Abstract
The article attempts to compare a poetic circle David’s Psalms by Taras Shevchenko with its origin — Book of Psalms in The Old Testament. It singles out, in the synchronical aspect, major factors and key attributes that allow us to interpret this poetic circle as a systematic object, or “text.” The circle is analyzed on two levels: (1) the poet’s choice of ten psalms out of 150 for adaptation; (2) the actual adaptation and transformation of the original text. This two-level process forges a new literary text authored by Shevchenko. The system of inner connections within the new text is defined by (a) textual transformation and changes in the “neighborhood relations” between the textual components; b) the “speaker’s code,” e. g. the system of textological, semantic, and figurative revisions, additions and accentuations introduced by the author of the adaptation into the texts of the chosen psalms. The article examines such categories as pretext and context and introduces such notions as “off-text” and “the dialogue of interpretations.” The essay deliberately narrows down its scope of examination implying the method of the “sums of technology” and pursuing euristic purposes. Thus, a wide range of facts and problems widely discussed within Shevchenko Studies is intentionally left behind.
References
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