Publikacija SEP 2011 - Vilenica

II. A Prioris of Literary Performance
In thinking about literary performance as I see it, let me first define
the foundations, the key a priori determinants of a literary performance;
these depend on historical, sociological, philosophic and other
aspects of how we perceive it. In brief, my way and line of thinking on
literary performance can be summed up in the answers to the following
three questions:
Who
Where
Why
Firstly, it is important to consider who is performing – my interest
lies in the author (only the author’s performance, from the phenomenological
perspective, can express the ontological value of the
performance), which narrows the field of discussion, particularly the
issues of interpretation, but nevertheless, at this point, I am concerned
only with this aspect; secondly, it is important to take into account
where the author is performing, as the location determines the connotations
that the performance carries (including the political connotation);
finally, the purpose of the performance is also relevant: in a true
literary performance, the author performs solely for the public – to
present his or her work, without any particular objective.
III. Performing Poetry Today
Such a heterogeneous, diverse world of poetry as we know today
has never existed before, just like there have never been so many different
types of poetics in the literary arena. Only in the last fifty years has
poetry performance gained such strength and drive that the ways of
performing have gone to unthinkable dimensions, doubtless also owing
to technological development, as, for example, many sound poets
started using tape recorders to manipulate sound. This also means that
the understanding of poetry as such has transformed, changed. The
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