Change of names. Khlebnikov, Aseev, and Bibler

Abstract

The philosopher V.S. Bibler, relying on Khlebnikov, elaborated on the duality of verbal semantics: indication of formal action and performative production of action. The poetic etymology helped to distinguish the unchanging core of the indication of the properties of the thing and the changeable elements of performativity. But such a specific understanding of the social performativity of the verb was developed not so much by Khlebnikov as by Nikolai Aseev in his doctrine of the change of names, which gives examples that coincide with those of Bibler. Bibler places Aseev and other futurists in the shadow of Pasternak because of the extension of the doctrine of double action to the history of thought, making a number of hypotheses about the specifics of the development of twentieth-century Russian thought. We may speak of the poetic history of thought as an invention of Biebler. Bibler’s idea is prolific for philological analysis because it permits us, along with the syntagmaticity of the utterance, to single out the paradigmaticity of performative techniques, which facilitates a consistent analysis of both the Russian avant-garde poetry and the later poetry.