Pragmatics of ecology: Poetry by Vs. N. Nekrasov and conceptualism

This paper investigates the position of the poet Vsevolod Nekrasov in the nonconformist literature of the second half of the 20th century. Many researchers legitimately and consistently class Nekrasov with the conceptualists: like other conceptualists, Nekrasov actively used the patterns of the Soviet language in his work. However, the analysis of Nekrasov’s poetry from the standpoint of literary pragmatics allows to identify the specific features of his poetics. Unlike most conceptualists, Nekrasov pays great attention to the perlocutionary effect of an artistic act, since from the poet’s point of view it is the reader’s reaction that determines the viability of artwork. Thus, a dialogue is built between the author and the reader, which for Nekrasov is the key to a new art system that exists beyond the limits of party dictation. In addition, a pursuit of dialogue was an important principle for Nekrasov not only on the external, but also on the internal level, that is, at the level of handling the word in a piece of art, which also shows the difference between the conceptualists’ and Nekrasov’s oeuvre. If conceptualists seek to undermine authoritative discourses, Nekrasov implements a different performative gesture, which consists in trying to potentially remove ideological connotations from every word. Nekrasov seeks not only to distance the artistic word, but also to restore its potential creative power. An analysis of this performative gesture reveals several intersections with the ideas of libertarian environmental philosophers, whose main idea was to build a new relationship with nature based on the principles of interdependence and diversity. Based on this similarity, it is proposed to define the pragmatics of Nekrasov’s poetry as the pragmatics of ecology.