Catachresis in the Poetical Style of V. A. Sosnora

This article is dedicated to a phenomenon of poetic speech known as catachresis. There is no common definition of catachresis among the philologists due to different approaches to literary studies, thus its identification in lyrics is somewhat arbitrary and even controversial. Nevertheless, catachresis captures some of the author’s unique characteristics and thus plays a significant role in the individual poetic style. When we consider this artistical device as a feature of individual poetic style, it becomes obvious that it influences not only the inner form of the word, but the whole artistic image, expanding its semantics and saturating it with new meanings. This technique was clearly and nontrivially expressed in the poetry of V. A. Sosnora. Using catachresis, the poet revives trite metaphors that have been firmly established in everyday speech and refers to the tradition of synthesizing art, color rendering and onomatopoeia. Using catachresis Sosnora clashes inconsistent and contradictory images and endows well-known symbols with new meanings. By persistently resorting to this technique in combination with other tropes, the author creates a unique semantically saturated and complex “irrational style”.