Human consciousness and poetic meanings

Abstract

There are different interpretations of the concept of meaning. For example, we speak of the meaning of the world and the meaning of life. We question the meaning of certain things and human deeds. For a human being, there is meaning both in the world around and in himself. In this article we focus on the phenomenon of the meaningfulness of poetic works for human consciousness. We show that poetic meanings are involved in creating the poetic world for human consciousness. Also, we study the relation between poetic image and consciousness. Our purpose is to analyse the work of poetry as a special phenomenon of consciousness and as a complex intentional object.

The subject of our research is poetic work. We consider it in the context of the poetic world and analyse such important conditions of its existence as narrator, protagonist and poetic image. We show that poetic image as a special phenomenon, which is constituted both by the author's and the reader's consciousness, has an important and often the main role to play in the being of a poetic work. Consciousness acts in the poetic world and its action with poetic meaning is actually the action of thought. Consciousness exercises its dwelling in the poetic world and develops certain skills of action in this world while staying in it.

We use phenomenological methods in the analysis of poetic work and view it as a complex system of meanings that shapes up in consciousness. Consciousness is considered as a stream, after the manner of Edmund Husserl and William James. It is an autopoetic stream that builds itself and develops in time. According to this model of consciousness, the meanings are analysed as reflective units of this stream, whereas poetic meanings - as a type of meanings in general.

The reader acquaints himself with the work line by line and thus complex systems of the work's meanings build up while the flow of the reader's consciousness runs; separate meanings intertwine with the stream and exist in it for a certain period of time. There are meanings that exist in the stream only for a moment and those more constant, made relatively more stable and lasting by the attention paid to them. According to the developing subordination, some meanings get hold over others, while poetic images are also divided in subjected and subjecting. The whole idea of the work is revealed only after the reader has finished reading the work.

Social meanings, perceived by the reader, as well as personal meanings, intertwine closely in consciousness and make one integral whole, thus defining one's personality. The world of one's life, as well as the poetic, scientific, musical and art worlds - all the worlds which coexist in human society and for humans - become personality determinants. A person always has a unique “biographic situation” and disposes of its own unique set of meanings and images, and also makes complex systems of these meanings and images, conceptualising the world. The poetic world is partly intersubjective and partly socialised, though also partly unique and deeply intimate for every single person; however, in both these aspects of its existence the poetic world is personality-forming. While apprehending this world a person constitutes it anew in his/her consciousness. The constructivist point of view on the poetic world seems reasonable to hold to since such world would not exist without being recreated anew in the consciousness of each reader. That said, the reader's consciousness acts in this world as if it was already there and given, and the acts constituting this world themselves are usually not reflected in the reader's mind.

We demonstrate that to exist in the poetic world - or, for that matter, in the world of life - consciousness should be involved, engaged and finally grounded. To be in the poetic world is not a common situation for consciousness, and it demands a certain creative state of mind, relinquishment from other worlds and from the world of life as well. Being in the poetic world is a boundary situation characterized by a lack of stability as well as by instability of the reader’s consciousness. In everyday life, dealing with ordinary things along with thoughts, meanings and images of the ordinary environment, consciousness moves along well-known paths which stabilize it; whereas poetic creativity, co-creativity with the author, on the other hand, brings consciousness to instability and unbalance. In everyday life people not only act but also think according to the patterns accumulated in their minds, and their thought moves along the well-trodden paths and is guided by common sense. To be in the poetic world it is necessary to relinquish from the world of everyday life, for the laws of the poetic world not only differ from those of the world of life, but often are at odds with them, and since common sense becomes useless, some other way to find your way in the poetic world is required. Each empirical person can demonstrate a different extent of involvement in the poetic world through his/her biography.

We examine such concepts as narrator and protagonist from the phenomenological point of view. For the first time, we prove that the narrator is a unique author’s model of a creative person. We also demonstrate such qualities of poetic image as constant becoming and a certain kind of veracity and facticity: the veracity of poetic image is the veracious depiction of the facts of the author’s inner life. For the first time, we show that a shift of meaning, which points to its special facticity, is always peculiar to poetic image and is always perceptible to the reader.