Existential Philosophy and Poetry Imaginism about the Temporalization of Despair

Abstract

Introduction. The tragic times of trials at the beginning of the 20th century motivated existentialist philosophers and imaginists poets to search for the temporal meaning of despair in people's lives. Philosophers comprehended the nature of despair, and came to the conclusion about its origin in person’s soul at the moment of subordination of human temporality to objective time as the cause of inevitable losses. Liberation from its power begins with the person’s turn to the value content of their own temporality. The word-image connects despair with the present moment of time as part of human temporality and outside of objective time. Revealing the features of the temporalization of despair in imaginists poetry, the author suggests that the word-image changes the existential attitude of a desperate person, giving value to their temporal existence.Methodology and sources. The methodological basis of the work is a hermeneutic approach to understanding the concept of ”despair”, a conceptual analysis of the term “word-image”, a method of component analysis of language units with temporal meaning and a comparative analysis of the interpretations of the temporalization of despair in existentialist philosophy and imaginist poetry.Results and discussion. The results of studying the problem of the temporalization of despair are the following conclusions. Firstly, despair may be a consequence of the involvement of a person who hopes, into objective time or part of the subjective time of a desperate person. Secondly, despair may lead a person not only to losses, but also to the search for values in the confrontation of objective and subjective times. Thirdly, the temporalization of despair is understood as a transition from a temporary experience to a timeless concept in philosophy and is expressed by the timelessness of this experience in poetry. Fourth, in philosophy the meaning of despair is revealed in the temporal sequence of losses, and the word-image puts a limit to losses in poetry, which returns a desperate person to values and contributes to the correction of their temporal existence.Conclusion. The scope of objective time expands in the technogenic epoch and subordinates a person's temporality to its rhythms, leading them to despair. Existentialists consider temporalization as a way to reveal the true meaning of despair, and imaginists use it so that a person experiences this feeling differently and builds their temporal existence in a different way.