Titles of “Poems Timid and Barefoot”: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms

SERHIY YERMOLENKO Department of General Linguistics O.O.Potebnia Institute of Linguistics National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Fields of research: semiotic aspects of various discourse and text types (everyday language, fiction, poetry, and proverbs), study of inner form at various language levels, study of interrelations between the semiotic structure of various types of linguistic signs and epistemological perspective of discourse. TITLES OF POEMS TIMID AND BAREFOOT: ON JAN TWARDOWSKI’S VAGUE SYNECDOCHICAL BIBLIONYMS „Drovių ir basų eilėraščių“ pavadinimai: apie Jano Tvardovskio neaiškius sinekdochinius biblionimus ANNOTATION The author focuses on some titles of poems by the Polish author priest Jan Twardowski (1915–2006) which he calls synecdochical (since they repeat a part of the text they name), in particular, those of them which seem to be uninformative, randomly and arbitrarily chosen as well as vaguely, if at all, motivated by the poem’s content. He explains their specific nature as determined by semiotic features of motivation proper to them as poetic text names, on the one hand, and by their role as an integral part of poetic text, on the other: taken out of their context and put in the prominent position of the title, such text fragments not only formally designate the text according to the ‘pars pro toto’ principle, but also get reinterpreted, acquiring new meaning as well as imparting an additional sense to the poem. The seeming vagueness of such titles acts as a means of making the reader seek the information they add to the text. Because of their vagueness and utter stylistic modesty, these titles represent those features of J. Twardowski’s poetics that reflect the Christian virtues of poverty and the belief in the incredible. 136 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms KEYWORDS: Jan Twardowski, biblionym, sign representation, motivation, text structure. ANOTACIJA Straipsnyje analizuojami kai kurie lenkų autoriaus kunigo Jano Tvardovskio (1915–2006) eilėraščių pavadinimai, kurie vadinami sinekdochiniais (pavadinimai pakartoja dalį jais pavadinto teksto), ypač tie, kurie atrodo neinformatyvūs, atsitiktinai pasirinkti ir neaiškiai arba iš viso nepagrindžiami eilėraščio turiniu. Paaiškinama jų kilmė, kurią, viena vertus, nulemia semiotiniai jų, kaip poetinio teksto vardų, motyvacijos požymiai, o kita vertus – jų, kaip sudedamosios poetinio teksto dalies, vaidmuo: išimti iš konteksto ir patalpinti matomoje pavadinimo vietoje, šie teksto fragmentai ne tik formaliai nurodo į tekstą, vadovaujantis pars pro toto principu, tačiau jie yra ir naujai interpretuojami, įgydami naują reikšmę ir suteikdami eilėraščiui papildomą prasmę. Tariamas tokių pavadinimų neaiškumas naudojamas kaip priemonė, skatinanti skaitytoją ieškoti informacijos, kurią jie suteikia tekstui. Dėl savo neaiškumo ir visiško stilistinio kuklumo šie pavadinimai išreiškia tokius Jano Tvardovskio poetikos bruožus, kurie atspindi krikščioniškąsias neturto dorybes ir tikėjimą nepaprastais dalykais. ESMINIAI ŽODŽIAI: Janas Tvardovskis, biblionimas, ženklo išraiška, motyvacija, teksto struktūra. The present paper is a study of titles of poetic works by the outstanding and very popular Polish author priest Jan Twardowski (1915–2006), focusing on those of them which I call synecdochical. Thus, the paper’s subject matter is of double topicality, relating to two fields of linguistic investigation, one more specific, the study of J. Twardowski’s titles as part of his poetic language and diction, and the other more general, the theory of (literary) proper names. I approach these titles semiotically, considering them signs whose objects are works they refer to. However, the relationship between the text’s title (also termed biblionym, see: Подольская 1988: 42) and the rest of the text it names (or the text proper) is ambivalent and more complex than in other types of signs. Indeed, on one hand, the title is considered an integral part of the text’s structure, the initial one, that which the reader deals with first (Kostkiewiczowa 1976: 474). But on the other hand, the title is also perfectly capable of occurring autonomously, for instance, representing the text in bibliographical lists or footnotes. This dual nature of the title’s relationship to the text it refers to manifests itself in the character of the title as a linguistic entity: Yu.O.Karpenko maintained Straipsniai / Articles 137 SERHIY YERMOLENKO that seen as the text’s name the title is a lexical level unit, whereas as the initial textual component it is a sentence (Карпенко 1975: 4). He also pointed out that such duality of the biblionym is caused by both the text and its name having the same, i.e. linguistic, form of expression (ibid.), to which it may be added that, due to that duality, the text title denotes itself along with the text proper. Be that as it may, the relation between the literary work and its heading is still more complicated. However important is the choice of the title for a book or article that is not artistic, yet in itself such a biblionym is just a token, or a tag, that is to say, it is an outer attribute of the text it denotes, a textual component whose function is a nominative and informative (and, possibly, persuasive) one, namely, to identify the text it refers to and to differentiate it from other ones by presenting it in an effective and attractive way (for that reason, even titles of strictly scholarly works can have a distinct element of imagery and stylistic value, cf. H.Popowska-Taborska’s collection of works and reminiscences named “Z różnych szuflad”, Roman Jakobson’s imaginative titles, such as “Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry”, Daniel Nettle’s monograph “Vanishing Voices. The extinction of the world’s languages“, the book by David Bello “Is that a fish in your ear? Translation and meaning of everything”, and the like. The title of the article «До питання про пареміологічний парадокс» by the linguist and paremiologist Z.H.Kotsiuba is an excellent example of a heading in which all the relevant functions balance out: the title objectively represents the work’s content and therefore properly introduces the reader to the topics dealt with, and at the same time the mention of a paradox will unfailingly intrigue the reader, operating as an additional stimulus triggering his immediate interest in the article. On the other hand, the literary work title, besides being all that, is directly and far more involved in the semantic structure of the work, especially a poetic one where, given a poem’s (relative) shortness and poetic lines being generally shorter than prose ones, its title is visually integrated in the text which can be perceived at a glance. Arguably, this involvedness is caused by that property of artistic work (both verbal and not verbal) which is its overall iconicity: in such a work, any of its formal features is meaningful so that any change in its form results in the change in meaning as well, see (Milewski 1969: 14–15; Єрмоленко 2006: 185–193). Because of that, the variety of literary work titles is generally greater than non-literary ones. I.R.Gal’perin indicated that the literary title often does not express its meaning directly (which is yet another corollary to the artistic character of the text: it is a well-known fact that art does not tolerate plain speech, see (Потебня 1976: 340)), its sense being metaphorically or metonymically “veiled”. According to him, literary titles can be classified as follows in respect of the form of information they contain: 1) symbol title, 2) citation 138 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms title, 3) message title, 4) allusion title, 5) narrative title (cf. chapter headings in 18th century English novels) (Гальперин 2007: 134). That is not to say, however, that there are no nameless literary pieces or pieces with plain and uninformative names, since such ones do exist too, cf. poems with three asterisks instead of a title as well as collections of verse called (either by the publisher or the author) simply “Poems”, for instance, N.K.Kybal’chych first collection of verse “Поезії” (1913) or B.Olijnyk’s book of the same name (1986). Then there are, of course, novels and stories that are named after their main character, such as Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne, Christie, or Carrie. While one may not fully agree with I.R.Gal’perin who thought N.D.Arutiunova wrong in claiming that L.N.Tolstoy’s novel title Anna Karenina does not perform the introducing function (ibid.) – for it obviously does – yet even to someone who has no previous knowledge of this novel’s content, this name is more than a name. Appearing in the title of an artistic work, it is presumed to refer to the unique literary character (on the other hand, such a name can be motivated, and correspondingly express, an intertextual allusion, referring to a precedent text or following a more general literary tradition, see, e.g., L.Yu.Gornakova’s thesis on the allusive Russian poetonym Лиза (Горнакова 2010)), while the text that follows must perform the rest, in particular, help the character’s name realize its potential semantic features: in Anna Karenina, such features are generated, according to A.A.Fomin, by the contrast of the paronymously interpreted – as the SQUARE vs. CIRCLE opposition – fragments of the surnames (Каре)нина and (Обло)нский (Фомин 2012). In a more general sense, a parallel may be drawn here with artistic photographs or paintings titled Mary, Louise and the like, anthroponyms used as their titles meaning something essentially different from what they denote in everyday usage, even if persons such pictures present actually have these names. But then again, there are more complicated literary titles too, yet the originality of even those can be different, since, as T.Kostkiewiczowa points out, “the way of formation of the literary work title as well as its structure are subordinated to the general principles of poetics of the work in question; being historically variable, they are subject to conventionalization along with other components of the literary work” (Kostkiewiczowa 1976: 474); in particular, that means that the choice of a title can be a matter of literary fashion preferences (cf. the following fragment of Vladimir Nabokov’s memoirs “Другие берега”: “...и у меня была с собой целая кипа беленьких книжечек стихов со всей гаммой тогдашних заглавий, т.е. от простецкого «Ноктюрны» до изысканного «Пороша»” (Набоков 1991: 167)). Turning now to the titles of poem of J. Twardowski, this very unusual author (his biography by Magdalena Grzebałkowska, a journalist with “Gazeta Straipsniai / Articles 139 SERHIY YERMOLENKO Wyborcza”, is called “Ksiądz Paradoks”), they are of different character too, some of them quite usual and traditional, e.g. Matka Boża Powstańcza [1, 20]1, O ludzkim sercu pod wielkim baldachimem [1, 86], Wiersz dydaktyczny [2, 396], Zaufalem drodze [1, 405], Posąg Dawida [1, 64], Modlitwa [1, 77; 1, 87; 1, 127; 1, 160; 1, 264; 2, 143] (besides six poems with this title, there are three more where Modlitwa co-occurs with other words), Ku wodzie [2, 330], Do Jezusa umęczonego organami [1, 141], Do albumu (there are three poems of this name: [2, 21; 2, 244; 2, 387]), Do albumu po raz drugi [2, 141], Dobranocka [2, 386] and so on. Among those, there are those of the type that Galperin called metonymical, in that they are realized by a word, a sentence or an utterance occurring in the text as well and so representing it; in semiotic terms, titles of this kind may be qualified as indexical (i.e. belonging to indexical signs as understood by Ch.S.Peirce (Ермоленко 2006: 19–20), i.e. ones based upon contiguity of various kinds between them and their object) and, one should add, iconic as well (again according to the Peircean classification of representational relationships between the sign and its object), since the part of the text reproduced by the title is similar to, or identical with, the corresponding fragment of the text. I will henceforth call them synecdochical, both for brevity’s sake and because one of their essential features is being motivated according to the “pars pro toto” principle. Among J. Twardowski’s titles of this type there are some that are fairly unusual, and it is they that are the subject matter of this article. Of course, the synecdochical type of titles is by itself perfectly usual, and among J. Twardowski’s biblionyms, there are quite a lot of such usual and, if one may say so, unremarkable names too. For example, of the two of his poems with the titles containing the word koniec (Koniec [1, 419] and Koniec nie-koniec [2, 398]), it is in the first that the word occurs elsewhere in the text (Koniec – to klamczuch w świecie nieskończonym). However, both titles seem usual and predictable, since it is actually the end that the two poems are about so that these headings express the poems’ theme and, consequently, are generalizations of their content. And yet in J. Twardowski’s poetry there are also biblionyms which seem thematically to be almost unconnected with the text they name, and inadequate in that they leave an impression of being randomly or arbitrarily chosen, not motivated and determined by, and therefore ill or not at all fit to represent, the text of the poem they refer to. The only thing they have in common with the latter is a word or phrase found in it. Irrespective of their composition, their principal 1 The examples are drawn from his verse collection: Twardowski Jan. Miłosc milosci szuka. Wiersze 1937–1998. Warszawa: PIW / Poznan: Ksiegarnia Swietego Wojciecha, 1999. V. 1–2. 140 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms common feature is that of a fairly loose or even (seemingly) non-existent meaningful relationship to poem they name. Such biblionyms, too, are not unknown in literature, and reasons behind their choice can be different. Say, the heading of W. Somerset Maugham short story The book-bag does not immediately bear on the story’s subject matter, a love relationship between a brother and sister, as told by another Englishman to the narrator travelling in Malaya. The character of this relationship, although unambiguously inferred from what is said, is never stated in direct terms either in the author’s narrative or in the embedded story, and perhaps it is this theme being at those time “too hot to handle” that is the reason why this story has a somewhat misleading name motivated in a rather roundabout way (the story begins with the narrator telling of his love of reading, which makes him, when travelling, take a huge book-bag with him; his Malayan host, a British Resident, borrows from him Byron’s biography, some details of which bring him to tell his own story of love between a sister and a brother). Yet the (apparent) lack of motivation in J. Twardowski’s poetic biblionyms seems to be of an altogether different nature which has nothing to do with taboo subjects (actually, J. Twardowski, as a religious poet, never avoided difficult and controversial issues of faith and religion and never tried to prove what cannot be proved). Consider, for instance, one of J. Twardowski’s most popular poems, Kiedy mówisz [2, 68]. Dedicated to Aleksandra Iwanowska, his long-time assistant and literary secretary, this very short text is an imperative utterance in the second person evidently directed to the addressee in answer to her letter full of complaints of ill fortune and bad luck. The two final lines of the poem summarize the essence of the message: a od zwykłych rzeczy naucz się spokoju / i zapomnij że jesteś gdy mówisz ze kochasz. The phrase corresponding to the title is found in the second of these lines, with the difference that in the text the phrase is introduced by the relative pronominal adverb gdy, whereas in the title gdy is substituted, perhaps for the sake of euphony, by its variant kiedy. However, this phrase, taken separately, does not seem in any significant way to bear upon the principal idea of the poem as expressed by these lines or, for that matter, by the whole text; or rather it tells about something different. Occurring in the context of dialogue (such as letter exchange), the textual fragment gdy mówisz ze kochasz seemingly refers to something the addressee previously said, with an additional emphasis on the alleged, i.e. not yet (fully) proven, content of the reported/cited statement. Actually, however, it is an idiomatic expression meaning approximately the same as gdy kochasz but highlighting the truth of this statement (gdy naprawdę mówisz ze kochasz “if you really mean what you say” = gdy naprawdę kochasz “if you really love”): the representation by the addresser of something as reported by the addressee himself (gdy mówisz ze kochasz) Straipsniai / Articles 141 SERHIY YERMOLENKO operates as a means of emphasis, evidently on the grounds of the following reasoning: “When something is said to be true it must be true”, the underlying assumption being that telling anything is tantamount to telling the truth. In other words, underlying this expression is the assumption about language not unlike the Gricean principle, in particular the Maxim of Quality referring to the truthfulness of what is said (Грайс 1985: 222–223). Therefore, taking the phrase gdy mówisz out of its context and using it as the poem’s title seems to bring into relief an additional topic, that of one’s responsibility to truthfully assert something, specifically when claiming something essential (such as having a Christian virtue) about oneself. Thus, the title of this kind alters the focus of poetic utterance, deviating from the main theme and putting emphasis on some other aspect of the poem’s content or even adding a new aspect to it. For instance, in the poem Lura [2, 344], consisting of only four lines, this word, denoting watery drink or food, is found in the poem’s first half describing a cemetery in autumn: Listopad cmentarz pusty / deszcz zimna lura. This description provides background to the following statement (uttered by an unspecified person): - to straszne – ktoś mówi / przestać kochać zmarłego dlatego że umarł. And yet what the title highlights is this background’s feature, a cold autumn rain. However, this feature, superimposed on the statement that follows, can be interpreted as a metaphor for that kind of weak and therefore inadequate love which stops with the demise of the loved one, the common feature shared by it and a watery drink being their weakness (cf., in particular, the lura’s definition, “słaby, mało esencjonalny napój” (Dubisz 2004), on the one hand, and, on the other, the attribute silny describing love in the true sense of this word, as in the definition of miłość, “silna więź emocjonalna, jaką łączy ludzi sobie bliskich” (ibid.)). In the poem Na pół [2, 176] the adverbial phrase, meaning “half” and used as a biblionym, later occurs in the text where it modifies the participle przedarte, and the latter is a constituent of the headless noun phrase consisting of several modifiers (Niedokończone / przerwane / przedarte na pół / niekochane / nic już nie warte) sharing the semantic feature “inadequate”. Judging from these modifiers one may infer that the elliptied head’s meaning should be construed as “your life”: the verb in the 2nd person imperative, nie wybrzydzaj, coming immediately after them, indicates that the whole text is an apostrophic enunciation directed to the unnamed person, possibly to the lyrical subject (i.e. the speaker as represented in the artistic text’s inner world) himself, who supposedly complains of the inadequacy of his life. Bu if we take into consideration the general idea conveyed by the poem (something like “inadequacy is a human condition in general”), then what the adverb phrase used as the title specifies will be understood as a human’s lot. So, in the general context of the poem the title Na 142 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms pól implies that the human nature is also essentially divided, not integral, and therefore contradictory, consisting of two parts, good and bad. Thus, this title is indexical too, both formally and semantically, adding an important generalization and a deeper philosophical sense to the poem’s message. In another poem by J. Twardowski which also deals with the existential aspect of human condition and has the title Na okrągło, this adverbial phrase being a part of its text as well. The phrase is polysemous, its primary meaning being “roundedly” and the secondary, “continuously, incessantly”. Since this very short poem tells about loneliness and alienation, and, used in the text, na okrągło specifies the head noun jęk (Samotność pośród ludzi / podrapana droga / telefon jak ryba śnięta / skrzynka na listy dla serca pułapka / ...jęk na okrągło / samotność bez Boga), it is quite obvious that it is in the second meaning that the phrase is used in the text. Yet being put in the prominent position of the poem’s title it seems to impart to it an additional sense underlying which is the phrase’s literal meaning conveying the image of something rounded or circular. Moreover, in the first line the author speaks about loneliness among people (Samotność pośród ludzi) and in the final one, about loneliness without God (samotność bez Boga); this “solitude”, significantly mentioned twice, at the beginning and the end of the poem, also brings along the image of circularity, of a closed circle which is a well-known symbol of a hopeless situation, which in spite of any efforts remains the same, cf. the Polish idiom with the corresponding inner form koło (kółko) się zamyka “jakieś sytuacje, czynniki wzajemnie się warunkują, uniemożliwiając rozwiązanie problem; sytuacja mimo wielu podjętych działań jest taka, jak na początku” (ibid.)2. And this is how the poet assesses that kind of loneliness: as endless and desperate. Besides, it should be noted that circularity is regarded as a feature of a pagan (or mythical) model of time (Мелетинский 1992: 252–253)3, different from a lineal and directional (and also hopeful) image of time as conceived by Christianity (Леон-Дюфур et al. 1998: 927). In another poem by J. Twardowski, Na słomce, the title corresponds to the prepositional phrase found at another prominent point, the very end of the last line and, correspondingly, the last sentence of the text: Matka Boska mnie trzyma / jak niezdarną bańkę na słomce. At the beginning, the lyrical subject envisages his death at the altar (Przygasnę przy ołtarzu iskierka po iskierce / zostaną tylko buty jak przydeptane serce), and the last line of this short poem expresses, through the simile comparing it with a soap bubble, the dangerously poor 2 Ibid. 3 Элиаде Мирча. Миф о вечном возвращении. Архетипы и повторяемость, пер. с франц. Спб.: Алетея, 1998, 249 с.; Мелетинский Е.М. Время мифическое. – Мифы народов мира. Энциклопедия 1, гл. ред. С.А.Токарев. Москва: Сов. энциклопедия, 1992, С. 252–253. Straipsniai / Articles 143 SERHIY YERMOLENKO condition of the author’s heart (indeed, in the early years of his priesthood J. Twardowski suffered from some obscure yet grave health problem that was never identified (Grzebalkowska 2011: 133)). It will be noted that the phrase na słomce, used within the text as a part of the simile jak niezdarną bańkę na słomce is, in syntactical terms, an adverbial modifier of place within an adverbial modifier of comparison; hence, the phrase belongs to the syntactic and semantic periphery of the last sentence. That is to say, the poet, while comparing himself to a bubble held on the straw by Virgin Mary, reproduces only a peripheral (but supposedly significant) feature of this image in the poem’s title. In doing so, he omits pointing directly not only to himself but also to the object which he compares himself with (a bubble), and verbalizes only where this bubble is found (i.e. a straw). That makes this title doubly indexical, since it is a part of the whole poetic text as well as its fragment expressing a complex image (a straw instead of a bubble on a straw instead of the lyrical subject). In spite of the fact that the poem’s theme is the poet’s condition, its title masks him by putting him, so to say, behind the straw. It may be added that a straw, i.e. a dried cereal stem, is lightweight, fragile, rapidly consumed by fire, and easily moved by the wind, which makes it a perfect metaphoric image of something or somebody equally fragile, vulnerable and perishable. Thus, the title at once hides and profiles the lyrical subject. The same indirect and, so to say, partial naming of the entity within the text-internal world is exemplified by the biblionym Gorętsza od spojrzenia [1, 99]. In the poem it refers to there is a list of the lyrical subject’s wishes, negative and positive, which are expressed by infinitive phrases. At first, he tells what he does not want to be (Żeby nie byc taką czcigodną osobą / ktorej podają parasol / ktorą do Rzymu wysyłają...), then, what he does (Ale byc chlebem / ktory krają / żywicą którą z sosny na kadzidło skrobią / czymś z czego robią radio / żeby choremu przy termometrze śpiewało /... żółtym dla dzieci balonem). Transition from the former to the latter, grammatically manifested by switching from the negative to the affirmative, is also signaled by the double interlinear space. The last among the positive wishes is that of always being a host (i.e. a bread disc used in Communion): // a zawsze hostią małą / gorętszą od spojrzenia / co się zmienia w ofierze. The importance of this wish is again emphasized by double line spacing separating the fragment of the poem containing it (which is also the poem’s last one) from the previous. Accordingly, it is the host that the comparative clause used as the poem’s title describes. Yet it does so indirectly, not naming it but specifying its attribute (“more ardent than the look”) instead. As a result, the focus is shifted from the author’s wishes to the host, which is represented by its property rather than directly. This shift is made still more pronounced by the change of the case form: in the title, the adjective gorętsza is used in the Nominative 144 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms instead of the Instrumental. This focus on the host is consistent with what is said about it in the last line of the poem (co się zmienia w ofierze), expressing the author’s underlying wish of selflessness, self-denial and self-sacrifice for the sake of God, cf.: Tunc Iesus dixit discipulis suis si quis vult post me venire abneget semet ipsum et tollat crucem suam et sequatur me (Matth. 16, 24). Arguably, the comparison of the host with the look in terms of temperature and, metonymically as well as metaphorically, the intensity of emotion (Апресян 1995: 2, 460; Черниш 2003: 129–151, 392) implies that communion with the invisible God by means of sacrifice is more close, important and profound than communion with other people by means of eye contact. Yet there are cases among J. Twardowski’s biblionymikon, too, that are far less clear-cut. For instance, in his poem titled Kochanowskiego przekład psalmow the author enumerates objects, both material and spiritual, which he had possessed in his early years and which he asks the Lord to bring back to him to be taken then to his grave with him. Among these there are ...herbaty gorzkiej łyk w manierce /i umarłego ojca list, / sweter od siostry, matki serce Kochanowskiego przekład psalmów / spalony z Wilczą w czas powstania i wszystko czego życzę innym – a sam niestety nie dostanę and so on [1, 46]. Although Jan Kochanowski’s translation of the Book of Psalms, considered a masterpiece of the Polish literature and a monument of the Polish literary language, is just one of the items on this list, it is significantly mentioned twice in the poem, both in its text and in its title, and in the former, the collocation Kochanowskiego przekład psalmow is repeated in the first line of the second stanza, occupying a fairly salient position within the text structure. Nonetheless, it remains unclear from the text what it is that makes the book so special for the lyrical subject. On the other hand, it can be assumed that it is precisely by mentioning it in the title that the author emphasized the value of the book as compared with his other wishes. There are some other poems as well where the motive for the choice of its part to be used as a title seems unclear indeed, or rather there seems to be no such motive at all. For instance, in the poem Z pliszka siwa [2, 186] the corresponding prepositional phrase with the object denoting the bird white wagtail (Motacilla alba L.) is found in the fragment enumerating things that are being remembered after someone’s death: jak pachniał orzech suszona lawenda / jak wujek kochał ciotkę w pamiętniku / bawił dowcip o kuchni z widokiem na cmentarz / spotkanie we dwoje nad wodą zieloną / z pliszką siwą co pogląda na wysokich nóżkach / nad Narwią zwą ją starą panną młodą. This list is embedded in the author’s reflections upon death and its crucial role in preserving everything that fills life with love and is so ephemeral and transient (as well as trivial and everyday) as life and love themselves. Yet the place occupied by the wagtail in these remembrances is clearly peripheral, this bird merely accompanying and, as it Straipsniai / Articles 145 SERHIY YERMOLENKO were, being a witness of, a date on the river Narew bank. Nonetheless, given the above-mentioned context of embedment, and taking into account J. Twardowski’s well-known Franciscan biophilia (Czernysz, Jermolenko 2000: 12), his love to animals and plants as well as his life-long interest in zoology and botany, and also assuming he had a personal experience associated, however loosely, with wagtails, or some particular wagtail, inhabiting the Narew banks, – with all that taken into consideration, it is exactly the mentioning of the wagtail in the title that imparts to the ornithonym a generalized sense, making this endearingly small bird a symbol of all that death makes immortal. Thus, however insignificant and randomly chosen may the title of this kind appear, yet it is by making a poem’s fragment its title that this fragment is given a meaningful prominence within the whole text of the poem, and it is exactly by its seeming lack of importance that the presence of some deeper sense in it is signaled. Somehow or other, the specific message the title of this kind conveys can be far from evident, a question rather than a statement. For instance, the poem W grudniu [2, 187] tells of seasonal events happening in various months : W marcu przylatują zięby… / w maju mignie wilga jak w niebieskim fartuszku dziewczynka / w październiku czernieją szpaki / w grudniu kocha / podaje nam ręce / na śmierć grzecznie ubrana choinka. So why is it December that is mentioned in the title? Perhaps, primarily because of Christmas, the most important holiday in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar which is celebrated in December and with which the Christmas tree is associated: describing the Christmas tree as loving, reaching towards, and sacrificed for, people clearly makes it resemble Jesus, this resemblance further supported by associations connecting cross with tree due to Greek ξύλον “wood” denoting, as a contextual synonym of σταυρός, the cross that Jesus Christ died on in the New Testament (Acts 5, 30; 10, 39; 13, 29; Galatians 3, 13; 1 Peter 2, 24; see also (Дворецкий 1958: 2, 1147)). But what about the other months? J. Twardowski mentions four of them, two spring ones (March and May), one autumnal (October) and one winter (December), with no summer ones, all of them (except December) witnessing some events in wild birds’ life, so that birds (the chaffinch, the oriole and the starling) are juxtaposed with the fir tree. What does this juxtaposition ‘birds vs. tree’ imply is not immediately evident, at least for me, and is open to dispute. Then again, maybe it was exactly a discussion, making one ponder over the poem and its title that the author had in mind. The previously discussed J. Twardowski’s poetic biblionyms or their components had appellative counterparts of such lexical classes as substantive, adjective or adverb. In J. Twardowski’s biblionymikon, however, there are also synecdochical titles formed by the use of units of other lexical classes. These titles 146 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms also leave the impression of being a random and arbitrary choice, and this impression remains even upon a closer scrutiny. Some of these are formed by the use of the verb, cf. Ryczał [2, 53] or Spojrzał [1, 190], where ryczał and spojrzał are also the words that the respective poems begin with. The first title is motivated fairly clearly: the poem describes the reaction of an unspecified person to the loss of love, the description followed by the lyrical subject’s exhortation (Ryczał na cztery strony że miłość odeszła... głuptasie nie wybrydzaj / wystarczy że przyszła). At the same time, deriving a biblionym form of a finite verb form in the past tense not unaccompanied by any other words is rather unusual both grammatically and stylistically, as if the author, looking for a (synecdochical) title but not especially preoccupied with his task, indeed used the word solely because it happened to be the first one met in the text. The second title repeats the first word of the poem which is also its first line. Besides, it is also one of the four verbal predicates found in the text, clearly referring to the same ellipted subject which should be construed as Jezus, as the line stanął w kącie załamał odjęte z krzyża ręce makes especially evident. The text of this poem tells about Jesus Christ who, looking at the finely decorated interior of a church, thinks that all of it is perhaps not for Him (i pomyślał / chyba to wszystko nie dla mnie). So, the title represents a peripheral part of the poem’s theme (as understood in the functional sentence perspective framework), which is a church seen by Christ and which is then contrasted with the poem’s rheme, Christ’s judgment. Still there may be more to it than peripheral motivation and ungrammatical formation. Another interpretation of this title seems possible, relating the act of looking performed by Jesus in a church to the well-known (in Poland as well as elsewhere) Christian concept and image of the Eye of Providence (or the all-seeing eye of God) usually depicted as an eye surrounded by a glory and enclosed in a triangle (Oko opatrzności 2014). In this case the meaning implied by the title would be something like “God keeps watching and seeing everything”, thus reminding the reader to try and see everything, including ecclesiastical matters, as He sees it. The poem Sześć listków containing a numeral in its title tells about a man in suicidal despair so deep that everything seems black to him. Yet this vision of his is not true, which is proven by the herb przyłaszczka “hepatica” coming to him and showing him under his nose its six blue petals. So the content of the poem is based upon color symbolism, the contrast between black and blue expressing the opposition of despair and hope. With hepatica represented as the carrier of the blue color of hope, it would have been natural if the biblionym which mentioned its petals had mentioned their color as well rather than their number. Yet it is the opposite, number rather than color, that the title highlights. Presumably, for the author the number of hepatica’s petals was in itself Straipsniai / Articles 147 SERHIY YERMOLENKO equally important, cf. in this respect his poem Pisze (Piszę to co widzę niczego nie zmysłam...[2, 188] ), where he points out, among other facts, about plants and animals, that daisy sometimes has ninety eight petals. What is more, it is also possible that in the poet’s view, this number of hepatica’s petals, too, is a symbol of hope – otherwise why should he have made a special mention of it in the title of a poem speaking of despair and hope. Some of J. Twardowski’s biblionyms derive from pronouns of various types. For instance, of titles formed by using personal pronouns referring to Jesus Christ, Ty (later changed for Kaznodzieja [1, 158]) is synecdochical, the pronoun then reappearing at the very beginning of the first line (Ty co nie zbawiasz dusz prośniętych słowami). So is Z Tobą [1, 136], whereas in On [2, 102] and Porzucili wszystko i poszli za nim [2, 373] the pronoun only occurs in the title. There are pronominal titles of other kinds as well, such as two biblionyms containing the relative pronoun który with an omitted antecedent, Który [1, 214] and Ktory stwarzasz jagody [1, 331]. In the latter poem, the clause underlying the title is repeated in the first line following the pronoun Ty, whereas in the former, the antecedent remains implicit (Który stworzyłeś / pasikonika jak szmaragd z oczami na przednich nogach...). In both cases, it is the Lord whom the poet addresses in his meditation or appeal, and in the texts of both poems który introduces the attributive clause in which some of the Lord’s creatures (living ones, animals as well as plants, and also some spiritual entities) are enumerated together with some of their distinctive features. In all these titles with pronouns referring to God, either directly or anaphorically, the very scantiness of this indexical representation (which is indication rather than naming) seems to comply with the third of the Decalogue’s ten commandments: “non adsumes nomen Domini Dei tui in vanum nec enim habebit insontem Dominus eum qui adsumps erit nomen Domini Dei sui frustra” [Exodus, 20, 7; Deuteronium 5, 11; cf. aslo Proverbia 30, 9]. At the same time, this modest and even poor way of referring to God by simply indicating Him rather than naming Him with sonorous names is consonant with J. Twardowski’s reiterated desire for a kościół deprived of all decorations, cf., for example, the already cited poem “Spójrzał” or the following lines from the poem “Jak długo” [1, 200]: pokaż się choć na chwilę w kościele – rozebranym do naga ze świecidełek / jak święci co nie mają nic do ukrywania... Significantly, the phrase rozebranym do naga ze świecidełek is syntactically ambiguous in that it can be interpreted as specifying either the kościele or the implicit addressee of the author’s appeal, i.e. Christ, the author wishing both to be bereft of embellishments they don’t need. And this also corresponds to J. Twardowski’s inclination to equally poor, undecorated naming of his own work, this inclination especially manifest in his 148 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms titles formed by using still other types of pronouns as well as other classes of functional, or formal, words (such as conjunctions and particles) are fairly numerous, cf.: A jednak [1, 357], Chociaż [2, 161], Choćby [1, 298], Choćbyś [2, 205], Co potem [2. 126], Czemu [2, 77], Dlaczego [1, 372; 2, 128], Dlatego [1, 231], Gdyby [1, 401], Ile [2, 73], Jakże [1, 442], Jeszcze [1, 351], Jeszcze nie [1, 164], Jeśli [1, 385], Już [2, 130], Kiedy [1, 234; 2, 110], Którędy [1, 215], Który [1, 214], Może [1, 261], Nie [1, 167], Nie tak nie tak [1, 305]. Nie tylko [2, 23], Ta sama [1, 448], Tak [2, 372]. Ten sam [2, 123; 2, 158], Teraz [1, 409], To [2, 192], To samo [1, 289], Tylko [1, 417; 2, 33; 2, 206; 2, 318], Wszystkiego [1, 318; 2, 223]. Some of them are synecdochical, occurring elsewhere in the poem, while others are not. In both cases, however, the reason for their choice as titles seems to be connected, at least partly, with “poorness” as a common feature of the semantic content which they possess in the language system, i.e. outside the particular context of their use, something their standing alone in the title emphasizes. But the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to J. Twardowski’s poetics in general. In his poem “Królewna ze Skępego” he, addressing Virgin Mary of Skępy (the sanctuary he was especially fond of), described his poems in the following way: …wiersze nieśmiale i bose / takie co nie idą jak krytyk za modą / …takie co nie świecą jak szyja ozdobna / za które nie płacą dolarami Nobla [2, 166] (also, emphasizing his unprofessionalism as an author, he would call himself a priest who writes poetry rather than a poet). So his poetics follows one of the three Christian counsels of perfection, that of poverty, as well as Seneca’s dictum Res sacra miser (found on the pediment of the building of the former Warsaw Charitable Society currently housing Archdiocese Charitable Center “Caritas”). Besides, there is another Christian tradition (with some notable parallels in Zen philosophy), which many of J. Twardowski’s titles seem to comply with and which the known paraphrase of Tertullian’s statement (from his “Carne Christi”) succinctly expresses: “Credo quia absurdum” (Credo quia absurdum 2014). In his poem synecdochically and so meagerly named “Jesteś”, J. Twardowski wrote: bo gdzie sensu już nie ma to sens się zaczyna [2, 78]. That explains why there are such titles in J. Twardowski’s biblionymikon that seemingly defy logical explanation, at the same time challenging the reader to undercover the message they presumably hide in accordance with the fundamental principle of their author’s poetics: since God speaks a language which is illogical from the viewpoint of human logic, it is only by means of paradox that we can speak about Him (Czernysz, Jermolenko 2000, 12). With respect to J. Twardowski’s biblionyms, this principle can be formulated in the following way: “Nomino quia absurdum”, their absurdity being a sign of a deeper sense they convey. Straipsniai / Articles 149 SERHIY YERMOLENKO LITERATURE Апресян Юрий 1995: Избранные труды. II. Интегральное описание языка и системная лексикография. Москва: Языки русской культуры. Гальперин Илья 2007: Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. Москва: КомКнига. Горнакова Лариса 2010: Аллюзивный русский поэтоним Лиза. Дисс. на соиск. уч. ст. канд.филол. наук. Иваново. Грайс Герберт 1985: Логика и речевое общение. – Новое в зарубежной лингвистике. В. XVI. Лингвистическая прагматика. Москва: Прогресс, 217–237. Дворецкий Иосиф 1958: Древнегреческо-русский словарь. Москва: Гос. изд. иностр. и нац. слов. Єрмоленко Сергій 2006: Мовне моделювання дійсності і знакова структура мовних одиниць. Київ: Вид. Дім Дм. Бураго. Карпенко Юрій 1975: Назва твору як об’єкт ономастики (переважно на матеріалі творчості Миколи Бажана). – Повідомлення Української ономастичної комісії, 13, 5–10. Леон-Дюфур Ксавье et al. 1998: Словарь библейского богословия. Киев, Москва: Кайрос. Мелетинский Елеазар 1992: Время мифическое. – Мифы народов мира. Энциклопедия. Москва: Советская энциклопедия. Набоков Владимир 1991: Другие берега. Ленинград: Политехника. Подольская Наталья 1988: Словарь русской ономастической терминологии. Москва: Наука. Потебня Александр 1976: Эстетика и поэтика. Москва: Искусство. Фомин Анатолий 20126: Квадратура круга семьи Карениных: об ассоциативном потенциале двух фамилий главной героини романа Л. Н. Толстого. – Вопросы ономастики 2(13), 63–82. Черниш Тетяна 2003: Слов’янська лексика в історико-етимологічному висвітленні. Київ: без видав. Элиаде Мирча 1998: Миф о вечном возвращении. Архетипы и повторяемость. Санкт-Петербург: Алетейя. 150 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms Czernysz Tatiana, Jermolenko Sergiusz 2000: O księdzu który pisze wierszy. – Twardowski Jan. Trzeba iść dalej, czyli spacer biedronki. / Wybór, tłum. na jęz. ukr., wstęp i przypisy Tatiana Czernysz i Sergiusz Jermolenko. – Kraków, Kijów: Kajros, 9–13. Dubisz Stanisław 2004: Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego. Versia 1.0. Warszawa: PWN. Grzebałkowska Magdalena 2011: Ksiądz Paradoks. Biografia Jana Twardowskiego. Kraków: Znak. Kostkiewiczowa Tereza 1976: Tytuł. – Głowiński M., Kostkiewiczowa T., Okopień-Sławińska A., Sławiński J. Słownik terminów literackich. Wrocław etc: Ossolineum, 474. Milewski Tadeusz 1969: Teoria znaku. – Milewski T., Z zagadnień językoznawstwa ogólnego i historycznego. Warszawa: PWN, 7–26. Twardowski Jan 1999: Miłość miłości szuka. Wiersze 1937–1998. Warszawa: PIW; Poznań: Księgarnia Św. Wojciecha. Credo quia absurdum 2014: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum [visited 07.08.2014]. Oko opatrzności 2014: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oko_opatrzności [visited 07.08.2014]. „DROVIŲ IR BASŲ EILĖRAŠČIŲ“ PAVADINIMAI: APIE JANO TVARDOVSKIO NEAIŠKIUS SINEKDOCHINIUS BIBLIONIMUS SANTRAUKA Analizuodamas kunigo Jano Tvardovskio eilėraščių pavadinimus motyvacijos požiūriu, straipsnio autorius daugiausia dėmesio skiria tiems pavadinimams, kurie pakartoja lyg ir nereikšmingą eilėraščio teksto dalį. Vis dėlto tyrimas rodo, kad tokie pavadinimai yra Straipsniai / Articles 151 SERHIY YERMOLENKO integralesnė teksto semantinės struktūros dalis nei išorinis ženklas, jų savotiška stilistika atspindi tam tikras krikščioniškąsias dorybes. Handed in on 28 February 2015. SERHIY YERMOLENKO Ukraine / Україна, 08292, Київська область, місто Буча, вул. Садова, №70/1 Ukraine / Україна, 01001 Київ, вул. Грушевського, №4, Інститут мовознавства ім. О.О.Потебні НАН України [email protected] 152 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXII