More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach
The present paper continues the series of the authors’ publications exploring Jan Twardowski’s diction, in particular, word-play as used in his poems. Creating an integrated approach that is both immanent and transcendent (as defined by G.Harman), the authors rely on observations and generalizati...
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irk-123456789-1848952022-07-31T01:24:18Z More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach Chernysh, T.O. Yermolenko, S.S. The present paper continues the series of the authors’ publications exploring Jan Twardowski’s diction, in particular, word-play as used in his poems. Creating an integrated approach that is both immanent and transcendent (as defined by G.Harman), the authors rely on observations and generalizations they had made while translating Twardowski’s poems and seeking Ukrainian equivalents for his word-play; now they use the latter as a means to verify and assess their explication of the content and inner form of instances of pun in original texts. They analyze these cases in terms of the typology of their structural and semantic features as well as from the viewpoint of the sense-generating role they perform within the context of Twardowski’s religious poetry. Regarding his poetic discourse as a hybrid of two linguistic-cultural codes, the religious and the artistic ones, they show Twardowski’s use of pun to be a reflection and a manifestation of his Christian outlook and artistic mannerism. Involving lexemes and phrases of various kinds, including idioms and components thereof, Twardowski’s word-play mostly concerns their semantics alone, leaving their form intact, so that the contextual clash of superficially similar entities (words as well as their lexical or phraseological semantic variants) that are essentially different and even contrasting in their meaning triggers their generating of new and profound senses. This relation of contextual semantic contrast brings together two or even more items. The underpinnings of Twardowski’s pun can be either purely lyrical and therefore individual, or historical-cultural and generalized, and a specific pun can occupy a more or less prominent and salient place in the general content and inner form of his poetic texts, yet it is invariably consonant with brevity and humour as the invariants of his diction. Typically involving actual and essential relationships between linguistic entities, it is natural, rather than artificial, and also insightful, its very structure reflecting the paradoxical nature of both the world of Twardowski’s poetry and his Christian beliefs. Цією статтею автори продовжують серію своїх публікацій, присвячених особливостям поетичної мови Яна Твардовського, зокрема про гру слів у його творах. У цих дослідженнях вони застосовують інтегрований іманентно-трансцендентальний підхід (за Г. Гартманом), використовуючи матеріал, пов’язаний із передачею відповідних місць в здійснених ними українських перекладах Твардовського, як засіб верифікації й оцінки експлікації змісту і внутрішньої форми цього мовностилістичного явища у відповідних фрагментах оригінальних текстів. Конкретні випадки мовної гри аналізуються авторами з погляду типології їхніх структурно-семантичних особливостей, з одного боку, і в плані смислопороджувальної ролі, яку вони виконують, виступаючи в контексті релігійної поезії Твардовського. Унаслідок розгляду його поетичного дискурсу як спільної реалізації двох мовно-культурних кодів, художньо-літературного і релігійно-конфесіонального, гра слів у цього письменника постає водночас як відбиття і як втілення фундаментальних рис його християнського світогляду і його поетичного стилю. Охоплюючи як слова, так і словосполучення різних типів, у тому числі ідіоми і їхні компоненти, мовна гра, як правило, реалізується Твардовським лише в семантичній площині, не заторкуючи плану вираження останніх, так, що контекстуальне зіткнення зовнішньо подібних, але відмінних за значенням одиниць або їхніх окремих лексико-семантичних чи фразеосемантичних варіантів породжує нові смисли. При цьому такий контекстуальний семантичний контраст може охоплювати дві або й більше одиниць. Підґрунтя мовної гри у Твардовського може мати як індивідуально-ліричний, так і загальніший культурно-історичний характер, а сама ця гра займати більш або менш важливе місце у внутрішній формі і смисловій структурі тексту. Але в кожному разі вона характеризується лапідарністю, простотою й гумором як засадничими рисами поетичної мови Твардовського. Вона головно спирається на риси, які реально пов’язують мовні одиниці, і через це є природною і значущою, самою своєю структурою відображаючи парадоксальний характер поетичного світу Твардовського і його релігійного світобачення. 2020 Article More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach / T.O. Chernysh, S.S. Yermolenko // Мовознавство. — 2020. — № 3. — С. 37-48. — Бібліогр.: 39 назв. — англ. 0027-2833 DOI 10.33190/0027-2833-312-2020-3-002 http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/184895 en Мовознавство Інститут мовознавства ім. О.О. Потебні НАН України |
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DSpace DC |
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The present paper continues the series of the authors’ publications exploring Jan
Twardowski’s diction, in particular, word-play as used in his poems. Creating an integrated
approach that is both immanent and transcendent (as defined by G.Harman), the authors
rely on observations and generalizations they had made while translating Twardowski’s
poems and seeking Ukrainian equivalents for his word-play; now they use the latter as a
means to verify and assess their explication of the content and inner form of instances of
pun in original texts. They analyze these cases in terms of the typology of their structural
and semantic features as well as from the viewpoint of the sense-generating role they perform
within the context of Twardowski’s religious poetry. Regarding his poetic discourse
as a hybrid of two linguistic-cultural codes, the religious and the artistic ones, they show
Twardowski’s use of pun to be a reflection and a manifestation of his Christian outlook
and artistic mannerism. Involving lexemes and phrases of various kinds, including idioms
and components thereof, Twardowski’s word-play mostly concerns their semantics
alone, leaving their form intact, so that the contextual clash of superficially similar entities
(words as well as their lexical or phraseological semantic variants) that are essentially different
and even contrasting in their meaning triggers their generating of new and profound
senses. This relation of contextual semantic contrast brings together two or even more
items. The underpinnings of Twardowski’s pun can be either purely lyrical and therefore
individual, or historical-cultural and generalized, and a specific pun can occupy a more or
less prominent and salient place in the general content and inner form of his poetic texts,
yet it is invariably consonant with brevity and humour as the invariants of his diction. Typically
involving actual and essential relationships between linguistic entities, it is natural,
rather than artificial, and also insightful, its very structure reflecting the paradoxical nature
of both the world of Twardowski’s poetry and his Christian beliefs. |
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Article |
| author |
Chernysh, T.O. Yermolenko, S.S. |
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Chernysh, T.O. Yermolenko, S.S. More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach Мовознавство |
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More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach |
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More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach |
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More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach |
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Інститут мовознавства ім. О.О. Потебні НАН України |
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2020 |
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http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/184895 |
| citation_txt |
More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach / T.O. Chernysh, S.S. Yermolenko // Мовознавство. — 2020. — № 3. — С. 37-48. — Бібліогр.: 39 назв. — англ. |
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ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3 37
© Т. О. CHERNYSH, S. S. YERMOLENKO, 2020
DOI 10.33190/0027-2833-312-2020-3-002
T. O. CHERNYSH
Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
Email: signum70.1@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2761-5617
S. S. YERMOLENKO
O.O.Potebnia Institute of Linguistics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv.
Email: signum70.1@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1340-0444
MORE ON JAN TWARDOWSKI’S WORD-PLAY:
AN IMMANENT-TRANSCENDENT APPROACH
The present paper continues the series of the authors’ publications exploring Jan
Twardowski’s diction, in particular, word-play as used in his poems. Creating an integrat-
ed approach that is both immanent and transcendent (as defined by G.Harman), the authors
rely on observations and generalizations they had made while translating Twardowski’s
poems and seeking Ukrainian equivalents for his word-play; now they use the latter as a
means to verify and assess their explication of the content and inner form of instances of
pun in original texts. They analyze these cases in terms of the typology of their structural
and semantic features as well as from the viewpoint of the sense-generating role they per-
form within the context of Twardowski’s religious poetry. Regarding his poetic discourse
as a hybrid of two linguistic-cultural codes, the religious and the artistic ones, they show
Twardowski’s use of pun to be a reflection and a manifestation of his Christian outlook
and artistic mannerism. Involving lexemes and phrases of various kinds, including idi-
oms and components thereof, Twardowski’s word-play mostly concerns their semantics
alone, leaving their form intact, so that the contextual clash of superficially similar entities
(words as well as their lexical or phraseological semantic variants) that are essentially dif-
ferent and even contrasting in their meaning triggers their generating of new and profound
senses. This relation of contextual semantic contrast brings together two or even more
items. The underpinnings of Twardowski’s pun can be either purely lyrical and therefore
individual, or historical-cultural and generalized, and a specific pun can occupy a more or
less prominent and salient place in the general content and inner form of his poetic texts,
yet it is invariably consonant with brevity and humour as the invariants of his diction. Typ-
ically involving actual and essential relationships between linguistic entities, it is natural,
rather than artificial, and also insightful, its very structure reflecting the paradoxical nature
of both the world of Twardowski’s poetry and his Christian beliefs.
Key words: Jan Twardowski, pun, poetic diction, semantics, Polish.
This paper continues the series of our publications, joint as well as individual,
studying the poetic language of Father Jan Twardowski (1915–2006), a popular
Polish priest and religious poet, in particular, his use of pun (or word-play) [Cher-
nysh, Yermolenko 2010; Chernysh, Yermolenko 2011; Czernysz, Jermolenko;
Yermolenko 2014; Yermolenko 2015; Yermolenko 2016: Yermolenko 2017]; the
38 ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3
Т. О. Chernysh, S. S. Yermolenko
latest of these, our joint presentation «A few words on Priest Jan Twardowski’s
word-play», is to be published in the proceeding of the 2019 Lviv conference
«Polish studies from the perspective of traditions and challenges of our time».
At first, our interest in the diction of Twardowski’s verse was purely practical: in
1997–1999, we translated a number of his poems in Ukrainian, later these trans-
lations together with their Polish originals appeared as a separate volume (Twar-
dowski). Inevitably, and understandably, we dealt with Twardowski’s poems not
only as translators but also as linguists, in that our work of translation was much
influenced as well as helped by our training and experience in the field of linguis-
tic research. At the same time, we couldn’t help noticing that our observations on
the intricacies of the language and style of Twardowski’s poetry, which we had
amassed during that period, had a significance that went beyond the study of this
author’s idiolect, and even language of poetry in general, bearing on some topical
issues in various branches of language theory (such as the relationship between
the semiotic mechanism of pun and some fundamentals of human psyche concern-
ing processing sign information [Chernysh, Yermolenko 2011: 513-514]).
In the present paper, we will continue our analysis of cases of pun found in
Twardowski’s poems. Here, too, as in the previous articles, we will consider them
within the descriptive and comparative framework of an integrated transcend-
ent-immanent approach in terms of G. Harman [Harman : 262–276], using means
of rendering these puns in Ukrainian as an additional tool elucidating their sense
and inner mechanism, and bringing into relief their other essential features. Also,
rather than treating it as a purely ornamental stylistic device whose contextual
value is limited to itself, we will regard word-play as used by Twardowski from
the viewpoint of the semantic structure of a poetic piece as a whole and, corre-
spondingly, of the sense-generating role the pun plays in this structure. In this,
we follow the traditional definition of pun and word-play as given, for instance,
in Oxford English Dictionary: pun ‘the use of a word in such a way as to suggest
two or more meanings or different associations, or the use of two or more words
of the same or nearly the same sound with different meaning, so as to produce
a humorous effect; a play on words’ [OED]; play of words ‘a playing or trifling
with words; the use of words merely or mainly for the purpose of producing a
rhetorical or fantastic effect’; play on or upon words ‘a sportive use of words so
as to convey a double meaning, or produce a fantastic or humorous effect by sim-
ilarity of sound with difference of meaning; a pun’ [ibid.] (cf. also [Taranenko :
37–41; Tymchuk : 12–36; Norman : 12–32]). As a matter of fact, paradoxicality,
which is always implied by pun as its underlying feature, is one of the foundations
of Twardowski’s philosophy of religion; and humour, belonging, along with brev-
ity and simplicity, to the general principles of his poetics [Czernysz, Jermolenko
2000 : 11–13] is, in particular, found in his puns. So, speaking of the rhetorical
value of word-play with respect to Twardowski’s diction, and considering pun as
something more profound and significant than a plaything, it is feasible to use the
term rhetoric in its original and scholarly rather than later, derivative and deteri-
orated common meaning (such as, e.g., Ukrainian риторика (metaph.) ‘superfi-
cially fine but senseless eloquence’ [SUM 8 : 544] or Polish ‘a style of political
propaganda, usually appraised negatively’ [Dubisz]; English rhetoric ‘language
that is used to persuade or influence people, especially language that sounds im-
pressive but is not actually sincere or useful’ [Summers]. It will be remembered,
however, that the origin of rhetoric was related to the emergence of philosophy
[Avierintsev 1979 : 41–81], on one hand, and to democracy with its practice of
publicly arguing the case [Perelman; Sobolevskij : 221–260] and presenting the
actual state-of-affairs, on the other [Gasparov: 27–59]. As S. S. Averintsev pointed
ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3 39
More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach
out, the language of philosophy and philosophical terms were borne from play,
in particular play on words [Avierintsev 1979 : 52]. In broad terms, the view on
Twardowski’s punning as something essential to his poetic language as well as
religious ideas and intuitions he strove to express in his poetry corresponds with
modern understanding of the cultural significance of game in general [Huizinga]
and, more specifically, and especially after L. Wittgenstein’s «Philosophische Un-
tersuchungen» [Vitghenshtayn : 310], the realization of the presence of the ludic
element in human cognitive and communicative activities as well as the impor-
tance of the role it plays therein [Filip : 12–44; Ginter].
In the sense structure of individual poetic texts by Twardowski, however, the
role of a specific pun can be more or less prominent and salient. In some of them,
it is only limited to a short fragment thereof, as is the case with his poem «Piszę»
(Twardowski : 350), where the author mentions, along with several other curious
facts of nature, that in autumn the black alder tree, Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertner,
sheds its leaves while they are still green: olcha czarna liście porzuca zielone
(ibid. : 349). At the same time, however, the wording of this fragment points to
another irregularity, an onomasiological one, between the colour epithet distin-
guishing this species of alder (czarna ‘black’) and the actual colour of its foliage
(zielone ‘green’). Twardowski emphasizes this discrepancy by juxtaposing the
colours in the same line, so that in this case his pun is based on a (surface) dissim-
ilarity rather than similarity: a leaf of the tree called black is nonetheless green.
Yet this discrepancy is felt and identified as such because of the onomasiological
presupposition of similarity motivation (cf. the notion of iconeme in [Grzega,
Schöner : 19]), according to which the object is commonly believed to be named
after its actual feature, and the black alder tree is in actual fact green. This implicit
pun capitalizing on the onomasiologically irregular relationship between the name
and its referent may be regarded as bringing into relief the author’s statement
on his mode of poetic writing expressed in the first line of this poem: Pisze to
co widzę niczego nie zmyślam (Twardowski : ibid.). In Ukrainian, Alnus glutino-
sa is ‘black’ too (чорна вільха, see [SUM 1 : 675], and the similarity motivation
iconeme applies here as well, hence the translation чорна вільха листя скидає
зеленим (Twardowski: 351).
On the other hand, pun can also be the principal feature of the semantic struc-
ture of Twardowski’s poetic text, as is the case of his short poem «Zagapił się»
(Twardowski : 356). Citing some cleric speaking in the church about who belongs
to the Roman Catholic Church, and naming the Pope, the cardinals, Lord’s people
etc., the author (i.e. the real as well as the text-internal subject of discourse) adds
that the speaker so gaped that he failed to notice Lord Jesus entering the church.
As it is evident from this rendering of the poem’s content in English, Twardowski
here puns upon the two meanings of two words sharing the semantic opposition
‘concrete vs. abstract’: kościół 1. ‘a group or community of people of the same
religion or denomination, a group, especially a Christian community’; 2. ‘a build-
ing, a place where Christians go to pray and worship, and where Holy Masses are
celebrated, typically having an altar, a baptistery, stalls, a confessional, and an or-
gan’ [Dubisz]; wchodzić ‘1. enter, come into’; 2. ‘belong, be part of”. The colloca-
tion of these words is repeated twice in the poem, first in a concrete sense and then
in an abstract one. Through this contrasting repetition, Twardowski indicates that,
concentrating on the formal structure of the Church and the hierarchy of its mem-
bers, one tends to overlook the fact that only the actual presence of Jesus as the
Church’s foundation makes it a real and concrete, palpable entity. Since Ukrain-
ian церква and входити have the same pairs of concrete and abstract meanings
[SUM 11: 202; ibid. 1 : 791], literal translation was considered acceptable.
40 ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3
Т. О. Chernysh, S. S. Yermolenko
There is an interesting instance of word-play involving the opposition ‘appel-
lative’ — ‘onomastic’ as well as the suspension thereof in the poem «Nadgrobek»
(Twardowski : 355) telling about pan Guzik (literally ‘Mr Button’) who first mar-
ried pani Pętelka (literally ‘Mrs Buttonhole’) and after her death, her sister. When
they all were dead, the following was written on Mr Guzik’s tombstone: tu leży
pan Guzik między Pętelkami. The combination of these surnames, funny in itself,
also produces a fairly complicated word-play. The Polish surname Guzik seems
to be fairly common (there is a lot of people with this family name on Facebook,
for example), while the surname Pętelka, is, to the best of my knowledge, far less,
if at all, so; as to respective appellative lexemes, they are part of the each other’s
conceptual frame and therefore presuppose each other semantically. At the same
time, in combining those family names in the epitaph of pan Guzik, Twardowski
was alluding to the Polish idiom guzik z pętelką ‘wielkie zero, zupełnie nic’ [Du-
bisz], in its turn related to the autonomous use of guzik with the same meaning.
The remark euf(imistyczne), with which this semantic variant of guzik is supplied
in Polish dictionaries, seems to indicate that it is used in such a way as a substitute
of the rude word of primarily scatological semantics beginning with gu- and also
capable of expressing the meaning of total negation. Arguably, the combination
of guzik with pętelka indicates that the latter meaning came to be associated with
guzik, so that its denotatum, the button, became a symbol of nothingness, and the
buttonhole, the button’s attribute whose form resembles zero, reinforced this sym-
bolic value. Thus, the situation depicted in this poem, including a quaint combina-
tion of surnames in the epitaph, along with its idiomatic underpinning, produces a
grotesque, if not absurdist, image of human existence as something futile, devoid
of meaning and bringing no fruit.
In Ukrainian, there is no idiom with a similar inner form. The Ukrainian for
‘button’, ґудзик, possibly borrowed from Polish [Mel’nychuk 1: 612-613], does
not have a secondary meaning of complete lack of something. L’viv Lexicon reg-
isters, along with ґудзик, also ґузик, whose meaning is ‘nothing’ (the word occur-
ring in the vernacular of senior city dwellers) [Khobzey et al. : 180], yet this is the
only meaning the latter has, so ґузик can be assumed to be a Polish borrowing spe-
cific to Galicia. However, Ukrainian does have idiomatic phrases for ‘nothing’,
namely дірка від (з) бублика as well as не вартий (не варт) виїденого яйця
(вишкварки, дірки з бублика, фунта клоччя, торби січки) [Shyrokov]. In the
collocation дірка від (з) бублика, at least one component, бублик ‘a bagel-like
pastry’, has a correlative family name (Бублик); what’s more, дірка з бублика
denotes, in its literal use, a hollow part of a pastry whose form also resembles
the figure of zero. So the translators found it appropriate to employ the phrase as
the source of surnames to be used as equivalents of Polish Guzik and Pętelka, the
resulting sentence Тут лежить пан Бублик помежи Дірками both evocative of
the underlying idiom and, if taken literally, absurdly grotesque.
To produce its stylistic effect, pun should be unexpected, its very unexpect-
edness preconditioning its rhetoric value. Thus, whatever its significance in the
poetic text’s semantic structure may be, word-play is, of necessity, is its second-
ary feature accompanying the main line of exposition. However, in Twardowski’s
poem «Sacrum» (Twardowski : 342), it is two discrepant meanings of this Lat-
in word as well as the historical relationship between them that are its theme.
Basically, the poem is about a shift which took place in the semantic evolution of
Latin sacrum, which, according to the author, originally meant ‘the hindquarters,
i.e. the best part, of an animal carcass used as a sacrifice’ but later elevated to a
religious sense (Polish sacrum only denotes the sphere of objects, phenomena, or
ideas considered sacral, as different from the sphere of profane things (profanum)
ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3 41
More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach
[Dubisz]). Thus, the contrast between the alleged original, material, and the sec-
ondary, elevated spiritual senses vividly represents the change in understanding
the sacred, connected with the shift from (pagan) myth to (Christian, and before it,
Judaic) theology [Avierintsev 2006 : 473]). It should be added, however, that the
anatomical meaning of Latin sacrum, originally the neuter form of the adjective
sacer, was secondary and obtained by it from the phrase os sacra ‘a sacred bone’,
called so because of the sacrificial use of the corresponding carcass part [Douglas,
Harper; OLD : 1674: Ernout, Meillet : 585-586].
Of several instances of word-play in the poem «Mój Boże», the first is a pun
upon the verb suszyć, which is realized in two subsequent lines in two different
meanings. First, the verb is used in the primary and literal sense ‘to dry up’: pani
co włosy suszyła ręcznikiem (Twardowski : 290); then, it is actualized within the
idiom suszyć głowę (a teraz mężowi w domu suszy włosy), literally meaning ‘to
dry up hair’ and idiomatically, ‘to pester with demands, to ask repeatedly and
annoyingly’ [Dubisz]. The literal meaning of two collocations being practical-
ly the same, this pun is a metaphor expressing a change in attitude from caring
to harassing. Such a change is mentioned here together with other occurrences,
some of which are natural (sikorka co podrosła), while other are less expected
and therefore surprising, yet also quite possible (biskup co zmizerniał). Among
these, there is also oślica która bardziej się dziwi / nie wtedy kiedy mówi ale kiedy
milczy. Here again the author puns upon two meanings, one of which, too, is phra-
seologically bound and refers intertextually to the biblical story of Balaam and his
donkey (Numbers 12 : 23–33), namely, of the donkey being given power to speak
to its master, Balaam, due to its seeing the angel. The Polish bookish idiom (also
used ironically) oślica Balaama denotes a timid and reticent person who suddenly
speaks up [Dubisz]. At the same time, Polish oślica, similarly to its masculine
correlate osioł, is also employed in a secondary sense to indicate a stupid person
[ibid.]. Twardowski superimposes one of these meanings upon the other, clearly
hinting, by means of pun, that with foolish people, garrulousness is the rule rath-
er than the exception. This cross-cutting semantic feature of amazement, found
everywhere in the poem, is also manifested by its title: being a form of address
referring to God and used as such in the penultimate verse (przyszedłem ukląkłem
pytałem mój Boże), Polish mój Boże is also an interjection expressing a wide gam-
ut of emotion, including astonishment, bewilderment etc. [Dubisz], (cf. English
oh my God). Thus, word-play, used three times in this poem and conveying the
feeling of surprise, emphasizes its main idea of the pointlessness of atheism as
expressed in the concluding line: dlaczego jest niewiara skoro wszystko być może.
Among Ukrainian proverbial terms, or winged expressions, of biblical origin,
there, too, is Валаамова ослиця (or Валаамів осел) [SUM 5 : 771] occurring,
albeit not frequently, in texts collected in the GRAK corpus. Ukrainian мій Боже,
too, can be used both in addressing God in one’s prayers and as an interjection (the
inverted variant Боже мій being more common). So, translating the respective
Polish fragments into Ukrainian did not pose any serious problems, since it didn’t
necessitate a search for indirect equivalents, as contrary to rendering lines with
suszyć. Although Ukrainian сушити ‘to dry’ is used in the idiomatic collocation
сушити (собі) голову, the idiomatic meaning of the phrase, despite its similarity
to Polish suszyć głowę, differs from the latter: ‘to rack one’s brain over some-
thing; to constantly worry about something, be obsessed with nagging thoughts
and feelings’ [Shyrokov]. Yet a fairly common way of making female hair curl is
by using hair rollers, or curlers, and in Ukrainian, this process can be described
by the collocation вити волосся на бігуді. At the same time, the Ukrainian verb
вити ‘wave, curl’ is used as a component of the idiomatic phrase вити линви
42 ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3
Т. О. Chernysh, S. S. Yermolenko
(мотузки, вірьовки) ‘to completely control one, making him fulfil one’s wish-
es, intentions etc.’ [Shyrokov], whose meaning is synonymous to that of Polish
suszyć głowę. Therefore the translators used these collocations to render Twar-
dowski’s pun on suszyć: пані що волосся на бігуді вила / а зараз мотузки в’є із
чоловіка (Twardowski : 291).
While bearing upon a central issue of a poem, Twardowski’s pun can simulta-
neously reflect an aspect of this issue. The double relationship of this kind is found
in his poem «Uciekaj» (268). The text of this poem is, in rhetorical terms, an apos-
trophe addressed to «passive abstraction» (abstrakcjo bierna) running away from
man as well as several things pertaining to him, some of these more or less general
ideas (od ludzkich przeżyć / od dowcipu / od nerwów / smutku co szuka przyjaźni
/ wiary na dobranoc) and some quite concrete (od Mickiewicza który chrzcił swo-
je dzieci / w Paryżu wodą z Niemna / od dziewczynki która w lipcu o centymetr
urosła). The list is concluded by an appeal for «passive abstraction» to run away
to where the devil nurtures his young. It seems safe to assume that the addressee
of this apostrophe is a kind of religion that distances itself from the mundane and
profane, and wants to have nothing to do with a real man and his everyday life.
Among items enumerated in the list, there is also God who has a human beard
grown up (uciekaj… od Boga któremu ludzką zapuszczono brodę). What this frag-
ment and the anthropomorphic image of God it contains allude to is, of course, the
problem of the iconography of God the Father and, by extension, the representa-
tion of the sacred (as discussed, for instance, in the treatise «Celestial hierarchy»
by St. (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite) as well as the essence of the Divine.
Usual now, the tradition of depicting God the Father as a majestic old man with a
grey beard is in fact comparatively new and only known beginning from the 10th c.
[Didron : 166–233]. Before that, any such representation was regarded as contrary
to the second commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20, 4–5: «Thou shalt not
make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them», as well as the words of Exo-
dus 33:20 («Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see Me and live»)
and of the Gospel of John 1:18 («No man hath seen God at any time»). These
severe admonitions have nurtured iconoclastic tendencies within the Christianity,
such as radical iconoclastic movement in Byzantium in the 8th and 9th c. as well
as similar views of early Protestants. Beyond these, they have always been con-
sidered something that any sacral representation has to take into account and deal
with [Avierintsev 2006a: 544-547] (cf., e.g., the title and the content of the paper
of the Polish religious artist and art critic T. Boruta «When painting the God, it
is not the God that we paint» [Boruta]). However critical Twardowski’s opinion
on church art and art in church may be (as expressed, for instance, in his poems
‟Spójrzał” and ‟Do Jezusa zmęczonego organami”), in this text he differentiates
a passive and abstract religion from the one of «a God with a human beard», un-
equivocally giving preference to the latter by means of an image representing the
combination of the transcendent and the immanent in the nature of the Divinity.
Coincidentally, his speaking of God as having a human bodily attribute
evokes Polish idioms anthropomorphizing Him, cf.: Ktoś chwycił, złapał itp.
Pana Boga za nogi ‘someone had a great fortune’ [Dubisz] (also registered in
J.Krzyżanowski’s dictionary of proverbs, cf.: Zadowolony, jakby Bozię za nogi
trzymał [Krzyżanowski 1 : 181]; cf. also Pana Boga za nogi, a diabła za rogi
(Chciał złapać Pana Boga za nogi, a złapał diabła za rogi) [ibid.], and especially
złapać Boga za brodę [Smerchko, Smerchko : 171]. The latter phrase is especially
interesting because of its component broda referring it to God; unfortunately, cit-
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More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach
ed by the authors of the article among phraseological items denoting one’s char-
acteristics, it wasn’t supplied with a definition of its specific meaning. Somehow
or other, it may also be assumed that Twardowski implicitly associates the sacral
anthropomorphic depictions of God the Father with the way He is portrayed in
Polish folklore, with ‘beard’ being the tertium comparationis, and by doing so, he
opposes «passive abstraction», which, striving to, so to say, deny God his beard,
i. e. rationalistically deny the presence of the Transcendent in «this world», is ac-
tually playing into the hands of what Apostle Saint John called «the prince of this
world» (John 12: 31, 14: 30, 16: 11).
In both the Ukrainian culture and language, the historical and linguistic con-
notations of a «bearded God» are almost the same as in the Polish: the Orthodox
and Greek Catholic pictorial traditions of God the Father portray Him as a stately
grey-bearded and grey-headed old man, and there is also a Ukrainian idiom (with
several variants) somewhat ironically representing one achieving something high-
ly desirable, extraordinary, or unexpected as ‘catching God’s beard’: вхопити
(впіймати, взяти і т. ін.) Бога за бороду; вхопити щастя за бороду [Shy-
rokov]. Given all this, the translator’s rendering of the fragment in question seems
adequate enough: від Бога якому бороду приробили наче людині (Twardowski
: 269); although the choice of відростили, an exact lexical equivalent of Polish
zapuszczono, would also have been justified. Be it as it may, both translation var-
iants convey, as does the original wording, a (seemingly) derogatory image of a
bearded deity, which, however, represents God not only vividly, but also more
truthfully than «passive abstraction» does (and, in doing so, meliorates, as it were,
the derisive overtone of the underlying idiomatic phrases).
Some of Twardowski’s puns are truly lyrical in their nature in that they can be
interpreted as having a personal background and relating to personal experiences,
such as childhood memories. In his poem «Wyznanie» (Twardowski : 318), he
enumerates several things which hadn’t frightened him: nietoperz / dziadek na
orzechy jak zbój / ulice dłuższe w nocy niż w dzień. Among these, he also men-
tions kiełbasy co się wieszają. Semantically, wieszają się can be understood in two
different ways, since this passive form of the verb wieszać (się) can represent the
both of the latter’s meaningful variants: one of these expresses the primary and
direct meaning ‘to hang’, whereas another denotes the act of hanging as a means
of execution (capital punishment) or suicide [Dubisz], the meaning ‘to be hanged’
only conveyed by the reflexive form of this verb. Smoked sausages are habitually
hung in order to preserve them, in particular, from rodents, and this old habit may
be a source of this word-play (possibly dating back to the time of the author’s
childhood, as there were no refrigerators then), by which hanging sausages are
associated with persons who hung themselves.
At the same time, this pun may, by a somewhat flippant extension, involve the
Christian doctrine position on the issue of self-murder: it should be remembered
that in Catholic theology, suicide is a mortal sin, i.e. something that is terrible, yet,
committed by a sausage, it is certainly not something to be afraid of.
The tradition of preserving smoked and cured meat by hanging is also found
in Ukraine, and the way of killing by hanging, too, is not something unheard of
in this country, and therefore the use of the verb гойдатися ‘to swing’ (in par-
ticular combined with the noun мотузка ‘a rope’) with reference to the act of
hanging is a fairly natural way of the latter’s periphrastic description (cf. a similar
image in the poem of V. Symonenko: І загойдають дерева на вітті апостолів
злочинства і облуд); and yet it seems to us now that ковбаси які загойдалися
на мотузці, while on the whole accurately rendering the general sense of the
44 ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3
Т. О. Chernysh, S. S. Yermolenko
pun, accentuate its implied «fearful» semantic feature more than the culinary one,
causing a slight imbalance of the contrasting meanings.
Far from being a fortuitous and superficial stylistic element, word-play, as
used by Twardowski, is indeed an integral structural part of what may be called
the linguistic picture of his poetic (or text-internal) world. As such, it reflects and
recreates the paradoxical and dialectical nature of this world, in which the sa-
cred pervades the profane, light fights darkness that surrounds it, and sorrow and
unhappiness turn out to be happiness and joy. For example, in the poem «Sześć
listków» (Twardowski : 258), an unspecified character is going to hang himself,
justifying his decision to do so by referring to the fact that it is impossible to live
while everything around him is black (jak żyć — kiedy czarne wszystko). This
statement, however, is declared false by a liverwort flower (Anemone hepatica
triloba), which, running up to him, rubs his nose in its six blue petals (or, as the
author puts it, leaves, possibly because this plant’s flowers appear before its leaves
proper, see [Przylaszczka pospolita]): ale to nieprawda przybiegła przylaszczka
pod nos mu podetknęła sześć niebieskich listków. The Polish adjective czarny, be-
sides denoting the black colour, also expresses the meanings ‘especially disgust-
ing, exceptionally dreadful, inimical, baleful’, ‘ominous, hopeless, pessimistic’,
and ‘gloomy, unbearable, frightful’ [Dubisz]. In disproving the statement about
the alleged universal blackness as contrary to the liverwort petal colour, Twar-
dowski neutralizes the difference between the primary and secondary meanings of
czarny, since what his character implies by using this adjective is, of course, the
negative character of the overall situation rather than the actual colour of the envi-
ronment. In this, the author plays upon the symbolism of the black (cf. [Tolstoy 4:
565–567] underlying the corresponding meaning shift. Rendering it in Ukrainian
didn’t present any problems since the same correlation of primary and second-
ary sense in also found in the adjective Ukrainian чорний [SUM 11 : 352], and
the flower Anemone hepatica triloba in Ukraine, where it is called печіночниця
звичайна, печіночник, and переліска [Pechinochnytsia zvychaina].
In all the instances that we have discussed so far, Twardowski produces pun
by employing linguistic items such as they are, without changing them in order
to be used in word-play. Yet it should be pointed out that there are cases when his
contrasting of different and at the same time similar entities in order to produce a
stylistic effect as well as generate a new sense does involve some prior preparation
in the text of the poem, making possible a subsequent pun, as in the case of the
poem «Arka» (Twardowski : 254). Much of its text is a humoristic description of
beasts aboard Noah’s Ark, including, e. g., a mammoth portrayed as an elephant
who, fearing cold weather, had put on a fur coat: mamut czyli słoń w futrze / ubrał
się ciepło bo myślał że będzie zimno pojutrze). Presenting crows as black on either
side (wrony czarne z każdej strony), he may have punned upon the aforementioned
polysemy of Polish czarny as well as that of strona ‘each of surfaces of a figure,
the right and left sides of something, an edge, a wall; a feature or a cluster thereof
that are possible to distinguish in something, an aspect, a form’ [Dubisz], if only
to suggest that the blackness of crows only characterizes their outer appearance
rather than their other, inner aspects as well. In the end, however, the author men-
tions a male person of senior age who plans to get rid of his spouse by putting her
aboard the Ark for at least a year. To substantiate this plan, the person is ironically
said to look at his wife as at his own little sparrow, this identification of his wife
with a bird pet operating as a hypocritical excuse for making her the Ark’s passen-
ger: patrzy wujek na ciotkę / jak na wróbelka własnego / obmyśla jak ją wpakować
/ choć na rok na Arkę Noego. Underlying the comparison of his wife with a little
sparrow is the fairly common use of wróbelek as a term of endearment: although
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More on Jan Twardowski’s word-play: an immanent-transcendent approach
not registered in the dictionaries which we consulted, instances of wróbelek, in
particular in the Vocative (mój) wróbelku, referring to humans can be found in the
National Corpus of Polish as well as in the internet, cf.: Co robi mój wróbelek, La-
leczko? Czy moje Żywe srebro przypadkiem nie płacze? — Nie, jest w kuchni. The
inner form of wróbelek used in this way can be assumed to prompt such a pun and
with it, the idea of the whole poem with the main point of its content: selfishness
disguised as caring.
The Ukrainian hypocoristic горобчик ‘a little sparrow’, too, can be used as
a simile referring to a person, yet because of the exigencies of rhyming, another
word was chosen by the translators, пташинка literally ‘a little bird; a birdie’,
which, having the same ending as Ukrainian жінка ‘woman, wife’, also meets the
other two requirements in that it denotes a creature that qualifies to be on board
the Ark, and it also can be used as a zoomorphic metaphor for a girl or woman (cf.
[SUM 8 : 380]. Hence the translation: думає чолов’яга про свою любу жінку
впхати б на рік до Ноя й цю ще мою пташинку.
As we have already pointed out, identifying the specific goal and result of
Twardowski’s word-play as well as the very fact of it can sometimes be prob-
lematic. In his poem «Proszę o wiarę» the author starts with kinds of faith he
doesn’t want: …taka z płaczem na ramieniu / taka co liczy gwiazdy a nie widzi
kury / taka jak motyl na jeden dzień (Twardowski : 228). The first description
clearly relates to the more usual expression wypłakać się na ramieniu, cf. also
the idioms płakać, wypłakać się komuś w mankiet, w kamizelkę, w rękaw «make
complaints to someone about one’s grievances» [Dubisz]. This description can be
apophatically construed as a definition of a faith that does not expect God to be
a sympathetic listener, to whom one can air his or her complaints and grievances
in order to receive consolation and succour. At the same time, one might point
out that in Polish there exist the following colloquial idioms z duszą na ramieniu
‘much fearfully, being very afraid’ and mieć duszę na ramieniu ‘to be afraid very
much’ (preserving the word dusza ‘a soul’ in its now obsolete sense of bravery,
courage) [ibid.]. The National Corpus of Polish and the internet demonstrate that
these phrases have variants substituting serce ‘a heart’ for dusza: Syntactically as
well as, partly, lexically, Twardowski’s phrase z płaczem na ramieniu corresponds
to z sercem (duszą) na ramieniu, yet it is not clear how one should interpret this
similarity: should one assume a word-play on the latter involving its partial trans-
formation? If that is the case, does the phrase imply that the author prefers a faith
that would have the fear of God rather than (or along with) tearful complaints
to Him? Or does he simply models his z płaczem na ramieniu upon the usual z
sercem (duszą) na ramieniu with no pun intended? Somehow or other, it is not
immediately self-evident that Twardowski puns upon the latter by coincidentally
alluding to, and modifying, it. So, the translators preferred a cautious variant що
плече для плачу шукає as rendering the most evident sense of the fragment.
Taking into consideration the above, it is not surprising that pun occurs in
Twardowski’s poem irrespective of the «seriousness» of the theme. For instance,
it is found in his poem «Niejedzenie» (Twardowski : 200), which is a text ad-
dressed to Lazarus’ sister Mary, a figure described in the Gospels of Luke (10 :
38–42) and John (11 : 1–12 : 3). Hosting Jesus in their house, Mary chose, ac-
cording to Him, «the good part», sitting at His feet and hearing His word, while
her sister Martha «was cumbered about much serving». In the poem, Mary is
shown as forgetting about the stove and laying the table the moment Jesus came
in (zapomniałaś o piecu, nie nakryłaś stołu) because miłość zaczyna się od nie-
jedzenia, after which, the author ironically describes some victuals (kasza sądzo-
na za rozpacz jak chuda wrona / czosnek jak zęby wiedźmy / z natury nierówne)
46 ISSN 0027-2833. Мовознавство, 2020, № 3
Т. О. Chernysh, S. S. Yermolenko
and kitchen utensils, namely a tea cattle: nieważnym stał się czajnik, inaczej na-
ciągacz. Polish naciągacz is a deverbative substantive formed from the verb na-
ciągnąć and denoting a swindler or a person whose occupation is stringing tennis
racquets [Dubisz], these two meanings deriving from two meanings of naciągnąć,
‘to swindle, manipulate someone’ and ‘to stretch, draw’ respectively [ibid.]. This
verb, however, has other meanings as well, among them ‘to infuse tea’. The in-
strument name naciągacz denoting a teapot as a device for making tea is a quite
grammatical, if non-existent, derivate of this verb; coined by Twardowski to be
used in this poem, it would simultaneously be associated by the reader with the
more usual sense of a swindler, which, in the context of the devaluation of food
and eating, and, consequently, material goods in general, is arguably the effect
the author is after. In other words, the teapot is presented as a failed swindler
(nieważnym stał się czajnik ‘the teapot lost its essential significance’). Ukrainian
натягати, a cognate of the Polish verb, differs, however, from it semantically in
that it can’t denote swindling, and Ukrainian have no nomen instrumenti or agenti
derived from it by the use of the suffix -ач. But the Ukrainian for the teapot spout
is носик, a diminutive of ніс ‘a nose’, and there is a Ukrainian idiom featuring ніс:
лиши́тися (залиши́тися, оста́тися і т. ін.) з но́сом (jokingly) ‘to fail, to get
into trouble’ [Shyrokov] (literally ‘to remain with one’s nose’). To link this phrase,
via носик, to чайник, and so to convey the author’s pun, the translators changed
the idiom’s wording, inserting the adjective полив’яний ‘glazed’ (glaze being a
teapot’s salient feature), so that, rendered in Ukrainian, the line reads as follows:
чайник сам зостався з полив’яним носом.
Summing up: Twardowski’s puns, diverse as they are, generally do not in-
volve changing a linguistic item in order to make it resemble another item, nei-
ther they are made by bringing together words or their forms and parts that are
phonetically identical but otherwise have nothing in common except in a very
special sense, which is produced through word-play. Rather, he plays with actu-
ally related entities, whose similarity is essential and logical, and not superficial.
In other words, he seems not to artificially create his puns but, on the contrary, to
discover them as already existing in the language, and that is why his word-play
is so revealing, insightful, and natural.
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Т. О. ЧЕРНИШ
Інститут філології, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевчен-
ка, Україна
Електронна пошта: signum70.1@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2761-5617
С. С. ЄРМОЛЕНКО
Інститут мовознавства ім. О. О. Потебні НАН України, м. Київ, Україна
Електронна пошта: signum70.1@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1340-0444
ЩЕ РАЗ ПРО ГРУ СЛІВ У ЯНА ТВАРДОВСЬКОГО:
ІМАНЕНТНО-ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНТНИЙ ПІДХІД
Цією статтею автори продовжують серію своїх публікацій, присвячених
особливостям поетичної мови Яна Твардовського, зокрема про гру слів у
його творах. У цих дослідженнях вони застосовують інтегрований іманентно-
трансцендентальний підхід (за Г. Гартманом), використовуючи матеріал,
пов’язаний із передачею відповідних місць в здійснених ними українських
перекладах Твардовського, як засіб верифікації й оцінки експлікації змісту і
внутрішньої форми цього мовностилістичного явища у відповідних фрагментах
оригінальних текстів. Конкретні випадки мовної гри аналізуються авторами з
погляду типології їхніх структурно-семантичних особливостей, з одного боку, і в
плані смислопороджувальної ролі, яку вони виконують, виступаючи в контексті
релігійної поезії Твардовського. Унаслідок розгляду його поетичного дискурсу
як спільної реалізації двох мовно-культурних кодів, художньо-літературного і
релігійно-конфесіонального, гра слів у цього письменника постає водночас як
відбиття і як втілення фундаментальних рис його християнського світогляду і його
поетичного стилю. Охоплюючи як слова, так і словосполучення різних типів, у тому
числі ідіоми і їхні компоненти, мовна гра, як правило, реалізується Твардовським
лише в семантичній площині, не заторкуючи плану вираження останніх, так, що
контекстуальне зіткнення зовнішньо подібних, але відмінних за значенням одиниць
або їхніх окремих лексико-семантичних чи фразеосемантичних варіантів породжує
нові смисли. При цьому такий контекстуальний семантичний контраст може
охоплювати дві або й більше одиниць. Підґрунтя мовної гри у Твардовського може
мати як індивідуально-ліричний, так і загальніший культурно-історичний характер,
а сама ця гра займати більш або менш важливе місце у внутрішній формі і смисловій
структурі тексту. Але в кожному разі вона характеризується лапідарністю, простотою
й гумором як засадничими рисами поетичної мови Твардовського. Вона головно
спирається на риси, які реально пов’язують мовні одиниці, і через це є природною
і значущою, самою своєю структурою відображаючи парадоксальний характер
поетичного світу Твардовського і його релігійного світобачення.
Ключові слова: Ян Твардовський, гра слів, поетична мова, семантика,
польська мова.
Дата надходження до редакції — 25.05.2020
Дата затвердження редакцією — 28.05.2020
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