Melody or Intonation (1923)

Abstract

It is impossible to establish precisely the subdivisions of the two basic principles in the development of the Russian poetic language: the principle of melody and that of intonation. A large realm of suppositions and guesses still awaits its conscientious explorer. His task, I think, will go far beyond the frontiers of poetics, for to complete it favourably he will have to resolve the quarrel between ‘the lyrical’ and ‘the tendentious’, between that ‘freedom of intuition’ and that ‘rational consistency’ around which today’s poets are distinctly grouping themselves.