American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Synaesthesia and Semiosis: Icon and Logos in Andrej Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev
Author(s): Amy Mandelker
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 158-175
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
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SYNAESTHESIA AND SEMIOSIS: ICON AND

LOGOS IN ANDREJ BELYJ'S GLOSSALOLIJA
AND KOTIK LETAEV

Amy Mandelker, City University of New York Graduate Center

Language is first and foremost sound symbolism.

-Belyj, "Kommentarii," Simvolizm
Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.
-Eco, The Name of the Rose

1. Introduction

"It would be completely perverse to see in Glossalolija [sic!] a theory which

would attempt to prove something to someone. .. To criticize me scientifi-

cally [naucno] is completely senseless" (Belyj, Glossalolija, 1).' Belyj's

defiance of critical discourse and procedures reflects his conviction that
". . .science simply proceeds from one form of ignorance to another: it is
nothing more than a taxonomy of every conceivable kind of ignorance."
("Nauka idet ot neznanija k neznaniju, nauka est' sistematika vsja'eskogo
neznanija" ["Emblematika," 56]). Belyj extends his critique of reason to the
linguistic level: to communicate via scientific or scholarly discourse is to
proceed from the rational, mathematical mode of human intelligence and
to signify via a system of purely referential and conventional word-terms.
While attacking referential, conventional discourse, Belyj valorizes poetic
language, which he sees as a living vestige of the philosopher's language.
Figural language is thus characterized as pre-Babelian, or Edenic, discourse
where the sounds of names are consonant with their referents. The formula-

tion of a dichotomy privileging poetic language over referential discourse

was a common principle in linguistic and poetic theories of the day, expound-

ed in the essays of Potebnja, the Symbolists, Futurists, and Formalists.

Belyj's discourse analysis differs dramatically, even from many of his fellow
Symbolists, in that he insisted that all discourse could and should signify or

function poetically. Belyj's theories of discourse thus transcend linguistic

and poetic concerns; his notion of "sound symbolism" or slovesnaja instrumentovka is simply one model in a series of signifying symbolic systems.
This paper attempts a preliminary evaluation and reformulation of Belyj's
semiotic theories, as outlined in his "Emblematics of Meaning" ("EmblemaSEEJ,

Vol.

34,

No.

(1990)

158

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 159

tika smysla," 1909) and as illustrated in an example of ekphrasis or intermodal intertextuality in Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev.

2. Glossalolija and Linguistic Iconicity: Symbolist Theories of Poetic

Language
From a modern, psycholinguistic perspective, poetic discourse may be described as exploiting the latent synaesthetic properties of language; these
properties are intended by the terms "phonetic symbolism" or "linguistic
iconicity."2 Phonetic symbolism or linguistic iconicity may be defined as an
effect carried by those non-semantic, non-morphological aspects of language

which communicate through affect. The ability of language sounds and

orthography to evoke multimodal associations in speakers and listeners is
considered an example of iconicity, or a natural relationship between the
sign and referent, as opposed to the arbitrary relationship between sign and

referent established by conventional discourse. Belyj's treatise, Glossalolija,

is both an exegesis and exemplification of early theories of linguistic iconicity, developed from a Symbolist perspective into what can only be termed a

semiotics of mysticism. What Belyj accomplishes exegetically in Glossalolija

is related fictively in Kotik Letaev. The two works should thus be read as an
intertextual unit describing the cognitive response to semiotic stimuli.
We might read Glossalolija as a "metaphysics of the sign," the main thesis

of which is that language, like all other phenomena in the physical world,
must not be decoded or employed as a tool of logic or denotation, but
ought rather to be venerated and contemplated as an icon of the divine. To
remain true to his own principle, Belyj attempts to write Glossalolija in
glossolalic discourse. This is sufficient explanation for the dizzying poetic
chaos of the poem, which, Cassedy aptly notes, strikes us "primarily by its
utter madness" ("Belyj the Thinker," 332).

The language of Glossalolija could be considered akin to Russian Futurist

experiments in transsense poetry (zaumnaja poezija). It has been termed a
masterpiece of the so-called "Argonaut" style, defined as: "...a lyrical,
highly metaphorical style that seeks to persuade by other means than
rational argument" (Elsworth, 7). True to the Russian literary tradition, the

genre of Glossalolija cannot be specified, as its problematic subtitle (poema)

insures. Belyj himself, in his 1922 introduction, termed it an improvisation,

and perhaps the musical structure is most apt for the series of themes and
variations rung on etymological changes which illustrate the philosophical

issues discussed. Elsworth has suggested that, "....[Belyj's] attempt to

establish a mode of discourse in which esoteric insights can be conveyed

leads to a situation in which all other forms of communication are precluded." (52) Nonetheless, Glossalolija is not totally incomprehensible and
does include some chapters containing straightforward exposition and clarification. The work is notable for its lyrical reveries in the rhythmical prose

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160 Slavic and East European Journal

style which best exemplifies Belyj's virtuosity, and which he himself felt was

the ultimate achievement of artistic language. Glossalolija thus simultaneously explicates and demonstrates the power of those primary cognitive
processes of iconicity and synaesthesia which enhance semiosis.
Despite its problematic designation as a poema, some generic models for
Glossalolija may be claimed, for example, the tradition of sound dictionaries

(ars rhetorica) begun in Plato's Cratylus and developed in Russian letters by

Lomonosov and by Belyj's contemporaries, Bal'mont and Xlebnikov. In
format Glossalolija resembles nothing so much as the Renaissance emblem
book, which combined a pictorial image with a motto (or mot) and an
explicatio (explanation). That different modes of representation and perception are called upon to interact suggests a form of synaesthesia, or intermodal intertextuality, which is replicated in Glossalolija's occult system of
correspondances between colors, movements, planets, metals, and sounds.
Belyj begins his meditation upon the eurhythmic properties of language
sounds as sketched by Steiner (Outline) with a vision of an armless dancer
with a scarf, Evritmistka. In her dance, Belyj discerns an icon of the human

tongue in articulational contortions, veiled with streams of air beneath the

arched firmament of the oral palate (see Figures 1 and 2). Yet, having
advanced the kinaesthetic theory of phonetic symbolism derived from
Wundt and other adherents of the gestural theory of glottogenesis,3 Belyj
spends surprisingly little space elaborating the eurhythmic "dance of the
vocal organs."
Instead, he proceeds to recount the four days of cosmic evolution as
propounded by anthroposophical doctrine, creating a synaesthetic cosmology based on alchemical associations and the form or shape of letters and
phones. This "lettrist" principle was stated clearly by Agrippa:

r-n o-rK &bar

Figure 1. The eurhythmic gesture. "Haa." The figure on the left is the tongue, the arrows
represent streams of air, the base of the tongue represents the glottis. The figure on the right
enacts or dances the gesture "Haa."

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 161

CTPYJl

rrK-rtr r "

Figure 2. The gesture "R-r-r-r!" The left side of the frame depicts the tongue on the bottom,
the superior arch represents the palate, and the arrows indicate the streams of air. The dancer
on the right enacts the gesture.

certo ordine, numero & figura constantes, non fortuito, nec casu, nec fragili hominum arbitrio

sed divinitus sic disposi tos atq; formatos, quo cum coeleftibus, atq; ipsis divinis corporibus
virtutibusq, consentiant. (107)
[the order, the numbers, and the shapes of letters are not constituted by chance or accident or
by human convention, but are formed divinely so that they are related to and accord with the
heavenly and divine bodies and their virtues.]

The events in the evolution of the cosmos as related by Belyj are enacted
respectively on Saturn, the sun, the moon, and finally earth. Each day, with

its planetary ruler, is also associated with an element (fire, air, water, and
earth, respectively), with a being (archangels, angels, demons, and men),
and with a complex of etymologically, phonically, or orthographically
related words whose semantic nexus suggests the significance of each day.
True to the spiralling course of evolution-which is the basis of anthroposophical belief, and which, as Janecek ("The Spiral") has demonstrated, is
the constitutive image of the novel Kotik Letaev-each subsequent day
represents both a recapitulation of the previous day and the introduction of

the new elements.4 As the recapitulation and innovations are manifested in

morphological and phonological combinations and recombinations, the
resulting impression strikingly resembles a fugal improvisation, with theme,
variation, recapitulation, and the introduction and integration of the second
theme.

The spiralic structure is motivated not only by the architectonic principle

of musicality, but by anthroposophic doctrine. According to Steiner, in

order for cosmic evolution to progress, it is necessary for the four-day cycle
to repeat itself in a new casting: in the new cycle, for example, the first (previously Saturnian) day will now be Jovian. Hence, for the latter part of the
book, Belyj instructs his neophytes as to how we may transcend the earthly

phase and begin the Jovian. As may be expected, the proper use and under-

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162 Slavic and East European Journal

standing of signs and sign systems-mastery of semiosis-is the key. In

turn, such mastery depends on the neophyte's capacity to achieve an
oneiric apprehension of the word or sign as icon.

Belyj's attention to the salvific potential of extra-systemic, or extrareferential, properties of language may be seen as related to similar ideas of

musicality professed by the Symbolistes: Baudelaire, Mallarm6, Rimbaud,

Verlaine, etc., yet Belyj's theory of linguistic iconicity ought not to be char-

acterized as a Russian translation of French theory. Mallarm6's and Verlaine's essays limit the discussion of the evocative potential of language to
its manifestation in poetry, while Belyj's theory extends to all discourse and
semiotic processes. The French Symbolist privileging of the musical analogy

(ut musica poesis) is ultimately reductionist, implying that the suggestive

"magic" of poetry lies in its "musicality." While Belyj concurred in the
Symbolist claim for the superiority of music and believed in its theurgic
potential, his conception of the "magic of words" is not an impressionistic
figure or gesture, but the keystone in his philosophical system. The fact
that Belyj never achieved full articulation of this system should not detract
from the extent of his semiotic intention. Belyj's theories are not limited to

the musical concept of slovesnaja instrumentovka or sound patterning in

verse, but are intended to explicate the existence of iconicity as a dynamic
principle of signification in all sign systems.

Baudelaire's trope of correspondances, which has so often been touted as

the source of Symbolist theories of synaesthesia, is too schematic a model
of fixed, pseudo-occult, relationships, which cannot extend beyond material

correspondences, as de Man notes: "It remains problematic how analogies

between sensual, material elements (as in synaesthesia) can expand to
become analogies between the material and the spiritual" (157). Belyj's theory of emblematics, which has much in common with Yeats' definitions of
image, allegory, and emblem (Ideas of Good and Evil), is directed at precisely
this problematic of the function or dynamism of synaesthesia as the semiotic
principle of iconicity. In fact, it is a suggestive coincidence that the concept

of the emblem, which de Man considers alien to French Symbolist aesthetics, proves to be central to the theories of Yeats and Belyj.

A semiotics of mysticism would rank words with other signs in an

Augustinian universe, where all phenomena may be read as signifying man-

ifestations of divinity on earth. In Belyj's schema, this perception is not a

result of the psychological blurring of different modalities evoked by the
hypnotic or disturbing effects of language sounds (Rimbaud's "diriglement
de tous les sens"). Instead, signs are physical manifestations in different
modalities which emanate from the ethereal and astral planes, taking the
shape of, in theosophical terminology, "thoughtforms." Furthermore, rather
than seeing a direct and coherent interaction of sounds and other modalities

based on psychoacoustic or psychokinaesthetic phenomena (as in Rimbaud's

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 163

"Voyelles" or Bal'mont's Poezija kak voliebstvo), Belyj derives his understanding of phonetic symbolism from his belief in the primary Edenic language, or to use theosophical terms, "Sensar," the Ur-language or language
of languages (Blavatsky, Glossary, 274). Weststeijn suggests that the Symbolists' experiments with sound patterning loosened the bond between signifier and signified by the process of foregrounding, concentrating on the
sound effects, onomatopoetic devices, incantational, or hypnotic effects of
language, the "evocative witchcraft" of Baudelaire. Belyj, by engaging in his
improvisations with the sounds of names, believed rather that he was, if
anything, strengthening the bond between signifier and signified; excavating
among the dead crusts and mineral deposits of the surface of modern languages to determine the fossil records of the proto-language at the vital
core. In describing Belyj as an explorer of etymologies, we recognize his
kinship with Xlebnikov, whose own linguistic investigations similarly reforged the link between signifier and signified. (Mandelker, "Chlebnikov";
Weststeijn, Chlebnikov).
3. Semiotics and Emblematics: Belyj's Theory of the Symbol
Belyj's interest in the sign (symbol) reflects his intuitive grasp of the three

major branches of semiotics: paradigmatics, syntagmatics, and pragmatics.

His fascination with ontological concerns and Rickert's neo-Kantian philosophy appears in his exploration of the epistemological modes of signification,

that is, the distinction between the objective and subjective reifications of
the signified as it breaks down into the Kantian "thing-in-itself," and its
relationship to the psychological or cognitive formation of what Belyj calls
the "concept." In other words, Belyj focuses on the issue of what Peirce
termed the "interpretant," or that third aspect of the sign which serves to
represent the idea or signified of the sign in cognitive processes, and which
therefore is itself a sign, as Peirce states: "any representation is a represen-

tation of a representation." Belyj anticipates this insight: ". . .the object of

true cognition is at the same time a cognitive product." ("ob"ekt istinnogo
poznanija javljaetsja vmeste s tem i posnavatel'nym produktom" [Emblematika," 92]). Belyj deviates from standard philosophical and linguistic views
when he argues that signs are not arbitrary constructs, but retain coherence

with their referent: "...truth is the coincidence of the object with its
representation." ("Istina v takom slucae est' sovpadenie predmeta s predstav-

leniem o nem" ["Emblematika," 88]). This view is primarily Augustinian and

Christological, derived, as Cassedy has demonstrated, from the logology of
the Eastern Orthodox Church. The "World Logos [Christ] takes on the
Image of man. .. ." ("Mirovoj Logos prinimaet Lik Jelove'eskij. . ." ["Emblematika," 94]) as the word appears to us as an epiphany, or the gift of
tongues, glossolalia. By extension, all manifestations may be read as Icons or
Images of the Divine: "the reality God created is a symbolic reality."

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164 Slavic and East European Journal

("Dejstvitel'nost', sotvorennaja bogom, est' dejstvitel'nost' simvolic'eskaja" ["Em-

blematika," 106]). The Icon, or Image, is not only an iconic representation,

but an incursion into or embodiment in the physical plane, a replication of
the original Logos. Words for Belyj therefore truly function as logoi;4 they
are objects of veneration.

In his discussion of the problem of transcendental values and the relationship between thought and language, Belyj rejects both idealist and
empiricist theories. Militating against the notion that linguistic representation is alien to thought, Belyj points out the logical ramifications of the
Saussurean concept of "l'arbitraire du signe":
...ecnH iOHITHCe o CHMBIne yCJnoBeHO, TO c o6pa3oBaHHeM Knacca CHMBOJnHqeCKHX fOHITHI~
n1Hm yanJceMcc OAHHaKOBO H OT AJCiCTBHTeCIbHOCTH, H OT HCTHHbI. MHp CHMBOnOB eCTb MHp

4HKIIHI; BCIKaI CHMBOJ1H3aIHq eCTb JO)KHoe o603HameHHe npegMeTOB cyimeCTByIrOLqHX B

TepMHHaX, KOTopbIM HHMTO He COOTBeTCTByeT; cHMBOJIH3M B 3TOM OCBeCLeHHH pa3iaraeT MHp

Ae~4CTBHTenbHOCTH. ("Emblematika," 88)

[If the concept of the symbol is relative (i.e., arbitrary, conventional, rather than fixed, A.M.),
then in framing a class of symbolic concepts, we are separating ourselves both from reality and
the truth. The world of Symbols is, then, a world of fictions. Every act of symbolization is merely

the false designation of existing objects in terms that correspond to nothing. In this light,
Symbolism appears to decompose the world of reality.]

Having anticipated the problematic of logocentrism, Belyj seeks to escape

it, affirming his view of the symbol as natural and unconventional-"The
...symbol.. .indicates the result of an organic union of one thing with
another" (". . .simvol ukazyvaet bolee na rezul'tat organic'eskogo soedinenija

'ego-libo v 'em-libo" ["Emblematika," 67])-and as "emblematic of pure

thought" ("Emblematika," 132). This view of a non-arbitrary, natural,

organically motivated symbol is essentially that of the iconic sign. Belyj
does not simply adopt a religious or theosophical model of representation
and signification, but insists on a rigorous systematization of the semiotic
process.

Belyj's conception of the motivated or iconic sign reflects an awareness

of the complexity of the issue of linguistic iconicity which, to a certain
degree, refines the rather simplistic schemata proposed by the American
semioticians, Peirce and Morris. In Peirce's textbook trichotomy of the sign
(symbol-icon-index), the icon is defined as a sign sharing certain similar
features with its referent as, for example, in a mimetic drawing or painting.

His definition overlooks the obvious problem of convention in representation; to give the standard example, the pictorial use of parallel lines which
meet on the horizon succeeds in conveying perspective only as a result of
arbitrarily established conventions for translating three dimensions into two.

Umberto Eco (191-221) has formulated a complex view of the iconic sign
as a "surrogate stimulus": a generous definition which embraces perceptual

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 165

notions of synaesthesia as well as an almost mystical notion of iconicity.

Such a view extends the notion of iconicity into the realm of metaphor, in
its suggestion that iconicity can occur at a sub-perceptual level in the creation of a mythology uniting the signifier and signified. The fertility of such

an approach to Belyj's Kotik Letaev has been demonstrated by Anscheutz,

who discusses Mfiller's theory of metaphor as comparisons established by
mythologies which, once forgotten, leave only residual traces in the "cooled,"

conventional metaphors of everyday discourse. The pursuit for meaning in

metaphor is thus stimulated by the ontological gap between signifier and
signified. Kotik Letaev's literalizations of metaphors resemble etymologies,
as he puzzles out the meaning of the figurative language of the adult world
by creating explanatory narratives or myths.

Belyj reiterates his theory of linguistic iconicity more succinctly in his

discussion of the artistic symbol, which he describes as a fusion of the
"experience of the artist" and "features taken from nature." Belyj's evocation
of the artist as intermonde results from this conflation, or intersection, of

two planes: spatial (features from nature) and temporal (experience of the
artist), and thus anticipates Baxtin's notion of the chronotope. Belyj emblematizes this concept as a cross at the center of which is a dot, from
which a perpetually expanding consciousness emanates, represented as a
series of concentric spheres. This cross with a dot at the center of expanding

circles is a schema of the Rosa Alchemica (the rosy or Rosicrucian Cross)

which preoccupied Belyj during most of his anthroposophical studies. It
serves, furthermore, as the essential trope of the novels Peterburg and Kotik
Letaev. In the latter, as we shall see, it functions as an icon of the artist,
and the process of artistic creation, which is, in turn, an emblem of divine
incarnation.

Counter to the prevailing Symbolist exaltation of the artist as a high

priest whose creation is withheld as a sacred mystery from the populace,
Belyj's semiotic view of artistic creation (encoding) and reception (decoding)
suggests that all semiotic activity, if properly revered, achieves the status of

high artistic creation. "When we experience something, it is as though we

were allowing these contents to pass through us. We become the image of
the Logos which organizes chaos." ("Perefivaja, my kak by propuskaem Jti
soderdanija skvoz' sebja; my stanovimsja obrazom Logosa, organizujusdego
xaos" ["Emblematika," 129]). Belyj's Symbolism thus, in principle, escapes
that elitist cachet which attaches to most Symbolist aesthetics.

In his discussion of the production and reception of emblems, Belyj

introduces the concepts of the artist's experience (the perception/interpretant or objective correlative) which motivates the artistic encoding of the
text. He explicates the reader's act of decoding the artistic text as follows:
"an emblem is. . .a monogram of pure cognition. . .by means of the emblem
the ideas of the intellect become thought in perceptible images; each idea in

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166 Slavic and East European Journal

art, therefore, is already an allegory." ("Emblema est'.. .monogramma Cistogo

voobrazenija. .. posredstvom emblemy idei razuma stanovjatsja myslimymi v

cuvstvennyx obrazax; a vsjakaja ideja v iskusstve stalo byt', est' uze a ll eg o r i j a " ["Kommentarii," 501]). It is the task of the literary critic or semio-

tician to analyze the text so that it may be "...decomposed.. .into its

constituent parts and carefully (looked at) [to examine] the means of representation in order to characterize the content." ("My kak by razlagaem ego
na sostavnye Jasti, pristal'no vgljadyvaemsja v sredstva izobrazitel'nosti, ...
dlja xarakteristiki soderdanija" ["Lirika," 241]). The implication that embedded in the "means of representation" are elements which may tend to
deconstruct the overt meaning of the work anticipates post-Structuralist
critical observations: ". . .In thus reorganizing the analyzed material into a
new whole, we can often no longer recognize a familiar poem at all ... ."
("soedinjaja vnov' v odno celoe razobrannyj material, my Ecasto ne uznaem
vovse znakomogo stixotvorenija" ["Lirika," 241]). Belyj's description of the
decoding process (the author and reader together creating the text) informed

both the Russian Formalist concept of "orientation on the expression"

(ustanovka na vyrazenie) as well as Prague Structuralist views of "concretiza-

tion." Furthermore, Belyj's recognition that the decoding of a poem often

reveals a meaning which subverts its stated message, predates deconstructionist notions of textual dynamics.

4. Synaesthesia and Reverie: The Semiotics of Epiphany in Kotik Letaev

Belyj's view of the process of decoding demands that the reader adopt an
attitude of oneiric reverence in order to apprehend an emblem's significance. Instead of decoding or reading according to the conventional referentiality established by a semiotic system, one should approach words as
logoi or icons; that is, one must read as if the very forms of inscription were

sanctissima. When contemplated in an attitude of venerative meditation,

icons, emblems, words will yield their mysteries. This process is described
by Gaston Bachelard in his La Poitique de la reverie:
Je suis, en effet, un riveur de mots, un reveur de mots 6crits. . ... Les syllables du mot se
mettent a s'agiter. Des accents toniques se mettent A s'inverser. Le mot abandonne son sens
comme une surcharge trop lourde qui emphiche de river. Les mots prennent alors d'autres

significations s'ils avaient le droit d'etre jeunes. Et les mots s'en vont cherchant, dans les
fourr6s du vocabulaire, de nouvelles compagnies .... (15)
[I am, in effect, a dreamer of words, a dreamer of the written word. ... The syllables of the
word become active. The stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like
a heavy load which prevented dreaming. Then the words take on new meanings as if they had
the right to be young. And the words begin to search in the cubbyholes of language for new

company ... .]

To the extent that meditation or contemplation is inner-directed behavior,

it is essentially an exploration of the self and of divinity within the self; the

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 167

degree to which true meaning can be apprehended is dependent on the

individual's willingness to free the imagination. Belyj thus counters Tjutiev's

verdict that language automatically betrays spirit-"mysl' izrec'ennaja est'

loi'" ("the spoken thought is a lie")-in Belyj's valuation, "the living word
is not a lie. It is the expression of the innermost essence of my nature."
("4ivoe, izrecennoe slovo ne est' loz'. Ono-vyrazenie sokrovennoj susinosti
moej prirody" ["Magija," 429]). And, "Meditation is not reflection, but the
knowing of living thought (uznanie mysli zivoj); contemplation is the blending

with it.. .living thought is the path to enlightenment. . .contemplation-the

experience of self." (Glossalolija, 95 [emphasis in original].
The psychological state of contemplation, a visionary trance-like state, is
deeply explored in the novel Kotik Letaev, which might be described as a
signansroman, in which the protagonist discovers and masters signs and
semiosis. As pointed out by Alexandrov (1986) and Janecek (1974), the
narrator of Kotik Letaev experiences three stages in development which
correspond to the tripartite ascent to higher knowledge and enlightenment
outlined by Steiner. The process of contemplation yields the ultimate state
of consciousness which a neophyte in quest of enlightenment may obtain.
The first stage, of "imagination," involves the acknowledgment that there is

an ultimate spiritual reality "concealed and revealed" in the physical world.

The second stage, "inspiration," we may associate with the traditional view
of semiotic decoding, the discrimination of elements, associated by Steiner
with the act of reading:
observation in the world of inspiration may only be compared with reading: and the beings in
the world of inspiration act upon the observer like the letters of an alphabet, which he must
learn to know and the interrelationships of which must unfold themselves to him like a supersensible script. (Outline, 306)

The third stage, "intuition," consists of merging with the spiritual beings
and recognizing the transcendent unity of all manifestations. This is
accomplished through venerative contemplation. As contemplation of an
object plunges the neophyte into simultaneously contemplating the cognitive
representation of the object, one experiences first a response, then the expe-

rience of the response, and, finally, experience expands to recapitulate all

cosmic experience. This activity Belyj places on the highest cognitive level
as offering image/order (obraz) within imagelessness/disorder (bezobrazie).
To illustrate this cognitive semiotic process in Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev,
Belyj has recourse to the format of the Renaissance emblem book, which
combines visual and verbal messages to produce a syncretic, intertextual
meaning: a name, discourse, and a vision.
In his spiritualist treatise, A Vision, William Butler Yeats discusses the
liminal cognitive state of visionary sleep:

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168 Slavic and East European Journal

When sleep is interrupted by vision the seer goes back to remote times and the seer amidst
brilliant light discovers myths and symbols that can only be verified by prolonged research.
He has escaped from the individual Record to that of the race. (250)

The "Record" of the race, the Akashic Record (Steiner, "Akashic"), the
suggestion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, is the basis for the excursion into the "memory of memory" which occupies the 35-year-old narrator

of Kotik Letaev. As Belyj states: "The transformation of the reality around

us depends on its transformation within us" ("Problema," 3). Therefore,
"We must recreate everything, and in order to do this we must create ourselves. And the only slope on which we may still clamber is ourselves. At
the summit, our "I" awaits us." ("My doliny vse snova peresozdat': dlja etogo
my doliny sozdat' samix sebja. I edinstvennaja kruca, po kotoroj my modem

esce karakat'sja, 'to my sami" ["Iskusstvo," 453]).

Kotik Letaev opens on that topos of a mountain slope, in the Swiss Alps,
on the peak of a mountain which is a mineralic outgrowth of the narrator's

own psyche, down which he sights attempting to regain the contemplative

state of early childhood. In the first post-natal moments of life, the threshold between the world where he was "before he was born" and the perceived

world of his home in the Arbat section of Moscow, was still as flexible as
the elastic bones of his developing body: "Eti kosti-porog, . . no razdvigaemy kosti; mne porog soznan'ja stoit peredvigaemym, pronicaemym, otkry-

vaemym.. ." (Kotik, 76). ["These bones are the threshold. .. But the bones
have separated; the threshold of consciousness becomes moveable, penetrable, open to me.. ."
While the threshold is open, the child is able to contemplate two knots of

wood on a lacquered wardrobe and to see an image of two figures, Moors

or Magi, bent over the Christ child, forming an embrace of the center of
wisdom:
Ha naKHpOBaHHO~ nOBepXHOCTH iwualIqHKa JIHHHH AepeBR$HHbIX BOJIOKOH C6e)anHCb: - TeMHOPOAHbIM lSITHOM nepenHneHHblX cyKOB - Kai 6i1 B aBCe HrypbI, CKJIOHeHHbIe CMyTHbIMH IiHKaMHI H3 pa3jeTeBUMIXCI CKlcIaOK
- Apyr K Apyry: rTO-To noBeOaTb Apyr Apyry -

- TaHTb, MOnYlaTb, BCnOMHHaTb: KaKyo-To ApeBH1O1O npaBAy, KOTOp~i KaCaTbCR

HeJlb3I:

- HH-HH-HHb> -

- KOTOpyKo BCHOMHHaeHIb TbI, TaK )Ke BOT, HOKHJOHstICb 6e3 luenoTa: o6pasbl nocBSILCeHHbIX nepe)KHBRaiHb MHOI BHOCJIeACTCBHH TaK, KaK HOJHoe TaHHbl CKnOHeHHe nlOKpoBeHHbIX @bHrypoOK Ha IIIKanqHKe... H3 pa3J1eTeB1IHXCS cKlIaOK; H -- o6pa3bI CKJIOHeHHbIX
BOJIXBOB B BeIHKOIfenHbIX KOpOHaX HaA SCHbIM HTHTeH ....
- Ha JaKHpOBaHHOM IuIKanHKe JIHHHH AepeBAHHbIX BOJIOKOH C6e)KarIHCb K AByM HATHaM:

nepenHieHHbIX CyB; H 3TH nTHa - He nRTHa, a M a B p bJ, To ecTb, TeMHbIe 6oroMOJbHbIe

nnga: BOIXBOB. (Kotik, 77-78)
[On the lacquer surface of the little cupboard the lines of the wood grain run together: -into a darkling spot of the sawed branch

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 169

-as if into two figures, inclining their obscured visages from the scattered pleats-to one
another, to relate something to one another.-to keep a secret, to keep silent, to recall: some ancient truth which it is forbidden to touch
upon:

"No-no-no!"-

-which you recall, just like this, bending without a whisper: subsequently, I experienced the holy images as if they were filled with mysteries, as were the bowed veiled figures

on the little cupboard. . .-and the images of the Magi in their magnificent crowns bowed
over the radiant Infant...

-on the lacquer cupboard the lines of the wood grain run together into two spots: of the
sawed branches; and the spots are not spots, but Moors, that is, dark pious faces: the Magi.]

This same image is represented in traditional emblematic form in Belyj's

Glossalolija in drawing No. 13. (See Figure 3.) The two inclined figures of

Tw x,
;i-~
0?~

Figure 3. The eurhythmic depiction of the Biblical phrase "Tohu-wa-Bohu" (Inta) ~nth)

(emptiness and invisibility). (From the second line of Genesis: "In the beginning God created
heaven and earth. Now the earth was unformed and void.. ." The Holy Scriptures, 1917 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America).

the Magi are meant to express the eurhythmic gesture of the Biblical Hebrew

phrase,
.In3 as
Anh
[emptiness
which
serves
the("Tohu-wa-bohu"
motto. Interestingly,
we have and
two invisibility]),
versions of the explicatio: the exegesis offered in Glossalolija and the "recalled" explication of
Kotik Letaev's childhood contemplation. The significance of the emblem is
the act of the Creation, and thus, according to figurative Biblical interpretation,

the birth of Christ. ".nf1 iTll" is taken from Genesis, where it refers
to the void preceding creation, before the manifestation of God on earth.
The Words of God in Genesis which will bring about creation are the same
logoi as the Logos which will create Christ. The Christ Child, however, is
not shown in the emblem; instead, the principle of linguistic iconicity is
invoked, adding a fourth semiotic dimension to the emblem. Occupying the
central space, the locus of the "ancient mystery" is the letter "t," itself a

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170 Slavic and East European Journal

motto for another image. By referring to the preceding emblem in Glossalol-

ija (See Figure 4) and Belyj's improvisation (or explicatio) on the letter "t,"

Stz
t

Figure 4. The legend reads, "The forces of 't'."

we understand "t" as the expansion of consciousness from a central point,

(see above, page 165) which Belyj sketches here as the flower or lotus of
eastern thought, contemplation of which may produce enlightenment. The
"t" is thus the central dot or point, the intersection of the two lines forming
a cross (an icon of the crucifixion), the intersection of time (the experience
of the author) and space (features from nature) subsuming the universe. In
the context of the novel, this is expressed as the conflict between Kotik's
father (mathematics and reason) and mother (society and emotion). In the
novel, Kotik Letaev as a child repeatedly experiences himself as a compressed dot which begins to expand outward in concentric circles. The
Christ child and Kotik are thus conflated-representing thereby the unity
of the spiritual and physical realms-and Kotik's spiritual development is
realized in terms of Christian imagery, as, at the end of the novel, he awaits
his crucifixion:

- 6yqy pa3'HTbIIH B ce6e, c npurBo~geHHliM,

pa30opBaHHbIM TenIOM, Ayuro. ...

PaciHiHai ce6H. (Kotik, 291-292)

[I will be torn asunder from my nail-pierced, rent body, and soul. ... I am crucifying myself.]

As the narrator proceeds in his growth up the slope of his psychic topos, he
"falls" from his earlier state of grace as he is forced to learn to employ words
referentially, this being the main difficulty confronting the maturing child:
- <(Hy, KOTHK, crca)KH TO-HH6ygub. . .
- ((OTero TbI MoJI'MqHib?))

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 171

Ho, 6bBaJano, BO MHe BCe CO)KMeTCH: CTaHOBHTCI TOMKOIO; He yMeo BbicKa3aTb HHNerO;

Bce-To gyMaIO 'TO 6b1 TaKOe npHyMaTb: -

- cnosa - KHpnriu: qTo6bI BbIpa3HTb Hy)KHO ynopHO pa60TaTb Mne a noTe

nHua Hag cno)KeHHeM T$AKKOKaMeHHbIX CJOB; B3pocnbIe nJioAH yMeIOT npoBopHO

cnIO)KHTb CBoe CJIOBO. (Kotik, 276-277)

[- "Well, Kotik, say something.."

- "Why are you silent?"
But then everything would convulse in me: it would become a single point; I cannot express
anything; but I keep on thinking: in order to come up with something:-words are bricks: in order to express yourself it is necessary to work indefatigably in the
sweat of your brow at the construction of weighty words of stone; grown-ups know how to
construct their words with agility.]

Later in his biography, the narrator returns to confront the two knots of
wood:
5I BnocneACTBHH B3pOCRbIM CMOTpen c o KHgaHHeM Ha JIaKHpOBaHHbIli CKaHnqHK: ABe Q)HrypbI,

CKnOHeHHbIe CMyTHbIMHI IHKaMHM TaM ciaraiHcb nonpe)KHeMy; H4 -HHITero He MorIH MHe

nose)aTb. (Kotik, 81)

[Subsequently, as an adult, I looked with expectation at the little lacquer cupboard: two figures
with bowed, obscured visages took shape there as before; and - they were unable to impart
anything to me.]

The narrator is able to de-code the shapes into images, as he might "read"
the words of a prayer, but he fails to contemplate the image, and therefore

does not receive the mystery. In another section of the novel, the narrator
contrasts his childhood "memory" of a lion with his adult discovery of the
"truth": there was a Saint Bernard named "Lion" who lived in the Arbat,
and whom Kotik encountered on his morning walks. Despite the fact that
the narrator's memory of a lion has been invalidated when he learns that
the "lion" was only a large dog with the name of a lion, the narrator's soul
still reverberates with the image of the Lion. He recognizes his persistent
sense of mystery and awe as the immanence of the sign (blizko znamen'e).
He is able to "intuit" the "truth" about the Lion at this later stage of his
life, because he "was then reading Zarathustra." At this spiritually more
advanced stage of adulthood, he has learned to do what he failed to do
with the knots of wood; he contemplates the image (the memory of
memory) of the Lion as a sign.
Rather than depicting a Lacanian loss of meaning with the acquisition of
language, Belyj's narrative suggests that early childhood is an age of union
with language in its fullest significance, before the acquisition of adult language habits encroaches on the child's attunement to verbal symbols. This
model strikingly resembles Piaget's stages of child language acquisition, with
the transition from "egocentric" speech to "socialized" speech representing
the loss of a pre-social, "autistic" world view. Kotik, like Joyce's young

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172 Slavic and East European Journal

Stephen Daedalus, even engages in the echolalia and "collective monologue"

characteristic of Piaget's first stages of child language.6 While Belyj's neoRomanticism underlies his perception of loss as a result of socialization, his
pursuit of higher understanding through semiosis suggests that the past
may be recaptured; "the world becomes a means for returning to the divine"
("mir stanovilsja sredstvom vernjt'sja k boiestvu" ["Emblematika," 74]).

In the Combray section of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, the

young artist's first overwhelmingly contemplative experience, in which he
responds to successive juxtapositions in the views of three Church spires in
the distance as his carriage passes over hills and around bends, produces in
him a feeling of ecstasy which is the impetus to create. Under the spell of

this inspiration, he writes his first piece of prose. For Belyj also, the state of

mind produced by contemplation is linked systolically to the moment of

creative inspiration. The influx of spiritual vision results in its embodiment
in matter.
5. Conclusion

Belyj has been accurately described as a precursor of Formalism and Structuralism, of statistical stylistics, and most recently, has even been credited
with anticipating the linguistic theory of distinctive features (Rifkin). The
perfusion of his philosophical thought throughout his oeuvre, even in his
most erratic, idiosyncratic and difficult compositions, allows us to recapture

and appreciate the degree to which his thought anticipates most of the
major developments in 20th-century literary theory and linguistic poetics.
Even more, Belyj's notion of the symbol, its creation and reception, is a
productive fusion of linguistic, philosophic, psychological, and poetic
thought which offers semiotic harmony as an alternative to the ruptures
and losses in signification posited by deconstruction.

NOTES
1 Brief versions of this paper were read at the Annual Meeting of the American Association
of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, New York, December, 1986, and at
the Comparative Literature Colloquium, City University of New York Graduate Center,
April, 1986. All translations are my own, with the exception of the excellent translations

by Steven Cassedy from which I quote for the following essays by Belyj: "Emblematika
smysla," "Lirika i eksperiment," and "Magija slov."
2 I use the terms "phonetic symbolism" and "linguistic iconicity" interchangeably here to

refer to the potential of language sound to create meaning which is not a product of
lexical semanticity. Whether this meaning is evoked by onomatopoeia (primary or secondary) or by a more abstruse synaesthesia is beyond the range of this paper to determine.

Linguistic theories of sound symbolism which were widely known in Russia in Belyj's
time were reviewed by V. Sklovskij in his article, "Zaumnyjjazyk ipoezija." The speculative
essays of Otto Jespersen, collected as Language: Its Nature, Development, Origin stimulated
a series of psycholinguistic experiments to test the existence of phonetic symbolism in

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Belyj's Glossalolija and Kotik Letaev 173

natural language, rather than in poetry. The pioneers were Usnadze, "Ein experimenteller
Beitrag zum Problem der psychologischen Grundlage der Namengebung," and Sapir, "A
Study in Phonetic Symbolism." Theories of sound symbolism occupied the Russian Formalists in their first publications; see Erlich; Mandelker, "Russian Formalism." Phonetic
symbolism continued to be an object of psycholinguistic investigation throughout the

20th century. For a review of phonetic symbolism research, see A. Mandelker, New
Research in Phonetic Symbolism, and J. Peterfalvi, Recherches experimentales. Linguistic

poetics has explored some of the implications that the results of phonetic symbolism
experimentation may have for literary criticism; in particular, linguistic poetics and stylistics of recent decades focused on the concept of quantifiable style features. Some investigators of statistically enumerated patterns of sound in poetry have proposed the existence
of "phonesthemes" (Householder), vowel "fugues" (Abernathy), or the potency of tonality
features (Jones). Jakobson summarized these views in his Sound Shape of Language.

3 Early theories of glottogenesis postulated the emergence of a primitive onomatopoetic

language. Most early hypotheses which were proposed to account for phonetic symbolism
presumed it was a vestigial trace of these earlier linguistic stages. Early theories may be
grouped according to whether the effect is believed to result from acoustic or kinaesthetic
perception, the latter view being more popular at the turn of the century. Theoretical
developments in psycholinguistic research in the 1960s resulted in a reinterpretation of
the phonetic symbolism phenomenon as a product of socio-historical experiences of language sounds in specific semantic contexts.
4 Logoi is used here primarily in the medieval sense, to refer to that class of spiritual beings,
daimones, inhabiting the regions between angels and human beings.

5 The spiral as a constitutive figure has resonance, both for Belyj and for Yeats. Yeats'
theory of the "widening gyre" (A Vision) is motivated by the same sources as Belyj's
spirals, or rayed wings; archetypal figures of spiralic motion are the ouroboros, the umbi-

licus, the caduceus, the lotus, the spiral staircase (Jacob's ladder), the tower (nautilus
snail shell). The belief that the spiral is an encoded unit of all of nature's patterns, apparently substantiated by the discovery of the double helix of the DNA strand, has stimulated
contemporary semiotic research into patterns of symmetry and asymmetry in nature and
in the complementarity of the two hemispheres of the human brain (Lotman, "Mozgtekst-kul'tura-iskusstvennyj intellekt"). Steiner's theories suggest that all externally visualized structures are projections of the interior of the body (Man in the Light of Occultism,
124). The spiral convolutions are thus emblems of the cerebrum; while the evolution of
the universe according to a spiral pattern is ontogenically recapitulated in the firing of
neurons along the cortical pathways of the brain in the evolution of a single thought.
Such views were seriously entertained by the American scientific community during the
1960s in Sperry's theory that short-term memories were "re-entrant loops" of firing
neurons.

6 Vygotskij's critique of Piaget in Thought and Language resists the perception of socialization as an encroachment on the child's individual language and argues convincingly that
language is social from its earliest appearance, a position developed by Volo'inov (Baxtin?)
into a model of dialogism, where every utterance is double-voiced, representing and reacting to other speech acts simultaneously. Volo'inov's position is unexpectedly similar to
Belyj's when he argues that semiosis occurs in the cognitive processes of meaning production and that, therefore, speech and consciousness share the same modality: "Although
the reality of the word, as is true of any sign, resides between individuals, a word, at the
same time, is produced by the individual organism's own means without recourse to any
equipment or any other kind of extracorporeal material. This has determined the role of
the word as the semiotic material of inner life-of consciousness (inner speech)" (Volo'inov,
14).

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174 Slavic and East European Journal

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