with whom we are already

familiar, who invented, among many others, for example, the line I have studied the science of

parting//At night bareheaded complaints .... In these lines there is no rational image. But to my

mind they produce a very precise emotional response.

The main point of poet Mandelstam - the creation of special meanings. His values -

seemingly, the values of indirect that may arise only in a verse, which become mandatory through

the verse. No words, but "the shadow of the words".

We note that: 1) the verse forms new shades of meaning of the word, 2) these new shades,

or even new meanings occur only in a verse, 3) all the words in the verse, that are used in the usual

sense and as used in the new sense, that do not exist out of the exact poem, painted one emotion,

and 4) trying to found in Mandelstam's poems the rational sense - "trying to open with their own

key someone else's space, though, the space is open".

In linguistics, a word is usually considered in two ways: the plane of expression and the

plane of content. The expression plane is one set of sounds in which the word exists. The content

plane - those concepts that are associated with a given set of sounds. The plane of the contents of

each word is made up of combinations of a set of semantic quantums. Under the semantic quantum

we mean the smallest, at the moment indivisible words unit of the meaning, orseme.

The process of selection of semantic series in a verse can be regarded as a well-known

mathematical process of factorization. The semantic series (and in factorization - factor sets) could

have feature of the elements they consist of. The semantic series itself could be elements on which

operations could be performed.


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It remains to add that conformity can only exist in space or time, and that Space and Time

have common seme - the seme of extension.

Another example of the creativity of Osip Mandelstam - an excerpt from his free

translation of Petrarch's sonnets. Compare the two versions of the translation of one line:

1. my days have swept by as running doe

2. my days have swept by as doe's slanting race

The second translation is made by Osip Mandelstam. You do not have to be a connoisseur

of poetry to understand that it is brighter, stronger and better, despite the fact that the Mandelstam's

phrase is out of logic. Does slanting race - what is it? Running that cuts the doe? The running that

slant the doe? Or running of a doe slant by someone? And what slants the running? And who slants

it? The mind stumbles upon this phrase.

And begins to scroll through the various options. Slanting running doe. A scythe, which

cuts the grass. Death with a scythe-run, cutting down doe. Braid, drizzling autumn rain etc. These

images are arranged in a row, as they are combined by two semes - the seme of death, decay and

the seme of swiftness, which itself is included in a row of deaths (since the days have swept). A

quoted string creates a very powerful suggestion/hypnoze.

Suggestion

I have already mentioned that the formula of suggestion arises where there is repetition,

rhyme, semantic row. The repentance of the same seme gives rise to resonance phenomena in the

brain (like a frame, seme - an irritant of a brain nerve centers). I am sure that the resonance

phenomenas are the basis of our ability to enjoy a work of art.20

In this chapter I will try to determine the conditions of high-quality implementation of the

formulas of suggestion.

1. Apparently, one of the conditions of a high-quality implementation of the formulas of

suggestion - its invisibility, encode, unawareness by perceiving. It is difficult to hypnotize a

person who does not want to be hypnotized. He resists the suggestion. But where there is no

awareness of suggestion - there is no resistance. The encode of a formula of suggestion is


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20The research that the Institute of Neurophysiology named after Bekhterevshowed that the same brain cell is excitedwhile irritation by seme, sound and picture. If we remember that the brain communicates with the body language ofelectric impulses, and that the excitation of a nerve center changes the oscillation frequency of the electrical impulsesthat generate the human brain, the assumption of resonance phenomena seems not too improbable. By the way, theresonance points and the famous phrase "internal tremor", which we describe our state while perception of very goodworks of art or piece of music.


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provided by the feature of "logical" thinking - not to capture the semantic links between words

of one semantic row. What common does our mind pick up with the words "lonely", "circle" and

"wind"? Probably a little bit. And at the same time as used in the phrase, they create a mood (As

circles wind alone" or "circling loneliness of wind " or circles of wind and loneliness" etc.).

These words belong to the same semantic row - a row of loneliness. The front repeat will only

lead to the semantic saturation, perhaps because in this case the formula of suggestion is not

hidden.

2. We know that the formula of suggestion arises where there is repetition, symmetry,

rhyme, semantic row. In order to instill the seme, obviously, you need a certain number of

repetitions.

Conclusion: The quality of the formulas of suggestion should depend on the number of

repetitions of instilled seme. If seme is repeated fewer times than necessary, the suggestion just does

not happen - the reader will not believe, will remain unmoved. This is understandable. If seme is

repeated too often, there is a reason to believe that the formula of suggestion will be destroyed -

again, the reader will not believe, will remain untouched.

The next problem to be solved to determine the boundaries of a given seme repeat (or in

other words, saturation of the text with seme), and implement a suggestion formula, involves the

use of associations. All associations that will arise in the perceiver, must form a series of semantic

rows, which identifiers are in relations of repeated symmetry or inversion symmetry with the

identifier of the leading semantic row.

pic.5

Is it always a resonance? Will the piece be perceived by readers as the author sees it? No,

not always. A repeat itself can not lead to the resonance. To cause a resonance, the total number of

semes instilled in the piece should be distributed according to the space in accordance with a

harmonic law, gradually increasing to a local maximum, then dropping to the locally maximum


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inversion symmetric seme, then again increasing, and so on, and growth is possible in two ways, as

shown in a pic.5.

Parts ab and bc correspond to the two parts of the text the same length, ab part - swinging

of the seme quatity in words with a gradual increase, with the constant number of repetitions per

unit length; bc part - the quantity of semes in words does not increase, but increases the number of

repetitions per unit length of the text, figure illustrates the well-known in the physics principles of

amplitude and frequency modulation.

What I am trying to say is that the proper distribution of seme in the space of the text leads

to a gradual rocking of consciousness; due to the gradualness the process gathers speed, and

because of inertia increases the probability of selection of the semantic field of each word in the

desired value. The pause role within it - saves the correct semantic rhythm oscillations, or untimely

filed, or nonconforming portion of the quantity of semes will slow the process caused by the

suggestion (of perception), or even destroy a realization of the right suggestion.

To make a work of art had an effect on a person, it must contain the optimal number of

optimally oscillating leading seme.

An important consequence of the review process of perception is the following

requirement for the proper implementation of the suggestion formula in a piece some elements must

be present: inversion symmetric elements, and therefore doomed to failure works in which the

"best" "conflicts" with "good". This requirement is simply a manifestation of the action in the field

of human endeavor known dialectical law of unity and struggle of opposites.

Earlier we talked that the suggestion formula can have a perfect implementation. Also in a

chapter We dont hear each other I have mentioned the actors that highlight the meaning while

reading a text from a stage. If we assume that it is possible to implement the formula of suggestion

in a literary work, it would mean that any attempt to interpret a literary work in the theater language

will be doomed to failure - any change in the text with seme saturation (as it inevitably will - the

actors use gestures, modulation of voice and other theatrical means of influencing the viewer) will

reduce the quality of the implementation of the formulas of suggestion. Interpreting the language of

the theater can enhance the impact of the text with an imperfect formula of suggestion, but it is

impossible to move to a stage an ideal text. Does that explain the fact that none of the play

"Hamlet" by Shakespeare have not exhausted the text? Does this mean that we should abandon


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attempts to stage an equivalent interpretation of the masterpieces of world drama? No. The fact that

there is some subtlety here, which caught the creators of the Noh theater21.

Plays of Noh theater - the masterpieces of Japanese literature. And the actors read the text

expressionless monotone voice, swallowing syllables, "killing" the text. But plastic and dance,

singing and music have a paramount importance. The actors wear masks, which kill facial

impressions, but all masks have a leading seme. As a result, the actors of the theater re-create a

powerful realization of suggestion. Loosing the suggestion in one place, they increase it due to

other, purely theatrical techniques.

Myth reality

It should be noted that the internal ordering of art space was realized or felt by many

artists.

Russian philosopher A.Losev says: "All sustainable, all decorated and ordered, structured

and organized was perceived by all the Greeks as coming directly from Apollo, or set directly by

him, dependent on him".22 So designed, structured space of art was felt so strongly, that was

perceived as a source of order in the world in general.

It's time to say that in our model, the symmetry relations not only structure the space of art,

but also our minds at all.

And it seems that this feature of the human mind acquired the days when people just learnt

to think and did not know the cause-and-effect relations. This feature is not so much mind, but

subconscious. To clarify what it means, we have to refer to attempts to study the mechanism of

association. It is Aristotle who developed an incomplete, but so far the best classification of

associations. On associations there is a huge literature, but we are primarily interested in literature

about the association experiments.

Association experiment was first performed by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles

Darwin, the famous English scientist.

He chose 75 words, write each one on a separate card and did not touch them for a few

days. He then took the cards one by one and looked at them. He timed the chronometer on, starting

with the moment when his eyes fell upon the word, and ending with the moment when the word


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21Noh or Nogaku - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanesemusical drama, that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing maleand female roles.

22A.Losev,Ancient Mythology(Moscow, 1957), 430.


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caused two different ideas. He wrote down these thoughts for each word from the list, but refused to

publish the results. "They reveal - wrote Galton - the essence of the human mind with such

vividness and accuracy that is unlikely to be maintained, if published and made known to the

world"23.

Dan Slobin makes the conclusion that the ratio of the polar opposition of the language is

universal (do you remember Groys linguistic paradox in the very beginning?). It is worth recalling

that any literary work is primarily the result of association. And since the basic operations that use

an associative mechanism - operation of grouping and operation of opposition, then appears a

symmetry of art works space.

Surprisingly symmetry is clearly manifested in the sphere of ideology. What is that all

oppositions, which permeated our ideology since immemorial time (pairs such as "we-they",

"friend-foe", "good-evil", etc.), if not a manifestation of the symmetry relations? (or a political play

of words in Orwells 1984 War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength). What, if not a

manifestation of the symmetry relations, is a dualism which has penetrated the vast majority of the

known religions? And does not it fit into the picture of clear division in the fairy tales of heroes on

good and evil, the division, which stands for inversion symmetry of life and death, and therefore

subjects of cosmogonic myths that have arisen during the period that is not available to historians?

At the heart of the myth and the birth of God's ability lay the ability of human mind to

group phenomena and objects of the world in the semantic series. You can probably assume that the

contents of the seme-id of the row participating in the "burning of the god " should be emotion,

mental state of a person of that epoch. Therefore, all the gods "involved" in a person's life, were

associated with him. A man of god burning times did not know the cause-and-effect relationships,

did not try to explain the world logically. The world existed in harmony of human emotion, every

new phenomena was included in the appropriate range of emotion which were evoked. If a person

of Mousterian times, say, saw an animal, it was immediately placed in his view, among other

phenomena of the world, causing the same or nearly the same mental state. It was not necessary to

explain it as it was included in the semantic row. Logical filters, impermeable, and evaluating the

information did not yet exist. But it was an ability to structure imaginative space of the world (or

rather space representations of the world) in the symmetric semantic rows, all the elements of which

were equal.

That is the same ability, which leads to the creation of a "third plan" of art works.


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23Dan Slobin,Psycholinguisitcs(Progress, Moscow, 1976), 139.


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But why are we - the people who live in the age, which replaced the myth with the theory

of relativity, does not include the logical filters, perceiving a work of art?

Daily, logically structured state of mind - not only the state of consciousness that is

available to us. Here is a partial list of altered states of consciousness: mystical, hypnotic, dreaming,

a narcotic. All these states of consciousness characterized by disabling the logical filters. What

mechanisms switch one or another state of consciousness, we do not know. But the mechanism of

the inclusion of the hypnotic state of consciousness is clearly associated with repetition, symmetry,

with the phenomenas which were on the "exit" of mythical state of consciousness.

A work of art must contain a "switch", which includes a hypnotic state of mind. This

implies an interesting conclusion: the space of images of art is akin to the space of representations

of mythological consciousness.

But if we admit, that the structure of a myth space and an art work is the same, should not

we admit that an art work preserves some traces, vestiges of the myth? Even more, the art in general

has evolved from a syncretic ritual action. If so and the myth rudiments could be found in art, then,

probably, we should look for it at the level of semantic rows at the third plan. And the function of

the third plan - instilling emotions, and it was suggested that emotions determined the stratification

of the world on semantics rows by a person of Mousterian period.

Backwater

All of the above chapters lead to the following conclusion - the space of artistic images

always structured by semantic rows, and as the mythological space and the space of mythological

conceptions of the world also structured by semantic rows, then the conclusion is that a man of

mythological era was supposed to take the current time from the future to the past. Paradoxically,

the Orientalists reconstructed traces of just such a relationship to the time of Ancient Sumer and

Babylon. Igor Klochkov (russian historian, orientalist, translator of many Babylon texts) in his book

The Spiritual Culture of Babylon draws our attention to the fact that looking back in time is

peculiar to the cultures of ancient and medieval times and suggests that the psychological reversal

of facing the future started, apparently in the middle of 1 millennium BC under the influence of

messianic doctrines and eschatological expectations, which led to the transfer of attention towards

future. This period finished in modern times.24


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24I.Klochkov, Dukhovnaya kultura Vavilonii: Chelovek, Sudba, Vremya (Moskva, 1983), 150. / Spiritual Culture ofBabylon: Man, Fate, Time (Moscow, 1983), 150.


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Maybe the reorientation process in time is associated not only with the messianic

teachings, but with the discovery of other forms of consciousness, different from the mythological,

that have logical filters. Actually, the Messianic doctrine - a consequence of the emergence of

logical thinking.

This process is not completed in modern times, as today, when we plunge into the world of

dreams or fiction, we are again not realizing that perceive the current time around.

Nausea

To understand the above information and how the time goes backwards in text, I will

switch to Jean-Paul Sartres roman Nausea .

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an

adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This

is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives

surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees

everything that happens to him trough them; and he tries to live

his own life as if he were telling a story. Nothing happens

while you live. The settings changes, people come in and go out,

thats all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked onto days

without rhyme or reason, it is an endless, monotonous addition.

Thats living. But everything changes when you tell about

life; its a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk

about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things

happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You

seem to start at the beginning: It was a fine autumn evening in

1922. I was a notary's clerk in Marommes. And in reality you

started in the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one

which gives to words the pomp and value of a beginning. I was

out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was

thinking about my money troubles. This sentence, taken simply

for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a

hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let


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things happen without noticing them. But the end is there,

transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the

story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more

precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future

passions. And the story goes on the reverse: instants have stopped

piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other,

they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and

each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: It was

night, the street was deserted. The phrase is cast out negligently,

it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and

we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall

subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all

the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that

he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that

did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet

there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night

which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not

make his choice.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like

those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time

by the tail.25

This long passage from Sartre closely related to the range of issues of interest to us. In fact,

Sartre says the following:

1. The events in the story must be ordered, but in life, they are not ordered (ie, the story

space is structured).

2. The end of the story in the process of its creating determines the selection of words

(ie, the semantic range of words, images can be formed only when the seme-id is known).

3. The images that means nothing in the context of the semantic range inject voltage.

Seme-id is perceived by the reader long before the actual end of the story.


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25Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea. Translated form the French by LLoyd Alexander, introduction by Richard Howard (ANew Directions paperbook, 2007), 39-41.


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4. You can not tell the story honestly, as telling, we are bound to structure the space of

images of the story, thus distorting the space in which the actual event occurred, and which has

not been structured in such a way as it has appeared in the story.

5. The presence of semantic series inevitably leads to reverse flow in the space-time

images of art work (in order to create a semantic number, you must know seme-id. It is primary,

and the semantic row is secondary).

The word

The time of reorientation of "logical mind probably ended at the turn of the II-III century

AD. This period is generally a period of global change: it is to the III century oratory dies, magic

words are forgotten.

At the moment when man has learned to perceive the world, the beginning of the end

started. With regard to the language it meant the beginning of the process of crushing the seme. As

soon as people began to open new features in the objects and phenomenas around the world, the

emotions that previously were caused by these objects and phenomenas have changed. The bond

between sound and seme ceased to exist.

The language ceased to be a model for reflection of the world, has turned into a monstrous

hierarchy, conservative, and not universal.

The fact that the more qualities a man opened in the subject, the more fragmented was a

meaning.

Thus, language can not adequately express the diversity of existing values. (Is not that an

imperfection Tutchev talks about in his Silentium?)

However, not only the smallest particles of meaning, as it turns out, unable to express a

word. Inexpressible are those first meanings from which it all began, the values that were once non

segmented.

That can explain the reasons which led to the rejection of words as a means of

communication in a number of teachings of the East. One of the Daos maxims says: "That who

knows does not speak, the speaker does not know".

It is known that the followers of Zen Buddhism rejected the word as a means of

communication: they believed that the reality must not be talked about, but should be lived through.

The word called undifferentiated experience of mental states, those states in which a person has

structured the world: all the things that cause this mental state, were part of a semantic row.


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Thus, if there was the word for a mental condition, then it necessarily follows that the word

was God immanent.

But if so, the myths, that are encoded in a work of art, must return us to that mental states

that are close to the state experienced by a man of that time. Then, when the suggestive power of

speech began to disappear due to fragmentation and loss of first seme and the loss of the link

between the plane of the content and the plane of expression, in order to cause a certain mental state

during ritual feasts, warfare, hunting, etc. people began to use poetry: myths, dissolved in the

semantic space of the rows, provided the impact on the psyche of people, as an isolated word no

longer could influence them.

And now we realize that the creation of art works (including music and poetry, and

originally, obviously, and the use of words), was so important and crucial also because the work

was realized as a birth. Almost as a release of genie from the bottle.

The End

But it is capital that should be pre-eminently regarded as diabolical, because capital can

profit from A as well as from not-A.

However the more profound suspicion can be neither confirmed nor disproved for this

diabolical subject can be represented only in black on black, and thus cannot be seen.

Now the philosophical subject - in other words, the revolutionary subject - is constituted

precisely by appropriating this diabolical reason, which otherwise remains hidden and operated in

darkness, and transforming it into dialectical reason by means of linguistification.26


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