VISUAL IMAGERY AND LYRICAL PLOT IN YURI LEVITANSKY’S POEM ‘DRAWING’

This paper examines visual imagery and lyrical plot in Yuri Levitansky’s poem ‘Drawing’, which is part of his cycle ‘Katerina, or Walking with Faust’ (1981); it analyses in detail how the visual image of the artistic world is constructed with the help of verbal means. Moreover, this depicted world is doubled, as there is the reality of the poem itself and the reality of the picture created in this poem. To analyse the plot, we consider the subject and spatio-temporal structures of the poem, as well as the situation, the event and the system of motifs. The lyrical plot is constructed as first a drawing and then a reflection on one’s own drawing and its understanding by the lyrical subject. Hence the need to consider the lyrical plot in relationship with visual imagery in this poem. The great importance of visual imagery is due to the title of the poem, which refers the reader to the need for visual perception. Visual imagery is related both to the process of drawing (color, outline, reflection, etc.) and to looking at the drawing. This image is a drawing, but the drawing is created and described with the help of words, thus combining poetry and painting. author’s strategy of vision, the reader, relying on the verbal component, must engage his visual imagination. In addition, there is a double recoding: first, a visual image of the drawing is created with the help of verbal means, and then this visual image is interpreted (again, with verbal means). The reader is requiredto use his or her imagination to ‘see’ the drawing created by the lyrical subject and to realize the subject’s understanding of it. That is, following the author’s strategy of vision, the reader, relying on the verbal component, must engage his or her visual imagination.