Sonido y sentido en "What if a much of a which of a wind" de E. E. Cummingsuna lectura formalista

Résumé

Bearing in mind recent views that support Formalism as " ... a vital presence in the theoretical discourse our day ... "(Selden (ed): 1995:29) this paper shows the apparently inexhaustible validity of the Formalist (slavic) analytical method, most singularly sensitive to the sound stratum of literary texts. The method is summed up from three angles (I. Phonological; 2.Prosodic-Semantic; 3. (Phono-)Syntactic and (Phono-) Semantic) and applied to a poetic text (Cummings' "what if a much of a which of a wind"). The empirical consideration of the latter widely attests to the theses inherent in that method, i.e. the detailed observation of the formal (= sound) devices in the text decisively contributes to the aesthetic and notional appraisal of the poem. Besides, this paper highlights once more the convenience of having analytical tools available in order to favour an objective consideration of the poetic text, so often haunted by mere impressionistic thinking.