«The revolution of language» by Eugene Jolas:
from «Vertical» Poetry to «Vertigral» Communication

The paper addresses the legacy of Eugene Jolas, French-American poet, translator and literary
critic, founder of the influential literary magazine transition, which in the 1920–30s integrated
diverse movements of the international avant-garde. The authors consider the linguistic and communicative
features of Eugene Jolas’ aesthetic theory and poetic practice. Jolas wrote a series
of declarations on the «revolution of language», which could be brought to life through the «poetic
state of language» and the creation of the «universal language». The two major issues are
raised: what were the images of language in Jolas’ works and what does «revolution of language» mean? What was Jolas’ transition from «vertical poetry» to a new perception of creative comprehension
between people that he called «vertigralism»?
Jolas’ «revolution of language» had philosophical origins, going back conceptually and aesthetically
to the so-called «linguistic turn» which began at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries
and was a great milestone in the culture of the twentieth century. Being sensitive to the crisis
of language, Jolas proclaimed «the revolution of language» which would ideally lead to a reorganisation
and revision of the communicative and symbolic functions of language.
Jolas’s conception of universal language included emancipation from the utilitarian communicative
function, construction of a new communicative model and a multilingual synthesis. Conventionally,
semiotic models represent communication as a «horizontal» process of information
transfer from sender to receiver. Jolas’ model of new communication presented not a linear
way of information transfer but a «vertigral» way of interaction that was based on the violation
of connections within the sign system and in a communicative situation, which is determined
by the negation of linguistic and communicative conventions. «Vertigral» communication is
based on the principle of linguo-creative production of occasional forms and meanings by reviewing
formal and semantic links between linguistic units. The paper considers specific linguistic
tools used by Jolas to achieve maximum semantic concentration and pragmatic effect of the word
by introducing new derivational links, such as «interlingual contamination», reduction of diacritics,
using archaic forms, etc.