ПОЭТИЧЕСКИЙ ЯЗЫК П.А.ВЯЗЕМСКОГО В СЛОВАРНОЙ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ

Научная статья
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.5.11
Выпуск: № 1 (5), 2016
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Аннотация

В статье представлены результаты системного анализа поэтического языка П.Вяземского (1792–1878), полученные авторами в ходе работы над словарем писателя. Выявлены количественные, качественные и эволюционные характеристики лексикона поэта. Проведен сопоставительный анализ словников Д.Давыдова, А.Дельвига, А.Пушкина, Н.Языкова, Ф.Тютчева, А.Полежаева, М.Лермонтова, Н.Огарева.

Acknowledgements

The research has been carried out within the project 2232 “Interdisciplinary social and humanist research in the context of innovative development and international connections” in the basic part of the state quota of the RF Department of Education and Science.

Introduction

Last decades the rapid development of literary lexicography (dictionaries, concordances) of the Russian philology in Russia and the West is being observed. There appeared some generalizing works devoted to the subject [19]; specialized conferences of this kind [15]; [20] and seminars at the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences are being held. This makes it possible to have good conditions to create some new and versatile methodology of linguistic and literary studies.

One of the urgent tasks of the author’s lexicography is the preparation of alpha-frequency dictionaries of the most prominent poets of the past, in particular the «Pushkin galaxy» [16]; [3], [4], [6, p. 98-151]; [17], [18]; [7]. This would enable to compare lexicons of both the contemporary poets, who were often close to each other ideologically and aesthetically, and the poets of different epochs, who were distant from each other in there system of art. Something has already been done in this regard, but it is necessary to do even more so that the present and future philologists could have dictionaries and reliable statistical basis for the study of language, style, and poetics of classics.

The article is aimed to show the results of research done and the possible prospects of these lexicographical works based on the example of the «Dictionary of the Poetic Language of P.A.Vyazemsky» [10].

 

Theoretical Background of Study

Alpha-frequency dictionaries of the writer’s language are multipurpose in terms of efficiency of analysis: a) they model the quantitative and qualitative structure of the lexicon of a particular poet, novelist or playwright; b) they outline the contours of the artistic mentality of the authors, their linguapoetical horizons, active and passive verbal «links» in their aesthetic thinking that can manifest itself through specific concepts, images, names; c) provide a reliable factual and statistical toolkit for understanding of the creative evolution of writers; d) provide opportunities for objective comparative historical analysis of language and linguapoetics of authors (predecessors – contemporaries – successors), as well as literary movements (classicists – sentimentalists – romanticists and so on).

 

The main results of the vocabulary «measuring» of P.Vyazemsky’s language

 

1. This dictionary is the first experience of lexicographical description of the language of P.Vyazemsky (1792–1878), of outstanding poet of the XIX century. It includes: alpha-frequency index of lexemes and proper names in the works of the writer (with reference to the specific text by means of indexation); a rating of the most common words; it interprets obscure lexemes; explains the names, the mythologisms, geographical realities and so on; makes comments on word usage of the writer. The evolution of the author is taken into account by means of information about the frequency of words and honymes – it is divided into three periods of his unique literary activity, the conventional boundaries of which are A.Pushkin's death and the end of the epoch of the reign of Nicholay I: 1800–1837, 1838–1855, and 1856–1878. The dictionary contains an alphabetical index of poems of the poet (more than 1000 texts) with information about their chronology, printed and archival sources, in some cases about textual discrepancies. The work of the poet is presented here to almost the maximum extent, including works not published in the Soviet period and in the «The Complete Collected Works» of the writer (Vyazemsky 1878–1896). The appendices contain a list of neologisms of the poet (274 units), the poems not printed in the collections of his writings, their significant variations, including those found in the poet’s archive (more than 40 new texts), as well as the works attributed to Vyazemsky.

2. The total number of lexemes used by the writer is 14 631 (taking into account the texts not included in the basic sample of the dictionary – 14 819); the cumulative amount of their usage (within the basic sample) – 187 881; the average frequency of occurrence – 12.8 times. Number of proper names appearing in poetry of Vyazemsky is 1486 (taking into account the texts not included in the basic sample of the dictionary – 1529); the amount of their usage (within the specified sample) – 3384; on average, they are used by the author 2.3 times. Number of barbarisms (foreign words and phrases) in the works of Vyazemsky – 32 (taking into account the texts not included in the basic sample of the dictionary – 34), the amount of their usage is 42; on average, each of them is used 1.3 times. The number of foreign-language honymes is 24, the total amount of their usage – 30 times; they are used on average 1.25 times. The total number of lexical units (lexemes, proper names, barbarisms, foreign-language honymes) in poetic language of Vyazemsky makes 16 173 units (taking into account the texts not included in the basic sample of the dictionary – 16 406); the total amount of their usage – 191 337 times, which makes the total sample of speech facts for the dictionary (without taking into account a number of products in the Annex to the dictionary).

3. Lexicon of Vyazemsky is the richest among the «counted» dictionnaires of other poets of the XIX century. So D.Davydov uses about 3500 words [11], A.Delvig – over 5000 [7], F.Tyutchev – over 6000 [14], A.Polezhaev and N.Yazykov – almost 8500 [2]; [9], Lermontov – about 10 thousand [1]; [2, p. 7]; N.Ogarev – more than 10 thousand [5]; and finally A.Pushkin uses almost 13 thousand words [12]; [2, p. 7].

In our view it is quite natural, not only because of the large volume of Vyazemsky's literary heritage, which is significantly reflected in quantitative structure of the author's dictionaries, and of his 70-year-old creative activity, which is also important because in post-Pushkin time and especially in the second half of the XIX century there appeared many new words, concepts, phenomena, – it was owing to his «encyclopedic» mentality and the brilliant knowledge of the Russian language, despite the fact that his poetic language itself is hermetically sealed and «conservative».

The above can be confirmed by the unique poetic honymasticon of Vyazemsky especially on the background of his contemporaries. For us to compare: the number of proper names in the poetry of Baratynsky is approximately 350, in Delvig’s  about 400, in Ogarev’s is almost 500, in Polezhaev’s is over 500, and in Yazykov’s – almost 600. Thus, the «list of names» Vyazemsky uses, is three times the average rate of usage of honymes in the works of the representatives of «Pushkin galaxy» and their contemporaries.

If we consider the degree of activity of proper names in the poetry of Vyazemsky, then we can account the probability of their occurrence in the text of the poet as 0,018 ± 0,001. As a comparison, the same parameter in Ogarev’s works is 0,010 ± 0,001, in Polezhaev’s – 0,018 ± 0,001, in Yazykov’s – 0,026 ± 0,001, in Delvig’s – 0,035 ± 0,002. Therefore, as a whole Vyazemsky does not abuse honymes in his poetic speech.

4. The list of 10 most frequent words of Vyazemsky includes и, в, не, он, я, с, на, мы, весь, ты. The peculiarity of the poet compared with other contemporaries is that he uses the lexemes мы and весь, which probably reflects the tendency of spiritual «conciliarity»; while the concept Я takes the lower level than, for example, in Lermontov’s, Polezhaev’s, Pushkin’s, Delvig’s, and Ogarev’s works, and «selfish» pronoun мой does not even enter the rating of «best twenty». To a certain extent Vyazemsky comes close to Ogarev, who also actively uses the word весь, while the concept мой is muted.

Among the 20 most frequently used full-meaning words, defining the main semantic vectors of Vyazemsky’s poetry are the following life-affirming, optimistic concepts as: день, жизнь, душа, здесь, один, сердце, любовь, ум, небо, там, рука, сон, друг, дать, сказать, стих, земля, слово, мир «universe», другой; they are followed by such important words as любить, бог, тень, новый, светлый, милый, знать…To compare with Delvig he uses – друг, любовь, рука, бог, сердце, любить, душа, песня, жизнь, день, петь, знать, небо, здесь, там, слеза, радость, говорить, сон, певец; Yazykov uses – день, душа, любовь, друг, мечта, поэт, милый, прекрасный, знать, стих, живой, слава, небо, рука, вино, здесь, любить, жизнь, сердце, сон; Polezhaev uses – душа, один, рука, день, друг, небо, мочь, жизнь, видеть, земля, там, сказать, бог, любовь, око, слава, милый, знать, идти, сердце.

You may notice that compared with other poets (except for Yazykov) Vyazemsky does not have many verbs that are dynamic by their semantics among the 20 of his «favorite» lexemes. However, the verb дать takes a higher rating position in his poetry than in the works of his contemporaries.  

5. The share of «one-time» words in the works of Vyazemsky makes 39%, i. e. this approximately corresponds to the statistical «normal» frequency distribution of the vocabulary in the language of the majority of writers: Davydov has 46,9 % of such words, Delvig – 45,4 %, Yazykov – 45,5 %, Polezhaev – 46 %, Ogarev – 41,7 %. As a result, you may notice that there is a tendency to reduce the probability of occurrence of low frequency words while the array of text samples forming the basis of these observations is increasing. The conclusion arises that the authors who have approximately identical literary heritage (in this case in the range from 65 to 79 000 word usages) there is almost a constant of the statistical distribution equal to 45–46 %, which, of course, needs further confirmation. The share of the twice used lexemes in the poetry of Vyazemsky is 16 %. Thus, more than half of the poet’s glossary consists of the lexemes of low frequency, which are sometime aesthetically very significant and memorable for their eccentricity: абрис, авангард, агроном, азарт, аксиома, акция, алгебра, алебастровый, алтын and so on. It is due to these elements that a stylistic uniqueness of any author is created, and the richness of its vocabulary arsenal is formed.

6. On the contrary the «one-time used» honymes prevail among proper names in the works of Vyazemsky: Авзония, Агасфер, Адиссон, Адриатика, Азия, Аи, Айвазовский, Акрополь… The following honymes are leading: Россия (17, 44, 48), Москва (38, 12, 26), Русь (7, 19, 23), Жуковский (19, 9, 8), Пушкин (6, 7, 19), Карамзин (10, 7, 12), Париж (8, 7, 11), Кремль (5, 10, 10), Феб (24, 1, 0), Европа (4, 6, 14), Нева (12, 6, 6), Святая Русь (2, 14, 5), Хвостов [D.Khvostov] (16, 1, 2), Парнас (16, 0, 2), Байрон (9, 0, 8), Белинский (0, 2, 14), Пегас (13, 1, 1), Петербург (9, 2, 4) and so on. However, some of the proper names are duplicated at the conceptual level, which reinforces the impression of their significance in the semiosphere of poetic thinking of Vyazemsky, for example: Россия, Русь, Святая Русь, Север; Петроград, Петербург, Петрополь, Питер, Санкт-Питер; Петр, Петр Алексеевич, Петр Великий, Петр I, Петр Первый, Piter; Байрон, Бейрон, Бирон, Бирони; Киприда, Киферея, Цетера; Мария, Дева Мария, Заступница, Мадонна, Пресвятая (Святая) Дева (Матерь), Царица небес

You may notice that such ancient «personalities» as Амур, Анакреон, Аполлон, Аргус, Арей, Аякс etc. mainly characterize the early works of Vyazemsky, then from the mid-century the images of religious and powerful country begin to grow in his poetry, and he mentions the names of fellow writers who are most dear to him.

7. In terms of active usage of certain lexemes in separate periods of his creative life there can be highlighted the following trends:

a) the frequency of usage of words remains relatively stable, given that the sample of the second period of the writer’s literary activity is twice inferior in volume to the other two, for example: венок (26, 11, 23), грех (21, 10, 19), грядущий (20, 12, 24), дом (50, 23, 51), жить (77, 39, 75), звезда (50, 22, 52), красавица (33, 15, 30), красота (88, 50, 79), луч (38, 22, 39), любить (106, 61, 121), небо (158, 69, 157), радость (80, 50, 79), роковой (20, 11, 17), сей (144, 59, 135), сердце (224, 112, 223), слеза (76, 45, 65), тьма (43, 26, 37), улыбаться (11, 7, 13), ум (166, 81, 166), юность (13, 5, 12), юный (32, 14, 36);

b) in due course it decreases, for example: веселый (28, 12, 12), взор (88, 14, 27), волнение (35, 3, 13), восторг (37, 7, 18), герой (35, 4, 11), глас (57, 12, 23), гений (23, 4, 12), говорить (86, 14, 48), дар (105, 16, 34), делать (27, 6, 9), довольный (13, 4, 3), друг (215, 49, 66), жар (39, 6, 8), изящный (14, 1, 6), клятва (18, 2, 7), кумир (29, 4, 11);

c) it decreases essentially, for example: ах (19, 1, 1), богиня (13, 4, 2), брег (35, 2, 4), веселость (9, 2, 1), вздох (23, 2, 5), вино (34, 5, 9), воображенье (16, 1, 6), забава (28, 5, 4), любимец (19, 1, 4), любовник (19, 2, 2), мадригал (11, 0, 1), малютка (20, 0, 1),  мечтание (13, 1, 4), мотылек (8, 2, 1), муза (91, 8, 14);

d) the following words (concepts) fall outside the scope of poetic thinking of the author – or already in the second period, for example: вверять (5, 0, 0), вверяться (7, 0, 0), грации (19, 0, 0), ода (25, 0, 0), уединенный (14, 0, 0), хариты (4, 0, 0); or in the third period of his creativity, for example: пленить (4, 4, 0), поверить (14, 1, 0), предрассудок (10, 1, 0), признаваться (8, 4, 0), согражданин (7, 3, 0), увидеть (15, 7, 0);

e) word frequency, conversely, increases, for example: благодатный (8, 7, 22), благость (2, 5, 12), боец (6, 4, 22), божий (13, 30, 64), боевой (2, 12, 16), бой (28, 41, 56), борьба (18, 18, 62),  брат (38, 34, 59), вера (9, 8, 21), вечерний (8, 9, 14), внешний (1, 9, 9), внутренний (2, 14, 26), впечатление (1, 8, 14), вопрос (5, 9, 39), вражда (17, 13, 34), встреча (9, 5, 25), глубокий (9, 9, 33), горе (16, 14, 45), грустный (7, 9, 22), грусть (11, 13, 27), закат (10, 9, 27);

f) in the speech of the poet there appear the words that he never uses – or at least in the first period of his life, for example: безвыходный (0, 2, 3), былой (0, 9, 29), господь (0, 11, 27), значенье (0, 4, 5), кубок (0, 8, 6), либерал (0, 1, 5), недостойный (0, 4, 3), общественный (0, 1, 12), отблеск (0, 3, 10), отметить (0, 1, 9), поминки (0, 6, 9), редко (0, 5, 6), родственный (0, 2, 11), современный (0, 3, 8), сознание (0, 5, 13), сочувствовать (0, 6, 10), сребряный (0, 2, 8), телеграф (0, 1, 5), темно (0, 1, 8), теплиться (0, 3, 9), тревожный (0, 5, 7), ядро (0, 6, 10), ясность (0, 5, 5); and in the second period, for example: безвыходно (0, 0, 2), выдумать (0, 0, 3), гласность (0, 0, 13), коммунизм (0, 0, 1), коммунист (0, 0, 1), комфорт (0, 0, 1), митинг (0, 0, 1), нигилист (0, 0, 2), прогресс (0, 0, 8), публицист (0, 0, 3), растерять (0, 0, 2), реализм (0, 0, 1), утилитарность (0, 0, 1), фантасмагория (0, 0, 1), фельетон (0, 0, 1), филантропия (0, 0, 1).

Summary

Compilation of such dictionaries-directories is extremely important, as they lay the foundation for further development of philology, putting at disposal of linguists and literary critics a set of corps and statistical tools for studying poetics of the particular author, for comparative studies from various points of view [6, p. 144-151, 198-266]. The solution of this global problem can be compared to the work already done by verses experts in the field of analysis of historical parameterization of Russian verse.

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