| From Plato to post-Structuralism, some of the most renowned thinkers were preoccupied with the idea that words provide an inadequate means of comprehending and conveying being. The issue of verbal inadequacy is clearly one of the most crucial topics of humanistic studies. My dissertation investigates the articulation of verbal skepticism in Russian poetry from the age of Romanticism to contemporary poetic culture, It is the first comprehensive study of the issue. I trace the development of the topos from the time of its inception in Sentimentalism and pre-Romanticism (Batiushkov), through rich and complicated explorations of the sentiment in high and "tamed" Romanticism (Zhukovsky, Venevitinov, Pushkin, Tiutchev, Baratynsky, Lermontov), to its revival during the Silver Age, with a particular emphasis on Mandelstam, to its engagement by Brodsky, and finally to its reappearance as a crucial strategy in post-modern and "post-post-modern" poetry, with Timur Kibirov's dramatization of verbal aversion as representative of the larger trend. The thesis situates Russian poetic articulations of verbal skepticism within the broader context of the discourse of word devaluation in Western and Russian philosophy, theology, linguistics, and literary theory. I identify various kinds of anti-verbal thought, and explore why and how they come through in specific works and specific historical contexts. As I argue, the articulation of verbal skepticism consistently implies an ontological discussion. I trace the relationship between verbal skepticism and religious (or anti-religious) thought over the course of the last two centuries and observe what crucial concerns accompany, underline, and explicate the subject. If earlier articulations of the topos coexist with, and contribute to, one's perception of metaphysical ideality, in the twentieth century an anti-verbal sentiment becomes a habitual corollary of a more general ontological skepticism. In this scheme, one's relationship to language and verbal art is figurative of one's relationship to the cosmic order. In terms of a more modern, "absurdist" discourse of verbal skepticism, a poetic devaluation of the word, therefore, must be regarded as an analogy for an existential predicament. |
