Sound in Literary Texts

This article defines the concept of auditivity in literary texts, both in the narrower sense of the term (the physically audible properties of a text) and in its wider sense (the potential ability of a text to create an auditive image in the mind of the recipient, thus conveying information in an aesthetic form, or contributing to this process). The article also investigates the possibilities of an intermedia typology of auditivity incorporating music and literature. This idea is built on the fact that both literature and music work with sound; they thus function as art forms which are close to their base material (Novak 2005: 26-34). I draw on a typology of literary/musical intermediality developed by Wolf (2011: 62-85), and I reach the conclusion that auditivity is a complex and complicated intermedia phenomenon which incorporates several intermedia types. The most explicit manifestation of the auditive properties of a text is on the level of structural plurimediality (sound poetry). Sound is also manifested implicitly in literary texts via intermedia imitations of acoustic structures (intermedia references in the form of imitations), which are very frequently accompanied by intermedia thematization. Auditivity in the process of literary communication has been investigated in the phases of auditivization (the deliberate creation of auditory properties in a literary work), reproduction and reception of literary texts. It has been determined that writers not only use traditional elements of poetic phonetics and phonology, but also engage in pure sonic experimentation. I reach the conclusion that the process of auditory emancipation of language is directly proportional to the loss of semantic properties by a text; literature thus comes close to the universality of musical communication.