Dar142.Html

IN SLOVAKIA #142 (197)
Mikhail Epstein's projective lexicon
January 15, 2006

This and the next three issues are about personal names and how inventive love is in their formation and lexico-grammatical transformations. About what R. Barth did not say in “Fragments of a Lover’s Speech.” This “article-poem” examines the meaning and form of a love name - and at the same time tries to embody those most tender possibilities of the Russian language that have not yet been fully revealed in it. The Russian language should be proud not of the rudeness of its abusive curses, but of the tenderness of its love spells.

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Love names. Introduction to erotonymy (1)

Michael Epstein

Why is the soul so melodious?
And so few cute names...?
O. Mandelstam

Personal names are naked
the essence of poetry. How
all poetry, they are untranslatable.
U. One

-Kate! - he said, sitting up on the bed, swinging his legs off it. - Katya, what is this! - he said out loud, absolutely sure that she heard him.... - Oh, it doesn’t matter, Katya, - he whispered bitterly and tenderly... But, whispering: “Oh, it doesn’t matter, Katya!” “He immediately realized that no, it didn’t matter that there was no salvation and could not be, and he quietly cried from the pain tearing his chest.”

This four times repeated “Katya” is the last thing that Mitya, the hero of Bunin’s story “Mitya’s Love,” says before committing suicide, which is unbearable, impossible without Katya. With this name he is trying for the last time to curse his fate, “to save his beautiful love in that most beautiful spring world, which so recently was like paradise.”

Love speech, and love itself, is impossible without a proper name. It contains the whole secret of love, its focus on the only one, its inexpressibility - and the need for expression. There is an extensive “fortune-telling” and “charm” - magical literature on the topic of love names, their meaning, compatibility, and “fate.” But there are no analytical studies in the area that could be called erotonymics - the linguistics and poetics of the love name. Roland Barthes' famous book "Fragments of a Lover's Speech" examines various figures and metaphors of love, vocabulary and grammar of love letters, confessions, dreams, and thoughts. It is all the more surprising that there was no place in it for a proper name - the most important figure in love speech. But this speech raves about the name of the beloved, chokes on the approach to him, pronounces it prayerfully or incantally, like the name of a deity.

This article is a kind of introduction to erotonymy, a discipline that arises at the intersection of erotology (the science of love) and anthroponymy (the science of people's names). We will talk about the semantic energies and grammatical transformations of a personal name, as well as its mythical meaning in love discourse. We will try to at least partially fill the thematic gap in Bart's book by focusing on the love game with a personal name, especially since the Russian language provides much more extensive grammatical means for this inspired game than French.

That is why our article has the attribute of another genre - the poem. This is a poem in praise of the Russian language, its endless ingenuity and tenderness in handling a personal name. Unfortunately for the Russian language, its most outstanding feature is considered to be swearing: it is presented as its “trademark”, a kind of worldwide “brand”. But Nabokov also wrote in the afterword to his Russian translation of Lolita that “everything tenderly human (strange as it may seem!), as well as everything peasant, rude, juicy and obscene, comes out in Russian no worse, if not better, than in English." Yes, “oddly enough,” the tender human comes first, and nowhere is it manifested so clearly and audibly as in affectionate addresses, in the endlessly multiplying shades of personal names. This loving richness of the Russian language is the theme of our article, which in places turns into a “poem” - an attempt to voice those most delicate possibilities of the language, which in many ways still remain hidden in its lexical and grammatical structure. Yes, the Russian language historically did not have its own Renaissance, knightly poetry, nature rarely smiled at it with its sensual brilliance... But the whole spectrum of love feelings was organically open to him: from affectionate mockery to passionate divination. To make this possibility clear, linguistics is combined with language creativity. The poem calls out the names that the article explores. These two genres have a common goal: for the Russian language to be perceived as a gentle, sweet, cooing, bewitching, dove language; so that the rude and obscene in him is pushed to the bottom of the language and does not dare to claim supremacy.

1. Proper name as the center and limit of love speech

Perhaps the main sign of love is the absolute uniqueness and irreplaceability of its object, Her or Him. Hence the impossibility of definitions and classifications of the beloved, the impossibility of speech as such, which should gradually fall silent on the approach to the beloved, just as the speech of a believer falls silent before the object of faith, turning into knowing silence, into intelligent ignorance. “For,” writes Dionysius the Areopagite, the founder of “negative”, silent theology, “as we ascend upward, speech is reduced due to the reduction of speculation. So even now, entering into the darkness that exists above the mind, we acquire not laconicism, but complete dumbness and misunderstanding." [1] Both what is believed and what is loved is most deeply known in darkness and silence, through not seeing and not speaking.

However, our theme is not loving silence, but loving speech: at that limit where, having reached the limit of love, it still remains speech, i.e. speaks himself. What words? What words remain the last for love - and are the first to introduce it into the realm of silence?

This question is posed in the book of Roland Barthes, who, without referring to Dionysius the Areopagite, uses, in essence, the method of mystical theology: not adding, but subtracting words. According to Barthes, love discourse is "a language without adjectives. I love another not for his (quantifiable) qualities, but for his existence; thanks to a displacement that you may well call mystical, I love not what he is, but that the fact that it exists ." [2] “With his atopicity (irrelevance, strangeness - M.E.) the other makes the tongue tremble: you cannot talk about him, about him, any sign turns out to be painfully false, painfully tactless; the other cannot be qualified ...” (Barth, 95). The only thing a lover can say about his beloved is that he it is what it is.

"THUS. Endlessly called upon to define the beloved object and suffering from the uncertainties of this definition, the loving subject dreams of a prudence that would force him to accept the other as he is, freed from all adjectives." (Bart, 369)

What is puzzling here is, first of all, Barth's appeal to prudence. It is not prudence that prompts one to abandon the definitions of a loved one, but, on the contrary, that feeling of love excitement, almost mystical ecstasy, which seems to leave no other means of self-expression except the pronouns “you” and “such.” Prudence just encourages you to list and recount: how smart, handsome, kind, generous, sympathetic, gifted, educated, successful, well-loved your chosen one is... Hundreds of adjectives, on the entire scale from pluses to minuses, are the voice of prudence. And to get stuck on “you” and “that” can only be the voice of amazement, going out of your mind. God, I’m going numb, I’m becoming a stutterer, all I can do is repeat: “you, you, you!” And Barth himself, in another fragment of this book, entitled “Amazing!”, emphasizes that the “suchness” of the beloved is born of amazement, i.e. going out of your mind. “Only one trace remains of this linguistic failure: the word “amazing” (the correct translation of “amazing” would be the Latin ipse: it is he, it is himself).” (Barth, 172)" Amazing is what is amazing . Or in other words: I'm crazy about you because you're amazing; I love you because I love you." (Barth, 173)

Indeed, love finds in its object the very best, that which can only be determined through itself. But that is precisely why it can only be designated by its own name - a proper name . What remains for a love discourse that has discarded all adjectives, evaluations, definitions and even pronouns - words that replace a name? Personal name . “We only have the name: Wonderful sound, for a long time” - O. Mandelstam. And Mandelstam’s: “blessed, meaningless word” (“In St. Petersburg we will meet again…”) is applicable to this personal name. A personal name is blissful because it affirms a certain reality of an individual being, and at the same time it is meaningless because it does not contain any meaning or idea. A proper name, as is known, does not have a “concept”, a general concept, but refers only to a single referent, an individual. Ivan can be lovingly comprehended and designated not through “beautifulness,” “cleverness,” “amazingness,” or “suchness,” but only through his “ " Ivanishness ". He is the " most ivanish " creature in the world. Vanya, Vanechka, Ivanushka, Ivanishche!

The words “such” or “amazing”, while remaining general, non-proper, are not at all final in love discourse. As significant words, taken in their exclamatory-ecstatic meaning, as signs of extreme delight, they are applied to inanimate objects and therefore, turning to animate ones and especially loved ones, they bear the stamp of vulgarity and sentimental falsehood. In Russian the exclamation “amazing!” It sounds especially clumsy and evokes not love, but rather gastronomic or theatrical associations. And the attributive pronoun “such”, rather than with admiration, is associated with a sorrowful exclamation: “... and such was the case!” And in general, the pronouns: you , such , the very best - these are just approaches to a personal name, blissfully growing in its love nonsense: You, Natasha, Natasha, Natashechka, Natochka, Tashechka, Natunechka, Tashunechka...

The fact that there are many Natashas in the world and one personal name can refer to different individuals does not take away from its complete individuality the meaning: “this one, and not another, only this one!” After all, it is known that the pronouns “I” or “you”, used by many individuals, do not at all lose their unique correlation with one of them - the one who pronounces it (“I”), or with the one to whom the speech is addressed (“you ", "You"). In the same way, the presence of multiple referents in the names “Ivan” or “Maria” (Ivanov, Mari) does not at all deprive each name of a unique correlation with the one whom it names or to whom it is addressed. In this sense, every personal name, like the pronouns “I” or “you,” with all the breadth of its use, carries within itself a refutation of its generality. Its meaning is entirely determined by the individual to whom it is referred by a given act of speech, the context of use. It is not the common nouns “such” or “amazing” worn out to the point of semantic emptiness, but only the proper name, in all the logically incomprehensible fullness of its meaning, that becomes the mantra of love, its magic spell.

Of course, love goes through different stages, in which many names, including adjectives, can be attached to its object. How unusual! Strange! Funny! Nice! Touching! Smart! Smarter than that! More beautiful than that! Everyone, everyone is smarter and more beautiful! Not in general, but for me. And in general too! How he understands everything! How sensitive! How attentive! So, so, so... well, just the best. Love in its summit proclamation is pure “ipseism”: it is he, himself, no one and nothing but him. The beloved can no longer be defined by a general measure of “pleasantness”, or “sensitivity”, or “handsomeness” - only through himself, through his “sweetness” or “Andreyness”, “Mariness” or “Natasheness”. All that ineffability that is love can express itself most fully in a personal name.

2. Sensual energy and semantic universality of the name.

At the limit of that suffocation at which the love discourse exhausts and falls silent, all that remains is to endlessly repeat: you, Masha, Mashenka, Mashechka, Mashunya, Mashulechka, Mashunechka, Mashichek, Mashichenochka... The name brings us close to the limit of linguistic communication, beyond which it begins communication of a different kind: tactile, gestural, psychosomatic. The name touches the named almost as tangibly as the hand; it easily turns into warmth and trembling, just as potential energy turns into kinetic energy. The personal name is organically combined with a hug, a touch, with all gestures of desire and intimacy. No common names will do here. Stroking your hair, pressing your shoulder, and saying “amazing!”? Or "like this"? - Impossible! Unpronounceable! No, only a name can sound here; it does not alienate the beloved, does not interfere with affection, but, on the contrary, enhances its personal appeal. Touching the shoulder - Masha, Mashenka! - you touch not only the shoulder, but also the whole of Masha: the hand, and the heart, and everything that is most intimate in her. The name seems to pick up the gesture, inspire and round it, spreading its warmth to those depths of the personality that are accustomed to responding to this name. The touch voiced by the name touches the skin from the inside, as if it turns the whole being of the loved one, enhancing the feeling of intimacy and mutual penetration. Human flesh, not sanctified by a word, not caressed by a whisper, is, as it were, not entirely human. What distinguishes human eros from animal sex is precisely the depth of the conversation, which is conducted with lips, fingers, and the whole body. Conditioned, every movement becomes greater than itself; it no longer adheres to the body from the outside, but is directed to the same place where words are directed, to the area of ​​understanding, empathy, response.

Actually, this is the subject of erotonymy: how a word transforms sensuality and is itself transformed by it. For intimacy to be filled with words, lovers must be able to talk. They should have many common topics and points of contact. Then the body will turn out to be a continuous erogenous zone, every point in it will respond to touch and calling. The voiced body becomes all-pervasive; like a sound wave, it passes through all obstacles. This does not mean that intimacy needs verbal conversation. On the contrary, in silence the conversation of the bodies themselves is more audible. A word not spoken by the lips is felt all the more strongly in touches, in hugs and makes them more piercing, hot, as if coming from within. What is important is not the relevance, but the intention of the conversation, the word-forming intention of the body, which is set and supported by half-spoken, barely exhaled words, the rustle of personal names ("...ushenka", "...enechka", "...onechka"...) .

B. Pasternak’s poems can be attributed to this implantation of words into the flesh of a love relationship: “Let’s drop words, Like a garden - amber and zest, Absent-mindedly and generously, Barely, barely, barely.” It is this threefold “barely”, its rhythmic pressure, rapid growth, as if contradicting its meaning of “least”, that indicates the way the word remains in love intimacy. It should sound a little, almost not sound, but voice everything else. Actually, the adverb “slightly” comes from the disappeared verb “slightly” - to smell, to feel. “A little” is a call to sense the least and at the same time awaken sensuality itself, sensitivity, with the least, since it manifests itself precisely in its focus on “a little,” in the ability to feel the least. Such barely audible, barely dropped words, the whole sum of names, pronouns, nicknames, inarticulate mutterings, touching and calling out to the beloved, create a holistic feeling of “semantic-somatic” intimacy, where the word truly becomes flesh, and the flesh becomes the word. In such closeness one can involuntarily hear a hint of the ancient mystical, mysterious connection between word and flesh, akin to love.

Here I would like to refer to the thought of P. A. Florensky about the connection between the word and the seed, the “upper” and “lower” loving outpouring of the personality.

“A person is built polarly, and the upper part of his body, both anatomically and functionally, exactly corresponds to the lower part.... The reproductive system and activity find an exact polar reflection in the vocal system and activity... ...Genital secretions turn out to be homotypic of verbal secretions , which ripen like the first and come out for fertilization. Some of the paradoxical nature of this homotypy will be smoothed out if you take into account that the seed, which seems to be only some drop of liquid, is in fact a highly mysterious entity, an intelligent entity, according to the saying of the ancients , for it carries with it the form, the idea of ​​a living being, carries with it something much smarter than the smartest person can come up with, carries with it both the objective mind of the organism and the subjective mind of its thoughts, and in addition, it is charged with occult energies, the exchange of which constitutes the focus of sexual intercourse. In other words, the seed has its own morpheme, and its own phoneme, and its own sememe: this is a word that establishes genealogical coherence primarily from the human side." [3]

Florensky even generally points out the connection between the morphological structure of the word and the sexual energy of the seed. A name, like a seed, seeks reproduction, self-repetition. Not only the lexical meaning of a word, but also its grammatical form are energetic and sensual in their impact. You, Ira, Irochka, Irushka, Irinka, Irinochka, Ironka, Irunya, Irushechka, Irushenka, Irichek, Irenochek, Irichenochka... And these are not all the names, they could at least be tripled, since all the same formations are possible both without the initial “I” and with the initial “A”. Rina, Rinochka, Rinushka... Arina, Arinochka, Arinushka... A loving soul is melodious, and there are so few sweet names, often just one, and then the soul begins to multiply it, sing it in ever new ways. In this repetition of the name, in its changing morphemes and phonemes, there is the rhythmic persistence of a love feeling, the persistence of prayer, incantation, penetration.

At one time, O. Mandelstam, reflecting on Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” proposed a new discipline - speech reflexology:

“His (Dante’s - M.E.) “reflexology of speech” is amazing - a whole science that has not yet been created about the spontaneous psycho-physiological impact of the word on interlocutors, on those around him and on the speaker himself, as well as the means by which he (Dante) conveys an impulse to speak..., a sudden desire to speak out." [4]

Perhaps, speech reflexology could not find such a fertile object in anything as in a personal name, since it, unlike other components of speech, not only addresses the interlocutor, but also directly names him, i.e. acts with double the force of the coincidence of the object and the addressee. The name resonates in the body of the named, speeds up the heartbeat, causes a rush of blood. Especially if this is an affectionate name, if it is repeated in different ways, sometimes quieter, sometimes louder, it sounds relentlessly. A personal name is a way of energetic interaction between the namer and the named. Moreover, it is difficult to determine in which direction the impact is directed more strongly. It would be possible to carry out a psychophysical experiment: measure the heartbeat frequency of the speaker and the listener at the moment of pronouncing a love name - and we would certainly be convinced of its significant deviation from normal.

One could only argue about whose heart beats the fastest... Most likely, a circulation of energies is taking place. The name of a loved one charges the lover with the power of desire and inspiration; it is as if he begins to speak in “tongues”, the meaning of which is incomprehensible to him and therefore cannot be resolved and calmed in an act of understanding, but causes excitement that overflows in the repetition of the name. The excitement of the namer, who goes through all imaginable names and cannot stop at one, in turn is transmitted to the named, who, as it were, “melts” on these fiery “tongues” of the name, and this wave flows back into the speaker and gives new strength to his speech.

The morphology and reflexology of a name are deeply connected; the grammatical change of a name itself captures the speaker as a sensual act of “ co-name ” with the named. Each suffix has its own psychophysical content, not only in the named one, but also in the naming one. "Irochka", standing on a par with "baby", "swallow", has a different meaning than "Irushka", which is on a par with "ivushka" and "lyubushka". “Irochka” is a childish diminutive, and “Irushka” is native, soft, familiar and homely. I want to pat Ira on the head and caress her, but I want to cling to Irushka and cuddle her. “Irina” is something very small, “little blood”, “egg”, a piece of myself, you are touched by it to the point of pity and awe. “Irunya” is more detached, familiar, familiar, mischievous, as in a teenage game. “Irichek”, “Irichenok” - this is a little boyish, with a hint of same-sex friendship, which can complement loving tenderness. This series of names, passing through the named, each time sculpts him in a new way, calls out of him different creatures, then “ochka”, then “ear”, then “ear”, then “ear”, then “unya”, then “ichek” ", "ichenka", "ichenochka", and with each suffix he becomes a little different, softens, warms up, turns from a solid personality into a flowing wave. The morphology of a name is essentially the formation of the named personality, where each grammatical form corresponds to a new identification. Just as a name grammatically “declines” and passes through a series of suffixal derivatives, so a personality passes through a series of psychophysical states, decreasing and growing, moving away and approaching, changing gender and age, becoming protean, mobile and omnipresent. Such are the charms of a love name: rapidly renewing itself, becoming a supername, the sum of all its derivatives, it turns the beloved into Proteus, because it wants him as Everything, it wants Everything from him...

But above all, for him to remain himself. This is the meaning of a lexically invariable and morphologically variable love name. Remaining the name of this person, it strives to overcome the boundaries of language, to become a touch, a merger, and at the same time to embrace the entire language, to become semantically all-encompassing, a superword that can designate everything. The repetition of a love name can be considered simultaneously both as a sensual-magical mastery of the beloved, and as a semantic mastery of the world through this inexhaustible, endlessly multiplying name. If you listen closely to this sequence: Ira, Irochka, Irushka, Irinka... - then you can hear in it the powerlessness of vocabulary, “definitional” experience, which with each subsequent name tries in vain to explain or at least clarify the meaning of the previous one. Since the name cannot be interpreted, it interprets itself, repeating itself again and again and thereby approaching a certain desired meaning, which is finally posited non-verbally, by a gesture of touching, connecting.

And at the same time, becoming a spell, the name is born into a new infinity of meaning, no longer descriptive and classifying, but pleading and motivating. Repeating itself again and again, it is not reduced to a tautology, since its meaning expands and is transferred to any things and events that acquire the properties of “irinity” or “naughtiness”. Instead of being defined in terms of common nouns, the beloved's own name itself begins to define and rename all things. Let us remember the poem by David Samoilov:

Winters have names.
One of them was called Natalya.
And there was a twinkle in it, a secret,
And cold and blue.

Elena was called winter,
And Martha and Katerina.
And sometimes I spend the winter long
I fell in love and went crazy.

And there were days and snow fell,
Like the warm down of a foggy winter...
And this winter was called Anna,
She was the most beautiful of all.

The name of Anna or Natalya can be given not only to winter, but also to a star, a tree, a house, a window, some dress or sweater, a city, a place where we met, and a day when it was especially good, and the year we met...

Such is the semantic universality of a favorite name. Precisely because the meaning of a name cannot be determined, it itself acquires the power to determine everything by itself. Love is very semiotic and even semiocratic, i.e. not only transforms things into signs, but through these signs he dominates things, appropriates them to himself, casts a spell with them, turns winter into one of the many signifieds of a personal name. According to modern linguistics and its founder Ferdinad de Saussure, each linguistic sign is arbitrarily associated with its signified: in the Russian word “winter” or in the English “winter” there is nothing that would connect them with winter itself, except for the conditional convention of the linguistic community - Russian speakers or English-speaking. From this point of view, a proper name is doubly arbitrary, since it is devoid of motivation from a general idea, a concept. In the name “Katya”, in the set of these letters or sounds, there is no connection with the creature whom it denotes. However, in a love speech, the name loses its arbitrariness precisely because it is universalized, addressed not only to Katya, but to all of Katino: to the winter, to the dress, to the house and city... But Katya’s connection with her dress, house, city , with this winter is far from arbitrary, it is motivated by her entire existence and the entire experience of the lover. Thus, the love name, as it expands semantically and morphologically, becomes a supersign, not only absolutely motivated , but also motivating everything else. Love language, in this sense, is a struggle with the symbolic arbitrariness of language itself, the desire to elevate everything random in it into non-random, predetermined. (More details about this myth-forming properties of a love name will be discussed in the chapter “Naming as Mythology”).

Of course, love is not reduced only to a name, there is a lot of unnameable in it, but when we talk about love discourse, the proper name becomes its center - and the limit that separates the nameable from the unnameable. You can say: dear, dear, beloved, Natasha - and then shut up, because there is nothing more to say. The name is the limit of the expressible in the inexpressible. If for some reason a ban is imposed on the name, if it cannot be pronounced, then love begins to writhe, as if its tongue had been torn out, it is suffocating from the impossibility of sound exhalation. “Words of love, not spoken by me, Burn in my soul and burn me” (K. Balmont. “Words of Love...”, 1900)

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1. Dionysius the Areopagite. Essays. Maxim the Confessor. Interpretations. St. Petersburg, Aletheya, 2002, p. 753.

2. Roland Barthes. Fragments of a lover's speech. Per. from French Victor Lapitsky. M., Ad Marginem, 1999, p. 372. All references to this publication are given below in the text of the article.

3. Chapter “The Magic of the Word,” from the section “Thought and Language” of the large, unfinished work “At the Watersheds of Thought.” Pavel Florensky. Op. in 4 vols., M., Mysl, 1999, v. 3(1), p. 248.

4. O. Mandelstam. Talk about Dante. New York, International Literary Commonwealth, 1971, vol. 2. 404.

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news

1. In the 10th issue of the magazine “Zvezda” (2005), an article by M. Epstein “ Word and Silence in Russian Culture ” was published.

2. In the 6th issue of the journal “Voprosy Literatury” (2005), M. Epstein’s article “ Little Man in a Case: Bashmachkin-Belikov Syndrome ” was published.

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