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Readings
-Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn, Hofmann
-Trying to Praise the Mutilated World: The Contemporary American Ode, Ann
Keniston, in A Companion to Poetic Genre [UQ Online]
-[redress] p22: Heaney explains how redress grows palpable, Borgesian circularity, a
poetry where the co-ordinates of the imagined thing correspond to and allow us to
contemplate the complex burden of our experience ; p27: meanings of redress,
finding a course for the breakaway of innate capacity
-solitary role of witness, spiritual stamina, Vaclav Havels hope, it is an orientation
of the spirit, its deepest roots is in the transcendental, it is not the conviction that
something turns out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of
how it turns out [Incline] 16
On Plato
Mitisi, Plato, Poetry, and Food in Tudor Aesthetics
-Synopsis:
Mitisis essay indicates that food metaphor has been used in the debate of the
legitimacy of poetry in a society in the sixteenth century. It has been used as
defending as well as opposing poetry by literary critics and philosophers. In ancient
Greece, Plato in his Republic condemned poetry that it nourishes our worst part,
and it feeds and waters the growth of passions that should be allowed to wither
away 1. In the sixteenth century, Stephen Gosson in his The Schoole of Abuse
(1579) compares poets to cooks; he identifies poetry with indulgence, conspicuous
consumption and expense 2. He follows Plato to argue that poetry and drama are
morally disruptive, and therefore should be banned from a reformed
commonwealth 2. He also claims that poets mislead and seduce their audiences
into a whole array of vices and abuses 2. Gosson produces a moral play called
Praise at Parting. Gossons attack prompted responses from Thomas Lodge and Sir
Philip Sidney. Lodge wrote A Reply to Stephen Gossons The Schoole of Abuse in
Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays in 1580. Sidney wrote Apology for Poetry
in 1595. Lodge compares poets to physicians rather than cooks. Poetry is the means to
revive both the body and the soul. Lodge affirms the social value of poetry. Sidney
asserts that Gosson misread Platos assault against poetry as Plato, according to
Sidney, banish[ed] the abuse not the thing (qtd. Sidney). He uses food metaphor to
substantiate his view. He uses the food metaphor to emphasize the transformational
power of poetry 7: Poets mediate between the raw product and its human consumer,
between the physical world and the subject, combing sustenance with pleasure (LeviStraus notion of cooking) 8. To Sidney, poetry is a combination of wisdom and
pleasure rather than mere pleasure as Plato and Gosson assert. Sidney also recuperates
the significance of food in order to reaffirm the value of poetry: the contemporary
view of digestion as a very literal assimilation of something that is not part of one to
the essence of ones being (Schoenfeldt 245) corresponds to Sidneys view of the
profound effects of poetry on its readers 8. The punishment of the belly is the
punishment of ones life 8. Hence, Sidney compares the poet to the food for the
tenderest stomachs, likens poetry to food throughout his treatise, descrbing it as a
cluster of grapes (340) and a medicine of cherries (341) 1. Sidney says that it is
not poetry that abuseth mans wit, but that mans wit abuseth poetry (350) 9.
Indeed, Mitisi claims that Sidneys reasoning is sensible: 1. Plato, as Arthur Kinney
suggests, sees that passions are aroused by ideas in virtuous ways, and a poet and a
philosopher with such passions are neither clever nor desperate sophistry, but a
thought and logical position that fused philosophy and poetry with life 7-8.; 2.
Sidneys emphasis on the capacity of poetry to teach delightfullyis Platonic, since it
was Plato who insisted that poetry if ever admitted at all in the ideal Republic should
be morally instructive (Hardison 78) 8.
Ch.2: Space
-Fillamore illustrates the deictic and the non-deictic conceptions of space 19.
Deictic conception of space has to do with the positing of a point of view, which
involve the location of the speaker at the time of the speech act; the relevancy of the
location of the speaker at the time of the speech act is essential to understand the
situation 19. Fillamore uses prepositions to illustrate the dimensionality
ascription and presuppositions in order to elucidate the non-deictic conceptions
of space.
-Prepositions [Dimensionality & Proximity]: correspond to the ascription of
different dimensionality properties to the entity named by the following noun or noun
phrase 20, Frequently the same noun has different interpretations depending on
what dimensionality property is assigned it by the accompanying preposition 20 ,
at (no dimension)/ on (two-dimensional: line or surface)/ in (three-dimensional:
the interior) 20, these at/no/in prepositions cover the concepts of simple location,
surface (unbounded) and interior (bounded) 21
-The categories of interior bounded spaces [Dimensionality & Proximity]: i.
horizontally bounded spaces ; ii. lower bounded spaces ; iii. upper-bounded spaces ;
iv. filled spaces 21
-Relative distance [Orientation and Distance]: horizontal and vertical orientations,
vertical orientation is up/down orientation, horizontal orientations include front/back
and left/right orientations, the left/right orientation is possible for an object only if
that object has BOTH an up/down orientation and a front/back orientation 22 ; special
orientational priority: front 23 ; back: in English the word back is associated with
the meaning the outer part of the body closest to the spinal column 24 ; left/right
24-2 : For animals or objects which have some surface similarity to humans, left and
right are determined by completing the analogy, that is, by centering our own topbottom-front-back framework into it and identify its left and right only by knowing
top from bottom and front from back. The choice seems to depend on the way in
which human beings position themselves with respect to objects 25 ; Side: The
English word sideis used to designate any smooth facet of an object which has not
been designated as a top or bottom extremity or as a front or back extremity 26
-Measurements of objects that are viewed as having a spatial orientation [Orientation
and Distance]: the adjectives that accompany these measurement indications are
selected according to a number of assumptions we make about the salient dimensions
and the specific spatial orientation of the objects in question 27 ;
high/long/wide/deep 28
-Movement [Orientation and Distance and Dimensionality]: via/over/through 2829, the prepositions of Location/Source/Path/Goal 29, dimenstionality
presuppositions are associated with the descriptions of movement/locomotion 29,
static (locative) and moving/directional (locomotive)
Ch. 3: Time
-Time is conceptually simpler than space since it only has one dimension and is
unidirectional 30. In the third lecture Fillamore talks about non-deictic conceptions
of time 31, which operate along the front/back axis, with indicators as before/after,
ahead/behind, earlier/later, earliest/latest, beginning/end. First,
earlier/later set up the temporal axis and the idea of the reference period.
Second, the indicated period is either being part of or outside of the reference period.
Third, if it is part of the reference period, the proximity and distance will be indicated
with the terms ahead/behind, or terms pointing to the extremity of the reference
period, beginning/end. Fourth, if it is out of the reference period, it will be indicated
with before/after 32-33
-Time is one dimensional and unidirectional: earlier and later (sequence) ;
front/back orientation can be thought as ahead/behind in movement 31; Before/
After or Ahead/ Behind are the movement metaphors for time 31, that these
movement metaphors are conceived along front/back axis one way or the other
depends on whether we regard time as stable and the continuing world as being in
motion, or whether the continuing world is taken as the stable reference point and
time is thought of as being in motion 31-32 ; Earlier/ Later are not movement
metaphors but simply temporal notions 32, beginning / end indicate duration and
hence the earliest and latest time points
-Proximity and Distance: The nouns front and back indicate portions of the
reference object, the phrases in front of and in back ofwithout the definite article
or words ahead and behind indicate position outside of the reference object but
along the front/back axis. The temporal axis is set up by the earlier/later relationship
between events. A time period has an extent along this axis, and locations in time
can be thought of as positioned with respect to a given time period along the temporal
axis. The position of a time period outside of the reference period calls for the
prepositions before and after, the earlier and later extremities of the reference
period being indicated by words beginning and end. And like the words front and
back, top and bottom, the words beginning and end can be used either for
naming extremities or portions of the time period 32-33
-Temporal Axis: With the temporal axis, the earlier/later orientation is permanently
set, and the beginning and end portions of a time period are not conceivable
independently of the earlier/later ordering relation in time 33 ; time periods and time
points 33 ; event types recurring in time 33 ; recurrences of the same phase of the
cycle are used for providing units of measure 33 ; [time measure words: fixed-phase
units] time measure periods taken only as units of measure are noncalendric while
time measure periods having fixed starting points are calendric 34 ; [time measure
words: fixed-length sequences] derivative units constructed by humans beings
consisting of partitions of the naturally given time units or sequences of the natural
units 34 ; explicitly bounded and less explicitly bounded time periods 34 ; positional
time indicators indicate a position within a sequence 36 ; expressions not identifying
calendar units can indicate relations of priority, coincidence and containment 38 ;
completive and durative verbs together with prepositional phrases 38 ;
actual/expected/theoretical time of an event (prolong/ postpone) 39
Ch.4: Deixis I
-Deictic: that context defined in such a way as to identify the participants in the
communication act, their location in space, and the time during which the
communication act is performed. Aspects of language which require this sort of
contextualizaton are what I have been calling deictic 41-42 ; Deictic anchoring ;
taking into the consideration of the subjects point of view in relation to the
surroundings, so the consideration of deictic is mediating between the subject and
the object
-Deictic anchoring: Specify speaker, addressee and audience 43 ; Place and time
deictic terms 43 ; Three ways of using deictic terms: gestural, symbolic, anaphoric
43 ; non-deictic indications depend on the understanding of something being oriented
in space in a particular way 46 ; time deixis/coding time/the time of the
communication act 47 ; time deixis: many locutions about time involve spatial
metaphors based on the notion of movement. It is on the moving world version of the
metaphor that we can speak of the future as being ahead and the past as being behind
(this coming Tuesday, the days ahead) 52
Ch.6: Deixis II
-This chapter deals with discourse deixis and social deixis
-Discourse deixis: any point in a discourse can be thought of as a point in time 73 ;
The demonstratives this and that have their uses in referring to an immediately
preceding and an immediately following portion of the discourse, respectively 74 ;
this has the idea that one of the participants knows what it is that is being referred to
but the other does not, and with that it is assumed that both encoder and decoder
know what is being talked about 74 ; But this also has a backward-pointing function
as well as a forward-pointing function 74 (this was restricted to past perfect tense in
its backward-pointing function) ; the words the former/the latter are also discourse
deictic terms 74
-Discourse deixis in conversation: the presentation of the total design of a text 75 ;
external analysis 75-77 and internal analysis (social deixis) 78
-Social deixis: Social deixis is the study of that aspect of sentences which reflect or
establish or are determined by certain realities of the social situation in which the
speech act occurs 79 ; person-deictic anchoring in terms of the speakers taking the
addressees point of view 85
Jonathan Culler
Culler, Reading Lyric
-Summary: Cullers essay Reading Lyric is based on his review of Paul de Mans
essay Trope and Anthropomorphism in the Lyric. Culler also discusses de Mans
essay in his book The Theory of the Lyric when he talks about the questions on lyric
as a genre. In the book, Culler quotes de Mans pairing of Baudelaires poems
Obsessions and Correspondences as a demonstration of how the qualities of the
lyric are always underneath even the non-lyric. He argues that there always appears to
be a poem which can disrupt and yet elicit (but not completely equalizes itself to) the
generic expectations of a lyric. In this essay Reading Lyric, Culler states the idea of
lyric is dependent on how the readers read the lyric. So, the question of asking What
is lyric is somewhat embarrassing. Culler says, Someone taking this view can argue
that no text really is a lyric but that, as de Man puts it, these are merely nostalgic
categories for classifying and mastering texts 6. Yet, Culler thinks that there appears
to be something that can be called lyric, as de Man delivers a puzzling statement:
No lyric can be read lyrically, nor can the object of a lyrical reading itself a lyric 6.
From de Mans assertion Culler thinks that, quoting William Ray, the conceptions that
de Man gives weight can hardly be reconciled, such as, in this case, lyric and
reading.
Culler here in this essay Reading Lyric tries to delineate and discuss the suggestive
statements that ask what a lyric is in Paul de Mans essay Trope and
Anthropomorphism in the Lyric. The essay lays out Cullers critical responses to de
Mans essay with regard to what is lyric. First, Culler mentions de Mans view of
lyric and lyrical reading. De Man, says, No lyric can be read lyrically, nor can the
object of a lyrical reading itself a lyric. De Man seems opposing a structuralist
approach to the genre of lyric. Culler analyses that De Mans examination of the
nature of lyric is through the act of lyrical reading which, interestingly, is resisting and
disrupting the lyrical reading. De Man interprets such a reading, as Culler says, a
transformation of the trope into anthropomorphism. This transformation includes a
transition: i. from the phenomenal to the essential; ii. from a chain of elements into an
unified whole of assertion; iii. from analogy to identification; iv. from subject-object
relation to intersubjective relation 5. Anthropomorphism is not an idea to define lyric;
rather, it is trying to suggest what a lyric. It is similar to an interface to approach what
a lyric is. It is not what a lyric is. So, de Man is answering the question of what is a
lyric by describing the phenomenality of the poetic voice in lyric instead of the
materiality of language. Second, Culler follows the idea of phenomenality by saying
quoting de Mans words: The lyric depends entirely for its existence on the denial of
phenomenality as the surest means to recover what it denies. Culler quotes Parker
and C. Hoseks suggestion that [t]he principle of intelligibility, in lyric poetry,
depends on the phenonmenalization of the poetic voice. The phenomenalization
refers to the idea that there is given perception a body of sensible signifiers which
stand in representational relation to conceptual signifieds that are given to
understanding. So the phenomenalization of the poetic voice challenges the cognitive
understanding of the lyric due to the presence of the sensual. The phenomenality of
language comes in or is revealed in the potentially endless patterns that might or
might not signify. 8 That is, the phenomenality of language posits a reading of lyric
4
-What is the difference between description and address as in lyric/ode?
-Paul de Man: Apostrophe, Prosopopoeia, Anthropomorphism, Giving a literal face to
an entity, foregrounding the intersubjective (the I-You) relation 4 ; Paul de Mans
definition of anthropomorphism 4:
i. from the phenomenal to the essential
ii. from a chain of elements into an unified whole of assertion
iii. from analogy to identification
iv. from subject-object relation to intersubjective relation 5
a. setting up relations of commensurability and specularity between subject and object
5
b. setting up a relation between the inside and outside such that qualities, like echoes,
can be passed back and forth and poses question of whether patterns are projected
from outside to inside or from inside to outside 5
-Paul de Man: Prosopopoeia is not a defining constituent of lyric 7
attempt to make explicit the moves of the interpretive process, to systematize the
operations of literary criticism, offer some account of the range of historical
possibilities that they make available (Theory of Lyric, Preface pdf 2)
-Ambivalence about twentieth-century reading of lyric
(Theory of Lyric,
Introduction pdf 2) --- i.e. the reader looks for a speaker who can be treated as a
character in a novel, whose situation and motives one must reconstruct. (Theory of
Lyric, Introduction pdf 2) --- the goal of reading a lyric is to produce a new
interpretation (Theory of Lyric, Introduction pdf 5)
4
-There signs recognizing the importance of generic categories, as Culler claims:
---Literary works emerge against the generic conventions, disrupting or conforming to
them 4
---Genres change as new works are created that either modify the categories, or,
eventually, delimit them differently in creating new categories 5
---Genre study gives the complexity of thoughts in our procedures to analyse and
accumulate knowledge in literary criticism 5
-Genre study is the most interesting when most specific 6 ; the question of genre
provides insight into the history of the literary tradition and the functioning of
literature, as well as, of course, the development of that genre in response to the
6
-The working classifications: Genres can be seen as traditions (biological genes) 7, as
social institutions created by constitutive conventions/the functioning in a system 7 ;
9
So Culler is indicating the vibrancy of generic category from the lens of its historical
dimension:
10
Culler takes it further that genre study should not be just describing what people of a
particular period thinks about the genre, but more importantly about evaluating their
thoughts if there are inadequacies
10
10
11
---2. On Lyric History
-Summary: Culler maps out the history of Western lyric from antique Greeks to the
nineteenth century. Lyric first started as a type of poetry involving thematic
circumstances and meters correlated with the mode of performance. Lyric poets were
singers. Pindar was a typical example. Lyrics in antique Greece are defined by the
performative quality and public role as morals or ethics teaching. Aristotle and Plato
did not treat lyric as a legitimate genre as compared to epic and drama. Lyric, to their
mind, was a mimetic work accompanied with music, and it should be evaluated
whether it could conform to the ethical and political values. Four hundred years after
Pindar, Horace readapated Pindars odes for more meditative uses, as singing the
more quotidian dimension of an individual life. Catullus, around the era of Horace,
born 20 years before Horace, reshaped the lyric as in-depth love poems. Troubadour
lyrics were gaining significance in the Miditerranean area around the Middle Ags,
where love songs, drinking songs, and sacred lyrics flourished. And, with the Antonio
Minturno (1563) and Sir Philip Sidney (1579) giving lyric a legitimacy as a genre on
a par with epic and drama, lyric was gradually becoming a poetic norm. In the 18th C,
Sir William Jones, the German aesthetician J.G. Sulzer, and Madame de Stael reckon
lyric as a genre expressing feelings more than representing the world outside, and
lyric is becoming the literary mode which is expressive more than mimetic.
-Thinking on Western lyric from the Greeks to the nineteenth century:
---Greeks: lyrics are the types of poetry involving thematic circumstances and meters,
which are correlated with mode of performance 11 ; lyric was a major strain of
archaic Greek poetry 12
---Origin of Praise: In Aristotles Poetics, Aristotle himself offers a speculative
genealogy, deriving all poetic genres from lyric encomia, hymns, and invectives 12 ;
Gregory Nagy and Jeffrey Walker think that lyric precedes and generates epic as well
as epideictic and panegyric rhetoric in general 12 ; Cullers says that it is clear that the
link between lyric and discourse that aims to praise or persuadeepideictic discourse
is strong in archaic Greece and persists through Renaissance 12 ; Under the Roman
Empire, there was a shift in the conception of rhetoric from techniques for efficacious
discourse to techniques for eloquence, and lyric poetry, esp. in its epideictic
dimensions, as poetry of praise, became more closely associated with rhetoric and
cited by rhetoricians 23. This can be seen in Longinus On the Sublime on Sapphos
poem 24 (Sappho: the helplessness and the inexpressible, embodying a turn where
suffering becomes a source of poetic power 26)
---The sudden profusion of lyric took place in ca 700 BCE due to the invention of
writing 13, as Leslie Kurke writes 13, singers became makers 13, and by 500 BCE,
lyric, though still treated as accompanied by music, was treated as text to be repeated
and evaluated 14
---Aristotles Poetics: Aristotle didnt treat lyric poetry as a major literary genre in his
discussion of mimetic poetry. He treated lyric poetry as a minor component of
tragedy, being the sung parts of tragedy: lexis and melopoeia are two media in which
mimesis is rendered in tragedy 13
---Platos dialogues: Book 3 of Republic distingushes poetry by mode of enunciation.
He calls a poem dithyramb in which the poet speaks in his own person only, as
contrasted with drama and epic 14 ; By 500 BCE, lyric utterance is taken as a
statement to be judged for its conformity to ethical and political values 14
---Aristophanes of Byzantine in 200 BCE: promoted a canon of nine lyrcists, which
are Pindar, Alcaeus, Sappho, Alcman, Anacreon, Simnides. So in the subsequent
centuries of the Roman Empire, these poets were celebrated alongside the epic, tragic,
comic poets, iambic, and elegiac poets 14
---The work of the Alexandrain scholars in the late 300 and 200 BCE (third and
second centuries BCE) was crucial in the development of a framework for discussions
of discourse (rhetoric and poetics) in the West 15
---(Greece) Pindars 11th Olympian: an ode praising victor in a boxing match 15, the
standing-out of the lyric I, the singularity of a voice, and Bruno Snell aruges that
here in a lyric age, we witness the birth of the modern mind, as poets came to know
themselves as individuals with an inner life. 16 But the lyric I here, as Culler,
recognizes, is more the site of performing a role rathern expression of the poets
individuality, as Pindars I often involves epideictic assertions of what should be
valued (what is best, what is worthy, what we owe to gods) 16 // Characteristics of
Pindars odes: i. the lyric I is a site to perform a social role; ii. setting up social
values (what should be valued); iii. a public performance; iv. highlights the
performative quality // Cullers conclusion:
17
---(Rome) Horace, born 400 years after Pindar: Horace engages in complex
negotations with the figure of Pindar 19: i. He eschews Pindars sublime
grandiloquence and public performance of epic muth in the famous Ode 4.2 19
20
---Catullus, born 20 years before Horace: He is the first poet in Greek or Latin who
appears to write about a particular love affair in depth in a related collection of poems
21. His collection sets a stage for a coherent genre, Latin love lyric 23. Paul Allen
Miller, who idiosyncratically defines lyric as a collection of poems in which we seek a
narrative, deems Catullus the first lyric poet 23
---Roman poetry: Though writing and the book have become the medium of lyrics,
they retain a reference to the poem as event or performance 23
---Lyric makes only a minor appearance in late Latin and medieval texts 26, but
several developments are significant in the history of Western lyric: i. accentual
meters ; ii. hymns and rhymes ; iii. rich tradition of popular songs associated with
aspects of everyday life 27 ; iv. Medieval lyrics flourishing with love songs, drinking
songs, sacred lyrics 28. The trend is towards a wide array of complex stanza forms,
shorter lines, and swifter tempos 29
---Troubadour lyric: from the Miditerranean area, love songs
---No music accompanient in lyric in medieval lyric poetry in the 13th and 14th C, and
there is a growing tradition of lyrics not meant to be sung but used for private
meditation 30 and so lyrics offer the position of a definite but unspecified ego whose
positive the audience is invited to occupy 30
30
30
---Petriachs Canzoniere, Dantes Vita Nouva (1295) in Medieval Age, French poets
of 16th C celebrated Greek and Latin odes ; Antonio Minturno was the first to treat
lyric as a genre on a par with the epic and the dramatic in 1563, and he is the first to
use Aristotles Poetics to give lyric a legitimacy that Aristotle refused it 34 ; In
England Sir Philip Sidney singles out the lyric as a legmitate form of poetry 34, and
he retains the classical and medieval model of lyric as a rhetorical practice
Epideictic discoursewith the centrality of praise and blame, which makes it easier
to treat lyrics as significant poetic porductions 35
---Expressive theory of the lyric (From mimetic to expressive): Lyric is identified with
the ode especially and set against epic, didactic, and narrative poetry 35 ; lyric is
expressive of passion: Longinus On the Sublime ; 18th C reflections linking poetry to
the origin of language contributes to the idea that poetry is more natural and elemental
than prose, originally expressive rather than rhetorical 36 ; Scholars who rejected the
mimetic theory of lyric: Sir William Jones rejects the theory of poetry as imitation in
his essay On Arts, Commonly Called Imitative 36, the German aesthetician J.G.
Sulzer, Madame de Stael 37
---Lyric as a poetic norm and Resistance to lyric as poetic experimentation 39
3. Lyric Genre
-Synopsis: Culler discusses the conception of lyric through the ideas of thinking of
lyric as a genre. He says that expressive theory of lyric, which has become the poetic
norm of what a lyric by nature is, is both the stimului of standardizing lyric as a genre
and of challenging lyric as a genre. He uses Paul de Mans discussion of Baudelaires
two poems in de Mans essay Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric for
illustration. De Man states that of both Baudelaires poems, Obsessions is a lyric
while Correspondences contains, implies, produces, generates, permits the entire
possibility of lyric 43. Culler concludes that first, de Man presents the conception of
lyric is a way to present a potential reality of our engagement with the world 43;
second, the expressive model of lyric is limiting our conception of lyric; third, we
need a more capacious notion of lyric to counter the modern notions of lyric
intelligibility linked to the voice of the subject b82. The most important claim Culler
makes is seeing lyric as a historical more than a transcendental category makes the
conception of lyric resistant to a logic of historical determination, i.e. reading lyric,
with regard to the generic parameters of lyric tradition in a way that the tradition can
evolve with different possibilites, enlarges the possibilities of reading and engagement
with lyrics.
-Expressive theory of lyric gives rise to the recognition of lyric as a poetic norm as
well as the modern resistance to genre theory 39 i.e. anti-generic thinking bears
directly on the expressive theory of lyric 40 --- challenging the ideas/concepts of ode?
40
-Paul de Man: versions and variations of the inside/outside pattern of exchange //
internalization and exteriorization
42
-Paul de Man: Correspondences is not a lyric but it and it alone contains, implies,
produces, generates, permits the entire possibility of lyric 43
43
-Paul de Man: Generic term such as lyric (or its various subspecies ode) are terms
of resistance and nostalgia at the furtherst remove from the materiality of actual
history 43 ; Generic terms, such as lyric, like period terms, are only names for ways
of contingently ordering things so as to defend against the disorderly play of language
and history and make sense of the world b82
-Cullers reading of de Man: a. the conception of lyric presents a potential reality of
our engagement with the world ; b. the expressive model of lyric is limiting our
conception of lyric ; c. we need a more capacious notion of lyric to counter the
modern notions of lyric intelligibility linked to the voice of the subject b82
b82
b82
-Culler: From the view of Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins, criticism has made a vast
range of poems into lyrics b83 ; ode is made to lurk under the generic category of
lyric 83 [ode as a subgenre] ; Emily Dickinson as an example b84 ; Cullers
conclusion on lyric genre: reading the poem to what extent in relation to the
pressupoed paramenters of the lyric tradition
b86
-Cullers stress on the fact that genre is a historical rather than a transcendental
category 89; This thinking of genre makes genre in a sense resisting the logic of
historical determination, i.e. A genre is not just a hisotrical evolution but a historically
evolving set of possibilities with potential to suprrise b90 ; Culler suggestions a more
capcacious/broader conception of lyric that enlarges and encourages the possibilities
of reading and engagement b90
Ch.3 Theories of the Lyric
Culler mainly mentions three major theories of lyric:
1. lyric as subjective form, real representation of the subject (Hegel)
2. lyric as a dramatic monologue, fictional speech act of an imagined speaker (Helen
Vendler, Barbara Herrnstein Smith)
3. lyric as performance (J.L. Austin)
1. Hegel
-Synopsis: Hegel provides an explicit theory of the lyric in his Aesthetics. In general,
his conviction is that lyric is the subjective genre of poetry 92. The centrality of
subjectivity that Hegel distinguishes lyric is different from the subjectivity in modern
sense 100. In modern sense, subjectivity refers to the consciousness of ones self
through reflection and experience. Hegels conception of subjectivity as the
distinguishing feature in lyric means more than the modern sense of subjectivity.
Hegels subjectivity is determined by the logic and architectonic of the whole
system in which a developmental logic of progressive idealization is undertaken
92. Culler says that [a]rt in general thus manifests for Hegel the progressive selfrealization of spiritincreasing spiritualization or idealization, s the material means
become less important 93. Poetry is the manifestation of a process of increased
spiritualization 100. The process is like this: The lyric poet absorbs into himself the
entire world of objects and circumstances and stamps them with his own inner
consciousness, also the lyric poet discloses his self-concentrated heart,raises
purely dull feeling into vision and ideas, and gives words and language to this rich
inner life (qtd. Hegel, 94). The poet in Hegels sense is a subject who through poetry
can realize itself as itself 95. He is not just an individual reflecting his own
individual experiences but a subject who is not able to purify and universalize the
individual experiences with the inner movement of the soul, so the subject (the poet)
can identify himself with this particularization of himselfso that in it he feels
and envisages himself. When the subject recognizes himself as himself (from
personhood to humanity) 95, the non-subjects (the readers besides the poet) can be
identified with the individuality of the experiences, that is, there is in front of us
something universally human so that we can feel in poetic sympathy with it 95.
Subjectivity as Hegels conception is a principle of unity rather a principle of
individuation 95 (*105).
Culler uses Kate Hamburgers discussion of The Lyrical Genre to redefine Hegels
conception of subjectivity in the theory of lyric in modern sense. Hamburger sees
lyric as real enunciation of real statement of a subject 105. The lyrical I is a
statement-subject, which is not exactly a personal I and not completely the
fictional I. It, in its enunciation in lyric, presents the indeterminacy between the
biographical individual and a fictional speaker 108. The assurance is that the lyrical
I performs a linguistic function in communication which is beyond the
communicative frontiers (historical, theoretical, or pragmatic, in Hamburgers
scheme), the function is embodied in communicating the statement of the subject and
its statements are real propositions of the experience of an object. The second
assurance is that the lyrical I performs the positing of itself (idea of Stewart on
positing ; positional function of the lyrical I) which can be referred to nothing but
the subject itself. The subject and the statement of the subject are real even they have
no function in a context of reality 106. The subject is real because there is really a
communicative function going on in terms of the positional function that the lyrical
I is performing; the statement of the subject is real because the statement is telling
the experiences of a genuine positioning subject, i.e. the lyrics do not project a
fictional world but make reality statements about his world 108. So,
Hamburger maintains Hegels theory that lyric as the subjective form, but she
gives a modern sense to Hegels theory by making it as a positional theory
(treating subjectivity as functional grammatical subject of a sentence, making it about
the types of language, differentiating the subjectivity of the subject and that of the
poet) 107.
2. Imitation Speech Acts
-Synopsis: Hegel sees lyric as a subjective form. He sees the poet as the subject who
organizes the materials through the inner movement of his soul and identifies himself
as himself in lyric through expressing the vision and ideas in lyric. The alternative to
the romantic theory of lyric as expression of the poets subjectivity is mimesis, which
suggests that lyric is the mimesis of the experience of the subject. It is the conception
of New Criticism and Modern Criticism. They insist the focus on the words and
wordings rather than the intentions of author. They treat the lyric as the expression of
a persona rather of the poet and thus a mimesis of the thought of speech of such a
persona created by the poet 109. If the speaker is the persona, the interpretation of the
poem becomes a matter of reconstructing the characteristics of this persona, esp.
the motives and circumstances of this act of speech, the focus becomes the drama
of attitudes expressed by this speaker-character 109. [The speaker is the persona
rather than a poet, the poem is the mimesis of the thought and speech of such a
persona, the interpretation of the poem is the reconstruction of the circumstances and
motives of the persona]. The representative scholars of this model of lyric as
fictional speech act are Helen Vendler and Barbara Herrnstein Smith 110. They put
forward a theory of lyric as dramatic monologue (each poem is a fictive speech of
an imagined speaker 110, the lyric is turned into a mini-novel with a character whose
motives are to be analyzed 111).
The limitations of the theory of lyric as dramatic monologue are: 1. It cannot be
applied to the poems which are public discourse about values in this world rather than
a fictional world, and these poems hold a long tradition in Western literature 115, 121.
These are the poems, like Pindars odes, claim to offer truths, to cast values in new
light, to ostensibly disclose aspects of the world and praise what should be noted and
remembered, but they claim especially to offer thought in memorable form 122, so
they are putting forward a distinctive vision of the worldnot a fictional universe
but our world 124 ; 2. It denies the effects of presentness of lyric utterance ; 3. It
denies the materiality of lyric language that makes itself felt as something other than
signs of a character and plot ; 4. It denies the rich texture of intertextual relations
that relates it to other poems rather than worldly events 119 ; 5. The theory cannot
address the sense of sudden emergence of new conceptual possibilities 122. In
general, the theory neglects the ritualistic dimension of lyric. This dimension refers
to the conception that lyrics are made for repetition, constructed by a re-performing
reader. This concept can be seen in Kendall Watsons proposition of poetry as
thought-writing in his Thoughtwritingin Poetry and Music, Alessandro
Barchiesis emphasis on the performative character of lyric in his Carmina: Odes and
Carmen Saeculare, and Roland Greenes assertion of the dialectical play of ritual and
fictional phenomena in his book Post-Petrarchism. The ritualistic dimension of lyrics
include: 1. the rhythm and repetition ; 2. lyric address ; 3. the performative
character of the lyric.
3. Performative and Performance
-Synopsis: The theory of performative language gives insights to literature. In this
theory, J.L. Austin, in his book How to Do Things in Words, sees utterances not as
constative but also performative, that is, utterances can accomplish the action to
which they refer 125, but not merely to describe a state of affairs or some prior state
of affairs, not being pseudo-assertions only. Derrida, in his article, Signature Event
Context, draws upon the link of the concept of performative language to the creative
power of language and to the problem of origination in general 126. Culler says,
[p]erformative acts may originate or inaugurate, create something new, 126. Culler
says that Austins account provides an alternative for the active, creative functioning
of language: language as act rather than representation 126. The epideictic
element of lyric, which is so central to the lyric tradition, exemplifies the
performativity in lyric, as the epideictic element of lyric includes not just praise or
blame but the many statements of value, statements about the world that suffuse lyric
of the past and the present.Lyrics do not in general performatively create a fictional
universe, as novels are said to do, but make claimsabout our world 128.
The performativity of lyric includes three aspects of the speech act: locutionary,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary. It becomes the theory of lyric as the
performativity of speech act. A lyric is the performance of the three aspects of the
speech act. So, the lyric is not just speaking but brings about that of which it
speaks. It is not just a locutionary utterance but also illocutionary (the act of speaking
the utterance in particular circumstances, that is linked with the presentness of lyric)
and perlocutionary (the effects that the poets are seeking to achieve by virtue of
producing a poem: effects such as moving readers, provoking reflection, leading them
to act differently, that is linked with the materiality of lyric) 130. With epideixis,
translated as discourse with an act aiming to persuade, to move, to innovate, the
epideictic element of the lyric exhibits as well the illocutionary and perlocutionary
aspects of speech act. This is the theory of lyric as performance not merely
performative. Culler lists a number of cases for executing the performativity of lyric:
1. brings into being that which it describes, related to the fictional aspect; 2. brings
forth the simple event of establishing itself as a lyric; 3. the poems success in
bringing about what it describes (creates the effects it says/aims to create in the
poem); 4. brings forth the poems functioning in the world through repeated readings,
and it can enter the language and social imaginary, giving us a world to inhabit 131
calls it the sublime power of rhythmsublime in that it resists or lies beyond efforts
of representation and can only be experienced, not comprehended 165 [charm-like
rhythmical solidity 166]. Aviram calls rhythm an allegorical power of lyric 168. This
is the sociality/impersonality of lyric 169.
(Amittai Avirams Telling Rhythms)
3. Sound and Repetition
-Seduction, repetition, memorality
-Impersonality of lyric: the more a poem foregrounds vocal effects,the more
powerful the image of voicing, oral articulation, but the less we find ourselves dealing
with the voice of a person. Poetic language rescripts the body into verbal language
once again, Blasing writes, and the language that keeps the pleasures of verbal sound
in play courtsexplicitly in incantatory or hypnotic versea hysterical regression,
jeopardizing the I, the linguistic construct of a psychosocial subject 176
-Rhyme can lend authority to lyric 183
***
Follow-Up Readings:
-Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric
-Mark Payne, Ideas in Lyric Communication: Pindar and Celan, Modern Philology
105 (2007)
[how odes as a tradition of lyric in ancient Greece]
-Roland Greene, Post-Patrichism (lyric sequence, lyric discourse)
[ritualistic dimension, performance, song, values in the public, reiteration and
repetition, re-performing, rhythm and repetition, lyric address, the performative
character]
-Apostrophe:
---Ann Keniston, Overheard Voices: Address and Subjectivity in Postmodern
American Poetry, 2006
---in recent British Poetry, Nancy Pollard, Speaking to You, 2012
---John Ashbery, Interview, in The Craft of Poetry, ed. William Packard 123-124
---Ralph Johnson, The Idea of Lyric, 34, 13
---Barbara Johnsons Apostrophe, Animation, Abortion
---Douglas Neales Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered
---Baudelaire on Theodore de Banville
---Quintilian on apostrophe
---John Hollander, Rhymes Reason: A Guide to English Verse (Verse on Apostrophe)
-Ode:
---George N. Shuster, The English Ode from Milton to Keats, 1940
-Horace:
---Cambridge Companion to Horace, Carmina: Odes and Carmen Saeculare
---Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse
---Two new collections of odes: Kenneth Kochs New Addresses, W.S. Merwins
Present Company
*Odes
-Odists: Pindar, Horace, Ronsard, Collins, Keats, Neruda, and Robert Lowell
-Ode is less a slippery and even dubious category compared with lyric 87
-How does lyric shine a light on the conception of ode if the fact that the poems are
seen as lyrics does not erase the subgenres? 88
-Hegel on odes: to odes, where the subjectivity of the poet becomes the most
important thing of all 95
-Hegel on Pindars odes 99: example of subjective inspiration, in Pindar there is an
exciting struggle 99 ; Horace is denigrated for deciding to make poems out of minor
events of his life 99
-Odes are not lyrics as imitation speech acts, as they claim to offer truths, to cast
values in new light, to ostensibly disclose aspects of the world and praise what should
be noted and remembered, but they claim especially to offer thought in memorable
form 122. These odes usually carry a sense of the sudden emergence of conceptual
possibilities 122.
Paul de Man
Paul de Man, Anthromorphism and Trope in the Lyric [in The
Rhetoric of Romanticism]
-reason, imagination, truth
-delivered in a series of lectures at Cornell in the Spring of 1983 ; as an invitation to
speak on the nature of lyric
-Chases comment on de Mans Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric: The
conceit of anthropomorphism, as this passasge goes on to characterize it, lies in the
fact that this particular rhetorical conceit excludes or desires the role of tropes or
figures in the process of representation, in favor of the recognition of essences.
Anthropomorphism is not just a trope but an identification on the level of substance,
the taking of something for something else that can then be assumed to be given 83.
I think this is how Platos theory on form and substances comes to our stage of
discussion.
11
-Obssessions as the interiorization and exteriorization of Correspondances
11
-Lyric as the defensive motion of understanding, the possibility of future hermeneutics
13
-From trope to anthropomorphism is from Correspondences to Obsessions --from an army of tropes to truth 14 --- the double-ness of reading --- text and its
infra-text
of all, a speaking face, the locus of speech, the necessary condition for the existence
of articulated language (RR 89) 83. Face is not the same as the existence of a
person. It is implicative in the making of the existence of a person. Chase says, it is to
imply that a face is the conditionnot the equivalentof the existence of a person
83. It resonates with Fillamores Lecture on Deixis on how to determine positions and
hence the coordinates of time and space in face-to-face situations. The face is the
beginning of the imagination of speech and language. Prosopopoeia is different
from anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism, as de Man says in
Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric, as a rhetorical conceit excludes or
denies the role of tropes or figures in the process of representation, in favour of the
recognition of essences 83. Anthropomorphism naturalizes the human, and the
distinction between man and nature is effaced 83-84. Prosopopoeia foregrounds
humans dependency on the giving of a figure to exist in language, and such a figure
enables, as de Man says, the recognition of an entity or agency that bridges the
distinction between mind and world, and there asserts a belief that mind and world
can be in a dialogue when they are allowed to exist in proximity through the positing
of the human as a figure (RR 89) 83. The ideas of proximity and distance resonate
with Susan Stewarts concept of touching.
Face is a figure, Chase says. He elaborates, De Man not merely reads
prosopopoeia as the giving of face; he reads face as that which is given by
prosopopoeia 84. Prosopopoeia is face and vice versa. This equivalence is actualized
in rhetoric, that is, the use of language. Chase says, Face is not the natural given of
the human person. It is given in a mode of discourse, given by an act of language,
that is why face is a figure. It aspires to be taken on a level of substance, similar to
anthropomorphism, but the difference is that it remains as a trope or a figure without
being naturalized as essence. To give a face, that is, to make language as a figure, is to
claim a relationship between the mind and the world in a way that a process of
comparison and substitution, the system of tropes and figures whereby language
functions as representation or cognition 84. As a result, it also sets up a capacity to
see entities as interchangeable parts of a whole, that is, opens the way to compose
the entire intelligible world through a face 85. De Man, however, putting forward his
concept of prosopopoeia, is suggesting the opposite of the fact that language functions
as representation. Chase says, for de Man [a] rhetorical reading deconstructs these
concepts by revealing their dependency on the figure of metaphor 85, that is, by
revealing that it is such a dependency on the figure of metaphor that contributes to the
man-nature intermediation, that erases the differences between terms and integrate
them into wholes, that inaugurates the process of totalization, that proposes the
naturalness of man, that makes language function as representation, and that
ultimately consummates anthropomorphism. Yet, this apparent enabling possibility
of prosopopoeia is actually a predicament. This is where de Man begins to more finely
define prosopopoeia. [Note: Chase fins that in de Mans Anthropomorphism and
Trope in the Lyric, prosopopoeia is clearly defined distinct from personification and
anthropomorphism 83]
Prosopopoeia, Chase says, is not the giving of face, but a taking off of face; it is,
Chase calls, de-facement 85. Prosopopoeia is to deconstruct how the language is
made into a figure. It is the reading of language of figuration. The central paradox is:
a function of faceas the relentless undoer of its own claimshardly to be
reconciled with the meaning of face, with its promise of sense and filial preservation
(RR 92) 86. When does that de-facement happen? It is when the face is given to a
name, that is, when the giving of a face happens in language and the face is then
turned into an intelligible linguistic pattern, which confers a language property
on the face and the face becomes nominal. To give a face to a name is to textualize
the face in order to actualize it. To de-face is to actualize/reflect upon the
textualization of the face. Through the actualizing of the textualization of face, which
is different from the actualizing of the face, first, readers suspend the conception of
language as representation; second, reader recognize that language is not representing
a face but positing a face; third, the positing of a face indicates that there is a failure in
the capability of representation between a subject and an object; fourth, prosopopoeia
is the reading of the positing of face and such as reading reveals the figurality of face.
Chase says: The figurality of face is implied by the etymology of prosopopoeia; the
fictionality of voice, by its definition 88 (see 83: the making of a voice). De Man
links his explanation of prosopopoeia with catachresis and apostrophe. He uses
the idea of catachresis to explain the relationship between name and figure.
Catachresis transfers a name from another entity to an unnamed entity. It enables the
production of another figure while it abuses the figure by pulling a name to it, so
Chase says: Naming takes place by production of figures whose figurative status is
simultaneously effaced 88. The paradox in catachresis is that figuration is only
actualized through being eliminated. Chase describes: Catachresis thus describes
a dependency and conflict between name and figure that is present in the concept
of giving a face 88. To give a face is to de-face, while to de-face a face has to be
given. Apostrophe confers the power of speech to an imaginary entity through
positing a gesture of address which assumes a reply (Chase 88). Chase says,
according to de Man, the only face isthe face conferred by catachresis, the only
voice is the voice conferred by apostrophe 88. [Note: Chase asks how does the
giving of a face to a namebecome de-facement? He finds that the conclusion of
Autobiography as De-facement gives us an answer that perpetuates the question
rather than laying it to rest. It is offered in the form of allegory 87]
De Man does not dwell on apostrophe for apostrophe is just an addressing gesture
which actualizes prosopopoeia in text; he doesnt focus on personification either,
because personification is a rhetorical skill giving entity a face which naturalizes
human; also, he doesnt, undoubtedly, give as much emphasis on anthropomorphism
as on prosopopoeia, since anthropomorphism, through apostrophe and
personification, performs the totalizing act in text that harmonizes all the
particulars into one organic whole, as if the face given to the entity is the
ultimate and absolute truth projected [De Mans critique of anthropomorphism
107]. De Man singles out prosopopoeia. Prosopopoeia discloses the predicament
inherent in the fact that understanding takes place figuratively, that voice is a figure
which is, in other terms, the logical difficulty inherent in the deictic or demonstrative
function of language (Chase 89). Prosopopoeia, therefore, is the discovery of voice
being a figure, a discovery of the deictic function of language that itself involves a
conflict between the function of language as postulation or act and its function as
figure or representation (Chase 88). Here, we can see that Chase takes us further on
de Mans idea of prosopopoeia. Prosopopoeia, from de Mans perspective, is not
merely a face but also the act of giving a face or the act of figuring; it is, furthermore,
about the act of de-facing upon the act of giving a face when to give a face is also to
give it a name in the text, so it is exposing the linguistic predicament. That is why de
Man says: As soon as we understand the rhetorical function of prosopopoeia as
phenomenality of the poetic voice. No matter which way to go, they are also left with
a figure. The performance of reading carries out the failure of prosopopoeia by
making manifest the disfiguration of the figure inherent in the process of figuration
109. The act of reading, Chase says, makes us: not to deprive of a mouth to give a
voice and a face, but to reopen a mouth, to deprive of face and voice, and he
continues, [t]his is the deprivation of language, which takes place in the process of
understanding or reading, the gesture that gives a face to a name 112.
-De Mans Critique of Anthropomorphism, Lyric, and
Prosopopoeia107
-Follow-Up Readings:
---Fillamores Lecture on Deixis
---de Mans Allegories of Reading
---de Mans RR (?)
---de Mans Autobiography as De-facement
---de Mans Hypogram and Inscription
---de Mans Sign and Symbol in Hegels Aesthetics
---de Mans Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric (prosopopoeia is clearly
defined distinct from personification and anthropomorphism)
---de Mans essays on Hegel (Sign and Symbol in Hegels Aesthetics, Hegel on the
Sublime, and Hypogram and Inscription) examine the notion of predication
---Hegel on sense-certainty in his Phenomenology of Spirit [sense-certainty is the
poorest knowledge as it posits no distance between the perceiver and the perceived ;
immediate experience provides no more than a This ; Hegel concludes that
knowledge is not at all immediate but mediate ; Hegels critique of the rhetoric of
sense-certainty ; Here and Now]
which it seems that the victims seduce themselves. This for de Man was what we do
in reading through the category of the aesthetic.Such is our humanity that even
when we have reduced the text to a machine, its power remains and seduces [us]
into dangerously close contact (qtd. de Man AR 298) 251.
Susan Stewarts conception of proximity and distance resonates here. It is the
pseudo-transparency between saying (signifier) and meaning (signified), in other
words, the illusive proximity between what one says and what one means, that makes
the saying and the meaning, the binary opposites as such, have a face-to-face
confrontation. The confrontation, in the trope of transparency thus immediacy in
representation, gives a dangerous temptation that deconstruction existed to combat
250. Readers, through reading, are imprisoned in an excess of cognition produced
by the text as they are never able to know the process of its own production once
language takes over in the production of meanings (qtd. de Man AR 300) 251. So
reading is an act for being seduced to know in vain (250, 251, 256). Reading
actualizes the seduction of the text (seduction and knowledge // to seduce and to
know). The reading as such, remarked by de Man, is an indictment of existence
rather than a panegyric of art (AR 93) 248. De Man perceives the reading as such is
always confronting a threat or a challenge 249. Proximity does not necessarily erase
the value of perceiving the perceived in aesthetic criticism. Rather, it can intensify the
relationship between opposites and shine upon the interdependent yet independent
complexity in the interrelationship. This is Michael Delvilles perspective of what
gastroaesthetics is doing.
De Mans theory of reading elicits the idea of deconstruction. Arac says: Because
rhetorical language complicates the simple regularities of logic or grammar, because
of the problematic relation between language in use and language as a tool of theory,
de Man warned repeatedly against expecting to find a smooth continuity between a
writers poetry and poetics (AR 25). Deconstruction itself depends on
discrepancies in this realm, for it does not work through a relation between
statements as in logic or dialectic. Rather it happens between metalinguistic
statements about the rhetorical nature of language and a rhetorical praxis that
puts these statements intoquestion (98). Deconstruction states the fallacy of
reference in a necessarily referential mode. This is the aporia, cognitive impasse,
predicament. De Man says, [t]here can be no escape from the dialectical movement
that produces the text (AR 187) 249.
De Mans conception of text comes from his dwelling on this aporia/cognitive
impasse/predicament in reading. He defines a text as any entity that can be
considered from [this] double perspective: as a generative, open-ended, nonreferential grammatical system and as a figural system closed off by a transcendental
signification that subverts the grammatical code to which the text owes its existence
(AR 270) [context-dependent and context-independent, general and singular,
universal and specific].
The moment of turn is all that makes the difference/conflicts manifest. The turn
is translated as trope (Greek: tropos). What is a turn? A turn, observes Arac, is
not just a means of expression; it is not necessarily at one with intention. The turn
changes intention, for trope is interpretation, not transparency 256, for instance,
converting an entity into its opposite, reversing one state to its opposite. Reading is
the turn, the trope, the figuring, giving a face to a name (Chase), making the
entity enter into new relationships which are enacting on differential turning 257. The
turn can make manifest the truth that the text per se refuses to mean. De Man says,
Texts engender texts and consist of a series of repetitive reversals that engenders
the semblance of a temporal sequence (AR 162) 258, which in Linguistics and
Poetics, Roman Jakobson states, Anything sequent is a simile 259. The turn
evinces that representation is not transparent 257.
the idea of poiesis through eliciting the dynamics of time and space among the singer,
the sung, and the receiver. This is the way that Stewart illustrates on how poetry gives
frame to the surroundings; in other words, how poetry confers form upon chaos.
Stewart tries to think through the issues of framing and forming in poetry by using the
rhetorical term deixis. She says that deixis is useful in understanding the implicit and
reciprocal capacity for animation in the receiver 150: Emphasizing the bringing
forth of form over notions of imitation and representation per se, deixis yokes rhetoric
that is, an intention to move and a reciprocal receptivity to be movedto visual
and aural appearances 150. Deixis analyses how the epistemology of space and time
is conditioned by language. Deixis defines and creates the circumstances of specific
contexts as well as makes it possible to transcend the contexts. Through the
understanding of the specificity, that is the context-dependence, created in poetry with
the means of deixis, we know how a form is invoked and henceforth established. At
the same time, as the deictic terms can be carried over to the other contexts and make
themselves intelligible in the other contexts, they are the consciousness-carriers of
culture and history, and hence they can be understood without being bound to the
context. In this way, they are said to be context-independent 152. For example, deixis
helps us, without bound to any contexts, consider framing the time and space of
apprehension, the mutuality, reciprocity or nonreciprocity, or relations between
positions and perspectives, the reversibility of things amid the unidirectionality
of everyday time, and assumptions of intention and reception 156.
In poetic utterance, poetry plays the role of carrying over context dependence into
the figuration of context independencewith a transfer of sense impressions 152.
Here, Stewart elicits a proposition: poetry invokes a form through sense impressions
mediated in terms of the coordinates of time and space, which can be understood in
terms of deixis 152. Then, Stewart goes into the theory of deixis in linguistics and
explicates the way that deixis conditions time and space, for instance, deixis describes
orientation, movement, and perception: The study of deixis compels us to identify
the relations between objects and persons as relational and mutual, but not in
indeterminate ways. The articulation of proximity, of edges and interiors, and the use
of prepositions such as at, on, and in thrust us toward the presence or absence of
dimensionality, bounded or unbounded space, and surface 155. What is amazing of
the contribution of poetry to deixis is inventing new possibilities in time and space, as
works of art: works of art, in their articulation of alternative models of time and
space, and as they compel a suspension of the performative, pragmatic, and
instrumental functions of discourse and gesture, counter the rigidity of this time
system and enable reflection, recursiveness, and the utopian possibilities of repetition
and simultaneity 155.
Stewart now tries to make a transition from the experience of beholding to the
experience of touching, which is steered by the sense of touch. She quotes the ideas of
Martin Heideggers nearness and Jose Ortega y Gassetts visual proximity. Heidegger
says, [n]earness is at work in bringing near, as the thinging of the thing. In
Heideggers speculation, the more proximate the thing is visualized, the more the
nature of it is confirmed and grasped. Heidegger reckons that the thing as being the
thing not because of its nearness but of its nearing. The thing is the nearness. It is
impossible to tear the thing-ness of thing away from its nearness to us. It appears
that the thing has its nature occupying the proximity in relation to the beholder.
Ortega y Gassett argues, according to Stewart, proximate vision has a tactile quality
158, and this quasi-tactile density possessed by the ocular ray, and which permits it,
in effect, to embrace, to touch the earthen jar 158. Gassett attempts to say that visual
proximity incites the beholder to affirm the existence of the thing or the nature of the
thing by touching it. But Gassett, as Stewart puts it further, argues that there are
incommensurable positions when the act of beholding occupies in a position
where the thing beheld is between being proximate and distant. This situation happens
in the works of art, according to Gassett: Each art operates a magic lantern that
removes and transfigures its objects. On its screen they stand aloof, inmates of an
inaccessible world, in an absolute distance. When this derealisation is lacking, an
awkward perplexity arises: we do not know whether to live the things or observe
them 158. This awkward perplexity of Gassett, according to Stewart, is Heinrich
Wolfflins source of power and pleasure in apprehension 158.
In appreciating a work of art, in grasping the truth, in understanding the thing-ness of
thing in the most cogent and empathetic way, if that is possible or potentially possible,
the question arises: how close is too close? How far is too far? What is the right
distance? How can we know the distance is right? In what way can we posit ourselves
at a right position which is not too close and not too far? Stewart does not have a
straightforward answer. Instead, she puts forward the complexity in this already
complex perplexity of proximity and distance in perceiving the thing-ness of thing.
She uses Dickinsons 1869 poem beginning Split the Larkand youll find the
Music as well as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios painting Doubting
Thomas of 1602 or 1603 as the examples to address the questions. She says, in
Dickinsons poem, to grasp the bird as the real thing making music raises the
possibility of killing the whole bird: to dissect the bird to see where the music comes
from. This touch is the danger of touch that goes over into destruction and of sight
without empathy 159. The music from the birdthis work of artcannot be
appreciated, grasped, or understood with this destructive touch, which obviously is
too intrusive (too close) to the art, truth, or thingness that the transcendence is
destroyed. The art, truth, or thingness, embodied in a form of life, such as a bird, a
kind of immanence, with which transcendence disappears if it per se, the life itself,
is destroyed. What Stewart is saying is that if one has to grasp the art, truth, or
thingness, first, one cannot depend on its material source 159, and second, one cannot
materialize the touch as a way to grasp for avoiding an over-intrusive proximity,
which is not getting close to understand but destroying without empathy and wisdom.
Following Dickinsons poem, Stewart talks about the painting, Doubting Thomas,
by Caravaggio, to further illustrate the complexity in grasping art, truth, and
thingness. The hesitation between coming too close and staying too far is exemplified
in the complex irony of faith in the painting. The prehensile hand of Thomas touching
the body of Christ shows that [t]here is something of this in the complex confusion
of subject and object that ensues from the simple exercise of touching one of our
hands with the other 160. On the level of the story of Doubting Thomas, Thomas
does not believe the resurrection of Christ because he never sees the mark of nails on
his hands; but he starts to believe when Christ shows his immaterial appearance and
lets him touch his wounds which are material and immaterial. In this story, the
confusion comes in whether Thomas touches or does not touch, as the wounds being
touched are lingering between the material and the immaterial. On the level of the
painting, Stewart says that there is much confusion in the proximate and distant for it
provides a subtle gloss on the transivity and intransivity of touch 160: 1. we dont
know whether Thomas is painted as blind or not; 2. we are not sure of the agency in
the depiction of hands, that is, if Christs directing Thomas finger or Thomas finger
initiating the touch; 3. we dont know how we should read the tear in Thomas cloak
in relation to the scar in the flesh of Christ. So, not to mention the faith of Thomas in
grasping Christs resurrection, but just with such a painting in front of our eyes, we
become very indecisive and confused, and so a solid and confident grasp, which is
conceptualized as faith, is problematized.
EPIDEICTIC
Ancient conceptions of lyric would be a form of epideictic discourse (the rhetoric of
praise of blame, focused on what is to be valued) ; modern proposals to consider lyric
would be seeing them as writing thoughts for readers to articulate (Theory of Lyric,
Introduction pdf 3) ; Pindar and Horace ; lyric forms can revive, that makes the
evolution and transformation of lyric possible (Theory of Lyric, Introduction pdf 4) ;
(Theory of Lyric, Introduction pdf 5) --- Poetics and Hermeneutics (Theory of Lyric,
Introduction pdf 5-6)
-Chapter 1: Two poems of Sappho and Horace respectively indicate the intricacy of
apostrophic gesture (Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 10)
Sappho, the lyric poet par excellence, Ode to Aphrodite, Sappho is a Greek poet
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 1)
[triangulated address]
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 6)
---Features of Sapphos poem / triangulated address:
i. the self-reflexive putting-into-play of the status of the other
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 7)
ii. not a fictional representation of an event, but makes the lyric itself as an event
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 7)
iii. foreground the ritual character of the poem as a chant/spell through repetitive
metrical patterns
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 7)
iv. it allows itself to imagine a response to its call or address and works to constitute
and active relationship
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 7)
v. its deictic apparatus of the here-and-now enunciation presents itself as an event in a
time that repeats, and that creates the effects of presence, links value to that mortality
time, rather than transcendence of mortality
(Theory of Lyric, Ch.1 pdf 7)
---Sapphos apostrophic gesture is prosopopoeia
---lifts lyric from the zone of things said and the oral discourse of saying things ; the
poem gives us not a voice buy voicing:
(124)
(129)
-Renaissance apologist of poetry, Philip Sidney: poetry is to teach and to delight ;
historian just draws attention to particular truth of things rather than the general
reason of things 130
-Poetry has the function of teaching and delighting, both heuristic and aesthetic, the
tradition of Sidney. Sidney is drawing up the classical ideas of poetry of Longinus,
Quintilian, and Horace
131 //
Robert Lowth also sees poetry having advantage and pleasure
131
-Poetry: self-referential, sign and meaning, the inexpressible
134
135
-Poetry is always social, Adornos On Lyric Poetry and Society
Critics on Lyric
Qualia
Qualia [plural] / Quale [singular] (subjectivity, more than an apple only, simply
apple, simply food)
-Qualia, according Peter Consenstein, who draws reference to Clarence Irving Lewis
contemporary usage of the term in her Mind and the World Order in 1929, represents
simple elementary states of sensory data that are so numerous, virtually infinite, that
most are not noticed (introspected) (Consenstein pdf 6). It is similar to T.S. Eliots
objective correlative: the way of expressing a particular emotion through a
particular combination of a set of objects, situation, a chain of events, the objective
correlative expresses a kind of artistic inevitability, it is a complete adequacy of the
external to the emotion. Qualia are seen as a fundamental in constituting human
consciousness and unconsciousness through the interiority of experience that defines
the identity of a human individual. Qualia are sense data, are a combination of sense
data of human experiences, are core composite of human consciousness and
unconsciousness, referring to the specific nature of subjective experience in the world.
-Qualia also bring forth the discussion of intent and intentionality. To be aware of
qualia is to surface the unconsciousness and awaken the awareness of the intent.
-There are different questions with regard to the idea of qualia:
---How brain builds consciousness?
---How does an individual transfer sense data to brain to build the consciousness?
---To define and to interpret qualia is problematizing the ideas of subjectivity,
consciousness, intent and intentionality, rather than circumscribing each idea with a
clear-cut boundary and threshold, and there ensues the complexity with regard to the
specific nature and our understanding of subjectivity, consciousness, intent and
intentionality
Sense and Sensibility, Lodge (Guardian)
-Literature is a record of human consciousness ; Lyric poetry is arguably man's
most successful effort to describe qualia ; The novel is arguably man's most
successful effort to describe the experience of individual human beings moving
through space and time.
-Human consciousness, as the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, author of The Feeling
of What Happens , makes clear, is self-consciousness. We not only have experiences,
we are conscious of ourselves having them, and of being affected by them.
-Daniel Dennett, author of Consciousness Explained , says something very similar. As
spiders make webs and beavers build dams, so we tell stories. ; "Our fundamental
tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or
building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly connecting and controlling
the story we tell others - and ourselves - about who we are."
-Consciousness is an elusive concept
-Joseph Levine, 1983, Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap has indicated
that qualia/quale is a key term in conscious studies, meaning the specific nature of our
subjective experience of the world
-See definition of qualia in The Oxford Companion of the Mind
-Reading literature is important because it gives us a convincing sense of what the
pdf 6
-The science of consciousness: qualia --- a collection of personal or subjective
experiences, feelings, and sensations that accompany awareness
pdf 7
-Qualia is about the unconsciousness
pdf 9
-Qualia brings the question of: subjectivity, consciousness, intention
pdf 9
-Intent is how the mind reveals unconscious states
-Differences between intent and intentionality pdf 11 ; Zen-like posture:
nonintentionality pdf 12
pdf 11
pdf 11
*Apostrophe
Readings:
-Quintilian, The Institutes of Oratory
-John Stuart Mill [eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard]
-Northrop Frype [the poet, so as to speak, turns his back on his listeners]
-Jonathan Culler, Apostrophe, in The Pursuit of Signs
-Jonathan Culler, Lyric Address, in Theory of the Lyric
-Jonathan Culler, Deconstruction and Lyric
-Jonathan Culler, Reading the Lyric
-Ann Keniston, Overheard Voices
-Natalie Polland, Speaking to You
-Barbara Johnson, Apostrophe, Animation, Abortion
-Bernard Lamy, The Art of Speaking [G-Book]
-William Waters, Poetrys Touch: On Lyric Address
-W.R. Johnson, The Idea of Lyric
-Helen Vendler, Invisible Listeners
-Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry [a lyric is meant to be spoken by its reader as if
the reader were the one uttering the words. A lyric poem is a script for performance by
its reader [.] It constructs a twinship between writer and reader xlii-xliii]
-Charles Baudelaire, Charles Baudelaire: Collected Essays [Baudelaire on Theodore
de Banville, hyperbole and apostrophe]
-McGuirk, Apostrophe in Seamus Heaney
-Mara Scanlon and Chad Engbers, Poetry and Dialogism: Hearing Over [Requested]
-Hosek and Parker, Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism [UQ Book]
-Smith, Apostrophe, or Lyric Art of Turning Away
-Usher, Apostrophe in Greek Oratory
-Kneale, Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered
Points to Consider
-Apostrophe:
---All address is motivated by the desire to unmake distance (Keniston 51)
---Apostrophe in Romantic Lyrics: exalted, transcendence, ethereal (Keniston 2) ;
Apostrophe is a hopeful gesture, which defies both the fact of absence (the fact that,
being out of earshot, the mother cannot be made to hear) and the laws of chronology
or narrative (the fact that, having departed, she cannot be made not to have departed)
(Keniston 58)
---Apostrophe in postmodern lyrics: allying with a particular historic moment, class,
locale, and mindset ; more mundane, solid, everyday, quotidian, myth-shattered, like
subterranean, urban, dingy particularity ; absence and paradoxes of apostrophes
conventions (Keniston 2) ; Language, as Barbara Johnson has argued in relation to
apostrophe, originates in a bodily (more exactly a maternal) absence it cannot unmake
or express, it must fail, in Kristevas terms, to signify. In a sense, apostrophe is
speech that has been severed from speechs conventional signifying or communicative
function (Keniston 58). Rather than truly speaking to anyone else, it alludes to what
has been removed and thus to its own processes of displacement and projection.
In this way it always hints at what has been taken, as the signifiers fort and da
allude to the maternal body without speaking of them directly and thus mark the
childs alienation from bodily presence. It is alienated and incommensurable, in
Kristevas terms, freed from the compulsion to represent (Keniston 58)
---Apostrophes etymological association with turning away suggests that apostrophe
and rhetorical figure more generally permit a turning away from or avoidance of what
is distasteful or painful (Keniston 44)
---These poems make stark an exclusion and also a pathos inherent in all lyric. They
offer, that is, a particularly vivid example of dyamics concealed but present in other
poems. (Keniston 27)
---Focusing on Plaths address changes her poems. Attention to this apostropphe
renders these poems less solitry than they often seem, and also more crafted and more
allusive. (Keniston 27)
---The speaker begins by blurring the boundaries between herself and the horse. This
is an impulse toward animation. This impulse takes a very different form by poems
end. The speakers concern is no oonger with the horses body, which drops out of the
poem as does the pronoun we. Instead she describes her transformation into what
she sees around her. She then defines herself through analogies with a series of
inaimate objects removed from the landscape she is moving through. Plaths
speakers transformation into an object involves an acquisition of power: the poems
final images invest her with a force and autonomy she lacked earlier (Keniston 39).
---Barbara Johnson connects the uncertainty of apostrophe about the others status
to an uncertainty about the precise degree of human animation that existed in the
entity killed (Keniston 41) // To associate apostrophe or invocation with what is
inarticulate, artifical, and uncertain is to allude to loss. Julia Kristeva in a discussion
of melancholia suggests: the depressed person has the impression of having been
deprived of an unnameable, supreme good, of something unrepresentable, that
perhaps only an invocation might point out, but no word could signify (Keniston
relation 4 (Harold Bloom) --- Harold Bloom: The Ultimate Thou 5 (Cavell: Appealing
to Criteria) but Culler says we should avoid that
-Invocation: 1st: I-Thou, present the object as subject, The vocative of apostrophe is
an approach to the event because its animate presuppositions are deeply embedded 5
--- a force 5, an uncalculable force of an event 15 --- the vocative posits a relationship
between two subjects 5 --- 2nd: constitute peoples encounters with the world as
relations between subjects 5 --- 3rd: Apostrophe is a device which the poetic voice uses
to establish with an object a relationship which helps to constitute him, ; Invocation
is a figure of vocation 6 --- poet makes himself as a poetic presence through the
image of voice, nothing figures voice better than the pure O of the voicing , which is
the soul 6 (Whitman: poets convince by their presence ; voice, poetic act, poetic
voice) --- presence, soul, embodiment of poetic tradition and the spirit of poesy 6,
brings out the condition in which the poet can be in dialogue with the universe 6 --4th: To read the apostrophe as a sign of fiction which knows its own fictive feature,
apostrophe is a way of constituing a poetic persona by taking up a special relation to
objects (Paul de Man: activity, the one minds modifications, internalization) 9 --presence and absence, I and you, inside and outside, past and present, a complex play
of mystification and demystification 16 --- Apostrophe is not the representation of the
event but the event itself 15
-Apostrophe must be repressed because this high calling of poetry must not be seen to
depend on a trope, an O 15
-Apostrophe AND Muse?
revealing of the instability of subjectivity, are the only way to recover the intimacy
with the self. If lyric subjectivity is defined by the circuit of communication or the
character of the event that the apostrophe establishes, as Culler says, the circuit of
communication and the character of the event established by the apostrophe in the
postmodern lyric is the paradoxes of desire, which are embodied in the intersubjective
overhearing and the intertextual overhearing. These two redresses of Mills notion of
overhearing characterize Kenistons introduction of the postmodern lyrics
apostrophe.
-Apostrophe of romantic lyrics:
---exalted and ethereal, timeless and transcendent, soaring and ambiguous sense of
transcendence 1 --- affirms proximity 2 --- apostrophe is built on a desire for the
others presence and tends to conceal the impossibility of its desire 8
-Apostrophe of postwar lyrics/postmodern lyrics: allying with a particular historic
moment, class, locale, and mindset ; more mundane, solid, everyday, quotidian, mythshattered, like subterranean, urban, dingy particularity ; the addressee is showing the
limitations of the act of address, so the addressee is defined only by contrasts with
what it is not 1-2 --- affirms separation and absence 2 --- uses apostrophe to
undermine apostrophes conventions, as Culler claims that apostrophe associates the
lyric with all that is most radical, embarrassing, pretentious and mystificatory in the
lyric 2 [the supremacy in Nerudas food?] --- postwar address affirms a historically
particular notion of what apostrophe can and cannot do (intersubjective and
intertextual overhearings) 4 --- Postwar apostrophe is concerned with the
paradoxes of otherness, with the often irreconcilable conflict between the desire
for others to be made present and the essential solitude of the lyric speaker.
Address in this way allows postwar poems to enact and explore questions of
desire 4 ---Postmodern address intensifies the (desire unfulfilled) paradoxes,
downplaying the optimism of traditional apostrophethe faith that the other is
there and can hearby foregrounding the absence of the addressee. This
insistence on absence does not undermine the desire articulated by these poems
rather, the desire is intensified by being revealed to be illusory 8
-Desire and apostrophe // Presence and absence // Self and Other:
---postwar poems often regard the lyric with a desire expressed through and
corresponding to their desire for their addressees embodiment 4 ; The very structure
of apostrophe alludes to the paradoxes of desire 10
---draw attentions to the limitations of confessional assumptions about stability of
subjectivity, and they also reveal the limitations of a postmodern poetics that attempts
to do away altogether with subjectivity ; it is apostrophe, a figure explicitly identified
with lyric, that these poets use to explore and interrogate poetic selfhood 5 ; in
postwar poems, subjectivity is the central but contested preoccupation of the lyric 6
---The emphasis is on the You rather than the lyric I 6 ; postwar lyric often
defines itself in terms of an always evasive other, it emphasizes the necessity of
interrogating selfhood as a fixed or unified category ; it allows the lyric to focus on
the exact relation between lyric and selfhood 6 ; The lyric self exists by means of
and in the service of the poem itself, but also chafes against the generic structure
to which it is captive 6 ; Kenistons emphasis is on the ways that apostrophe allows
postmodern poets to comment on lyric while articulating desires that, enabled by the
capacities and limitations of the genre, transcend lyric 7
---You & the paradoxes of desire: replaces what is known with what is desired, it
requires a leap of faith 8, the speaker and the reader radically suspend disbelief ;
Lacan and Johnson: displacement and elaboration of the desire 8 ; The you of
apostrophe is not merely an externalized or split-off figure for the speaker or
what Culler calls an act of radical interiorization and solipsism, address
provides a way for the speaker of lyric to consider the extent to which others
constitute the self 9 ; Apostrophic poems construct a position from which their
speaker can desire lyric itself 10, so laying out the equivalence between the desire
within the poem (for the other to appear) and the desire enacted by the poem (for
lyric) 10, requires a reader absent from the scenes both of composition and utterance
11 ; Johnsons notion that the cry of Mama! underlying all apostrophe marks not
proximity but the speakers knowledge that proximity cannot be attained 15, Barbara
Johnsons notion of apostrophe emphasizes the failure of direct communication 16 ;
Postmodern address keeps looking back at lyric, hearing it not so much as an
inescapable and therefore oppressive rhythm but as a marker of the desire for
proximity. As a result, postmodern poems affirm neither Fryes disinterestness nor
Tuckers defiant weariness. Rather, these poems affirm the pathos of overhearing:
straining to hear the responses of their apostrophized others, their speakers also
overhear the apostrophes that preceded theirs, which they comprehend and toward
which they yearn but which they can no longer easily inhabit. This pathos itself
contains contradictionsthe term refers both to the unmediated identification of
spectator with what a work of art conveys and to the maudlin or ironic excesses of
that identificationand as such connects the intersubjective with the intertextual.
Overhearing is pathetic in that it seems to unmake the selfs solitude even as it
affirms that solitude. Positing the possibility of identification and union, it insists
on exclusion 12-13 ; Brock-Broido and Lowell insist on the existence of an other,
even if that other cannot be placed or identified ; it requires the speaker to
acknowledge the limitations of speech. But it also affirms the persistence of faith in
an other, even if the other remains a negative presence 21-22
-Turning away from Judge: Quintilian, L.M. Findlay
-Ambivalence, Impreciseness, Instability: Apostrophe sets both the speaker and the
poet into a position of overhearing that affirms the instability of apostrophic utterance
itself 16 (the apostrophized other is fluctuating between listener and poet, the
apostrophe is caught between recollection and defiance 16) --- the presence of an
overhearer reveals the limitations of direct speech 17 --- Brock-Broidos Her Habit
emphasizes the instability of address and hearing is more dramatically affirmed by its
representation of the overhearing of earlier lyric 19
-Tuckers notion of intersubjective overhearing: the scenes of overhearing that
occur within the parameters of the fictional world established by the poem while
diminishing the power and integrity of the speaker, whom Tucker sees as central to
this mode of overhearing 17 ;
-Tuckers notion of intertextual overhearing: the dependence of poetic speech on
the overhearing of various kinds of voices17 ; Tucker puts it in Victorian monologue
and he claims that the Victorian monologue longed for the lyric mode its practitioners
so incessantly, excessively overheard 20 ; the lyric represents a generic longing 20 ;
Brock-Broidos Her Habit evokes, desires, remakes poetry 21
places do not exist but I believe where they ought to exist, that is now, for to be
aware of its existence one needs consciousness, that is the distance between the
subject and the object 10
-Sievers, On Paul Celans Meridian: Meridian is Paul Celans interpretation of his
own poetry, his auto-poetological statement ; the notions of poetry and encounter
-Perloff, Paul Celans Poetic Practice: two mouths of silence, intimate
alienation ; the dead speaking of stones and stars
OED
John Stuart Mill
Northrop Frye
Tucker
Helen Vendler
Barbara Johnson
Ann Keniston
William Waters
Paul de Man
Martin Buber (?)
**Wittgenstein
Wetzel, Wittgensteins Augustine
-inaugural passage, naming, human desire to be understood, temptation, confessional
(root of meaning)confession as a goal to be achieved in getting to know a thing
(idealized clarity)see Wittgensteins attunement, Cavells appealing to criteria ; the
meaning of words ; the be aware is to fictionalize 5 (Augstines fictionalized
memory) ; memory 5 ; Wittgenstein: Augustine gives a particular picture of the
essence of human language 6, the theory of meaning 6 ; desire-sign conjunction 7 ;
assign significance to his desires 7 ; DESIRE 8 (self-awareness, philosophical self,
meaning, desire, communication, transparency, idealism, complete, total, perfect,
absolute) ; question of meaning is different from question of use 8 ; Wittgensteins
critique of Augustine 8-9 ; the infant child, infancy itself seems to belong to no
one (infancy is the unreachable) 11 ; the moment of turning 11, Gods relating him
through a childs voice 12
-Logic, forms of life, meaning (See Frye: logic, grammar, rhetoric) 14
-The philosophical self is a metaphysical subject, the limit of the world 15 --- the
awareness to fictionalize 5 --- Nerudas transcendence as earthly --- turning to the
thing itself (leaving the I out, very different from the Romantic self) --- the
confession of a philosophical self:
17
(visual, apostrophe, no I)
-Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations is a confessional writer 18 --- shift of
focus in confession --- chooses conceptual perplexity over prayerful agony 18
-Confession and Condition 20 --- limits of life
127
-More on Augustine:
128
-Wittgenstein: These words give us a particular picture of the essence of human
language 132 --- not sufficient 132 --- Wittgenstein: Augustines conception of
language is like such an over-simple conceptual of script --- Perhaps there is no
general notion of the meaning of a word. Perhaps that notion surrounds the
working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. Perhaps we
would be better off to abandon any such notion and to cease theorizing the essence of
language altogether 139
-On Augustines picture: 132
-No explanation / self-sufficiency of language: No such thing was in question here,
only how the word five is used 134
-Five Red Apples 135 --- two voices (the explanation seeking voice and the rebuking
voice) --- to be aware / self-conscious is to fictionalize --- to think, to recollect, to
philosophize 135 --- Speech Act: five is a tool we use to do certain things 135
-The words of a language by their nature as tools in use admit of being turned and
twisted rather than being tied as though by steel to particular referents 137
-Apostrophe: express inner understandings in dealing with objects 137
-Apostrophe: neither sentence nor a word, but it is a call 144, part of an activity in the
world, and not any vehicle of representation 144
-Organic: the nature of mastery remains a mystery 138 --- the essence of language nad
our mastery of it eludes us 138, elude our conceptual efforts to specify it 139
-Understanding, meaning, definition: What is the nature of this power that lies at the
heart of our understanding of language? 141 --- No way and no need 144
-Routines and Practices:
142
-Words and World cannot be separated in terms of their essence 143
-Slab, Bring me a slab, Hand me a slab 145
constant reminder of our mortality p71, the yearning for something is in the praise,
theres something missing/detached/not there yet in terms of the distance of time or
physical distance
-the doubleness of limestone, like human p71
-prehistoric happiness 77
Yales Lecture on Auden, Hammer
-it is a poem of praise ; the landscape is porous: A landscape that is Auden's version of
an earthly paradise and our only image of these ultimate promises. Auden manages somehow
here to make us see and feel what the life to come might be like, what it might be like to be
blessed, while still acknowledging that we can only live in and be in and speak in the world
before us, which is the one that Auden remains, throughout his poetry, dedicated to.
Martin Harrison
Happiness
-looking: Poplars 16 ; Summer Rain Front, North Coast 24
-Softness / Eating: theyre softness (a word hard to stomach in poems) 18
-Shape: About Bats 19
-birdlike mood: (birdlike because always moving, / perching, quickly alarmed,
sharp) 25
-Space / time: a gull hovering battling the air its interminable / no less than the part
of the present Im not living in 29, Watching time float, as if it balances every way
while things which move / seem to move nowhere 36
-happiness: A brief downpour opens up a world called happiness / carrying the
thought of you, the touch of you, / when, right now, its absence breaks my heart 36
-Whiteness: if all these would make sense suddenly (in a burst of light) / (in the
white outflow of a breaking wave) (in a quick overjoyed memory of you) 38
-Still-life: incomprehensible longing searching for words, / words turning out later to
be the simplest thoughts: / there on the table, a bunch of yellow and gold
bottlebrushes / leaning away from each other akimbo in a grey Japanese vase 39
Things
// Willard, testimony of the invisible man: William Carlos
Williams, Francis Ponge, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda
[Inter]
Introduction
-Ponge: Truth is not the conclusion of a systemtruth is simply that 9
-Nerudas Impure Poetry 9-10 --- Give me sorrow and I will transform it into
hope --- the message is not just turning something negative into positive --- For art is
not a selection from the world but a transformation of it into something that praises
existence 10 --- Praise, affirmation, intimacy, unity, interpret light --acknowledgment of existence 10
Ch.5: Radiant Bread for the Sun of Man: Pablo Neruda
-Ode to Bread 013
-The answers you find will not look like answers at all but more like experiences,
Neruda writes: I did not come here to solve anything, I came here to sing 84
-he rejoices in the physical acts that bind us together and to the earth: walking,
eating, sleeping, making love. For he cannot speak and be heard unless his hearers
have this readiness, too 91-92
-Odes (start from p92) --- love 93
-Nerudas description is to make you remember what you already know as if you did
not know it 96 --- They start by making the thing unfamiliar to you and end by
making it new 96, but Neruda is no imagist. Seeing a thing well is not enough; he
wants you to love it 96 --- Consciousness: when you stand in the universe of the
elephant and ask what man is, you will not find him the conqueror of nature he
believes himself to be 98 --- Neruda loses himself in things 99: The innocence of
the elephant is the innocence all nature has when you step outside human progress to
see it. It is an Eden that needs death to continue; yet it is still Eden, because the idea
of sin makes no sense here. Nature is both change and the state of grace that lets you
liv in the whole of life rather than in our sector of it. Like the ocean, it is always
washing the dead ashore; yet it absorbs them again so completely that Neruda asks,
Where do the griefs go? 99 --- He is lost in things!
-A Light from the Sea: bring us to see, in the end, / the sea moving, wave upon
wave, / and flower after flower, all the earth 99
-Subject-Object 100-101 --- he celebrates bread for being itself, not for being eaten
103 --- The I becomes we as Neruda no longer uses things to carry his private
emotions 103
-In Odes, Neruda says that things choose him to say their lives 101
-Nerudas accusing himself of his earlier poetry 101
-Poetry is not found by separating things but by bringing them together, in a blind
extension of love 102
-The Elemental Odes are Nerudas hymns to being alive 106 --- social hunger --Neruda makes it clear that our most intense experience of impermanence is not death
but our own isolation among the living 106
Ch.6 Legacy of the Invisible Man
-In the kingdom of man, religion is, as Rilke says, a direction of the heart. The artist,
like the saint, shows us how to love. To love, one must make ones self invisible 111
-When you start from the faith that there are no ideas but in things, you enter a world
of such strangeness and disorder that language itself seems utterly divorced from what
it has always described. To be transparent means to have an extraordinary negative
ability that lets you suspend all the ideas you live by 112
-Things: change from useful to mysterious 113 --- This change from useful to
mysterious does not happen in the world but in man himself, whenever he stops
treating the thing as an object and respects it as a presence 113 --- Presence: Gabriel
Marcel: When a being is granted to me as a presence, I cannot treat him as if he were
placed before me. The relationship arises between us surpasses my simple awareness
of him. For me he exists in an immediacy beyond all imagination mediation 113, To
the invisible man, nothing is an object and everything is a presence 113, Our
tragedy, says Williams, is our inability to communicate with one another, locked
within ourselves as we are and unable to utter the simplest things of importance 114,
you kneel, height becomes depth 114 --- Possibilities of We
3
-poetic activity, poetic practice, poetic parameters 4, open the boundary between
poetry and poetic activity --- honoring poesis in its broader etymological sense of
making 4 --- its acknowledged collective and social space is narrow 4 --- lyric has not
become an object of popular and mass culture studies 5:
5
--- larger enjoyment and engagement with the process of making and cultivating new
social practices of knowledge 6
8 [Aura]
-subject-object
8
-the uncanny in the poetic 10 ; poetic language and everyday life 10
11
-reconcile the aesthetic work and the aesthetic experience, Kant and Marx:
14
2
-Culler takes the lyric back to the Greek and Latin Literature: a song sung to the lyre,
lyric address, call to be calling, different from taking lyric as dramatic monologue
(speaker, situation, addressee, lyric speaker as a character in novel), poetic language
makes things happen, the lyric present, the distinctive lyric temporality, the patterning
of language (Frypes babble and doodle), lyric is a linguistic event/a foregrounding of
language, rhythm and bodily experience of temporality (establishes a condition of
experience/figures the givenness)
-Jacksons Dickinsons Misery
2
-Lyric: conceptless, non-conceptual lyric intensity
-Jacksons Dickinsons Misery
-Lyric Studies participates in the renewal of lyric ideology ; new ways of thinking
about lyric studies
-lyric and culture:
2
-Reading a poem is a sensorium 4
-Possibility: mere experience as a more radical possibility than revelation 4
-Qualia 4 --- non-representational and non-cognitive
-Dickinson
-No conceptualization, subjective modality of experience:
5
-specialness to phenomenal experience
***
// Hunter, Lyric and its Discontents
// Burt, What is This Thing Called Lyric
-lyricization
-the lyric poetry that we see in the past is a modern creation
-lists out different definitions of lyric by different lyric critics
-the analysis of lyrics can reformulate the definition of lyric 5
-human presence, to have an experience 8, poetry and experience 11 (ref. Izenberg),
lyric as a mode rather than lyric as a genre 7,12
-Majorie Perloff:
8
-Lyric and Things:
8
-Qualia and Kant 9
-Historical nature of lyric is more important than looking at a definition of lyric 11
-Stanley Fish, Definition of Poetry, Recipe
-Inhabitation, Intimacy, in extension by us 15
-Opens the impossibility 16
-Elusiveness of lyric as a genre:
16
-Persons 17 --- lyric poetry disembodies 18 --- Barbara Johnson: the question of what
human being is raised and explicated by lyric cannot be answered by lyric
16
2
-The modern invention of lyric is always attributed to Romanticism 2
-Hegels Aesthetics: lyric as the pure representation of subjectivity and therefore to
further the spirit of the age 3 (the poet can move civilization forward in his perfect
self-expression 3) --- 19th C, lyric is a genre ever more a perfect idea rather than an
imperfect practice 3
Others