"Phenomenology of Null Appearance: Between the Imaginary and the Real"

This study within the discipline of "visual studies" is dedicated to examining some phenomenological aspects of visuality in the realm of poetic imagery. We rely on the idea expressed, in particular, by Jean-Luc Marion, which suggests that phenomenological techniques are spontaneously actualized in the spheres of artistic creativity and perception. In the context of ideas from Husserl's phenomenology that are significant to this topic, we analyze certain aspects of visuality in the domain of poetic discourse using the artistic texts of Pushkin, Gogol, Tik, and Hoffman through a phenomenological lens. We also utilize the concept of "species" introduced by Ingarden, which formalizes the idea of the plastic saturation and "iridescence" of specific phenomena, as well as the possibility of seeing one thing in another. The reflection as a poetic image is also explored in the context of visuality. Within the framework of the phenomenological method, we employ phenomenological epoche, reduction, intuition, analysis, description, and the phenomenology of poetic imagination as outlined by Bachelard (studying the material imagination that underlies poetic metaphors). Drawing on Husserl's phenomenology of image, we examine some aspects in which the role of perception and the "here and now" world becomes evident in constituting poetic images. In this regard, we highlight the images that Husserl calls "perceptual fictions"—images that arise based on impressions and effects in the perception of objects and the surrounding environment. In relation to poetic discourse, this concerns images of nature that serve as the foundation for poetic metaphors. In contrast to the literary tradition that posits Gogol's fantastic images as delineating the boundaries of the real and the other worlds, we aimed to demonstrate that the images of nature and the elements, which give rise to fantastic images, become for Gogol, Tik, and Hoffman a source of perceptual play, referencing the foundations of perceptual practices. We sought to show how the aspects of phenomenology outlined in the theoretical part of the article organically exist and operate in the realm of visuality.