Passive voice in German poetic texts (evidence from I. V. Goethe's poems)

The article is concerned with the problem of the passive constructions’ functions in German poetic texts. Grammar peculiarities of passive constructions and their stylistic facilities realized in German poetic texts are considered in the article. The study revealed that even though passive constructions are stylistically unlabeled they take an active part in the structuring of poetic texts and bring in extra meanings. Combination of structures involving both active and passive voices helps to identify semantic changes found in the poetic text. It is established that in poetic texts the static passive is used more often than the processual passive. It is related to the ability of the past participle to attribute “quality” to poetic texts in the analytical construction. The processual passive appears in the poems with peculiarities of compositional “narration”. In poetic texts, the object of passive constructions is mostly a lyrical subject which remains a semantic center of the poem, even though its perception field narrows.