WHAT DOES POETRY ASK? (TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN, KONSTANTIN PAVLOV, BINYO IVANOV)

Abstract

„What does poetry ask“ is a question through which we are trying to look intently at the essence of poetical language. Our observation dwells on specific poetry books that were published in the last decades of the previous century and at the beginning of the present one. The selection of the authors and the books does not t aim at creating hierarchies or forcing judgements. Although the three authors boast an outstanding output and acclaimed presence in literature, the choice was first provoked by the ability of their works to phrase and evoke questions. If poetry can provide answers r, then those answers arrive via questions. Poetical space is a space of rewriting the rules of „the social contract“, as far as language is the base without which neither the contract, nor society, are possible. Yet at the same time poetry is a ceaseless opening towards subjective sensuousness and it is open not towards societies, but towards personalities; such personalities who are ready to transgress the security of the well-known and the territories of certain truths, towards the infiniteness of the question.