PDF. - full text - Dunarea de Jos

we need to quote an opinion (Crisp, 2005: 329) in which ‘terms’ should be read ‘figures of
speech’: “It is not unusual for terms to display instabilities and reversals of meaning in a
period of semantic change” - and we seem to be spanning such a period now.
If we make a cognitive claim upon these poems, we can start from an explanation
envisaging some everyday form of embodied experience, such as climbing a ladder to get
rescued or to get a reward, and also the experience of making oneself comfortable under a
blanket. The moment metaphorical thinking is activated, the projection of the source domain,
more experientially accessible, occurs onto the target domain. If we consider, however, that
the allegorical meaning is foregrounded rather than the symbolic and the metaphorical,
allegory in the light of human cognition opens up a challenging perspective which probably
accounts for the ‘revival’ of allegory in present-day culture.
3. Ancillary grammar
To us, MS saliently handles the dash and the exclamation mark. The former occurs
once for introducing the rephrasing intention (line 7) and the second time for setting up the
possibility of the double (see Pârvu, 2005: 47) in line 14, with a cognizing I-subject evincing
the split self: the body-like-a-shadow addressing the soul-like-an-alter-ego. The exclamatory
punctuation in line 15 clashes with the hushing message of the onomatopoeia, yet manages
to suggest the passionate drive animating the self. In PL, there is a synecdochically split
body: knees and breast (line 5) and then hands (lines 8 and 10) in a more intimate fusion with
the self being accompanied by the possessive determinative. Both MS and PL place in focus
their last stanzas through their diminished size to two lines and one line, respectively. It is
also worth noting that both poems allow the blank which is silence to reign supreme at the
end.
Additionally, ‘mi se trimite’(line 6) and ‘mi se aruncă’ (line 8) in MS are the Romanian
instances of reflexivity with the zero-agent to be found in English too with ‘it is drawn’ in PL
(line 5). They all represent an option for pointing to a taboo, in a situation in which it is
inappropriate to give a name to the one who saves you or to the one who protectively covers
you.
Another grammatical comment is that in MS the zero article for ‘scară’ in the title
stands out when compared to the same noun with definite determination in lines 7 and 13. It
could be the progression from something unknown and abstract to the familiarity given by
the mentioned daily observations. This progression is recorded in PL in the treatment of the
noun ‘evening’, from the indefinite description of the routine phenomenon (line 1) to
uniqueness of manifestation (line 2). Then we should note that the present tense encroaches
into past time territory in MS and equally in PL. The deictic zero-level of here-and-now
confer a permanent and spatially unlimited perspective to the experience. The vocative (MS,
line 14) is functional in splitting the individuality of the experiencer, while the unanswered
self-turned questions in PL (lines 8, 9, 10) set up a split ego as well. In MS, two cases of
incongruent positioning (lines 6 and 7 with the items ‘şi’ and ‘zic’) are indicative of extreme
emotion which prolongs its defamiliarizing syntactic jumbling of the clauses constituting
lines 9, 10 and 11. In PL, the frequency of negative patterns (lines 2, 3, 6, 9), only one of them
being verbal negation, can trigger an interpretation going through Zero in the direction
shown by Laurence Horn (1989), namely to take negation as a positive assertion about the
existence of a relevant difference. The first form of negation is a rejection of external entities.
Horn says that the fifth form of negation (known as ‘scalar negation’) is the first form, after
all, but it must necessarily be detached, that is used against an absent entity. Since a
recognized absence only exists in contrast to a recalled presence, such a form of negation is
necessarily dependent upon memory. Memory enables what is present to shift attention to a
stimulus that is not present. In reacting to absence, what was previously ground must now
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