| Abstract [eng] |
This MA thesis explores the anthropological dimensions of poetic meaning in Antanas Kalanavičius' poetry (1945–1992). Using a phenomenological lens, it examines how Kalanavičius' poetry explores the emergence and durability of meaning within the tension between nature and culture. The analysis is grounded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts of corporeal consciousness and the linguistic gesture, as developed in “Phenomenology of Perception”, and is further informed by Mircea Eliade's notion of the sacred, Paul Ricœur's theory of the symbol, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics of the festival. The examined corpus includes poems from the “Fragmentai” (“Fragments”) section of the collection “Ne akmenys guli” (1994), as well as one text from the compilation “Vienkiemio gylėj”. Merleau-Ponty posits that meaning arises through embodied experience: he describes consciousness as corporeal and the body as conscious and subjective. He emphasizes the interrelation of body and consciousness in language as well, identifying a bodily intention toward signification. This foundational principle of language calls for the transcendence of fixed forms and the creation of a living, dynamic speech. While meanings shaped by culture structure lived space, Merleau-Ponty also explores a primordial, pre-symbolic spatiality that exists beyond the reach of signification. Eliade's phenomenology of the sacred proposes a parallel conception of anthropological spatiality: the sacred is understood as a qualitatively distinct mode of being—eternal, absolute, and unbounded—manifesting within temporal forms. Gadamer's notion of the festival further enriches this interpretive framework, characterizing festive time as an alternative to the empty temporality of everyday life—self-contained and capable of sustaining itself. Ricœur's account of the non-semantic dimension of the symbol, like Merleau-Ponty's primordial space, points to a stratum of being that eludes cultural meaning. The interpretation demonstrates that Kalanavičius' poetic vision constructs a cosmological order grounded in representations of living nature, in which the upper and lower poles correspond to the grasp of embodied meaning and the experience of ungraspable being. In “Fragments,” the body separates the subject from sacred time, while poetic temporality is shaped by recurring imperfective verbs, instead of ritual calendars. These verbs express what Gadamer calls “fulfilled” time—a striving to sustain the moment of embodied meaning. The imagery of night and morning evokes a world in the process of vanishing and re-emerging—an experience that captures the non-human quality of being and the human potential to render the world meaningful, thereby sacralizing it. The subject's gaze, directed both upward and downward, reveals the intimate link between embodiment and cosmological meaning. In Kalanavičius' poetic vision, space is centered around the home—a site of assimilation into culture that is nonetheless disrupted by unhumanized nature. The metaphor of metal highlights the tension between the natural and cultural dimensions of human existence. Speech is shaped like iron, yet its natural quality also signals the fragility of meaning. As a material that is culturally inscribed yet inherently natural, metal reflects the human effort to make sense of the world while confronting the resistance nature poses to such meaning-making. Ultimately, Kalanavičius' poetics frames meaning as emerging from embodied perception. His poetry sanctifies the possibility of meaning while contrasting it with the natural dimension of both human and worldly existence. Kalanavičius' anthropological poetics offers a distinctive engagement with the theoretical frameworks of Merleau-Ponty and Eliade, as well as with the critical discourse surrounding his work. The phenomenological approach developed in this thesis contributes to the still underexplored field of research on Kalanavičius' literary legacy. |
