A Conspectus of Poetry Part I Elder Olson 1 Most of us become acquainted with something called poetry in our early childhood. We meet it as a Mother Goose rhyme, a jingle to remember the months by, a counting-off rhyme, sing-song to be recited while play- ing certain games, or as the words of a song. We are told that all these are ‘poems,” and we soon learn to recognize other “poems” on our own, through their also being in verse and rhyme. At first we tend to be pleased with almost any verses, so long as the rhythm is emphatic or sprightly enough; later we become more discriminating and begin to think of some poems as good, others as bad; later still we begin to consider the subject of the poem or its diction or something more than the mere verse, and to be pleased or displeased by these as well. Our conception of poetry alters accordingly so that we are not too greatly surprised when we are told, at some point in our education, that there is a distinction between poetry and verse, that, indeed, verse is not essential to a poem. Presently we are told about the special forms of poetry, such as ballad and epic and lyric, as well as about the “nature” of poetry itself; and “laws and rules” of its composition, the criteria by which it is to be judged; and most of us accept these assertions without bothering to puzzle over them, much less question them. Even if we do notice dis- crepancies among definitions or rules or criteria we are not too much troubled; by now we have unconsciously dismissed certain aspects of poetry as matters of mere taste or opinion, and so tend to be pleased with discrepant statements as reflecting interesting variations in taste and opinion. By now, too, we have read and even studied a good many 159160 Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, I poems; and all in all, we perhaps feel that we know all that is necessary about poetry, and that some people, surely, know everything possible about it. In short, we are much like the Athenians, who knew all about love and virtue and justice until Socrates asked them a few questions; and unless we ourselves fall into the hands of some such shrewd and persis- tent questioner, or decide to do some diligent thinking on our own, we shall never realize that our supposed knowledge is chiefly unwarranted assumption, and that our conception of poetry seems clear and adequate only because we never examined it closely. We need not blame ourselves too greatly, however: experts them- selves are hardly in a better condition. For in fact a great many—perhaps most—of the important questions about poetry have never been settled. What, precisely, is poetic form or structure? How does it function— indeed, what is the function of poetry? What is it that makes poetic diction poetic? What is the nature or essence of poetry, and how is it to be defined? All of these crucially important questions remain, after many centuries of discussion, matters of controversy. There is even the problem, to begin with, of what is to be designated as the poem, of where and in what way it may be said to exist. Suppose, for example, we have agreed that Keats’ “To Autumn” is a poem; what can we point to as the poem “To Autumn”? Where is it? Asked that question in its customary meaning, we should answer, “In that red book on the third shelf,” and be perfectly right. But strictly speaking the red book on the third shelf contains merely a printed copy of a particular text which a particular editor has based upon a particular draft of the poem, and we meant nothing more than that by our answer. The book certainly does not contain the poem itself, for the poem existed before the book did, and would continue to exist if the book were destroyed. Neither is the poem the manuscript of the poet. That is merely a tran- scription of the poem into written signs, necessary neither for the com- Elder Olson, poet, critic, and Distinguished Service Professor in the department of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of six volumes of verse, including Collected Poems and Olson’s Penny Arcade, and of numerous works of literary criticism. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Poetic Process” (Autumn 1975) and “On Value Judgments in the Arts” (September 1974), the title essay of his most recent collection of criticism. Among the many awards which he has received are the Academy of American Poets award, the Longview Foundation award, the Emily Clark Balsh award and, for Olson’s Penny Arcade, the Society of Midland Authors award. Both his poetry and his criticism are the subject of a book by Thomas E. Lucas. Part II of “A Conspectus of Poetry” will appear in the Winter issue of Critical Inquiry.Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977161 position of the poem nor for its transmission to others, for poets often compose in their heads, and poems have often been transmitted orally. Is the poem, then, something that existed in the mind of the poet? If so, how can it still exist? In the minds of readers? Surely the poem would exist even though no one read it; otherwise someone would have to read it before the poet could write it, and it would at some times exist and at others not, according as people did or did not happen to read or re- member it, and so on. Most critics would dismiss such questions as unnecessarily abstruse and metaphysical, since there is general agreement that a poem exists as some kind of meaningful organization of words. A more important question, they would hold, is that of what differentiates the poem from scientific statements or orations or even ordinary discourse, since these also involve the meaningful organization of words. Is the poem “poetic” primarily because of its content or subject matter, in the sense of its “meaning,” or primarily because of certain properties of its language? Contemporary critical opinion is sharply divided on this point. Some critics favor subject matter, like Maud Bodkin, who finds that poetry is effective through its attachment to “archetypal” human experiences; others favor language, like William Empson, who finds that poetry is effective through the rich ambiguities of its diction. Critics of either group can discuss something which they call “poetic form” or “poetic structure,” since the subject matter can always be discovered to reveal patterns of experience, structures of symbols, or organizations of themes, and the language, similarly, to reveal structures of metaphors, ambiguities, or paradoxes. Broadly speaking, the position of neither group is without basis, for the meaningful organization of language implies both some principle of organization in the meaning and some principle of organization in the language. Indeed, there can be no doubt that a single poem may contain many different structures. Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress,” for example, is a composition in meaningful language, and as such has a grammatical structure. It contains syllogistic reasoning, and thus has a logical struc- ture. It involves an effort at persuasion, and so has a rhetorical structure. It is, moreover, a composition in verse, and so has a prosodic structure. Many other structures may be, and indeed have been, found in it— structures of ideas, metaphors, symbols, images, and so on. Each of these can be seen as a whole of some kind, made up of parts which function in some way within it; but these wholes, themselves differing from one another, will consist of different parts which function differently. The simultaneous presence of a multiplicity of structures in a single object is not in itself the source of difficulty, and is by no means peculiar to art. A plant or an animal can also be considered—because indeed it is—such a multiplicity, single object though it is. A cell, a vein, a finger, a hand, an arm, an eye is a whole; the nervous system is a whole, the skeleton is a162 Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, I whole, the venous system is a whole, the man is a whole; and all of these wholes have different parts which function differently. For whole and part are relative terms; as we stipulate different wholes, we shall have different parts with different functions. There is nothing strange, thus, in the fact that critics supposedly looking at one and the same poem should see different things, that they should discover different structures and analyze these differently. Nor would mere difference of concern constitute conflict here, any more than a difference of concern produces conflict between osteology and myology except that, unlike students of these branches of anatomy, crit- ics tend to claim that the structure with which they are concerned is “the” structure. Since this is a primary point of dissent, it is worth our while to observe that it is one thing to assert that a poem contains a certain structure, and quite another to assert that this is “the” structure of poetry—that is, the one which makes any and every poem a poem. The first assertion, we may assume, is a matter of fact, provable by inspection of a particular poem. The second, however, can only be a matter of hypothesis. We cannot by inspection of a particular poem prove that its structure or its qualities must necessarily be shared by other poems which we have not inspected. Such conjectures would be risky even in the natural sciences, in which many things may be said to be “necessarily” thus-and-so. Hypotheses as to the general nature of poetry are not merely un- certain in themselves, but also, as a cause of conflict, tend to generate other uncertainties. They tend, moreover, to exclude from consider- ation any poems, or any aspects of poetry other than those they have formulated. Constructed upon the basis of the examination of a rela- tively small body of poetry, they determine both the interpretation and the mode of analysis of all other poems, on the apparent assumption that all poetry is homogeneous, and that what is true of a portion of it is bound to be true of the whole, A hypothesis in science is valuable as a means of extending knowledge by going beyond knowledge by guesswork; but a scientific hypothesis is always presumed to be verifiable or falsifiable by forthcoming evidence. Artistic hypotheses of the kind we have been discussing, on the contrary, rule out any dissident evidence and evaluate consonant evidence to the degree in which it bears them out. Thus, if something does not have the characteristic which the hypothesis declares “poetic,” it is not a poem and need not be considered; if it does have the characteristic, it is good in the degree to which it has it. This is hardly scientific procedure. A hypothesis always presents some- thing which should be the conclusion to be proven true or false, by evidence still to be discovered; it cannot, thus, be given more authority than the evidence. Is there an alternative course to one which sets up hypotheses as to the nature of poetry and then proceeds to illustrate them? Happily,Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977 163 there is, Rather than beginning with the hypothesis we may begin with the fact, and let what may emerge. That is, rather than beginning with some notion of the nature of poetry, we may begin with individual poems and discover what we may of their nature or form. This proce- dure evidently involves four phases: (1) examination of the characteris- tics of individual poems, (2) discovery, by comparison with other poems, of likenesses and differences, (3) decision as to which of these likenesses and differences are relevant to poetic form, and (4) the statement of form itself. Once we have discovered a given form, we shall be in a position to discuss the principles underlying the construction of such form, the various possibilities of such construction, and what constitutes excellence in a given form. And we must be prepared to accept what our data indicate. Thus, if it turns out that each poem is unique in form, no general statements—of whatever degree of generality—will be possible. In that case it will be completely impossible to formulate an “art” of poetry; an art of poetry will be a mere chimera. If it turns out that there are several distinct forms, there will be several arts; if many forms, many arts; if one form, one art. We must question our data and accept their answer, not answer for them. If our question itself contains any ambiguity, however, we cannot expect a precise answer. Unfortunately, the term “form” is extremely ambiguous. We can remove that ambiguity only by stating what we mean by it. Among the many senses of the term there is only one which here interests us: form in the sense of that which makes something a certain kind of thing. This implies first, that we must speak somehow of all the elements which enter into it, not merely of some. For example, if poetry involves both subject matter and language, we must deal with both. This implies, secondly, that besides making our account all-inclusive, we must make it something ultimate. To illustrate this point: if someone were to propose to you that the form of man, the human animal, was “an organization of electrons,” I think you would object that something further was in- volved. An organization of atoms, then? No, for this applies to stones and other things. Of organic cells, then? Or beyond these, even, of blood, veins, cartilage, bone? But we include all these when we merely say “animal.” And if man is the only animal who is rational, and if “rational” includes in itself possessing sensation and memory and imagi- nation, then “rational animal” is the statement of the form—or in other words the definition—of man. By analogy, the form of the poem is that toward which all other forms or structures tend and in which they are included; and the “function” of the poem is that toward which all other functions tend, and in which they are included as a whole. The form of the poem is its subsumptive form, the function of the poem is its sub- sumptive function. Once, therefore, we have found in a poem the form to which all others tend, we shall have solved our problem.164 — Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, I Proceeding in this fashion, empirically rather than hypothetically, inductively rather than hypothetically, has certain disadvantages. It is not so easy as the other, for commencing with a general principle and applying this to particulars is always easier than working from many particulars toward the principle. Perhaps, also, it is not so attractive, for it cannot at once offer some grand insight into the nature of all poetry. On the other hand, it offers one crucial advantage of its own: the possi- bility that whereas the contrary method has always ended in uncertainty, this may suggest a few things of which we may be certain, if not about poetry in general, at least about poems in particular. 2 In things that exist by nature one may easily observe that some possess relatively simple, others relatively complex structures. No one doubts that the amoeba is among the simpler organisms, the frog among the more complex, and man among the most complex. It seems reason- able to suppose that a similar greater or lesser complexity should exist also in the arts; and this supposition is easily verified. Considered simply as kinds of structure, the lyric is manifestly less complex than epic or tragedy. The lyric usually consists of a single utterance, usually short. Epic and tragedy usually involve many characters, in manifold interac- tion in many incidents, uttering many speeches. Between these ex- tremes, moreover, we find such forms as one-act plays, epic episodes, and the like, obviously more complex than the lyric, and less complex. than epic or tragedy. It seems that it might be possible, thus, to arrange the structures of poetry in the order of increasing complexity, from the most simple to the most complex, and to discuss them in that order. And. it might be advantageous to do so, for the simpler would be easier to consider, and besides, this step-by-step procedure should make clear, among other things, the relation of complexity to form. What, then, is the “simplest” form of poetry? While there is no necessary correlation of mere length with complexity of structure, it is clear on the other hand that something may be too brief to be very complex, just as one may not be able to say all one wishes within a ten-word telegram. Granted that a great poet may convey much in a few words, and that, similarly, he might produce structures of considerable complexity within that limit, it is also true that Homer could not have written the liad, or Shakespeare, Hamlet, in ten words or less. It seems reasonable, thus, to look for the simpler forms of poetry in some area of discourse in which expression is severely restricted. Naturally, one thinks at once of the more stringent verse-forms, such as the haiku, the tanka, the rondel, or the rondeau, but many forms of communication such as telegrams and notices also demand great terseness.Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977165 Here are some terse compositions— 1. On THE DeaTH oF Caesar Julius Caesar Was assassinated in Forty-four B.c. 25 On Bones A bone consists of Organic and inorga- Nic materials. 3. NoTICcE Smoking and spitting Are strictly prohibited On these premises a. Sprinc Day Departing, the spring day Lingers Where there is water 5 THe Eacie With crooked hands The eagle Clasps the crag ‘The first three are in haiku form (at least insofar as they contain five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five again in the last). The fourth and fifth are not. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether anyone would identify nos. 1, 2, and 3 as poems. Some people might hesitate to say definitely whether nos, 4 and 5 are poems, out of general un- certainty; but if they were assured that the group contains at least one poem, they would certainly pick one or the other and perhaps both. As a matter of fact, no. | is a sentence from a history, no. 2 is from a textbook of anatomy, no. 3 is a notice posted on the ferry shuttling between Hong Kong and Kowloon, no. 4 is a translation of a famous haiku by Issa, and no. 5 is an adaptation of the first line of Tennyson’s poem The Eagle. Since, we may assume, most people would distinguish between the first three and the last two, on what grounds might one do so? The matter of verse does not apply here; all are in verse of a sort, and the non-poems are in stricter verse-form than the poems. The words which make up all five pieces are, as mere vocabulary, neither poetic nor non- poetic. Modern poets have abundantly demonstrated that there is no such thing as a “poetic vocabulary”; any word in the dictionary (as well as a few which are usually omitted) may conceivably be used in a poem—166 Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, 1 indeed, even algebraic equations and chemical formulae have been used effectively. Similarly, it would be naive to base the distinction on mere subject matter—on what the compositions are “about.” Beautiful poems have been written about manhole covers and telegraph wires and, in- deed, subjects far less promising than smoking and spitting. We need hardly trouble, besides, to talk about the first three as facts, the last two as universal; the second and third clearly entail universality, while the last two entail facts—no. 4, for example, involves a fact of optics. Moreover, any of the non-poems might conceivably enter into poems as parts; it is only as wholes that they are non-poems. Of course, it is what something is as a whole that determines what it is. And no. 1 is a non-poem, not because it involves a fact, but because it has no purpose beyond the conveying of the fact, and because any number of other sentences might have served this function as well. For example, it makes no difference to this function whether we say this in verse or not—the verse adds nothing whatsoever, and is in fact a distraction—or whether we say “Julius Caesar” or “Gaius Julius Caesar” or “Great Caesar,” “was assassinated,” “fell by the hands of assassins,” etc. Any syntax, any choice of words, any order that will convey the fact will do. Its form, thus, is that of a proposition—a proposition being a sig- nificant combination of thoughts or of words, proposed for consider- ation in terms of truth or falsity. Its grammatical form—that of a declara- tive sentence—is wholly subservient to its logical purpose. Were it false, it would have no value whatsoever—which is what a history instructor would mean in marking it zero. Notice, too, that we do not consider the tone in which the statement is supposedly uttered, or the character, emotion, circumstances, etc., of the speaker, or to whom and in what circumstances this was said. In ordinary discourse, even, such considerations would be relevant—might even qualify or, in the case of irony, reverse the meaning of the state- ment. Here all such considerations are irrelevant; the meaning is im- mediate and final, and is evaluated only in terms of truth and falsity. All of these observations about no. | apply to no, 2 as well; the only difference between them is that the former is a historical, the latter a scientific, proposition. No. 3 is a different matter: it looks like a state- ment; it is really a command. That is, while it is a declarative sentence, it does not constitute a proposition. You are not supposed to consider whether it is true or false; you are supposed not to smoke or spit. The manner of utterance is relevant here, insofar as the command might be politely or harshly put, and the source of the command is also involved, although only in respect to the authority behind it, the strictness or laxity of its enforcement, and the nature of the penalty for disobeying it. (Sometimes these are included in the command, as “By order of the Police Dept.,” “Maximum penalty $1000.00 fine and ten years im-Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977167 prisonment,” and so on.) While it makes statements, they are only such as entailed in an act prescribing something to be done or not done. The proper response to them is not a statement, but an action complying with their specifications. Their final form is not statement but action; their meanings are subsumed under act. And here we seem to have stumbled upon something that is very often forgotten: the final end of language has not been achieved when meaning has been conveyed. Language obviously reaches beyond mean- ing to constitute action. A public speech, for example, is not merely the public utterance of sentences with meaning, and it has not achieved its end when the audience has grasped its meaning; it is an attempt at persuasion, and therefore an act. We act upon one another constantly by means of verbal actions such as ordering, requesting, teaching, insulting, complimenting, threatening, promising, etc. Since these are actions, more than grammatical or logical considerations are relevant to them. We judge grammatical structures by intelligibility, logical propositions by their truth or falsity. A speech which incites a nation to revolution is not judged merely in terms of its intelligibility and correctness, or in terms of the truth of its statements, or even the persuasiveness of its rhetoric; its grammatical, logical, and rhetorical structures are all subsumed under its structure as an act. And the considerations appropriate to it are those which we apply also to action. From the point of view of the threatened government this is as treasonable an act as a physical attack upon officials or installations; and the adjectives applied to it, on either side, would include those appropriate to the characterization of action. The charac- ter of the agent of this act, his motive, and all other circumstances of action would be relevant considerations, just as in any other action If speech, then, may constitute action, it is also possible for it to simulate action. To take a parallel: since the human face is bounded by certain lines or planes, it is possible by the reproduction of these lines or planes to draw or sculpt a face; similarly, since an angry or a grief- stricken man will tend to do certain things by means of speech (e.g., denounce or lament) and to use a certain tone of voice, certain rhythms, etc,, it is possible by reproducing these to simulate the speech of an angry or grieving man. Where a particular is simulated, with the intention of reproducing it as accurately as possible, such simulation is merely copy- ing, and is judged by its faithfulness to the particular facts. But it is also possible to simulate kinds of things, without reference to any one particu- Jar; and such simulation differs from copying as, let us say, a sculpture of a hand or foot differs from a cast of the hand or foot of a particular ‘person. Between such simulated activity and real activity there is a clear difference. The angry man speaks and acts in a given way because he is a man ofa particular character suffering a certain emotion. The simulated action is the reverse of this. The simulated speech and action are of a168 Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, I given order because an angry man of a certain character would do or say such and such things. Moreover, a particular fact has been replaced by a general probability, In addition, we are now affected by the simulation, not by the reality; and this is a very important matter. We shall examine it later; but for the moment you may grasp something of its importance by consider- ing that an audience will enjoy a tragedy, which involves simulated ac- tion, whereas they would be repelled and horrified if the same events were really taking place before them. But we are wandering too far from our examples. Suppose we con- sider no. 4. Departing, the spring day Lingers Where there is water. This is a sentence; but it is more than a sentence. It is a statement of an observed optical phenomenon which might well lead to scientific investigation of it, and as such is a true proposition about the phenome- non. It is more than that, too; for certainly we should feel that we had not exhausted the possibility of discussing it if we talked simply of its grammatical correctness and intelligibility, or its truth. As a matter of fact, as a scientific observation it is not entirely satisfactory; it contains certain elements which, from a scientific point of view, are irrelevant. For example, from the point of view of optics, it does not matter whether it is a spring day which is departing, or whether the reflecting surface is water, and of course the day does not really “linger”—this is a metaphor for the propagation of light. If we refined the details of this composition merely to what is of scientific import, we should end up with bare state- ment about light and reflecting surfaces, perhaps even with a formula. ‘And so perhaps we should have gained something. But we should have lost something else: the sense of a human being observing the close of a spring day and comparing the continuing brightness of the water to a lingering-on of day. It is not a mere “experience” which is communi- cated: it is a certain mental activity of noticing and comparing. And to this mental activity nothing in the piece is irrelevant. And it should be clear that the piece is a depiction—that is, it offers a likeness, a simulation—of the activity in question. The technique of de- piction is fairly evident: Issa has selected one crucial detail which sets a whole landscape before us, one thing which activates the imagination to supply all the rest. We visualize the encroaching darkness, the last brightness in the sky (a spring sky), the still-bright watery places, and by implication, the darkened places where there is no water. The compari- son of the closing day to someone departing and lingering is itself sig- nificant; it is the kind of comparison which would occur only to someone in a tender, melancholy mood, someone regretful at the day's ending,Critical Inquiry — Autumn 1977169. someone who therefore endows the day with his own emotion, and imag- ines it as lingering, reluctant to depart. Quite possibly the poem contains many other subtleties; but if this very general analysis has been correct, we may make certain inductions. First, apparently a poem may be a simulation of, a likeness of, or, in Aris- totle’s word, an imitation of human activity. Second, this poem presents a single comparison, indivisible as such because it contains no constituent comparisons; quite possibly, therefore, the simplest poems present in- divisible activities. Third, we are affected by the simulated activity as it is presented to us, not as it exists in nature. Finally, while probability is entailed, it is not natural probability, which includes bare possibility (that i is, coin- cidence or chance), but poetic probability, since the activity is univer- salized (i.e., restricted to what a kind of person might necessarily or probably feel, think, or do—not what a particular person had felt or thought or done). Looking about, we easily find other examples of poems dealing with single indivisible activities. For instance: Dirce Stand close around, ye Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat conveyed Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old, and she a shade. O WesTERN WIND O western wind, when wilt thou blow The small rain down can rain? Christ, that my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again! ON SEEING A Hair OF Lucrezia BorGIA Borgia, thou once wert almost too august And high for adoration; now thou’rt dust; All that remains of thee these plaits unfold, Calm hair meandering in pellucid gold. We must not confuse grammatical simplicity here with poetic. “O Western Wind” is divisible into two sentences, the Borgia poem into three clauses; but we are discussing indivisible activities. “Dirce” is really a dramatized hyperbole: the girl was so lovely that the lover cannot believe that death has destroyed her beauty; she must still be so beautiful that170 Elder Olson A Gonspectus of Poetry, 1 Charon, old as he is, must desire her; therefore the lover begs the shades to stand about her, lest Charon see her. The activity, it would seem, is a single request. The activity in “O Western Wind” is a single wish for spring to come so that the lover can return home to his beloved. The activity in the Borgia poem is a single act of reflection on the difference between what Borgia was and what now remains of her. Were we to search for further examples, we should find that every activity of mind—recollecting, recognizing, perceiving, inferring, ex- pecting, imagining, and the like, as well as every emotional response— can be found represented among poems which depict a single activity. A number of questions arise about them. Do they all have the same effect? What makes them effective, or ineffective? Is this the same for all or does it differ with different kinds? What gives them their unity and com- pleteness? At first sight there would seem to be a bewildering multiplicity of kinds, so that one scarcely knows how to begin. But a little reflection shows that the problem is less complicated than it appears. Set “O West- ern Wind” beside the Borgia poem, and a distinct difference is at once evident. The lover in the former desires ardently to go home to his beloved; we as readers are moved by his outcry, but we do not ourselves desire to return to his beloved. In the Borgia poem, on the other hand, the speaker is contemplating the difference between what Borgia was and what now remains of her, and we find ourselves contemplating this also; presumably, then, we feel what he feels. It appears thus that our response is either similar to or different from that of the speaker in the poem; if we ask the reason for this similarity, the answer is at once evident. Where the causes of the speaker's emotion are similar to those which cause ours, the emotions will be similar; where they are different, different. Thus, where the causes of the emotion of the speaker have been adequately and fully rendered in the poem, and where we ourselves are subjected to these causes only, we shall respond in a manner similar to his: in all other cases there must be some difference of response. In “O Western Wind,” for example, the causes of the lover's longing—his love for his beloved and his home—are not the causes of our feelings; we respond to his passionate yearning. In the Borgia poem, however, the cause of the speaker's emotion as well as of ours is con- templation of the difference between what Borgia was and what now remains; thus we feel as he does. But here we must consider more specifically what we mean by “causes.” If we take the emotion of anger as an example, certain thingsCritical Inquiry Autumn 1977171 are quite evident. In the first place, we are more readily disposed to become angry when we are in what is called, for that very reason, an irascible mood or frame of mind; in fact, unless we are in such a frame of mind, we do not become angry. Second, we do not become angry at anyone and everyone; for example, we do not become angry with some- one who does everything we wish exactly as we wish it done. Third, even if we are disposed to feel anger, and if there is someone present with whom we might feel angry, we shall not feel angry unless we are consider- ing some aspect of that person or his behavior which angers us. Thus there are evidently three factors in anger: (1) a frame of mind disposing us to it; (2) an object at which we feel it; (3) some ground on which we feel it. Running through other emotions, pity, fear, envy, and the like, we find that all contain these factors, for every emotion is felt about some object, on some ground, in some frame of mind. Since the emotions cannot be produced without these factors, and since these factors in their differences must determine what emotions will ensue, these factors must be considered the causes of the emotions. Emotions, as states of consciousness involving pleasure and pain, have as their ground either some sensation or memory or some image of imagination or some opinion. A sudden loud noise startles or alarms us, an imagined or remembered scene arouses our desire or aversion, an opinion that we have been slighted angers us. Moreover, these mental conditions have certain bodily conditions attendant upon them, and the relation is reciprocal: the emotion produces the bodily condition, the bodily condition disposes us to the emotion. Thus, for instance, a certain species of fear produces a certain weakness and debility of the body, and conversely such a bodily weakness and debility makes us more suscepti- ble to such fear. This reciprocity is well known; everyone knows, for instance, that a spirited army marches with animation, and animated marching produces a spirited army (hence the spirited character of mili- tary music). It follows from all this that, leaving aside considerations of sound and rhythm for the moment, we shall feel an emotion similar to that felt by the person in the poem when our frame of mind, the object of emo- tion, and the aspect of it considered are similar, or when we have been induced to form some image of the emotion itself. There are, then, the following ways of producing such similarity: (1) the object of emotion, in its proper aspect, is set before us, or (2) some similar of it, or (3) the required frame of mind is induced in us, or (4) some similar of it, or (5) we have been induced to entertain some notion of the bodily condition which is related to the emotion, or (6) some similar of it, or (7) of the emotion itself, or (8) its similar. Doubtless this sounds very forbidding; nevertheless, it is what poets do. Thus (1) in the Borgia poem the character sets directly before us the object of his emotion—to wit, the difference between her as she was and172 Elder Olson A Gonspectus of Poetry, I what now remains of her. (2) The Homeric simile illustrates the use of the similar of the object; Homer will describe a raging lion and then ascribe its characteristics to one of his heroes. (3) and (4) While very brief poems generally utilize objects of emotion which do not require specific frames of mind, longer ones sometimes establish them elaborately. See the beginnings of “St. Agnes’ Eve,” “Rugby Chapel” for (3); and “Lycidas” (4) for similars. (5) Both the bodily condition and its similar are illustrated in the opening lines of Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense” (bodily condition) and (6) “as though of hemlock I had drunk / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk” (similar). (7) Since the direct statement of the emotion is not very effec- tive, this is usually done by an image or through signs, i.e., such actions and mental or physical effects as would betoken the emotion; the use of signs will be discussed and illustrated subsequently. (8) As an example of an emotion expressed through its similars, see the first stanza of Chris- tina Rossetti’s “A Birthday”: “My heart is like a singing bird / Whose nest is in a watered shoot; / My heart is like an appletree / Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit.” The following diagram may clarify these matters. Person in poem (8) Similar of (7) (7) Image of Emotion (as mental pain or pleasure) (8) Frame of mind (1) Object in proper aspect a“ Emotion (4) Similar of (3) < | ~ (2) Similar of (1) (5) Bodily condition (6) Similar of (5)Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977173 5 When the cause of an emotion is a sensory perception, or a memory of one, or an imaginary one, it is represented in the poem by an image. Images have been confused in contemporary criticism with symbols and metaphors until the terms have become almost interchangeable; but it is useful to distinguish them, and indeed they are quite distinct. Metaphor is always verbal; the name of one thing is transferred (metapherein) to another on the ground of a supposed likeness. Symbols may or may not be verbal; the American flag, for example, is a symbol, although it is a physical thing. Things, qualities, shapes, actions, etc., may all be symbols: for example, a flag symbolizes a nation; the color blue, the Virgin Mary; the cross, Christ or Christianity; genuflection, an act of worship. When something is a symbol, its name also takes on symbolic significance; but what constitutes something as a symbol is that the idea of something else is, for whatever reason, substituted for the idea of itself. Thus a cloth on a stick, with a certain design on it, has as its proper concept a cloth on a stick, with a certain design on it, and nothing more; when it has been adopted as the flag of a nation, the idea of the nation supplants the idea of a mere cloth on a stick. Once something has become a symbol, it not only stands for the concept of what it symbolizes, but inherits the emo- tional associations, perhaps even the authority, of the symbolized, and may even represent the latter in action. In metaphor, name replaces name, and the things remain distinct. In symbolism, concept replaces concept, the thing symbolically “be- comes” something else. An image is different from either; it is a con- struct of the imagination—a phantasmal synthesis of remembered feelings or sensations produced by an act of the imagination of the reader as determined by the poem. Textbooks on poetry commonly classify imagery as visual, au: tory, etc., according to the five senses, and some include kinesthet imagery; but such classification is pointless and perhaps misleading. Any human experience may be imagined as an experience: and anything so imagined is an image. Thus it is possible, not merely to imagine anything ‘one might perceive by the external senses (sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell) but also to imagine anything from the feeling of fever or chill or a heart attack or a stomachache to that produced by scientific discovery (‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When some new planet swims into his ken; / Or like stout Cortez . ..”). In short, any experience of man, real or imaginary, may be represented by an image; for the image is precisely whatever we may imagine. 6 An image, as stated earlier, is a phantasmal synthesis of re-174 Elder Olson A Gonspectus of Poetry, I membered feelings or sensations, produced by an act of the imagination* of the reader, as determined by the poem. As determined by the poem: that is, neither as gratuitously introduced at the whim of the reader, nor as intended rather than achieved by the poet. There are readers who at the mere mention of “bride” are eager to imagine an entire church wedding, and there are poets who in mentioning “bride,” expect their readers to imagine such a wedding. The question is one of a response relevant to something actually achieved in the poem. On the other hand, an act of the imagination of the reader is necessary, since there are readers who do not perform this act, just as there are readers who read without troubling to understand the meaning of what they read (indeed, these are much the same sort). Further, an image is constructed out of remembered feelings or sensations. For example, in "Spring Day” the reader is required to supply his own remembrances of a spring sky. In other words, the materials of an image are remembered sensations and feelings. Where there is no experience of any kind supplying such materials, either no image or an inappropriate one will result. Thus someone blind from birth cannot imagine colors. The image is synthesized out of these materials, i.e., combined into a whole which is a phantasm—that is, a mental presenta- tion of something, not as an idea merely conceived, but as experienced or felt. To grasp this distinction, notice the difference between having an idea of a triangle and actually visualizing one. Since an image is produced by an act of the imagination, we must note certain limitations of the imaginative faculty, for it cannot be asked to do what is impossible to it. Sensation can simultaneously present numerable details in innumerable relations with extreme minuteness and precision. The imagination can handle only a very few elements in very simple relation, and can do so only vaguely and generally. A thousand skillful painters, told to represent precisely what they saw of the same scene as viewed from the same position, could—everything else being equal—produce pictures which would differ as little as color pho- tographs. Told to paint the most precise and vivid image in poetry, they would probably never produce two identical pictures The materials of an image must not only be few and drawn from experience; they must also be compatible with each other and with the whole into which they enter. Thus, no image will result when the mate- rials are contradictory to, or inconsistent with, one another, as related to the whole. For example, it is impossible to imagine a round square Moreover, since the whole imagined is always a single perception, the materials must be such as are consistent with a single perception. For example, a popular novelist wrote “They increased their speed until their car was a tan streak beneath them”; but a speeding car would seem 1, We are speaking here throughout not of imagination in its broadest sense, but in the sense of an image-making faculty.Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977175 a streak only to someone outside the car. Coleridge made the same mis- take in The Ancient Mariner; he had the Mariner, who was on the ship, say that “The furrow followed free.” The wake appears to follow a ship only to an observer outside the ship; from on board it appears, as Coleridge himself later learned, like a brook flowing away from the stern, in a direction opposite to that of the ship’s motion. He altered the line, ac- cordingly, to read “The furrow streamed off free.” Moreover, the ordering principle must be a very simple one, even when the materials themselves involve nothing more than a single unit. For example, on the opening page of The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Ham- mett describes the face of his detective, Sam Spade, as wholly composed of V's: the eyes are V's, the brows are V's, the nose is a V, the nostrils are V's, the mouth a pair of V's, the chin is a V, etc. A V is a very simple element, but when we are required to imagine a certain number of these, some vertical, some horizontal, some facing in the same direction, others in opposite directions, the imagination rebels. It might be possible to draw a picture according to Hammet’s specifications, but no image re- sults. When, on the other hand, Hammett later tells us that Spade re- sembled a “blond Satan,” we easily imagine his appearance. The whole image formed, furthermore, should be such as we could actually perceive. One can readily perceive something to be a red disk; one could not readily perceive something to be a red chiliagon (thousand-sided figure). Consequently, one cannot form an image of a thousand-sided figure. Similarly with things excessively large or small; we can imagine them, but not as of their real size; we imagine them always as of an actually perceptible magnitude. And we may imagine something which could not possibly exist, so long as it is possible to the imagination. The imagination combines, separates, augments, diminishes, trans- poses, situates things in place. It combines sapphire and mountain to create a sapphire mountain. It separates light from lightning to create black lightning. It augments to make the giants of Brobdingnag, and diminishes to make the tiny men of Lilliput. It transposes to make men with heads beneath their shoulders, and winged horses. It can situate things above, below, on this side, on that side, beside, around, between. It can do more: basing on comparison, it creates a wine-dark sea; given a cause, it imagines an effect; given an effect, it imagines a cause; given a part, it supplies the whole. The synthesis which is created, however, must always be a novel ‘one; once it becomes customary or trite, the imagination is not activated. Call a mountain Sapphire Mountain, and those who become used to the name will not make an image of it; for them it will simply be a name, bringing to mind the mountain and whatever they associate with it, but the words will have no further effect. We are discussing, of course, literary images; that is, images pro-176 Elder Olson A Gonspectus of Poetry, I duced by words. What causes the image to synthesize is always a gram- matical indication of some kind, except where such indications are im- plicit rather than explicit. Thus combination is produced by an attribu- tive adjective modifying a noun, or by compound adjectives and nouns, etc.; separation, by prefixes like un- and suffixes like -less, etc; and so on. Clearly, then, an image is no particular grammatical arrangement, and it is also not a figure of speech. We can only say of it that the more econom- ical of words it is, the better, for it will then tend to have an instantaneous effect. Thus a phrase, or even a compound noun or adjective, will tend to be most effective. The more succinct the image in its expression, the more closely will it approximate the instantaneity of perception. Since, despite the lim- itations of the imagination, the parts of the image must readily fuse into a whole, poets have used various devices to simplify either the materials or the principle of their relation. For example, where a complex shape or figure is involved, one may reduce it to simpler shapes (sphere, cone, pyramid, cube, circle, square, triangle, etc.) as in “globed peonies”; or, where the overall shape is too irregular to be so reduced, it may be described by comparison to some familiar complex figure or shape, as in “pear-shaped,” “acorn-shaped,” “flame-shaped,” etc., as in “bulging eyeball of water” (for the Pacific Ocean) and “the hills like pointed flames.” For precision, the shape should be a fairly standard one; thus Richard Le Gallienne’s image of a beetle as “a vase-shaped beetle with a deer’s horns” fails because we may imagine many different shapes of vases. Where the overall arrangement need not be imagined too pre- cisely, a sharp image may still be achieved by making the materials into units, as in “scalloped waves,” “waves formal as the scales on fish,” “herded pines,” “sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool,” “a town like a scattering of white cubes on the hillside,” “the castle like a cluster of white cones in the moonlight,” “snow like stars,” or MacLeish’s “cone- land” for “mountain country.” Images are most graphic when they (1) involve contrast, (2) convey an actuality, and (3) imply as much as possible. Thus Wallace Stevens’ its in snow” and T. S. Eliot's “Late roses filled with early snow” are vivid because of contrast. An actuality is conveyed whenever something is presented as actualizing its potentialities, as an arrow in flight, a bud bursting into bloom, and in general things in action or motion, e.g., Jeffers’ “ocean trampling its granite.” Even when things are not remarkably in motion, even, indeed, when they are static, their mo- tion can be exaggerated or a motion may be attributed with vivid effect: thus “jostling shock of blue-bells” or Dylan Thomas’ “bouncing hills.” Finally, images imply when a detail selected implies other details or an attribute implies other attributes, all of which themselves result in im- ages; thus Homer's “wine-dark sea” is admirable because we imagine not merely the color but a host of other attributes common to wine and theCritical Inquiry Autumn 1977177 sea, such as translucency, glow, liquid motion, etc., and Wallace Stevens’ “dove with eye of grenadine” is excellent for similar reasons. Obviously a single image may involve contrast, actuality, and implication. What distinguishes imagery from mere description is the fact that an image does not yield its meaning unless it is imagined, whereas descrip- tion, though much more accurate, can be complete in merely being grasped by the intellect. If I say, “Ice one hundred and twenty feet high came floating by,” that is mere description; the reader knows the precise height of the ice, but is not forced to picture it. If I say, as Coleridge did, “Ice, mast-high, came floating by,” a reader will not know the exact height of the ice; he can frame some idea of it only by picturing the mast and ice together. The height will of course vary with the height of the mast which individual readers may picture, but in any case the poet has achieved his end, that is, of forcing the reader to picture the ship amid towering icebergs; and the reader who does not so visualize mast and ice has stopped short of the full meaning of the words. One must observe that in the making of images, order is very impor- tant. It makes all the difference in what order impressions are made upon the mind. Consider Dylan Thomas’ “the town below lay leaved with October blood.” Here we see the town with blood-red leaves cover- ing it; but if the line read “the town lay bloodied with October leaves,” the primary impression would be that of a bloody town, and the impres- sion would be unpleasant, even if subsequently modified. This principle is often forgotten by translators of poetry, with disastrous results. The choice of words, too, obviously makes a great difference; thus, as Aris- totle pointed out long ago, it makes some difference whether we say “rosy-fingered Dawn” or “red-handed Dawn.” But this matter we may discuss later. We may grasp something of the importance of imagery by consider- ing the following brief poem by Walter de la Mare: NiGut That shining moon—watched by that one faint star: Sure now am I, beyond the fear of change, The lovely in life is the familiar, And only the lovelier for continuing strange. This is a poem in which the speaker perceives something and draws aconclusion from it. Quite evidently we are to feel as he does; that is, we too are to perceive something (though in imagination), and to concur in the conclusion which he draws. For such a piece to be successful, how-178 Elder Olson A Conspectus of Poetry, I ever, the perception must be so rendered as to incorporate the conclu- sion in itself; we must be presented with an image of striking beauty, simultaneously familiar and strange, and obviously more beautiful be- cause strange. We are presented instead with something so feeble as almost not to be an image at all; indeed, we gain nothing by visualizing moon and star; the commonplace expressions “shining” and “faint,” the trite notion of a star “watching,” do nothing to make us see particular beauty or particular strangeness in moon or star. The conclusion which he draws, too, has no emotional significance for us; we should not be made particularly happy or be greatly pleased if it were true; if itis false, as it probably is, it does not matter much. In form the poem is similar to the Borgia poem; but consider the difference between “That shining moon—watched by that one faint star” and “Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.” The latter sets before us the beauty of Lucrezia, the calmness after so much violence and danger, the stillness in which motion is only metaphorical (“meandering”), majesty vanished, dead hair representing all that remains of a life; we make the comparison, we feel the difference, our minds are teased be- yond this to reflect on mortality, on the ephemerality of beauty and power and human existence, we are forced to reconsider the meaning of life 8 “Night” and the Borgia poem and “Spring Day” belong to the kind of poem in which the response of the reader is similar to that of the person in the poem. “O Western Wind” and “Dirce,” on the other hand, are of the kind in which, because the causes differ, the effects differ; and we must now briefly consider the nature of this second kind. In the first kind, we observed, the reader is brought into the very condition of the person in the poem—is made to perceive the same objects in the same way, to think and feel about them in the same man- ner, in the same frame of mind; in brief, he reacts to the same causes. In “O Western Wind,” as we saw, the causes which affect the lover are different from those affecting us as readers. We do not ourselves long to return home to his beloved; we respond to the passionate expression of his longing. In “Dirce,” similarly, we do not respond to the beauty of Dirce, of which we can frame no idea, or to her death; these things affect the lover—assuming him to be that—but we respond to what, given these conditions, he does. The difference is now perhaps clear: in the former case we respond as we do because we have in imagination been placed in the condition of the speaker, our concern is with ourselves as responding to these conditions: in the latter case, we respond to the thoughts, feel- ings, and actions of others.Critical Inquiry Autumn 1977179 What, then, determines the nature of our response in the latter case? Suppose we look once more at our two examples. The speaker in “Dirce” might reasonably be supposed to have been grief-stricken at the death of the lovely Dirce, but he offers no obvious indication of his grief. Indeed, he seems to regard her death as by no means final. Her body is gone, but she lives on, though asa shade, and she retains her beauty, she remains desirable. His request to the “Stygian set” to stand close about her and protect her from Charon can hardly be taken very seriously—in. fact, the notion of the aged Charon as attempting to ravish her shade and of course being frustrated precisely because she is a shade comes perilcusly close to the ludicrous. If the speaker is joking, the joke seems a peculiarly heartless one, especially since Dirce seems to have died very recently—she is just about to be ferried across the Styx. If he means literally what he says, he is being absurd. If his expression is figurative— if, that is, this is only a way of saying that he cannot imagine such beauty as ever really dying, its irresistibility as ever being diminished, even though the flesh had perished, he is paying a graceful and subtle tribute to the dead woman. Doubtless the last is the correct interpretation, but this is not our concern. The point that does concern us is this: that as we variously interpret the activity of the speaker, our reactions vary. We are pleased or displeased, we approve or disapprove, we do or do not take his action or condition seriously, according to how we frame varying conjectures as to the nature of the action, the character of the agent, his intention, etc.; and our attitudes and emotions are determined by these considerations. Thus if we construe “Dirce” as a malicious remark, or as a foolish one, or a tender one, we respond quite differently to it. Evidently, then, we judge the activities of characters in poems, as well as the characters themselves, much as we do real activities and real persons, with only this difference, that our judgments are in no way affected by reflections on our self-interest, since clearly the people in poems can neither help nor harm us. And we judge and interpret their actions by signs—that is, by indications afforded us that the character and his action are good or bad, and so on. Where all such moral indications. are absent, our reactions seem to have a sympathetic basis. Thus, in “O Western Wind” nothing indicates whether the speaker is a good or bad person, whether his love is or is not a lawful one, etc.; consequently our response is a sympathetic one—that is, we respond with a kind of pain. where the person is suffering pain, pleasure where his feelings are pleasurable. Both the moral and the sympathetic principles operate in the longer forms of poetry also. In Browning’s poems, the Duke of “My Last Duchess,” the soliloquist of the Spanish Cloister, and the Bishop of St. Praxed’s are all evil men, and we react to their utterances in a manner180 Elder Olson A Gonspectus of Poetry, 1 quite different from that in which we react to those of Tennyson's Ar- thur or Ulysses. But they differ, as bad men, from one another; and accordingly, we react in a different way to the speech and actions of each. A threat from a wicked and powerful person has a different effect upon us from an expression of petty spite; we do not react to the Duke’s words, thus, as we do to the Spanish soliloquist’s.