Acrostic

From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the choice of this form is often associated with sacred motifs (the name of Christ, the Virgin Mary, etc. is read), or with the poet’s appeal (to his patron, fellow writer), or with a signature embedded in the first column letters of the author's name (it is believed that this is the use of an acrostic of its inventor, the ancient Greek poet and playwright Epicharmus of Kos . in Russia acrostic came from Byzantium and began to be applied from the XI century. at the root of Russian acrostic also cost akrostishnye signatures who lived in the XVII century, hieromonk Herman , engaged lane Proposition psalms , for example, his arrangement of Psalm 140 shows the first letters of the phrase "German monk molyasya Pisahov").

Functionally, these three cases correspond to three types of acrostic:

• acrostic-key: a text read in the first letters in a concentrated form expresses the meaning of the work and, according to the author’s intention, should be noticed by every reader; A special case of such a solution is a mystery poem with a clue in the first letters:

I am known for mine by name;

He swears to the rogue and his immaculate

Those in disasters have more than anything else,

Well, sweeter with me and in the best share.

I can serve alone in the lasciviousness of pure souls,

And between the villains - I will not be created.

Yuri Neledinsky-Meletsky , Acroshish riddle

• acrostic - initiation: a text read in the first letters calls its addressee; often this addressee is indicated in the text in another way (in the title, in the epigraph , directly in the poem), sometimes there are no other indications, and then the dedication is noticeable only to a very attentive or prepared reader:

• acrostic code: the text read in the first letters is not directly related to the content of the poem and introduces new, secondary information into the work. Often this type of acrostic was used as a means of circumventing censorship or other prohibitions. In various memoirs there are references to the acrostic of Felix Chuyev with the encrypted motto “ Stalin in the heart”, about the acrostics of Nikolai Glazkov “To dear Leonid Ilyich” published in the Soviet provincial periodicals (the poem itself was innocent lyrical in nature, which made an irony addressed to L. I. Brezhnev at the same time harmless and caustic) and Eugene Shesholina "Christ has risen." The story of the Voronezh poet Pavel Melekhin, who sold his poems to more successful Soviet authors and once, instead of his own author’s signature, encrypted his attitude to the poet Mikhail Kasatkin who bought and published this poem (“I” at the beginning of the last line, is instead known "S"):

A month in the city is not visible at night,

To ak over the square - a separate ceiling.

Ah , why is Nikitin so silent

With a sleazy sea of ​​lights drunk.

And the automatic devices at the entrance to the alley

It’s as if wanderers are here,

To the blind, they do not regret anything

And the gifts of the copper await.

But it seems midnight empty

Mr. Ruby - Neon Light.

He is at least moving, his vision is in stagnation:

Why beware, poet!

Well , so that deep, not ceremonial

Oh appreciate how we live today

It ’s necessary to take Nikitin’s place -

And not in the square, but in the past century ...

Another type of acrostic is the alphabetic acrostic ( abechedarius ), in which each first letter of a poem or stanza forms an alphabetical sequence. An example of such an acrostic is the Old Testament Lament of Jeremiah , the first four songs of which consist of 22 stanzas each, with each stanza starting with a new letter, in the sequential order of the Hebrew alphabet .

Formal varieties of acrostic can be considered more rare telestices and mesostichs ( mesostichs ), in which the additional text is not read by the first, but by the last and middle letters of the poetic line, as well as acrotelesty . In the XX century, a number of complications of the form were tested, starting with double and triple acrostices (first, third and fifth letters in each verse), found in the poetic correspondence of Mikhail Lozinsky and Konstantin Lipskerov . The largest contemporary master of Russian acrostic is Valentin Zagoryansky , in whose poems (the author calls them acrograms ) the additional text can be read in many directions at once (along the first, last and middle letters, both diagonals and the like).

Occasionally, a form similar to acrostic is also found in prose: for example, the feuilleton of Alexander Amfiteatrov , referring to the very beginning of the 20th century, in which the anti-government slogan was read by the first letters of words. In one of Ellery Queen ’s novels, the first letters of the titles of the chapters form the title of the book and the name of the author: The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen . The last paragraph of Vladimir Nabokov ’s English story “The Vane Sisters” ( 1951 ) is also organized as follows: the first letters of all words are arranged in a phrase, which is the key to the story told in the main text. In these cases, however, it is more legitimate to consider such a manifestation of acronym not as an independent form, but as a literary device , since we are talking about organizing only a certain fragment of the text, and not the whole work.

• Alphabet prayer
• Abcededary

• The chapter on acrostic from the book of Sergei Biryukov on experimental poetic forms
• Shumilin. B. How they fooled the Bolsheviks. Star. No. 11, 2007
• Lecture No. 7 from the course “Combinatorial Literature” by Tatyana Bonch-Osmolovskaya
• Overview of Ivan Chudasov “From acrostic to acroconstruction”