Introduction
Osip Mandelstam is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian Silver Age poetry, whose prose texts are also distinguished by a wealth of imagery and complex structure. His works often feature oxymoronic alogisms—the embodiment of a stylistic device that acts as a riddle on the reader. In them, the author clashes opposing concepts and ideas, creating an effect of internal contradiction. Alogisms allow the author to convey the multilayered nature of personal experiences, point out the contradictory nature of memory, and highlight the peculiarities of the perception of time. Alogism as a Dominant Trait of the Writer's Idiostyle.
Language always remained central to O.E. Mandelstam's writings, as scholars have noted: "In order to immerse the reader in an 'alien' space, Mandelstam simply recreates the speech patterns of the national language." By the speech image of a national language we will understand "the totality of phonetic, lexical, graphic, and cultural-functional characteristics of a specific language embodied in a work of art" [Golubeva 2022: 237].
It is necessary to emphasize the importance of studying such a feature of the writer's idiostyle as a violation of lexical compatibility, due to which a mysterious alogism is created, based on an oxymoron that exhibits contradictions: "The characteristic features of this group of means are, first of all, the presence of a contradiction between individual components of the context and, as a consequence, the explicitly expressed or implicitly implied negation of some textual components by others, as well as the simultaneous realization of the relations of "contrast and identity" between the elements of the context" [Yashina 2010: 826]. V.I. Karasik believes that intentional illogicality is used with specific pragmatic intentions, consisting of "the construction of a comic effect or an attempt to arrive at a new, unusual understanding and designation of some state, quality, or phenomenon" [Karasik 2022: 116]. During our research, we identified the following contexts in the prose of O.E. Mandelstam: All around were, God forbid, some cheerful little houses with low souls and cowardly placed windows; Separation is death's younger sister. For one who respects the reasons of fate, there is an ominous wedding animation in the farewells; I liked gothic pine cones and hypocritical acorns in monastic caps more than mushrooms; And once I saw the dance of death – the mating dance of phosphorescent bugs. The author's frequency of their use suggests that oxymoronic alogisms serve as a means of expressing internal conflict and existential uncertainty in O.E. Mandelstam's texts, since an oxymoron is "a combination of incompatible, contradictory, opposing words and concepts, in which its components do not destroy or neutralize each other, but retain their full meanings, reflecting a fundamentally new phenomenon or its new state" [Shestakova 2009: 62]. In other words, to understand an oxymoronic phrase, it is important to correlate the meanings of its constituent components and evaluate the innovative, contextually determined semes that arise from the clash of their meanings, which are important for the realization of any authorial intention. Let us consider the lexical meanings of oxymoronic phrases and composites, evaluating the interaction of contextual partners in the text.
Contrasting characteristics of one object: cheerful – low, cowardly. The diminutive "veselenkiy" (jolly little houses with low souls) is formed using the diminutive suffix -еньк-; however, in context it has a dismissive connotation and a negative evaluative meaning (cf.: God forbid any "veselenkiy domiki s vozdnye sudochonki..."), as it points to a contrast between the external and the internal – the pleasing appearance of these houses is obviously leveled or belittled by the "low" souls of the inhabitants, the meager life: the speech is most likely about the life and customs of the people living in them, since the appearance of the home reflects the soul and character of the owner: it is undeniable that the critical description is precisely of outdated, low-quality buildings with cowardly ('fear of an active and open life, independent thinking') windows, which the poet is outraged by for their backwardness and outdated appearance. ""Cowards" is definitely called "cowardly people", while the word "trus" in the singular is also reminiscent of other meanings that are not relevant today. The explanatory dictionary of V. I. Dahl distinguishes four of these: ‘storm and unrest, fury of the elements’ with the note ‘old.’, ‘earthquake’, ‘trembling, fear and trembling’, ‘timid, fearful person and animal’ [Dal 1982: 437–438]; the explanatory dictionary of Mandelstam’s time, edited by D. N. Ushakov, records homonyms: ‘coward’ — ‘timid, cowardly person’ and ‘coward’ (church-book obsolete) — ‘earthquake’ [Ushakov 1940: 816] — these meanings, which have diverged to the point of homonymy, go back to the same Old Slavonic root with the semantics of shaking, quaking” [Surat 2024: 71]. "In oxymorons, higher semantic unities form lexical units that, in everyday speech, cannot be part of the same syntagmatic wholes" [Živa Benčić 1991: 29].
The compound ominous-wedding indicates the author's perceived predetermination of certain life events. This metaphor points to the author's assessment of farewells, emphasizing that life contains moments of joy and anxiety, and that they are closely intertwined. A wedding is a joyful, bright celebration for a person, but at the same time, it carries with it a disturbing image: the daughter-in-law's separation from her father's house, according to mythology, implies her death and rebirth in a new place (home). In Slavic folklore, the image of "marriage" is linked to the image of "death": "Marriage (like death) symbolizes dying (of the bride or groom), which the Slavs associate with the transition to a 'foreign family'" [Skovoroda 2000: 220]. Before marriage, the newlyweds cross "the threshold of the house, the gates of the yard, the village boundary, the river." "As is well known, at night these toposes are hostile to man, and crossing them promises him a 'quick death'" [Skovoroda 2000: 221]. The image of "wedding" and the image of "death" create a holistic picture of existence, where every beginning is connected to an end, and every completion to a new beginning.
An estranged image from the natural world is the acorn: hypocritical – monastic. Mandelstam deliberately projects his assessment of the subject, alluding to the period when monks were viewed negatively, skeptically, and distrustfully, perceiving the image of a spiritually pure person: hypocritical because smooth, shiny, and without nicks.
Contemplating a column of swooping insects evokes a mysterious image, supported by the author's background knowledge of linguistics: the dance of death—a mating dance.
Using oxymorons, O. Mandelstam also forces us to reflect on the paradoxical nature of human existence. The use of oxymorons allows the writer to convey deep feelings and experiences, creates tension, and enhances the emotional expressiveness of his texts: "In Mandelstam's tight contexts, distant meanings meet, intersect, or engage in conflict with one another," noted Lidia Ginzburg [Živa Benčić 1991: 25] the idiostical feature we are studying.
In the texts by O.E. Mandelstam's writings display a gradation that emphasizes paradox. The difference between oxymoron and paradox lies in the fact that in oxymoronic phrases, the meanings are logically incompatible: Mamikon, chewing his drooping gubernatorial lip, sang a few Persian verses in his unpleasant camel voice; The gray bast of theatrical wigs protruded from beneath the palm bark, and in the park, like six-pound candles, blooming agaves shot upwards every day. Also noteworthy are such illogicalities based on the "fusion" of the concrete with the abstract, incongruous comparisons: She is unsteady, like a will made in sound mind and memory; The long gray mustache of this butterfly had a spinous structure and exactly resembled the branches on the collar of a French academician or silver palms placed in a boat. In O.E. Mandelstam's texts, however, there are also statements with a subjective modality of approval, expressed in emotionally charged sentences, in which collocations mysterious to the uninitiated are noted: the Shah's whims, nature - the Marseillaise, grandfather - the youthful thunder of eloquence, etc. (The Shah's whims of the Parisian master; Hello, Cezanne! Glorious grandfather; The Marseillaise bursts into the concept of nature!; May the youthful thunder of his eloquence never cease!). By the Parisian master, Osip Emilievich means the French painter Henri Matisse, whom the writer disliked, considering him "an artist of the rich": "... I disliked Matisse, the artist of the rich. The red paint of his canvases fizzes with soda. The joy of ripening fruits is unknown to him. His mighty brush doesn't heal his sight, but it imbues him with a bull-like strength, so that his eyes swell with blood. "Oh, these carpet chess and odalisques! The shah-like whims of a Parisian master!" (Mandelstam was very knowledgeable in painting and was a connoisseur of fine art.)
Conclusion
Thus, in O.E. Mandelstam's prose, oxymoron serves as a tool for adding depth and multi-layeredness to the work, helping to accentuate the complexity and contradictory nature of the characters and their surroundings through paradoxical combinations that create new semantic nuances and highlight the internal dynamics of the images. Researchers have repeatedly noted the presence of oxymoron and illogicality in poetic texts, viewing them as expressive devices demonstrating the paradoxical nature of the author's artistic thinking: "Poets very often and willingly use contextual antonyms, including oxymoron, which most often consists of combinations of words from different parts of speech" [Supryaga 2023: 255]. However, in this case, it is important to emphasize that these techniques are also actively manifested in prose works. It is in prose that illogicality acts not simply as a stylistic effect, but as a way of expressing something unique an unconventional view of reality.
Thus, it can be confidently concluded that illogicality is a key idiostical feature that defines the uniqueness of Osip Mandelstam's style and worldview.