Enjambment as a Cognitive-Poetic Strategy: A Psychostylistic Analysis of Viktor Krupka’s Poetry

Abstract

Modern linguistic studies are increasingly departing from the view of language as a purely instrumental system, focusing instead on its role as a formative factor in consciousness and the self-identity of the individual. This article presents a comprehensive psychostylistic analysis of the typology and functional characteristics of enjambment (verse carryover) within Viktor Krupka’s poetry collection Axis (Vis’). The relevance of this research stems from the necessity to explicate the relationship between formal verse structures and the cognitive-emotional states of the subject in contemporary Ukrainian lyric poetry. The study is grounded in the premise that psychopoetic intentions facilitate a departure from mere technical prosody, framing enjambment as a sophisticated instrument for modeling fragmented consciousness and a mechanism for verbalising “impossible” or “non-factual” experiences. The aim of our study is to identify the types, functions and psychopoetic effects of enjambment in V. Krupka’s collection Axis (Vis’) and to analyse the specific features of its use as a cognitive-stylistic device. The methodological framework integrates formal-grammatical, structural-semantic, and psychopoetic approaches, enabling the interpretation of enjambment as a means of attention management and a tool for generating semantic multi-layeredness (“engaging ambiguity”). The scholarly novelty of the research lies in the introduction of an updated classification of enjambment types, encompassing classic forms (rejet, contre-rejet) and extended modifications (weak, isolating, combined), which are relevant to the architecture of contemporary free verse. The proposed approach facilitates the analysis of enjambment as a “rhythmic performance” in which the continuity of sense and the discontinuity of form are perceived by the reader simultaneously. Particular attention is devoted to the functional load of various enjambment types. It is established that weak enjambment functions as a mechanism of emotional inertia, ensuring the fluidity of internal monologue and the soft immersion of the recipient into poetic consciousness without sharp cognitive pauses. Conversely, isolating enjambment acts as a “cognitive stop,” compelling the reader to focus on the affective core of a single word. This effect is critically amplified by the author’s unique visuospatial organization (layout): the consistent rejection of capitalisation (except for the theonyms God and Lord), which visually sacralises specific lexemes and transforms every graphic pause into an act of identifying spiritual meanings. Within a cognitive-temporal framework, it is demonstrated that the use of enjambment creates “phase shifts,” “zones of expectation,” and “weak gestalts,” all of which increase the reader’s integrative effort during text perception. Enjambment is characterised as a strategy of “engaging ambiguity,” where a word at the line boundary momentarily belongs to multiple contexts. Combined forms of carryover allow the author to model states of psychological breakdown and post-traumatic reflection, transforming the syntactic rupture into a visual metaphor for internal distance. The study’s findings confirm that enjambment in Krupka’s work constitutes a systematic cognitive poetic strategy that animates poetic speech and transforms the act of reading into an active process of cocreating the artistic world. The developed methodological toolkit enables a deeper analysis of the rhythmics and emotional fabric of contemporary poetry, opening new possibilities for investigating the interaction between poetic form and the cognitive processing of meaning within psycholinguistic and receptive dimensions.