Article

Name: Understanding and misunderstanding absurdist text

Authors: Vladimir V. Feshchenko

Linguistics Institute of the Russian Academy of Science

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper poses a question whether it is possible to adequately understand absurdist texts – namely, the poetry of A. Vvedensky and the metaphysics of Ya. Druskin – and what methods of understanding prove to be more pertinent and efficient in the boundary zone between sense and nonsense, beyond the common linguistic logics. The issue of understanding is transformed in the avantgarde (absurdist) texts into the issue of self-understanding. Misundertanding causes the break in aesthetic communication and consequently the beginning of the reader's reflexion on sense production itself, as well as the rise of the hermeneutic effort. The author's goal in this case is not to communicate sense to the reader, but to attract the reader's attention to the very processes of sense production. The point of 'zero communication' in the texts of 'chinari' is not in the attainment of understanding, but – through misunderstanding – in the cognition of the very transformations in the communication process. The processes of misunderstanding are activated every time in the border-line states of consciousness, and Vvedensky's and Beckett's texts expose the border-line state of language in this kind of circumstances.

Keywords: sense and non-sense, understanding and misunderstanding, absurdist text, zero communication, border-line state of consciousness and language, linguistics, philosophy of language, text interpretation

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