Functional-Grammatical Maximalism of Infinitive Poetry by Joseph Brodsky

Abstract

 This paper is focused on the phenomenon of functional-grammatical maximalism of the independent infinitive, exemplified by Joseph Brodsky’s poetic texts. The expression in them of three predicative categories of the infinitive – time, person and mood – is analysed. The specific features of this expression include: a unique temporal plane of action, expressed in a literary text by the infinitive through its internal time, i.e. the aspect; a composite image of the subject of an infinitive text, i.e. a meta-subject, in which the Self of the speaker merges with the Self of the listener, represented by both the second and the third person or by the seeming absence of the person; and meditative modality characteristic of Brodsky’s infinitive writing, gravitating towards semantic hyperbolism, i.e. the theme of another, unattainable existence. The author used the functional-grammatical, semantic and contextual analyses, generally applied in poetic grammar. The analysis found a combination of homogeneity, formal minimalism and functional maximalism of the infinitive. In addition, the following lexical-grammatical methods of expressing this phenomenon were identified in Brodsky’s poems: the category of aspect and semantics of infinitives, which contribute to changing the nature of time in a poetic text and to expressing the subject’s attitude to the action of debitive, epistemic and meditative modality; additional temporal indicators in the form of secondary parts of the sentence helping to create a time cycle in the text; personal pronouns indicating the presence of persons in contact with the subject of the infinitive action. The phenomenon analysed in this paper can be explained by the nature of the infinitive, which is indefinite and ambiguous and, therefore, has high functional potential. This makes the topic under discussion interesting for linguists and calls for an in-depth study of this linguistic unit using different types of texts.