Yu. N. Chumakov’s Verse Theory

The article combines a biographical essay on Yu. N. Chumakov’s
scholarly career and a commentary on his book “In the Direction of a Lyrical
Plot”. The book was written late in the scholar’s life and was intended as
a summing up and clarification of those intentions that implicitly underlay all
of his literary studies as well as the particular way of thinking about lyrical poetry that Yuri Nikolayevich seemed to have “always” possessed, long before he
started to write about and analyze poetry.
Chumakov’s first serious involvement in literary studies came rather late
in his life. At the outset, he followed the structuralist method and was greatly
influenced by the publication of Yu. M. Lotman’s first book, “Lectures on
Structural Poetics”. “At the time, structuralism provided me with a language”,
he used to say. Indeed, for a decade or so Chumakov was perceived as, and
in fact, was a structuralist.
However, in his earlier years, during which he had to face and overcome
a lot of challenges, Chumakov had become keenly interested in philosophy and
hermeneutics which remained his utmost priority throughout his life. This interest
did not get in conflict with his passionate love of poetry – on the contrary,
poetry became one of the ways in which he was able to delve into the concepts
of Being and Existence which had become and always remained so vital for
him. It was in those early years that Chumakov had gained a firm idea of what
it meant to understand poetry and what kind of conditions were necessary for
poetry to be understood. One of such conditions was the existence of a subjectsubject
relationship with the text – something that was incompatible with thinking
in oppositions which, in turn, was indispensable for the structuralist approach.
Both of these trends in Chumakov’s intellectual interests found a direct and
theoretically grounded expression in his book. A key feature of this monograph
is its contradictions which are due to the fact that Yuri Nikolayevich was not
satisfied with analyzing a literary text by using just a single method – either
a purely scholarly (and inevitably binary) approach or a purely intuitivist one.
He wanted to combine an academic analysis of a poem which would allow
one to demonstrate a multiplicity of meanings produced by the poetic structure
with an understanding of its “beingness” which, according to Heidegger, would
reveal its true meaning. And, in fact, Chumakov succeeded in achieving such
synthesis in his book where the concept of a lyrical plot is discussed in two different
“languages” and through the use of two different logics. By using the
binary oppositions approach, the author proves both the existence of the lyrical
plot as a conceptual category and its irrationality. By using a different logic,
which may be characterized as a “symmetrical” one and which utilizes analogy
and similarity, Chumakov further explores the meaning of this concept. In doing
so, he likens lyrical poetry to a “point that extends infinitely” which has always
been his way of thinking about it.
The writing style of the book is very condensed. The author intended for the
reader to “follow the references” and independently uncover some of the book’s
theoretical and philosophical premises. As a result, the reader may encounter
certain difficulties in understanding the book which is why the article includes
commentary on some of its theoretical concepts.