The Presong by Olga Sedakova through the Intertextual Analysis

O. A. Sedakova, philologist, theologian, translator, teacher, is one of the prominent figures in the modern literature. The author believes that in Sedakova's works intertextuality is highly likely realized both as a principle and a method of her poetics. Thus, Sedakova's lyrics have a high intertextual potential. For now the nature, functions and mechanisms of intertextuality require clarification. It determines the relevance and novelty of our paper. So, the scope of the study is the specifics and functioning of intertextuality in Olga Sedakova's poem The Presong (studying the Homer image). In our research intertextual analysis is based on the developments of R. Dressler, V. Bogrand, V. E. Chernyavskaya and includes elements of I. R. Galperin's theory of textual informativeness, comparative method and motivic analysis. In Sedakova's semantically complicated poem The Presong intertextuality turns out to be a constituent component, forming the image of Homer. Typological and referential links in this poem are presented as allusions; their recognition requires the reader to have developed intertextual competence. There are no precedent phenomena, acting as facts of intertextuality in the The Presong, but only words of everyday language that acquire specificity of an intertextual unit in the poem’s context. Due to the contextual conditionality of the word/image, the poem has a polysemous text. The Homer’s image consists of two motive complexes; we called them "optical" and "Homeric poetics". The "optical" group combines a reference to the Homeric question, several conventional facts about the biographical Homer, as well as elements of Natural philosophy from his poems. The conceptual stratum of the poem is closely related to the factual one: the physical blindness of the ancient poet becomes a marker of Homer’s relation with divine locus. And Homer, endowed with a special vision, turns into an inspirer of the subsequent poetic tradition.

intertextuality, typological intertextuality, referential intertextuality, intertextual analysis, poetics, Homeric poetics, imagery, Homer' image, Homer, Olga Sedakova