METAPOETIC TEXT AS A VERIFICATION METHOD OF RESEARCH RESULTS (ON THE EXAMPLES OF WORKS BY D.A.PRIGOV)

Verification in cognitive researches is a stage which is not necessary but preferable; its aim is to check the obtained results by means of appealing to native speakers [2, p. 194 – 195]. The research of the national concept was beyond the scope of our study therefore verification methods of the results of mega-concept modeling reflecting individual poetic consciousness must be particular: we check the reliability of the chosen methods and the research results of individual artistic concept basing on the authors’s position, i.e., we compare the received results with metapoetic texts by Prigov. “ Articles, essays, remarks concerning the creation (in this case, poetic), tractates, researches  written by an artist about his or other poets’ creation, –  all this is properly a metapoetic text” [8, p. 608]. Prigov’s articles about creation, his statements about it on the radio and television, his interviews, Internet-conferences as well a particular genre chosen by the author – preannouncements to the books of poems where Prigov offered the analysis of his own works – were considered as metapoetic texts.

In the given article we will follow the logic of general semantic-cognitive analysis of the mega-concept “creation”, i.e., at first, we will compare the research results of the mega-concept “creator” to Prigov’s metapoetic statements; then the results of the concept “the result of creation” analysis and, at last, “the process of creation” will be subjected to the same procedure.

As a result of the concept “creator” modeling, it has been found that the information concerning the creator’s personal qualities as well his creativity takes the greater part in poetic consciousness of Prigov. According to cognitive signs of the concept which were emphasized in the poet’s texts, the image of a man of creation, ambiguous and, at first sight antilogous, was formed. But in the process of analysis it has been learned that three different images of the creator are reflected and three forms of his existence are described in Prigov’s poetic worldview: a traditional, highly ideological image with all ingrained attitudes; an ordinary man of art – an image showing Prigov’s conception of what is in fact a man of creation in the modern world, and Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov himself.

 A creator-conformist creates great works, thinks over the duty, preaches the verity, glorifies somebody or something. They call him “a man of genius”; he is the pride of Russia, the wisdom of the people, the conscience of nation, he belongs to his nation and mediates between God and humans, he ought to have the Russian fate and takes a definite place in creators’ hierarchy. At Prigov it is a kitch image of the pop-hero creator (Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Lermontov etc.).

A man of art is an ordinary, at first view an undistinguished character, who is depicted as a helpless, insignificant little man, generally poor, too young to make a success or too old to become famous; something constantly interferes with his creative career: his age, non-recognition or, on the contrary, a resounding success and fame, misunderstanding among the wider public, – he can make mistakes, be jealous, have some drawbacks or no sense of conscience  but he is definitely skilled, gifted, active, possesses  imagination, has unusual capabilities, is always in progress, has a special attitude to the beauty; he loves his own works and is often not independent in his creation as he is craving for recognition. In one of his interviews Prigov says that everyone who cultivates art has ” the internal need to be understood by some kind of critical mass of viewers… the general sort of an artist is a self-regarding, narcissistic, ambitious artist who wants to be loved [3].

Prigov himself is always present alongside his created images, and at the same time he keeps distance from his characters, he is not here but he is always here, in the text, he is didactive and free. Prigov lives in his works as an idea, as the way of verbalization, he sometimes peers out of his characters’ masks, “appears for a moment” and disappears again. He could be recognized in an original gesture-idea, which  base is the confirmation of human freedom, the negation of any standarts and the Sovyet culture idioms, the opposition  between “high” and “low”. A creative activity, the ability to reflection, intransigence are his special features, creative enthusiasm, ironic attitude to himself and the others are characteristic of him. He goes through different conditions, and his way of existence in the text is characterized by “twinkling” (masks change) and irony. In his opinion, a modern writer is unartful and unskilfull, the representatives of the conventional trend are unable to accept the postmodernism writers, and the continuity in creation can play a negative role.

He supposes that he can be accepted “as a cretin”, unrecognized and unloved by the nation. He sees his destination in purifying the world of dirt, however, he doesn’t believe to be able to save anything. Such is the image of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov in his poetic works.

In his metapoetic texts Prigov determines his place in literature and art as “just a culture worker” [5]. “My task is to discover the bacillus of totalitarianism in every harmless speaking, ideology…It is not a very noble task since the man engaging in this activity is hated [3].

The analysis of  language representations of the concept “ the result of creation” in Prigov’s works has allowed to establish that the important thing for Prigov is not a work itself but its author-creator, the process of creation and the reader/viewer for  whose sake a player space of the text is organized. A work itself is the object of interest for the author due its form. It is in contradiction with the traditional opinion that content has priority to a form. One of Prigov’s interviews proves these observations: “Texts are the poems’ skins, in fact, they don’t amount to much” [4]. Therefore, a player space where the characters-authors move going beyond the bounds of the text, their creation, is organized: “In fact, an artist can be entirely separated of his text. He alone is more important than the languages he uses.”

Modern art, as Prigov believes, is “the art presenting an artist” [7].  For this reason, such a great activity for the image-project creation “Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov” is being carried out. Its development must be observed by a special viewer/reader who is close to the performance art and shares the ideas of conceptualism: “I need no traditional reader but a kind of a tracker who will trace the stages of my project”.

Thus, a postmodern text is only a shell, an unusual, provokingly catchy package; author – project, hero-character who realizes “a cultural gesture”; reader – observer who is able to perceive this gesture.

The construction of the categorical structure of the concept-frame “the process of creation” has shown that an important component here is “a personal aspect”, and 

an image component submits a large part of the concept macrostructure with the cognitive sign “life” which is actively represented. Therefore, the process of creation can be imagined as some kind of a lifelong theatrical performance being played by the author and his characters. So, a borderline between reality and art becomes rather conventional and mobile. “Conceptualism is, in some sense, a kind of mirror which has been put in face of the Russian culture . “ [6]. Prigov, being self-consistent in his conceptual studies, was trying to create his own reality and to influence the well-established ideology, where “the criticism of statements is not encouraged, but a pop -heroic statement on the stage, or the imperious within the authority is encouraged.”

The super-task of  Prigov’s poetry is the reconstruction of the lost harmonious world’s balance [1]. Human’s desire for freedom and for active intellectual cooperation lost due to various reasons must be, in the poet’s opinion, found. That was one of the tasks of his creation – an intellectual project “Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov”.

The comparison of the results obtained in the analyses process of the concepts “creator”, “the result of creation”  with Prigov’s metapoetic texts has shown that the chosen cognitive research methods allow to get valuable and rather accurate information about individual poetic consciousness on the material of a literary text.

The method of the mega-concept “creation” modeling, the indicative analysis of a literary text and the method of associative application allowed to determine high-priority ideas in the poet Prigov consciousness. Further researches of the mega-concept “creation” might be connected with studying its objectivation peculiarities in the national sphere of concepts.

We suppose that the indicative analysis of a literary text and the method of associative application developed especially for post-modernistic texts, which are complicated for interpretation, can be applied in conceptology for the research of other literary systems in Russian literature.