Chapter 2 - Poetic language

Summary

По́шло сло́во любо́вь, ты права́.

Я приду́маю кли́чку ину́ю.

Для тебя́ я весь ми́р, все слова́,

Если хо́чешь, переимену́ю.

Пастернак, «Без назва́ния»

You are right, the word ‘love’ is banal.

I will think up another term.

For you, if you like,

I'll rename the whole world, all the words.

Pasternak, “Without a Name”

In poetry, as in any other kind of speech, our specific words reveal an enormous amount about us. All languages are rich enough to offer multiple ways of expressing the same sentiment. The poet, it has been claimed, chooses “the best words in the best order.” But what are the “best words”? Since there is no litmus test to determine whether a given word is worthy or unworthy, poets must determine for themselves what vocabulary is appropriate for what work. The results vary widely, depending on the era, the genre, and the personal taste of the individual.

Lexicon

With the advent of secular poetry in Russia, the need for a distinct poetic language became imperative. One of Lomonosov's seminal ideas was to apply the classical notion of three styles (high, middle, low) to the Russian literary language. Since Lomonosov felt that poetic language should be maximally differentiated from spoken language, he gave pride of place to the high style, which was based on words borrowed from Church Slavonic (the Russian recension of Old Church Slavonic, a written language devised in the ninth century in order to translate liturgical texts from Greek).