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www.amazoniainvestiga.info ISSN 2322- 6307
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.53.05.34
How to Cite:
Dudareva, M.A. (2022). "Digital turn" in art and the problem of entelechy of modern poetry. Amazonia Investiga, 11(53), 348-352.
https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.53.05.34
"Digital turn" in art and the problem of entelechy of modern poetry
«ЦИФРОВОЙ ПОВОРОТ» В ИСКУССТВЕ И ПРОБЛЕМА ЭНТЕЛЕХИИ
СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ПОЭЗИИ
Received: May 18, 2022 Accepted: June 15, 2022
Written by:
Marianna A. Dudareva137
https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 4950-2322
SPIN: 5362-0507
Abstract
This article is devoted to two processes in
modern society - digitalization and
apophaticization. We are witnessing a “digital
turn” in contemporary art, which leads to its
massization and makes it more accessible, but at
the same time, a person becomes metaphysically
detached, cannot penetrate the aura of art, feel it
metaphysically, which leads to the
desacralization of great works of painting and
literature. However, literature exists in a large
dialogue of cultures, it contains the entelechial
principle, that is, the meanings and codes of other
eras and cultures. In the center of the research is
the problem of the entelechy of culture, which
requires axiological and ontological study. It is
the entelechial principle in culture that makes it
possible to withstand the onslaught of
digitalization and technocratization. Research
methodology: a holistic analysis of a literary text
in the ontohermeneutic way with the use of a
semantic research method. An otnohermeneutic
analysis of a literary work, the poetic book
"Tyutchev's Swans" by the Russian poet
A. Shatskov, allows us to understand how
entelechy manifests itself in modern culture.
Keywords: modern literature, folklore,
entelechy, digital turn, apophatic, creativity of
Andrey Shatskov.
Introduction
Today we are witnessing the process of
massization of art, we understand that a “digital
137
Doctor of Culturology, Candidate of Philology, docent, Russian Language Department No. 2, Institute of the Russian language,
RUDN University, Russian Federation.
turn” is taking place before our eyes, which, on
the one hand, has expanded our possibilities
Dudareva, M.A. / Volume 11 - Issue 53: 348-352 / May, 2022
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regarding the accessibility of art (we don’t buy a
ticket to Paris to get to the Louvre, but join some
online excursions), on the other hand, art is
desacralized, a person falls out of the bosom of
sacred cosmology, and often there is no need for
a serious cultural-philosophical analysis of the
existence of art in the virtual space. However,
along with digitalization, there is also a reverse
process - apophaticization. A person is becoming
more and more metaphysically detached, more
and more moving away from the Absolutes of
culture, the apophatic horizon of which is
becoming ever higher. We cease to understand
much in art, which for us today performs an
entertaining function. But through myth and
folklore, entelechial principles in culture, we can
again approach the incomprehensible in the
verbal space of Russian culture. Let us turn to
the problem of the entelechy of culture and the
work of the contemporary Russian poet
Andrei Shatskov in this aspect.
Talking about the entelechy of culture still
requires an appeal to the very concept of
"entelechy", which back in the 1990s. caused
controversy in the scientific community (more on
this in the article by the philosopher V.P. Vizgin
(Vizgin, 2017). Of course, it is worth returning to
the origins, to the works of Aristotle, in which
entelechy is perceived as the essence (soul) of the
body (Aristotle, 1976). However, modern
researchers from various fields of humanitarian
knowledge continue to rethink this concept after
the publication of a well-known article by the
historian G.S. Knabe "Entelechy of Culture"
(Knabe, 1994). In this work, the concept of
interest to us was associated with the problem of
the dialogue of cultures, continuity between
cultures, the mechanism of their change. But
first of all, attention is drawn to the fact that the
scientist does not seek to give a specific
definition of entelechy, pointing to its inner
content, which we are able to experience
intuitively (Danilova, 1994, p. 202). But this
“elusiveness”, or apophaticism (we will
designate it this way), the antinomies and
paradoxes inherent in the concept itself, should
not confuse a researcher following the paths of
ontological thought (Vizgin, 2017, p. 8).
The entelechy of culture is the driving force of
culture, or the impulse that manifests itself
rhizome in its sacrum. One of the definitions of
G.S. Knabe formulated it as follows: “... the
absorption by a certain time of the content,
character, spirit and style of a past cultural era on
the grounds that they turned out to be consonant
with another later era and were able to satisfy its
internal needs and demands” (Knabe, 2000,
p. 19). The entelechial beginning of Russian
culture can be understood through logos, since
Russia has always been a logocentric country.
Literature, according to the ideas of the leading
philologists and culturologists of our time, both
domestic (I.V. Kondakov, A. Ya. Flier (Saint
Petersburg University, 1997, p. 251), and foreign
(Kosovska, 2020, p. 100), is one from the first it
transmits cultural meanings, being a part of the
cultural text, which lends itself to hermeneutic
reconstruction. Modern philosopher V.P. Vizgin
also tries to comprehend the problem of the
entelechy of culture through Russian poetry and
quotes A. Akhmatova’s words about I.
Annensky’s poem “The Bells”: “a grain was
thrown into them, from which then sonorous
Khlebnikov poetry grew” (Vizgin, 2017, p. 15).
But entelechy is both a “seed”, a “source”, and an
imagining, that is, a “high” manifestation of the
Absolute in the Other, that is, an entelechy
process in a culture of bidirectional action: into
the future and into the past. In the article we
mentioned, V.P. Vizgin, let us single out one
more conceptually important observation: “To be
the “source”, “beginning” of the germination of
the future and to maintain integrity with all the
multipath versatility - in this we intuitively see
the “work” of a genius” (Vizgin, 2017, p. 15).
However, the “work” of a genius, who, by the
way, is always apophatic, incomprehensible, is
not only prophetic in nature, he must not only
anticipate the future of culture, but also
understand the lessons of the past, fully perceive
and assimilate the intonations of the past in his
soul. In this context, the observation of the
symbolist poet A. Bely from the 1909 article
“The Emblematics of Meaning” is indicative:
“What is really new that captivates us in
symbolism is an attempt to illuminate the deepest
contradictions of modern culture with colored
rays of diverse cultures; we are now, as it were,
living through the whole past: India, Persia,
Egypt, like Greece, like the Middle Ages, come
to life, rush past us, as epochs that are closer to
us rush past us” (Bely, 2010, p. 57–58).
Materials and methods
Let us turn to the work of the contemporary
Russian poet A. Shatskov, the author of the
famous Lament for Russian Poets. The poet is on
soil positions and believes that literary centrism
will remain in Russia, as he says in his interview
to Literaturnaya Gazeta: “I sincerely hope that
the collapse of the “connection of times” can
occur in any country, but not in Russia”
(Shatskov, 2020). This article provides a holistic
ontohermeneutic analysis of the new book of
poems by the modern Russian poet A. Shatskov
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"Tyutchev's Swans", aimed at highlighting the
entelechial potential of this artistic text of
culture, which allows an ontological approach to
the questions of the creative process itself, to
delve into the understanding of the being of the
artist of the word. A semantic analysis has been
carried out, the purpose of which is to determine
the symbolic space, subtext in the book of a
modern poet.
Results
In the Russian version of logocentrism, myth,
folklore and literature are soldered, which form a
vertical transmission of culture: literature
"adopts" the knowledge of folklore and myth,
always entering into a creative dialogue-dispute
with tradition. Folklorist V.A. Smirnov writes
about it this way: “a kind of “argument” with
folklore is taking place, its dialectical “negation”,
of course, with elements of “removal”, that is,
productive assimilation of those potentialities
that lie hidden in folklore” (Smirnov, 2001, p. 4).
Modern poetry, which is difficult to think about
today, since the cultural distance between the
artist and the recipient has not yet been properly
developed, nevertheless, also exists within the
framework of tradition, the entelechial principle,
which can manifest itself latently in artistic
creation.
About Andrei Shatskov's poetic book
"Tyutchev's Swans" one could say with the
words of Fet: "This book is small // The volumes
are much heavier." The book has only 16 pages,
which is not typical for modern book literary
production. However, history is hidden in it, the
subsoil depth of our people, in the language of
the Russian philosopher I.A. Ilyin (Ilyin, 1959,
p. 135). The book, and this is precisely the book
that is integral in its content, semantic tension,
consists of a triptych. The first part, historical, is
dedicated to the distant bloody days of the
Mamaev battle. The poet, focusing on the figure
of Zakhary Tyutchev, known from the "Tale of
the Battle of Mamaev" and some oral traditions,
leads the reader on the righteous path of a distant
relative of the great poet:
Carrying on the Kulikovo field
Testament of the fathers from the darkness of
ages:
About faith, valor and will,
And overcome the enemies!
And in the blue, spreading its wings,
Accompanying the prince's army,
An abundance of swans flew -
Detachment of Heavenly Knights!.. (Shatskov,
2020, p. 8)
And here for the first time, in passing, the image
of swans appears, to which, as it were, the new
poetic book of A. Shatskov is dedicated. On the
one hand, the reader, together with the lyrical
hero, becomes a witness to historical events,
deceit, battles and victories, on the other hand, in
the first part of the triptych, a historiosophical,
ontological plan arises:
It's done! Earrings on birches
The autumn breeze blew
When regiments with victory - Sergius
I met Kremnik at the gate.
And you, Zakhar, with a two-fingered hand
On otchuyu, returning, howl
Raised - to an unknown grandson
Bless the way ahead! (Shatskov, 2020, p. 8)
And this path must and will run like a red thread
through the fates of other heroes, another
Tyutchev, an unknown grandson.
The second part of the book is already addressed
to the manor space, the Tyutchev family estate,
which was formed at the end of the 18th century:
Heavier chains - poets fate
In Russia, covered with frosty dust...
But proudly in the shield of the family coat of
arms
The swan's white wings are flattened!
Their brood splashes in the treasured pond,
And walks in squadron formation in a circle ...
I will come to them to say goodbye with a bow.
And I will cut off a loaf of bitter bread.
(Shatskov, 2020, p. 10)
This fragment shows that the poet is well
acquainted with the history of the Tyutchev
family, pays great attention to details,
mentioning the family coat of arms with wings in
the center of the composition. The image of
swans unites the phenomenal and noumenal
spaces: swans in the sky guarding the “knights
squad”, swans on the Tyutchev family coat of
arms, a symbol of purity, and finally, real swans,
the inhabitants of the estate. Where does this
love for swans come from? Where are the roots
of this image? Here we can raise the question of
the entelechial principle, which is explicitly and
implicitly manifested in these verses. It is
noteworthy that in the art laboratory of Andrei
Shatskov we also find in the poems of previous
years the image of a swan associated with the
feminine principle, for example, in “The Swans
of the Blok” (“And in the yearning swans of the
Blok // I again imagined you!”). The poet always
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connects "top" and "bottom", thus building the
necessary vertical of culture, through which one
can open up the noumenal, the world of eidos. It
is worth paying attention to the apt remark of the
philosopher V.P. Vizgin about the need to keep
in mind the concept of “eidos” associated with
the problem of the entelechy of culture (Vizgin,
2017, p. 14).
It is noteworthy that the poet is organic in the
classical poetic and pictorial traditions. In this
entelechy context, Pushkin's Swan Princess from
the famous "Tale of Tsar Saltan" and the
mysterious and mythological "Swan" by M.
Vrubel are recalled. In general, the image of a
swan is characteristic of our national space. S.
Yesenin associated the essence of the Logos with
him, pointing out in the 1918 treatise “The Keys
of Mary” to the special connection between the
word and the ancient symbol-sign: “The tie of
poetic ornaments is subject to everyone ... our
Boyan could not help but give an image to fingers
and strings, likening the first ten falcons, and the
second to a flock of swans” (Yesenin, 1997, pp.
197–198). The artist of the word is obliged to
hear the word, to bring this word out of the
farthest distances (the entelechy of culture). It is
with this testament that the triptych of the book
"Tyutchev's Swans" ends:
History stood at the threshold
Silently
and in the essence of the night
His road wound through the Bryansk region
In Europe, of which to the edge of the river
The heart aspired, returning again
In dense bushes of willow and birch...
And the poet carried the word from far away
And he carried it to this day! (Shatskov, 2020,
pp. 12–13)
Conclusion
Digitalization in contemporary art requires
axiological and ontological understanding, since
this process is associated with the transmission of
culture, that is, the transfer of sacred knowledge
from one generation to another. It seems to a
modern person that he can touch great works of
art through the media environment without
leaving his room, that is, in the online broadcast
mode. However, the massification of art also
leads to its desacralization. But in Russia, the
artist of the word is endowed with an entelechial
perception of reality, which allows him to
prophetically turn to the future and analyze the
past from historiosophical positions. On the one
hand, he enters into a dialectical dispute with
tradition, on the other hand, the poet's work is
always permeated with an entelechy impulse,
which either manifests itself brighter or fades
away. In modern poetry, a vivid manifestation of
the entelechy of culture is the work of the poet-
soiler A. Shatskov, namely his new book
"Tyutchev's Swans", where the author immerses
the reader in different historical eras - from
Ancient Russia to modern times close to him.
But these eons are “sewn together” by the
archetypal image of a woman, an ideal lover, the
idea of high love, which fits into the concept of
Russian cosmic Eros. Talking about the
entelechy of culture allows us to radically
reconsider some issues related to the
apophaticism of artistic creativity, since both
require cultural perception - we are talking about
cultural a priori given by Genesis, God to every
people. However, the relationship between the
concepts of "entelechy" and "apophatic" requires
a more detailed study and a separate study.
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