«В ПРОМЕЖУТКЕ МЕЖ ЗВУКОМ И СЛОВОМ»: АКУСТИЧЕСКАЯ ОБРАЗНОСТЬ ЛИРИКИ Б. АХМАДУЛИНОЙ

Abstract

The article analyzes relations between the sound and the word in the image-bearing system of B. Akhmadulina’s lyrical poetry. Among the acoustic objects in the poetess’ works one may discover sounds of natural environmental phenomena, as those of rain, of dripping water, cock’s crowing, etc., as well as the audible strata of culture (sounds of music, singing, or gramophone play). Meaningfully, the audible natural world is often expressed by either comparing it with music, or metaphorically, associating it with human speech, or, ultimately, with a prophetic or even sacred word. Sounds of everyday life, as the click of an electric switch, or the squeak of an opening door, as a rule, lose their direct material meaning and acquire metaphorical and symbolic connotations. The acoustic background of everyday life in Akhmadulina’s lyrical contents is turned into the «speech» of ordinary objects and can be juxtaposed with the poetess’ word, the poet being responsible to endow space with a voice. Paradoxically, it cannot be achieved by music. For all the high density of Akhmadulina’s musical associations, she seldom describes them, more often than not in the majority of musical fragments there appears «the silent movie effect», when acoustic means of the performed music is represented via its visual analogs, while musical instruments are needed only metaphorically or as means of comparison. Real sounds, those that will acquire actual meaning serve as blood emphatic accents which turn into ‘bleeding speech’. It is only then that the gap between the sound and the word dies away. The process of extracting the sound is hard and almost always painful. Still, that is the only way of overcoming the existing noise which claims the word’s space, and thus saves the object from namelessness. It is only the poet’s living voice that is able to give speech its identity and credibility. It is only by extreme effort that one can give name to the existing matter. Only by saying it aloud can you come into contact with Truth.