PDF. - full text - Dunarea de Jos

gets tighter in the process, but this is also contained in the cognitive meaning of ‘vitality’, a
description with which connectors occur across input spaces and manage the projection onto
a blended space. In the two poems about extinction, scaled time and syncopated time are the
effects of time compression. When time in the outer space is compressed in the latter variant
– see MS’s case – a sequential scanning will serve the mentioned poet towards distinguishing
between temporal and atemporal relations in the end. The bias shown by PL, instead, is
towards summary scanning, giving rise to a static scene in a unified final whole. As for
conceptualized death, MS applies the reverse of the relation between vertical elevation and
quantity (going ‘up’ is less, contradicting the typical view that ‘up’ is ‘more of it’), whereas
PL applies vertical descent-and-quantity in reverse (doing ‘down’ is more than ever
anticipated). And this estimation of quantities develops against a qualitative truth: verticality
is a movement upwards which points to divinity, whereas the downward movement leads
the way to darkness (in sus spre Dumnezeu, in jos spre tenebre).
The study of the two poems can persuade the student that a ‘cognitive environment’
signaled by Sperber and Wilson (1986) is by necessity created when audiences assess
arguments and make their judgements (it is our position now, as readers of MS and PL). We
may share a physical environment, but our differences are obvious: we represent the world
differently. Our perceptual and inferential abilities vary. We have different sets of memories.
We possess different belief structures, and so on. Thus, a Romanian’s cognitive environment
would be different from an Englishman’s. What is manifest to one is not manifest to the
other. What phenomena are in our visual field at a particular time may be the same even
though we may not notice them all. In consequence of Sperber and Wilson’s demonstration,
we can discard the catchwords ‘mutual knowledge’ or ‘shared information’ and use instead
the reference to a shared – or not shared – cognitive environment. Thinking of two distinct
persons, Tindale (2004: 22) says: “Insofar as their cognitive environments intersect, then that
intersection is itself a cognitive environment.” Nevertheless, the analysis below will reveal
that for our large communities of Romanians and Britons, respectively, there is no overlap of
cognitive environments.
Both texts display logical sequentiality while opposed action takes place: one self
unwraps (MS) and the other wraps up (PL). The same feeling – sadness – is coupled with
opposed emotion: relief (MS) and puzzlement (PL). The passage we have already alluded to
bears contrary but not contradictory conclusive experiences: SEEING IS KNOWING (line 4 ff
in MS) versus NOT SEEING IS NOT KNOWING (line 3 ff in PL). Hence, the foreseeable
differentiation in foregrounding devices. MS makes salient the gradability of situations as
often as he can, being shocked with (a tendency towards) extremes in lines 5, 9, 12, whereas
PL works out nothing gradable as long as his semantic description stagnates around a zero
of the level recording neither an excess nor a deficit. We will further point out that the zero
of negation prevails with him.
In ancient Greek ‘allegoria’ means ‘other speaking’ and denotes figurative language,
something other than what one says. Do we have an allegory (one and the same) in the two
poems? We answer in the affirmative. MS writes about a man lying on his back. The plot is
that a spider comes and a soul goes, goes up in all probability. In PL the evening comes and a
lying man goes down, or simply goes, according to the title. In MS, the allegory
accommodates a symbol, the ladder. In PL, the allegory is set up between the man, the tree
and Earth, while ‘evening’ is an abstract personification at first, only to melt next into an
allegorical object, the silken sheet. Allegories in the past centuries were suitably turned into
representations in painting. We believe the most ekphrastic components visualising for us
the poetic situation are the ladder and whatever that is which is being drawn over knees and
breast, perhaps a shroud. Again within the allegory, if the concept of ‘symbol’ carries a
quasi-religious revelation of the Infinite, the most eligible candidates for it are the spider’s
thread in MS and the tree in PL. And this interplay of figures can be prolonged. Ultimately,
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