The Language of Paradox

CLEANTH BROOKS
Paradox: Definition

“Paradox is a statement which

seems on its face to be self
contradictory or absurd, yet turns
out to have a valid meaning”

M. H. Abrams
 Paradox is a central concern for certain New
Critics particularly Cleanth Brooks has claimed
that paradox is inevitable to poetry.

 “The
language of poetry is the language of
paradox.”

 Hisessay The language of Paradox expands on

this notion with reference to Wordsworth’s It Is A
Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free and
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge; and
Donne’s Canonisation.
 CleanthBrooks begins the essay by pointing out that,
“The language of poetry is the language of paradox”,
though most of us are not prepared to accept the truth.

 Poetryis the language of soul – an expression of

emotions and imagination while paradox is the
expression of intellect.

 Paradox is hard and witty and it is always associated

with a writer Chesterton who is called the “prince of
paradox.”
 Generally there is a prejudice among
people that paradox is regarded as “
intellectual rather than emotional, clever
rather than profound, rational rather than
divinely irrational.”

 But Brooks emphasises that paradox is a

language appropriate and inevitable to
poetry.
He implies that even Wordsworth
commonly known as the ‘simple poet’
(who uses unsophisticated language)
employs paradox into his poetry.
Wordsworth use of paradox

 In the sonnet It is a Beauteous Evening,

Calm and Free the girl seems to be less
worshipping and untouched by the divine
inspiration yet Wordsworth calls her to in
communion with God ‘all the year’, which
is the paradox employed here
 Thegirl although ‘untouched by solemn thought’
feels unconsciously sympathetic towards nature
which suggests that she is in communion with
God.

 She does not worship, but the paradox is still

divine, still God is with her though unknown to us.

 Thus
the lyric in the sonnet is based upon a
paradox which states an essential truth.
 She
is divine and God’s chosen because she is in
sympathy with all nature, and not merely with its
noble and solemn aspects.

 Her
unconscious sympathy is the unconscious
worship.

 Sheis in communion with nature ‘all the year’, and

her devotion is continual whereas that of the poet is
sporadic and momentary.
 There is one further paradox even in this simple
lyric.The evening is compared to a nun and obviously
‘quiet’, ‘calm’, ‘free’ are the outward sign and symbol
of the nun called evening.

 The‘holiness’ of the evening with the outward

trappings of a nun, stands in sharp contrast with the
inner holiness and innocence of the girl who,
however, does not have these external trappings, not
does she worship in any formal way, as does a man.

 Her innocence is itself a continuous worship.

 Wordsworth is a simple poet who believes in direct
statement but anther of his lyric “Upon Westminster
Bridge” has a tinge of irony and paradox, and it is this
use of paradox accounts for its mysterious charm
though most readers are not conscious of this fact.

 Thecharm of the lyric arises from the fact that it grows

out of a paradoxical situation.

 The
poet has always been disgusted with ‘urban mark
and roar’ and now he is surprised that the horrible city
could be so sweet and charming.
 Grim and feverish London was not expected by the
poet to have this charm and hence he is surprised
at its beauty.

 The
celebrated ‘nature poet’ exclaims at the
beauty of man-made urbanised London.

 Also the poet had never been able to regard the

river as real or as part of nature but in this sonnet he
calls it as a ‘natural’ thing like the Daffodils or the
mountain brooks.
 The city in poet’s insight of the morning has earned
its right to be considered organic and not merely
mechanical.

 This is why the stale metaphor of the sleeping

houses is strangely renewed.

 The most exciting thing that the poet can say

about the houses is that they are asleep.
 He has been in the habit of counting them dead
as just mechanical and inanimate – to say they
are ‘asleep’ is to say they are alive, that they
participate in the life of nature.

 In the same way, the trite old metaphor which

sees a great city as a pulsating heart of an empire
becomes revivified.
 Itis only when the poet sees the city under the
semblance of death that he can see it as actually
alive- quick with only life which he can accept as
the organic life of “nature”.

 Thepurpose of the Romantic writers Wordswoth

and Coleridge was to make ‘common look
uncommon’, to make the familiar look unfamiliar.
 Wordsworth was consciously attempting to
show his audience that the common was
really uncommon, the prosaic was really
poetic. This is nothing but the use of paradox
because the Romantics were concerned
surprise with wonder, with revelation, by
showing the familiar world in a new light so
that the readers are both startled and
delighted.
The Neo Classists: Use of Paradox
 The Neo Classists use of paradox is ironical,
opposites were brought together to make
the reader alive to irony of situation.

 We find such irony throughout Pope’s

“Essay on Man” wherein man reasons but
the irony is he reasons only to err.
 He may be the lord of all created beings but the
irony is that he is also a prey to all; he claims to be
the soul judge of truth but the irony is he is always
in error.

 Theparadoxes here are ironical, but it may also be

claimed that there is wonder also, for Pope has
made us see man in a new light
Other poets: Use of Paradox
 However, paradoxes which arouse both wonder
and irony are clearly mixed in the poetry of Blake.
And they merge in Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner”
and in Grey’s “Elegy”

 Thesituation in the “Elegy” is typically similar to

that of Wordsworth.

 The peasants are contemplated in the light of their

bitters.
 The comparison startles, illuminates and shows
the peasants in a new light, the contrast
between their real glory and factual obscurity is
startling.

 Butthe paradox is ironical too and in the “Elegy”,

the paradox is ironical.
Poetry and Science:
 The language of poetry is not fixed and rigid as that
of science.

 Inscience the meaning of words are fixed, but the

poet makes his own language as he writes.

 He uses new combinations, new modifications and

continually modify the meaning of words, violate
the dictionary meanings, and thus enrich the
language and increase its expressive power.
 Such modification is perpetual; it cannot be kept
out of poem, it can only be controlled and guided.

 Also connotations is as important as denotation in

poetry.

 T. S. Eliot has commented upon the “that perpetual

slight alteration of language, words perpetually
juxtaposed in new and sudden combinations”
which occurs in poetry.
 Suchmodification takes place even in such simple
poem as Wordsworth’s Evening sonnet. The adjective
‘breathless’ in the sonnet suggests tremendous
excitement yet the evening is calm and quiet.

 Thereis a final contradiction; it is that kind of excitement

and that kind of calm and the two states may well
occur together.

 But
the poet has no one term. He must work by
contradiction and qualification
The Nature of Metaphor
 Thepoet must use both analogy and
metaphor, and as I.A. Richards has pointed
out , there are subtle and complex state of
emotions which cannot be communicated
without the use of metaphor.

 The use of metaphor forces the poet to resort

to the use of paradox, for figures of speech in
their very nature imply that the figuring of one
thing or concept through the other.
 Thereare necessarily constant adjustments,
contradictions and modifications.

 AsShakespeare has said “By indirections find

directions out”

 Eventhe simplest poets are forced to use of paradox.

Such is the nature of poetry.

 But
there are others who use paradox and irony
consciously to gain a compression and precision
which is not otherwise possible.
Donne’s Canonisation
 Donneis one such poet. His poems are based
on paradox and metaphor. His poem
“Canonisation” is based on paradox.

 Profane love is treated as divine love, and the

canonisation is not of holy saints who have
renounced pleasures of flesh, but of lovers who
have renounced the world for each other, the
body of the each is hermitage for the other and
so they are called saints of love.
 Theparadox is cleverly argued out and established.
But as Cleanth Brooks himself points out, “the poem,
thus is a parody of Christian sainthood; but is an serious
parody of a sort that modern man, habituated as he is
to an easy yes or no, can hardly understand.”

 Herefers to accept the paradox as a serious rhetorical

device and since he is able to accept it only as a
cheap trick, he is forced into the dilemma either
Donne does not take love seriously, here he is
sharpening his wit as a sort of mechanical exercise.
 OrDonne does not take sainthood seriously, here
he is merely indulging in a cynical and bawdy
parody.

 Butboth such attitudes are wrong, for a careful

reading of the poem shows that Donne takes both
love and religion seriously and he could have used
no other instrument for his purpose except
paradox.
 Throughthe detailed analysis of poem, the learned
author shows that the vein of irony is maintained
throughout.

 There are ironic contrasts and ironic statements.

 Bythe last stanza it is shown that in rejecting life

and through the absorption in each other, the
lovers achieve a moral intense life.
 The
paradox has been hinted at earlier in the phoenix
metaphor. Here it receives a powerful dramatization.

 The lovers in becoming hermits, find that they have not

lost the world, but have gained the world in each
other, now a more intense and meaningful world.

 Donneis not content to treat the lovers’ discovery as

something which comes to them passively but rather
something which they actively achieve.
Who did the whole world’s soule contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes

The image is that of a violent squeezing of a powerful

hand. And what the lovers drive into each other’s
eyes?
The ‘Countries, Towers’ and ‘Courtes’, which they have
renounced in the first stanza of the poem.
The unworldly lovers thus become ‘worldy’ of all.
This is the paradox and irony of all.