www.idosr.org Goody ©IDOSR PUBLICATIONS International Digital Organization for Scientific Research. ISSN: 2550-7958. IDOSR JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION AND ENGLISH 5(2) 1-5, 2020.

The Perspective of Poetry Performance in Eastern Europe

Goody, Jack

Department of Media and Communications, Aga Khan University, Pakistan.

ABSTRACT In the second half of the twentieth century, poets and artists in Eastern Europe in particular took up the challenge of reflecting on and investigating the instrumentalization of language for communicative and political-ideological purposes. They did so by drawing attention to the made-ness of language, its materiality and mediality, and by creating performative situations for themselves and their audiences within which possibilities of verbal expression could be tested and acted out. Poetic performance makes the limits of language and speakability tangible. This review work will enlighten us on basic steps taken by the European countries in enhancing poetry performances in and Diaspora. Keywords: Poetry, Eastern Europe, Performance

INTRODUCTION Poetry is a literature that evokes a yam-growing properties, and such magic concentrated imaginative awareness of as they may be thought capable of has experience or a specific emotional retired to do its business upon the human response through language chosen and spirit and not directly upon the natural arranged for its meaning, sound, and world outside. Formally, poetry is rhythm [1]. Poetry is a vast subject, as old recognizable by its greater dependence on as history and older, present wherever at least one more parameter, the line, religion is present, possibly under some than appears in prose composition [5]. definitions the primal and primary form This changes its appearance on the page; of languages themselves [2]. Naturally, and it seems clear that people take their not every tradition or every local or cue from this changed appearance, individual variation can be or need be reading poetry aloud in a very different included, but the article illustrates by voice from their habitual voice, possibly examples of poetry ranging between because, as Ben Jonson said, poetry nursery rhyme and epic. “speaketh somewhat above a mortal Poetry is the other way of using language mouth” [6]. If, as a test of this [3]. Perhaps in some hypothetical description, people are shown poems beginning of things it was the only way of printed as prose, it most often turns out using language or simply was language that they will read the result as prose tout court, prose being the derivative and simply because it looks that way; which is younger rival. Both poetry and language to say that they are no longer guided in are fashionably thought to have belonged their reading by the balance and shift of to ritual in early agricultural societies; the line in relation to the breath as well as and poetry in particular, it has been the syntax [7]. claimed, arose at first in the form of In the socialist states of Eastern Europe, magical spells recited to ensure a good with all of their differences, poetry and harvest [4]. Whatever the truth of this performance are characterized by a hypothesis, it blurs a useful distinction: double sub-culturality [8]. On the one by the time there begins to be a separate hand, they undermine the conventional class of objects called poems, perception of script and words as neutral recognizable as such, these objects are no means, which, on the other hand, was longer much regarded for their possible unacceptable against the cultural-political

1

www.idosr.org Goody backdrop, forcing them into the unofficial been speculated that some features that or partially tolerated cultural scene. distinguish poetry from prose, such as Form in poetry meter, alliteration and kennings, once Poetic form is more flexible in modernist served as memory aids for bards who and post-modernist poetry and continues recited traditional tales [14]. to be less structured than in previous Lyric poetry literary eras [9]. Many modern poets Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic eschew recognizable structures or forms and dramatic poetry, does not attempt to and write in free verse. But poetry tell a story but instead is of a more remains distinguished from prose by its personal nature [15]. Poems in this genre form; some regard for basic formal tend to be shorter, melodic, and structures of poetry will be found in even contemplative. Rather than depicting the best free verse, however much such characters and actions, it portrays the structures may appear to have been poet's own feelings, states of mind, and ignored [10]. Similarly, in the best poetry perceptions. written in classic styles there will be Epic poetry departures from strict form for emphasis Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a or effect. Among major structural major form of narrative literature [16]. elements used in poetry are the line, the This genre is often defined as lengthy stanza or verse paragraph, and larger poems concerning events of a heroic or combinations of stanzas or lines such as important nature to the culture of the cantos. Also sometimes used are broader time. It recounts, in a continuous visual presentations of words and narrative, the life and works of a heroic or calligraphy [11]. These basic units of mythological person or group of persons poetic form are often combined into [17]. Examples of epic poems are Homer's larger structures, called poetic forms or Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the poetic modes (see the following section), Nibelungenlied, Luís de Camões' Os as in the sonnet. Lusíadas, the Cantar de Mio Cid, the Epic In addition to specific forms of poems, of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Valmiki's poetry is often thought of in terms of Ramayana, Ferdowsi's Shahnama, Nizami different genres and subgenres. A poetic (or Nezami)'s Khamse (Five Books), and genre is generally a tradition or the Epic of King Gesar. While the classification of poetry based on the composition of epic poetry, and of long subject matter, style, or other broader poems generally, became less common in literary characteristics [12]. Some the west after the early 20th century, commentators view genres as natural some notable epics have continued to be forms of literature. Others view the study written [1]. of genres as the study of how different Satirical poetry works relate and refer to other works. Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire Narrative poetry [5]. The Romans had a strong tradition of Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that satirical poetry, often written for political tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic purposes. A notable example is the poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is Roman poet Juvenal's satires. The same is often reserved for smaller works, true of the English satirical tradition. John generally with more appeal to human Dryden (a Tory), the first Poet Laureate, interest. Narrative poetry may be the produced in 1682 Mac Flecknoe, subtitled oldest type of poetry [13]. Many scholars "A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, of Homer have concluded that his Iliad T.S." (a reference to Thomas Shadwell) [7]. and Odyssey were composed of Another master of 17th-century English compilations of shorter narrative poems satirical poetry was John Wilmot, 2nd Earl that related individual episodes. Much of Rochester.Satirical poets outside narrative poetry such as Scottish and England include Poland's Ignacy Krasicki, English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic Azerbaijan's Sabir and Portugal's Manuel heroic poems is performance poetry with Maria Barbosa du Bocage [10]. roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has Prose poetry

2

www.idosr.org Goody Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that shows radicalizing the intertwinement of poetics attributes of both prose and poetry [5]. It and politics and intervening into media may be indistinguishable from the micro- space. In contrast to the meta-linguistic story (a.k.a. the "short short story", "flash practices of Moscow Conceptualism, fiction"). While some examples of earlier Slovak conceptualist Ľubomír Ďurček deals prose strike modern readers as poetic, systematically with the contextual prose poetry is commonly regarded as meanings of a single word, such as the having originated in 19th-century France, word truth. He uses the page format as a where its practitioners included Aloysius limited model space, a performance area Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur in miniature. Monogramist T.D‟s works Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé [18]. rather emphasize intimate processes of Since the late 1980s especially, prose writing, whose manipulation of figurative poetry has gained increasing popularity, language changes the word into a material with entire journals, such as The Prose image or spatial object. In his early work, Poem: An International Journal, starting with the first Hungarian Contemporary Haibun Online, and Haibun happening The Lunch [6], Tamás Today devoted to that genre and its Szentjóby styled himself a „poet at the hybrids. Latin American poets of the 20th typewriter.‟ For the Polish neo-avant- century who wrote prose poems include garde artist Andrzej Partum, postcards Octavio Paz and Giannina Braschi [9]. with provocative slogans, which he sent Writing-Reading Performance worldwide, were a form of postal Performance places the poetic text in a performance examining the meaning and situational context of production and weight of words. Thus the addressee and reception [1]. Beyond the printed word, his or her (often very creative) response typographic experiments evolve from a played a key role in Partum‟s postal physical process of writing by hand and actions [7]. It was a part of the producing texts by typewriter, which international Mail Art movement and themselves often gain the status of crucial element of the Poetry Office aesthetic objects [4]. The presentation of founded by Partum in Warsaw in 1971 [8]. poetry by way of poets‟ readings implies a In the works of the artistic duo Dorota further shift from the reception of self- Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė (Young Girl contained works to the perception of Reading Group), collective reading from poetry in performance situations. Poets mobile displays creates a unique seek direct contact with their audience. In experience of community. Yet here his performance for a video camera titled reading the text is not simply transferred Conversation with a Lamp, Andrei to the performative situation; thanks to Monastyrski, one of the founding the installation, its virtual dimension is members of the Collective Actions group, exceeded in the form of material objects reflects on how the concept of strongly engaging the senses [9]. performativity developed from poetry, Audio Gestures retrospectively presenting Russian poets Auditory or phonic poetry can be of the nineteenth and twentieth century‟s understood as a further development of in the situation of a reading performance sound-poetry in that it not only involves [5]. Another prominent approach by many the sound of language and the artists and poets is the focus on freeing transgressive potential of the voice, but language from ideological usurpation. also clearly works with the technical They tried to understand to which degree possibilities of audio recording [10]. One they themselves had unconsciously of the great technological breakthroughs internalized ideology, for instance, as of the 1960s was the personal tape when Dmitri Prigov took on the character recorder, which meant that sounds could of a Soviet militia-man in his readings [5]. not just be recorded, but edited, cut, It is precisely this gesture that Pussy Riot modulated, or mixed [10]. Ladislav Novák cited in their action The Policeman Enters experimented with a tape recorder at the Game in the 53rd minute of the World home before he and other poets, such as Cup final match on 25 July2018, thus

3

www.idosr.org Goody Josef Hiršal or Bohumila Grögerová, negan called this series of actions Active Poetry collaboration with a radio studio in the [14]. During a street action after the north Bohemian town of Liberec in the defeated labour protests of 1976, the late 1960s on a Semester of Experimental group Akademia Ruchu presented the Creation, during which innovative audio assembled crowd with lines of poetry compositions were aired over the course written on banners. The Orange of many months [11]. In the 1980s, the Alternative, on the other hand, played activity of the Latvian artist collective with the political setting by changing one NSRD (Workshop for the Restoration of singular letter in a slogan to mock the Unfelt Feelings), founded by Hardijs prohibition of anti-regime banners. Lediņš and Juris Boiko, was characterised Contemporary artist Liliana Piskorska also by the production of experimental music creates performative acts reclaiming albums and the performance of public space [5]. In this case, however, interdisciplinary actions. In her sound she deals not with the political regime, compositions, Jelena Glazova, a younger but with sexism in language, which also artist from Riga, uses archival recordings mounts considerable resistance. By of Latvian folk songs from 1927, changing male to female endings in wall preserved on wax cylinders, which she graffiti, she draws attention to the need mixes with her own digitally processed for gender-specific adaptation of Polish voice recordings [12]. For Polish artist flexion [10]. In contemporary Russia, Wojciech Bąkowski, the noise of tape and Pavel Arsenev and Roman Osminkin of the cheap music equipment from the 1980s Laboratory of Poetic Actionism from St. are objects of nostalgia, which he Petersburg, or Kirill Medvedev, a Moscow- willingly uses in both stage performances based poet, activist, and front man of the as well as installations [12]. politically engaged rock band Arkady Interventions in Public Space Kots, experiment, increasingly via social Spoken or written word in public space media, with methods and devices aimed confronts poetry with politics and at breaking out of the safe space of art to involves direct sharing of ideas within a intervene directly in society [4]. Damir community or interaction with accidental Avdić, a Bosnian musician, writer, and passers-by [6]. In the 1970s, the critic of post-Yugoslav social reality, exhibition actions of the Zagreb-based works in a similar fashion. Group of Six Artists or the public Language Games interventions of the Bosch+Bosch group Since the emergence of language-based from Subotica practiced what one might art practices in the 1960s, poetry has call poetry of immediate impact [13]. been taken literally as a potential field for Testing the limits of freedom, they used the examination of language as such [15]. the street as an open interactive space to Poetry opens up a horizon for analyzing replace the page of a book or how words act in various contexts and conventional exhibition space. The various media. Language is often performances of Tomislav Gotovacs understood not only as a means of caused a sensation by their bringing of communication and its materiality, but private things into public spaces [9]. On also as a relational and dynamic field [16]. streets and public squares, Gotovac Mladen Stilinović‟s statements often presented his naked body and daily tasks imitate the form of slogans used in like cutting his hair and shaving, politics and marketing [4]. His chief watching television or cleaning. The interest is in language not as a linguistic Polish artist Ewa Partum used letters object, but as a dynamic field for made of white cardboard sold in shops to confronting ideologies. In his work, assemble slogans for the decoration of phrases taken from everyday speech are living and working spaces. She randomly inscribed into a complex matrix of social scattered these letters in both urban and relations. Vlado Martek‟s pre-poetry goes natural spaces, and in this way liberated back to synergy of elementary practices them from their original meaning. She and concrete materials used for writing

4

www.idosr.org Goody conventional poetry by means of explores the relationship between the tautology [11]. Honza Zamojski is an world closed inside the book and the artist who creates his unique world, architectural space of the exhibition. He where pencil sketches, visual poetry and builds visual and poetic narratives the essence of an artist‟s book intertwine without avoiding absurdity, self-irony and with sculptural objects and installations, humour; however, he is sometimes deadly adding up to build inseparable serious and disturbing. combinations [17]. In this way, Zamojski CONCLUSION In the socialist states of Eastern Europe, perception of script and words as neutral with all of their differences, poetry and means, which, on the other hand, was performance are characterized by a unacceptable against the cultural-political double subculturality: on the one hand, backdrop, forcing them into the unofficial they undermine the conventional or partially tolerated cultural scene. REFERENCES 1. "Poetry". Oxford Dictionaries. 10. Kumin, Maxine (2002). Oxford University Press. 2013. "Gymnastics: The Villanelle". In Poetry Literary work in which the Varnes, Kathrine (ed.). An expression of feelings and ideas is Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary given intensity by the use of Poets Celebrate the Diversity of distinctive style and rhythm; Their Art. University of Michigan poems collectively or as a genre of Press. p. 314. literature. 11. Monte, Steven (2000). Invisible 2. Allen, Mike (2005). Dutcher, Roger fences: prose poetry as a genre in (ed.). The alchemy of stars. Science French and American literature. Fiction Poetry Association. pp. 11– University of Nebraska Press. pp. 17. 4–9. 3. Brower, R. and Miner, E. (2014). 12. Perloff, M.(2002). 21st-century Japanese court poetry. Stanford modernism: the new poetics. University Press. pp. 86–92. Blackwell Publishers. p. 2-4. 4. Crisp, P. (2015). Allegory and 13. San, J. E. (2004). Working through symbol – a fundamental the contradictions from cultural opposition?. Language and theory to critical practice. Bucknell Literature. 14 (4): 323–38. University Press. pp. 124–25. 5. Davis, A. and Jenkins, L. (2007). 14. Schafer, J. and Gendolla, P. (2010). The Cambridge companion to Beyond the screen: modernist poetry. Cambridge transformations of literary University Press. pp. 90–96. structures, interfaces and genres. 6. Gayley, C. M. and Young, C. C. Verlag. pp. 16, 391–402. (2015). English Poetry (Reprint 15. Schimmel, Annemarie (2017). ed.). Kessinger Publishing. pp.5 - Mystical Poetry in Islam: The Case 12. of Maulana Jalaladdin Rumi. 7. Kampf, Robert (2010). Reading the Religion & Literature. 20 (1): 67–80. Visual – 17th century poetry and 16. Sheets, George A (2016). The visual culture. GRIN Verlag. pp. 4– Dialect Gloss, Hellenistic Poetics 6. and Livius Andronicus. American 8. Kirk, G. S. (2010). Homer and the Journal of Philology. 102 (1): 58– Oral Tradition (reprint ed.). 78. Cambridge University Press. pp. 17. Wang, Yugen (2004). Shige: The 22–45. Popular Poetics of Regulated Verse. 9. Kuiper, T. (2011). Poetry and T'ang Studies. (22): 81–125. drama literary terms and concepts. Britannica Educational Pub. in association with Rosen Educational Services. p. 51

5