Subjectivité poétique, dialogisme et transitivité

Abstract

Poetic subjectivity, dialogism and transitivity. The paper studies the interplay between three key-concepts, subjectivity, dialogism and transitivity, with reference to the recent transformations of the poetic discourse, especially in the context of Romanian postmodernism. Poetry is traditionally considered the most subjective of genres, with subjectivity being perceived as a psychological element, with some philosophical overtones (particularly within Romanticism). Modern theories of enunciation and discourse can shed new light on this presupposition, by revealing the linguistic dimension of the subjective feature. By the same token, subjectivity is revealed as being intimately intertwined with dialogism. Although implicit in any type of discourse (as in Bakhtin’s account), dialogism can also be deliberately emphasized. The paper is concerned with the more explicit dialogization of contemporary poetic discourse. Transitivity pertains to the communicative dimension of poetry. Borrowed by Gheorghe Crăciun from Tudor Vianu, who distinguished between the reflexive and the transitive function of language, transitivity is applied by Crăciun to modern and postmodern poetry. In the corpus of Romanian poetry analysed in this article, the self is being deconstructed and reconstructed on new coordinates and interpersonal and intertextual dialogue is being employed as a means of resistance to ideology and social engineering. In the poem “Without them”, Mariana Marin writes a poetic homage to the German poets in Romania, who have influenced her towards a “committed subjectivity” and away from a neo-Romantic, narcissistic subjectivity. Letiția Ilea grafts reported discourse on her pseudo-confessional poem “A beautiful spring day. In the fields” in order to bring attention to the failure of genuine dialogue and the inner, polyphonic theatricality of the self. Dumitru Crudu in the poem “dimitrie” designs confessional personae for himself and solicits the readers’ empathy, while Ioan Flora, in “Poetry is a document, I said to myself ”, resorts to metapoetry, in search of a new poetics, of a more “truthful” and “just” type.