Closing Statement: Linguistics an, 1 Poetics

ROMAN JAKOnSON

Fortunately. schol~lr1y and political conferences have nothing in common. The success of a political convention depends on the general ;lgrccllIcllt of the majority or totality of its p'lrticip.:lnls. ThL' u~c of votes and vetoes, however, i'i alien to .c;chobrly discu~sion \~hcrc di-;;lgrcclllcnt gL'llcrally proves to be morc productive than agreement. Disagreemenl discloses antinomies and tensions within the field discussed and calls for novel exploration. Not political conferences hut rather exploratory activities in Antarctica prescnt an analogy to scholarly meetings: international experts in various disciplines altcmpt to map an unknown region and lind out where the greatest obstacles for the explorer ore, the insurmonnl:tblc peaks­and precipices. Such a mapping seems to have been the chief task of our conference, and in this r('ipect its work has been qnite succe~sful. Ha\-e we not realiled what prohlelll'i arc the mmt crucial and the most contro­versial? Have we not <llso learned how to switch our codes. \vhat terms to ex.pound or even to avoid in order to prevent misunderstandings with people using di [ferent departmental jargon? Such questions, I helieve. for most of the memhers of this conference. ir not for:tll of them. an! some­wh:lt clearer today lh<ln they were three days ago.

I have been <lsked for summary remark:; :.lbotlt poetics in its rdation to linguistics. Poetics deals prim:.uily with the question. What makes a !"Nhal m(,5.'>Ogc a lI'ork of ar,? Because the main subject of poetics is the dijjcrenlias!,uifica of verbal art in relation to other arts and in rclation to other kinJ,'\ of verb:tl behavior. poetics is entitled lo the leadin!; place in litcrary studies.

Poetics deals with prohkms of verbal structure. just as the analysis of painting is concerned with pictorial structure. Since linguistics is the global science of verbal structure. poetics may be regarded as an integral part of linguistics.

Arguments against such a claim mlLst be thoroughly discussed. It is evident that many devices studied by poctics arc not confined to \-erbai art. \Ve can refer to the possibility of transposing WUlherillg f{c(~h'J inlo a motion picture, medieval legends into frescoes and miniatures. or L'opres-miJi c/'UI1 faune into music, ballet, and graphic art. However ludicrous may appear the idea of the ]/jad and Odyssey in comics, certain

)SO

Cl(}jinf! Statement: Urrgui.flics utld Poeticr 351

s,tructur;\1 features of their plot :.He preserved despite the disappe:3rance of their verbal sh3pe. The question whether nl;,ke's illustratioM 10 the Dil fila Cnmmrdia are or are not adequate is 3 proofth:n difTerent arts are' comparable. Tile problems of b:lroque or any other historical style tran5grcss the frame of a single art. When handling the surrealistic metaphor, we could hardly pnss by Max Ernst's pictures or Luis Ilui'iuefs films, The Andalltsian Dog and The GoMen Age. In short. many poetic

.-featurcs belong not only to the science of language but to the who-le theory of signs. that is, to general semiotics. This stateml!nt. however. is valid not only for verbal art but al~o for all varieties of I::tnguagl! since language ~hares many properties with some other systcms of signs or even with all of Ihel11 (pansemiotic fe~ltllres).

likewise :1 second objectinll contains nothing that would hI! specific for literature: the que.<;tion of rclntions bct\\'e~n the word and the "orld concerns not only vcrbJI art but actual1y all kinds of discourse. Linguistics is likel) to explore all possible prohlems of relation between discourse and the "universe.of discourse": what of this universe is verbalized by a given discourse and how is it verhalized. The truth values, however, as far as they arc-to say with the 10gicians-"extr:1linguistic entities," obviously exceed the bounds of poetics and of linguistics in general.

Sometimes we hear that poetics. in contradistinction to linguistics. is concerned with c\'alu:1tion. This separation of the two fields from each other is based on a current but erroneous interpretation of the contrast between the structure of poetry and other types of verb:!1 structure: the latter are said to be opposed by their "casual," dcsignless nature to the "noncasual," purpO$cf ul character of poetic lang\1Jgc. In point orract. any! vClbal hehavior is gnal-dirl'('ted, but the aim" are different and the '(tn_{ formity of the me3ns used to the elTect ail11ed 'It is a prohlel1lth~1t evermore preoccupies inquirers into the diverse kinds of verb .. 1 communication. There is a close correspondence. Illuch closer than critics bclie\'c. bct~cen : the question of linguistic phenomena expanding in sp:lce 3nd time and the spatial and temporal spread of literary models. Even such discontinuous ex.pansion as the resurrection of neglected or forgotten poets-for insl:tn(e. the posthumous discovery and subsequent canoniz31ion of Gerard Manley Hopkins (d. 1889), the tardy fame of Lautrcamont (d. 1870) among surrealist poets, and the salient influence of the hitherto ignored Cyprian Norwid (d. ISS)} on Polish modern poetry-find a parallel in the history of standard languages which are prone to revive outdated models. some­times long forgotten, as was the case in literary Czech which toward the beginning of the nineteenth century ieaned to sixtel!nth-century models.

Unfortunately the terminological confusion of "literary studies" with "criticism" tempts the student of literature to replace the description of

352 Retrospects and Prospects

the intrinsic value" of a litcr:lry v!ork by ~ suhjective. ccnsoriouc; verdict. The J:1hcl "literary critic" npplicd to <1n invc~ligalor of literature is as

erroneolls :1<" "gram mat leal (or lexical) critic" would he a rplicd to a lingui,t.

Syntactic and morphologic rcsca~ch cann~l ~c suprl~~t.cd by a normative grammar, and likewise no manifesto. rOlstmg a critic S own la"l~s a.nd opinions on creattve literature, may act as mb-s.titutc for an ol~.J-cctlvc scholarly analysi .. of verbal art. This statement is not to be n,llslakcn

for the quid is! rrinciplc of !ai.ue;: Jain?; any verbal culture IIlvolvcs

programm:ltic. planning. normallv!.: l:nJcavor~. Yd w.h~ is a clear-cut di\crimination made hetween pure :lnd applied 1i1lgl1!~tlC" or hetweel1 phonctics and orthocpy hut not hetwe~n literary 'i1.II11ics :1111~ cri.tici'il~\ '!

Literary !<.tutiics, with poetics a!<. their focal portion. consl!<.t hke h~­P"UI">t ics of two !<.els of prohlem'\: synchrony alH.I diachrony. The synchroillc description cnvi ... agcs not only the litcr:HY production of any ~ivcn st~\gc but also that rart of the literary II""dilion which for the stage 10 ques\lon has remaincJ vital or hac; been rcvivcd. Thus, for inst"l1CC. Shakespcare on the one hand and Donne, Marvell. Keats. "nt! Eillily Dickinson on the other arc e.xperiellced hy the present Eng.lish poetic world. whereas the works or Jamcs Thomson "nd Longr~lIow. ror the tillle being. do not helong to viable art!.;;!ic values. The selectioll or c!a\sics and the~r r~inler­prctalion by a nO'd trend is a subst;l11tial prohlem of synchrolllc literary studies. Synchronic poetics, like synchronic linguislie~. is not to I~e con­fuscd with statin,; any stage discrimin<ltes between more conservatl\"C and morc innovatory form ... Any cOllt..;mporary stage is expcricnccu in its temporal dynamics, and. 011 the other hand. the historical approach both in poetics :lnu in linguistics is concerned not only with change .. hut a~so with cont;nuou ... enduring. slatie factors. A thoroughly comprehenSIve historical poetics or history of languag.e is a supcrslrUl.:lure to be built on a

series of successive synchronic description ... 111 .. ; .. lcnce on kecping poetics apart from linguistics is w<lrrantcJ only

when the field of linguistics "prears to he illicitly rC:<itricted. for cx<llllpic. when the sentence is viewcd by some linguists as the hig.hcst ~lIlaly!;lble con .. truction or whcn the scope of lingui:<itics is confined to grammar nlone or uniquely to nonsemnnlic questions of external form or 10 the i11\'~nl(lry of denotative devices with no reference to free variations. Voegelin has clearly pointed out the two most important "nd related ~ro.hIe1l1s \\hic.h fuee structural linguistics. namely, a revision of "t he monollllilc hypotheSIS of languagc" and a concern with "t he interdcpendence of diver~e structures within one languagt":' No doubt. for any speech communlly. for tiny speaker, there exists a unity oflangutlgc. but this over-all code represcnts a system of interconnected subcodcs; each I,,~guagc: enc~mpasscs sev~ral concurrent patterns which are each charactcTlzcd by a dllTerent funcllon.

! I

,

Clos;tll! Statement: Linguistics and roetics 353

Oh .. iously we must "grec wilh S~lpir that, on the ,,,hole, "ide~1tion reigns supreme in langu::Igc ... "(J.aR), hut Ihis surremacy does not authorize linguistics to disregan.l the "seconuary ftlctors." The emotive ek'ments of speech which. as loos is prone to believe, cannot be described "" ith a finite numher of absolute categories," are classified by him "as non­linguistic clements of the real WOfW." H't~t, "for \J5 tlK-y remain vague,

protean. tluclu:tting phcnomena," he concludes, "which we refuse to tolerate in our science" (2U). loos is indeed a brilliant expert in reduction experimcnts, "IHI his elllph:lIic rcquiremcnt for an "c:xpllision" of the emotive clcmcnts "frolll linguistic scicnce" is a radical c'peril1lcnt in reduction-reductio ad nh.mrdlllll.

Language 1l1l1:<it he ilm:stigatcd in ailihe variety of ils functions. Ikfore disclJssing the poetic function we must ddinc its pl;.1Cc nl110ng the other functions of language. An outlinc of thcse functions dcmands " concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech event. in any act of verbal cOlllmunication. The ADI1R[S!)[R sends a M[SSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operati .... e thc mcss"gc r~quires" CONTEXT referred to ("rcrerent" in another, somewhat ambiguous. nomenclature). seimblc by the addressee. and either verb,,1 or cap:1ble of being verbalized: a ("ODE fully. or tit least partially. comlllon to the addresser :1Ild addrt!ssce (or in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message); and, fin::lIly. a CO!'.lTACT, tt

physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. All these factors inalienably involvcd in verbal communication m"y be schematized as follows:

ADDRESSER

CONTEXT

MESSAGE

CONTACT

CODE

. ADDRESSEE

Each or thcse six f"ctors determines a dirTcrent runction of language. Although we distinguish six basic "specls of I"nguage. we coult!. ho\\c,·er. hardly rind verbal messages that would fulfill only onc function. The divcrsity lics not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a dilferent hicrarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function. But ncn though a sct (Einsldlung) toward the rcferent, an orientation toward the CO:-.TEXT -brieny the so-called RF:FERENTIAL, Udenotative:' Ucognitivc" function­is the Icading task of numerous messages, the accessory participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant linguist.

\ ' . ;\

354 Retrospects and Prospects

The so-called nlOTlVE or "exjm~s!>ive" function, focused on the ADDRESSER, aims a direct expression of the speaker's attitude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emo· tion whether true or feigned; . therefore, the term "emotive," launched and advocated by Marty (269) has. proved to be preferable to "emotional." The purely emotive stratum in language is prcs,cnte.d by the interjections. They differ frolll the means of rcfcrcnti~.d language both by their sound paHcrn (peculiar sound sequences or even sounds elsewhere unusual) and by their syntactic role (they are not components but equivalents of sentences). "TUf! TUff said McGinty": the complete utterancc of Conan Doylc's character consists of two suction clicks. The cmotive function, laid bare in the interjectiom;, flavors to somc extcnt ali our utterances, on their phonic, grClmmatic;:ll, and lexical level. If wc analY1c bnguagc from the standpolllt of the information it carries, we canTlot restrict the notion of information to the cognitive aspect of language. A man, using expressive features to indicate his angry or ironic attitude, conveys ostensible informiltion, and evidently this verbal behavior cannot be likened to such nonsemiotic, nutritive activities as "eating grapcfruit" (despite Chatman's bold simile). Thc dilTcrence between [big] and the emphatic prolongation of the vowel [bi: g] is a conventional, coded linguistic feature likc the difTl:fencc hetween the short ;'IIH.I long vo""eI in such Czech pairs :1S [vi] 'you' and [vi:] 'knows,' but in the lattcr pair the ditTercntial information is phonemic and in the former elllotive. As long as we arc interested in phonemic invariants, the Engli~h lit ~lnd /i:f appear to be mere variants of one and the samc phoneme, hut if we arc concerned with emotive unite;. the rcbtion hetwecn the invariant and vari::lIlts is

I revcrscu: length and shortness arc invariants implemented by variable phoncmcs. Saporta's surmise that emotive dilTerelH:e is a nonlinguistic feat ure, "attrihutable to the delivery of the message and not to I he message," arhitrarily reduces the informational capacity of messages.

A former actor of Stanislavskij's Moscow Theater told me how at his audition he was asked by the famolls director to make forty ditTaent messages from the phrase Segor/"ja l'C'c-erom 'This evening,' by divcrsir)ing its expressive tint. He made a list of some forty emotional situations. then emitted the given phrase in accordance with each of these situ;lIiollS, which Ilis audience had to recognize only from Ihe changes in the sound shape of the same two words. For our research work in the description and analysis of contemporary Standard Russian (under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation) this actor was asked to repeat St::lI1isbvskij's test. He wrote down some lifty situations framing the same elliptic sentence and made of it fifty corresponding messages for a tape record. Most of the messages were correctly and circumstanthllly decoded by

Cloring Statement: Linguistics and Po~tlcs 355

Moscovite listeners. May I add that all such emotive cues e:lsily undergo linguistic analysis.

Orientation toward the ADDRESSEE, the CONATIVE function, finds its purest grammatical expression in the vocative and imperati"·e, which syntactically, morphologically, and often even phonemically deviate from other nominal and verbal categories. The irpperative sentences cardinally differ from dcdar:ttive sentences: the latter are and the former are n-ot liable to a truth test. When in O'Neill's play The> FOU1IIail', Nano, "(in a ficrc~ tone of command)," says "Drink !"-the imperative c:lonol be challenged by the question "is it true or not 7" which may be, however. perfectly well asked after such sentences as "one drank," "one will drink;' "one would drink." In contradistinction to the imperative sentences. the declarative sentcnces :Ire convertible into intcrrof!ative sentences: "did onc drink 7" "will one drink?" "would onc drink 1"

The Iradition;tl model of IJnguage as elucidated particularly by Buhler \'" (51) was confined to these three functions-emotive, eonative, and referential-and tl'le three apc~es of this model-the fIrst person of the . addresser. the second person of the addressee, and the "third person," \. properly-somcone or something spoken of. Certain additional verbal functions can be easily inferred from this triadic model. Thus the magic. inc:lntalory function is chicny sOl11e kind of convcrsion of an absenc or inanimate "third person" into an addressee of a conative message. "May Ihis Sly dry up, 'ra, 'f", ifa, if"" (Lilhuanian spell: 266, p. 69). "Waler, queen river. dayhreak! Send grief heyond the blue sel. to the sea-bottom, like a grey ~tonc never to rise from the sea-hottom. 111;IY !!ricf Ile\'cr corne to hurden Ihe light heart of God's servant. may grief be rerno"'cJ :md sink away." (North Russian inclIltation: J .. B. p. 217f.), "Sun. stand thuu still upon Gihcon: and thou, Moon, in the valley of Aj-a-Ion. And Ihe ~un stood !;Iill, and tht! moon stayed ... t, (Josh. 10.12). We ohserve, howeycr. three further constitutive factors of verbal communic~lIion and three corresponding functions or languagc.

There are llless;lges primarily serving to establish, to prolong. or to dis­continue communication, to check whether the channel works ("Hello, do you hear me ?"), to attract the attention of the interlocutor ortoconlirm his continued attention ("Are you listening?" or in Shakespearean diction. "Lend me your ears!"-and on the other end of the wirc "Urn-110m!"). This set for CONTACT, or in Malinowski's terms PIIATTC function (2~). may be displayed by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas, by enttre dialogues with the mere purport of prolonging communication. Dorothy Parker caught eloquent examples: .. 'Well!' the young man said. 'Weill' she said. 'Well, here we are,' he said. 'Here.we are,' she said, 'Aren't we?' 'I should say we were,' he said, 'Eeyop! Here "we are.' 'Well!' she said.

Rctro.flpC'cts Otlll Prospects

'Well!' he ... aid, 'welL' .. The endeavor to ~tart and ."u~tain communication ! is typical ofwl\.,ing hird,,; thus the pilatic function oflangtl:1g;e is thc only : one Ihey share with human beings. It is also the first verhal function ! acquired by infants; they arc pr.onc to communicate before being ablc to

send or n:ceive inform<ltive communicatioll. A distinction has been made in modern logic between two IeveI~ of

langua~e, "ohjecl languagc" spc'lk;ng of ohjccts and "mclalanglla~c" speaking of language. But metalanguage i" not only a necessary <;cientifie tool utilized hy logicians and linguists: it plays al<;o an illlport;\Ilt role in our c .... crJay language. Like Molierc's Jourdain wl~(l u"ed pro<;e without knowing it, we pfm:tice met:dangllage without rc:di/ing the !l1c1alingual character of our operations. Whcncver the ,uldres<;cr and/or thc addressee need to -:heck up whether they usc the S'lIlle code, spel'ch is focu"ed on the CO[)E: it performs a MHALJNGUAL (i.e .• gloo;"ing) function. "I dOIl't follow you-wlmt do YOll mean?" asks the iHldrc<;<;ce, or in Sha\.:cspc;)rcaTl diction. "What i<;'t thou <;ay'st T' t\ nd the iH.ldre"ser in anticipat ion of sllch rcc;)ptllring questions inquires: Do you know what I llle:1I1?" Imagine such an ex;:t"perating dialogue: "The sophomore was plucked." "RUI what is plllcked?" "Plucked nlC'InS the same a<;jlllllked." "/\ndjlw1!.:rrl?" "To he jlrmked is for ai/ in 01' exam." "And what is S(I/,holl1o/"e?" pcrsists the interrogator innocent of school vocahulary. "A .1'0/,/101/101"(' is (or me<ll1s) <I seuJlld·yclIr sllld('I1/." All Ihe<;e equational sentences convl?Y inrormation merely ahout Ihe lexical code of Eng!ish; their rUlleti(lIl is qrictly metalinguiil. Ally process of langu:lge karning. in p:lrtinll:1f child acqui"ition of the mother tongue. ma~es wide usc or such lllctalingu;)l operations; and ilpha<;ia m<.ly often be defined as a loss of ability for metalingual l)peralions.

\

We h;lve hrou£ht lip allth~ six r'.'lctors invoh'cd in verhal.cOIl1I1lUllic:Jtion except the me<;"agc it"elf. The set (EillSlelhlllg) toward the Mt SSACt: as sll(:h. rol.:u<; on the Jlles~age for Its own ~ahe. i" the I'OJ IIC fUllction or Jangu;lge. This function cannot he pro(tuctin.'ly <;tudied out or touch with the general problems of language. and. on the other hand. the scrutiny of bngu<lgc reqllires a thorough consideration of its poctic function. Any attempt to reduce the sphere of poetic rUllclion to poetry or to contine poetry 10 poetic function would be a dehlsive over<;implilicalion. Poetic fUllction j" not the sole function of verbal art hut only its dominatlt. dctermining function, whereas in all other verhal acli\"itie~ it aLls as a sub"iuiary. aeces"ory constituent Thi~ runclion, by promoting the palpability of sigm. deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects. Hence. whcn de~ding with poetic function, linguistics c:lnnot limit itself to the tield of poetry.

"Why do you always say Joan and Marger)" yet never Margl'f)' al/(/Joan?

,

I I

Glosi,,/! Stn/clUe",: UIIJ!";.fltic.f nml POl,tics

"-357

Do you prefer Joan to her twin sister?" "Not' at ::til, it just sounds smoother." In a sequencc of two coonJinate names. as r;)r as no rank. problems interfere, the precedence of the shorter nnme suits the sp\!akcr. unaccountably for him, as a well-ordered shape of the message.

A girl used to t;llk about "the horrihle Harry." "Why horrible?"' "Bccause I hate him." "Rut why not drC'adfitl, I('rrih/t', frightful. rlis­grwillg?" '" don't know why. bUI IJor,.ihl4' lits him ~tler." Without rcalizing it, she clung to the poetic device of paronomasi~.

The political slog:1I1 "I like Ike" 1:ly layk ayk/, sllccinctly structured, consi~t.~ of three Illollmyllahlcs ;\I1t! cOllnts three diphthongs layl, e:ll:h of them symllletril':lIly rollowed hy one c(ln~Onanl:1i phollern..:. I .. 1 .. k .. k/. The makr.:.up of the three \\,on.l .. presents a v:lriatiol1: no conson:lIl1:tl phonemcs in I he !irst \vonl, two arollnd the diphthong in t he second. and onc linal consol1nnt in the third. A similar dominant nuclcus layl was noticed by Ilymes ill some of the sonnets of Ke::lts. Both cola of th..: tri .. yll:lbic formula "I like like': rhyme with each olher, and the second or the two rhyming words is fully included in the !irst onc (echo rhyl1lc)./layk/-/~lyk/. a paronollwstie image of a feeling which totally envelops it~ ohjeet. Both cola alliterate with c:leh other, and thc lirst of the two :llIilerating words is includcd in the second: lay/-/ay~/. a p;1ronollla~lit.- i1l1:1ge of the loving subjcct enveloped hy the heloved object. The Sel:Olld;lry. pOdic function of this election:11 calch phrase reinforces its iJ1lprcssi\'enes~ :tnd cllicacy.

,\s we said, the linguistic study of the poetic function must overstep the limits of poetry. ;lIlt!. on Ihe other hand, the 1~llgtJistic sl'f\ltiny of poetry callnot limit itsclf to the poetic function. The particularities of divers\! poetic genres imply a dilTerclltly ranked partieipalion of the (Hher \erhal runctions along ",itlt the dominant poetic function. Epic r0etry. focused on the third rerson, strongly involves the rcicrl!nti;li runction of hlngu:J.gc; the lyric. oriented to" .. :trd the first person, is intimately linked "ith the emotive rUllction; poetry of the second pcrson is imhued with the con;lti\c function and is either supplicatory or exhort:ttive, depcnding on whcther the first person is subordin~lIed to Ihl! second one or the second to the first.

l'!ow that our cursory description of the six basic functions of verbal communication is more or less complete, we may eomplementourschcme of the fundamental factors by a corresponding scheme of the runctions:

EMOTIVE

REFERENTIAL

POETIC PHATIC

METALINGUAL

CONATIVE

358 Retrospects and Prospects

What is the empirical linguistic criterion or the poc{ic fundion? In particular. what is I he indispensable feature inherent in any piece of poetry? To answer this question we must recall the two basic modes of arrangement used in verbal behavior, sr/rclinn and comhinafion. If "child" is the topic of

J' the message. the speaker selects onc among the extant. more or less similar, . nouns like child. kid. ),oung,,{cr, lot, all .or them equivalent in a certain

respect. anti then. to comment on this topic, he may select one of the semantically cognate verbs-sleeps. d07es, nods, nap". ilolh chosen wortls combine in the speech chain. The selection is produced on the hasc of equivalence ... imibTity and di ... similarity. synonymify and antonymity,

I while the eomhin:llion, Ihe build up orlile sequence, is based Oil conti~lIity. I ~ The I'oetic jUllifhm I'rojects t"e prillcil"e (~! cquim/cl1c(' FOII/ t"e axis of'

sel{'(tiol1 into ,hc (lxis of cflllIhillotion. Equivalence is promoted to the con<;,titlltive Jevice or the sequence.! In poetry one syllahlr: is equalized with any other syllahlc or the same sequence; word stress is assumed to equal word stree;s. as une;tress equals umtress: pro<;odic long is matched with long. and short with short; word boundary equals word boundary, no boundary equale; no houndary: syntactic pause equals syntactic pause. no pallse equal .. no pause. Syllahles arc converted into units or measure,

and so arc morae or stresses. It may he ohjected th<.lt mct:.,danguage al<;o makes a sequential usc or

equivalent units when eomhining synonymic expressions into an equ:l~ tional sentence: A = A ("Marl! is I"" felllale 0I the horsc"). Poetry and metalanguage, however, arc in diametrical opposition to each other: in metalanguage the sequence is used to build an equation. whereas in poetry

the equation is used to build a sequence. In poetry. and to a certain extent in \;Itent manirestations or poetic

function, scquence<; dclimited by word boundaries hccome comlllen­surahle whether they ::He sensed as isochronic or graded. ".loan and Margery" showed IlS the poetic principle of syllable gr~ldation. tilt: same principle which in the closes or Serbian rolk epics has been raised to a comrulsory law (cr. 2MH. Witbout its two dactylic \vords tbe combination "ill"ocelll by.ttander" would hardly have become a hackneyed phrnse. The symmetry or three dj~yl1abie verbs with an identical initial consonant and identical final vowel added splendor to the laconic victory message or

Caesnr: "Vclfi. rh/;. rid:' Measure or sequences is a device which. outside of poetic runction. finds

no application in language. Only in poetry with its regubr rc;ter?tion of equivalent units is the time of the speech flow experienced. as it is-to cite another semiotic pattern-with musical time. Gerard Manley Hopkins. an outstanding searcher in the science or poelie language. defined verse as "speech wholly or partially repeating the same figure of

I· I

,.

Closi,!g Statement: Linguistics and Poetics 359

sound" (179~. Hopkins' suhseqllent question. "but is all verse poetry:' can he definitely answered as soon as poetic runction ce;1~es to be :ubi. trarily confined to the domain of poetry. Mnemonic lines cited by ~opkins (like ."Thirty days hath September"). modern advertising Jmgles. and versllled medieval!aws. mentioned by LOll. or finallv Sanserit scientific treatises in verse which in Indic trJdition arc strictly di_<;t~in!!uished from .true ~oelry (ktirya)-all the~c tllelr~cal texts m:lke use of poetic functlo~ . wlthollt,. ho\\c.ver, as~igning to this runction the coercing. ~et~rmmll1g rolc It carnes in poetry. Thus verse actually e:.;.cccds the hmlts of poetry. but at the same time vcr~e always implies poetic function. And apparently 110 human cuiture ignores vcrsema\r..ing. \\hen::ls there arc m:lny cultural patterns without "applied" vcrse; ;1I1d e\'cn in stich cultures which possess both pure and applied vcrses. the latterappc:lT to he 3

sceol.ldary, unquestionably derived phenomenon. The adaptation or poetic means for some hcterogeneous purpose docs not conee:ll their primary essence. just as elements or emoti\'e lanCllace. when utilized in poetry. still mai1ltain their emotive tinge. A ~fiIib1lSterer may recite ~ial!·atha ~ecause. it is long. yet poetical ness still remains the primary mIen I or thiS text IIsc1r. Sdf-cvidently. the c:.;.islcnce or \'Crsified. musical, and pictorial coml1lercials does not separ:!le the questions or vcrse or of musical and piclori:1I rorm rrom the study of podry. mllsic. and fine arts.

To sum up. the analysis of verse is entirely within the competence or poetics, and the latter may be defined as that part or linguistics which tre:lls the poelie rUllclion in its relationship to the othcr runcticll1s or language. Poetics in the wider sense or the word de:ds with the poetic function nol only in poetry, where this runction is superimposed upon the other functions or lang\l~lge. hut also outside of poctry. \"hen some other function is superimposed upon the poetic runction.

The reiterative "Iigure of sound," which Hopkins S3W to be the consti~ tu~i~·e principle of verse, can be rurther specilied. Such a figure always utdlles at least one (or more than one) binary contrast of a relatively high Jnd relatively low prominence effected by the differcnt sections or the phonemic sequence.

Within a sy\1ahle the more prominent, nuclear, syllabic part. consti~ tuting the peak or the syllable. is opposed to the less prominent, marginal. nonsyllahic phonemes. Any syllabIc contains a syllabic phoneme. ::lIld the intervJI hct\\cen two successive syllabics is in some languages ah\~l)'s and in others overwhelmingly carried out by marginal, nOllsyllabic phonemes. In the so-called syllabic versification the number of syllabics in a metrically ddimited chain (time series) is a constant, whereas the presence of a nonsyllabie phoneme or cluster between e"ery two syllabies of a metrical chain is a constant only in languages with an indispensabl~ occurrence of

- - ------ -------

360 RetrrMpects atJd Prospects

nomyllabics between syllabics and, furthermore, in those verse sy .. tcms where hiJtus is prohihited. Another mtlnifcstation of a tendency toward a uniform syllahic model is the avoidance of closed syllahlcs althe end oflhc tine. ohservahle. for instance, in Scrbi;Jn epic songs. The Italian syllabic verse :::.hows a tendency 10 lre<lt a sequence of vowds uno;,cpar:'llcd hy conso­nantal phonemes as one single metrical syllabic (cf. 247:1, sees. VIII-IX).

In some patterns of vcr~ilication the syllahlc is the only comtanl unit of verse mca~urc. and a grammatical limit is the only con\lanl line of dcm;lrcation between measured sequcllces, whcrc<l'> in other patterns syllahlc,> ill turn an; dichololl1i:tcd into more and le~s prominent, and/or two kvels of grall1lllatic;d limits ;In: diqingui"hcJ in their metrical runction, wonJ houndaries ~1I1(j syntactic pau\t.:s.

Except the varieti!:s or the so-calkti vcrs lihre th.lt arc based on eon­jllgatc intonations and pauses only. any meIer tlses the syllahle as a unit or measure at least in cert:lin sections or Ihe·verse. Thlls in the pllrely accentual verse ("sprung rhythm" in Hopkins' vocabulary). the number or syllahles in the upheat (called "slack" hy Hopkins) Illay vary, btu the down heat (ictus) eon'll:!lllly contains one single syllahlc.

In any accentual \'erse the contrast between higlll:r and lo\\cr prominencc is achieved by syll:lhlcs ulHkr slress versus IIIlS(res,cd syllahlc... Most

aCCl:ntual patterns opemte primarily with the contrast of syllahles with and without word stress, but some varietie"" or ncccntual verse deal with syntactic, phras;d <;fre"ses, those wllich Wimsatt :md Beardsky cite as "the

major stre:""l:" or the major word,," and whkh arc Oprosl:d as prominent to syllahlcs without such major, "Ylltaclic slress.

In the qU;lntitati"e ("chroncl1lic") h'rse, long :111<1 ~hort sylbh1cs arc mutually 0pro~ed as more and les~ promincnt. Til;:.. contrast is ll<;ually carried out by syllahle nudei. phonemically long and ~horl. Bur ill metrical pallerns like Ancient Greek and !\rahic, which equali7c kllgth "by p()<.,ition" with length "by nature." the minimal.\)'lIah1cs consisting or a consonantal phoneme nnd one mora vo'.'.cI arc opposed fo syllables \\Ith a surplus (3 second mora or a closil1gconsonant) as simpler and le~" prorni­nelH syllables opposed to those that arc more complex and promincnt.

The question still remains open whether. besides the :.accentual nnd the chronemic Verse, there exists a "!onelllie" type orversilication in bl1£:lIag~s where dilTercnccs or syllabic intonations :'Ire used to distill!!uish'- w~rd meanings (19K). In classicaIChinesepoelry(293).syl1;lhlcswith n;odl,lations (in Chinese (St:. 'dc-nected lones') are opposed to the nonmouulated syllahlcs (p'ing. 'level tones'), but apparcntly n chroncmic principle unda. lies this opposition, as was suspected by Polivanov (JIR:I) and keenly

intl:rpreted by Wang Li (4JHa): in the Chinese l11etri\:~illradition the level tones prove to be opposed 10 the dellcetcd tOiles JS long tonal pe.lks or

F'

CIMinI! Statement: L/n:!ui.flicJ and P"('t;u 361

syllablcs to short ones, so that verse is based on the opposition or length and shortness.

Joseph Greenh..:rg brought (0 my attention another variety or [anemic versification-the verse of Efik riddles based on the level feature. In the sample cited by Simmons (J79. p. 228). the query ant.I the re~pon~e form two octosyllabks with an :tlike distrihution of h(ich} •• In<.l I(ow)-tonc syll;lhics: in each hemistich. morcover, the last tl1rt.'e ·of the four syl1;tbles

prt.'selH nn identical !onemic pattern: ''''''/!tlt/dl/I/''''I'''''''!!. Where;ls Chillec;c vcrsilication ;lrre;lrS as a peculiar variety of the qll3nlitative verse, the verse or the EliI.' riddles is linked with the usual ;\t.'\.'('nlllal verse

bY;l1l opposition of two degrees orprol11incnce (slrl'ngth or hei~ht) of the vOl'al tOile. Thus a metric}l system or ver.:-:ili(::ltitlll l':lll he based only on the oppo;;ition of syllabic pe.lks and slopes (syl1'1hic verse). on the rl'lative

level oftllc peaks (accentual verse), nnd on the relative kngth oflhe sylbhic peaks or entire syllabks (qu:lntil:ltive verse),

In textbooks Qf literature we sometimes encounter a superstitious eontraposition of syllabi Sill as n mere mechanical count of syllables to the lively pulsntion of accentual ver.:-:c. If '\o'l! e:-;antin~. however. the binary mcters or the strictly syllahic and at the samc timc. acccntuni versilication. we obscrvc two homogeneolls sllccession~ of w;)"e1ike peaks :md v;\l1eys, or thesc two unduhllory curves, the syll<1hic olle ca.rries nuclear phonemes in the crest nnd lIsually m:lrgin:11 phonemes in the bottom. As a rule the ;lecelltual curvc supcrposed upon the syll:lhic curve aileflt:ltes stressed and unstressed syllables in the crests and hottoms respc\.'livdy.

For eomp;lrison with the English meters ",hi(,:h we have lengthily di<;clls'\l'd. I hring 10 your attcntioll the similar Rtls"ian hi,l;iry vl..'r'e rorms which for the last fifty years llave verily ullth.'rgol\c an C:dl:lllstive investi­gation (sec pnrlieul:Jrly 407). The structure of the verse COlli be ... ·cry \ thoroughly described and interpreted in terms of enchained probabilities, Be~;ides the compulsory word boundary bct\\een the lines. "hidl is nn invarinnt throughout nil Russi:m meters. in the classic pattern of Russian syllabic accentual verse ("syllabo-tonic" in nati\e nomenclature) we observe the following constants: (1) the nllmber of syllablcs in the line from its beginning to the last downbeat is stable; (2) this very last down­beat always carries a word stress; (3);} stressed syl1nbk: cnnnot f<lll on the upbeat if a downbeat is rulfilled by an unstressed syll<lblc of the same word unit (so thnt a word stress enn coincide with an upbe:lt only ns rar as' it belongs to a mon05yllabic word .unit).

Along with these characteristics compulsory for any linc composed in a givcn metcr, there are rcatures that show a high probability of occurrence without being constantly present. llesides signals cert~lin to occur ("proba­bility one"), signals likely to occur ("probabiliti~s less th<l" one") enter

362 Retrosp(·cts amI Prosp('clS

into the nolion of meIer. Using Cherry's description of human communi~ cation (62), we could say that the reader of poetry obviously "m;\y he unable 10 atlach numerical frequencies" to the constituents of the meter, hut as rar as he conceives the vase shape, he unwittingly gets an inkling of

their "rank order." In the Russian hinary meters all odd syllahles counting back from the

last downhcat-hricny, all the upheats-arc usually fulfilled by unstressed syllahles. ('"ecpt some very low percentage of strc<iscd 11l0no~yl1ahlcs. All even syllables, again counting hack from the last downhc:ll. show a sizahle preference for syllahlcs under word sIre"". hut the prohahililics of their occurrence aTC uncq lIa Ily d rstrihuleu among the succes"ive down heals of the line. The higher the relative frequency of word stresses in a given down~ beat, the lower the ratio shown hy the preceding downheat. Since the last downbeat is constantly str~<;sed. the next to last gives the lowest percentage of word strcsses; in the preceding downl"leat their amount is again higher, without attaining the maximum, displayed by the final downbeat: one downbeat further toward the beginning of the line. the amount of the stresses sinks once more, without reaching the minimum of the nexHo~ last downheat: and so on. Thus the distribution of word stresses among the downbeats within the line. the split into strong and weak downbeats, creates a rl'!{rl'ssire ulU/u/afnry curl'£' superposed upon the wavy alterna­tion of downbeats and upbeats. Incidentally, there is a captivating ques­tion of the relationship between the strong downbeats and phrasal

stresses. The Russian binary meters reveal a stratified arr~1ngement of three

undulatory curveS: (I) alternntion of syllahic nudei and l1l;lrgin'i; (11) division of syllahic nuclei into alternating downbcats :md upheats: and (Ill) alternation of strong and weak downbeats. For example. Russian masculine iamhic tetmllleter of the nineteenth and present centuries may be represented by Figure It and a similar triadic pattern appears in the

corresponding English forms. Three of five downbeats arc deprived of word stress in Shelley's iambic

line" Laugh with an inextinguishable la ughtcr." Seven of sixteen downbeats are stressless in the following quatrain from Pasternak's recent iambic

tetrameter Zemlja (" Earth "):

I (11ica za panibr:ita S okonniccj podslcpov;itoj, I bcloj noci i zabtu Ne rilzminut'sja u rcki.

Since the overwhelming majority of downbeats concur with word stresses. the listener or reader of Russian vcrses is prepJrcd with a high degree of

Closing SlatCn!('nt: linguistics and PO(?ticf 363

probability to meet a word stress in any even syllable of iambic Jines. but at the very beginning of Pasternak.'s quatrain the fourth and, one foot further, t~e si~th syllabic, both in the first and in the following line; present him With a fruslraled expectation. The degree of sueh a "frus­tration" is higher when the stress is lacking in a strong downbeat and becomes particularly outstanding when two- successive downbeats are

!II

II

2 3 4 5 6 7

FJgure 1

carrying unstressed ~yllables. The stressle~sncss of two adjacent down­belts is the less probablc and thl! most striking when it embraces a whole ~lemistieh as in a bter line of the Slme pocm: "Ctohy za gorodskj6u gran' JU" [s{')hyz.)g.1rack6jll gran'juJ. Thc expectation dcpcllJs on the treatment of a given downbeat in the poem and more generally in the whole extant metrical tradition. In the last downbeat but one, un stress may, ho" .. ever, outweigh the stress. Thus in this poem only 17 of 41 lines have a word stress on their sixth syllable. Yet in such a ease the inertia of the stressed even syllables alternating with the unstressed odd syllables prompts some expectancy of stress also for the sixth syllable of the iambic tetrameter.

Quite naturally it \\:as Edgar Allan Poe, the poet and theoretician of defeated anticipation, who metrically and psychologically appraised the human sense of gratification for the unexpected arising from expected ness. both of them unthinkable without the oppmite. "as e\:il cannot e:(ist. without good" (316). Here we could.easily apply Robert Frost's formula from "The Figure A Poem Makes": "The figure is the same as for love" (128).

The so-called shifts of word stress in polysyllabic words from the downbeat to the upbeat ("reversed feet"), which are unknown to the

--------

364 Rdr(UpcctJ amI Prospects

sl:lnt.lard rorm~ of Rus<;ian verse, appear quite usually in English poetry after a metric;!! <lnd/or syntactic pau!'c. A noticeahle "wmrle i<; the rhythmical vari:uion of the same adjective in Milton's "'nfinite wrath and inti"ilC despair." In the linc "Nearer, my God, to Thee, ncarer to Thee," the stressed syllahlc of onc and the same word occurs twice in the upbeat. first at the beginning of the linc and a second time at the beginning of a phra"c. This license, discussed hy Jespersen (212) and current in many

laogu'lgcs. is entirely cxpl<lin:.lblc by the p:Jrticular import of the relation between an upheat ,Int! the immediately preceding downhcat. Where such

an immediate precedence is impeded by an inserted pause, the upheat becomeo; a kind of s)"l/aha ance(1!i.

Be<iideo; the ruleo; which underlie the compulsory featurcs of verse, the rules governing its option;)1 traits also pert~in to meter. We arc inclined to designate such phenomena as unstress in the down heats and stress in uphcats :.IS deviations, hut it mu~t he rememhered that these :tre :tllowed oscillations, departures within the limits of the law. In British parliament­ary terms, it is not an opposition to its majesty thc meter but an opposition of its majesty. As to the actual infringements of metric:tl laws, the dis­cuY-sion of such violations recalls Osip Brik, perhaps the keenest of RU<isian formalists, v..ho used to say that political conspirators arc tried and condemned only for unsuccessful attempts at a forcihle upheaval, hecause

J

II in the case of a SlKCI.!<isful COIiP it is the conspirators who aSSUIlll.! the role

I of jtJdgc~ and plw:.ecutors. II" tile violences agaiJl~t the melcr take root, I they theln<.elve<; heco1l1e metrical rules.

'-"ar from heing an ahstract, theoretical <icheme, metef-or in more explicit tenn<:., ("a.H' rln(!!,I1·- underlies the ~trut.:tllrc of" any single line or, in logical terminology, any \ingle rast' int/lll1cl'. Iksi,Sn and instance ;lrc correlatIve concerts. The versc dcsi~n determines thc invariant featurcs of the vcrsc in<,tances and sets up i-he limits of vari:ltions. ;\ Serhian pea .... ant 1"t.:citer of" epic poetry llle1l1ori/eS, performs, and. to a high c.'([t·nt, improvi<;es thousands, sometimes lens of thousands of lines, ~nd their meter is alive in his mintl. Una hie to abstract il<; rules, he nonetheless notices and repudiates even the slighte~t infringement of the<;e ruks. Any line of Serhian epics contains precisely tcn syllables and is followed hy a syntactic p.wsc. Thefe is furthermofe a compulsory word houndary before the fiflh syllable and a compulsory ahsence of word boundary bcfor~ th~ fourth and tenth syllable. The verse has, moreover, significant quantltatlvc and tlcccnlual characteristics (cr. 199, 200). .

This Serbian epic break, along with many similar examples presented by comparative metrics, is a persuasive warning agninst the erroneous identification or a break with a syntactic pause. The obligatory word boundary must not be combined with pause and is not even meant to be

elMi,,:: Statement: U,t;!ui.uics antI Podia 36S

rcrc~rtinlc by the ear. The 31l:dy<;is of Serhian epic SO"g~ phonographic­ally rccorded proves that there ~rc no compulsory ~udih!c clues to the hreak. anti yet any attempt to abolish the word boundary before the fifth syllan!e by a mere insignilicant change in word order is immediately condemned hy the nnrrator. The grammatical facl that the fourth and lifth ~ylbhle~ pert:lin to two different word units is·suilicienl for the arrr:li~al of the bre:lk. Thus verse design goes far heyond the questiOn<; of Sheer! sound shape: it is a much wider linguistic phenomenon, and it yields to no isolating phonetic trealment.

I say "linguistic phenomenon" even thOllgh Chatman states Ihn( "the meter e."tists as a system outside the language." Yes. meter ;lrpcars nlso in other ~lrtS dcaling with time sequence. There arc 1ll;IIlY linguiqic prohlems -for in~t;l1lce, syntax-which likewise overstep the limit of langunge and arc comhlon to difTerent semiotic systems. We m:ly spe~lk even ahoul the grammar of tralTie signals. There e.xists:l sign:ll coJe, where a yellow light when com hi ned will} green warns tlml froe passage is close to hcing stopped and when combined with red announces the approaching cessation of the stopp~lge: such a yellow signal ofTers a close nl1alogue to the vcrhal comrletive asped. Poelic meier. however, has so Illany ifltrit1~ically litlgui~ljc parlit.:ularitics th:!t it is most cOlwellient to tkscrib\!: it from a purdy lingui\til..' point of view.

Let us add that no linguislie property of the vcrse d('~ign should be tlisn:garded. Thus, for example. it would he an unfortunatc mistake to deny Ihe constitutive v:ll\1e or intonation in English I1ll'lcrs. Nll( e,"cn speaking nbollt its fUlld:lI11enlai role in the mt'lcrs of such a nl<lsh:r of Engli"h frt'c v"::l"';e as Whitman, it j ... impossible 10 ignorl.! the tlll·tril..,;tl signilit":lIlce or ramal il1(011;1Iion ("fin;11 j1l11cture"), "hcther '\:adcnt.:I!" or "anticati"::llce" (223), in pocms like "The Rape of The Lock" "ith its intentional avoidance of" enjamhmcnts. Yct CYeIi :l \"chl.'lllcnt ;I1;'1.."umu­lation of cnj;lIHhments never hides lhl'ir digressi\·e. variational slaHls; they always set oIT the norlllni coincidl.!llcc of syntactic p:'llIse ;111(1 pilUS;JI intonation with tile mdricnllimit. Whntcver is the reci ler's \\ ay of reading. thc intonational constraint of the poem remains valid. The intonational contour inherl.!nt to a poem, to a poet, to a poetic school is one of the 1110st notablc topics brought to discussion by the Russian formalists (J08, 461).

The verse design is cmbodied in verse instances. Usu:.llly the frce \·,tria­tion ofthese instances is denoted by the somewhat equivocalla bcl"rh}"thm." A variation of rase installer." within a given poem must be strictly dis~ tinguishcd from the variablc dc/in',}, ins/anCl's. The intention "to describe the verse line as it is actually performed" is of lesser usc for the synchronic and historic~1 analysis of poetry th:\o it is for the study of its recitation in the present Jnd the past. Meanwhile the truth is simple and clear: "Th..:re

366 Retrospects and Prospects

are many performances of the same pocm-dilTcring among themselves in many ways. A performance is an event, but the poem itself, if there is

any poem, must be some kind of enduring object." This sage memento of Wimsatt and Beardsley belongs indeed 10 the essentials of modern melries.

In Shakespeare's verses the second, stressed syllabic of the word "absunJ" u~ually falls' on the downbeat, but once in the third ;:let of lIam/('{ it falls on the upbeat: "No. let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp." The reciter may scan the word "absurd" in thi~ line with an initial strc~s On the fir'.l syllabic or observe the fin:11 word stress in accord­ance with the standard accentuation. He may :.lIso subordinate the word stress of the adjective in favor or the strong ~ynt;1,ctic stress or the following

head word, as suggested by Hill: "No, leI the candied tongue l~k ahsurd

pomp" (174), tiS in Hopkins' conception or English antispasts--"regrct

never" (179). There is finally a possibility of emph<ltic modifications either through a "fluctuating accentuation" (scliLl'ehcl1r/c Bctommg) emhracing both syllables or through an exclamatiunal reinforc~ment or thc first

sylhlhlc Utb·surd]. But whatever solution the reciter chooses, the shin of the word stress rrom the downbeat to the upbeat with no antecedent p:1use is still arresting. and the moment of frustr:1ted expectation st;lYS vi;lhle. Wherever the reciter put the accent, the discrepancy hct\ .... een the English word stress on the second !>yllable of "ah~l1rd" and the downbeat att:1ched to the flrst syllahle persists as a constitutive re;'llure of the verse inst:1nce. The tension between the ictu~ ;lnd the usual word stress is inherent in this line independently of its different implementations hy various actors and readers. As Gerard Manky Hopkins observes, in the preface to his poems. "two rhythms arc in some manner running at once" (180). His description of such a contr<lpuntal run can be reinterpreted. The superinducing of an equivtllence principle upon the word seq lienee or. in other terms, the mounting of the metrical form upon the usual speech form, necessarily gi\·cs the experienec or a double, ambiguous shape to anyone who is familiar y,ith the given language and with H:rst!. Both the convergences and the divergences bctween the two forms, both the \varranted and the rrustrated expectations, supply this experience.

How the given verse-instance is implemented in the given delivery instance depends on the dC/kefy desl);n of the reciter; he may cling to a scanning style or tend toward prose-like prosody or freely oscillate betv.een these two poles. \Vc must be on gU;)fd against simplistic binarism which reduces t\VO couples into one single opposition either by suppressing the cardinal distinction between vcrse design and verse instance (a:; well as

Closing Statement: LitJl!u;stics and PoeticJ 367

between delivery design and delivery instance) or by an erroneouc; ideoli· ncation or delivery instance and delivery design with the verse instance and verse design.

"But tell me. child. your choice; wh:lt o;h:\11 I buy You?"-"Father. wh:tt you huy me I like best."

These two lines from "The H~lldsomc Heart" hy Hopkins contain a heavy enjamhment which puts a verse houndary herorc the concluding mono· syllahle of a rhr~sc. of a sentence. of an utterance. The rccitation of these pentameters may he strictly Illctric:11 \\ ith a m:1I1ifest pause hetween "buy" tlnd "you" ;lnd a suppressed pause ~lner the pronoun. Or. on the contrary, there may he displayed a prose-oriented manner without any separation of the words "buy you" :lI1d with a marked pallsal intonation at the end of the question. None of these ways of recitation m~y. however. hide the intentional discrepancy between the metric::!1 :11ld synt:tctic division. The verse shape or a poem remains completely independent of its variable delivery, whereby.1 do not intend to nullify the alluring question of Afltorcfl/cscr and Sclbst/csrr launched by Sievers (376).

No doubt, verse is primarily a recurrent "figure of sound." Primarily, always, but never uniquely. Any attempts to confine such poetic conven­tions as meter, alliteration. or rhyme to the sound level are speculative reasonings without any empiric::li justification. The projection of the equational principle into the sequence has a much deeper and wider signific;,lnce. Val~ry's view .or poetry as "Ih.:sitation bctw~cll the sound and the sense" (cr. 426) is much more realistic and scientific than any bias of phonetic isolationism.

Although rhyme hy definition is based on a r~gular recurrence or equivalent phonemes or phonemic groups. it would be an unsound oversimplilication to trcat rhyme merely from the standpoint of sound. Rhyme necessarily involves the semantic relationship between rhyming units ("rhyme·fdlows·' in Hopkins' nomenclature). In the scrutiny or a rhyme we arc faced \vith the question of whether or not it is a homoe­oteleuton, which confronts similar derivational :lI1d/or inflexional suffixes (congratu!ations·decorations), or whether the rhyming words belong to the same or to different grammatical categories. Thus, for example, Hopkins' fourfold rhyme is an agreement of two nouns-"kind" and "mind"-both contrasting with the adjective "blind" and with the verb "find." Is there a semantic propinquity, a sort or simile bcl\\een rhyming lexical units, as in dove-love, light-bright, place·space, name·fame? Do the rhyming members carry the same syntactic function? The difference between the morphological class and the syntactic application may be pointed out in rhyme. Thus in Poc's lines, "While 1 nodded. ncarly

368

nappillg. sudJcnly there came a lapping. As or someone gently rapping," the three rhyming \\ord<;, morphologically alike. arc all three syntactically different. Arc totally or partly homonymic rhymes prohibited, tolerated, or ftlvor..::d? Such f\dl homonyms as 50n· ... un. I-eye, eve-cave, and on the ollll:r hand. echo rhYllH:s like Dt:ccmhcr-crnhcr, infinite-nigh!, ... warm-warm, smiles-miles? What ahout compound rhymes huch as Hopkins' "enjoy­ment-toy meant" or "began s.ol11c-ransom"). where a wonJ unit accords with a word group-!

A poet or poetic school may he oriented tuwnrJ or against grammatical rhyme; rhymes must he either grammatical or anti!!r;lI11lllatlcd; all agr:.lmmatical rhyme, indifferent to the n.:lalion hetween sound ~nd

gr:Jmmalic;)1 !\trw.;turc, would. like any agrammatism, belong to veroal

pathology, Jr a poet tends to avoid grammatic;1I rhyme<;, for him. as Hopkins said. "There arc two clement<; in the heauty rhyme has to the mind. the likeness. or s~il11eness of sound and the unlikenes<; or difTerence of meaning" (179), Whatever the rebtlon between sound and meaning in dilTerent rhyme techniques, both spheres are necessarily involved. Arter Wimsatt's illuminating ohservations about the meaningfulness of rhyme (441) and thc shn.:wd motlern studies or Slavic rhyme patterns, a student in poetics can hardly m;lintain that rhymes signiry merely in a very vague way.

Rhyme is only a particular, condensed case or a much more gcner;d. we may even say the rllnu:llnent;ll, probkm or poetry, n:lll1cly I'fll'lllldi.HII. Here again Ilorkins, in his student papers of I H65, tlisplayed a prodigious insight into the <..trUl:ture of poetry:

The artificial !'art or poetry. perhaps we shall he right to say ;111 artifice, redueee; it<,dr to the principle of paralleli:C;lll. The :-;trllcture of poetry is that of continuous parallelism, runging from the technical <;o·called rarallc1i'illls or Ilcbrew poetry "nd the antiphons or ("lHm.:h mu~ic lip to Ihe intricacy of Greek or Italian or Engli.d1 vcr<;c. But paralleli:c;m is of two kind" m:ecssarily-where the oppo"ition i<; clearly marked, and whcre it ie; trallsitional ralher or chrom:Hic. Only Ihe first kind, Ihal or marked parallcli"m, is concerned WLlh !he structure of ve~e-in rhythm, the recurrence of a certain sequence or syllables. in metre. the recurrence of a certain sequence or rhythm, in alliteration, in asson'lnc": and in rhyme. Now the force or this recurrence is to beget a recurrence or parallelism an<;wering to it in the words or thought and, speaking roughly and rather for the tendency than the invariable result, the more marked parallcli'im in structure whether of elaboration or of emphasis hegcts more m:nked par:dlcli:c;m in the words and sense,." To the marked or abrupt kind ~f

parallelism bl'long metaphor, simile .. par~ble, and so on. where the ctTe~t ~s sought in likenc'i'i of tlunge;, and anllthesls. contrast. and so on. where It IS

sought in unlikeness (179),

Drieny. equivalence in sound, projected into the sequence as its constitu~ tive principle. inevilJbly involves semantic equivalence, and on any linguistic level any constituent of such a sequence prompts one of the two

Closi,J;.! Stdlt'rf,cnt: Un:!"istiCJ and Pot,tics 369

corrl.'bli\c cxperielKe<; "hich Ifopkins neatly delincs a~ "comrari,on for likel1e",,' s:lk..::" and "comparison ror unlikcne~<;' ~ake,"

Fon.lore ofT..::rs the mo<;l clear-cut and stereotyr..::d rorm<; or poetry, p;utieularly suitable ror structural ~crutiny (;]<; Seb('ok il1u~lrated \\ith Chercmis samplc~), Tho~c oral tr;Hlitions that me gramm;1ti(.':1\ p;u:ll1e1ism to connect eomecutive lincs, for example. Finno-Ugric patterns of verse (sec 10 . .199) and to a hi~h degree also Russian foil... poetry. C~1n be fruitrully anal)7ed on all linguioqic Ic\'els- phonological. nlorrho~ logicll. syntactic. and Icxical: we learn what elemcnts arc concci,'cd as cquival..::nt :llld how likeness on certain levels is tempered \\'ith con~ spicuous d ill'crence 011 othcr ones. Such forms ella hie lIS 10 \"erir y R~lnS011\'s wise suggestion that "the mcter~al1(.I-l11eaning process is the org::lI1ie act of poetry. :Inti involves all il<; important ch:u<lcters" (J2·n. Thesc cle:lr-cut tr:Hlitional structures may dispel Wim<;alt's douilto:. :I.houl th~ po .. sihility or writing a gr;lmmar or th~ meter's interaction with the scnse, as \\ell as a grammar or the arrangement of melJphors. As soon as parJ.lIc1ism is promoted to canon, the interaction hel' ... ·ecn meter ~nd meaning and the arrangement or tropes cease to be "the free J.nd individual and unpre­dictable p~rts of the poetry,"

Let us translate a few typicnllines rrom Russin" wedding songs about the apparition or the hridegroom:

/\ hrave rellow was going to the porch. Vasilij \\as walking to the mallor.

The trall<;latioll is literal: the verhs. howeycr, takc the final POSitIon in both Ru'\sian I..'lauscs (I)ohroj mol(1dec k senick:un privor:'lci,·"I.// V;l~ilij k tcrelllll pri'\;ii.ivai), The lines wholly correspond to e;l(h other syllt:lCti­c::lIly :1I1d morphologically. Both prcliieati\"e \"er(,s h:m.: thc same preli\cs and suOi\cs and the same voenlic allernant in the stem: they arc :llil..e in a<;pcct, tensc. number, and gender; and, morcovcr, they arc synonymic. Both sllhjccts, the common nOlln and the proper name. refer to the same person and form nn appositional group, The two modifiers or place are expresc;cd hy identical prepositional constructions. and the first one stands to the second in synecdochic relation.

These verscs Jl1Jy occur preceded by another line of similar grammalil.':ll (syntactic and morphologic) Il1nke-up: "Not a bright falcon" as nying beyond the hills" or "Not a fierce horse was coming at gallop 10 the court." The "hright ralcon" and the "fierce horse" of these variants arc put in metaphorical rel'llion with "brave fellow," This is traditional Slavic negative parallelism-the refutation or the metaphorical st:llc in ravor of the ractual state. The negation lie m~ly. 110\\,cvcr. he omillcd: "Jasjon .okol za gory zalj6tyval" (II bright falcon was nying beyond the hills) or

370

URcliv ken' k6 dyoru prisLiki' .. al" (A fierce horse \...-a" coming at a gallop to the court). In the first of the two examples the metarhorical relation is maintained: a brave fellow appeared at the porch. like a bright falcon from behind the hills. In the other instance, however, the semantic connection becomes ambiguous. A. compar.ison hetween the appearing hridegroom anti the galloping horse suggests itself, hut at the SJme time the hah of the horse althe court actually anLicip.Jtcs the arrro:lch of the hero to the house. Thus before introducing Ihe rider alll.1 the manor of hi..; fiancee, the song evokes the contiguous, ml'lol1ymicai images of the hors!.:: and of the courtyard: posst:s",ion instead of posscs<;or, and outdoors instead of inside. The exposition of the groom ll1~y be hrohn up into two consecu· tive moments even without suhstituting the horse for the horseman: "/\ brave rellow was coming at tl gallop to the court./! Va'iilij W;lS walking to the porch." Thus the "rlerce horse," cmerging in the preceding line at a similar metrical ;'Ind syntactic place as the "brave rellow," ligures simultaneously as a likeness to and as a representative possession or this fellow, properly ~peaking-l'afJ I'm 1010 ror the horsemall. The horse image is on a border line hetween metonymy and synecdoche. From these suggestive connotations or the "fierce horse" there ensues a metaphorical synecdoche: in the wedding song .. and other varieties or Russian erotic lore. the m;lsculille felil"- /.;011 becomes ;1 latent or even p"tcnt phallic

symhol. A .. early as the IHHO·s. I)otehnja, a remarkable inquirer into Slavic

poetic". pointed out that in folk poetry a symhol <1rrenrs to he m'lteri;l1ized (orclCrJfr/(,I1). eonvt.:rted into .111 acces\ory or the amhiance. "Still a symhol. it is put. however. in <1 connection with the action. Thus a simile is prc~ented under the shape or a temporal sequence" (322). In Potebnja's examples rrom Slavic folklore. the willow, 1.1I1tkr which a girl pa~ses, serves at the same time as her inw.ce; the tree and the c.irl arc hoth ~opr~sent in Ih·e same verbal siJlllllacn~1ll orllle willow. Quitc"':-.imil:nly the horse or the love ~ong~ rel1l:Jins a virililY symbol not only when the maid is asked by the Jall to reed his steed but even when being saddled or put into the stahle or attached to a trce.

In poetry not only the phonological sequence but in the S31lle way :lny se'1l1encc or semantic units strives to huild an equation. Similarity superimposed on contiguity imparts to poetry its throughgoing symbolic, multiplex. polpc11l;]ntie essence which is beautirully suggested by Go(:the's "Alles Verg;ing!iche ist nur ein Gleichnis" (Anything transient is bu.t a likencss). S'lid more technically. anything s~qllent is a simile. In poetry where similarity is superinduced upon contiguity ... ny metonymy is slightly metaphorical and any metaphor has a metonymical tinl.

Ambiguity is an intrinsic, inalienable character or any sclf·focllsed

Closing Slol('ment; Un:!uiltics and Pot·tics 371

m..:<,<,:lge. hricny J: corollary fC:lture of poetry. let us repeat "ith Empson: "The m;schin3tion .. of :lmhiguilY are among the ,·ery roots of poetry" (J13). Not only the message itself but also its addresser and addressee hecome amhiguous. Besides the author and the reader, there is the "I" of the lyrical hero or of the fictitious storyteller and the "you" or "thou" of the alleged addressee of dramatic monologues, supplic:ltions. and epistles. For instance the poem "Wrestling Jacob" is. addressed by its title hero to the Saviour and simull~lneoll<;ly acts as a suhjective Oless:lgc of the poet

Ch .. rles Wesley to his readers. Virtually any poetic mess~lge is a quasi- J' quoted discourse with all those peculiar, intricate problems which "spcech within speech" olTers to the lingl1ist.

The supremacy of poetic function over referential function docs not II obliterate the reference but l1\ake~ it ambiguous. The douhlc·scnsed mess~ge finds corre~pondellcc in a split addresser, in a split addressee. and besides in a split reference. as it is cogently e."posed in the preamhles to fairy tales of variQus peoples, for instance. in the usual exordium of the Majorca storytellers: "Aixo era y no era" (It W<1S and it was not) (135). _

The repetitiveness elTeeted by imparting the equivalence principle to";-­the sequence makes reiterable not only the constituent sequcnees of the poetic mcss .. ge but the whole message as well. This clpacity for reiteration whether i11lT11cdiat~ or dc1~lyed. thi~ reific:llion of a poetic message ;J nd its constituents. this convcrsion of <t Illess.age into :.111 enduring thing. inuced aU this represents an inherent and elTct::tivc property of / poetry.

In a sequence, where similarity is superimposed on contiguity, two similar phonemic sequences ncar to each other arc prone to assume a paronomastie runction. Words simil:1r in sound arc drawn togcther in meaning. It is true that the first linc of the final stanza in Poe's "Raven" makes wide use of repetitive alliterations. as noted by Valery (426), but "the overwhelming ellect" of this line and of the whole stanza is due primarily to the sway of poetic etymology.

And the Raven, never flitting •• still is sitting. still is sitling On the pallid bust of Pllllas just above my chamber door: And his eyes have all the seeming or a demon"s that is dreaming. And the lamp.light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that Sh'ldow that lies floating on the Roor Shall be lined-nevermore.

The perch of the raven, "the pallid bust of Pallas," is merged through the "sonorous" paronomasia /pi:bd/-/pxbs/ into onc organic whole (similar to Shelley's molded line "Sculptured on alabaster obelisk" /sk.1p/­/l.b.st/-/b.l.skf). Doth conrronted words \vere blended e.arlier in another epithet of the same bust-placid /pl:csld/-a poetic portmanteau, and the

--- - -------- ------------------------

372 RelTfHpects and Prospects

hond between the siller and the scat was in turn fastened by a paronomasia: "hirtl or hC;Hf upon the ... hust," The hird "is sitting liOn the pallid bU~1 of Pall<ls just ahove my chamber door," and the raven on his perch, (kspitc the lover's imperative "Iake thy form from orT my door:' is nailed to the place by the wonJs (jAsI ;)h,\v/. hoth of thelll blended in

/h;'''/. 1 hI.! ncvcr·cnding slay of the grim guc'a is c:.;prcs\cd hy a chain of

ingenious paronnmasias, partly invcr"ivc. as ",:0.,; woult! L'~rccl from ~uch a ddihcratc experimenter in anticipatory. rcgn:s\ivc IIIOdliS (J1,('umdi. such a ma ... ter in "writing hackwanl .... as Edgar All:tn Poe. In the introductory line of thi .. cOIH.:luding .. tanw. "ra\'ell," contiguolls to the hleak. refrJin wortl "never," aprcars Olll:e lllore as an embodied mirror im:l!;c of this "never:" /11.v.r/-/r.\'.n/. Salient paronoma .. j:ls inkn:nnncct both cmhlr.:ms of the e\'crJa'iting despair. lir'it "the Raven, never niuing," at the heginning of the very Ia'it stanza. and second. in its very last lines the "shadow that lics noaling on the noor" and "shall be lifted-nevermorc": Int:v.lr nitil.1/-jn()tll.l/ .. . jn()rj .. . /lirt.1u n(,v.lr/. The alliterations which struck V:lkry build a paronomaqic string: I~tl ... /-{..,il ... 1-/..,'1 .. . I-I .. h . .. /. The invariance of the group is particularly sln:sscu by the variation in its on.kr. The two luminous clTects in the chiaroscuro­tile "Iiery eyes" of the hl:u.:k fowl and the lall1pli~hl tilr{)\\ in~ "his shadow on the 1100r"-·are cvoked to add to the glool11 of the whole pit'lure and

are aeain bound by the "\'ivid efTcct" of paronomasias: 61(\) siml~l/ ... Id;Ill'~lI/ ... /II. drimll.1! --IHun st(jmrr.l!. "Thai shadtH\' Ih:lt lies IlaY7/,' pairs with the Raven's .. eye .. ·• /;lyrl ill an impn.:<;<;i\c1y misrlaced echo rhyme.

111 porlry .• 111Y con .. picHoUS similarity in sound is evaluatcd in re<;pcel 10 simil:lrily and/or di ..... imilarity in meaning, But Popc's :tllitcrali"e pr ... 'cept tn r0rls-"lhe sound musl sccm an Lcho of the ~ellsc"-- has a \\ider aprlicalion. In rcf ... ·l'cllliat lang\1agc thc connel·tion b":I\\l,'cn Siglltlll:; :l11d sigll(lfW/J i" o\..:rwhclrningly ha~cd 011 their codilil'U contiguity. \\l1ich ie; oflcn conru<;ingly ta hl,'lcd "arhitrarincss of I hc \ erbal sign." The rde\ a nce of Ihc sound-meaning ne'lls is a simple corollary or the supcrpo<;ilion of

I') similarity upon contiguity. Sound symholi ... m i .. an 'lIHlcni~lbly ohjcctive

relation founded 011 a phenomenal COll11cclion hel\\'ee11 dilll.:rellt sCllSory modes. in particular hetwcen the "isual and auditory expericnce. If the results of rese~lrch in this nrea have sometimes heen \'Jgue orconlro\'ersial. it is primarily due to an insunicient care ror the methods or psychological andlor linguistic inquiry. Particularly from the linguistic point or view the picture has orten been distorted by lack of attention to the phOl10-

--- .. ~--

Clo.~i":: Srah,,,,,.'nt: I.i"gu;sr;cs anfl Pa(.'(;(J 373

logicol ospcct of spcech sounds or hy ine\'itahly \3in operations with cOl1lple.~ phonemic units instead or \\ith their ultimate componenls. BUJ whell. on le<;ting. ror cxample, such phonemic oppo .. ilions Je;, gra\(~ 'cr"us acute we ask whether IiI or luI is darkcr. some or the subjects m:ly re"'pond th:lt this '1l1estiol1 makes 110 sense to them. hut hardly one will state Uta IiI is the darkest or the two. •

Poetry is not the only arca where sound ~yrnholism makes itself fclt, bUI it is a province where the internal nexus hctween sOllnd and mcaning changes rrom lalcn! into palent and m:lnifests itselr most palp:lhly and illh:I\~c!y. :IS it has hl,'en noted in 11)'lllcs's stimulating p:lpcr. The super­avcrage acculllulation of a certain eI~lSS or phoneme_<; or :l contrastive asscllIhl:lge or two opposite dasses in the sOllnd \nturc of a line. of a stann. or a poem :lctS like an "undercurrent or 11lc~\Oing." to usc Poc's ricture<;ql1c e'<pression. In two pobr words phonemic fI.·I:lI;Oll~hip 1llJY be in :Igreelllellt with ~el1lanlic opposition, as in Russian /d.cn.1 'd<ly' and Inocl 'night' with the acute vowel and sh3rped consonants in the diurnal name and the corresponding grave "owel in the. nocturn:11 name, A reinforccment or Ihis eontr;I .. 1 by surrounding the first word \\ilh acute and sharped pholleTl1e~. in contradistinction 1\1:t gr;I\'c phonemic n..:i,ghhor~ hood of the second word. makes the ~olll1d into a thorough echo or Ihe sense. But in Ihe Frl'lIch JOIll' 'tl;ly' and 111"'1 'ni!!ht' the di"trihution (If grave and :tCllk \O\\c1s is imerted. so that ~1;dl:1f1l1C's f)i"(/gafi"".~ an'usc his mother tongue or a decci\ing perversity ror us<;igning to d;'IY a dark timhre and to night a li~ht one (2(,:'1. Whorr st:lt..:s that \\ hell in ilS snl1n(1 shape "a word has:ln awustic simil<lrily to its OWIl meaning, we C:1I1 not icc it, ... Out. whl:n the oppos.ite occurs. nobody 11otk-cs it." I\ll·til' bn~l1agL', ho\\'c"er. and p:lrtinrlarly Frcndl poclry ;n the ('olli~i(ln h .... l\\eel1 sonnd and meaning dctl,'clcd hy Mallarmc. either seeks:1 pholl(1logil';d alternation or <;uch a dis('fepaney and drowns the "con\,crsc" distribution of ,-ocalic reatures by surrounding Ill/if with grave and jOllr with acute ph(llu:mes. or it rc<;orts to a semantic shirt and it~ imagery of day and night replaces the imngery or light and dnrk by other synesthetic correhllcs of the phonemic opposition grave/anile and. ror instance. puts the hea\'y. ,\arm day in contrast to the airy. cool night: because "human subjects seem to asso­ciate the e.'<pericnccs or bright, sharp, hard, high. lighl (in \\eight). quick, high-pitched, narrow, and so on in a long series. with each other; and conversely the experiences of dark, warm, yielding. sort, hlunt. low, heavy. slow, low-pitched. wide, elc., in anolher long seril!s" (~~7, p. 2670.

However clTcetivc is the cmphasis on repetilion in poetry, rhe sound texture is still rar from being conlined to numerical eontri\·anccs. and :1

phoneme that appears only once. but in a key word, in a pertinent position.

374 Retrospects and ProspeclS

against a contrastive background, may acquire a striking significance. As painlers used to say, "Un kilo de vert n'cst pas plus vert qU'un dcmi kilo."

A ny analysis of poetic sound texture must consistently take into account the phonological struclure of the given language and, beside the ovcr~all cotlc. also the hierarchy of phonological distinctions in the given poetic conwntion. Thus the approximate rhymes used hy Slavic peoples in oral and in some stages of written tradition admit unlike consonants in the rhyming mcmhcr"i (e.g. Czech Imfy, hnky. J/o!'y. kos.\'. ,fOehy) hut. tiS Nilch ncllect!. no mutual correspondence hctwccn voiced and voiceless con·

sonants is allowed (294). so that the qlloted Czeeh words C:lnnot rhyme with hotl)'. doily. !.:o:y, rolly, In the songs of some American Indian peoples 5uch <1" Pima.Papago and Tepecano. according to lIer7og's oh"ervations­only partly c0111l11unicah.:d in print (l6Hl--the phonemic distinction betwcen voiced and voiceless plosives and between them and nasals is replaced by a free variation, wherca.c; the distinction between labia Is, dentals, velar'>. and palatals is rigorously maintained, Thus in the poetry of these languages consonants lose two of the four distinctive features, voiccd/voicclcsc; :lnu nas<ll/oral, and preserve the other two, gr:l\"c/acute and compactjdifTu<ie. The sdection and hierarchic stratifrGltion of valid

C<ltcgories i'i a fadar or primary importance for poetics both Oil the phonolo£ical and on the gramm<ltical level.

Old Indie and Medievnl Latin literary theory keenly distinguished two poles of verb.1I arl, labded in Sanskrit Piiiinili alH.I Vaidarhbi and corre· spondingly in Latin ornafus dYJicilis and ornailis/acilis (sec 9), Ihe latter style evidently being much more d ifficllit 10 anrliy7e lingllistic<lJly bccau~c in such literary forms verbal ue"iccs arc nnosknlatious and lan!!uJge seL'IllS

a neJrly transparent garment. Bul onc must say \\,oith Charles Sallucrs Peirce: "This clothing never can be completely stripped olf, it is only I changed for somelhing more diaphanous" (307, p. 171). "Vcrsdess

I composition," as Hopkins calls the prosaic variety of verbal art--:-where

I· parallelisms are not so strictly marked and strictly regular as "coIlIIllUOUS

parallelism" and where there is no dominant figure of sound-present more

I entangled problems for poetics, as doc,> any transitional linguistic area. In this case the transition is between strictly poetic and strictly referl'ntial I language. But Propp's pioneering monograph on the structure of the fairy tall! (323) shows us how a consistently syntactic approach may be of paramount help even in classifying the traditional plots and in tracing the puzzling Jaws that underlie their composition and selection. The new studies of Levi-Strauss (248, 24~a, also, 24Rb) display a much deeper but essentially simii:J.r approach to the same constructional problem.

It is no mere chance that metonymic structures arc less explored than

Closin1! Statrnll'nl: lifl:!lIil1;o and POC!I;('I 375

the field of mCI:Jphor. ~l.Jy I rcpc:1t myoid Oh'i.enalion th::J.1 the Ifotudy of poetic tropc-o.; ha'i. h .... cn dirl'cted mainly to"ard metaphor. and the so-callcd reali .. tic litcr;:llurc. intimately ticd \\ith the metonymic principle. still defies inlerprct::ltion. ahhough the same lingui'i.tic methodology. \\hiclt poetics uses when analyzing the metaphorical style of rom:lntic poctry, is entirely applicahle to the metonymical tex.ture of re:l1islic prose (l(1).

Totbooks h" .. lievc in the {lCClirrence or poems dC\'oid of imagery, but nctually scarcity in Icx.icnl tropcs is countcrb:ll<lnced by gorl!eolls gram­matic<ll tropes <Inti rlgure,>, The poelic resOllrces concealed in ;hc morpho­logic;}1 ant..! syntactic structure of language, hrieny the poetry of gr:lmmar, and its literary product, the grammar of poelry. haw becn seldom known to critics ;;md mostly disregarded by linguists but skillfully mastered by creative writers.

Thl' main dramatic force of Anlony's exordium to the funeral oration for Caesar is Jchieved by Shakespeare's playing on grammatical categories and construclions .. Mark Antony lampoons Brutus's speech by changing the alleged reJsons for Cnesar's assassination into pl3in linguistic fictions. Brutus's nceusation of Caesar, "as-he was ambitious, I slew him," undergoes successive tmosformalions. First Antony reduces it to a mer\!' quotalion which pUIS thc responsibility for the statement on the speaker quoted: "The noble Brutus !!Ilalh loki you ... ," When n."pcatl'd, tllis reference to Brutus is put into orposition to Antony's own asscrtions by :111 adver. sative "but" and further degraded by a concessive "yet." The reference to the alleger's honor ceases to juslify the allegation, when repcated \\ith :1 substitution of the merely copulative "and" instead of the previous causal

"ror," and when finally put into question through the malicious insertion of a modal "sure":

The noble Brutu$ Hath told you C::r=sar was ambitious; For Brutus is an honourable man, But Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honourable man. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honourable man. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And, sure, he is an honourable man.

The following polyptoton-"J speak ... Brutus spoke ... I am to speak"­presents the repeated allegation as mere reported speech instead of reported facts. The effect lies, mod:1llogic would say, in the oblique context of the arguments adduced which makes them into unprovable belief sentences:

I speak not to disprove wh:lt Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I lIo know;

376 R('(roJpccts untl PrtHPl.'06

The: mo<;' dT~("ti\c: d~\ i(~ or Antony's irony j .. the IIfodll.f "Mil/flll.f of nruluc.'~ ah<.,traL"h (h;!n~~d il1to :I 11IodllS ralll.\" 10 di"do<.,~ Ihat these reilicd :lllnhu{c'" Me nolhmg hut IIf1!!lIhtlc hcllon... To Hrutu<;'~ <;aying "hc was amhitiow .. ." Antony lir~t rcrlies hy Iran~rerring. the alijectivc rrom the agent to the ~Iction ("Did Ihi" in Cae~~lr SC~ll1 ambitiousT'), thcn hyelieit­ing the ah<.,lract noun "amhition" :lnd convening it into a suhject of a concrete passi .... e constnJclion "Amhition sholllJ he m:H1c or siemer Sill IT" and subsequently to a rrediC<I{e noun or an interrogative sentence, "Was thie; ambition T'--Brutus's aprcal "hear mc ror my cause" is amwcred hy the sallle noun in recio, the hypost:lli7eo subject orall interrogative, activ~ cOllstruc.:tioll: "What cause wit holds you, .. ?" While Brutuscalls "aw;lkc your sen"cs, that you may thc netter judge," thc ah~tract substantivc derived from "jlld~e" hecome~ lin apo"trophi.fcd agcllt ill Antony's report: "0 judgment, thou art ned to hrutish neasts. Incilientally. this apO"trophe with its murderou~ p'.lfonomae;ia Brutus-hrutish is reminiscent or Caesar's parting exclamation "Et lu, Brule!" Propertics and activities are exhihited in rafO, whereas their carriers :tppe:.lr either ill ohliquo ("withholds you," "to brutish beasts." "hack to mc") or as subjects of negative action<; ("men have lost," "1 must pause"):

/ You all did love him once, nlll without e:\lIse; What cau"e wilhhnld~ you then 10 mourn rur him'! o judgment, thou art ncd to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!

The last two lines of Antony's exorliium display the ostensibk indepcndence or these t;rammalical metollymies. The stcreotyped .. , mourn for so-and~ so" anu the ligur:lIivc hut still slereotyped "so-anu-so is in the collin and Illy heart is with him" or "goes out to him" give pl:KC in Antony's speech 10 a daringly r~::dized metonymy; the trope heeomcs a part of poetic reality:

My heart is in the coOin there with Cxsar, And I must pause till it come back to mc,

In poetry the internal rorm of a name, that iS I the semantic load of its constituents, regains its pertinence, The "Cocktails" may resume their ohliterated kinship with plumage, Their colors are vivified in Mac Hammond's lines "The ghost of a Aron.'( pink lady /I With orange blossom~ anoat in her hair," and the etymological metaphor attains its realization: "0, Bloody Mary,lI The cocktails have crowcd not the cocks!" ("At an Old Fashion Bar in Manhattan"), Wallacc Stevens' poem "An Ordinary Evening in New Havcn" revives the head word or the city name lirst throllgh a <Iiscrect allusion to heaven and thcn through a direct pun-like confrontation similar to Hopkins' "Heaven-Haven,"

377

1 hoe l~'~ C"~I • ..Ii:- r~t., <,.,1.. ,;, .. r /'1 tI,,· '.JII'.' (I""J, l'r,·f~, ... "-t'r I ~l'.,;:j':u, "r ~I;'''' 11..1\1;:1 _ •.•. 1.\ 111111 ill .\"c·lt· IIflf"t'n .• ,

Tre i,: ... :'no.:l ,10' I:. </1, rJ h,tJ i(\ t:oulIll'rr.lrt:

1 he m ... lilll..t r,lr "tnh, f" S,· .. · lIun"', ror h;\ room. , ,

The adj~Cli\c ";-':C\\ '. or the: city n:Jrnc is laid bare through the concate-nation or orposih.'s: ..

The ofdc<;t,ne\\est day is thc nev .. c<;t :tlone. The oldcst-newe'it ni!;ht docs n(lt creak by, , ,

When in 1919 the Moscow Lin!!ui"ti!.' Cin.:1c di~eu'\~..::d how to define and deli.mil the range ~f qil/tcln arna;/{ia, the poet Majako\"sl..ij rehuked us hy saylllg that for hlln :1I1y <Hljecti\"e while in poetry was thereby a poetic epithet, even "gre:lt"' in the Greift nl'm' or "hi{' ;lIlt! "little" in slJ(h n:llnes of Moe;cow streets as no/'.flwja r"("H~j(l and Af(lh~j(l frl'Jl1ja. In other ~ words. poetical ness is not a suprlementation of discour."c with rhctoric::J1 \ adornment hut a total re-c\'ahwtioll or the discourse and of all its COIll- ;

ponents whatsocver,' A missionary blamcd his African flock ror walking undressed. "And

what ahout yourselr'?" Ihey pointed to his vis<lgc, :'arc not you, too, somcwhere 11~lkcd T' "Well, hut that is my f:ll'e." "Yet in U!"i:~ rl'lllrted the nati\'es, "e"erywhere it is f:ll'e," So in podry ,IllY \erh:11 d . ."I11..::nt is cOIl\'erled inlo a figure of poctic !"ipeedl.

My attempt to vindicate the right and duty of linguisti!.'s to direct Ihc invcstigation or vernal art in :111 ils compass :lI1d cxtent can l'Ol11e to a conclusion \\ilh the same hurden whk'h summ<lrized my report to the 1953 conference here at Indiana University: "Unguista sum; lill!!lIi"tiei nihil a me aliellmll puto" (249), If Ihc ptlel R:IIHiOlll is richt (and'" hc is right) tl~at "poetry is a kind or langua?c" (J26), the lingui;1 ,\lH1SC lidd is ;ny kll1J of language may and must mclude poetry in his ~tlldy, The pre~ent e~nfe~cnce has clearly shown that the time \\ hen both lingui"ts and literary hlstonans eluded questions of poetic structure is now sa rely behind us. Indeed, as H~lIander stated, "there seems to be no reason for trying to separate the literary rrom the overnll Jinguistic," If there arc somc critics who still doubt the competenec of linguistics to emhrace the field or poetics, 1 pri\'ately believe that the poetic incompetcnce of some higoted lil1!!uists has been mistaken for a.n inadequa.cy of the linguistic scienc~ itselr. All of us here, howe\'er, definitely realize that a linguist deaf to the poetic runc­tion of language and a literary scholar indilTerent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods arc equally nagrant anachronisms.