The well and the wreath: poetics of discoursive immortality

The paper focuses on Mandelstam’s poem of Voronezh period “Ne muchnistoy babochkoy beloy” (NMB). In contrast to intertextual and cultural approaches, the author examines the text on metapoetic plane - as “instrumental metamorphoses” explored by the poet in “Razgovor o Dante”. It is argued that NMB is a literary adaptation of folk lament - a self-reflexive and self-preserving voice. The poem is permeated by implosives and clicks that signify the proximity of voice to irreversible muteness of the deceased, while i/u-modulation performs phonological “differentiation” localizing the speaker within the space of the language. The burial rite represented in the poem is interpreted as “instrumental order” preserve my speech forever that reduces the sounding word to the voiceless sign. The wavering course of the silent cortege reflects phonetical metamorphoses of the poetic speech within that very speech. NMB approaches the Soviet concepts of immortality as it perpetuates the body in its activity. The speaker’s articulatory work forms the space of the language and preserves itself within that space. The speech mimics of the text reproduces the phonosemantic markers of the folk lament, while semiotic transformation of the poetical discourse becomes equivalent to the gesture of immortality.