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Dimensions of Iconicity
Edited by Angelika Zirker, Matthias Bauer, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 15] 2017
► pp. 119–134

The ocean of surging emotion

The iconic representation of Symbolist transcendence in the poem “Feather Grass” by Konstantin Bal’mont

| University of Hawaii

This article explores how Symbolist cognitive poetics governs links between the form of the poem and the visual and non-visual imagery pertaining to spiritual transcendence. It investigates how this experience is iconically represented via the blending of human and water ontologies in the poem “Feather Grass” (1895) by the Russian Symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont. The emergent structure of this blend, observed throughout Bal'mont’s poetry, points to flux and permeability of the human emotional terrain, including emotional memory. The blend consistently maps the transition from the earthly to the spiritual as a continuous fluid transmutation or liquescence (Kostetskaya 2015: 413). It facilitates the dissolution of various boundaries and the removal of the central Symbolist duality of realia (concrete reality) versus realiora (the true reality of the innermost and supra-material spheres). The liquescence of emotional fabric manifests itself across various features of the poem, such as prosody, rhyme, sound pattern and repetition. The structure of the poem blends various liquescent topologies in order to render non-representational sensations associated with the evocation of emotional memory: it is circular, reminiscent of rings formed on a water surface when a stone is thrown in; simultaneously, it is vertical representing the dynamics of sinking and rising; it also evokes the idea of water as a prototypical mirror.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The poem
  • 3.From emotion to iconicity via blending of the senses
  • 4.Phonetic, semantic and prosodic features of the poem
  • 5.The structure of the poem
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.15.07kos
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