Words of the Unfathomable: Apophatic Poetics of Semyon Frank

Abstract

The fundamental poetical ideas of Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank (1877–1950) can be reconstructed on the basis of general aesthetic judgments within the framework of the system of religious thought, which he presented in the work The Unfathomable (1938). The notion of the unfathomable is the axis of Frank’s (meta)ontology. Before starting the interpretation of discussions and studies in which the Russian thinker directly thematizes poetry itself, it is necessary to illuminate the broader framework of his implicit poetical position. “Unfathomable” is a philosophical name for a primeval reality that cannot be encompassed by any positive definition. From the first and last depth of reality, both the external, objective, and the internal, intimate world of human experience are born. Therefore, authentic aesthetics and poetics are obliged to accompany this (meta)ontological act of poíesis, instead of getting entangled in the dualism of internal (subjective) and external (objective) reality. Frank’s interpretations of poetry come from the intuition of a negative, apophatic dimension, which also expresses itself in literary works. Poetry in its purest form is an expression and an imprint (Ausdruck), a trace of the unfathomable in words. The task of poetics, as a theoretical and interpretive deepening into the meaning of creative expression, is to preserve, and not finally decipher this imprint, the seal of the negative.