Polyptoton in Pushkin’s Lyrics

The paper pursues the series of the author's publications demonstrating in practice the principles of the microphilological approach to the text, which is based on the transfer of the research focus from the macro-level (ideological and thematic) to the micro-levels of the text (especially grammatical and phonetic). This article presents interpretations of two Pushkin’s poems (“Cloud” and “Storm”) in the light of grammar – in particular, polyptotone (multi-occurrence). The opposition “nominative case / indirect cases” is used as a prism (for this study, semantic differences between indirect cases are less important than their commonality in opposition to the nominative case), reflecting the development of dramatic movement and the arrangement of characters. For instance, the transition of a noun from the nominative case (for example, clouds in the poem of the same name) to the indirect one often marks the transition from the active region, from the position of the “main character” to the region of “passive”, “subordinate characters” and vice versa (e. g. virgo in the poem “Storm”). The analysis of the alternating case endings of the nouns and personal pronouns in the poems clearly demonstrates how grammar, often functioning as a dynamic spring of a poem, moves from the purely linguistic sphere into the category of strong artistic techniques, enriching both the content plan and the expression plan, allowing you to see how the depth of the content is reflected at the micro-levels of the text.

A. Pushkin, grammar of poetry, microphilological approach to the text, polyptoton