THE SYNTAX OF RUSSIAN PALINDROMES: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

This article comments on the grammar specificity of long palindromic poems written in Russian in the 20th century. It suggests a possible approach to the comprehensive examination of the elements that determine their syntax, with particular attention given to rhythm, rhyme, strophic characteristics, parallelism, symmetry, and their interaction. The work insists on the necessity of studying and classifying syntaxemes both paradigmatically and in regard to their position in each palindromic line considered separately. Until now scholars have not been interested in detailed investigations of the syntactic possibilities for long palindromic poems. The work also includes an analysis of the poem Ukol Bloku by Boris Goldstein and characterizes repeated syntactic strategies as among the most important of the authorʼs poetic techniques. Special attention is given to the methods that determine the composition of the text and may tell a lot about palindrome genesis in general.