SEMANTIC SHIFTS AND METAPHORIZATION OF UNITS OF MEASUREMENT IN POETRY AND PROSE AND THE PROBLEMS OF INTERLINGUAL TRANSFER OF IMAGERY

Abstract

The article examines the functioning of units of measurement in poetry and prose as mechanisms of semantic shift through which quantitative designations are transformed into carriers of qualitative, existentially and socioculturally loaded meanings. It is shown that metrological vocabulary in literary discourse simultaneously maintains a connection with the conventional scientific picture of the world and undermines it, since “second,” “versta,” “foot,” “pood,” or “drop” come to denote not a measurable parameter but the intensity of experience, the distance of alienation, the bodily commensurability of the world with the human being, the weight of guilt, or the limit of patience. The analytical framework draws on hermeneutics, comparative literary studies, and sociolinguistics and makes it possible to trace how the choice of archaic, anthropomorphic, and abstract measures correlates with historical regimes of perceiving space and time–from the traditional order to modernity and postmodernity, where precision often becomes a source of defamiliarization and absurdity. Special attention is paid to the interlingual transfer of imagery: the replacement of culturally specific measures with metric equivalents can destroy the chronotope, stylistic register, and idiomatic memory, whereas successful solutions require a functional-semantic reconstruction of the “metrical mentality” of the source culture and consideration of the pragmatic effect on the reader of the translation.