Grammatical Parallelism and Its Russian Facet

Abstract

We have learned the suggestive etymology of the terms PROSE and VERSE-the former, oratio prosa < prorsa < proversa 'speech turned straightforward', and the latter, versus 'return'. Hence we must consistently draw all inferences from the obvious fact that on every level of language the essence of poetic artifice consists in recurrent returns. Phonemic features and sequences, both morphologic and lexical, syntactic and phraseological units, when occurring in metrically or strophically corresponding positions, are necessarily subject to the conscious or subconscious questions whether, how far, and in what respect the positionally corresponding entities are mutually similar. Those poetic patterns where certain similarities between successive verbal sequences are compulsory or enjoy a high preference appear to be widespread in the languages of the world, and they are particularly gratifying both for the study of poetic language and for linguistic analysis in general. Such traditional types of canonic parallelism offer us an insight into the various forms of relationship among the different aspects of language and answer the pertinent question: what kindred grammatical or phonological categories may function as equivalent within the given pattern? We can infer that such categories share a common denominator in the linguistic code of the respective speech community. Of these systems the biblical PARATJLETLISMUS MEMBRORUM was the first to attract the attention of Western scholars. In 'The Preliminary Dissertation' to his translation of Isaiah, first published in 1778, Robert Lowth laid down the foundations of a systematic inquiry into the verbal texture of ancient Hebrew poetry, and adopted the term 'parallelism' for poetics: