Editor vs. graphomaniac

In recent years, graphomania has rather become a practical problem, not a theoretical one, for both literary critics and aestheticians and editors of publishing houses. Thus, it is very important to identify general features of this phenomenon. First, poetic graphomania appears to be the most frequent, as it does not take a lot of time and effort to create a poem - the main thing is to find a rhyme, not really caring about rhythm and sense. Second, today's graphomaniac is usually a well-educated man, who has graduated from the university, sometimes even with an academic degree. Third, a graphomaniac nowadays does not only create texts, (s)he also tries to publish them, seeking for public recognition as a poet. Moreover, a graphomaniac's text is powerless from the aesthetic point of view; it is stereotyped, secondary and recognisable via its everyday speech cliches and expressions. The article analyses the peculiar features of publishing a manuscript of such an amateur "poetic book", outlining its polyreferential aspects. In the poems, which are arranged chaotically according to their appearance, but without any inner hierarchy, there has been found an emotively charged plot of sinful love with its cadences, rises and falls, sexual and erotic motives, sentimental dramatic effects, metaphysical reflections, commonly intertwined with civil motives, everyday sketches and the author's thoughts. The article shows how the rhymed material can be reorganised in a certain poetic "whole" not with the help of a "poet-compiler", but by an editor. This, however, does not overcome the stereotyped "I-subject" of the poems, who lacks individual features at all text levels - from the title up to the typical, anachronistic character of poetic devices unveiling graphomania. Therefore, when there is enough material (the so-called pile of material), even of bad quality, to make a book of lyrics one needs but one operation: to shift the genre (a semantically meaning form) to the format (according to the rules of the "game").

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