Grammar of Modern Russian Poetry: Subjective Perspective, Predicative Categories, Modus Frames (Part I)

Abstract

The article is devoted to considering the grammatical properties of Modern Russian Poetry connected with the predicative categories, subjective perspective and modus frames typical of this kind of poetic texts. The above mentioned grammatical devices are viewed in their interconnection with the essential features of modern poetic texts: their subjectivity, multiplicity of interpretation, «modal inconclusiveness», «multiple reference», suggestiveness, double division, increased successivity, small volume and independence of motives. The results of the linguistic analysis are compared with the authors' reflections as expressed in poetic texts, interviews, critical analyses etc, which allows one to assess the value of the grammatical phenomena under study for conveying the «obligatory meanings» of a particular epoch. These results corroborate the special significance of the subject as the category of both expression and content planes, this category being the centre of the «efforts» of all the other grammatical categories under analysis (time, modality, space localization). «The grammar of poetry» is hence treated not as the grammar of «distortions», irregularities opposed to the traditional grammar of the language, but as the realization and the reconsideration of the potentialities and as filling in the lacunae found in the grammatical system of the language, which is carried out by a special group of this language's native speakers for creating new contents and forms, both «eternal» and corresponding to the spirit of the age. What receives special attention in the article is 1) the infinitive and nominative poetry displaying the creative potential of verbal forms of the infinitive and of nouns in Nominative Case correspondingly and 2) the functioning of negative sentences in poetic texts.