Adjoined Conceptual Domains in the Bilingual Poetry of Pablo Picasso

Abstract

Picasso started writing poems in April, 1935 during a period of personal crisis. This shift to literature is predicated on an assumed irreducible conflict between new verbal expressions and his established visual composition. Picasso’s texts provide a window into the artist’s mind that is separate from his own artistic creations —which makes them extremely relevant. This paper investigates two aspects of Picasso’s poetry. First, how Picasso used subtle differences between the lexical realization of concepts in French and Spanish: the two languages he used to compose his poems. And Second, how he explored the potential overlap between semantic categories for concepts associated with co-occurring words. When these linguistic phenomena are examined carefully, it becomes clear that the lexical combinations that Picasso implemented in his poems were far from arbitrary. Resume Picasso a commence a ecrire des poemes en avril 1935, pendant une periode de crise personnelle. Ce passage vers la litterature se fonde sur le conflit irreductible suppose entre de nouvelles expressions verbales et sa composition visuelle etablie. Les textes de Picasso nous donnent un apercu de ce qui se passe dans la tete de l’artiste qui est separe de ses propres creations artistiques – ce qui rend ces textes extremement pertinents. Cet article enquete sur deux aspects de la poesie de Picasso. Premierement, la maniere dont Picasso a employe des differences subtiles entre la realisation lexicale de concepts en francais et en espagnol, les deux langues dans lesquelles il a ecrit ses poemes. Deuxiemement, la maniere dont il a explore le chevauchement potentiel entre des categories semantiques pour des concepts associes aux mots coexistants. Apres un examen approfondi de ces phenomenes linguistiques, il s’est avere clair que les combinaisons lexicales avec lesquelles Picasso a compose ses poemes etaient loin d’etre arbitraires. Mots-cles: Picasso; bilingue; la poesie; domaines conceptuelsl; categories semantiques