Poetics and Extreme Experiences: on Rhetoric in Writing about the GULag

Abstract

This article examines the possibility of using concepts from the scope of poetics and rhetoric for the purpose of description of a literary text which deals with labour camp experience. The book "Day and Night" by Leo Lipski may serve as an example to bring out a similar perspective which has no essentialist presumptions but rather presumes that such concepts as, i.e. laconism and parataxis are useful to describe the properties of a text which, in turn, is a result of a specific mode of reading. Consequently, the process of the text being revealed can be described on the basis of selected concepts from the tradition of poetics and rhetoric. As a result, it appears that concepts from the scope of poetics and rhetoric – at least partly and on the basis of specific terms – do not belong to the past but still can be applied in the analysis of texts as well as in literary communication.