ABOUT TRANSFORMATIONAL POETICS

The article considers avant-garde poetics as poetics of transformations. In the historical avant-garde it is an appeal to anagramme/metathesis, the palindrome, the acrostic, different ways of the word restructuring, and, finally, invention of one‘s own transrational language (zaum‘) which was in fact the most radical transformation of the common language.

Velimir Khlebnikov, apparently under the influence of these discoveries, conducted a global experiment for the transformation of words, a kind of new word formation. His ideas of „small splitting of words”, „semantic constellations of words”, „free melting” of Slavic words and practical development of these ideas remain relevant and inspiring. V. P. Grigoriev studied these problems extensively.

Neo-avant-garde uses the discoveries of predecessors and adds something new to them. Thus, G. Speshnev builds up huge verbal arrays of paronyms. E. Mnatsakanova uses sequentiality, vocalizing and consonizing verse space almost turning it into a piece of music. A. Al‘chuk creates a chain of new meanings by overflowing of semantically loaded morphemes. V. Sherstyanoi creates meaningful text on the basis of vaguely related words; in addition, he demonstrates transformation of the alphabet itself, reaching the roots of its formation, dividing graphemes into elements and connecting them again. Ry Nikonova and Serge Segay carry out a series of different transformations, taking into consideration the importance of the initial letter of the word, on which Khlebnikov insisted. Thus, transformpoetics gains more and more importance and influence in poetry, conecting modern creative endeavors with creative pursuit of the early 20th century.