«The revolution of language» by Eugene Jolas: from «Vertical» Poetry to «Vertigral» Communication

The paper addresses the legacy of Eugene Jolas, French-American poet, translator and literary critic, founder of the influential literary magazine transition , which in the 1920-30s integrated diverse movements of the international avant-garde. The authors consider the linguistic and communicative features of Eugene Jolas’ aesthetic theory and poetic practice. Jolas wrote a series of declarations on the «revolution of language», which could be brought to life through the «poetic state of language» and the creation of the «universal language». The two major issues are raised: what were the images of language in Jolas’ works and what does «revolution of language» mean? What was Jolas’ transition from «vertical poetry» to a new perception of creative comprehension between people that he called «vertigralism»? Jolas’ «revolution of language» had philosophical origins, going back conceptually and aesthetically to the so-called «linguistic turn» which began at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries and was a great milestone in the culture of the twentieth century. Being sensitive to the crisis of language, Jolas proclaimed «the revolution of language» which would ideally lead to a reorganisation and revision of the communicative and symbolic functions of language. Jolas’s conception of universal language included emancipation from the utilitarian communicative function, construction of a new communicative model and a multilingual synthesis. Conventionally, semiotic models represent communication as a «horizontal» process of information transfer from sender to receiver. Jolas’ model of new communication presented not a linear way of information transfer but a «vertigral» way of interaction that was based on the violation of connections within the sign system and in a communicative situation, which is determined by the negation of linguistic and communicative conventions. «Vertigral» communication is based on the principle of linguo-creative production of occasional forms and meanings by reviewing formal and semantic links between linguistic units. The paper considers specific linguistic tools used by Jolas to achieve maximum semantic concentration and pragmatic effect of the word by introducing new derivational links, such as «interlingual contamination», reduction of diacritics, using archaic forms, etc.

Keywords

Authors

References