It is customary to talk about what a prose work is only against the background of its difference from a poetic text, however, strangely enough, with the apparent obvious difference between a poetic text and a prose text, to formulate what exactly this difference consists in, what is the essence of the specifics of verses and prose, why these two types of speech exist , is rather difficult.
The problems of distinguishing between prose and verse
Modern literary criticism, studying the difference between a poem and a prose work, raises the following interesting questions:
- Which speech is more natural for culture: poetic or prosaic?
- What is a prose work against the backdrop of a poem?
- What are the clear criteria for distinguishing between poetic and prosaic text?
- Due to what resources of the language does a prose text turn into a poetic text?
- How deep is the difference between poetic and prosaic? Is it limited to the organization of speech or concerns the system of thinking?
What comes first: poetry or prose?
Writer and literary critic Yan Parandovsky, reflecting on what a prosaic work is, once remarked that there is no scientific evidence that mankind first spoke in poetry and not prose, however, the sources of literature from different countries are precisely poetic rather than prosaic . This happened because the verse was the first to rise above everyday speech and the poetic speech reached its perfection long before the first attempts at fiction appeared.
Jan Parandowski is a little disingenuous, since in fact there are a considerable number of scientific hypotheses based on the assumption that human speech was originally poetic. This was mentioned by J. Vico, and G. Gadamer, and M. Shapir. But Parandovsky clearly noted one thing: world literature really begins precisely with poetry, and not with prose. Genres of prose works developed later than poetic genres.
Why exactly the poetic speech arose is not yet known exactly. Perhaps this is due to the idea of the general rhythm of the human body and the world around it, possibly with the initial rhythm of children's speech (which, in turn, is also waiting for an explanation).
Criteria for distinguishing verse and prose
The famous poet Mikhail Gasparov saw the difference between a poem and a prose work, that the poetic text is felt as a text of increased importance and is designed for repetition and memorization. A poetic text, in addition to being divided into sentences and parts of sentences, is also divided into parts that are very easily grasped by consciousness.
This observation is inherently very deep, but it is not instrumental, since it does not imply clear criteria for distinguishing between verse and prose. After all, prose can also be of increased importance and can also be designed for memorization.
Formal signs of the difference between prosaic and poetic text
Formal signs of difference - short fragments of a sentence - also cannot be recognized as sufficient grounds. A. G. Mashevsky notes that in fact, even an article from a newspaper can be turned into poetry simply by dividing its sentences into fragments of different lengths and writing each of them on a new line.
However, it will be too noticeable that the sentences are divided conditionally, no additional meaning is given to the text by this division, unless a humorous or ironic sound.
Thus, the differences in prose and poetry do not lie in any one attribute, but suggest some profound differences. To understand what a prosaic work is, you need to know that prose and poetic texts obey different laws of the organization of the text and the ordering of its elements.
The word in verse and in prose
It so happened that traditionally prose is determined through its difference from verse. More often it is customary to speak not about the distinguishing features of prose in comparison with a verse, but rather about the difference between verses and prose.
So, about the word in the verse, the Russian literary critic Yu. N. Tynyanov said that it is closer than in prose, is connected with other words in the work, and its connection with the structure as a whole is more close, he called it “the law of unity and tightness of the verse series” , and this concept is still relevant for literary studies.
Two trends in resolving the issue
Modern science has made many attempts to formulate what a prose work is in contrast to a poetic one, and in these attempts two trends can be distinguished quite distinctly. A number of philologists believe that the most important criterion is the specificity of the sound of the text. This approach can be called phonetic. In line with this tradition of understanding prose and verse, V.M. Zhirmunsky also expressed himself, in whose opinion the difference between poetic speech lies in "the regular ordering of the sound form." However, unfortunately or fortunately, not all prose and poetic works are clearly phonetically different from each other.
In contrast to this tradition, graphic theory insists on the primacy of the nature of the recording of the work. If the record is ordered as poetic (written “in a column”, then the work is poetic, if the text is written “in a line”, then it is prosaic). In line with this hypothesis, the modern poet Y. B. Orlitsky works. However, this criterion is not enough. As already mentioned above, a newspaper text written “in a column” does not become poetic from this. Pushkin’s prosaic works, recorded as poems, will not become poetic from this.
Thus, it must be recognized that there are no external, formal criteria for distinguishing between prosaic and poetic texts. These differences are deep and relate to the sound, and grammar, and intonation, and genre nature of the work.