brilliance.
Let us bring in another example (Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, chapter 8):
XXXVI
And so? While eyes continued reading,
His thoughts remained yet far away;
His dreams, desires, as well as grieving
Were crammed deep in his soul today.
Among the lines in plain print visible,
And with the spirit’s eyes perceptible,
Were others. Those were what for verse
He took, now utterly immersed.
’Twas secret lore of deep tradition,
Obscure, sincere, from olden times,
And disconnected, muddled dreams,
A dread, and mumblings, premonitions,
Just living nonsense in a fairy’s land
Or correspondence in girlish hand.
XXXVII
And gradual pacification
Of thoughts and feelings now holds sway,
And before him his imagination
Its motley pharaoh sets to play …
XXXVIII
… How much when in a corner, solo,
Did he look like a poet inspired,
And sat he near the blazing fire,
And to himself hummed “Idol mio”
Or “Benedetta,” while up the flue
Burned now a paper, now a shoe.
(VI, 183–184)4
XXXVI
И что ж? Глаза его читали,
Но мысли были далеко;
Мечты, желания, печали
Теснились в душу глубоко.
Он меж печатными строками
Читал духовными глазами
Другие строки. В них-то он
Был совершенно углублен.
То были тайные преданья
Сердечной, темной старины,
Ни с чем не связанные сны,
Угрозы, толки, предсказанья,
Иль длинной сказки вздор живой,
Иль письма девы молодой.
XXXVII
И постепенно в усыпленье
И чувств и дум впадает он,
А перед ним воображенье
Свой пестрый мечет фараон …
XXXVIII
… Как походил он на поэта,
Когда в углу сидел один,
И перед ним пылал камин,
И он мурлыкал: Benedetta
Иль Idol mio и ронял
В огонь то туфлю, то журнал.
In this instance, we have three external rhythm-forming codes: the printed text, the measured flickering of the fire, and the “humming” motif. It is quite typical that the book appears here not as communication—it is read without its content being noticed (“While eyes continued reading,/His thoughts remained yet far away”)—but as something that stimulates the development of an idea. And, crucially, it stimulates not with its content, but through the mechanistic automaticity of reading. Onegin “reads without reading,” just as he looks at the fire without seeing it and hums without noticing. None of these three rhythmic sequences, each perceived by different organs, has an immediate semantic relationship to what he is thinking, his imagination’s game of “pharaoh.”iv And yet they are indispensable if he is to read the “other” lines “with the spirit’s eyes.” The external rhythm’s intrusion organizes and stimulates the interior monologue.
Finally, a third example we would wish to introduce is the Japanese Buddhist monk contemplating a “rock garden.”5 Such a garden consists of a modest, gravel-strewn square with stones arranged according to a complex mathematical rhythm. Contemplating these complexly arranged pebbles is supposed to create a certain mood that fosters introspection.
* * *
Various systems of rhythmic series, from musical repetitions to repeating ornamental patterns—constructed according to clearly marked syntagmatic principles, but deprived of their own semantic content—can appear as the external codes by which the verbal message is reconstructed. For comparison, see also Yuri Knorozov’s notion of a correlation between information and fascination.6 v In order for the system to work, however, two heterogeneous fundamentals must collide and interact: the message, in some semantic language, and the intrusion of an additional, purely syntagmatic code. Only the combination of these fundamentals gives rise to a communicative system that one might characterize as “I—I.”
Thus we can regard the existence of a special channel for autocommunication as well-established. And it happens that this question has already drawn scholarly attention. We find an indication of the existence of a special language specifically designed for autocommunication in L. S. Vygotsky, who describes it as “inner speech.”vi And here we also find an indication of its structural markers:
The basic distinction between inner and outer speech is the absence of vocalization.
Inner speech is mute, silent speech. This is its fundamental distinction. But it is in precisely this respect, meaning the gradual increase of this distinction, that egocentric speech undergoes an evolution.
