Kees Mercks

Introductory Observations on the Concept of ‘Semantic Gesture’^*

I.

In a series of articles, written during the last years of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s (i.e. the flourishing period of Czech structuralism in the context of the Prague Linguistic Circle), Jan Mukarovsky gradually introduced into literary theory his con­cept of ‘semantic gesture’⁽¹⁾. Pertaining to the integ­rity (‘unitedness’) and specificness (‘uniqueness’) of the literary sign, this concept emerged mainly in con­nection with the problem of the individual aspects of a literary work (Cervenka 1973: 160) or of literary com­munication. On the one hand, it serves as a method by which the literary work can be investigated as a per­sonally and hence intentionally organized structure in its qualities as aesthetic object, on the other hand, as a method by which the characteristic features of the literary structure can be established, exposing its integrity on the basis of a certain congruency in its stratification (sound, meaning, theme). Finally, the connection between the characteristics of the lit­erary work and its creator's personality could be de­scribed by the same notion. At this point Mukarovsky reached the domain of literary interpretation (Cervenka 1973: 161), albeit on strictly structural lines.
On a larger scale, the typical features of a group of literary works, produced by one or several authors, could be investigated in the same manner and hence arises a third implication: the role of the semantic gesture in the description of an author's poetics and even in literary evolution (Mukarovsky 1939b/1948-II: 374)⁽²⁾. Because of its manysidedness and versatility, both in theoretical (conceptual) and pragmatical (ana­lytical) respect, the notion of semantic gesture seems to be very attractive and useful. Nevertheless, its response in the academic world has unfortunately remained rather restricted, mainly to the relatively small group of Mukarovsky’s own ‘pupils’⁽³⁾ and in a later stage, in turn, to a few of their own ‘pupils’⁽⁴⁾. There are several reasons for this - in my opinion - unlucky fate of the semantic gesture. It is partly due to the theoretical and even more ideological criticism, mostly indicating the extent of admissibility of Czech structuralism in general after 1948 (the year of the communist change-over), and partly to external circumstances, such as the physical absence of Czech scholars in the academic circles, caused by political purges and emigration⁽⁵⁾.
Firstly, the notion of semantic gesture was criticized by Mukarovsky himself ⁽⁶⁾ at the end of the 1950s. This rejection was brought about by the change of ‘world-view’ which he underwent after 1948. Under the influence of his experience during the war, he had radicalized his former political orientation, accepting as so many Czech intellectuals did - the program of socialist reforms. In 1947 he attempted to formulate a certain degree of epistemological affinity between structuralism and dialectical materialism in the field of literary theory, but this effort did not meet approval in dogmatic Marxist circles (L.Stoll a.o.). Structuralism was criticized as an ‘idealistic, bourgeois’ current, incompatible with Lenin’s theory of reflection. Likewise, the structuralist method - with its orientation on the individuality and uniqueness of the literary work and on the polyfunctionality of all art - was said to be at variance with the aesthetical theses of socialist realism. In accordance with the new ideological demands, Mukarovsky confined the notion to a manifestation of ideological and sociological presuppositions, such as ‘party-spirit’ (stranickost) and ‘common people’s spirit’ (lidovost), which should control the semantics of the literary work. In comparison to his previous refined and subtle analyses, the literary studies he published in this period are rather disappointing,⁽⁷⁾ insofar as he was occupied with literature at all. As a rector of the Charles University and director of the Institute of Czech Literature in Prague he was mainly forced to fulfill representative functions, on behalf of which he attended many peace-conferences and issued many purely political addresses ⁽⁸⁾. In spite of all these efforts, he was severely attacked towards the end of the 1950s, as soon as he attempted to broach the question of literary individuality again⁽⁹⁾. This meant the temporary end of public discussion of the semantic gesture as well.
The academic polemic on this issue was resuscitated in the ideologically milder climate of the mid 1960s. As a result of these improved spiritual conditions, many articles could be published on Czech structuralism in general⁽¹⁰⁾. Even a collection of Mukarovsky’s own essays from the pre-1948 era appeared in print ⁽¹¹⁾ and one year earlier, a ‘rehabilitation’ of the notion of semantic gesture had already been attempted by a ‘pupil’ of Mukarovsky’s, M. Jankovic, who first of all removed the ideological barriers that had put a taboo on the concept in the 1950s⁽¹²⁾. A few years later he continued his plea, pursuing the philosophical implications of that particular notion ⁽¹³⁾. In spite of this renewed interest, warmly supported by another ‘pupil’ of Mukarovsky’s and a close colleague of Jankovic, M. Cervenka, one can hardly assert that the question of semantic gesture suddenly became a common topic, neither in Czechoslovak literary theory nor abroad. True, Jankovic’s second article (1970) has been translated into English and German,⁽¹⁴⁾ but the English translation is a considerably abridged version of the original Czech text, albeit authorized by Jankovic for that purpose. In this respect one must give preference to the unabridged German translation, published in Postilla bohemica an unfortunately less well-known periodical than Poetics, in which the English translation appeared. To neither of these translations, however, I have found very many references, so that the number of those who are acquainted with the notion of semantic gesture hardly seems to have increased by those laudable efforts.
The reasons why Jankovic and Cervenka again drew attention to the problem of semantic gesture, were, in the first place, their inspiration by the attractive aspects of this notion with regard to literary theory and analysis - they gave the notion a crucial position in Mukarovsky’s conceptual system ⁽¹⁵⁾ - , in the second place, their concern with regard to the complexity, ambiguity and a certain vagueness of the notion, which .apparently required further clarification⁽¹⁶⁾. Roughly three practical problems should be mentioned in this context: the designation of the notion itself, the phrasing of Mukarovsky’s definition and the lack of feedback in the diverse literary analyses⁽¹⁷⁾. Although these questions will return in the course of this paper, their general outline can already be given here, because they too have probably impeded the transmission of the notion across the border.
One objection to the term ‘gesture’ could be that it is a metaphorical designation, not appropriate to scientific language and possibly even confusing because of the allusion to similar terms in the field of theatre, behaviour or psychology. Of course, one cannot deny that a certain connection must exist, whereas literary production and reception are human acts par excellence. Human activity on the stage, in society and in personal life differ principally, however, from that in literary communication, not to speak of the personal, ‘active’ aspects in the structure of the literary work itself. Therefore, a common term such as ‘gesture’ can only be applied to the latter by way of comparison, and hence, metaphorically. Just to avoid such an undesirable confusion with psychological ⁽¹⁸⁾ or theatrical terminology, Mukarovsky soon added the restricting adjective ‘semantic’ to this ‘gesture’, as we shall see on the following pages (II.3, II.4), or even further modified the ‘gesture’ by replacing it by ‘intention’,⁽¹⁹⁾ or ‘semantic gesture’ by ‘semantic intention’ (cf. II. 4) . I doubt whether this last change much clarifies the matter (cf. II.4), and I agree with Cervenka, who emphatically called the choice of the term ‘semantic gesture’ a fortunate one (Cervenka 1978: 180), as long as a more ‘neutral’ designation for this notion has not been found. Contiguous terms like ‘constructional principle’ (Tynjanov, e.g. 1924/1977: 261) or ‘isomorphism’ instead of structural ‘congruency’, proposed by Cervenka (1978: 180), obviously lack the personal roots of the ‘semantic gesture’ and seem to be limited to the text-structure.
Not only is the designation of the notion, but also the phrasing of its definition, as we shall see, subject to change. Only in the course and full context of all of Mukarovsky’s articles, in which he gradually elaborates the question of the semantic gesture, one can understand its essential meaning. Such a flexible and imperfect way of definition is a well-known feature of Czech structuralism and must be explained, first of all, by the principal endeavor to create a dynamic conceptual system, capable of internal development⁽²⁰⁾.
Moreover, at the end of his literary analyses Mukarovsky usually does not return to his starting-point: the establishment and description of the semantic gesture in concreto. This lacking feedback could be likewise explained in terms of deliberate imperfection. By means of the semantic gesture, the areas of individuality and specificness are made accessible in the literary analysis, although it is hardly possible to express what, exactly and concretely, the semantic gesture has been. Nevertheless its effect on the several levels of the literary work in question is irrefutable and can be described. Emphatically not representing an idea, theme, or other form of concrete (predetermined) meaning, the semantic gesture seems to be fused with other elements of the text-structure and can thus hardly be specifically ‘labeled’ (Cervenka 1973: 161). Earlier Jankovic even spoke of manifestations of ‘sense’ (1970: 21),⁽²¹⁾ pointing to an energetic stream of meaning in contrast to the fulfilled (static) meanings of a word, thought or theme. At any rate, the seeming elusiveness of the semantic gesture might not have increased the credit of the notion in wider academic circles.
The last reason for the lack of response to the notion abroad could be imperfect communication. Mukarovsky’s articles, in which the term and its several definitions occur, are not only written in Czech, but are also dealing with examples from Czech literature. Indeed, thanks to renewed interest abroad towards Czech structuralism during the 1970s, a relatively large number of Mukarovsky’s essays were translated, especially into German and English⁽²²⁾. Understandably, however, the translators predominantly chose articles which were not dealing with Czech literature itself (and hence with the semantic gesture ‘in practice’), but with theoretical questions. Thus, the extent of applicability of the semantic gesture in the analysis of a concrete literary work still remained terra incognita to those who do not read Czech. The purpose of this article, thereupon, is to focus on these particular, concrete literary analyses, pursued by Mukarovsky on a rather large scale, and to present the term ‘semantic gesture’ and its several definitions in their own context.
The renewed interest in Czech structuralism was partly brought about by new developments in the Czech spiritual and political climate. At the end of the 1960s, the relatively moderate era was brutally replaced by the period of severe ‘normalization’, which again meant the end of Czech structuralism in the ‘official’ academic world. Thanks to a certain inertia, inherent in such developments, Jankovic’s collection of studies on structuralism (1970) could be published and a new collection of (older) essays (1971) by Mukarovsky as well.
From the very beginning of the normalization period Mukarovsky was harshly attacked by party-ideologists, with lasting effects until his death in 1975. Many of his former ‘pupils’ left the country ⁽²³⁾ during those years; others - such as Jankovic and Cervenka - were expelled from the ‘Institute of Czech Literature’ and could only continue their scientific activities ‘unofficially’ and under circumstances of great personal risk. On the other hand, they were supported by their former colleagues in the Diaspora, who generally soon regained their abandoned positions in the academic world abroad and furthered the publication of these ‘unofficial’ writings.
The scientific and ideological taboo on Mukarovsky in Czechoslovakia had lasted almost ten years, when in 1982, quite unexpectedly, a re-edition of a large amount of his previous essays, augmented with some ‘old-new’ ones, was published at Odeon’s in Prague. This edition is carefully annotated and even contains a list of translations and commentaries which were produced abroad in the years of taboo in his own coun­try. This great enterprise was followed by a separate edition of a still unpublished article in 1985, pre­pared by Jankovic, who discovered it in Mukarovsky’s legacy. This official acknowledgment ⁽²⁴⁾ coincided with a stream of publications abroad in honour of Mukarovsky, collected in periodicals such as Poetics Today (1980/1981, Vol.2, Nr.lb), Wiener Slawistischer Alma­nach (1981, Bd.8) and Russian Literature (1982, Nr. XII-III, IV and the present issue), which were, in their turn, accompanied by regular publications in Ann Arbor and Amsterdam ⁽²⁵⁾. As a result of this renewed interest in Czech structuralism in general, the discussion of the semantic gesture has again been resuscitated by Jankovic’s reply (1982) to Wolf Schmid’s quite specific interpretation of this notion (1977) and Herta Schmid’s answer to their discussion (1982). However, here I will focus on the primary sources of these polemics.
In the following pages I will present and comment on the original phrasing of Mukarovsky’s text-fragments in which the notion of the semantic gesture occurs. Apart from a few minor abridgements these quotes will be given in full, in order to show the context and sub­sidiary implications of that notion as well. The sev­eral definitions will be mutually compared and brought together. Finally, the literary analyses in which the semantic gesture has been applied as a working hypoth­esis will be taken into account and related to the original definition. To avoid any confusion in terminology, I will take gratefully advantage of the English trans­lations (as far as available), provided by P. Steiner and J. Burbank (Mukarovsky 1977, 1978) ⁽²⁶⁾.

II.1 The Genesis of Sense in Macha’s Poetry (Mukarovsky 1938b/1948-III: 239-310, esp. 239)

Unlike Mukarovsky’s previous study (1934a)⁽²⁷⁾ of M.Z. Polak’s poem “Vznesenost prirody” [The majesty of nature], in which Mukarovsky discovered the developmental values of this innovating poetic work to Czech Pre-romanticism and Romanticism but did not yet formulate the individual qualities of the poem in terms of the semantic gesture (cf. II.6), the present study of Macha’s oeuvre was meant to highlight the unique integrity of the whole artistic work of one poet by means of this particular notion. Already in 1928 Mukarovsky had pub­lished an analysis of Macha’s long romantic lyrico-epical poem  Maj [May], in which he primarily provided a minute descriptive study of the sound level of that poem. The aim of the second study, however, was to show the coherency of the diverse levels throughout the whole of
Macha’s oeuvre with special regard to the influence of the poet’s personality. With this aim in view, Mukarovsky conceived the notion of (semantic) gesture.
The following quotation contains not only the sen­tence in which the term ‘gesture’ emerges for the first time in Mukarovsky’s writings, but also the surrounding context which holds significant clues for a better understanding of the term. The study from which the quotation is taken has not been previously translated into English because of the many concrete examples from Macha’s work (mostly from poetry, but - intentionally - also from prose and some dramatic fragments ⁽²⁸⁾. The sen­tences, in which the term ‘gesture’ and further clues are given, are italicized.

 “The study that we present here is an attempt to in­vestigate the fundamental, schematic principle on which the semantic unity of Macha’s literary work is based. We do not intend to separate the components of form from those of content, but we will start from the pre­supposition - as this has already been sufficiently proven by the given development of literary theory - that each and every component of the literary structure has the same claim (though not in the same manner) to be bearer of meaning. Therefore, we will not analyze the different components with respect to their typical char­acteristics, but will reduce them all to their same de­nominator: meaning. On the other hand, we will neither examine the content of the work, as the term ‘meaning’ might suggest, hence we will not give a full list of the most general categories and semantic domains from which Macha took his thematical material, nor will we search for the philosophical reach of Macha’s literary work. We will, however, try to make a reconstruction of that - with respect to content undetermined (and in that sense eventually formal) - gesture, by which the poet selected the elements of his work and blended them into a semantic unity. And moreover: when we speak about ‘unity’, we do not have in mind the kind of unification which is only being gradually realized in the act of reading by virtue of the compositional ground plan, but we mean the ‘unitedness’ of the dynamic constructional principle which becomes manifest even in the smallest segments of the literary work and which consists in the ‘united’ and unifying systematization of the components.”
(Mukarovsky 1938b/1948-III: 239; tr. mine - K.M.)

II.2 The Semantic Construction and Compositional Basis of Karel Capek’s Epics (Mukarovsky 1939b/1948-II: 374-401, esp. 374)

The second time Mukarovsky made use of the notion of (semantic) gesture was at the beginning of his second study on Capek’s prose. In a slightly abbreviated form, he repeated the ‘definition’ given above and added to it some interesting complementary features. Unlike the
Macha-study in which he searched for examples in different genres he now envisaged the problem of finding such a ‘fundamental, schematic principle’ in one genre by one author. In a previous study of Capek’s prose (1939a), he had already examined its sound level and concluded that, as to Capek, the specific intonational line was the dominant factor of his verbal expression. In the following study he extended this investigation to the other levels of Capek’s prose, in order to prove their profound correlation, their mutual ‘unitedness’:

“In our previous article we have examined the sound level of Capek’s prose; we noted there too, however, that this level was not the final interest of our analysis. Already then the purpose was, virtually, and in the present article the purpose will be even more, ‘to reconstruct that - with respect to content undetermined - gesture with which the author blends the elements of his work into a semantic unity’, hence to determine he meaning-creating process, through which the work arose and which is being re-initiated in the act of reading. A similar method we had already chosen in the analysis of the semantic construction in Macha’s work. <...> The approach which we then chose will be used again in this monographic study, devoted to the literary work of one single author; its purpose is not only to register what is artistic in the author’s work, but also to grasp the author’s influence through the literary work on man’s attitude towards reality in ‘everyday life’. The final goal of such a method could be – if we succeed in embracing the wider dimension of literary evolution - the history of Czech artistic prose, which by examining what is artistic in art, could also include its noetic reach”.
(Mukarovsky 1939b/1948-II: 374; tr. and italics mine - K.M.)

II.3 On Poetic Language (Mukarovsky 1940/1948-I: 78-129, esp.120)

 The next example, in which the problem of (semantic) gesture was raised, appeared one year later, though in quite a different context. Here, Mukarovsky was not much concerned with the analysis of a concrete literary work, but felt the need - after all his practical analyses - to summarize his views on the (semantic) gesture and other concepts. For the first time the full term of ‘semantic gesture’ is used here and as such it acquired a paramount position in Mukarovsky’s conceptual system. This essay, being one of the most frequently translated studies, became one of the most well-known, too. Here, we also meet for the first time a reference to a certain congruity (cf. II.1) of the construction/structure ⁽²⁹⁾ on the diverse levels of the literary work and references to possibly synonymous designations, such as ‘semantic fact’ and ‘semantic intention’, which are for that reason been rendered in italics, as well as the repeated basic ‘definition’:

“The congruity of the semantic structure of the sentence with the structure of higher semantic units, indeed, even with that of the entire text, is a very important working hypothesis for the theory of literature. That is, it creates a bridge over which we can pass from the linguistic analysis to the study of the entire semantic structure of the text. ‘Compositional analysis’ is not doomed to rigid staticness, if we apply to it the principle of semantic dynamics, an enumeration of which we presented when we analyzed the semantic structure of the sentence. In this way compositional analysis acquires the possibility of leading to the determination of the ‘formal’ but nevertheless concrete ‘semantic gesture’ by which the work is organized as a dynamic unity from the simplest elements to the most general outline. Despite its seeming ‘formal’ quality the semantic gesture is something completely different from form conceived as the external ‘garment’ of a work. It is a semantic fact, a semantic intention, though qualitatively undetermined. And precisely because of its semantic essence it makes possible the comprehension and determination of the external connections of a work with the poet’s personality, society, and other spheres of culture. The notion of the semantic gesture, though it concerns the internal structure of the work, removes the last remains of Herbartian Formalism from the structural theory of literature.”
(Mukarovsky 1940/1948-I: 120; tr. Steiner/Burbank 1977: 54; italics are mine - K.M.)

II. 4 Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art. (Mukarovsky 1943/1966: 89-109, esp. 100)

 This article, in which Mukarovsky deals with the problem of semantic gesture for the fourth time - and fairly extensively - , is one of his most puzzling commentaries on the subject. On the one hand he attempts to remove the problem of semantic gesture from the context of practical literary analysis (and its theoretical postulates to the domain of structural (semiotic) aesthetics, on the other, he connects the concept of semantic gesture to a notion which seems at first glance rather close to E. Husserl’s concept of ‘semantic intention’ (Bedeutungsintention), without referring to Husserl himself. The latter’s influence on Mukarovsky’s work is, therefore, rather difficult to prove, although a certain parallelism between both scholars seems to be incontestable ⁽³⁰⁾. Husserl, we know, visited the Prague Linguistic Circle and must have met Mukarovsky personally ⁽³¹⁾. The reason for not quoting Husserl’s term (just as Mukarovsky did not quote Tynjanov’s ‘constructional principle’, cf. II.1, I) could be a certain apprehension to transpose directly and fully a notion from another conceptual system into his own.
The English translation confirms the similarity or even identity of the two notions, deciding in favour of ‘(un-)intentionality’ instead of the more neutral term ‘deliberateness’, which at least is appreciably different from Husserl’s notion, whereas the Czech expression is ‘zamernost’ and not ‘intencionalnost’. On the other hand, as we have seen, Mukarovsky did also use the expression ‘intention’ (in Czech: intence).
Another circumstance preventing full comprehension of this article is its abrupt ending, which suggests a continuation of this subject that, unfortunately, has never been realized. Nevertheless, even as a torso this article contains more clues than ever to the ‘riddle’ of semantic gesture, albeit now in the new context of structural (semiotic) aesthetics:

 “But what does have supratemporal import as a principle of semantic unification is the unifying semantic intention [Czech: intence] which is essential for art and always operates in every work of art. We have called it the semantic gesture. This semantic intention [‘intence’] is dynamic for two reasons. On the one hand it unifies the contradictions, or ‘antinomies’, on which the semantic structure of the work is based; on the other, it takes place in time, for the perception of every work, even a visual work, is an act whose temporal span has <...> been sufficiently documented by experimental studies. Another difference between the ‘idea of a work’ and the semantic gesture is that the idea quite obviously pertains to content and has a definite semantic quality, whereas for the semantic gesture the difference between content and form is irrelevant. In the course of its duration the semantic gesture is gradually filled with a concrete content without our being able to say that this content enters from without. It simply originates in the range and the sphere of the semantic gesture which forms the content immediately upon its birth. The semantic gesture can therefore be designated as a concrete, though qualitatively, not predetermined, semantic intention [‘intence’]. If we examine the semantic gesture in a specific work, we cannot therefore simply express it, we cannot designate it by its semantic quality <...>. We can only show how individual semantic elements of a work, from the most external ‘form’ to whole thematic complexes (paragraphs, acts in a drama etc.), group together under its influence. But not only the author and the structure that he has imposed upon the work are responsible for the semantic gesture which the perceiver experiences in the work. A considerable share falls to the perceiver, and it would not be difficult to demonstrate by a more detailed discussion of more recent analyses and critiques of older works that often the perceiver appreciably modifies the semantic gesture of a work contrary to the author’s original intention [‘zamer’]. This accounts for the perceiver’s activity as well as for the intentionality [‘zamernost’] viewed from his standpoint. <...>
With the aid of this intentionality [‘zamernost’] the perceiver binds the work into a semantic unity. All the components of the work invite this attention. The unifying semantic gesture with which he approaches the work strives to encompass them all in its unity. The fact that some components may stand outside of intention [‘zamer’] for the author is not relevant for the perceiver, as we have already shown. <...> Naturally, the unification does not occur smoothly. Contradictions can appear among individual components or, better, among the meanings of which they are the vehicles. Even these contradictions are resolved in intentionality [‘zamernost’] precisely because - as we have remarked above - , intentionality – i.e. the semantic gesture - is in no way a static, but a dynamic, unifying and all-embracing principle.
(Mukarovsky 1943/1966: 100; tr. Steiner / Burbank 1978: 111-112; italics are mine - K.M.)

II.5 Vancurian Prolegomena (Mukarovsky 1940s/1971: 221-277, esp. 234).

 With passing references to his earlier studies on Macha (1938b), Capek (1939b) and “On Poetic Language” (1940), but without mentioning “Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art” (1943), Mukarovsky returned to the notion of semantic gesture in the second half ⁽³²⁾ of the 1940s, but apparently before 1947 (cf. I). In this extended study he admits that the semantic gesture and the ‘unified semantic intention’ (Czech: intence) are identical:

“...the most fundamental, relatively closed configuration of the context is the sentence, not only as a grammatical construction, but also in the sense of a semantic whole. One may thus assert, in advance and in general, that the principles by which the semantic construction of the sentence in a given work is controlled, are also effective in that work with respect to the organization of higher dynamic semantic units, such as a paragraph, chapter, or a whole text. By virtue of that unity of semantic gesture (i.e. unified semantic intention) which controls the construction of the text a fluent transition of linguistic elements into thematic ones is realized and a unifying theoretical view on the construction of the work is made possible”.
(Mukarovsky 1940s/ 1971: 234; the first italics are J.M.’s; tr./ italics are mine - K. M.)

With this quotation, in which the term ‘semantic gesture’ appeared for the last time in Mukarovsky’s ‘creative period’, we conclude this part of the paper. For commentary, see II.7, but first I would like to draw attention to some indirect references to the subject of semantic gesture, in which the term as such is not employed, but similar problems and affiliated terminology occur.

II.6 Indirect References to the Semantic Gesture

 In almost every instance where Mukarovsky was concerned with the individual characteristics of a literary work or oeuvre one encounters phrasings which show a conspicuous resemblance to the wording used in the above-mentioned studies. Therefore, it could be interesting to consider Mukarovsky’s analysis of Nemcova’s famous prose-work Babicka [Grandmother], one of the major works of Czech nineteenth century literature. Already in the mid 1920s Mukarovsky’s analysis exceeded, as we shall see, the strict bounds of stylistics, searching for their deeper roots:

“It turned out that the main mystery of B. Nemcova’s stylistic art is based on the simple and fluent arrangement of tiny details, which she - with the alertness of her creative perception - could pick up from the stream of reality so fully and organize so harmoniously that she was able to evoke the illusion of the very essence of all events: of an endless flow, of a continuous coming and going, rising and falling, appearing and vanishing. <...> We assume that from this creative method leads the direct path to the very roots of Nemcova's nature: to the balanced harmony of her character and to her optimism.
(J.M. 1925/1948-II: 322; tr./italics mine - K.M)

 The interesting thing here is that Mukarovsky at such an early stage (even before his first ‘aesthetic’ Macha-study from 1928 and still under the influence of ‘literary psychologism’) dared to connect specific stylistic features with the more or less extra-literary category of the author’s specific psychological state of mind, without reducing the author’s psychology to a certain classified type ⁽³³⁾.
In this respect, the recent publication of a ‘forgotten’ article from Mukarovsky’s legacy must be mentioned, in which the psychologically colored term ‘motoric gesture’ was coined:

“The essence of poetry is neither based on content, nor on form, but on a certain third quality: on the unified motoric stream, who’s ‘bearers’ are both content and form. <...> Searching for the motoric gesture of a poet, we examine the very essence of his creative personality. <...> We will, therefore, classify the poets according to the similarity of their motoric gesture. <...> We would like to stress that we do not regard them as types.”
(Mukarovsky 1927/1985: 54; tr./italics mine - K.M.) ⁽³⁴⁾

In several subsequent analyses of the individual character of a literary oeuvre Mukarovsky applied the method of comparing the diverse levels of the work and pursuing some fundamental, unifying basic principle, typical of the individual poet in question. In his study of O.Theer’s poetry (1931/1948-II), we encounter an ‘organizing principle’, ‘typical’ and ‘characteristic feature’, etc.; in his study of K. Hlavacek’s poetry (1932/1948-II): ‘tendency’, ‘fundamental, semantic unit’, ‘essential’; in his second Hlavacek-study (1934/1948-II): ‘most fundamental quality’, ‘intentional application’, and so on. Although they mostly concern the hierarchization of the components of the work itself (the material side) allusions to the wider dimension of the poetic personality can be found as well. Moreover, these analyses show Mukarovsky’s gradual transition from a psychological to a semantic standpoint, albeit in the broadest sense: semantics being present and even fundamental in the diverse spheres of not only the literary work, but also of culture in general and even in those of the psychology and sociology of the artist, all focused in some principle, intention, tendency or gesture.
The afore-mentioned (cf. II.1) Polak-study (1934a) also contains familiar phraseology with respect to what has been later called ‘semantic gesture’, e.g. ‘a general semantic tendency of Polak’s style’ (p.153) , which in the course of the study could be identified not only with Polak’s own poetic preferences and dispositions, but also with his personal ‘life-style’.
In the same year Mukarovsky made a first study of Vancura’s prose, in which he expressed the need to connect such a ‘fundamental semantic tendency’ with a sociologically oriented investigation in a following study. Although that part of the study has never been realized and could have served as a bridge to the sociological and ideological literary studies of the 1950s, in the present study we encounter notions such as ‘tendency’ and ‘intention’:

“Even verbal tense and mood are forced to serve the fundamental semantic tendency of the author, realizing sharp semantic ruptures, by which the linguistic utterance is dynamized, irrespective of the theme. <...> Finally, it is useful to mention briefly the sound level of Vancura’s prose, i.e. the euphonic organization of the consonants, because that level also serves the semantic intention here”.
(Mukarovsky 1934/1966: 288; tr./italics are mine - K.M.)

“A sociological analysis would need to be added and its main problem would be as follows: a) the social motivation of the fundamental semantic tendency of Vancura’s work, i.e. his tendency to use sharp semantic contrasts and continuously changing evaluations.”
(Mukarovsky ibid.: 290; tr./italics are mine - K.M.)

The term ‘creative method’ that we have met in the Nemcova’s study (1925) , we encounter again in 1938 (the same year of the second Macha-study), though slightly modified as ‘poetic method’, in a profound study devoted to Nezval’s collection of surrealistic poems The Absolute Grave-digger. Here the ‘poetic method’ is clarified by the already familiar phrase of ‘a principle without concrete content’, but the expected designation of ‘semantic gesture’ is not actually used:

“The choice of artistic means and the manner of their application to a work of art is controlled by a certain methodical principle, that - being without concrete content by itself - determines the specific character of the work of art as a semantic construction. This principle is of course subject to changes; the changing reality itself forces it now to slower, now to more rapid changes. The capability of the poetic method to adapt itself to that changing reality seems, at present, even one of the main criteria for the life span of a literary work: the presence and characteristics of this method can be established only by a semantic analysis that does not pretend to determine the value of a literary work, but supplies a merely cognitive goal.” <...>
“The determination of the fundamental meaning-creating principle in a poetic work does not directly aim to grasp the uniqueness of the analysed work. <„..> Of course, the shifts to which this principle is subject from one work to another are gradual and hardly noticeable. Usually, the artistic means themselves vary to a lesser extent than their application in the general structure of the work.” <...>
“To begin with, let us attempt - superficially and approximately as it may seem - to discriminate between the semantic orientation of Nezval as a Surrealist and the semantic principle of his previous period as a Poetist”.
(Mukarovsky 1938a/1966: 272-273; tr./italics are mine - K.M.)

II.7 Commentary on Mukarovsky’s Theoretical Statements Regarding the Concept of Semantic Gesture.

 The most conspicuous quality of all above-mentioned statements consists in the description of a concept which is gradually shaded by a variety of slight modifications, depending on the aim of the pursued literary analysis or on the specificness of the literary work to be analyzed. A further reason for this shading of the definition may be found in the circumstance (cf. I) of the dynamicity and flexibility purposely maintained in Czech structuralism, inviting to constant reconsideration and reflection on the one hand and, on the other, pointing to possible connections with notions in other conceptual systems. Thus interpreted, Mukarovsky’s typical manner of definition is fully intentional and provides definitely positive values.
In my opinion, however, the open character and variability of definition is not only an advantage, but, indeed, also creates the impression of certain vagueness around the term of semantic gesture, impeding its unconditional acceptance.
Veltrusky (1980-81: 120) gives us another explanation of this phenomenon, indicating that virtually all Mukarovsky’s concepts were only of a provisional character at that time and were meant to be redefined and systemized in the course of the 1940s. Such a complementary stage, however, never took place due to the unfavorable conditions during the war and, three years later, after the communist change-over, both preventing an organic evolution of Mukarovsky’s theoretical framework.
At any rate, if one would like to apply the notion of semantic gesture in literary analysis one needs a clear concept whose definition should not be dependent on a gradual and maybe provisional description in the primary sources. Therefore, let us now attempt to summarize what has been formulated - step by step - by Mukarovsky in the several quotations, and distil from them the main features of the concept of semantic gesture and the main possibilities of its application.
In the Macha-study (cf. II. 1), Mukarovsky first formulated a definition of that ‘gesture’, which later appears to be the kernel of the definition. This gesture is undetermined as regards content (and only in that sense ‘formal’, being neither a part of content nor of form sensu stricto), but apparently determines the meaningful way the poet (or more in general: the creative personality) selects and blends the elements of his work into a semantic unity.
The first problem that arises is the relation between that gesture and the category of content (as a qualitative entity). In the same article Mukarovsky places this term in a series of categories, such as ‘theme’, ‘idea’ and even ‘philosophy’, apparently meant as ‘world-view’, hence all provided with a qualitative aspect (see also II.3). Different to such a static or fixed meaning is the kind of meaning - or better still: meaning-creation - with which the semantic gesture is dealing. This kind of meaning consists rather in a dynamic, semantical ‘action’ (cf. Jankovic 1970: 7), which is evidently neither meaningless itself nor confined to the fulfilled meanings of content etc. In this respect, it concerns a meaning of another category which penetrates into all levels of the literary work and thus affects all ‘other’ meanings, orienting them to the semantics of a work as a whole and representing the author’s ‘noetic approach’ to the world. And here exactly the semantic gesture shows its semiotic nature.
The second problem is twofold: how should one interpret this process of 'selecting and blending' and how integrational is the attained semantic unity of the literary work. To start with the latter, Mukarovsky explains that the gesture consists in the ‘unitedness’ (Czech: ‘jednotnost’) of the dynamic constructional principle that is responsible for the united (being itself integrated) and unifying (integrating the work) systematization of the work-components (cf. II. l). What is striking here is Mukarovsky’s open allusion to Tynjanov’s well-known notion of ‘constructional principle’. In my opinion, however, a full equation of both concepts is not justified. The constructional principle pertains to the vivid interaction between the work-components in terms of dominancy and subordination (Tynjanov 1924a/1965: 28-29), e.g. rhythm in poetry, plot in prose or the pronounced word in oratorical genres (1924/1929: 15-16). Mukarovsky may have considered such an essential unifying principle, organizing the literary structure, useful to the domain of semantics and literary communication as well, augmenting it with individual and intentional properties (cf. 11. 3,4,5). Indeed, because of this alliance with the personal (creator's) influence on the literary work as a sign the work gains its specific 'dynamic unitedness', its integrity, manifest through a certain congruity on its several levels (cf. II.3).
The first part of our question (the process of selecting and blending) is, of course, closely connected with the problem described above. In “On Poetic Language” (II.3) the dynamic organization of the work is emphasized ('from the simplest elements to the most general outline') and in “Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art” (II.4) Mukarovsky speaks of unification of contradictions (‘antinomies’) on which the semantic structure is based. The dynamicity of the organization could be interpreted in two ways: firstly from the point of the creator, choosing his thematical material ‘from outside’, but aesthetically and intentionally re-arranging it into the required semantic unity of the literary work, secondly from the point of view of the reader who is not fully acquainted with the author’s intentions and who has to reconstruct the semantic unity by means of the provided thematic material and his own ‘intentionality’ (experiences etc.).
In this respect, the semantic gesture is at the intersection of both the inner organization of the literary work and its ‘outward’ relations, the first controlled by a fundamental semantic principle, intention, responsible for the specific semantic tendency or orientation (cf. II.6), the latter complementing and adjusting that same tendency toward the individual perceiver of the literary sign. The inner organization is given by a certain congruity (II.3) on the various work-levels, being essentially and inevitably present. Only due to this essential quality can the external connections with other spheres (II. 2,3) be established, though the perceiver’s interpretation need not necessarily be identical with the original creator’s intention(s). The often asserted infinity of interpretations is, thus, noticeably restricted by the perceiver’s orientation on the essence of the semantic structure of the literary sign. For that purpose and within these boundaries, the semantic gesture seems an appropriate concept and working hypothesis.
Although in “Vancurian Prolegomena” (II.5) Mukarovsky paraphrased the semantic gesture as ‘unified semantic intention’ I doubt if this is really helpful. An intention purports to be, in general, hidden and is for that reason always of another category than ‘gesture’ can ever be. Consequently, it would be better to maintain he original difference in terms of cause (intention) and effect (gesture), though both are dealing with a certain stream of ‘qualitatively unpredetermined’ meaning, or even sense ⁽³⁵⁾.
As yet two other problems have remained unsolved, the first one concerns Mukarovsky’s rather emphatical statement in his Macha-study (II.1) that he will not analyze the different components as to their typical characteristics. Nevertheless, his subsequent study on Macha’s work is an excellent characteristic, though with respect - and that was his main goal - to the literary individuality and the inherent essential relations. Therefore, I did not hesitate (cf. I) to draw attention to these possibilities of the semantic gesture for literary analysis. Likewise, Mukarovsky stated in his Nezval-study (II.6) that it was not his direct aim to grasp the uniqueness of the analyzed work, though I asserted (cf. I) that the semantic gesture pertains, indeed, to this property, connected as it is with the category of individuality. The main problem with which Mukarovsky was concerned at that moment was, however, the application of the semantic gesture to a broader specific and coherent entity: to a literary current.

III. The Semantic Gesture in the Concrete Literary Work.

 After the examination of the several modes of defining the semantic gesture the next methodical step should be a confrontation of this theoretical part with the concrete semantic analyses provided by Mukarovsky in the remaining parts of the above-mentioned studies.
Two methodical problems, however, arise. Firstly, these studies were written for a public well conversant with Czech literature, whereas my aim is to reach a public which is neither very well acquainted with those particular studies by Mukarovsky in which he demonstrated the effectiveness of the semantic gesture, nor with the literary work of the Czech authors analyzed. Secondly, Mukarovsky’s analyses are mostly quite lengthy and richly illustrated with concrete examples from the chosen works. Therefore, I reproduce these parts in a very global and succinct way, adding some factual information about the work and sometimes giving other examples than Mukarovsky did. In other words, the following excursion through the literary work of the classical Czech authors Macha, Capek, Nezval and Vancura will, to a great extent, reflect Mukarovsky’s characterization of the dynamics of the sentence, context, composition and external relations, searching for the underlying dynamic semantic principle that unifies the analyzed works and connects them with the individuality of its creator.

III. l The Semantic Gesture in Macha’s Literary Work

According to Mukarovsky in the “Genesis of Sense...” Macha’s work shows an apparent tendency towards distortion of context and thematic construction, to be ascribed to the high degree of independence of the word-designations and motifs (Mukarovsky 1938b/1948-III: 248 and 309). With regard to the word-designation, Macha played with meaning on the borderline of non-figurative and figurative expression. On the one hand, the referential relation of the word to reality is maintained, but, on the other hand, the symbolic potentiality of almost every word is increased, referring not only to that reality, but also to the internal 'world' of the poem (Ibid.: 243-244). Thus, factually, two kinds of meaning arise: one bound to the linguistic system and the extra-literary reality, the other developing more freely on the symbolic level inside the work (Ibid. :286) and inclining to ‘sense’, where ‘sense’ is to be connected with the interpretation of facts (Ibid.: 285). In Macha’s work the referential function is weakened - in comparison to the thematic function - and therefore almost every word turns out to be a motif (Ibid.: 289). Those motifs, with accumulated meaning referring to the intrinsic relations inside the work, show a same degree of independence, which can only be realized by a weakened plot (Ibid.: 309), sometimes compensated for by a firm composition. There hardly is a progressive thematic line (Ibid.: 248, 270): on the contrary, the reader is invited to use his own associative competence to find some coherence (unity) in the fragmentation of the discourse (Ibid.: 309-310). The technique used by Macha to connect the ‘clusters’ of motifs seems familiar to the film technique of montage (Ibid.: 290, 293). This distortion or weakening of the context is not a weakness of the author, but expresses his intentionality (Ibid.: 244,309). One may add that precisely in the act of designation, contextuation and dynamic composition this intentionality becomes manifest, determining the semantic gesture of the work. As far as the outer relations are concerned, Mukarovsky refers to Macha’s contemporary Sabina, who studied Macha’s personality and came to similar conclusions (Ibid.: 244) with respect to his personal life-style ⁽³⁶⁾.
Such semantic clusters can be illustrated with examples from Macha’s long poem May. ‘Normal’, non-figurative designations as ‘maj’ [May], ‘haj’[grove], ‘laska’[love], ‘skala’[cliff] acquire symbolic meaning by their acoustic similarity and their repeated juxtaposition, and at the same time they refer to nature in all its sensorial aspects. Through this thematic meaning this motif-string anticipates further thematical events: the depiction of nature, in which every creature seems to be in love, functions as the introduction of Jarmila waiting for her lover Vilem. Depicting nature in an anthropomorphic way, Macha even refers to a vague, pan-psychic, philosophical conception of nature. In sharp contrast to this motif-string appears another string: ‘stin’ [shadow], ‘klin [womb, wedge], ‘hynout’[die, fade], referring to night and death, which will affect thematically both Jarmila (her suggested suicide) and Vilem (death-penalty).
Most of these symbols have an ad hoc character and support the level of more stable, traditional symbols, well-known from the Romantic canon, such as ‘night’, referring both to fear and death, and to love, dreams and metaphysics; or ‘pilgrim’, referring to the individual and lonesome struggle for life and searching for its basic values; or ‘earth’ in its life-giving and life-taking capacity. In Macha’s work these traditional and often obsolete symbols obtain an aesthetically fresh meaning by their new attachment to the poetic context in which they appear.
In the poem May such a ‘leitmotiv’ with symbolic potentiality is represented by the element of water, which occurs at the same time as a general symbol in Romantic folk-poetry (and -mythology). Macha refreshed this traditional symbol by using it in different contexts: as a part of nature in the lake, near the cliff, where Jarmila is sitting, it reflects the universe (moon, stars) and the surrounding landscape (hills, trees, groves, farms) which by the slow turning of the light of the moon seem to embrace one another in a tender love-scene, while the lake itself is characterized as a sharp wedge (womb) between those hills, a dark, eerie place, implying the fatal development of the story. The element of fatality is again emphasized by the endlessly running waves of the rivulets in the hills leading into the lake. Waves are, in their turn, present in the lake, when its surface is disturbed by the wind and the paddles of the messenger, who will bring Jarmila the sad news about her lover.
The element ‘water’ occurs again in the form of tears in the eyes of Jarmila, reflecting - like the lake - not only the surrounding scenery, but also her sad state of mind, when she realizes the coming death of her lover. At the end of this scene those two images, the dark lake and the weeping Jarmila, blend - as the surrounding colours, scents and sounds fade - , suggesting Jarmila’s suicide by drowning. Moreover, later in the poem the element 'water' occurs again in connection with the protagonist Vilem, while he is waiting in his cell for his execution by hanging (he had murdered - without knowing it - his own father who had seduced his Jarmila). Reflecting on his life and overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, sadness and distress, Vilem hears water dripping from the walls of his cell, signifying the horrifying conditions of his imprisonment and simultaneously symbolizing time, slowly, but irrevocably advancing, and his own imminent death. Again one may notice the sublimation of sensorial experience to philosophical perspective and again a significant ‘movement’, the falling water-drops, enables a comparison with the falling teardrops shed by Jarmila.
Therefore, there arises a complex, a hierarchic network of correspondences, implying a symbolic coherence. However, not the meanings themselves, being ‘qualitatively determined’, but that extra, dynamic meaning, constituting the network of correspondences in the area of dynamic semantics, belongs to the province of the semantic gesture. The distortion, the fragmentation of the context, which we have noticed on the level of the sentence, isolates the words in their horizontal, syntagmatic structure and frees their secondary qualities (sound-correspondence, accessory meanings, dynamic leaning), resulting vertically, on the paradigmatic axis, in a basic semantic process unifying the diverse leanings, from the smallest units to the general outline, into the semantic unity of the whole of the work, connecting it - in its semantic essence - with the poet’s individuality and with the outward relations of is work(s) .
Specific to Macha is his tendency to symbolize almost every semantic element in his work, without losing contact with the sensorial aspects of reality, respectively resulting in his philosophical preference for Romantic dualism, expressed in continual sharp contrasts, and in his passionate, almost erotomaniac approach to life. As far as the outward relations are concerned, Mukarovsky calls upon Macha’s contemporary Sabina who confirmed Macha’s passionate character and ponderous way of speaking (Ibid.: 242) and who was the first to notice the apparent unity between Macha’s literary work and his Romantic attitude in personal life. In the specific case of this Romantic poet, the borderline between the individuality of his literary work and his posture in real life seems to vanish. In this respect, very elucidating examples concerning Macha’s character though not given by Mukarovsky - can be found in Macha’s Diary and private correspondence, both genres balancing in the borderline between the illusory literature (fiction) and the real life belonging to a physical person.
To start with the latter, Macha wrote in a letter to his friend and publisher Ed. Hindl (8 June 1836):

“Whither your girl - ? - Girl!!! - My girl, when she eats, she is feeding two! This message is for you alone. - The rest will tell you the May: ‘without end is love, indeed, disappointed etc..’ Once I have told you that I could turn mad for one thing: - here it is - ‘eine Notzucht ist unterlaufen ----‘ ; - my girl’s mother had died, at midnight she took a horrifying oath on her mother’s coffin ---- and ---- it was not true - and I - hahaha! - Eduard! I did not turn mad - but raging I was, when I will be able to speak with you alone, you will hear things - if it will be a boy that will be born, he shall be a Mephistopheles — ; such things that happened to me, neither Victor Hugo nor Eugene Sue were able to depict them in their most horrifying novels, and I have experienced them - and I am a poet!”
(K.H. Macha 1929:365; 1972: 324; tr. mine - K.M.)

Note here the extremely fragmented style, the exclamations, the passionate verbal expression, the hidden meanings (allusions) and sharp contrasts. As a matter of fact, the birth of Macha’s son (also at midnight), approximately coinciding with the publication of May, fulfilled Macha’s Romantic premonitions. In another letter to the same Hindl (9 October 1836) Macha declared:

“I have a son, he was born on the first of October and I need not chop off my head, because, if you had seen him, you would have said he is a young Macha, even if you had not known that I had a son. <...> A wrinkled brow, deeply bent over his eyes, a bulging vein in his brown, gloomy and dark-blue eyes, and such a deep sorrow on that so small face”.
(Ibid.: 371, resp. 329; tr. mine - K.M.)

In Macha’s Diary (concerning the year 1835) one encounters an almost direct and unadorned report of the poet’s love-relation to Lori, the future mother of ‘his’ child. The frankest passages of this diary were written in cipher and were apparently not meant for publication. By later scholarly investigation their content has been revealed, but they have never been published, for morality's sake, for a broad public in Czechoslovakia, only abroad by emigrant publishing houses (Toronto 1976, Munich 1986). From those pages the reader receives quite an exceptional view into the private life of the author: Macha’s emotional outbursts of love and jealousy, passion and compassion, harshly accompanied by physical and mental maltreatment of his ‘girl’.
I take into account those particular aspects of an author's (supposed) personal life, firstly because it might elucidate the unity of literary work and personal life in singular cases, when the author transposes his literary norm into his own life. This does not happen regularly, not even in the case of Romantic writers. In Czech literature, for instance, the example of Macha is at variance with that of another Romantic poet: K.J. Erben, whose personality lacks the demonic and revolting features, which are so characteristic of Macha (cf. Mukarovsky 1936/1971: 203-221, esp. 204-205, where there are also references to R. Jakobson’s study on both Romantic poets in Slovo a Slovesnost 1/1935).
The second reason concerns the problem to what extent the semantic gesture is dealing with other important influences from outside the literary work: the author’s psychological, noetic and social dispositions. Mukarovsky’s answer to that question is: “Neither thoughts, nor facts etc. enter into the literary work as elements of a material or psychological reality, but always as meaning”. (1938b/1948-III: 285). One might add, however, that all these elements are dynamically organized in the author’s personality, according to the relevance to their subject. Blended into a basic attitude they must influence the intentionality of the literary work as well and as such they must determine, to a great extent, the semantic gesture of a work. However, the field of the author’s intentions and their sources is mostly too concealed from us to be useful to literary research, unless the author himself considers his ‘life’ as a part of his literary creation and gives us evidence of such a ‘secondary’ literary life.

III.2 The Semantic Gesture in Capek’s Literary Work

 Summarizing his previous Capek-study, Mukarovsky states in “The Semantic Construction...” that in Capek’s one can recognize a ‘freely undulating intonational line’ ⁽³⁷⁾ without exaggeratedly sharp pitches, but with repetitions and shadings in accordance with the intonational pattern of lyrics (lyrical melody). “The intonational units seem to form a chain whose links are connected in a parallel way, are mutually comparable and show a progression without gradation”. (Mukarovsky 1939b/1948-II: 374-375). Such a specific intonational pattern can, of course, only be made possible by a specific syntactic and semantic construction. In Capek’s work one often encounters comparable syntactic patterns, neatly ordered in quite simple and surveyable segments, which do not differ much from the character of those in colloquial speech, i.e. they maintain a clearly communicative function. The sentences themselves are mostly paratactically organized in the context and allow, well-balanced as they are, for flexible mutual relations without being controlled by hierarchic sub- and supra-ordination. Thanks to these conditions, the semantic elements can enter freely and flexibly into mutual contact, can shift smoothly from one semantic level to another (e.g. from the comic to the serious and v.v.), maintaining a kind of ambiguity. The whole contextuation, thus, tends to a certain endlessness, a continuous flow whose components are not sharply divided and are comparable in the sense that they share the same ‘rights’ and the same importance (Ibid.: 375ff.).
As in Macha’s work, such a tendency can be traced back to the specific referential relation between the sign and the signified object. The discrepancy between direct and indirect designation is weakened in Capek’s work, so that the different semantic elements can easily be placed on the same level. In Macha’s work every designation is potentially symbolic, in spite of a firm relation to reality, in Capek's work the symptomatic quality of the literary sign is stressed. In Macha’s work the several designations are highly isolated and their concatenation is fragmentary, in Capek’s style an opposite tendency can be detected: a flexible flow of meanings (Ibid.: 384ff.).
This same tendency can be found on the thematic level of Capek’s oeuvre. On the one hand, the story is specially constructed: the ‘crisis’ mostly takes place at the very beginning of the story and the rest is like a broadly elaborated, extended ‘peripetia’, with all sorts of repetition and gradation of episodes. On the other hand, many motifs are repeated and acquire, in the same manner, importance, i.e. not so much qualitatively as quantitatively. By the parallelism of the episodes the motifs appear again and again in slightly shaded contexts, causing a certain successivity and simultaneity, which is very typical of Capek’s prose (Ibid.: 387ff.).
Another characteristic feature of Capek’s prose (and drama) is the special relation between the subject of the work (“the point where the reader instinctively places the ‘poet’ as the creator of the work and himself as the perceiver of the work”; ibid.: 396) and the personages, who all seem to be derivations of that pluralistic subject. Therefore, the narrator can never sympathize with one of them, but must more or less equally distribute his personal involvement over all the characters. Thus, sharp divisions between the subject of the work, the narrator(s) and the characters seem to vanish. Sometimes such a pluralism is already given by the presence of a series of narrators who each in turn render evidence of one single event. (Ibid.: 396ff.).
At the intersection between the literary work and the outer world Mukarovsky refers to the philosophical level which is often expressed in the literary work as a theme or as a special approach. In this area, too, one can see a suppression of hierarchy in Capek’s democratic ‘world-view’: people are all interesting, all should have the same ‘rights’, the same importance, and should enter smoothly and without conflict into contact with each other; great personalities are presented in their ‘petty’ human properties and vice versa the common people in their greatness. Even the transcendental world is present in its ‘descended’, concrete manifestation through symptoms functioning as indices of the mystery.
Quite exceptionally, in the middle of his Capek-study Mukarovsky returns to his theoretical starting-point: the semantic gesture, about which he says that It “maintains its identity in all the phases of the process of creation and perception of the literary work” (ibid.: 387). At first sight, this statement seems rather non-committal, but actually it contains in the context of the other statements concerning the semantic gesture  further clues for its understanding. ‘Maintains its identity’ implies that the semantic gesture can partly change from work to work without losing its basic identity. Present ‘in the process of creation and perception’ implies that these possible changes are caused by the different points of view and the different approaches adopted by the creator (with his individual intentionality) and by the perceiver with his interpretational task (and his intentionality). Speaking of ‘the perceiver’, we must take into account individual differences in interpretation (synchronic) and temporal developments (diachronic). In spite of this great variety of possible different interpretations, however, the basic identity of the semantic gesture, being bound to a concrete literary work or oeuvre, as an individual artistic product, remains unchanged.
Mukarovsky amply illustrates his analytic statements with examples chosen at random from Capek’s work. Here, a few examples will serve to clarify the matter. For instance, one of the interesting features of the works of Macha and Capek is the use of punctuation, esp. dashes and dots. In Macha’s letter to Ed. Hindl (quoted in III.1) we have seen how those reading-marks destroy the coherence of the sentence and suggest horrifying events, alluded to by fragmented, isolated exclamations, in Capek’s work this particular punctuation mostly has
completely different function, reinforcing the impression of ‘endlessness’ and ‘successivity’, enabling smooth transitions from one intonational segment, one sentence, scene or episode, into another. In accordance with this continuous flow, Capek’s semantics develop in a smooth, tempered manner, not tending towards sharp contrasts and conflicts (Macha’s titanic dichotomy), but rather to repetition and harmony and to a kind of ambiguity on an equal basis (Capek’s humane democracy’).
In his novel Obycejny zivot [An Ordinary Life, 1934] such an ambiguity is implicitly given by the title, pointing to one of Capek’s main interests: the extraordinary aspects of every man’s life. An ordinary man relates his life story, but at a certain point he is assailed by doubts whether he really lived his life as decorously as he had assumed before. When he recalls some vital events he must admit that, factually, he behaved quite badly. Viewed from this new perspective a completely different life story, made up of the same events, though differently interpreted and evaluated, seems to be possible and likely to the same degree. Whereas Macha would have probably taken advantage of such an inner discrepancy inside one life, dramatizing this conflict to symbolic and all-embracing proportions, Capek avoids such an aggravated emotional drama and lets the narrator ‘simply’ re-narrate his life from his newly acquired point of view. The suppression of hierarchy here consists in the fact that both lives seem to be equally true. For Macha everything, the inner world, the concrete reality and the cosmic, transcendental world, are interdependent and hierarchically organized, for Capek the transcendental world and absolute truth are, to their full extent, inaccessible to human understanding and appear only in the form of relative truth and symptomatic manifestations in the pluriform concrete reality.
Such a symptom of the transcendental world (cf. Mukarovsky 1934b/1948-II: 328-336) occurs as a theme in Capek’s story “The Footprints”,⁽³⁸⁾ which can be found in his collection Povidky z jedne kapsy [Tales from One Pocket, 1929]. These tales seemingly represent common or garden detective- or rather crime-stories, although their purport is more philosophical than at first glance may seem. In essence, they deal with two kinds of approaches to reality: a subjective one, including the mysterious aspects and a certain transcendental awareness, and an objective one, which is more concerned with facts capable of being proven ‘real’ and which excludes mysteries.
In the story mentioned, a criminal event does not even occur and where ‘crime’ emerges as a theme in the discussion between the subjective protagonist and the objective police-officer, ‘crime’ does not mean a mystery to the latter, but a simple trespassing of the law. Here, the violation of the objective reality consists in a mysterious isolated series of footprints in the further untouched snow, without a logical beginning or ending, half of which appear on the pavement and half on the road. The subjective and objective explanations differ so fundamentally from each other that neither of the men can agree on a common solution of this incomprehensible phenomenon. Both stick to their own truth, depending on their own criteria (private/subjective vs. professional/objective). Their dispute, however, does not culminate in an emotional quarrel, although basic values are involved, but ends - like le series of footsteps - in nothing: another policeman, coming along on his daily patrol, ‘solves’ the mystery by accident, completing the series of footsteps.
A symbolic, or rather metaphoric image (whereas Capek usually avoids symbolization) of the subjective approach, admitting irrational explanations as well, may be seen in the series of footsteps that leave the straight (logical) path on the pavement. This formal aspect of the central theme does not occur in the dispute between both men, which is mainly concentrated round the ‘ontology’ of the footprints, and thus remains merely a matter of interpretation. The same could be said of a comparable motif: the checkmate with the knight. This motif emerges quite inconspicuously at the beginning of the story and only seems to serve to motivate (as to its content) the protagonist’s good temper when he is returning home after a successful game of chess. However, as to its form, the knight’s move is the only irrational one in this game (jumping over other pieces) and the only one capable of deviating from a straight line. Macha probably would have pressed such a correspondence, loading it with symbolic meaning. Capek intentionally leaves the motif on its horizontal, parallel level of concrete, direct meanings, even decreasing its position by putting the motif in parentheses, just as he humorously degrades the lofty subjective explanations of the mystery by the down-to-earth comment of the police-officer.
In the various tales the pluralistic subject is given by a set of diversified personages who are all confronted with a mystery or crime and who all represent the subjective approach to solve the problem. In is world there is no leading ‘detective’, no Father Brown or Sherlock Holmes, to demonstrate a monistic method, but a variety of ‘protagonists’, limited and united by their function in the stories. Thus, also on this level, the impression of repetition, equivalence, parallelism, infinity and even eternity is suggested. Not directly bound to linguistic, static and fixed ending, the meanings of those devices have their roots deep inside the subject of the work and in his attitude to life and reality.
Regarding the outward relations of the semantic essence of a literary work, Mukarovsky refers only to the author’s thoughts and attitudes insofar as they appear as a theme in the work itself, probably assuming that Capek’s ‘non-literary’ occupations are too well-known to the Czech audience to which he addressed his essays. Here, however, some information about Capek’s background will be given in order to show some similar characteristics in this province as well.
Almost his whole life, Capek was intensively occupied with the popular newspaper “Lidove noviny” [People’s paper], combining journalism with literature as two equivalent and compatible genres, just as he democratically did not ‘condemn’ lower genres such as children’s literature or crime-stories. In the innumerable journalistic articles he wrote, Capek showed himself as a master of the light prose-form, which enabled him to create an equally innumerable amount of variations on public issues. Starting from this short prose-form, one may even assert that his more extensive prose seems a conglomeration of such smaller forms, which appear as episodes or re-narration from a different angle and in another context in his novels and stories.
Moreover, the influence of journalistic style is present in almost all his literary work and seems to be a poetic innovation of other writers connected with the same newspaper, as well (E. Bass, K. Polacek a.o.). Capek’s personal preferences, originating from the essence of his individual characteristics, thus, partly coincide with those of other authors, together creating a new literary attitude, style or current.
Ideologically and philosophically Capek was affiliated with the humane-democratic group led by T.G. Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s first president, and the ‘Hrad’ [Castle], the residence not only of the president and his government, but also the symbol of Masaryk’s personal views, ideas and preferences. Capek spent many hours with Masaryk, writing down his democratical philosophy, oriented on every man’s life. Reading these Hovory s T.G.M. [Conversations with T.G.M., 1928], one gets the impression of reading one of Capek’s own interior monologues in his novels. To that extent the views of the interviewed interrelate with the views of the interviewer himself, albeit in the form of parallelism and simultaneity. T.G.M. seems, in this work, Capek’s alter ego and, just as in Capek’s literary prose, in which the interior monologue often tends to interior dialogue (self-interrogation of the subject), the subject in this work seems pluralistic as well.
The individual characteristics of the literary work manifest in the choice of the artistic devices, the thematic preferences and the whole construction of the literary sign, can also be discovered in other spheres in which the subject emphatically interferes.

III.3 The Semantic Gesture in Vancura’s prose

 In comparison to Capek’s democratic literary style, his constant occupation with the construction of thought, views of life and relativistic conception of truth, his contemporary Vancura - also mainly a novelist - takes an almost opposite position. The source of his impressive epic style, according to Mukarovsky (1940s/1971: 246), can be found in oral narration. In a previous study (1934c/1966) he had already demonstrated the specific analogy between the lofty narrator in Vancura’s prose and the particular speech, evaluative attitude and thematical preferences of the 'living author’ whom Mukarovsky personally knew well. After an examination of these external relations of Vancura’s prose, Mukarovsky returned to the subject in the 1940s, analyzing its internal characteristics, and pointed out that Vancura’s narrator - in general - is extremely involved in the construction of the plot and artistic representation of the story (1940s/1971: 259). Indeed, it is the narrative subject that authoritatively determines the speech, attitudes, feelings, thoughts and values in the literary discourse by means of his full control of the story, even endowing the personages with ‘his’ expressive rhetorical style ⁽³⁹⁾.
The sentence and contextuation of Vancura’s prose show a strong independence of the word, or part of the sentence (gerund, apostrophe, invective etc.) or a whole sentence (proverbial expressions), each of them maximally charged with actualized meaning (Ibid.: 236). Thus, in the course of the story a process of semantic accumulation is effected which, however, does not develop in a smooth, gradually increasing measure. Due to the semantic tension between the incongruently juxtaposed components of the sentence, or context, its development is full of semantic ruptures, turns and collisions, retarding the rapid unrolling of the plot and drawing the reader’s attention to the expressive way a word, sentence, context or situation has been modeled (Ibid.: 240ff.).
As regards Vancura’s aesthetical conception, each word contains a potential dynamic, capable of evoking clusters of other words, whole contexts, and sometimes even directly influencing the plot (Ibid.: 252ff.). Whereas in the case of Macha’s poetry the poet took advantage of the hidden symbolic meanings of the word, building a network of semantic correspondences, we see here a maximal use of the expressive qualities of the word through which Vancura intended to designate and evaluate reality. In his narrator’s speech and often in the speech of the characters there is a collision between high flown style (archaic, biblical, chronicler’s), low style (invectives, vulgarisms) and neutral style (proverbial turns), all emphatically expressing an evaluative attitude towards reality. An inclination towards overstatement (Ibid.: 276) dominates this confrontation of different styles: futilities are represented as preponderous affairs (and conversely), ‘bad’ becomes ‘horrible’, ‘good’ – ‘heavenly’, ‘dramatical’ – ‘fatal’, etc. This typical, exaggerated and incongruent way of designation often expresses an ironical, humorous or emotional view of life and seems incompatible with the underlying ‘real situation’: a discrepancy between the world represented and the theme (Ibid.: 235). The reliability of the description which appears frequently strained by this incongruity, is compensated for by the many proverbial expressions which are embedded in the narrator’s text, endowing it with ‘absolute’ truth ⁽⁴⁰⁾.
What has been said before about the paramount position of the word in the sentence and of the sentence in the context, also holds valid for the position of the motif in the thematic development, which proceeds in a very complicated manner: the description does not keep step with the theme, but, moreover, the development of the theme itself reveals ruptures, turns and ‘detours’. Thus the unity of the plot is distorted in favour of rather independent episodes (Ibid.: 275-276) and the reader's attention is again drawn to the specific structure of the components. What finally connects the thus fragmented text, is the ever present, persuasive narrator who with his specific speech assembles the loose episodes, scenes. Mukarovsky has furnished his observations with many examples from various novels and stories by Vancura. For brevity’s sake, I propose to omit them here, and refer to examples in English, given in Dolezel’s book on narrative modes (1973). The coherence of the dynamic semantic construction with the semantic intention and their essential meaning (sense) for the interpretation of Vancura’s oeuvre seem sufficiently obvious.

III.4 The Semantic Gesture in Nezval’s Poetry

The unity of literary work, author and personal orientation in the world, projected in the semantic intentionality and expressed by the semantic gesture of the work, was not very difficult to prove in the case of Macha who died young at the age of 25 and produced his work in the span of only a few years. Our task seemed more complicated in the case of Capek and Vancura, who both left a huge oeuvre, written over a long period and subdivided into several genres. Although a certain development in their work is undeniable, neither Capek nor Vancura radically altered their literary method. The same applies to the oeuvre of Nemcova, mentioned in the chapter “Indirect references” (II.6). In the case of Nezval, however, the interesting question arises whether the basic semantic identity of his work can be discovered in spite of his programmatic change from the poetic school of Poetism (roughly in the 1920s) to that of Surrealism (roughly in the 1930s). Unfortunately, we must leave out of consideration his later switch to Socrealism, because it exceeds the bounds of Mukarovsky’s article, although a comparative analysis of his poems “Edison” (1928) and “Stalin” (1949) seems attractive enough ⁽⁴¹⁾.
In his semantic analysis of Nezval’s collection of poems, The Absolute Grave-digger (1937), Mukarovsky conceived Nezval’s whole oeuvre as an individual unity with temporary inclinations towards the literary schools of Poetism and Surrealism. Within the context of that ‘obvious’ unity to which he scarcely devoted further attention one can distinguish between the ‘semantic orientation’ (and hence poetic method) of Nezval as a Poetist and as a Surrealist. The first period is dominated in Czech society by a general feeling of optimism, as a result of certain important changes: political independence after centuries of subordination to the Austrian Empire, the end of a dreadful World War, new technological perspectives etc. One may consider the new poetics of Poetism, whose leading poet Nezval was, as a reflection of this new optimistic approach to life.
The new spirit was not only evident in the thematic choice, but - interestingly enough - also in the application of the poetic means. Exoticness, abundancy, playfulness, sensorial experiences are expressed in his poetry of that period by an extremely metaphorical style. The effect of the continuous strings of metaphors is an endless flow of meanings, permeating and influencing one another, which weakens the original referential relation. The object as an inspirational source seems to undergo innumerable miraculous metamorphoses until it finally disappears in the overwhelming amount of comparisons, which in their turn acquire an increasing independence and tend to realized metaphors. Thus the attention of the reader is not drawn to the original object but to the complicated semantic relations between the poetic images evoked. This semantic process is reinforced by the tendency to paratactical construction of the sentences, mostly parallel to the line of verse, and by an uncomplicated syntactical construction, supporting the mutual relations between the several poetic images and their semantic interaction (Mukarovsky 1938a/1966: 273ff., cf. also Grygar 1969: 96ff., esp. 103).
In his following Surrealistic period Nezval quite radically changed his previous poetic method. Instead of abundant series of metaphors - expressing his optimistic, buoyant view of life at that particular, time - Nezval now commenced, under influence of the ever more menacing crises in social, political and economic life, to write a far more complicated type of verse. The syntactic structure of the sentence tends more and more to hypotactic organization, breaking down the unity of the sentence into its quite independent components which are each accumulated with meaning. The sentence no longer covers the line of verse and loses its constructional clarity. The poetic images themselves start to puzzle the reader, instead of their previous remote correlations. At this point, Nezval became interested in partial aspects of reality and composed them in his surrealistic poems into new and complete poetic images, consisting of logically incompatible components. Hence his preference for synecdochical tropes that draw the reader's attention to the construction of the literary sign and to the semantic procedures by which the poetic world is made complex (Ibid.: 277ff.).
In the initial poem of the above-mentioned collection from the surrealistic period, Nezval portrays a grave-digger by means of his professional attributes and surrounding objects, raising the level of objects to that of a living being (or vice versa) and thus assembling a new poetic world full of inner conflicts. Mukarovsky compares this ‘pictorial’ device with the technique of the XVI-th century Italian painter Arcimboldo who constructed similar compositions. In general, however, the exchange of artistic devices became, of course, very usual in modern art (Ibid.: 284).
In poem nr.24 from the chapter “The Bizarre Town”, the poetic image is based on a quite different incompatibility. It describes a hairdresser’s lady-assistant, sitting in a bath in the middle of a city square. Mukarovsky explains that the underlying reality of this image is not reality itself, but a pictorial sign (a poster) placed in the reality of the city and represented in the poem as an image of the real world. The confrontation of these two different semantic perspectives, blending into one, permits the reader to experience the illusive, enigmatic effect of the poem (Ibid.: 280-281).
Another illusive play with two kinds of reality and two coinciding, but differing views on reality can be found in Nezval’s poem nr.13 from the same collection. Here, a reflecting shop window serves as the combining and unifying factor of the direct image of beautiful hands in gloves, adorned with jewelry, mixed with the indirect, reflected image of a roof in the rain. Thus the total impression is created as if the beautiful hand is protruding from under the roof and exposed to the rain. In this case Mukarovsky refers to a photographic device: a special camera position is chosen from which two images can be seen simultaneously. Nezval’s inspiration may, therefore, be found in a photograph of the surrealistic painter J. Styrsky which was well-known at that time: a shop window exposing plaster limbs in bandages in which the surrounding street and traffic are reflected, suggesting a logical correlation (Ibid.: 283).
The examples given above show a fundamentally different approach to the world and appreciation of the world in comparison to those of the previous period of Poetism. At that time, the new optimistic vision of outside reality resulted in an excessive and uncompleted inspiration by the world, although that world itself, actually, remained concealed from the reader. In the surrealistic period reality is already conceived a complex and troubled category, full of conflicts
and no longer fully comprehensible. As a result of this, poetic images represent each on their own a comparable complexity and internal discrepancy, brought about the irreconcilability of their components.
Both methods, however, have in common that the reader presupposes an almost tangible subject which is emphatically responsible for the application of the poetic means and the complexity of the poetic image or of poetic images. This highly active subject (in Mukarovsky’s terminology always a category inside the literary work) also remains concealed in the work: as ‘invisible human factor’ which sets the reader the task to solve a given problem: in the Poetist poetry search for the mutual relations between the metaphors, in the Surrealist context to decipher the poetic image itself (Ibid.: 279).
The semantic gesture in Nezval’s poetry may consequently be described as a semantic unity of two opposite tendencies: one towards metaphorical designation of world and made possible by paratactical construction, the other towards synecdochical designation allied to hypotactical construction. At the same time we noticed that Nezval’s first method blurred the
relation to the signified reality by means of the dazzling variability of the poetic images evoked and that his second method obviously complicated this referential relation, even creating the impression that we are dealing with the real objects themselves and not with their semiotic substitutes (Ibid.: 285). Both poetic methods, however, are firmly united in the impression of an intentionally manipulating subject.
At the end of his article (Ibid.: 285), Mukarovsky pleads in favour of the discipline of semiotics (now indeed referring to Husserl) for a better understanding of the increasing complexity of the world. He even suggests that reading Nezval’s poetry could be considered - so to speak - a useful exercise in detecting complicated semiotic processes. We may add to this question of the social function of literature in general that not only thoughts, feelings or attitudes, but also the meaning (sense) of constructional devices, determined by the semantic gesture, may serve to enrich the reader’s experience.

IV. Conclusion

The semantic gesture reveals itself as a fundamental unifying principle which generates the dynamic unity (integrity and identity) of the literary sign (or set of signs). As a consistent principle it expresses the specific, individual character of signification: the complicated semiotic process by which ‘signifiers’ and ‘signifieds’ group together and form ever greater signs. Such a semiotic process definitely has a personal, individual source through the subject (as work-category) in the creative personality of the artist and is, consequently, connected with intentionality (‘deliberateness’ - cf. II.4) and sense. On the other hand, the primary intentionality and sense remain partly concealed from the perceiver of the work, who can only assume whether some element of the work is intended by the author or not. An interpretation may thus appear as a result of intentional tendencies from both sides, as a confrontation between different attitudes, views and opinions, projected in the literary work and connected with a certain theme, artistically arranged and synthetically expressed by the semantic gesture. However, one cannot maintain that the semantic gesture is entirely the result of concrete intentions or even an artistic plan. As the examples mentioned above demonstrate, a noticeable part of the conspicuous analogies and congruencies seem to have an artistically spontaneous, indeed, unintentional character, even in the case of Nezval’s poetry.
Apparently, a tension exists between intentionality and unintentionality instead of a sharp line of demarcation. In accordance with Husserl,⁽⁴²⁾ there is a transitional phase of ‘pre-awareness in the human mind’, from which (un-)intentionality and sense originate. If this is true, we could speak of a kind of pre-intentionality, tending now towards a lesser, now towards a greater extent of awareness. From the artist’s point of view, his general intentions could thus gain a state of artistic intention with respect to the artistic work to be created and one could attach to this concrete artistic intention the designation of ‘zamer’ (cf. II. 4), though this intention need not always fulfilled in all its aspects but could also partly change in ‘unintention’. From the perceiver’s point of view, a reverse process takes place: during the act of reading, he is reconstructing the original artistic intention (as far as possible) and relating it to his own experiences, intentionality and sense, ‘making’ these aware on the basis of the literary work to be read. Thus not only the artist’s intentions and the artistic intentions night diverge, but also the perceiver’s interpretation of them will be, within the semantic boundaries given to the literary work, divergent and, in its turn, oriented towards the perceiver’s world. The semantic gesture expresses this confrontation of intentionalities, bringing about the specific dynamic meaning of a literary work and connecting the several levels of the work in a senseful unity, although the concrete meaning of that sense might differ.
As soon as the semantic gesture has been described in the semantic analysis of a work, its features are not changeable any more, but during the act of reading, or analyzing, its typical, specific and synthesizing influence can be felt as an energetic flow of meaning-creation, challenging the reader to reconstruct from this semantic material a senseful unity, capable of fielding him moments of a ‘refreshed’ view on the world in which he lives. For that reason, the semantic gesture is reaching further than Tynjanov’s constructional principle which is bound to the literary work and lacks the individual dimension, further than stylistic attempts to determine the ‘parenthood’ of a literary work an enumeration of its specific characteristics, and further than biographic attempts to explain the literary work on the basis of an author’s life data or personal views on his work, although all these approaches may contribute to the reconstruction of the semantic gesture and gain sense, indeed, within its context.

References

Notes