Article

Name: Enriching meaning though combining multiple languages: polyglot’s approach to poetry

Authors: D. B. Nikulicheva

Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract: The article analyses poetic creativity of the Russian polyglot Willy Melnikov. His poetry illustrates how multiple languages can be used as a tool for creative poetic self-expression. The article does not aim to prove or disprove Melnikov’s proficiency in respective languages, because languages for him have not a communicative, but a creative function. Combining many languages in his poetry, Melnikov attempts to find a new way to transmit verbally the uniqueness of his personal experience. The psycho-physiological specifics of sounds in different languages is of key importance for Melnikov, who claims that being combined different languages impose a harmonizing «synergetic» effect on human beings. Some of his multilingual and macaronic verses are analyzed in this article. The essence of the polyglot’s poetic creativity is traced through the mechanism of verbal synesthemia – the interplay of the sensational and the emotional in sounds of human speech that is deeply felt by polyglots from their early childhood.

Keywords: polyglottery, internal speech, distortion of language norm, contaminations, macaronisms, allusions, interlinguistic associations, verbal synesthemia

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