THE INFLUENCE OF FRENCH SYMBOLIST POETRY ON THE DEVELOPMENT E.E. CUMMINGS’ POETICS
The following article deals with the main principles of French symbolism expressed in the poetry by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarme and their influence on the development of Cummings’ poetic concepts. The central categories of American author’s and French poets’ poetry: depersonalization and dehumanization, deformation, estrangement, abstraction and illogicality, disdain for traditions were the results of searching for a new way of art reception and a new language which would be free from set rules and cliché. The verbal energy of the word that is characterized by sound tonality and associative connections predominates over the meaning and creates polysemy and mystery of the poetic texts. The interpretation of the poems by these authors became impossible for most of the readers because of the poets’ deliberate estrangement from readership.