The Text’s Visual Features in the E. Mnatsakanova’s Book «Steps and Sights»

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of visual and graphic features of the E. A. Mnatsakanova’s texts in the book “Steps and Sighs” published in Vienna in 1982. The relevance of studying visual poetry is substantiated. A brief review of articles and dissertations, which highlight the work of the poetess, is given. At the same time, a significant gap was revealed in the study of her work - the poorly studied visual aspect in the presence of a layer of works in which the visual-auditory nature of poetry by E. A. Mnatsakanova was noted, which abandoned the traditional grammatical structure in favor of the traditional musical structure. Two types of visual-graphic techniques are considered that are most clearly manifested in the book “Steps and Sighs” - firstly, the location of the text on the page, among which the following techniques are highlighted: continuous writing of text, dividing the text into several vertical streams, fragmentation, indentation, spaces , holophrastic constructions and, secondly, typeface accidents, within which the use of foreign and uppercase fonts is considered. Comprehensive research methods led to the conclusion that the visual-graphic techniques used by Mnatsakanova are due to the visual-auditory nature of her work and the “stereo-scopic-phonic” thinking of the poetess. Also identified are three functions that the visual-graphic techniques considered by the author of the article perform in the text: organizing the sound structure of the poem with the help of indents, spaces, holophrastic constructions, meaning-forming, i.e. creating additional semantic accentuation using font accentuation and the function of holistic perception of the text, providing the possibility of multidirectional reading (writing solid text, dividing text into several vertical streams).