A. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Stylistics is interested in many types, genres and styles of discourse (spoken or written speech events) – from applications for a job to Shakespearean sonnets, from the blabber of a drunken vagabond in the gutter to royal speeches in British Parliament. In this respect, any subjective preferences are absolutely out of the question. Analyzing a newspaper article or a legal document stylistically may be no less interesting and instructive than criticizing a work of fiction, modern or classical. Moreover: years of practical experience in teaching Stylistics show that the philologically minded students much oftener misunderstand non-fictional than fictional texts, and understanding is the ultimate goal of both Stylistic Analysis and Text Interpretation (for the time being, we shall leave the fine points of distinguishing between these disciplines aside).

Now, there are two kinds of understanding: silent and worded. Uncle Vasya – and we will use that nickname for an ordinary reader who is not a Philologist – does not need verbally expressed understanding of what he is reading, whereas a student of Philology does, for it is their duty to teach Uncle Vasya how to understand texts silently. The difference between Uncle Vasya-as-Reader and a Philologist-as-Analyst or Critic is like the difference between an ordinary car driver and an engineer who knows the principles of the car engine’s work. You don’t have to be an engineer to drive your car decently enough, do you? You must only know which button to push when and which pedal to press in what traffic situations. Yet if you want to learn to drive your car decently enough, you’d rather turn for help to an engineer. Uncle Vasya need not be interested in Stylistics or Text Interpretation, but a Student of Philology must, because s/he must use them as an instrument to teach Vasya some decent reading. That is why Stylistics and particularly Text Interpretation are sometimes called “Worded Reflexion” (“вимовлена рефлексія”). “Reflection” (or “reflexion”) is a psychological term meaning an ability to ask oneself questions about what is not quite clear.

Consequently, understanding depends much on putting questions to oneself as well as to others. Unfortunately, during the 70 years long rule of the “sovok Pedagogy”, the healthy desire for asking questions has been knocked out of the pupils’ heads. These backward practices, though now abandoned nearly one student generation ago, sometimes persist both in schooling and University Education. The hardest thing is to change one’s long formed mentality, though now that a new generation schooled in the New Ukraine has come to the fore, the situation seems to have somewhat improved. They say that once “the leader of the World Proletariat” remarked that one fool may ask so many questions a dozen wise men could not possibly answer. Yet, this is certainly not the case: “Ilyich”, being an intellectual himself, did not like intellectuals and called them “shit” because they are most of all inclined to reflection, and reflection is something that the Proletariat must shake away, as it will distract their attention from the “revolutionary struggle”. They must first strike, and then, time permitting, think, which is not absolutely necessary.

Suchlike philosophy was not only false, but dangerous. As a matter of fact, fools usually keep silent. Some of them because their complex of inferiority makes them fearful lest, by asking, they should reveal their stupidity. Others – because they think they know everything, and that makes them happy (“happy”, by the way, is semantically associated with “silly”: the Old English “sælig” means “happy”). Both types of fools are very dangerous because those fearful very quickly develop their inferiority complex into the superiority one (as was the way to Fascism), and those «happy», if they are put to rule the country, would bring it to ruination. It very much looks like the same thing happening now to some of this country’s MP’s.

From what has been said above it follows that these two extremes are super-human or morbid. Understanding or knowing everything is supernatural. It is perhaps the privilege of a superb Entity (God, or Absolute Idea). But understanding or knowing nothing is altogether inhuman or pathological, for every moment of our existence we know that there is something we do not understand, and something that we do. To learn more than I know, I ask questions, and answering them (or trying to answer them), I am making a slow, but sure progress. Partial understanding is the normal condition of a mentally healthy person (so far, we leave the complicated problem of the difference between knowledge and understanding aside). A mentally healthy person will always know what it is exactly s/he does not understand: the ability to formulate what I do not understand is a step forward to understanding what I want to. But understanding with the help of stylistic analysis is different for fiction and non-fiction texts (belletristic and non-belletristic Styles).