Lyudmila Gogotishvili’s predicative concept and Russian young symbolism

Studies in East European Thought. 2023. Vol. 75. P. 543–555.

Gravin A. A.

The article provides a linguophilosophical analysis of theoretical approaches to the symbolism of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely using the predicative concept of Lyudmila Gogotishvili.

It is shown that the consideration of the category of symbol in the dimensions of the unmanifest and the manifest makes it possible to expand the problematics of symbolism into phenomenological and linguophilosophical perspectives. In this case, symbolization turns out to be associated with reference, determined by the specifics of the “participation” in it of the linguistic subject and predicate and the status of the referent as a phenomenon of consciousness.

The antinomy of the unmanifest and the manifest presupposes in symbolic reference the allocation of a special extra-linguistic category of the most real, which is fundamentally outside the field of natural language and is energetically associated with it through verbal myth. It is shown that the ratio of myth, name and the most real in the reference allows using Gogotishvili’s predicative concept to evaluate the linguophilosophical features of this or that approach to the symbol. It is concluded that the symbolism of Vyacheslav Ivanov presupposes the prevailing role of the predicate in the reference to the unmanifest most real and can be designated as mythological, while the symbolism of Andrei Bely presupposes the prevailing role of the subject in the reference to the real, manifested in language, and can be designated as metaphorical.

Keywords: symbolism, predicativity, Vyacheslav Ivanov (poet), manifestation, Andrei Bely, energeticity, unmanifest, Lyudmila Gogotishvili