Kirjain kirjaimelta, höyhen höyheneltä

Timo Haajasen runojen lintumotiivien merkityksen konkreettisuudesta

• Karoliina Lummaa Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74618

Abstract

Letter by letter, feather by feather – Bird motifs and the con- creteness of meaning in Timo Haajanen’s poems

In this article, I examine the detailed descriptions of birds and bird carcasses in the poems of Timo Haajanen as examples of concreteness of meaning in poetic language. Concreteness is here defined as a type of meaning parallel to abstract or symbolic meaning. The concrete and the abstract are emphasised as parallel – in fact, almost simultaneous – types of meaning, due to which the meaning of a motif is always twofold. A bird motif interpreted as an animal in the scene of the poem always carries symbolic or ot- her textually or intertextually determined meanings arising from the textual character of the motif. The article presents critique on Michael Riffaterre’s interpretative semiotics, which conceptualises the semiotic level as prior to the mimetic level. The aim of this study is to show that such a hierarchy does not adequately account for the concurrence of the concrete and the abstract dimensions of meaning. Although concreteness is also seen as a stylistic feature through Murray Krieger’s study on the figure of ekphrasis, it is primarily theorised as an interpretative aspect.

The concept of concreteness as an interpretative aspect is defined by relating it to two types of referentiality: imaginative reference (the bird is understood as ”being” in the scene of the poem) and linguistic reference (the word ”bird” refers to a particular type of animal).