The Motivated Sign
The Motivated Sign Iconicity in language and literature 2
Edited by Olga Fischer Unil•ersity of Amsterdam
Max Nanny Unil·erJity ofZiiridJ
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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00
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Pcnnancncc of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Ubrary or Congress Cataloging-ln-PubUcaUon Data The Motivated sign : iconicity in language and liter.ature 2/ Wiled by Olga Fischer. Max Nanny. p. em. Includes bibliogro~phical references and index. I. lconicity (Linguistics). 2. Semiotics. 3. Linguistics I. Fischer. Olga. II. Nanny. Max P99.4.126M68 2000 401'.41-...dc21 00-046827 ISBN 90 272 2574 5 (Eur.) /I 58!111 003 6 (US) (Hb: alk. paper) CIP 10 2001- John Bcnjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint. microfilm. or any other means, without written permission from lhe publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam •Tile Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
xi
List of contributors
xiii
lntrOOuction: \'eni, l'idi, l'ici Max Niinny and Olga Fischer PART I
General Semiotic foundations of iconicity in language and literature Winfried Nritlr
17
The semiotics of the mi.w?-en-ahyme Jolm J. Whitt•
29
Good probes: Icons, anaphors, and the evolution of language William 1. Herlofd:y
55
PART II
Sounds and beyond The sound as an echo to the sense: The iconicity of English gl- words Piotr Sadowski
69
On natural motivation in metaphors: The case of the cucurbits RalfNorrman
89
Old English poetic texts and their Latin sources: lconicity in Ca=dmon's Hwm1 and The Phoenix Eurl R. Anderson
109
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART Ill
Visual iconicity: Typography and the use of images Iconic punctuation: Ellipsis marks in a historicaJ perspective Anne C. Henry
135
Iconic functions of long and short lines
157
MaxNiinny
konicity in advertising signs: Motive and method in miming 'the body' Robbie B. H. Goh
189
Iconocla.o;m and iconicity in seventeenth-century English poetry
211
Lorelta lnnocemi PART IV [conicity in grammatical structures
Structural iconicity: The English -S- and OF-genitives C. lac Conradie The position of the adjective in (Old) English from an iconic perspective
229
249
Olga FiJdrer
Present participles as iconic expressions
277
Frank }amen cmd Leo Lelll:.
Of Markov chains and upholstery buttons: "Moi. madame. votre chien ... "
289
Jean-Jacques Lecerc/e PART V
[conicity in textual structures lconicity and rhetoric: A note on the iconic force of rhetorical ligures in Shakespeare »hifgmrg G. Miiller The emergence of experiential iconicity and spatial perspective in landscape descriptions in English fiction Wemer »hlf
305
323
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ix
Iconic dimensions in Margaret Atwood"s poetry and prose Christina Lj111rgberg
351
Author index
367
Subject index
377
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the contributors, who with their studies collected in this volume have helped to extend the range and depth of iconic studies. We wish to express our deep gratitude to the institutional sponsors without whose support neither the second symposium in Amsterdam nor the publication of the papers given there would have been possible: the Konhrklijke Nederland.fe Akademie mn Weteusdwppm. the Faclllteil der Geesle.fWetemdwppell of the University of Amsterdam. and the Hcx·luchlll.{tifttmg des Ka111om Ziirich. We should also like to thank Kees Vaes of Benjamins Publishing for again helping us to sec this volume through the press. In the essay by Anne C. Henry all illustrations are reproduced by permission of The Syndics of Cambridge University Library. With the following e:~tceptions: Figure I is reproduced by permission of The Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral: Fgure 2 by permission of The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College. Cambridge: figure 4 by permission of The British Library. shelfmark C. 34.e.26. We deeply deplore the all too early death of one of the contributors to this volume. Ralf Nomnan. who died on 21 March 2000. Ralf was one of the keenest and most active participants in the first two lconicity conferences. to which he made highly important and original contributions. He once said that the !conicity group of people offered a scholarly home to him. We shall all miss his warm and gentle presence as well as his inspiration and insights very much indeed. We are happy that with this publication, which is dedicated to him. we can posthu· mously offer Ralf Nomnan a memorial of our love and respect for him.
O.F. and M.N.
List of contributors
Earl R. Anderson Department of English. Cleveland State University, Euclid Ave at East 24th Street. Cleveland, Ohio 44115. U.S.A. sf
[email protected] C. Jac Conradic Rand Afrikaans University, P.O. Bo:t 524, 2006 Auckland Park, South Africa.
[email protected] Olga Fischer Department of English, Universitcit van Amsterdam, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT dam, The Netherlands.
[email protected] Am~tcr
Robbie B. H. Gob Department of English Language and Literature. The National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crcscenl. Singapore 119260.
[email protected] Anne C. Henry Emmanuel College. Cambridge CB2 3AP, United Kingdom.
[email protected] William J. Herlofsky Center for Foreign Language Education and Research, Nagoya Gakuin Kamishinano, S~to-shi, Aichi-k~n. 480-12 Japan.
[email protected] Univ~rsity.
Lorena Innocenti Dipartimento di studi linguistici e l~u~r.ui ~uropci e postcoloniali, Universitii. Foscari di Venezia, Zauerc, Dorsoduro 1405, 30125 Venezia, Italy.
[email protected] Frank Jansen Faculteit der Lett~ren, lnstituut lands.
[email protected] Ned~rlands,
Jean-Jacques L.ec~rcle 14 Clos Per.tult. 91200 Athis-Mons, France.
1350
ca.
Tr.ms 10.3512 JK. Utrecht, The Nether-
xiv
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Leo lentz Oll-OTS, Trans 10, 3512 JK, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
[email protected] Christina Ljungberg Bergstro:L~se 29c, 6045 Meggen, Switzerland.
[email protected] Wolfgang G. MUller lnstitut flir Anglistik!Amerikanistik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitiit Jena, Emst-AbbePiatz 4, 07743 lena, Gennany. Wolfgang.Mueller@n:.uni-jena.de Max Nanny Englisches Seminar, Universitlit ZUrich, Plattenstrasse 47,8032 ZUrich, Switzerland.
[email protected] Winfried NOth Univcrsitii.t Kassel. Fachbercich 8.
Georg-Forster-Stra.~se
3 . .\4109 Kus.-.cl. Gennuny.
[email protected]~~l.de
Ralf Nomnant Depanment of English, University of Tampere. P.O. Box 607. Kalevantie 4, 33101 Tampere. Finland. Piotr Sadowski American College Dublin, 2 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. Ireland.
[email protected] John J. White Depanment of German, King's College, University of London, Strand, WC2R 2LS. United Kingdom.
[email protected] Werner Wolf Abteilung ftir Englische Literatur und Algemeinc Literaturwisscnschaft. Kari-FranzensUniversitii.t Gra. HeinrichstroL~se 36, A-8010 Gra. Austria.
[email protected] Introduction veni, vidi, vici Max Nanny
Olga Fischer
Unil·er.tity ofZiirich
Unh·ersity of Amsterdam
I confess that not without overcoming a deep repugnance can I accept that the relation between soond and meaning is, as Saussure and his disciples maintain. a result of an arbitrary convention. My distrust is natural: poetry is born from the old magical belief in the identity between a word and what it denotes. (Octavio Paz, "Reading and Contemplation... 13)
This volume offe~ a selection of papers given at the second international and interdisciplinary symposium on lconicity in Language and Literature held in Amsterdam in 1999. 1 It is a sequel to Form Miminf? Meaning. /conicity;,, Language and Literature (Benjamins 1999). which gathered papers offered at the first conference on iconicity in Zurich ( 1997). The purpose of both conferences. and of the papers presented at them. was not primarily of a theoretical nature although semiotic. linguistic and literary theory aJso had an important role to play. The overriding aim was to present case studies of how iconicity worh on all levels of language (phonetic. graphemic. syntactic. lexical. etc.) in literary texts and in all kinds of verbal discourse. In a manner of speaking. the symposia and the papers were meant to challenge what Roman Jakobson has called .. Saussure's dogma of arbitrariness" (Jakobson 1960:357), a dogma poetically expressed by Juliet (Romeo and J11liet, 2.2.43-4) in the lines: What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell a. sweet.
In the "Introduction" to Form Mimi11g Mea11i11g (pp. xv-:uxiv). the reader will find an explanation of what its editors and the authors of the papers contained in it unde~tand by the term 'iconicity' .! The reader will also find there (pp. xxitT.)
MAX NANNY AND OLGA FISCHER
the criteria that allow a differentiation between the main types of iconicity. especially the distinction between more concrete and perceptual 'imagic' iconicity and the more abstract and relational type of 'diagrammatic' iconicity. But this division. let it be said, cannot always be drawn clearly. and the two fonns of iconicity are often fused in both language and literature. At the Amsterdam conference, Winfried NOth (in this volume) introduced a further dilferentiation. namely one between 'exophoric' and ·endophoric' iconicity. two concepts that a number of contributors (e.g. MUller. White) have found to be very useful. Wherea" 'exophoric' iconicity consists primarily in form miming meaning (thus establishing an iconic relation between the sign and its referent in the world, or rather our perception of the world). 'endophoric' iconicity refers to form miming form (thus being purely intra-linguistic). 3 However. we would like to add at this point that. although cndophoric iconicity is concerned with resemblances between signs, and not between the sign and the signified. it too involves 'meaning'. The miming of one form by another (repetition) is only noted when it is in some sense meaningful. Thus. the mere repetition of the article in the following phrase. 'the king of the cats'. should not be considered an example of endophoric iconicity. It is clear that a repetition only becomes meaningfully iconic when it rises above conventional expectations. For this reason. the difference between endophoric and exophoric iconicity may be less clear in practice than it is in theory (as Wolfgang MUller. this volume. also argues), because even endophoric iconicity consists of a structure (form miming form). which. combined into a new sign. then mimes a third clement {a signified) in the world as we perceive it.
Veni, vidi, vici In order to avoid repeating what we have explained in other places. let us. by way of introduction. illustrate some iconic uses of language in a nutshell by means of an example that shows most types of iconicity to perfection. namely Julius Caesar's famous phrase l'elli. 1-idi.l'id ('I came,l saw,l conquered'). This Latin dictum has. since Roman Jakobson first had recourse to it. been a stock phrase for scholars who wished to illustrate iconic features:' According to Jakobson. the chain of verbs in the Latin phrase "informs us about the order of Caesar's deeds", for the temporal order of speech events mirrors "the order of narrated events in time" (Jakobson 1960: 350). When primarily considering the parallelism between the sequence of verbs and the temporal order of the events they represent. we rel.:ognise that not the individual verbal signs themselves arc of an iconic (imagic) nature.lt is their sequential order. their tempor.tl relationship
INTRODUCTION
that is iconic: for this relationship is similar to the one that connects the historical events the verbal sequence refers to. In other words. Caesar's dictum represents an iconic diagro1m. As Johansen writes: ''A diagram is characterised by depicting relations analogous to those of the represented object. A map. for instance. is a diagrum. because the relations between the different parts are analogous to those between the parts of the geographical area it depicts" (Johansen 1993: 98). In NOth"s terms, Caesar's phr.tse illustrates 'exophoric' iconicity. However. as MUller (this volume). who takes the rhetorical form of the utterance l't>ni, 1·idi. 1·ici into account, ha.'i shown. its iconic force goes beyond chronological iconicity. Calling its use as an illustration of merely diagmmmatic iconicity a misuse of a quotation. he demonstmtes that its asyndetic syntax (i.e. its lack of syntactic links) mirrono the swiftness of Caesar's actions. MUller also demonstrates that the repetition of first-person-singular verb forms. apart from their endings contributing to the sound effect. particularly convey an emphatic subjective verve ...a sense of the personal triumph of the speaker... In other words. the abrupt sequence of brief verbal forms in Caesar's phrase may be said to be exophorically iconic of the swiftness of his military action that led to victory. And it may be. as MUller (referring to Tabakowska 1999) adds. interpreted as mirroring Caesar's subjective view of the whole military experience. Now let us also briefly review some intm-linguistic or endophoric features of the Latin dictum. As Johansen has pointed out. what is peculiar to it is ..the internal organisation of the sound pattern·· (Johansen 1996: 48). First of all. and more diagrammatically. the increasing assonance of the three verbs ()i:) occurs once in \"elli but twice in \'idi and \'id) may be considered to reflect the growing momentum of Caesar's military operations. This vocalic emphasis is reinforced on the consonantal level: as Johansen has also pointed out. there is a gradual loss of sonority (from In) to (dl to (k]) in the sequence ... suggestive of hastened progression with a final punch in victory"' (Johansen 1996: 48). In addition. further endophoric features are noticeable in Caesar's dictum: its three words consist of two syllables. each containing a consonant and a long vowel. and they alliterate on )v). Rhythmically. the phrase consists of three spondees. which lend the short words weight and impact. These similarities and repetitions may semantically imply that the three actions were the same. not only equally swift. equally ea.-.y. but equally momentous too. whereas the alliteration highlights the initial sound of the phrasal climax. vid (a kind of Churchillian V-sign Cl\'tlllf Ia leflre so to speak). The iconic import of all this has been summarised by Jakobson to whom the .. symmetry of three disyllabic verbs with an identical initial consonant and identical final vowel add splendour to Caesar's laconic victory message: Veni. \'idi, \'ict" (Jakobson 1960: 358).
MAX NANNY AND OLGA FISCHER
Of course. the iconic features discussed here. be they imagic or diagr.1.m· matic. exophoric or endophoric, all occur in a medium. namely (wriuen) language. whose sign system is. in semiotic tenns. symbolical or conventional. that is. basically arbitrary. But as Johansen has rightly emphasised, there may be a ··friendly cohabitation of iconic and symbolic features (or similarity and conventionality) within one and the same sign.. (Johansen 1993: 227). And. referring to the iconic use of sounds in particular. he adds: ''The iconicity of linguistic sound. which plays a minor part in language as a system. plays a leading character in literature. especially in poetry.. (Johansen 1993: 227). The pervasive presence of iconic features in poetry or literature in general is made evident in many studies collected in this volume. illustrating iconicity of a visual (eg. Nanny. and to some extent White). an oraJ (Anderson. Norrman). or a more clearly structural kind (Ljungbcrg. Mtiller and Wolf). It is therefore not surprising to find that the great Mexican poet Octavia Paz sees iconicity as the es..o;ence of poetry. whose roots he discerns in ancient magic beliefs and practices (see the epigraph above). It is interesting to note that Paz refers to ancient practices. A number of studies in this volume are also concerned with the iconic foundations of language and the evolution of iconic features into symbolic ones (e.g. Fischer and Herlofsky). and. likewise. with the preservation of iconic features (Sadowski) or the rearrangement of features to preserve a basic iconicity (Conr.tdie).
The seventeen studies contained in this volume approach iconic aspects in language and literature from such various angles (semiotic. phonetic. graphemic. syntactic and textual) and from such different kinds of discourse (from cookerybook to poetic texts) that it is somewhat difficult to put the essays into welldefined sections. In a similar way. it is not reaJiy possible to divide up the studies according to types of iconicity. not only because most studies. based as they are on actual texts. deal with a variety of iconic types simultaneously, but also because the types themselves (as noted above) are not dear-cut and run into one another. Thus. Nomnan's study. for instance_ deaJs both with metaphoric (i.e. diagrammatic) and phonological (i.e. imagic) iconicity showing. in fact. how even the metaphorical may be imagic. while Anderson is not only interested in syntactic but aJso in onomatopoetic aspects of iconicity.
Part/ contains papers that are of a more theoretical or general nature. In the only purely semiotic study of this collection, Wi"friecl Niith draws our attention to a
INTRODUCTION
number of facts. For instance. he emphasises that Peirce's theory of signs. with its classification into icons. symbols and indexes. and into object, interpretant and representamen. was triadic and not dichotomic as often assumed. NOth aJso points out that iconicity represents a scale running from pure or genuine icons to hypo-icons. A second. already mentioned. point NOth makes is that 'form miming meaning' does not cover all forms of iconicity because 'form' may also mime 'form'. He distinguishes.therefore. between 'c:tophoric' and ·endophoric' iconicity. the latter standing for 'form miming form'. As we noted above. in order for form to mime form in such a way that we notice it.the miming needs to be significant. i.e. some referential meaning is needed to make any repetition of form meaningful: a mere repetition is only very abstractly iconic. In other words. iconic significance in an endophoric relation can only be found if there i.{ a relation between the repeated forms in question and some 'object' in the mind of the reader. The study by Joh11 White is a historical investigation devoted to an importunt liter.uy device. namely the miJe en abyme. Ranging through American. French and German literature. White discusses whether the mi.{e en ahyme may be seen as an example of iconicity. His analysis of the various uses of the device starts with Paul Auster's novel The Mtuic of Chance. in which a scale-model of the 'City of the World' occurs. He analyses the limited nature of its iconic isomorphism. its synecdochic quality and its synchronicity. White then describes the chequercd history of the term. which he traces back. through Morrissette and Datlenbach. to Gide's mirror analogy and its origin in heraldry, 'the shield within the shield'. By means of literary texts drawn from the works of Gide. Borges. Huxley and Jean Paul. he analyses examples of deferred iconicity. infinite regress or unending duplication. the similarity between embedded and embedding work. the double iconicity of exophoric and endophoric functions.ln a more theoretical part White. dr.1wing on such semioticians as Sebeok. Eco and Greenlee. discusses the Peircean context for the literary mise ell abyme. its location in the process of scmiosis. He finally studies a few literary uses of the mise ell abyme. its degrees of isomorphism. its endophoric and exophoric a.-.pects. especially in Kafka's The Trial and in Mann's The Magic Mou111ai11. By way of conclusion, he summarises the variety of functions of the device. from didactic. prophetic and cognitive to mystifying and magical. A possible scenario for the gradual evolution of language from a presymbolic system (where mimicry and iconic expressions play a primary role) to a system which began to make more and more use of arbitrary and purely grammatical signs is provided by William Herlofsky. What makes this attempt so interesting is the way in which he applies this conceivable evolution to a
MAX NANNY AND OLGA FISCHER
particular case. He shows how Chomsky"s so-called Binding Principles (which account for the way in which anaphora and referential expressions behave with respect to their antecedents within a certain linguistic domain) may have arisen out of real-world-space referential associations. In other words. he tries to explain how symbolic (i.e. arbitrary) anaphor.1 and their linguistic behaviour arose out of iconic and indexical 'ancestors'. Part II deals with one of the most basic iconic phenomena. namely iconically motivated sounds and onomatopoeia. Piotr Sadow.{ki is.like Herlofsky. interested in the role played by iconicity in the evolution of language. but his concern is the lexicon rather than syntax. He takes the group of words beginning with gfin English for his case study. He shows that these words fonn a coherent group referring to closely related semantic fields. According to Sadowski, this grouping cannot be accidental and suggests some sort of iconic motivation. In order to test in how far the g/-sounds are motivated by the meanings they convey. he considers the same sounds and the same semantic fields both diachronically and crosslinguistically. His findings are that in English the group of g/-words has dwindled in the course of time (from Old English to Modem English) so that their iconicity has become less pronounced. On the other hand. it is also interesting to see that foreign g/-words on the whole assimilated to the existing iconic semantic grouping when these words were borrowed into Middle English. He also finds that these gf-icons are to some extent language-specific. Even though they do occur in other Germanic and Celtic languages. they do not occur to any extent in the Romance languages. Quite likely.language-specific phonological constraints play a role here too. and these may have undermined an original iconic base. Essentially, Ralf Norn"a" is interested in the relation between the tenor and the vehicle in metaphors. He shows by means of the plant family of the cucurbits that the metaphorical use of the cucurbits in a large range of cultures and languages. both in modem and classical times. is remarkably similar. He indicates that there is a very strong iconic relation between the tenor and the vehicle. This appears not only in the fact that the cucurbits are used as symbols for life and death (which links up well with the fonn. the substance and the general nature of the cucurbits) but also in their phonological iconicity. In other words. the names for these plants are phonetically remarkably similar across different languages: the common core of velarity. labiality and reduplication that characterises the words used for cucurbits resembles their shape and fast growth.5 Both these points are supported by lavish illustrations from the literatures in a number of languages.
INTRODUCTION Earl A11derJo11 investigates a number of types of iconicity that he has found
in medieval English literature. showing how pervasive iconicity was from the very beginning of literary history. He first of aH notes that there are quite a lot of Middle English data where scribal substitution has produced iconic forms. Most of these are of the onomatopoeic variety. He next analyses the use of syntactic iconicity in Cacdmon's Hym11. This is of a more clearly artistic nature and it is both of a chronological (i.e. word order mimicking temporal order). as well as of a purposefully achronological kind. the poet manipulating the word order in order to provide a boundary between (human) history and (divine) eternity. The main part of Anderson's paper deals with the Old English translation of the anonymous Latin poem Carmen de m·e phoenice into what is known as Tire Phoenix. While the Latin poem is barren of any sensory experience. its Old English counterpart is full of it. For. as Anderson demonstrates, the translation makes elaborate use of all kinds of iconic sound-symbolic devices: such as the usc of high versus low vowels to contra given at the Amsterdam conference that deal with language and litemture in the light of iconicity see the special number on lconicity of the £rUYJI1f'~erdam: Benjamins. Paz. 0. 1996 ...Lectura y Contemplaci6n··. Sonrhras de ohra.f. Ane y Lileralllra. Barcelona: Biblioleca de Bolsillo (1983) (our tr.mslation). Tabakowska. E. 1999 ... Linguisti~; Exp~ssion of Perceptual Relationships: Iconicity a.-. a Principle of Text Organization (A Ca~e Study)". In M. Niinny and 0. Fischer (eds). 409-422.
PART I General
Semiotic foundations of iconicity in language and literature Winfried Noth Uni\'er.{ity of Kauel and Catholic Uni\·ersity of Sdo Paulo
I.
Introduction: arbitrariness vs. ic:onicity
In his Course in General LinRuistic.~. Ferdinand de Saussure formulated his famous ..first principle of the nature of the language sign... which states: "The linguistic sign is arbitrary'' (1916: 67). According to this principle. there is nothing in a horse or in our mental image of a horse that explains why the English speDking world designates a mare or a staJlion as horse and not us chel•al. Pferd or canllo. For generations of scholars. this principle of arbitrariness had been a dogma of linguistics. However. this volume of collected papers, on The Motimted Sign and other recent research testifies to a new research paradigm. More and more iconic features are being discovered in language and literature at the levels of phonology. morphology. word fonnation. syntax. the text. and in the domain of language change (8ouissac et al.. eds. 1986: Waugh 1992: Hinton et al. 1994: Landsberg. ed. 1995: Simone. ed. 1995: Anderson 1999; Nanny and Fischer. eds. 1999). My own contribution to this volume deals with the semiotic foundations of iconidty in language and literature (see also NOth 1990a. 1990b. 1993. 1994, 2000). After all. iconicity is a semiotic concept. and it was Charles Sanders Peirce who introduced it in the fmmework of his general theory of signs. What did the founder of modem semiotics mean by iconicity. how did he define the iconic sign in contrast to other signs. and to what extent is Peirce's theory of iconicity relevant to the study of language and literuture'! These arc some of the questions I would like to discuss in Section 2.
18
WINFRIED NOTH
Section 3 will be dedicated to my own argument that iconicity in language goes beyond the principle of "form miming meaning". as Olga Fischer and Max Nanny put it in their Call for Papers. In addition to ··fonn miming meaning". we have to consider an essentially different kind of iconicity in language which is based on the principle of "fonn miming form". After this linguistic extension of the scope of iconicity. I want to conclude. in Section 4. with remarks on the ubiquity of iconicity in language and show that iconic signs are. to a certain degree. omnipresent in language and verbal communication.
2.
Iconicity according to Peirce
In the framework of Peirce's semiotic typology. the icon is defined according to the relationship between the sign and its object. What does Peirce mean by the object of the sign. and how is the iconic sign related to this object?
2.1 Icons. indice.f, and s)'ltrbo/.~ Iconicity has often been defined in contrast to arbitrariness. and the opposition of the iconic vs. the arbitmry sign has frequently been associated with the dichoto· my of the natural vs. the conventional sign: the icon is the natural sign. which is similar to its object of reference. while the arbitrary sign is the conventional sign. which evinces no similarity to its referential object. Such dichotomic classifications are not in the spirit of Peirce's theory of signs. which is essentially ba.-.ed on triadic classifications. Thus. the cla.-.s of icons is not only opposed to the class of arbitrary signs. which Peirce calls symbols. but at the same time to the class of indexical signs. This triad of signs is defined according to the criterion of the relation between the sign vehicle and its referential object. In the case of the icon. the sign vehicle ··resembles" its object or "partakes in its characters" (CP 3.362, 4.531 ). Pictures. portraits. and realistic paintings are the prototype of iconic signs. In the case of the index. the sign vehicle evinces an existential connection with its object. There is a relationship of cause and effect, or a temporal. local or physical link between the sign and its object. The so-called natural signs. such as weather signs. symptoms of diseases or Sherlock Holmes's clues are typically indexical signs. In language. deictic words. such as/, here. and trow, exemplify the class of indexical signs.
SEMIOTIC FOUNDATIONS OF !CONICITY
19
Finally. the category of symbol.f consists of arbitmry and conventional signs. A symbol. according to Peirce (CP 2.249) "is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of law. usuaJiy an association of general ideas". Icons. indices. and symbols are by no means mutually exclusive categories. Every language sign. even an iconic or an indexical word is a symbol. In this respect. deictic words are indexical symbols. and iconicity in language is iconicity in symbolic signs.
2.2 Icons ami llypoicons in relation to their objects The criterion of iconicity generally adopted in language studies is the similarity between the verbal sign and its object. Similarity. however. is not really Peirce's central criterion of iconicity. Peirce distinguishes between the genuine or pure icon a.'i the ideal and at the same time unattainable borderline ca.'ie of iconicity and the actually iconic sign, which he calls hypoicon (CP 2.276) and which he defines as a degenerate. i.e., an imperfect, or derived kind of icon. A gen11ine ico11 is more than merely similar to its object It fulfils its semiotic function "by virtue of a char.1cter which it possesses in itself', so that the genuine icon ''does not draw any distinction between itself and its object"' says Peirce (CP 5.73-74) and concludes: the genuine icon "is an affair of suchness only"'. Sign and object merge in one (Santaella 1995: 143), and the genuine icon turns out to be its own object. referring to nothing but itself (cf. CP 2.230). We are thus confronted with an autoreferential or self-representing sign (Ransdell 1979: 57). Peirce summarizes these characteristics of genuine iconicity when he states that the pure icon is a sign "by virtue of its being an immediate image. that is to say by virtue of chardcters which belong to it in itself as a sensible object, and which it would possess just the same were there no object in nature that it resembled" (CP 4.447). In contrast to the genuine icon. the l1ypoicon is only similar to its object. and it shares only some of its features with its object. There is thus a scale of iconicity from hypoiconicity to pure iconicity. ranging from hypoicons which share only few features with their objects to genuine icons which are no longer different from their objects. but at the end of this scale. the genuine icon is a mere abstraction. No actually produced icon can be a genuine icon. This volume on iconicity in language is thus actually a book on Hypoiconicity. Of course. I do not seriously want to suggest a change of terminology. but on the other hand. the concept of hypoiconicity in language is useful in so far a.'i it draws our attention to the fact that every verbal icon is not only an icon. but at the same time also a symbol. sometimes also with indexical elements.
20
WINFRIED NOTH
2.3 The llllfllre of the object The sign vehicle and its object are only two constituents of the sign. whose definition is a triadic one according to one of Peirce's descriptions: A sign. or represt•lllamtm, is .~omething which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. II add~s:.es somcbody.that is, create:. in the mind of that pcn;on an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the imerprettiiU of the Jirst sign. The sign stands for something. its obje('t. It stands for that objeiding diffimltie.{ of the .\·tudy" (CP 2: 230, my empha.o;is)). And second, that an iconic sign can contain within it a reference to another iconic sign. and not just refer to what Peirce elsewhere terms its 'immediate object' .9 An illustration from Thoma.'i A. Sebeok's Cmlfributio11s to the Doctrine of Si!:'JS may help contextualize and illustrate the argument that follows. It could even serve as a gloss to Peirce's contention that "the entire universe ( ... ) is perfused with signs. if it is not composed exclusively of signs" (CP 5: 448) and that any human being "is a sign himself' (CP 5:314 and 6: 344). Sebeok's starting-point is Mieczyztaw Wallis's controversial claim that in most examples of iconicity "the relation of representation is nonsymmetrical: an iconic sign( ... ) represents its representatum but not vice versa" (Wallis 1975: 2). Sebeok responds to what he sees as an unwarranted generalization by arguing from the counter-evidence. Implicit in Sebeok's whole approach is a recognition of the fact that one cannot simply freeze-frame the ongoing process of semiosis and make one phenomenon into the sign and the other into its object. as accounts of the iconic sign's relationship to its denotatum sometimes appear to. Virtually all forms of semiosis generate a variety of potential relationships. not just a single (referential) one-to-one relationship - which may be one reason why the mi.w! ell ahyme so often conjures up thoughts of a potentially infinite regress and are not just confined to the relationship between the embedded and the embed· ding work. Here is the way Sebeok illustrates iconicity's ability to become part of an ongoing process of signification: As for the vertiginous problem of regression, let it be illustrated by the following: An infant daughter can be said to be an iconic sign for her mother. if there is a topological similarity between her. as signifier. and her mother. its denotatum. However. the little girl can likewise. though doubtless to a lesser degree. stand as an iconic sign for her father. every one of her siblings. all of her kinfolk. and. further. for all members of the human race, but also for all primate~. and, further still, all animals. all vertebrates, and so forth, and so on, in unending retrogression to evermore gcneralizcddenotata. (Sebeok 1976: 130)
The pattern of"retrogression" (or seemingly infinite semiotic regress) highlighted here relating to the little girl's status as an iconic sign is analogous to the way in which Willie's model fans out. as it were. to encompass iconically not just
TilE SEMIOTICS OF THE MISE EN ABYME
43
episodes and figures from his earlier life. but the city he and Stone lived in before they won the lottery. and the world of which that city is a part. Despite its idiosyncrasies. the iconicity of Willie's model is psychologically more plausible than the possibilities near the end of Sebeok's inventory. As Sebeok admits. it is unlikely that the little girl (qua icon) would ever be read primarily a. a sign for the entire human race or for all animals. even though such a taxonomy is not illogical. However. if we pause at one of Sebeok's earlier, more acceptable links in the iconic chain of regress (her relationship to her siblings). we can observe a feature which ha implications for our understanding of the iconic process informing the mise m abyme's function.lt is axiomatically the case that an iconic topological similarity would make it possible for the little girl to be read as a sign of one of her siblings, and by the same token. that sibling could be read as a sign standing in an iconic relationship to her. In fact. within such a family. the possibility exists for any one member to be iconic sign or denotatum in a large number of eonfiguro~tions. These are not. it must be stressed. mutually exclusive sign-roles: on the contrary. they co-exist. As we have seen. and will observe in the cae of further examples. it is often possible for a mi.{e etJ ahyme to refer iconically to the embedding work in which it appears and to refer iconically both independently and in collaboration with the entire work - to the world of the reader. In fact. if the containing work were the sole object of the mi.~e en abyme's referentiality. it would indeed be closer to the examples of the kind of Nard,{,{i.wic Narrmil•e which Hutcheon (1980) analyses. But because signs beget signs which beget signs (etc.). iconic sign-object relationships at the same time form part of larger patterns of signification. some of which also display iconicity. Or. as Umberto Eco puts it, "a book is made up of signs that speak of other signs. which in their turn speak of things" (Eco 1980: 369. my translation). E.co's notion of signs that speak of other signs is. of course. centml to Peirce's conception of semiosis and of the effect of iconicity. "'By 'semiosis' ", Peirce writes. "I mean[ ... ) a cooperation of three [factors): a sign. its object and its intcrpretant. this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs" (CP 5: 484). Peirce's distinction between a sign's object and its interpretant (CP 5: 474 and 8: 179) - at other times expressed as one between the sign's immedime and its dyt~amical object (CP 4:536 and 8: 314. cf. Greenlee 1973: 65Jf.) - may have been infelicitously expressed. but the principle underlying it remains of crucial importance to our topic. Indeed. Greenlee. who refers disparagingly to a widespread, yet "uncritical form of Peirce's principle that every sign represents an object" (Greenlee 1973:71), has even suggested that "possession of an interpretant [is[ the essential condition of signification" (Greenlee 1973: 18). There may be contexts. e.g. the figured poem
44
JOHN J. WHITE
or iconic sentence structure, where such a differentiated notion of semiosis would be of little help. But in the case of the mise e11 ab,\·me, we have already seen occasions on which it is pertinent. Willie's City of the World model may not represent a reality and hence has no (dynamical) object. but it is still able to ..create in the mind of (al person an equivalent sign'' (i.e. in our case the iconic sign's ''immediate object" or interprctcmt): and in l."ertain literary contexts this process of semiosis can become extremely significant. Jean Paurs self-duplicating inn sign foregrounds a process of duplication. an interpretant which the narrator then relates to other indexical-iconic signs of self-absorption {reviews of reviewing or reflecting upon a reflection of reflection etc.). By the same token. the model within a model may create one obvious interpretant (the hidden smaller version which we cannot see). but this interpretant will in tum create the further interprctant of continuous regress. Such patterns, already noted in Tire Mu.fic' ofCirance. Poim Coumer Poilll and "Partial Magic in the Quixote". might themselves be read as iconic of the ovcrnll process of ongoing semiosis. "with the interpretant becoming in tum a sign. and so on ad infinilum" (CP 2: 92 and 303). Greenlee (1973: 107fT.) has explored the ramifications of the suggestion that "the function of the interpretant is to interpret a sign to another interpretant. so that the interpretant too functions as a sign" (108). He concludes: I propose to part company with [Peirce[ on the question of the triadicity of signification. The insistence on this triadicity is arbitrary even on Peirce's own grounds since Peirce maintains that the series of interprctants is unlimited. Accordingly, it would be better to describe the sign relation as polyadic with the number of relata being unlimited - rather than triadic. Peirce's semiotic should have insisted (a) simply on a differentiation nf the sign from the dyadic causal relationship and (b) on the continuity of interpretation. (Greenlee 1973: llllw
Yet without abandoning the concept of 'iconicity', Greenlee's empha.,.is on the "regress of interpretants" (112). which was a principle also informing Sebeok's exploration of multiple fonns of iconic sign within the context of family relationships. captures more convincingly the process of semiosis underlying some of our examples of literary mise e11 abyme than Peirce's often elided sign-objectintcrprctant model does.
4.
Semiotic perspectives on further mises en abyme
It should be evident from the above section that it is likely to be more fruitful to examine the degree of iconicity in the mi.fe en abyme or to privilege that aspect
THE SEMIOTICS OF THE MISE EN ABYME
45
of the sign than to approach the device a.'> being an exclusively iconic sign. lconicity is always ··a matter of degree" (Sebeok 1979: 117).1n contmst to the metaphors of mirroring and interior duplication. which have the disadvantage of suggesting a high degree of iconic isomorphism. treating the mi.{e ell ab)·me as an e:~tample of iconicity can direct attention more effectively to the role played by both similarities and differences between the embedded and the embedding text. At one stage in ''Partial Magic in the Quixote'', Borges's nanator declares of the play within the play in Hamlet that an ''imperfect correspondence of the principal and secondary works lessens the efficacy of this inclusion'' (Borges 1989:46. my translation). The findings of research into the mi.~e en abyme to date would. however. appear to be pointing to a diametrically opposite conclusion. In his discussion of the first of ''Nine Problems in the Theory of Mise en Abyme". for example. Ron offers a sceptical exploration of the "requirement that what is reflected in mi.{e en abyme should in some sense be 'the work as a whole'" (Ron 1987: 422). It is true that there are certain pieces of fiction where a mise en abyme does appear to refer to the embedding work in its entirety: for Gide. Navalis's Heinrid1 mn Ofterdingen remained the classic example of such total reflection (on the centra] mise etl abyme's pivotal place between recall and prophecy. deduction and induction, see Diillenbach 1989: 67-fl9). and the same holds true of the two novels I shall shortly be examining: Kafka's The Trial and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mmmtaitr. But as Ron argues (1987:423-425), even when a miJe etr abyme refers to the entire work. the degree of iconic isomorphism can still vary greatly and there are often likely to be as many differences as equivaJences. Bat (1978) and Van Zoest (1977) have done much to draw attention to the hermeneutic value of such discrepancies. And. as our example from Jean Paul's Flegeljahre has already shown. in works where the mise etr abyme does not refer to the embedding work in its entirety, then its endophoric function may well be less important than an (exophoric) referential element. In the case of the inn sign. the referential target is helpfully identified by a supplementary gloss from the namllor. These two factors - the role played by differences as well as similarities within a seemingly iconic device and the importance of referentiality as well as "narrative narcissism" (i.e. exophoric as well as endophoric iconicity) - will now be investigated. using The Trial and The Magic Mmmlllin as illustrations. There are a number of miseseiJabyme in Kafka's The Trial. The allegorical paintings which the artist Titorelli shows K .. the dramatic presentation of the conditions which the accused buyer Bloch suffers at Advocate Huld's hands and many of the labyrinthine buildings that make up much of the novel's terrain all function as mise.{ en abyme. But most commentutors have been in no doubt about
46
JOHN J. WHITE
the paramount role played by the par.1ble told to Josef K. by the prison chaplain
in the Cathedral in the penultimate chapter of the novel. There are various striking similarities between this mise en ab;rme and The Trial in its entirety: both
are about the Law. both depict the frustrations of trying to reach the higher authorities. both spatializc this sense of frustration and both attempts end in death. However. there are also important differences between the pamble and the
encompassing novel. The man from the country goes to the Law, K."s realms (home and bank). on the other hand. are invaded by the Court's representatives. The man remains humble, K. is often arrogant. The man sits patiently at the door seemingly daunted by the frightening tak of gaining access: he even solicits help
from the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur coat. while K .. by contmst. rushes hither and thither arrogantly demanding help to bring about his acquittal. The man in the legend appears to accept the Law's authority, while K. is often dismissive. And so on. Almost all readings of The Trial recognize the significance of the Doorkeeper pamble a..o; a mi.fe t'll ab.vme and consequently find themselves obliged to confront the limits of the ta1e's iconicity. Kafka's Doorkeeper legend illuminates by dint of its limited i.wmorphism. The reader may conclude that the apparent difference between K. 's frantic stmtegies and indefatigable searching and the pamble-hero's lack of movement may be deceptive. given that neither makes any rea] progress. And the contrast between the aura of power and authority that radiates from the doorkeeper and the decrepit buildings inhabited by the minions of the Law is interpretable more as a reflection of divergent attitudes on the part of Josef K. and the man from the country. K .. having been told by the priest in the cathedral that he is to hear a story about deception (Tiill.\"dllmg). proceedo; to interpret it as evidence that the doorkeeper has deceived the man from the country. reading tiiusche11 as if it can only be understood in a purely transitive sense: but it more probably alludes to the man's own selfdeception. But. of course. K.'s assumption that this is a story about one man deceiving another is itself an act of self-deception on his part. Clearly. our attempts at positing interfaces between the mise en abyme and the surrounding novel will be coloured by the extent to which we either share or reject K.'s own self-justifying interpretation of what is happening. In Kafka's hands, the mise en abyme makes considemble play with differences between embedded text and surrounding work. If one were to apply the rej/ectioll metaphor here. one would have to make substantia] allowances for elements of refraction and distortion (two of Kafka's favourite metaphors). The account of the experiences of the man from the country as he comes to the Law is in no simple straightforward sense a tautologous duplication or didactic resume of what is happening to K. in the rest of the novel. But it is worth remembering that Kafka not only integmted the
THE SEMIOTICS OF THE MISE EN ABYME
47
story of the man from the country as a mi.w? en abyme into Tile Trial. he aJso published it separately in September 1915 in the Jewish magazine Selbstwehr and four years later in his collection A Coumry Doctor, in both instances entitling it
"Before the Law". Published independently. it of course changes its semiotic status. Such iconicity as it retains is no longer a function of essentially endophoric para11els (or contrasts) with the fictive Josef K.'s situation. goals and behaviour. Instead. the focus is on what similarities the reader can detect between the pardble and the world he or she inhabits. But of course those parallels were also present, in the form of 'deferred iconicity'. in the mi.fe en abyme version in Tire Trial. The subsequent integration of "Before the Law·· into the Cmmtrv Doctor collection of stories creates a further fonn of intertextual (endophori~} iconicity (on which. see White 1985:94f.). 11 My second and concluding example of a mi.fe en abyme. the effects of which again derive from limited iconic isomorphism. is the dream-like vision which Hans Castorp experiences in the "Snow" section of Thomas Mann·s The MaRie Moumain. It is a vision which points in two directions: to the experiences which the novel"s hero has so far had up at the Berghof Sanatorium and at the same time. particularly in some of its images of regression and violence. to the trench warlare with which Mann"s novel ends. As well as recapitulating features of the narrative in which it occurs. it also refers to both the dangers and prospects which confront the Europe of Mann"s early readers in 1924. Thus. it is both "prophetic". in Jefferson"s sense. and as much a recapitulation as the parable in Tire Trial was. While lost in the snow. Castorp has a double vision. First. he experiences a scene of ugliness and cannibalistic barbarity. a vision so dark and disturbing that he ha.'i no wish to linger in such a world but quickly tries to follow the beckoning young man who conducts him to a more seductive Arcadian realm. Iconically, the first of the two visions recapitulates and refonnulates Castorp's obsession with death and disease. a fascination which has been with him from the very first day of his arrival at Davos. However. the barbaric vision not only re-enacts the experiences the protagonist ha.'i undergone. it also transfonns them into such an unattractive presenting vehicle that it takes him a while to realize its implications. It is this relative Jack of obvious iconic isomorphism between miJe en abyme and preceding narrative which is its most striking feature. Hans was bewitched by Clawdia Chauchat. who. aJthough a symbolic representation of death and disease. had more in common with Tannhauser's Venus than with an allegoricaJ hag cracking open the bones of a baby. Yet. as was the case with Kafka's The Trial. what superficiaJiy appears to be a contra'it-imag.e possessing. only limited iconicity. turns out to illuminate the truth of what ha.'\ been happening. in the novel more revealingly than surface duplication would ever have done.
48
JOHN J. WHITE
Towards the end of the novel. the reader realizes that Ca.,torp's cannibalistic nightmare also functions as a prefiguration of what the concluding episode refers to a.., the "World Feast of Death.. : i.e. the front-line carnage of the First World War. Like Willie's model. the vision has both a biographical dimension. symbolizing Castorp's seven bewitched years up in a realm of disease and deathfixation. and a further epic designatum: Europe's impending barbarism (which in 1914 will also engulf Castorp himself). When. in the novel's final pamgro~.ph. the nanator asks "Will love rise up one day. even from this World Feast of Death. even from the dreadful heat of fever which ignites the rainy skies all around?'" (Mann 1946:572. my translation). he has left Castorp's world behind in favour of the world the reader inhabits. a place that has all too recently known horrors as harrowing as those in the first part of Castorp's vision. Thus. Janus-headed. the mise en abyme points in equal measure both back to Castorp's early experiences and forward to his fate at the front. but even beyond to the reader's world. which it also rcHects iconically. And this is also true of the second part of Castorp's vision: the Arcadian idyll. The images of harmony. serenity and mritas which characterize this second part are intended as a counterbalance to the bestiality of its predecessor. In this sense, they also stand in a relationship of endophoric iconicity to one another. But what we are in fact being offered are not two autonomous alternatives: anachronistic barbarism or civilization. To borrow an image from Nietzsche's The Birth of TraJ:edy (a crucial intertext for this passage). the behaviour of the happy people in the Arcadian realm is essentially a ''bulwark" against barbarism. "Were they. those children of the sun. so sweetly courteous to each other. in silent recognition of that horror? It would be n fine and chivalrous conclusion they drew. I will hold to them. in my soul" (Mann 1946:230, my translation). It would require a much longer interpretation of this complex miJe t'IJ abyme to do semiotic justice to the patterns of contrast. limited isomorphism and indexicality which interact under the umbrella of its dominant iconicity principle. Mann rightly regarded this epiphanous episode as the core of The MaJ:ic Mountain: he refer.. to the italicized insight to which it eventually leads - "For Ihe Jake of ROodness and lm·e. man shal/mJtlet death ha1·e dominimr O\'er hi.f thollghls" (232) - as the ErJ:ehnissat:.. the distillation of the entire work. Once more. the sentence. like the one with which The Magic Mmmtaill concludes, transcends the fictive domain tn point iconically outwards to the reader's world. Again. function is not just confined to metafictional reHexivity. The reason for this being the fact that Mann was painfully aware that while the world of the early twentieth century was quite capable of reflecting the ugly vision of a hag devouring an innocent child, it had yet to find its way through to the modem equivalent of the
THE SEMIOTICS OF THE MISE EN ABYME
49
Arcadian vision. In Peircean terms. we once more have an example of an interpretant for which no real object yet exists. That is the ethical challenge with which the work confronts its readers.
5.
Conclusion
Moshe Ron concluded his invaJuable critical investigation of "Nine Problems in the Theory of the Mise en Ab_wne" with the declaration that "any diegetic segment which resembles the work where it occurs is said to be placed en abyme'' (Ron 1987: 436), aJthough he still felt constrained to add "a brief
glossary and two provisos" (436f.) to even such a seemingly incontrovertible conclusion. The more semiotically oriented discussion of the mi.fe en abyme in the present paper does not.l believe. invalidate the central findings of either Ron or Oallcnbach. The mi.w: e11 abyme is a work within a larger work, it resembles - or refers iconically to - the outer work. (or to parts of it) in ways often peculiar to the individual example and it can have a variety of functions, from didactic. prophetic and cognitive to mystifying and magical. In other words. while status and context may be relatively simple to define, the parameters of the relationship of similarity and its specific function can diverge substantially from instance to instance. Whereas Gide's original heraldic analogy and Diillenbach's preferred metaphor of mirroring both suffer from the marked disadvantage of appearing to concentmte too exclusively on similarities and shared features. what our examples have revealed is a creative interplay between elements of similarity and dissimilarity. Such fluctuations are something which the concept of 'iconicity' would seem best able to cope with. Yet whereas Bal and Ron each view the mise en abyme as an 'icon'. both are more concerned with the icon as an absolute category. rather than an aspect of a sign - a sign which may at the same time differ from its object (the outer text) in a number of vital respects. While Ron ( 1987: 422-426) argues persuasively that a mise en abyme does not necessarily resemble "the work as a whole". and Bal is as concerned with difference between the mise en abyme element and the larger text that it is said to resemble. neither chooses to exploit the advantages of seeing the device a. an example of iconicity. nllher than a. an icon. and of monitoring the extent to which iconicity can involve elements of (graphic) codification as well as direct similarities. It is the mise 01 abyme's circumscribed iconicity. not its categorical status as an icon. which semiotics has tended to neglect. In a few of the examples considered in this paper. duplication was sufficient to suggest the kind of infinite regress which so fascinated Peirce in some forms of sign-production. Moreover. allowing
50
JOHN J. WHITE
for the possibility of both endophoric and exophoric. as well as 'delayed'. iconicity in such a device. we can see that in certain examples. including the one from Jean Paul's Flegeljahre. a local mise en abyme effect (the inn sign on an inn sign), far from being merely an example of aesthetic narcissism, as it was for Dallenbach (1989: 37f.). at the same time points outwards, exophorically. to phenomena subjected to criticism by the narrator. Indeed. the less myopically endophoric the device becomes. the more its exophoric referentiality will be likely to be exploited. And given that iconicity always prefers a generic object (unlike indexicality. which is usually signally a single object). it is not surprising that the mise en abyme - the map within the map. the microcosmic model or the story within the story - habitually points via the embedding work to the world beyond the fiction. In this respect, it invariably combines elements of endophoric and exophoric iconicity. Far from being merely another ··one of the major mOOes of textual narcissism.. (Hutcheon 1980: 4). the mise e11 abyme retains an important referential component. And. as we have seen, because of the complexities of the multi-layered proces." of semiosis involved, it demands substantial interpretive creativity on the reader's part.
Notes fonn.~
of K:onic s•gn,
s~ Walli~
I.
On the magic power of certain
2.
N(l doubt. Tilt M1uic of Chum·t is in part indebted to Edward Albee's 7iny Afi•·t. As FUredy ( 1989: 753) point~ out. Albee's play "has a cha101t:ter ddibero~tely and explicitly stop the recursions". i.e. when the butler says "You don't suppose that within that tiny model in the model there. there is ... another roum like this. with yet a tinier model within it and within .... Julian ''uls him short with: " .. and within and within and within and ...., No. I ... ro~lher doubt if' (Albee 1971: 26). The empty spoce on Willie's platfonn. on the other hand. k~ps the hypothetical pos.~ibility of infinite regression intact a.~ an idea. even though its creator is understandably sceptical that the pn1ject will ever be completed.
1975: 14-19.
3.
The mist tntlb)mt ha.\ seldom been treated a.\ a type of litero~ry iconicity: Bal 1977 andl978 approaches it within a Peircean conceptual fr.unewort of iconicity largely indebted to van Zoest (1917). wherea.~ Ron. in an explor-.ation of the device as "an iconic ligurc peculiar to niiiT.Itive" (19117:436). refrains from doing .w within a rigornusly semiotit matrix. During the 1999 'Second Symposium on konicity in Language and Liter.ature'. an objedion wa~ made to the assumption that the mise en ubymt could be legitimately treated as a form of iconic sign on the alleged ground that it wa.~ an example of mere ,{imilarity betw~n one sign-system tthe mist en uhyme) and ;u,mher (the embedding work of liter.atu~) nather th11n an iconic relalion.'ihip between ~ign and object. A compansble charge wa.~ levelled again~! the linguistic com:ept of 'endophoric iconicity" (see Winfried NOth's "Semiotic foundations of iconicity in language and literature" in the present volume,especially Section 2). NO!h ha~ sinte pleaded for an expanded 'iconicity'-concept in his Symposium report for the Zeiurhriftfor Stmimik ("Da.~ Prinzip 'Form Miming Meaning' !lolle durch da.~ Prinlip 'fonn Miming Fonn" ergiinzl werden, darnit auf diese
TilE SEMIOTICS OF TilE MISE EN ABYM£
51
Weise auc:h Formen dcr lkoniritit erfaBI werden. die in Rclationcn der Ahnli~;hkcit zwischen Elcmentcn inncrhalb cines Tc:ues begriindet ~ind" NOlen 1999: 254-255). In Section 3 of the ~sent paper, I will argue that viewing mi.tt' t'll ubyme a.~ a fonn of iconicity is nut inconsistent with Peircean semiotics. 4. 11M: key exception is Dlillenbach's analysis of Michel Butor's misrs rll ab_\'mr, mainly bccaiL~ Butor him.~lf is seen a.~ e;~;ceptiona.J in one particular respect: "By laying gn:at stress on (the] relationship between the work of an and the extmlingui.~tic reality ouL~ide it, Butor'', Dilllenbach argues. "presen-es the rden:ntial role of literary discourse. thus di~tan~;ing himself from ~nds of thought that say !hat litera!Ure is only concC'I'I1ed with itself. For Butor. the novel is not entirely enclosed within the worid of lenen. Like a linguistic sign, it must 'stand for'. or be ·equivalent to'. something else. and in the final analysis it can only be defined by iL~ ability to represent what is set out IUUUnd it. 1101 pa:o.~ively, of coun;e. like a ~;opy. but in a re1·elotory· way, using il~ undeniable 'detective' power" (Diillenbach 1989: 122). 5.
Ftlredy (1989:751!.) makes a useful distinction between "recursion" and "repetition" yet appellrl! to blur that distinction in the case of the so-called "Dro.~te-effect" on the "famous cocoa tin em which is painted a girl holding another such cocoa tin, on which~~ painted a girl, and so on''. In reality. the factor of scale makes the effett appear doser to repetition than recursion. In many context~. including Wtllie's City of the World and the Quaker Oats packet, simple duplication is sulf~~;ient to conjure up the possibility of infinite regression in the receiver's imagination. Hence, duplication might be thought of a.~ an iconic sign for recul'!iion.
6.
Since metaphor is one of Peirce's three cla.~-.es of icon. it would be possible to tmlt the mi.u tn ab)·mt within this more specilic conceptual framework. The dillkulty is. however. that Peirce seldom returned to his original notion of the metaphor as icon and semiotics ha~ not taken up and refined his suggestion.
7.
See Ntith: "Semiotic foundations of iconicity in language and
8.
In IICiual fa~:t. in keeping with the family's pious Chri~tianity, Walt had been given the nume Gottwalt and his brother Vult, who came in pla~.-c of the girl his father had e:..pected, is a~iated with the idea of a girl "or whatever God wished": "Quod Deus vult" (Jean Paul 1969: 32!.). As Gouwalt becomes known a.~ Walt and the MJn Vult receives his name from the phr-o~.o;c "Quod Deus vult". the twins' names make them into the Gennan onoma.~tic equivalent of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
9.
Peirce's distinction between the "immediate" and the "dynamical" object (d. CP 8:314 and 4:536 and Greenlee 1973:651f.) makes untenable any simpk distinction between sign-sign relationship.~ tq11a similarity) and iconic sign-object relationships, unless, that is. one di:~eounl~ Pdrcc's point thnt all such one-to--one models are not mort than a shonhand misrepresentation (CP 2: 277).
10.
Greenlee ( 1973: 52) contends that Pein:e "never developed his eanc- weorc", the (accusative singular) direct objects of "herigean".
Agent Creatire powers Result
weard meabte
modgeiJanc weor
er ne mid eagum. ne mid swcce. ne mid earum. ne mid smecce. ne mid hrinc" ( 1.6.6: we would not be able to apprehend with the body. not with eyes. nor with taste. nor with ears. nor with smell. nor with touch); a second time. "na3er ~Jam eagum. ne ~Jam earum. ne )>am stennce. no dam swece. no dam hrinunge" (I. 18. 18: neither with eyes, nor ears, nor smell. nor taste. nor touch). This text has smecce and .{fem·ce for odoratu.{, and /trine and hrimmge for tactU.L The anonymous translator in the Old English Heptateuch (ed. Crawford) translates the verb tangere variously as a'hrinan (Gen. 27:21. 32:25 etc.). onhrinan (Ex. 29:37), and llreppan (Ex. II: I); odor is translated as ste11c (Gen. 27:27; Lev. I :9) and swa'c (Lev. 1:13 and 17); .nwn is also used to translate gu.mu (Ex. 16:31). Tac:Jus often is translated periphrastically. as in IEifric's Nativitcu- Domini 110.{/ri /esu Chri.{ti, "tactus . hrepung 003e grapung . on eallum limum . ac t>eah gewune· licost on ~am handum" (U\•es of Sait1U, 1:22. 199-200: tactuJ, touching or feeling with all the limbs. but most usually with the hands). Then. where a penitential text has "per quinque sensus corporis mei uisum, auditum, gustum. odoratum & tactum. in cogitatione mala" (as to the five senses of my body, vision, hearing.taste. smell. and touch, in contemplation of evil), an Old English translation reads ''mines lichaman. on gesihl>e. on ahiringe. on swccce & rethrine. on yfele gc~Jance" (FOrster 1914). The Old English translation lends itself to three possible interpretations: (I) that the translator recognized only four senses.
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viz. sight. hearing. swecce (meaning either/or la.'ite or smell). and touch: (2) that the translator originally wrote ''gesihl>e, on ahiringe. on .muecce. on swecce & oethryne. on yfele ge~ance". while on smll!cce dropped out in the process of
copying. due to its similarity to
011 S\\'ecce:
(3) that the translator in fact listed
five senses. viz. sight. hearing . .m·ecce which refers to both gu.fllml and odorallim. touch. and gejJance 'thinking'. In Pier.f P/olt'man. the five senses are allegorized as Sires Sewel. Herewel. Saywel. Worche-wel-wyth-thine-hande. and
Godfrey Gowel (8, IX, 20-22: sc. sight. hearing. speech. working with hands. and walking). These varying interpretations are possible because the taxonomy of five senses had not yet established itself firmly in the language. Somehow. then. the Phoenix-poet has led us to the frontier of language.
3.2 MorphophouemicjeatureJ and .{)'IJae.{tlresia This is but a small part of the poet's fourteen-line expansion of a laconic twoline introduction in the poet's source. the pseudo-Lactantian Carmen de m·e phoettice (Baehrens 1881: 247-262: Blake 1964: 88-92) which is barren of sensory experience: "Est locus in prima felix oriente remotus.!Qua patet aetemi maxima porta poli" (1-2: There is a remote place in the fertile distant east/ Where the greatest gate of the eternal heaven stands open). The Anglo-Saxon poet adds sensory details in such a way a.., to develop a synaesthetic poem. in theme and in rhetorical stn&tegy. such that Neorxnawang ('Paradise') is apprehended through sight. smell. hearing. and touch. Old English wlitig means 'bright' a. well as 'beautiful', and focuses on sight (the noun wlite means 'countenance' or 'form') and on the nco-Platonic identification of beauty as daritas 'brightness'. divine essence that radiates a material form (Eco 1986). The word wlitig eludes Modem English translation. with respect to its meaning and its iconicity. Among the words used to translate wlitig in dictionaries and glossaries, beautiful and comely capture only one aspect of its meaning:jair only hints at brightness (at least in contempomry American English): delightful is not focused on sight: and none of these words offer phonetic equivalents for the repetition of high front vowel (1). which suggests brightness and lightness. in contr.lst with darkness or heaviness. in languages around the world. Modem English pretty offers a phonetic equivalent. but suggests something sma11. and will not do to describe the spacious plain of Ncorx.nawang. There is a hint of synaesthesia in the repeated vowel-rounding (o-u) of lines 11-12: "Drer bi3 oft open cadgum togeanes/onhliden hleo~ra wyn. heofonrices duru" (There is often open for blessed ones, opened. the joy of songs, the door of heaven). expanding "Qua patet aeterni maxima porta poli" (line 2). which has
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the same synaesthesia. iconizing 'openness' by means of rounded vowels (Anderson 1998: 186--189). The more unusual rhetorical feature in this case is the
poet's use of asyndetic parataxis. with wytt and dum serving as co-subjects of the verb phrase bit) onhliden. Next. and here we follow along with the poet a.'IO he teaches us to read his poem aesthetically: anaphoric repetition. end-rhyme. and onomatopoeic and synaesthetic oce~~putio. in a catalogue of sounds not heard and sensations not felt in paradise: Ne mzg prer rcn ne snaw ne forstes fnzst ne fyres bla=st nc hes cyme" (53: 'no loss of life nor coming of the evil one (the devil]'), and the poet of Judgment Day II imagines a new millennia! world in which there will be "ne hryre ne caru . biiJ j:la:r wredl ne lyre ne dcalles gryre" (262a. 266: no ruin nor sorrow ... nor will there be poverty nor loss nor fear of death). In these passages. gryre and hryre, words of moderate frequency, are kept away from each other. and arc collocated. instead, with the comparatively rare words lyre or dryre. In the Old English poetic corpus. gryre appears as a simplex 23 times. as a first compoundelement nine times. as a second compound-element eight times. and in the
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adjective Rryrelic 3 times: hryre appears as a simplex. nineteen times and as a second compound-element three times: lyre appears as a simplex thrice (and as a second compound-element thrice. only in prose): and dryre appears as a
simplex twice. and as a second compound-clement once (Bessinger and Smith 1978). Lyre and clryre arc older words. separated from their verbal roots (losian. dreo.m11) by i-umlaut and rhotacism. and are relatively peripheral compared to
the newer analogical formations
/or.lo.~ 'loss', and dreor 'blood'. all of which have greater frequency than lyre and dryre. The rhyming collocation of gryre and hryre.then. with relatively peripheral lyre and dryre. is unexpected and exciting. whereas the rhyming of gryre and hryre would seem ordinary, rather like the rhyming of eorl and ceorl. or offriiJ and wirJ. two words of moderate frequency meaning 'peace'. The rare words lyre and dryre are. as it were. dmwn out of the closet by gryre and hryre; thus. the rhyme patterns themselves are peripheral in the language. What makes gryre, hryre, dryre and J.vre iconic words? Mainly their horizontal relationship to each other as words that convey a sense of loss or the danger of loss. This feature. 'horizontal iconicity' (see also Sadowski, this volume), appears also in modem groups like prowl. growl, howl. foul. cowl. scowl. which share a connotation of something 'sinister', or .fcramble. ramble. bramble ..\·hmnbleJ which share a connotation of 'awkward sprawling', or dri:.:.le . .~i::.le. swi::.le. fi:.:.le. pi:.:.le which suggest the action of liquid on a surface. Gryre. with initial cluster (gr-1. shares semantic space with kinesthetic granitm. grammg 'groan. groaning·. grennian. gremumg 'grin'. grimetan. grinuian 'rage. roar'. gri.wn 'shudder·. gnomian, gnormmg, ~:rym 'groan' and. in Beowulf. the name Grendel. Initial [gr-] has a continuous history in English as a phonaestheme that has negative connotations and often is associated with a tightened jaw as in grin. grimace, groan. grumble. grouch. growl, and then. in the affective domain. grim. greedy. grumpy. Marie Nelson ( 1973) has explored the aesthetic contributions of words in (gr-1 especially in the fourteenth-century Alliterative Morte Arrlmre. As for the synaesthesia in llryre and dryre. motion is iconized by repetition of (r). Repetition of phonemes. and also of syllables and words. is a common form of iconicity in languages around the world. and may be variously onomatopoeic; synaesthetic, iconizing motion, iteration. or frequency; or phonaesthetic. iconizing intensity. pejoration, familiarity. or some other aspect of affective experience (Anderson 1998: I 10--116 and 208-213). The rhyming collocation of hryre and dryre (in line 16) reinforces a pattern of repetition that already exists in each word separately. Having said this much. we are still some distance from understanding the artistry of this passage. for we should want to know why the poet amplifies one
!CONICITY IN CAEDMON'S HYMN AND THE PHOENIX
123
line. "Nee tamen aestivos hiemisve ... " into a catalogue of ten verses marked by anaphora with sentence negation. II is true but not enough to say that this sort of amplification is usual in Old English poetic treatment of Latin sources. Blake. in the introduction to his edition. points out classicaJ and biblical precedents: the description of the Elysian plain in the Odyssey - "No snow is there. nor heavy storm. nor ever rain'', etc. (Ody.uey 4.563 ff.). and John's vision of the New Jerusalem as a place where "there shall be no more death. neither sorrow. nor crying. neither shall there be any more pain" (Rev. 21:4: Blake 1964: 13-14): in other words. paradise is described in terms of a catalogue of unpleasant things that are not present there. But the Phoenix poet would not have known the Ody.uey and was not thinking of Rewlatiotrs. which focuses on human sorrows ruther than climatory extremes. We will never be able to identify a specific literary source. but Bruce Lincoln ( 1991: 23-32) has collected Greek. Irish, French, Old Norse. Iranian. and lndic descriptions of paradise in terms of catalogues of bad things not present there, to support his proposal that this is an Indo-European theme. This theme is barely audible in De m·e plwenice. but clearly present in the Prose Phoetri:r:, and embellished with the rhetorical devices of onomatopoeic and synaesthetic occupatio in The Phoenix. and also in Glllhlac 8 (825b-33a) and Judgmelll Day II (254-71 ). poetic passages that exemplify the Indo-European way of describing paradise. The poet follows this with a bit of synaesthetic occupatio in his description of mountain peaks and cliffs not found in paradise: Beorga.~ )'.rr ne muma~ steape ne stondai'l, ne standifu hcah hlifiai'l, swa her mid us, nc dene ne dalu ne dunscmfu. hlrewa.~ ne hlincas, ne )'a:r hleonad oo unsmej)Cs wiht. ac se .rj)Cia feld wridad under wolcnum wynnum geblowen.
(Phoeni.t 2lb-27: Neither hills nor mountains stand steep there. nor do cliffs tower high. as here with us. Neither glens nor dales. nor mvincs. nor mounds. nor hills tower there. nor anything rugged. but the noble field flourishes under the douds. joyfully blooming.)
The poet's source is just two lines: "lllic planities tractus diffundit apcrtos./Nec tumulus crescit nee cava vallis hiat" (5-6: There the plain spreads over open tracts.! For not a hill exists. nor does a hollowed valley gape.) For fllllllllll.{ and cam Willi.{ the Anglo-Saxon poet gives series of terms for hills and valleys. Is this just ampli.fimtio by habit'! Maybe not. Notice that in the sequences of words
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EARL R. ANDERSON
for hills or height. the stressed vowels repeatedly swing upward. from the midback diphthong of beorRas to the high back vowel of m1mta:r; from lhe mid-front diphthong of heah to the high front vowel of 11/ijiaiJ and again in hltt•waslrlincaJ, and then there is a sort of vowel shock, with low and high front vowels juxtaposed in the compound srmrdifll. Vowels move in the opposite direction. downward. in line 24 where valleys arc mentioned: from mid front to low in dene-dall1. from high back to low front in dunscrafu. an opposing twin compound. as it were. of stwrdifu two lines earlier. The patterns might have been suggested by the contrdsting high and low vowels of twm1ltu and ca\'ll vallis, but the Phoenix poet often manipulates vowels to achieve synaesthesia. Of course. the Latin source does not match the Anglo-Saxon poel"s use of the takete-factor. as I have called it elsewhere: the association of unvoiced stops and fricatives with the jagged edges of a mountainous terrain (.fteap, l'tandifu. heah hlificu}, lrlinca.f), and. in contrdst, the ma/unw-factor. the association of liquids. nasals. and perhaps voiced stops with a smooth or low terrain (delle. da/11. dun-). Takete and maluma (earlier baluma): these terms are familiar in iconicity research as the nonsense words that were used by Wolfgang KOlher in psycholinguistic experiments. in which informants of differing linguistic backgrounds were asked to match nonsense words with angular and curvilinear geometric shapes. In an early experiment, most of his informants matched takete with a pentagram. and baluma with a spirdlly shaped curve formed by three overlapping teardrops ( 1929: 242243). In later experiments, KOhler substituted malunra for btllumu in order to avoid association with English ballooll, with the same results (1947:254-255). A number of follow-up studies confirmed KOhler's claim that for speakers of various languages. unvoiced stops are associated with angularity, while nasals. liquids, and bilabial voiced stops like [bJ are associated with curvilinearity (Tarte and Barritt 1969; Tarte 1974; Tarte and O'Boyle 1982). One aspect of the anistry of the Phoeni.t poet. then. is his sensitivity to these translinguistic iconic associations. The poet's description of the phoenix is a tour-de-force of synaesthesia used to support a theme that has no basis in the Latin source: the poet conveys the idea of the uniqueness of the phoenix by describing him as a work of art mther than as a natural creature: Is sc fugel fa:gcr forweard biwc. bleobrygdum fag ymb ~a breost foran. Is him Jxrt heafod hindan grene wra:tlice wrixlea wunnan geblonden. Ponne is se lima fa:gre gcxla:led. sum brun sum ba:>u sum blacum splottum
!CONICITY IN CAEDMON'S HYMN AND THE PHOENIX
125
seamlicc= beseted. Sindon pa fi):m hwit hindanweard ond se hab grene niopoweard ond ufeweard ond Pa:t ncbb lixcd swa gla:s oppc gim, geaftas scync
innan ond ulan. Is seo eaggebyrd stcan: ond hiwc stanc p:clicast. gladum gimme, pone in goldfatc smiJ>e orponcum biseted weor}led. Is ymb lJ<me sweoran, !>Wylce sunnan hring, beaga beorhta.'t brogden fedrum. (Phot>ni.t 291-306: The fair bird, foremol>t in bcaUiy, i:. adorned with a variety of colors in front, around his breast. His head is green behind, splendidly variegated and mixed with purple. The tail is beautifully variegated, partly brown. pal1ly purple, and partly covered artistically with bright spots. The wings arc white behind. the neck is green above and below. and the beak gleams like gla.~s or a jewel. the jaws brilliant inside and oul. The eye is piercing and in appearance most like a stone. like a brilliant gem when into a gold setting it ha:. been placed with the skill of smiths. Around the neck. like the sun's halo. is the brightest of thmat-plumages. inlaid wilh fealhers.)
The association of high front vowels with brightness or light colors is heard in "ti~u/ hwit hindanweard" (297b--98a). "~a:t nebb lixel}/ swa gla:s o~l>c gim. geaftas scyne innan ond utan" (300-lb) and in many verses elsewhere in the poem. The translinguistic a.'isociation of high and front phonemes with bright and light colors. and of lower or back phonemes with dark or cool colors. is. of course. a familiar concept in iconicity research (cf. Cha.'itaing 1960. 1961. 1962). But the most noticeuble form of iconicity in this pussage is the association of consonant clusters with variegated color: "bleobrygdum fag" (292a: ornamented with variegated colors), "wn£tlice wrixled wurman geblonden" (293: artistically blended, mingled with purple), "sum blacum splottum" (296b: partly with bright spots). Then. in addition. variegated color is iconized through syntax using (maphora with s11m ("sum brun. sum basu. sum ble1cum splottum''. 296) and using homoeoteleuton with -weard ("hwit hindanweard.. nioJ:>oweard ond ufeweard". 298-99a). Multiple repetition of words and syllables iconize a multiplicity of spots. The association of multiple consonant clusters with variegated color, a.'i a species of chmmaesthesia. has not been investigated fully in the litemture on iconicity; its synaesthetic counterpan would be the association of multiple consonant clusters with twisted or knotted shapes and contours. for which the exemplary Old English word would be wrretlic. usually translated e1bstroctly as 'wondrous. curious; excellent. beautiful'. but often implying something more
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physical: a complex. intricately designed surface. The dragon killed by Sigemund is a "wrretlicne wynn" (Beowulf 89Ia: intricately-shaped worm): the Brosing necklace that Wealh):leow presents to Beowulf is a "wnrtlicne wundurmaMum'' (Beowulf 1173a: intricately craflcd. wondrous treasure). Similarly synaesthetic words arc wrixltm- wrixlilm 'change. exchange', wrtt'.motr, wri/wn 'twist', wr(l'Stan ·wrest. twist', wruxlian 'wrestle'. wra:stlere 'wrestler'. wringun 'wring'. hwearfian-llwearjliatl- hweorftm 'tum about". hwerjlung 'error'. fm:ttwe 'ornament. treasure' .fra:tlewian 'adorn, decorate'. The basis for iconicity in such cases could be either kinesthetic or cognitive: multiple consonant clusters are complex articulations. difficult to process cognitively. and thus have the potential to iconize complex or asymmetrical shapes. rough terrain. complicated, intricate surfaces, and variegated color. The verses "bleobrygdum fah" (292a) and "wrretlice wrixlea wunna geblonden" (294). then. display a fonn of iconicity that we may compare to the Ph_\'Jio/ogu.~ poel's description of the panther, whose intricate coloring is compared. in a simile. to the coat of many colors that Jacob gave to his son Joseph: D;rt is wr~rtlic deor, wundrum scyne hiwa gehwylces: swa ha!led secg.W. g~sthalge guman, ~;rUe Iosephes tunece wa:re telga gehwylces bleom bregdende, ~ara bcorhtra gchwylc a:ghwrs a:nlicra o~rum li:\le dryhta bcarnum. swa ~a!s deorcs hiw. bi~N brigda gehwa:s. beorhta and scynm wundrum lixed. ~a:ue wr~rllicra J>e gim" (300a). and finally in the superlative simile describing the phoenix's eye: Is sco eaggebyrd stearc ond hiwe stane gclicast. gladum gimme, J>one in goldfate smi~ orJ>oncum biscted weor(3eil. (Phoe11i:r 301b-4: The eye (by its noble] chantcter is hard (as stone! and in shape-and-color most like stone. a bright gem. when it is set in goldfate by the
ancient artifice of smiths.)
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EARl R. ANDERSON
Here the poet departs somewhat from his source: lngcntcs oculi: crcdas gcminos hyacinthos. Quorum de medio Iucida Hamma micat. (De Ol'e plwenin.' 137-40: She has cnonnous eyes: you would believe them to
be twin jacinths, from the middle of which a clear flame sparkles.)
The poet's departure from the Latin sense may not always be intentional. The hapax legomenon. eaggeb.vrd 'nature of the eye'. for example. probably is based on confusion of ingemes ·enormous' with geJIS, genlis 'family descent' and by extension 'nature'. The poet's substitution of general words stane and gimme for the more specific hyucintho.~ 'jacinths' is consistent with the Old English treatment of gem-names which are classified as 'stones' according to color. rather than by names of species or names derived from geographic sources as is the case in Greek and Latin. One grammatical change may be significant: where the Latin source refers to the phoenix's eyes in the plural. the Anglo-Saxon poet substitutes the singular. probably because the poet is thinking of a metal sculpture of a bird in side profile, which would have only one eye. This, in Anglo-Saxon sculpture. usua1ly would be a red garnet in a sening surrounded by a circular trench that act historians call an 'eye-surround'; perhaps this is what the poet means by goldfcl'l. Although Bosworth-Toller trnnslate "in goldfate" 'in a bracelet' based on the gloss braaia or lamina aurea 'thin plate of gold', most commentators are content with something more gener.dized like ·in a gold setting·. The OE Datriel has "Godes goldfatu" (755: 'God's golden vessels'). The word lends itself to a variety of interpretations and might very well have had a technical artistic meaning alongside more general senses. Then. too. the Anglo-Saxon poet suppresses the Latin poet's detail of the phoenix's gigantic size (145~6), perhaps because that would be inconsistent with the image of a meta1 sculpture. Another aspect of iconicity in The Phoetrix is synaesthesia of motion. Here. the Latin poet emphasizes the gigantic size of the phoenix.larger than other birds and bea.'its in Arabia. yet light. swift. and graceful. not sluggish like other large birds: Magnitiem terris Amburn quae gignitur ales Vix aequare potest. seu fera seu sit avis. Non tamen est tarda ut volucres. quae corpore mag:no lnccssus pigros per grave pondus habcnt. Sed levis ac velox. regali plena decore. (De Ul't' p/wenice 145-49: Scarcely can any winged creature born in Arab lands, whether bird or bea~l. compare with her in size. Yet she is not sluggish like the birds with large bodies which have slow gaits because of their great weight. Rather. she is light and swift, rich with regal grace.)
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The Latin poet is weighed down by concepts, which the Anglo-Saxon poet soars above with simplicity of thought and lightness of language. contrasting the
phoenix's quick movements to the slowness of other birds: Nis he him.lcrweard ne hygeg;clsa, swar ne swongor swa sume fuglas. ):Ia pe late ):lurh lyft laca!) fi)lrum: ac he is snel ond swift ond swipe leoht. wlitig ond wynsum wuldre gemearcad. (314-18: Nor is he slothful nor light-minded. nor heavy nor sluggish like some birds, which fly lazily through the air with their wings: but he is nimble and swift, very light, and he is beaUiiful and winsome with glorious markings.)
Earlier: swa sc haswa fugel beorht of Pa:t bearwiL~ hearne gewited. farct1 feprum snell Hyhtc on lyfte, swinsaa ond singei'l swegle toheancs. ( 12lb-24: The bright bird depar1s from the forest, from a lree, goes quickly on wings in flight through the air, makes melody and sings toward heaven.)
If the language in the Latin source seems weighted by concepts. like some passages in Dante. the language of The Phoenix is characterized by 'lightness', as ltalo Calvina calls it. comparing the poetry of Dante and Cavalcanti (Calvino 1988: 10--17). In both pa.-.sages. high and front vowels iconizc the phoenix's fleetness of feather: "ftyhte on lyfte/swinsai\ ond singe(\" (123b--24a) ... "he is snel ond swift ond swi~ leoht.lwlitig ond wynsum" (317-18a).ln the passage contrasting the swift phoenix with other, slothful birds. the slowness of the other birds is iconized by a concentration of lower back vowels: "swa ne swongor swa sume fuglas" (315); the focal word . .nmngor, with two consonant clusters, is characterized by prolonged duration as well as lower back vowels.
4.
Conclusion
Tire Phoe11ix presents some of the most extended examples of synaesthesia and is unique in Old English in that regard. although other poems also come to mind: The Dream of the Rood with its dark colors. darkly heard in low and back vowels; parts of Beoi\'U/f: the 'Doomsday' poem that we once called Chrisll/1. )conicity is a linguistic resource that is generully available to poets. but poets
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EARl R. ANDERSON
differ in their uses of it. Iconicity thus makes an imprint that differentiates the work of one poet from another.lt is a sort of linguistic fingerprinting. except that some are better than others, and the Phoenix poet. it still seems odd to say. is among the best.
References A:lfric. 1881-1900. Uw.'.iofSaims. &I. W.W. Skeal. EETS os 76, 82,91 and 114. London: Oxford University Press. Alfred. 1969. Kinx A/.fred:f Ver.fiOII of St. Augll.ftineS Soliloquie.L Ed. Th.A. Camicelli. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univel'5ity Press. Anderson, E.R. 1997. 'The Sea...ans of the Year in Old English... Angln-Scu:on England 26: 231-263. Anderson, E.R. 1998. A Grammar of /coni.m1. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Atkins, J. W.H. (ed.). 1922. The Owl and the Nighti11ga/e. Cambridge: Cambridge University P~ss. Baeh~ns. Aemilius (ed.). 1881. Ponue l.Ati11i Milwre.f, vol.3. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. Bede. 1969. Bnie:f Ecde.titt.ftical Hi.uory. Ed. and tmns.B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon. Bessinger. J. B .. Jr.. and Ph. H. Smith. Jr. 1978. A Conmrdam·e to the Al•glo-Saton Ponic· Record:t. llhaca. NY: Cornell University Press. Blake. N. F. (ed.). 1964. The Phoem:r. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bolinger, D.L. 1950. "Rime, Assonance, and Morpheme Analysis". Word 6: 117-136. Reprinted in his Fom1s of En~-:lish: An·em, Morpl1eme. Orda. I. Abe and T. Kamckiyo (eds), 203-226. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. Calvino. I. 1988. Six Memos for the Next Miflenium: TI1e Charles Eliot Norto11 l.Lctures 1985-86. Trans.P. Crragh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chastaing. M. 1960. "Audition color&: un enqm?te". Vieetlangage 105:631-637. Chastaing. M. 1961. "Des sons et des couleurs". Vie et langage 112: 358-365. Chastaing. M. 1962. "La brillance des voyelles". Ardli\'11111 LinRui.uimm 14: 1-13. Clemocs. P. 1995. lmnactions of TIIOIIf.:llt and Language in Old EnRii.fh Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crawford, S.J. (ed.). 1922. Tile Old Engli.fh Venion of the Heptatellch, £/fric:t Treati.fe on the Old and New Te:ttamem and hi.t Prefaa to Gene.ti.t. EETS os 160. London: Oxford University Press. Dobbie. E. Van Kirk. 1937. TI1e Manusc-ript.tofCa·dmon:t Hynmand Bedrralure. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Bcnjamins. Nelson, M. 1973. ··submorphemic Values: their Contribution to Pattern and Meaning in the Marte Artlmre". Lan~:uage cmd S~·le 6: 189-296. Peinovich, M.P. 1979. Old Engli.fh Ntmfl Morphology: A Diat·hmnic Study. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Simone. R. (ed.). 1995a. /conicity in Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Simone, R. 1995b. '"Under the Sign of Cratylus". In R. Simone (ed.), vii-lti. Simone, R .. 1995c. "Iconic Aspects of Syntax''. In R. Simone (ed.), 153-169. Stanley, E.G. (ed.). 1960. Tile Owl and the Nightingale. London: Thoma.~ Nelson & Sons. Tarte. R. D. 1974. "Phonetic Symbolism in Adull Native Speakers of Czech''. Language a11d Spuch 17: 87-94. Tarte. R.D .. and L.S. Barriu. 1969. "Phonetic Symbolism in Adult Native Speaker of Engli..~h: Three Studies". Studies in Lo.ng11age and Language Beha1•ior, Pro~:reu Report VIII, February/, /969. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health. Education and Welfare, Ollke of Education. Reprinted in Ltmguage and Speech 14 (1971): 158-168. Tarte. R.D .. and M. W. O'Boyle. 1982. "Semantic Judgments of Compressed Monosyllables: Evidence for Phonetic Symbolism".Jm1rna/ of P.f)'cholillgui.ftic Re.uarch II: 183-196.
PART
III
Visual iconicity: Typography and the use of images
Iconic punctuation Ellipsis marks in a historical perspective Anne C. Henry £mman11el Colh.>f:e, Unil·ersity of Cambridge
1.
Introduction
My aim in this paper is to draw attention to the iconic value of punctuation. Punctuation is largely ignored. not only within discussions of iconicity. but also within the broader domain of literary criticism. I am particularly concerned here with ellipsis marks. When we pick up a novel. or a poem or a play. we arc usually confronted with ellipsis marks in one form or another: they might appear as a series of points. or a series of hyphens. perhaps a dash or a line of asterisks. Although much work has been done on the development of alphabetic forms. it is less common to a"k how marks of punctuation have come about. nor how any particular variant might relate to its signified meaning. In this study I demonstrate that over the last 400 years these variant graphic forms of ellipsis have evolved alongside changing historical periods. and in direct response to changing liter.1ry and linguistic preoccupations. And. I believe, it is only by looking at ellipsis marks within this broad historical context that we arc able to recognise their full iconic force. Simon Alderson in his essay 'lconicity in Literature: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Prose Writing' similarly argues that discussions of iconicity should be undertaken with historical awareness. He describes the "flexibility" of the term 'iconicity'. but argues that "its merit is that it helps open up the age·old litemry ideal of form/function correspondence to serious linguistic investigation at a number of different levels" (Alderson 1999: 110). The rarity with which punctuation is discussed within this "age-old" litercll)' debate of form and
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ANNE C. HENRY
function. itself justifies an employment of the term 'iconicity', even in its broadest sense. and in this paper I will examine ellipsis marks as 'icons' in two ways. Firxt. I will examine how each graphic form provides information about its immediate verbal context. in some way visualising the concerns of the particular book in which it appears. engaging with what Alderson describes as ''the beliefs about language and reality circulating at the time" ( 110). Second. I will demonstrate that ellipsis marks have twer time developed a semantic system of their own. That is. as they have evolved and been transformed along broadly iconic (amongst other) principles. their iconic resonance comes in pan from their relation to each other. Ellipsis marks can therefore often be employed lo contradict ostensible verbal meanings or at lea'\1 contribute secondary levels of meaning within particular verbal contexts. II is also often possible. solely by examining the form the ellipsis marks take. to place a work within a specific historical period or literary genre. To demonstrate this. my argument follows chronologically the history of ellipsis marks. beginning with a description of how the first marks of ellipsis came into bcing. 1
2.
The history of ellipsis
2.1
Medie~·al
tue: omissions in manuscripts
When copying from defective exemplars. medieval scribes would often leave blank spaces to indicate places which were lost. tom. worn or otherwise illegible. The following is an example from a twelfth-century manuscript from Salisbury Cathedral:
ELLIPSIS MARKS IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
137
~.nn.mi7Pt1'!n.u·U{Umt"~ niub·,fiAcW Jul•nrr .tuclmaf.fcim
~~~~~-~~~~~~ri"~C:~ o~)l~~~~r ~~h"c;:r.:=-~~~~~'!fl (''u;:l:r;.t"~r~~dtt':.fund'C-'f·n~l'i••udu:t'""'nui f~r;n- ,;.'ill-' ifC!rtmRli~yn:a·
~.:.\MIIfiTIUI"'t"frltl11'1"t'ChW\'nlr (\ltT'II diTroJif1'1"f1t)'t"4..tnlni_ (nff'Lctrt'dt~i",.L\m-'bl~f·'flll"tn"'a;;.\111:.f.\llt'" Jo;tncnnnnqutr.tr r•-mn1'J.Irt'·.t· ~· r-.tm.:tt rii ttTJ"!n(,...~rr tJbn~lmJ" • nan1ir'"}'~,·t~.tbhumJ.n.t tTTrk"'t'~J,rmmur 1.argtn"' tjj:~...w '='"~ n:n .:mn•nnf'hmt d&ct1·t .sdutrtnm 'l.f•,ri rw( .:l~nra· 1 , ·!rm~( 'Tuyummtf :runu1.1 '"'!):uurrr n."T('If r.:rf. I( r'Tr\ ~.\IIIITt' •1111 J,,n,IO:J.illl .:.nnnnlir h..-macJdol1UI'J\.l.:l tfi( .\lit" .tdu!ttr nommd,~ri'"JIIi.l .1dulmoia vn·ri'n'.UI!'t" • nf'\1.
O.~.~.nn~" i1'9l' hai~ mn.,ch ,,,nuu•l" rt"uf
''~•ft11i,;ot1U11rto mdt-f l"tfr.-mdto ·•1'\"
t' -~.' \'111-ul(rtd.tdh!r 1l1"' .:!~,·· md1uf i1dl' '1":' r.m.,nt
tn•m -~· ""'mli '111' tr.:t•ml"n- tTrlT '!lt f!~ ct11G'i· •1ut hft' f'OUL~7tf
Figure I. Reproduced in Webber: /991, plate H. Blank spaces served a practical purpose. Due to the minimal circulation of manuscripts. scribes were unable to consult even a fraction of the various copies of a work. therefore the blank space allowed later readers, who had consulted other. more complete versions of the texl. to till in the blanks. Yet here the blank space also took on an iconic significance. as it visually replicated the missing parts of the copy-text: absence denoted absence. However. scribes. from the tirst century AD. and probably earlier. would also usc a mark often known as the a.~leri.\'C/1.~ to indkate omissions.
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ANNE C. HENRY
p <Jbmu ollllJlllllllj •IU.)'IL'!II 0Jomo. D•- Sbp, btre 1111 fir • s.. !If tbo~ fprake one lDOlb mo:r- --- :JI'Omo, D-•· J beftrb pou litre me. D"· lillbat IDaa!b pau (Jane Or 1 S•. !i}~pre bp tbhf knaae oa tO! badl, anD c.vy 111m Ia •• faa aa t!Joa c~na. ~
Dr,
S•.
:d Letter.t of Joseph Conrad. Volume 2. /898-/902. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kyffin. M. (trans.) 1588. Terence's Andria. London: T. E(ast) forT. Woodcocke. Lindsay. W.M. (ed.) 1911. Isidore of Seville's Etymofogiarum.ti1•e origilmm. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lennard, J. 1991. Bill I Digre.u: Tile £rp/oitmion of ParemheuJ in Engfi.d1 Printed Verse. 0Jtford: Clarendon Press. Livius, T. 1521-33. HiJtoria. Venctiis: in aedibus hacredum Aldi Manutii. et Andreae Asulani soccri. Maturin. C. 1820. Me/moth tile Wanderer: A Tale. Edinburgh: for Archibald Constable. Mulcastcr, R. 1582. The First Pari of tire Elementarie ~t"lrich entreatetll ,-hefdie of the right writing of our English llmg. London: T. Vautroullier. Panofsky. E. 1955. Meaning in the Vi.mal Art.t. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Parkes. M. B. 1992. PauJe and E/fet·t: An lntrodut·tionto tile Hi.uory of Punctuation in the WeJt. Aldershot: Scolar Press. Punenham, G. 1589. The Arte of EngliJh PoeJie. London: R. Field. Richardson, S. 1748. Claris.w, Or, the History of a Young Lad.\': Comprehending The mo.tt Important Concern.f of Prh·ate lJfe. London: for S. Richardson. Staiti. P. J. 1989. Samuel F. B. Mor.te. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sterne. L. 1760-67. The Life and Opinion.f of Tristram Shand,\·. London: for R. and J. Dodsley: [v. 5-9:) forT. Becket and P. A. Dehondt. Webber. T. 1992. Scribes and Scholar.t at Sali.~bury Cathedral c. 1075- c. 1125. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Iconic functions of long and short lines Max Nanny Uni•·erJity of Zurich
1.
Introduction: Line-length as icon
Since at least the Renaissance. poets who have tried to mime meaning by textual form have had recourse to the poetic line. the basic rhythmic and visual unit of a poetic text. In the following I shall focus on the iconic use made of lineation as discovered in mainstream poetry. leaving modernist. experimental or pattern poetry by the side. 1 I shall not deal with the line-break and enjambement, which offer an important iconic potential of lineation but on which well-known critics such as. for instance. John Hollander and Christopher Ricks have commentcd.2 I shall chiefly concentrate on •·i.ma/ rather than aural line-length. hence mostly leaving out the auditory aspects of meter and rhythm. We must be aware of the fact that ever since the introduction of writing in ancient Greece and especially since the advent of printing in the West in the 15th century. the line ha.'i also had a visual reality in poetry as seen and not just an auditory reality in poetry a.'i heard. So what we are confronted with is a fundamental duality of the line. and of poetry: it appeals both to eye and ear. it is both seen and heard. Due to this. each and every printed poetic text is also subject to a kind of vi.mal prosody. As I have discovered. one important iconic potential of lineation in traditional poetry may be descried in the typographic length of lines and, if more than one line is taken into account. in the gradual change of line-length. be it increa.'iing or decreasing. Now, the length of a line in aural terms is first of all the result of its number of syllables. However. whether a line is perceived to be long when
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.{poke" also depends on the length of vowels. on the clustering of consonants. on the particular rhythm of the line and on the syntax. The ~·is11al length of a line both derives from its number of syllables and from the number of letters it contains, which in tum is subject to the specific words used. Monosyllabic words of one or two letters like ·a·. 'to' or 'of' do not contribute to the visual (and acoustic) length of a line us much a~ such monosyllables of six (e.g. 'threat") or even nine leuers ('screeched'). And of course. the use of polysyllabic Latinate words lengthens a line. In the context of iambic pentameters. visually long lines are. metrically speaking, often hexameters or hendecasyllables. i.e. pentameters with an extrametricaJ feminine ending. In short. the length of a line is nf a complex nature depending on hnw we view it. It is also a relative tenn. Thus. whether a line seems long or short depends on its immediate context of verses. But as soon as a line noticeably detaches itself from its adjacent neighbourhood of lines. it may. I argue. function as an icon. Let us not forget the important fact that. of course. not all conspicuously long or short lines acquire iconic force: it is the meaning of a line {or of a passage) alone that detennines whether we may interpret it in iconic terms at all. It is essential to remind ourselves that iconicity is not a necessary. geneml phenomenon but of an optional and. hence. occasional nature. However. when I was visually scanning thousands of lines. I came across a very large number of conspicuously long and short lines with the same or related key-expressions whose meanings turned the lines into icons. This to me seems to be more than just accidental. 3 Now. whereas a long or short line may be. broadly speaking. an 'imagic icon'. the change of line-length. be it in the form of gradually longer or gradually shorter lines. assumes diagrammatic qualities: the relationship between the changing lengths of single lines as signs reHects a similar relationship of change between their semantic referents. My paper is based on the scrutiny of the collected works of mostly English poets:' Finding visually conspicuous long or short lines I examined the semantic content of such lines with the aim of discovering formal iconicity, i.e. linear mimings of meaning. Thus I perused the poetry of important seventeenth and eighteenth century English writers (such as Jonson. Donne. Milton. Dryden. Herrick. Marvell. Herbert. Pope. Gr.ay. Collins. Goldsmith). of the Romantics {Blake. Wordsworth. Shelley. Keats) and of some other nineteenth and twentieth century poets {Arnold. Tennyson. Dickinson. Auden). In terms of the iconic use of line-length. the seventeenth and eighteenth century poets. particularly Dryden and Pope. proved to be the most rewarding for in their works. ico11ic long or
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
159
short lines are found most frequently. This is probably due to their conscious adherence to a mimetic view of the world and of the arts which was dominant at their time.
2.
The long line as an icon
A long line may serve as an imagic icon of length. distance. duration or, more metaphorically. of vastness. great height. swelling. spreading. stretching and width. Its projection beyond the surrounding line-ends may serve as an icon of protrusion. excess, surplus and surpa..;sing.
2.1 Length and distance In a passage of John Dryden's play AllforLLn•e (1. i. II. 233--237) the length of a line offers a direct icon of the lengtlr of an outstretched body: Of all forsaken. and forsaking all: live in a shady Forrest's Sylvan Scene, Stretch· d at my length beneath some blasted oke: I lean my head upon the Mossy Bark. And look just of a piece, as I grew from it: My uncomb'd Locks. matted like Mistletoe. Hang o ·er my hoary Face .
In its immediate context of the previous and succeeding lines. the long line .. Stretch'd at my length beneath some blasted oke'' (1. 235) iconically reHects stretching and length. The clustering of consonants and long vocalic sounds also add an auditory suggestion of length. A similar iconic effect by means of conspicuous line-length is achieved by Emily Dickinson in the first line of her poem 764 that metaphorically refers to the premonitory, long shadow ca'\t by the setting sun on the lawn: Presentiment - is that long Shadow - on the Lawn Indicative that Suns go down 1be Notice to the startled Gmss That Darkness - is about to pa.~s -
Already in a passage of his early poem ..To the Memory of Mr Oldham" (II. 7-12) Dryden uses the icon of a long line to suggest greater distance: To the same Goal did both our Studies drive, The Ia.~ I ~I out the soonest did arri\'e.
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160
Thus Ni.w.f fell upon the slippery place. While his yuung Friend perfonn' d and won the Race. 0 early ripe! to thy abundant store What could advancing At:e have added more?.1
In the race between the older Nisus and the young Euryalus at the funeral of Anchises {Aenid 5). ''Ni.ms fell upon the slippery place" (I. 9). whereas Euryalus mn the full length of the course. According to this epideictic analogy. the younger Oldhwn. ··o early ripe!" (I. II). outran the older Dryden in the race of life and achievement. The line "While his young Friend perfonn'd and won the Race" (1. 10) mimetically outruns the previous. much shorter line in which Nisus falls.
2.2 l...enghty objecu: snake.f,
weapmr.~, sceptre, hair and .~tream.f
The long line has been often used as an icon of the lengthiest animal. namely the .make. Alexander Pope's famous passage from ''An Essay on Criticism··. a poem that is rich in examples of iconic strategies. comes to mind (II. 354--357): Then. at the fa.ft. and oil(\' Couplet fraught With some llllltlecming Thing they call a TIWIIRIII, A 11eedless Afexo11drit1e ends the Song. That like a wounded Snake. drags its slow length along.
The above sequence of iambic pentameters ends in the long (hexametric) alexandrine "That like a wounded Snake. drags its slow length along" (1. 357). whose meaning is formally or iconically mimed by the line's dmgging length as well as by the phonetically long syllables. In his "Mont Blanc" (II. 98-106). P.B. Shelley iconically stretches the line that compares glaciers to "snakes" (1. 101} so that this line. the longest of the whole poem. creeps beyond the right-hand boundary of the whole text: And tlli.f, the naked countenance of earth, On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on: there. many a precipil'C, Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled: dome. pyramid, and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
In D. H. Lawrence's poem "Snake", especially in its passages that describe the moving snake which the speaker discovers and observes with ambivalent feelings
ICONIC FUNCfiONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
I6I
near his water-trough in Sicily ''fo)n a hot. hot day.. (1. 2). the poet aJso iconic-
ally lengthens the lines to suggest the long shape of the animal. as these two passages (II. 5-9. 54-64) demonstrate: I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait. must stand and wait. for there he
wa.~
at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness sofa-bellied down. over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom . (
... (
I looked round. I put down the pitcher, I picked up a clum.y log
And threw it at the water-uough with a clatter. I think I did not hit him. But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified ha." (Book II. II. 303-308): Is fit for feeding Cattle, fit to sowe, And equal to the Pasture and the Plough. Such is the Soil of fat Campa11itm Fields. Such large increase the Land that joins Vt>.{Ul'i/1,{ yields: And such a Country cou'd Acerra boa.-;t, 1ill Cfa11i11s overflow'd th' unhappy Coa.~l.
2.4 Grelll height and wllness However. also great height and tallness are indirectly connected with the notion of size. Thus. a linear icon of height is offered by Millon in Paradise Lost (Book VIII. II. 452-456): Hee ended, or I heard no more, for now My earthly by his Heav'nly overpower'd, Which it had long stood under. strain'd to the highth In that celestial Colloquy sublime, As with an object that excels the sense.
Tallness is iconically rendered by a long line in a passage from Pope's The Dmrciad Variomm (Book II. 21-26): All who true dunces in her cause appcar'd, And all who knew those dunces to reward. Amid that Area wide she took her stand. Where the tall May-pole once o'verlook'd the Str-.t.nd: But now, so ANNE and Piety ordain. A Church collects the saims of Drury-lane.
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2.5 Swelling. spreading, :'Otrett·hing and width However, long lines may a1so be used as icons of swelling, spreading. stretching and width. Thus Robert Herrick offers an example for S\l'elling in his sonnet
about a painter's iconic imaging. ''To the Painter. to Draw Him a Picture". in which he asks the painter "To paint a Bridgeman to the life: I Draw him as like too. as you can·· (II. 4-5): His cheeks be pimpled. red and blue: His no.~e and lips of mulbrie hiew. Then for an easie fansie: place A Burling iron for his face: Ne:\1. make his cheeks with breath to swell. And for to speak. if possible: BUI do not so: for feare. lest he Sho'd by his b~athing. poyson thee.
Here the line ''Next. make his cheeks with breath to swell" (I. II) is an execs· sively long or swollen line relative to its neighbouring lines. It iconically renders the swelling of the bridgeman's cheeks when breathing out hard (II. 7-14). Dryden often uses the iconic long line when writing about swelling.ln ''The First Book of Ovid's Melamorplwses'' (II. 537-543) he even subjects the word "swell'd" to a syllabic swelling by repeating it in its present participle fonn: The Stones (a Miracle to Mortal View. But long Tl"ddition makes it pass for true) Did first the Rigour of their Kind expdl. And. suppl'd into softness. a. they fell. Then swelrd. and swelling. by degrees grew wann: And took the Rudiments of Humane Fonn: Imperfect shapes: in Marble such .m seen When the rude Chizzel does the Man begin:
Alexander Pope also uses the linear icon for swelling in The Iliad (Book XV. II. 714-719): The Sire of Gods. confinning Theti.~' Pray'r. The Grel'ian Ardour quench'd in deep Despair: But lifts to Glory Trn.v's prevailing Bands. Swells all their Hearts. and slrengthens llll their Hands. On Ida's Top he waits with longing Eyes. To view the Nll\'}' blazing to the Skies:
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
167
And even John Keats reenacts swelling and fullness by means of a long line in his Endymion (III. II. 798-802): Delicious symphonies. like airy Howcrs. Budded. and swcll'd, and, full-blown, shed full showers Of light. soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine. The two deliverers tasted a pure wine Of happiness. from fairy-press ooz'd out.
The length of the line "Budded. and swell'd, and. full-blown. shed full showers" (1. 799) is an appropriate icon of the idea of swollen fulness which is reinforced by the repetition of "full"'. In a passage of '"To the Right Hon'ble Hierome. L. Weston" (II. 12-18) by Ben Jonson we find an example that illustrates the use of a long line as an icon of spreading: Because the order of the wlrol~ is fain:! 1be very verdure of her nest. Wherein she sits so richly drcst. As a11 the wealth of Season. there wa.~ spread: Doth show. the Graces. and the Ho11res Have multipli'd their arts. and power.;. In making soft her aromatiquc bed
The line ""As all the wealth of Season. there was spread.. (1. 15). apart from being indented. is the longest line of the poem and thus iconically suggests a .. spread ... In "The Twelfth Book of Ovid's MelamorplroJes.. (II. 579-586) Dryden uses a distinctly long line for spreading: Six Lion's Hides. with Thongs together fast. His upper part defended to his Waist: And where Man ended. the continued Vest. Spread on his Back. the Houss and Trappings of a Beast. A Stump too heavy for a Team to draw. (It seems a Fable. tho' the Fact I saw:) He lhrcw at Pholon: the descending Blow Divides the Sku11. and cleaves his Head in two.
Pope has numerous examples. such a'l the one from The Iliad (Book XVI. II.
683-688): The Chief who taught our lofty Walls to yield. Lies pale in Death. extended on the Field. To guard his Body Troy in Numbers flies:
168
MAX NANNY 'Tis half the Glory to maintain our Prize. Haste. strip his Arms, the Slaughter mund him spread, And send the living Lydan.f to the [kad.
It is worth noting that frequently the word '(a)round' occurs in a long line as if to suggest the length of a circuit. Even Keats uses a clear linear icon for spreading in "Fancy.. (II. 1-12): Ever let the Fancy roam. Pleasure never is at home: At a touch sweet Pleasure melleth. Like to bubbles when rain pelteth: Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her: Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dan forth, and cloudward soar. 0 sweet Fancy! let her loose: Summer's joys are spoil! by use, And the enjoying of the spring Fades a.-; does its blossoming:
Frequently a long line is used when (spread) wing.t are mentioned. In Herrick's satirical short poem ··upon B/a11ch". Blanch's bleary-eyed and bald husband is said to have "wilde cares" that are "like Lethem wings full spread" (1. 3): Bl..a1u·h swears her Husband's lovely; when a scald Has blear'd his eyes: Besides. his head is bald. Next. his wilde cares. like Lethem wings full spread. Flutter to nie. and bcare away his head.
In order to make the third line more iconic of its meaning. the spaces between its words are wider than in the other three lines in J. Max Patrick's edition. In his translation of "Ovid's Art of Lo1•e. Book I" (II. 708-709) John Dryden offers an example of the iconic use of both a long and a short line to indicate the peacock's spreading his tro1in and then its pulling it in again: Pr.tise the proud Peacock, and he spreads his Train: Be silent. and he pulls it in again.
Milton also makes use of linear wing-icon in Paradise Lo.ft (Book V.ll. 53-57): Much fairer to my Fancy than by day: And as I wond'ring lookt. beside it stood One shap'd and wing'd like one of those from Heav'n By us oft seen: his dewy locks distill'd Ambm.fia: on that Tree he also gaz'd:
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
169
The iconically long line "One shap'd and wing'd like one of those from Heav'n" (1.55) is also reinforced by the word "Heav'n'', a frequent line-lengthening word in the poetry of Dryden and Pope. In Book XI of Paradise Lnsi (II. 6-9) we have a similar case that combines
wings with the word ''Heav'n": Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer lnspir'd. and wing'd for Heav'n with speedier night Than loudest Oratory: yet thir port Not of mean suitors. nor important less
'Winged' long lines occur in Dryden's work too, such as in "The Cock and the Fox" (II. 427--432): For Day-light now began apace to spring. The Thrush to whistle. and the Lark to sing. Then crowing. clap'd his Wings. th' appointed call. To chuck his Wives together in the Hall. By this the Widow had unbarr'd the Door. And Chantick~r w~nt strutting out before, With Royal Courag~. and with Heart so light,
In Pope's '"To Mr. Addison, Occasioned by His Dialogues on Medals" (II. 19-24) there is an iconically long. i.e. stretched out, line (1. 21) that suggests immense .~!retching: Ambition sigh"d: Sh~ found it vain to trust The faithless Column and th~ crumbling Bust: Huge moles. whose shadow stretch'd from shore to shore, Th~ir ruins ruin"d. and their place no more! Convinc"d. she now contracts her vast design. And all her Triumphs shrink into a Coin:
The opposition between "stretch'd from shore to shore" (1. 21) and "shrink into a Coin" (1. 24) is iconically rendered by the opposition of the longest and the shortest line in this passage. There are several examples of a long line standing as an icon of width in John Milton's Paradi.~e Lo.~t. Let me just choose one example found in Book VI (II. 73-81): ... as wh~n the total kind Of Birds in orderly array on wing Came summon'd over Ede11 to receive Thir names of thee: so over many a tract
MAX NANNY
170
Of Hcav'n they march'd, and many a Province wide Tenfold the length of this lcrrcnc: at last Far in th' Horizon to the North appear'd From skirt to skirt a fiery Rcp:ion. strctcht In bauailous aspect, and ncau:r view
The conspicuously long line "Of Heav'n they march'd, and many a Province wide" (I. 77) is the 'widest' of this passage. It fonns an adequate icon of the size of the heavenly "Province" which in the following line is declared to be "Tenfold
the length of this terrene''. Finally. let me add one of several examples in Dryden's work. It occurs in his "Palamon and Arcite'' (Book 1,11. 219-224): The Garden, which before he had not seen, In Spring's new Livery clad of White and Green, Fresh Aow'rs in wide Pcm~rr~.f. and shady Walks between. This view'd. but not enjoy'd. with Ann.~ across He stood. reHccting on his Country's Loss: Himself an Obj~cl of th~ Publick Scorn, And oft~n wish'd h~ n~v~r had been born.
Again lhe shoner lines following the long alexandrine "Fresh Flow'rs in wide Partare.~. and shady Walks between" (1. 222) iconically mirror such diminishing notions as "Loss" (1. 224) and "Scorn" (1. 225). 2.6 Pmmuion Sometimes a long line that protrudes beyond the line-endings of its immediate context may be used as an icon of something that breaks the contour of a text. of something peeping out. reaching or sticking: out. A protruding long: line is, of course. visually highly conspicuous. Let me stan with an example of a line whose protrusion breaks the textual outline: It speaks of and perfonns what it says at the same time. It is found in John Dryden's poem "To Sir George Etherege", from which I quote the relevant passage (II. 26-44): But you hav~ made your Zeal appear. Within th~ Circle of the B~ar: R~gion of the World so dull, That is not of your Labours full. TritJtolenl/u, (so Sing the Nine) Strew'd plenty from his Cart Divine: But {spight of all those Fable-maker..)
What
ICONIC FUNCfiONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
I7 I
He never sow'd on Almainc Acres; No. that was left by fates Decree, To be perfonn'd and sung by thee. Thou break'st thro' Forms. with as much Ea.o;e As the French King thro · Aniclcs: In gmnd Affairs thy days are spent, Of waging weighty Complement, With such as Monarch." represent; They whom such va.o;t Fatigues attend. Want some soft minutes to unbend. To shew the World. that now and then Great Ministers are mona! Men.
The line "Thou break'st thro' Forms, with as much Ease" (1. 36) is a striking perfonnative icon of what it says: like "fates Decree" (I. 34) it is "perfonn'd and sung" (1. 35) at the same time. As the longest (and rhythmically rather irregular) line of the eighty-one line poem it patently protrudes or breaks through the contour fonned by the line·ends that define the visual shape of the poem. Robert Herrick in his brief poem ''Upon her feet"' uses two protruding lines as icons of a lady's feet sticking 0111 under her gown: HEr preuy feet Like snailes did creep A liule out. and then. As if they started at Do-peep. Did soon draw in agen.
As we can see. there is an indented line. "Like snailes did creep" (1. 2). which protrudes. and a long line. "As if they started at Do-peep" (1. 4). to indicate creeping "tal little out" (1. 3) and peeping out of a lady's "pretty feet" under her long skirt. And the fact that they ")d)id soon draw in agen" (1. 5) is also mimed iconically by a much shorter line that looks drawn in below the preceding line. The tongue has been rendered by a protruding long line by several poets. In a passage from John Milton's Paradise LoM (Book VI. II. 151-159) a long line iconically protrudes from the body of blank-verse: ... first sought for thou retum"st From flight. seditious Angel. to receive Thy merited reward, the first assay Of thir. right hand provok'd. since first that tongue lnspir'd with contradiction dur.;t oppose A third pan of the Gods. in Synod mel Their Deities to a.~sert. who while they feel
172
MAX NANNY Vigor Dh·ine within them, can allow Omnipotence to none.
The long line "Of this right hand provok'd, since first that tongue" (1. 154) in my view fonns a linear icon of the tongue. In addition. the fact that this tongue dares to contradict. dares to be in opposition and hence different is also given diagrammatic force by its having a different length compared to the neighbouring lines. And in Milton's "PsaJm V" (II. 25-30) we aJso find a passage in which the longest line of the poem presents an icon of the tongue: For in his fall'ring mouth unstable No word is firm or sooth: Their inside. troubles miserable: An open grave their throat. their tongue they smooth. God. find them guilty. let them fall By their own counsels qucJrd:
A passage in Dryden's translation of ''Virgil's Geor~:in" offers a telling linear illustration of a protruding tongue (Book IV. II. 739-745): The Rocks were mov"d to pity with his moan: Trees bent their heads to hear him sing his Wmng.~. Fierce Tygers eouch"d around, and loll"d their fawning Tongues. So, dose in Poplar Shades. her Children gone. The Mother Nightingale laments alone: Whose Nest some prying Churl had found, and thence, By Stealth, convey'd th" unfeather'd Innocence.
The line "Fierce Tygers couch'd around. and loll'd their fawning Tongues'' (1. 741) in linear tenns also 'lolls' over lhe wavy right hand margin of the surrounding passage of at least sixty lines. By the way, the line "The Mother Nightingale laments alone" is one of those iconic short lines that suggest the notion of singularity or aloneness that will be discussed below. In a passage from his translation of "The Eleventh Book of the Aeneis" Dl)'den combines tongue and a snake's tail (II. 1105-1114}: So st(X)ps the yellow Eagle fmm on high, And bears a speckled Serpent thm · the Sky: Fast'ning his uooked Tallons on the Prey: The Pris"ner hisses thro" the liquid Way, Resists the Royal Hawk, and tho" opprest, She fights in Volumes, and erects her Crest: Tum'd to her Foe, she stiffens ev'ry Scale:
ICONIC FUNCfiONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
173
And shoots her forky Tongue, and whisks her threat'ning Tail. Against the Victour all Defence is weak: Th · imperial Bird still plies her with his Beak:
The long line "And shoots her forky Tongue. and whisks her threal'ning Tail"' (I. 112) protrudes or. like the snake's tongue. "shoots'' out from the typographic body of verse and simultaneously "whisks" her conspicuous tail-end. Alexander Pope uses the same iconic device in "Windsor-Forest" (II. 269-274). reinforced by the idea of a streaming How of lines ("Numbers" .I. 272): Led by the Sound I roam from Shade to Shade, By God-like Poets Venerable made: Hen: his first lays Majestick Deflllam sung: There the last Numbers now'd from Cowle)···s Tongue. 0 early lost! what Tears the River shed When the sad Pomp along his Banks was led?
Also in William Blake's poems, which generally make rather a mre use of lineicons. we find the same protrusion icon in "To Thoma"' Butts. 22 November 1802" (Poems in Leuers liil 1802-3, II. 5-11}: With trees & fields full of Fairy elves And little devils who fight for themselves Remembring the Verses that Hayley sung When my heart knocked against the root of my tongue With Angels planted in Hawthorn bowers And God himsdf in the passing hours With Silver Angels across my way
John Keats. who like Blake infrequently used line-icons, has also recourse to the line-icon for tongue in the third stanza (II. 21-30) of his "Ode on Meluncholy": She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die: And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu: and aching Pleasure nigh. Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay. in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy ha.~ her sovran shrine. Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's gr.:1pe against his palate line: His soul shall ta.~te the sadness of her might. And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
The noticeably projecting line "Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue" (1. 27) is the longest line of the poem. given more protrusion by its
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MAX NANNY
indentation. By prominently sticking out of the whole printed text it seems to me an obvious icon of a tongue whose muscular mobility is indicated by the adjective ''strenuous". Headlands and peninsulas are geographic protrusions. In Emily Dickinson's poetry we discover the iconically suggested protrusion of a headland or peninsula by means of a long line. In the first stanza of her poem 76 we read: Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, Past the houses - pa.~t the headlands Into deep Eternity -
And a similar line-icon of a projecting peninsula is found in the third stanza of Dickinson's poem 661: With no Police to follow Or chase Him if He do Till He should jump Peninsulas To get away from me -
A protruding line. of course, is highly dis(.:emible on the page. Hence. it sometimes becomes an icon of high visibility or visual disclosure.
2.7 Etce.u. surplus or surpt1.uing A long line or an iambic hexameter (alexandrine) or heptameter in the context of tetrameters or pentameters may also be used as a diagr.tmmatic icon of exce.u or going beyond - it is diagrammatic because it involves comparison. In Milton's Paradise Wst (Book XII. II. 474-478) occurs a passage with a long line ao; an icon of overabundance: Wheth~r I should repent m~ now of sin me~ done and occasion'd. or rejoice Much more. lhal much more good thereof shall spring. To God more glory. more good will to Men From God. and over wrath gmce shall abound.
By
The repeated ''much more" in the line "Much more. that much more good thereof shall spring" (1. 476). once used adverbially and once as an adjective. powerfully suggests great abundance which the long line reinforces. In ''Virgirs Georgics" (Book I. II. 72-76) Dryden uses a telling linear icon to indicate an excessively rich harvest:
ICONIC FUNCfiONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
I 75
That Crop rewards the greedy Peasant's Pains, Which twice the Sun, and twice the Cold sustains, And bursts the crowded Barns. with more than promis'd Gains. But c're we stir the yet unbroken Ground, The various Course of Sea'iOOS must be found:
Here the long line. by exceeding the length of its adjacent lines. diagrammatical-
ly reflects the bursting of the ..crowded Barns". In "Psalm IV" (II. 31-41) John Milton also uses an over-long line as a linear icon of abundance: Into my heart more joy And gladness thou ha.o;t put Then when a year of glut lbeir stores doth overdoy, And from their plenteous grounds With vast increase their com and wine abounds. In peace at once will I Both lay me down and sleep. For thou alone dost keep Me safe where'ver I lie:
The awkward syntax of the set:ond-longest line otthe poem. "With vast increase their corn and wine abounds" (I. 36), together with the idea of vastness. additionally contributes to the impression of length because the nonnal syntactic order is reversed and one wails for the verb to appear. Pompous grandiloquence (often associated with the poetry of Pindar) consists in rhetorical exces.f. In Dryden's "The Medall. A Satire against Sedition'' (II. 91-98) we discover a long-line icon of such excess: Almighty Crowd. thou shorten 'st all dispute: Pow'r is thy Essence: Wit thy Attribute! Nor Faith nor Rea-.on make thee at a stay. Thou leapst o"r all eternal truths. in thy Pindarique way! Atlrem. no doubt, did righteously decide. When Pllocio1r and when Socrates were try'd: As righteously they did those dooms repent: Still they were wise, what ever way they went.
Imitating the notorious turgidity and bomba'it of the Pindaric style that goes beyond accepted rhetorical nonns. the Alexandrine "Thou leaps! o'r all eternal truths. in thy Pi11dariq11e way" (1. 94) exceeds. leaps over the boundary fanned by the endings of the surrounding lines.
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MAX NANNY
An abundance of words is also suggested by a long line in a passage of Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism'' (II. 305-310): Others for Langtwge all their Care express, And Vllluc Boob, as Women Men, for Dre.u: Their Praise is still ~ The Stile i.~ exceflent; The Sense. they humbly take upon Content. Words are like Lea1'es: and where they most abound. Much Fruit of Seflse beneath is rarely found.
The long line ""hrds are like Lem•e.{; and where they most abound" (1. 309) is itself a line in which words "most abound" for it contains nine instead of seven to eight words as do the preceding lines. In addition. the surpassing length of this line (created by the iconically supernumerary ninth word ''abound") is a perfect icon of verbal abundance. The successive line, ''Much Fmil of Sense beneath is r.trely found''. stands both "beneath" the previous line and is much shorter. indicating Jess "Fmit of sense''. A final example offen; an icon of surpa.uing. In the Ja..,t stanza of Emily Dickinson's poem 611 we read: What need of Day To Those whose Dark - hath II deem it be - Cominually At the Meridian?
~o
- surpa:.:.ing Sun -
The iconic function of the "surpassing" or excessive length of the second line in the quoted stanza is obvious: it also goes beyond all the other line-ends of the poem (not quoted here) by at lea."t an inch.
3.
The short line as an icon
3.1
The
.~hort
line as em icon of.mmllnes.~. contraction, slimness and narrowne.{.\'
Like the long line. but much less frequently. the noticeably short line may also assume iconic functions. These are based on its shortness but also on the gap of blank space it leaves within a block of longer Jines. One iconic function of the short line is to suggest smalltJe.u. In John Milton's "On Time" (II. 1-11) we discover two short lines as icons of smallness: Ay envious Time. till thou run out thy rJ.ce. Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, Whose spet=d is but the heavy Plummet's pace:
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
177
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, Which is no more than what is false and vain, And merely mortal dross. So little is our loss. So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou has cntomb'd. And, last of all,thy grttdy self consum'd, Then long Eternity shall greel our bliss With an individual kiss:
The conspicuous shortness of the two parallel lines "So linle is our loss" (I. 7) and "So little is thy gain" (1. 8) provides a perfect icon of what they express. If Milton had had no intention of using a linear icon here. he could have put the two sentences in one (hexameter) line. The last quoted line expresses singularity ("'an individual kiss") by means of its shortness. of which more below. Something similar is found in Alexander Pope's "Moml Essays: Epistle Ill. To Allen Lord Bathurst" (II. 279-282): Of Debts, and Taxes, Wife and Children clear. This man posses! - five hundred pound-. a year. Blush. Gr.mdeur. blush~ proud Couns. withdraw your blaze! Ye little Stars~ hide your diminished rays. While the ''blaze .. of "Grandeur" and "proud Courts" finds its iconic cqui valent in a prominently long. highly conspicuous line (1. 281). iconising blinding majesty. the weakly shining "little Stars" with their ''diminished rays" are adequately represented by a much shorter one (1. 282). In a passage from John Dryden's AllforUn•e (Act II, i.ll. 401-406) we again discover an example of how the notion of smallness and slight value is iconically rendered by a short line: And yet you leave me~ You leave me, Amml)': and, yet I love you. Indeed I do: I have rcfus'd a Kingdom. That's a Trifte: For I could part with life: with any thing, But oncly you. Oh let me dye but with you! Cleo.
In its line-context. the very brief line "That's a trifle" (1. 403) graphically mimes its meaning. Shortening a line also offers a perfect icon of comracticm or crampi11g. In a passage from Dryden's All for Love (Act I. i.ll. 175-185). Ventidius laments Antony's shrinking due to the influence of Cleopatra:
178
MAX NANNY Can any Romcm see. and know him now, Thus aller'd from the Lord of half Mankind, Unbent. unsinew'd, made a Woman's Toy, Shrunk from the va.'>l extent of all his honors,
And cmmpl within a comer of the World? 0. Anion_,·! Thou bravest Soldier. and thou best of Friends! Boumeous as NaiUre: next to Nature's God! Could~! thou but make new Worlds, so wouldst thou give 'em, As bounty were thy being: Rough in Battel. As the tirst Romatls, when they went to War:
The shrinking of Antony "from the vast extent of all his honors'' (I. 178) and his cmmping "within a comer of the World" (I. 179) is perfectly rendered by the most shrunken of lines. "0, Antony!'' {1. 180), which is also cramped into a comer of the surrounding sequence of iambic pentameters. On the other hand. the contrasting bounty or largesse of Antony's nature and gifts is iconically rendered by the long line "Couldst thou but make new Worlds. so wouldst thou give ·em" (1. 183). which is bracketed by the expressions "Bounteous" (1. 182) in the preceding line and "bounty" (1. 184) in the succeeding one. The short line as an icon of .flimlles.{ is found in Andrew Marvell's "Aeckno. an English Priest at Rome" (II. 59--65): ... forelse so thin He stands. as if he only fed had been With consecrated Wafer..: and the Host Hath su~ more flesh and blood than he can boast. This Ba.uo Relie1·o of a Man. Who as a Camel tall. yet easily can The Needle's Eye thread without any stitch,
The line "This Basso Relievo of a Man" (I. 63). which is the shortest of the 170 lines of the poem. is a perfect icon of Flcckno's extreme thinness. Due to its relative shortness. it may be seen as a linear 'bas-relief' in the context of its surrounding lines for it projects relatively linle from the left margin or its base. It especially contrasts with the preceeding line. whose length offers an icon of the ironical boast that even "the Ho.ft" (1.61) is bulkier than Fleckno becDusc it has "sure more Hesh and blood" (1. 62). In his "Letter to Cromwell" (II. 22-25) Pope suggests ttarrow11e.u by means of a short line:
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
179
and Lanes arc Terms too vile and base, And give Idea's of a narrow Pass: But the well-worn Paths of the Nymphs of Drury Arc large and wide: T,vdcomh and I a~sure ye. Allye.~
In addition. the fact that ''Paths of the Nymphs of Drury" (I. 24). like all paths of sin and vice. are "large and wide" (I. 25) is mirrored by the contrdsting length
of line 24. 3.2 The Jhortline a.f an ico11 of lo.u. 1•ocuiry and singularity Sometimes the empty space left after a brief line within a block of longer lines iconically suggests a /o.u. A striking example can be found in Shakespeare's Othello (3.3.442-449): Orh. 0, that the slave had forty thousiUid lives! One is too poor, too weak for my revenge. Now do I sec 'tis IIUc. look hcre.lago: All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven. 'lh gone. Arise, black vengeance, fmm thy hollow cell! Yield up, 0 love, thy crown and hearted throne To tyr.tnnous hate! Swell. bosom. with thy fraught, For 'tis of a.'ipics' tongues!
As can readily be recognised. the space after "'Tis gone." (1. 453) stands for the gap that is left when Othello blows his "fond love ... to heaven" (1. 452). 7 In a passage of All for Lim! (Act V. i. II. 141-145) John Dryden imitates Shakespeare's iconic device of marking loss: Alex. Ah me! I hear him: yet I'm unprepar'd: My gift of lying's gone: And this Court-Devil. which I so oft have rais'd Fon.akes me at my need. I dare not stay: Yet cannot far go hence.
Again the blank left by the loss of the Egyptian eunuch's "gift of lying" (I. 142) is mirrored by the blank space left behind the brief line. In addition. the shortness of the last quoted line. "Yet cannot far go hence" (I. 145). is also iconic of its meaning: it does not go far as a line either. In Ad I of All for LiJVe (i, II. 170-174) the Roman general Ventidius even uses the word "blank":
180
MAX NANNY Oh, she has deck'd his ruin with her love, Led him in golden bands to gaudy slaughter. And made perdition pleasing: She ha~ left him The blank of what he wa.;: I tell thee, Eunuch, she bas quite unman'd him:
The typographic blank after the short line "The blank of what he was" (I. 173) is an exemplary fonnal icon of the line's meaning. John Milton oJfers a short-line icon of vac11ity in Paradise Lost (Book II, II. 930-935)o As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides Audacious, but that seat soon failing. meets A va..;t vacuity: all unawares Auu'ring his pennons vain plumb down he drops Ten thousand fadom deep. and to this hour Down had been falling. had not by ill chance
The short line "A vast vacuity: all unawares" (1. 932). the shortest line of Book II. leaves a linear vacuity between the much longer lines before and after it. Singularity is a social form of vacuity and is often suggested by an iconic short line. John Dryden offers a fine illustration in a passage of his Religio Lctici (II. 80-88)o Those Gyant Wits. in happier Ages born, (When Arm.f and Arts did Gref'Ct' and Rm11e adorn) Knew no such Systf'mc: no such Piles cou'd ro1ise Of Nutural Wonl!ip. buill on Pray'r and Pmise. To 011e sole GOD: Nor did Remon;e, to Expiate Sin, prescribe: But slew their fellow Creatures for a Bribe: The guiltless Victim gman'd for their Offence: And Cruelty and Blood was Peflitel/ce.
The extreme shortness of the line "To 011e sole GOD" (1. 84) iconically reflects the exclusive singleness of God around whom there is existential vacancy. Similarly in Pope's "Ode for Musick, on St. Cecilia's Day" (II. 96--105): No Crime wa.~ thine, if 'tis no Crime to love. Now under hanging Mountains, Beside the Falls of Fountains, Or where Hebm.r wanders. Rolling in Maecmder.r. All alone,
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
181
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his Moan: And call her Ghost For ever, ever. ever lost!
The dimeter line "All alone" (I. 101) perfectly mirrors the drastic reduction of being alone or by oneself. Incidentally. the right-hand contour of the first six lines mirrors "under hanging Mountains" (I. 97). and the wavy lineation of the whole passage iconically reflects the rolling "Maeanders" (!. 100) of the wandering Hebrus.
4.
The iconic contrast between long and short lines
Sometimes. long and short lines are collocated in iconic contrast to suggest long and short dumtion. The first example is taken from Ben Jonson's Cary-Morison Ode (II. 65-74)' It is not growing like a tree In bulke. doth make man better bee: Or standing long an Oake. three hundred yean::. To fall a loggc. at la.o;t, dry. bald. and ~eare: A Lillie of a Day lsfairerfarre.inMay. Although it fall. and die that night It was the Plant. and ftowre of light. In small proportions. we just beauties see: And in short measure. life may perfect bee.
The growing length of the first three lines (II. 65-67) of the quoted stanza iconically represent the process of growth, "growing like a tree/in bulke" (II. 65-66). ending in the longest line of the passage. "Or standing long an Oake. three hundred yeare" (1. 67). lls visual length. which is phonetically reinforced by long vowels and consonant clusters. iconically reflects the impressively long life of an oak tree. "three hundred yeare" (1. 67).1n contrust to an oak's longevity. a lily's ephemcrullife. "A Lillie of a Day" (I. 69), and its "small proportions" (1. 73) are adequately expressed by means of a very short line. which later is punningly referred to by the expression "in short measure" (1. 74) - "measure" also meaning a metrical group of poetic feet. Typically. the short vowels and words strengthen the idea or temporal briefness. The combined iconic use of short and long lines for contrdsting lengths of duration is also shown in John Dryden's brief epitaph "Upon Young Mr. Rogers of Glostershire" (II. 1-8):
182
MAX NANNY Of gentle Blood, his Parents only Treasure, Their lasting Sorrow, and their vanish'd Plca.~urc, Adom'd with Features, Virtues, Wit and Grace, A large Provision for so short a Race: More mod'r,ue Gifts might han prolong'd his Date. Too early tilted for a beuer State: But, knowing Heav'n his Homc,to shun rklay. He kap'd o'vcr Age, and took the shortest Way.
The shortness of Mr Rogers's life (again expressed in tenns of a race), which Dryden laments here. is rendered by the relatively short line "A large Provision for so short a Race" (1. 4). This line is preceded by conspicuously longer lines that represent Mr Rogers' "large Provision··. The succeeding. markedly longer line. "More mod' rate Girts might have prolong'd his Date" (1. 5). suggests a longer life. And whereas the description of the "large Provision" needed three lines. "More mod'mte Gifts" are now mentioned in just a half line. The idea of the shortness of Mr Rogers's life is taken up again by the briefest line of all. "Too early fitted for a better State" (1. 6).
S.
Gradual change of line-length as a diagrammatic icon
The gr.tdual increa-.e or decrease of length in a sequence of lines may. though mthcr rarely, function as a diagrammatic icon of change of one sort or another.
5.1 Grad11ally longer line-length as a diagram of gro...,.th and im:reaJe Thus. a sequence of lines that grow longer and longer offers a perfect diagrammatic icon of increase or growth. A noteworthy illustration is offered by Dryden's satirical characterisation of Sir Fopling in his "Epilogue to The Man of Mode .. (II. 19-22): His bulky folly gathers as it goes, And, rolling o're you. like a Snow-ball growes. His various modes from various Fathers follow, One taught the Toss. and one the new Frt>nch Wallow.
The increasing length of the lines iconically mirrors the snow-balling of Sir Fopling's "bulky folly" (1. 19) steadily gathering weight and "rolling" (1. 20) down the lines.
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
183
A short passage of Alexander Pope's "The Temple of Fame" (II. 469-474). where it is maintained that '"The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd' (1. 468).
provides an illustration of a similar linear diagram of the notion of progressive increase: Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told: And all who told it. added something new. And all who heard it. made Enlargements too. In ev'ry Ear it spread. on cv'ry Tongue it grew. Thus Hying Ea.~t and West, and North and South. News traver d with Increase from Mouth to Mouth:
This passage shows how gradually longer lines may mime adding, enlargement. growth. unlimited spreading or increase. a miming that also occurs on the level of rhyme: we find an additional triplet rhyme at the beginning of the passage (II. 470-472). In Pope's translation of the Iliad (Book XVII. II. 428~31) there occurs a
staggered passage that offers another diagrammatic icon. this time of gradually stronger and expanding light: Unclouded there, th' Aerial Azure spread. No Vapour rested on the Mountain's Head. The golden Sun pour'd forth a stronger Ray. And all the broad Expansion flam'd with Day.
The expressions "Azure spread". "stronger Ray" and ''broad Expansion Hamed" tum this .sequence of increasingly longer lines into a linear icon of increasing brightness. 5.2 Gradually shorter line-lellf:llt as a diagram of gradual sJrrinkiiiR and decline In contrast to gradually longer lines. gradually shorter lines may function as iconic diagrams of processes of decrease. shrinking and decline. In Book Ill of Pope's The Dunciad Variorum there is a sequence of verses (II. 349-353) that enacts the process of shrinking by means of shorter and shorter line-lengths: Philosophy.that touch'd the Heavens before, Shrinks to her hidden cau~. and is no more: See Physic beg the Stagyrite's defence! See Metaphysic call for aid on Sence! See Mystery to Mathematicks fly!
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MAX NANNY
Let us look at a passage from Dryden's Allforl...tn•e (Act I. i.ll. 216--223). where
Antony. addressing himself. laments his fate: Am. HcH•ing thmll'fl l!im.fef/ down.
Lye
the~.
thou shadow of an Emperor:
The plat:c thou presses! on thy Mother Earth Is all thy Empire now: now it contains thee: Some few dayes hem:e. and then twill be too large. When thou'rt contrdcted in thy narrow Urn. Shrunk to a few cold Ashes: then Octlll'ia (For C/eotmtra will not live to see it). Ol·tal'ia then will have thee all her own,
Dryden not only uses a long line to express an excess of size here. "too large" 219). but he also has recourse to gradually decreasing line-lengths (II. 219-222) as a diagrammatic icon of steady contraction. ''contracted in thy narrow Urn'' (I. 220). and ultimate shrinking. ''Shrunk to a few cold Ao;hes" (I. 221 ). In his Prelude (1805, Book Ill. II. 10-12) William Wordsworth uses a shortening of lines to indicate the sucking or contracting force of an eddy:
(1.
Th~ place, as we approached. s~~mcd more and more To hav~ an ~ddy's force, and sucked us in More eagerly at every step we took.
The gmdual. ··at every step" (1. 12). and ever stronger. "More eagerly" (1. 12). sucking force of the eddy is iconically rendered by the gradually shorter lines whose contour on the right resembles the oblique waH of a whirlpool. (II is interesting to note that in the 1850 version of the Prelude we no longer find this iconic linear rendering.) Robert Herrick's short poem "Divination by a Daffadill" illustrates perfectly how decreasing line-length may function as a diagrammatic icon of dedine: WHen a Dalfadill I see. Hanging down his head t"wards me: Guesse I may. what I must be: First. I shall decline my head: Secondly. I shall be dead: Lastly, safely buryed.
The gradually shorter Jines of this text (II. 2--6) iconica11y mirror the insight conveyed by a daffodil "lhJanging down his head" (1. 2), namely that man's life is also subject to decline: from sorrow to death and finally to burial. By choosing the daffodil for his "Divination". the speaker has chosen the proper Hower for the daffodil was the tr.tditional symbol of short-lived. quickly withering beauty.
ICONIC FUNCTIONS OF LONG AND SHORT LINES
185
as Herrick writes in another poem. ''To Daffadills'': "FAire Daffadills. we weep
to see/You haste away so soone" (II. 1-2).
5.3 Iconic contrast between gradually /o11ger and gradually shorter li11es
Let me end this study with examples in which a poet makes the most compre· hensive use of iconic lineation. namely of the contr.tst between gmdually longer
and gmdually shorter lines. An illustration of a double diagrammatic reversal of line length can be found in Dryden's ''The First Book of Ovid's Melllmorplwses" (II. 461-468): A thin Circumference of Land appears: And Earth. but not at once, her visage rears, And peeps upon the Seas from upper Grounds: The Streams, but just contain'd within their bounds. By slow degrees inlo the Channels crawl. And Earth increa...es. as the Waters fall. In longer time the tops of Trees appear; Which Mud on their dishonour'd Branches bear.
The gmdual appearance of the land due to the sinking of the water first is iconically indicated by gmdually longer lines whereas the simultaneous regression of water. ·•as the Waters fall" (I. 466), is then suggested by increasingly shorter lines (II. 464-466). In a passage of his "Ode for Musick. on St. Cecilia's Day" (II. 12-21) Alexander Pope uses increasingly longer line-lengths as a diagrammatic icon of the growing loudnes.o; of the music to a maximum of "wild Musick" (1. I 7). only to reverse the process by gmduatly decreasing line-lengths that indicate "a dying. dying Fall" (I. 21 ): Hark! the Numbers. soft and clear, Gently steal upon the Ear: Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading Sound~ the Skies: Exulting in Triumph now swell the bold Notes, In broken Air. trembling. the wild Musick noats: Till. by degrees, remote and small. The Strains deC charaetcrbtir.::. arc embodied in the pography, with it~ dclihcratcly humpy outline~ and uneven :.ilc among all three Jrds (with the fir:.t. ··oo... :.tanding out as the large~! by far) which ~uggcsts a 1istcrou:.ly exuberant proclamation. almost a shout of rough joit· dt• l'iln'. Even (or especially) in the absence of particular knowledge of the language culture. the sign mimes a physicality characterised by size. roughness. tim shed or unpolished spontaneity. cxdtcdly uneven pcrformam:c or behaviour. d related ICillurc:.. The !etten; somehow ·took like' the sort of word:. the rough d boisternu:. young labourer would :.peak in every a:.pcct (performance and lonation. coment. but - copiously. overflowingly fertile) can be embodied in other ways. as the advertisement for Nissin noodles shows in unabashedly sexist tenns ]Figure 5]. There is in fact little or no link between noodles and female sexuality (or specifically here. breast size). except for the conventional pun linking "cup" noodles to bra "cups" - a thin link. since the pun could have been played out in a number of other ways ("cup' as the action of cupping or craddling something. references to coffee or tea culture. or to a trophy and popular sporting events like soccer). Yet there is a fundamental link. which is not merely the cheap sexist sensationalism of using a beautiful and scantily-clad girl to attract attention.ln fact.the conventional and arbitrary link is strengthened by all kinds of experiential meanings. The girl is not only physically well-endowed. but is 'luxuriant" in many senses. with her thick and lustrous long hair, dark eyebrows. and full lips. Her comprehensive fullness and luxuriance thus embodies the rich texture of the noodles that she represents - as not only psychoanalysts would argue. orality is sexuality. and one can luxuriate in the texture of noodles in one's mouth just as easily as one can luxuriate in the feel of soft thick hair or the experience or sensation of other physical contact. The typography of the caption - "All cups are not created equal" - strengthens the link-by-materiality. The font used is a variation on the style commonly known as 'chequebook', with lines that are thickly swollen in some parts, but left thin elsewhere, particularly at the joints. The modified font in this advertisement is not as mechanically unifonn as chequebook (which is often used to simulate electronic data, for example as subtitles which are supposed to be computer entries especially on science fiction progmmmes like Star Trek: TIJe Nexl Generario11). In the Nissin advertisement. the swollen parts of the fonts are made to look spontaneous and unpredictable. swelling some parts of letters but not others (the angular letter "L'', for example. is left thin). What is swollen. conspicuously. are the concave curves of rounded letters like "C" (repeated at the start of "cups" and "created"), "0". "U". "Q" and "0". The fact that all these letters are upper-case adds to the sense of fullness and expansiveness, since the volume and swell of the rounded parts of these letters are inevitably maximised in the upper-case as compared to their lower-ca"e forms. Figurative a"sociations - Nissin noodles are a" desirable (and. in a sexism
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familiar from the Credit POSB advertisement and elsewhere. as 'ea... y') as this beautiful girl - play up to marketing and demogrnphical strategies. Instant noodles are favoured by younger consumers, who are not bothered by nutritional considerations. who appreciate the speed and availability of the snack. und who are always or unpredictably hungry. Yet the crude sexuality of the advertisement is not perfectly justified by this demographic consideration. since (unlike. say. a female celebrity endorsement) the blatant sexual availability of this unknown girl appeals only to the male half (albeit the hungrier half) of this demographical group. Once again. figurative meanings and demographic intentions are based upon more fundamental.less arbitrary or exclusionary. codes of meaning. which cut across the values of sub-groups (e.g. of race, gender, age) even as they cut across particular advertisements. That is to say, iconic mimicry of the youthful body agrees with our understanding or experience of this body, even if we arc not (or no longer) part of that actual demographical group. The rambunctious. overt physicality of the young labourer in the lsuzu advertisement. despite being an opposite set of meanings in many ways (not least of which is the obvious gender opposition). thus reully forms a significant puir with the blatantly 'healthy' and physically-luxuriant girl in the Nissin advertisement. Both signs mime (in various aspects of their form and structure) the physical exuberance of youth - its barely-containable. unexpectedly full and luxuriant body. with its energies and appetites which are always threatening to manifest themselves in unexpected appetites and behaviour (whether this be shouting. laughing. stripping. sexual intercourse. eating. or other antics). Reading these lesser-known examples in some detail helps us compare this semiology with that of better-known examples. such ao; MTV narratives. which mime in various ways the spontaneity. haste. bro~.shness. crude and unpolished munner. and daring and loud behaviour, of the youth body. Clearly many more iconic parameters can be encoded in a moving. television narmtive: time and duration (the 'pace' of MTV segments. particularly those between music videos. mimes the frenetic activity - or, perhaps more uncharitably. the short attention span and flighty mental processes - of a typica1 teenage viewer). appeamnce and layout (colourful. quirky, eye-catching. but always informal and seemingly 'unfinished'), and a range of physica1 and cultural attributes such as the physical energy. social stature (or lack thereof). dress and behaviour. However. many of these parameters arc also captured in print advertisements. for example in the advertisements for the Discovery Channel. which (particularly in its adventure programmes) caters to a similar youth market. The advertisement featuring white-water kayaking (Figure 6) features not only a striking photograph of a river-bed seen (as it were) by a canoeist underwater: in its typography. it also
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gure 6.
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mimes the physical sensations of such an experience. The text. like that of the lsuzu truck adven.isement (with the exception that quotation marks are dispensed with here). uses relative font size to mime a certain vocal performance - the
excited. almost incoherent babble of a person in the frenzy of an adventure like white-water kayaking (or the watching of the Discovery programme which is supposed to be identical with this).ll is not only that certain words 'shriek' due to their relative size. and that this swelling of size follows no logic other than the sudden spurts of fear and excitement experienced by the kayaker - thus the sensation of "spinning in a washing machine ... the ''white chaos'', are the crisis points in the body of the text. as well as to the body of this hypothetical kayaker. In addition. the failure of alignment at these points in the text. resulting in 'forced' contact between the 's' in "washing", the 'e' in "white" and the 'c' in "chaos" with letters in surrounding words. mimes the actual physical swirling and bumping of the kayaker. Thus the r.1ther dubious leap of the imagination which equates watching a programme with actually performing a dangerous physical activity - an equation which must certainly require a considerable "willing suspension of disbelief", as Coleridge would put it - is actually based on the less arbitmry identification of the performative agitation of the text, with the sensation of said physical activity. This format is not merely an anempt at an eye-catching variation from standard. predictable orthography (although it also works at that level). but also an iconic representation of a certain rambunctious physical activity and the sensations that must accompany it. The youth body is not always so positively viewed - after all. social value systems are likely to be more important in symbolic representations than in iconic. since the experiential meanings referred to by the latter are less subject to cultural mediations. Another aspect of the youth body is the physical stigmata of acne. menstrual changes, and other marks of a body in a state of undependable flux. The advertisement for Whisper feminine pads !Figure 7). which appeared in a youth-oriented Singapore publication (Go magazine. whose title also evokes youthful energy). refers to seveml potentially-embarrassing marks of the youthful body. One young girl. obviously still unused to the feminine business of periods and how to deal with them with composure. anxiously tells her friend to check her for stains. The reader is unable to actually sec 'menstruation' as such. of course. nor even the stain that would be a metonymy of this. However. menstruation - or rather. the young girl's internal discomfort and anxiety arising out of her body's unaccustomed responses to this process - is marked elsewhere. in the pink blush on her face. in the picture of the Whisper package (which. stmngely. floats in a thought balloon unconnected to anyone and
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hovering in the vicinity of her derriere). and in the red type in the words ''check'' and "whisper ultra thin" (which contrast with the black of all the rest of the dialogue and thoughts)." In one sense. these marks are metonyms. stigmata which are caused by menstruation. Yet they also resemble. if not menstruation per se. then the physical and emotional state which the girl is in a or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or tlyes (947-950).
This episode. so insistently iconic. stands out against the aJJegories which precede and follow it. as a different sort of representation. That these allegories are connoted negatively is revealed by the fact that they symbolize negative concepts. but also by the fact that the whole episode is set in a metapoetical framework. where the limits of representation are considered. Before Satan's meeting with Sin and Death is recounted, hell has been described with sublime tones in a crescendo. until language has paused to consider its limits in representing monstrosity. Before starting his tale. the poet hints at ineffability and at the
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fictions of ancient fables. the fables that have made evil and heirs horrors concrete. i.e. that have created allegories and visible monsters. It is almost a way of pointing to what will follow in the text. namely the creation of allegorical monstrous figures to represent evil: through many a dark and drearic: Vale They passd. and many a Region doloroos. Ore many a Frozen. many a Fierie AI )X'. Rock.~. Caves. Lakes. Fens, Bogs. Dens, and shades of death, A Universe of death. which God by curse Created evil. for evil onely good. Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable. inutterable, and worse Then Fables yet have feignd. or fear conceiv'd, Gorxmu and H,,·dra's. and Cl!imera:f dire (Ibid.: 42. 618--628).
After Satan has reached his final destination. at the beginning of the third book. the invocation to Light is counterbalanced by the explicit reference to the poet"s blindness. who can sing the invisible. just because he cannot see: So much the rather thou Celestial Light Shine inward. and the mind through all her powers Irradiate. there plant eyes. all mist from thence Purge and disperse. That I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight (Ibid.: 54--55. Ill, 51-55).
Visuality is censured. and exhibited as the means fit only to portray evil, and. in the very core of the episode of Satan's voyage. the representation of the uncreated resorts to verbal iconicity.
2.2
Di.~carding
metaphor
A similar process can be noticed in John Donne, whose poetry Hagstrum thought to be characterized by a "tendency to be unpictorial. conversational. and witty" (Hagstrum 1958: 113). Metaphysical wit in fact is defined by the critics also a~ the opposite: a-. the use of far-fetclred, extended images, which assail the reader with a sense of wonder and require him or her to make an effort of interpretative participation. In "A Noctumall upon St. Lucies Day", a poem whose object is the immaterialness of death, Donne explicitly rejects images and looks for a nondescriptive expression, which does not apply to the sense of sight nor appeal to the inner eye of imagination. and yet attempts to be iconic.
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Ancient Sophists already knew that neither being nor attributes could be ascribed to something which has no referent nor existence. except through the via negath·a. which later mystics would consider as the only way to speak of the infinite and of nothingness, of God and of not-being. So. how is it possible to speak of death. of the 'not being any longer'. which constitutes one of the 10poi of the seventeenth century and. like Nothing. opens up a void and deletes Vitruvian measures and proportions. when the concept of death is not given an allegorical body. nor is rendered through metaphors? In Donne's poem an exegetic way is pointed out to the reader. and it has the clarity of a watermark. subtly illuminating the text: Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes. Lucies. who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes. 1be Sunne is spent. and now his flasks Send forth light squibs. no constant rayes: The worlds whole sap is sunke: The gener.dl balmc th 'hydroptique earth hath drunk. Whither. a~ to the beds-feet. life is shrunkc. Dead and enterr'd; yet all these seeme to laugh. Compar'd with mee. who am their Epitaph. Study me then. you who shall lovers bee At the next world. that is. at the next Spring: For I am every dead thing. In whom love wrought new Alchimie. For his an did ex.presse A quintessence even from nothingnessc, From dull privations, and leane emptincssc: He ruin'd mee. and I am re-bcgot Of absence. darlmessc. death: things which arc not. All oChers. from all things. draw all that's good. Life. soule, fonne. spirit. whence they bceing have: I. by loves limbecke. am the grave Of aJI, that's nothing. Oft a flood Have wee two wept. and so Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow To be two Chaosscs, when we did show Care to ought else: and often absenL'ts Withdrew our soules. and made us carcasses. But I am by her death. (which word wrongs her) Of the first nothing. the Elix.er grown: Were I a man. that I wett one,
10
15
20
25
30
ICONOCLASM AND !CONICITY IN ENGLISH POETRY I needs must know: I should preferre. If I were any bea~t. Some ends. some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest, And love: All. all some propcnies invest: If I an ordinary nothing were. As shadow, a light. and body must be here. But I am None: nor will my Sunnc renew. You lovers, for whose sake. the lesser Sunnc At this time to the Goat is runne To fetch new lust. and give it you, Enjoy your summer all: Since shec enjoyes her long nights festivall. Let mee prepare towards her. and let mcc call This houre her Vigill. and her Eve, since this Both the yeares. and the dayes deep midnight is. {Grierson ed. 1912:44-45)
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35
40
45
1be opening. apocalyptic, images of a "'spent"' sun. of a dried and thirsty earth. of a life ..shrunk" "'lO the beds-feet". are all denied. 1be concrete imagery. first military. then organic. is rejected with a conscious gesture. at once scornful and ironic: all the~ seem to laugh. Compar'd with mec. who am their Epitaph (8-9).
The metaphors of a universal death. which involves "The Sunne. the world. the earth.life" itself. no longer suffice to communicate the sense of loss. of absence: they seem aJmost light-hearted when compared to their epitaph. In the poem this corresponds to a shift from the almost visual materiality of a dark universe without life-sap to the metalinguistic consciousness of a representation made of words (the epitaph), which is valued as an exemplary piece of writing ("Study me then". 10). These three lines (8 to 10) show the readers ("you who shall lovers bee") the place where the meaning of the text must be looked for and divert their attention from the opening metaphors where the four elements seemed to contribute to the general disease turning it to the subject himself. identified with a sepulchral ituaiptioll. Let us see then how the subject (the structures his presence in the text. First. contrary to all other grammatical subjects. who are attributed different actions. the I is subject only of the verb to be. through which he tries to find an identity. to verify his essence. Every time he appears, the I is something: "[I[ am their Epitaph" (9): ··1 am every dead thing" (12): "I am re-begot" (17): "I am [... [the grave/Of all" (21-22): "I am [... [/Ofthe first nothing, the Elixer grown" (28-29): "But I am None" (37); to say nothing of those lines. from 30 to 36. that
n
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present hypotheses ("Were I a man ... ". ''If I were any beast. .".and so forth). where identities are proposed and rejected, and where the only actions ("I needs must know; I should preferre''. 31) are conditional. showing an absurd and negative possibility which is immediately rctmcted. As the first "I am'' (9) identifies the I with writing. with the verbal signs of an epitaph and with the refusal of images. so. symmetrically, the last "I am None" denies all the preceding hypotheses. which attempted to find a place for the I in the Chain of Being. from man down through animals. plants, minernls, to "an ordinary nothing", the shadow projected by a body. Once again, what is refused is the materiality both of a real body and of its image as the shadow, for Plato and in Neoplatonic thought. is the sign of something. an anamorphic, distoned image which refers to reality (cf. Gilman 1978: 168. and Innocenti 1995). Yet. a different type of materiality is focused upon: that of words. and panicularly of poetical words, which are given a meaningful form. The poem. in its structure. reproduces two distinct movements interacting at the level of meaning: the circular motion of the stars and of human time. and the linear one of alchemical transformation. These two dimensions. or semantic levels. also correspond to. or are revealed by. two neologisms present in the text.
2.2.1 The icons of cirndarity The first neologism is in the title. The term 'noctumall'. according to the O.E.D .. appeared in the English language with the meaning of 'night-piece' for the first. and apparently the only. time in 1631. in Donne's So11gJ a11d Sonet.f. It recalls the word 'noctum·. a night office according to the Catholic ritual: something similar to that "Vigill" or "Eve" of the penultimate line ("Let mee call/ This hour her Vigill. and her Eve". 43-44). The word. newly coined by Donne. is first of all an existing adjective which becomes a noun. But the term 'noctumall', besides being a neologism derived from the substantivization of an adjective. had a funher meaning a'\ a noun. which I do not think has ever been pointed out in analyses of Donne's poem. Curiously enough. a 'noctumall' wao;; a kind of ao;;trolabe. a scientific instrument devised to calculate the time of night according to the position of the stars. The O.E.D. registers 1627 as the first entry. but the British Museum owns a specimen built by Humfray Cole much earlier. and in time for Donne and his contemporaries to have known it. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary (1755) defined it as: "An instrument by which observations are made in the night". It is not by accident. then. that the poem open.~ with a remark on the hour of the night. in a line repeated circularly at the end. In the term 'nociUmall', Donne fuses the semantic areas of astronomical
ICONOCLASM AND !CONICITY IN ENGLISH POETRY
observation and literary genre. two kinds of representation of the
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geometrical and verbal. The whole poem is structured by means of parallelisms and repetitions. It
is actually a circular text. It opens and ends with the same word ("Tis", "is") and with the same dark midnight of the year and of the day: time rewinds in a circular fashion to recover the winter solstice. St. Lucy's day. the darkest, and the same central night hour. In a symbolic way, death appears a..; a ouroboro.f, the snake whose shape, rolled in a circle. indicates eternity but also. paradoxically. the coincidence of first and last ('") am Alpha and Omega. the beginning and the ending'', Re~·elation. I. 8). In the same way. other levels of the text have a circular structure and their elements face each other as in a mirror, going back to the starting point. This happens with the two connected dimensions of personal pronouns and time. Thus. the beginning is marked by the present tense and by the third person (the neutral "it" of the opening descriptions and the "she'', referring to Lucy): in the second stanza. the lovers enter the stage as "you" and the reference is to the future ( 10-1 I) and next we find the ")" and his alchemical transfonnation again in the present. In the exact centre of the poem the pronoun "wee" (23) shifts the attention to an irretrievable past. Only after revolving on the pivot of memory and around this union ('"wee two"f'us two", 23-24).2 can the following stanza explicidy declare the occasion of the poem and the cause of such annihilation. revea1ing the event which until now has not been mentioned: "her death". The inverse way leads back to the alchemical transformation of the "I'' and to his present: then. in the last stanza. to the future of "you lovers" and eventually to the same present of the beginning. That past time referred to in the centre of the poem is almost a midday hour opposed to the dark midnight of the first and last lines: or it is a summer solstice along the circular orbit of the year. On both sides we find the centrifugal symmetry of the three stages already analysed: the present situation of the "I". resulting from an alchemicaJ distillation: the future of ''sublunary" lovers enjoying a human time dimension made of seasons and marked by "the lesser Sunne" ('"at the next Spring". II: "Enjoy your summer a])". 41): and lastly the dark. sullen present of absence and death. At the centre there is a lost unity. impossible to recreate. as is shown by the separo1tion of "wee" into a "shee" and an")". Every other plural fonn - the "you" of living earthly lovers. or the "others" ( 19-20). alive too- refers to beings belonging to a different world. away from the unity of perfect love.ln particular. these other beings are denoted as "all" ( 19. 34 twice -, 41). as the very opposite of what the poet declares to be: "nothing": I, by loves limbcckc. am the gr.m: Of all. that's nothing (20-21).
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The future earthly lovers can enjoy their summer. provided the poet is allowed to reach his dead love (""Let mee prepare towards her. and let mee call/ This hour her Vigill. and her Eve ... ", 43-44) and to call this moment. dedicating it to her verbally. This word, ..call", belongs to the semantic field of metaJanguage present in the te~t. with its references to writing. to words. which arc all to be found in the sections of the poem centred on the present. Once again. symmetrically. the prayer at the end. to be free to use terms, give names. choose them and comment on their inadequacy, as in line 28, where a sentence in brackets admits the impropriety of the word "death", corresponds to the epitaph which is to be studied. at the beginning. The present. the place of writing. is characterized on the one hand by these metalinguistic allusions. a.'i if they were pointing to something to be studied. to be discovered in the text: on the other hand it is marked by the alchemy that ha.-. distilled the subject. reducing him to a negative essence. Yet the verb used to denote the process carried out. "expresse" ( 14). selected in preference to the synonyms 'distill', and 'extrdct'. also denotes a verbal representation. an utterance in words. What then if the text should require the reader to pay attention just to this distillation? What if the process of the subject being tmnsformed into words. into an epitaph. were the solution to representing death and Nothing? 2.2.2 The imaRes ofnorltingneu Alchemy works as a womb r·t am re-begot/Of absence. darknesse. death; things which are no!''. 17-18) and as a romb ("1. by loves limbecke. am the grave/Of all. that's nothing". 21-22).~ Both nouns. linked by their similar sounds. denote the 1·as alcllemicwtl, or 'vessel'. the container where chemical tr.msformation used to take place: according to L. Abraham. "the events that occurred within it were a dramatic representation in microcosm of the happenings in the macrocosm" (Abraham 1990: 121 ). Once again. then. we find images of beginning and ending, in two lines where positive and negative are reversed. but with the same annihilating result: rebirth grows out of darkness and death. while the tomb contains ''all". Positiveness is made of negatives and negativeness encloses everything. that is to say. all that is positive. Yet the real pan1dox this poem achieves and insists upon. is to speak of Nothing through affirmative statements. In only one case a verb - not by accident the verb to be - is present in its negative form. and that is at the end of the second stanza. in line 17: "absence. darknesse. death: things which are not". The/. on the contrary. i.L Not only is he alive, notwithstanding her death ("which word wrongs her") and his wish to reach her. at a deeper level. the I
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cannot but assert his own being. because. in order to speak about Nothing. one must exist and use words. full and not empty forms. This is why Nothing. absence. and death can only be represented concretely: the aspiration that the object and the instruments of communication can coincide falls short. In spite of all polysemy, ambiguity and abstraction. words go on living as present objects and language cannot but signify its own presence at the same time as it intends to communicate a chasm of sense. As Donne wrote in The Broketr Heart: Yet nothing can to nothing fall Nor any place be empty quite (Grierson ed. 1912:49, II. 25-26).
Well aware that words are paradoxical instruments. and that they are endowed with a form and a materiality through which even the immaterial and non-being must be expressed. Donne played the verbal game to its extreme consequences. up to. as it were. an essentialization or. to keep the alchemical metaphor. a distillation. What alchemy does to the subject. sublimating him into a quintessence. or elixir. is exactly what takes place in the text at a verbal level. with Donne's second lexical creation. "nothingness". which ha'\ been more successful. having been adopted in standard usage. but which. as far as I know. has escaped the attention of scholars. I hope its being commonly used will not prevent us from recognizing its innovative significance and realizing its importance to my argument 'Nothingness' is. for the O.E.D .. another tenn that appeared for the first time in this poem. and was given the meaning of 'non existence. that which is non-existent': that is to say. it denoted the absence of existence. while a little later it would mean 'absence of value' as well. What seems remarkable. however, is that in this case. too, the operation is a substantivization. carried out on 'nothing' through the suffix ·-ness', a suffix which is generally tagged on to adjectives to 'extract' or 'express' from them a nominal essence. The tenn "nothing" appears in the poem three times: the first time as a quantifier to mean generically 'nothing' (22); the second time the presence of the article makes it "the first nothing", the primeval emptiness which was the origin of Creation: and the third time. in decreasing stages. just as the "I" descends the Chain of Being. it becomes "an ordinary nothing".like a shadow. "I am None". in line 17 refers to all the preceding hypotheses in order to reject them all as identities for the /, but the capital letter seems to give "none" the meaning of 'no one', nobody. thus specifically answering the first of those possibilities ("were I a man"). Just as in "Lovers Infiniteness" Donne deals with the infinite and ironically makes the concept of "All" relative ("All was but All. which thou hadst then",
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Grierson ed. 1912: 17. I. 13), here he speaks about "nothing" offering all possible variations, and showing the approximation of the language used to represent it. But at the same time he creates a word to signify an absolute. essential nothing: a neologism. not yet corrupted by use. a noun to express (also with the meaning of 'distill' or 'extract') the essence of the denotafllm. The fact that the term was used by Donne only once. in this poem. renders this linguistic creation all the more important. Either as a device to exorcize Nothing. or as a painful admission that words cannot express the void except with their cumbersome fullness, in Donne's poetry the verbal prevails over the image, even over the metaphysical, far-fetched images of Wunderkommer objects. It prevails with its argumentative constructions. but also with its mctalinguistic. self-referential twistings. The verbal triumphs in miming the cyclical returns of time and in neologisms. in the word that extracts the essence not just of reality. but rather of another word. More than in other poets. iconicity here exemplifies how abstract and transcendent topics are iconoclastically rendered: how death, and God. and Nothing. belong to the realm of the Logos and of its expression as a word. and are transubstantiated into it. by progressively losing corporeity. In other word'i, to poets such a.o; John Donne. verbal iconicity can reproduce dematerialization and abstraction. but no human image could ever lawfully and adequately represent either metaphysical objects or the material substance of a divine body. That is why I think we have a fitting definition of this process, when Donne's alchemy succeeds in transforming the body of the subject into the words of an epitaph. in a metamorphosis which is the exact opposite of the Word which, as is well known. "cam factum est."
Notes I.
On the one hand we lind the Neuplatonic. Ficinian belief that man\ power to create ima&es is a spark of divine intellect. or Bruno's idea that thinkmg b equivalent to speculating through images. On !he other hand, Rami.~tic logic. i.e. Petru~ Ramus's 'mc:thtxl' of memorizing without the usc of tmages through the dialectic dtsposition uf elements in gr.tpht~; diagrums. seems to suppon it.-onocla,m. especially in Protestant countries (cf. Yate~ 19801. On Ramus's in11uent.-con konidty. see alMI the works both of Rosemond Tuve ( 1942: 365-400) and of Walter Ong (195M. 1959, 19821.
2.
In '"Elegy: his Picture"' the same pattern occurs: tlilferent pronominal positions confront each othc:r. but in the middle of the poem the pronouns tt"l'l' and 1u appear. For the function of similar patterns in Donne's poetry, cf. Rullni 1992.
3.
Alchemy i~ here referretl to not a~ a static symbohc s\"slrm. matle of analogical substitutions. but a~ a sublimatmg pmcl'ss; words do not replace lheir •mmaterial referent. but. iL\ through a 'distillation'.they iL\SUmc its immateriality. its emptine~s. its non-existence.
ICONOCLASM AND !CONICITY IN ENGLISH POETRY
225
References Abraham. L. 1990. Mun·elf and Alchem)·. Aldershot: Scolar Press. Baumlin, J. S. 1991. John Doll lit! cmd the Rhetoric.f of Renai.uana Di.fCO/IT.ft!. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. Oarbishire. H. 1958. The Poeti
neither does a relatively heavy first NP cause an imbalance. viz. the democratkally elected government of Sierra Leone (p. 12)
7.
Conclusion
An impon.ant problem that remains for the characterisation of S-genitives suggested above. is how remoteness from the Event Model may be quan1ified and what 'distance' is pcnnissible. Referring to the example the king:,· a.~sauina timr. Fischer (1992:227) states that the objective genitive is found "when only the object interpretation is plausible". Taylor (1994: 202) points out that S-genitives with a head such as de.uruc:Iion a.Chcr (eds). Form Mimi111: Mt'aning. [conicity in lAnguage and litt'rature, 409-422. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Taylor, J.R. 1991. ''Possessive Genitives in English: A Discourse Perspective". Soutll Afrimn Journal of Lingui.ftic.t 9: 59-63. Taylor, J.R. 1994. "'Subjective· and 'Objective· Readings of Possessor Nominals". Cognith·t! Lingui.ftics 5: 201-242.
The position of the adjective in (Old) English from an iconic perspective Olga Fischer Unirenity of Atmterdctm
I.
Introduction
I have often wondered about the ditTerent positions adjectives can take in Old English. They can occur both before the noun and after it as in. ( I)
a.
b.
/XI
forlet he f}(me l~mnan o/11 dte.~ mamniscan lichomatl then left he the clay oven of-the human body (Manl.l01) 1 . .. het heonric /Jam .H: fa:der becwtl'd ger.wnum was-called Henry to-whom the father left treasures unaleallendlice uncountable (Chron2.1086.59)
whereby it is interesting to observe that the postnominal adjectives arc almost invariably adjectives of the so-called strong declension. declined as in (2a). while the prenominaJ ones follow the weak declension (see 2b) when the noun phrase is definite. and they arc strong when the noun phrase is indefinite.
250
OLGA FISCHER
dedemio11 of OE strong
(2)
adjectives
deden.~ion
of OE weak
adjectives
neuter
fern -1-u
-/-u -1-u
-a/-e
nom. sg.
b.
neuter
fern
ace. sg. gen. sg. dat. sg. nom. pl. ucc. pl.
-e
gen. pl. dat. pl.
-al-e
-an -an -an -ra/-ena -ra/-cna -ra/-cna
II appears then that in Old English definiteness and the strong/weak distinction
is also closely linked with position. In this study I would like to find out why this is so. what the link is between these three features. and how position is further linked to iconicity. In the course of the Middle English period. the strong/weak-adjective distinction was gr.adually lost. There are still some vestiges of it in Chaucer but they do not play a distinct grammatical or semantic role. This loss was a result of the genera] phonetic attrition of most of the inflectional endings, but it was also due to the development of a determiner system, which already in Old English began to take over the function of the e~pression of (in)detinitenes..'i. In Old English. definiteness was already usually marked with the help of the demonstrative pronoun .{t!. seo./Jll't.lndetiniteness usually remained unmarked (the use of iin 'one' or sum 'a certain', as an indefinite article. was still rare). and here the strong/ weak adjective distinction still played an important role. In how far adjective position in Middle English was also affected by these changes. is something that still needs to be looked into, but which I will keep for another occa.'iion. I became intrigued again by the question of the different positions adjectives can take when I was looking for an appropriate poem to adorn a speech I had to give on a particular occasion. The poem I selected was by the Dutch poet. Judith Herzberg. and began like this. (3)
~illnr ~wijgen bij mijrr bed my father had a long hour sit be-silent by my bed 'My father had been sining silently at my bedside for a long hour' ('Ziekcnbezock'. Herzberg 1968: 52)
Mijn racier lrad ee11lang uur
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 25 I
The first time I read it aloud to practise. I automatically read. "Mijn vader had een uur lang zitlen zwijgen bij mijn bed". Only when I read it out wrongly in this way. did I realise that the order of adjective-noun in the phra.~e "een lang uur" wa~ highly unusual. and I suddenly realised what a difference position can make to the meaning of a phrase. 'A long hour' is definitely not the same as 'an hour long' .In the usual order 'an hour long'. we indicate simply that the length of a particular occurrence was an hour: ·an hour long' then means ·an hour in length'; in the other order we say something about the kind of hour that it was. it was a 'loooong· hour (to put it iconically), intimating possibly the heaviness or tediousness of that hour. In other words. the hour itself is qualified and becomes a different kind of category of hour. not just a neutral sixty minutes. Nowadays in Dutch (and also in English) adjectives nonnally precede their nouns. so this case is rather exceptional in that the syntactically natural order is the more striking one. But this is. of course. just what poets do. they change what is the rule (in Lecercle's (1990( words. they play with or violate the rules of grammar) but always according to some other rule system. One could say that there are two rule systems operating in language: conventional or grammar rules on the one hand. and expressive rules on the other. Plank ( 1979) refers in this respect to the symbolic and the iconic poles in language. and F6nagy ( 1999) distinguishes between the primary and the secondary cOOe. whereby the first is conventional and usually language-specific. and the second motivated, and therefore much more universal. It is this latter code which is iconic in nature. reflecting in its form the shape of the world as we experience it. The difference in meaning in the Dutch phrase started me thinking whether the adjective position in Old English was ruled merely by the arbitrdry conventions of grdmmar. or whether it could also have been iconically motivated in some way. The fact that Old English shows variation is in itself interesting and needs to be explained. When the adjective position is fixed (as it is more or Jess in both Modem Dutch and English). the likelihood that this position is purely gmmmatical or conventional becomes greater. However. like Dutch. English has its exceptions too. as the following examples show. (4) a. b.
the responsible man the man responsible
Bolinger (1967:4), who discusses more "almost unambiguously 'trustworthy'··. blame'". In what follows I will make us as to what causes the difference between
such pairs. remarks that (4a) means whereas (4b) "is unambiguously 'to of Bolinger's very perceptive remarks these two expressions.
252 2.
OLGA FISCHER
Iconic motivation in the positioning of adjedives
When we are looking at the possibility of meaning differentiation of adjectives by means of difference in position. it is most fruitful to start with those languages where both pre- and postnominal position is used regularly. such as for instance the Romance languages (Spanish, Italian). Modern Greek. and aJso Old English. When we consult the handbooks of Old English gr.1mmar. however. we do not become very much wiser about what the 'meaning' of the adjectiva1 position may have been. Grammars note the variety. but usually not more than that. Most often they explain the variety in position as follows. given here in the words of G.L. Brook (1955: 82): ''(t]he order of words is less rigid in Old English than in Modem English because the Old English inflectional system. much fuller than that of Modem English. made it possible for a writer to make clear the relation of a word for the rest of the sentence without making use of word order for this purpose". Similarly. SPrenscn (1956: 262-263) writes: "Anyhow it is tempting to assume that the widespread usc of the construction adjective + substantive + adjective in OE. was supported by. if not a direct outcome of. Jaj gener.tl tendency towards looseness in construction". Even Mitchell. the 'Bible" of Old English grdmmar. remains vague. He notes (1985: ~172) that the reason for poMposition may be Latin inftuence.z a desire for emphasis. rhythmic and stylistic variation. meter etc. In an earlier paragraph(~ 160). Mitchell remarks that it is not always clear whether with an ··auibutive adjective in postposition". "we have to do with an attributive. predicative or appositional. use". It seems that Mitchell himself believes that these adjectives are still altributive. witness his remark in §168 that adjectives after the noun ··may seem predicative to some readers" (italics added). Although Quirk and Wrenn ( 1955) give more details about the kind and number of adjectives that appear postnominally. an explanation for the position itself in syntactic or semantic or in any other terms is not given in any of these grammars. The difference between weak and strong adjectives. which is also of interest here because there is. as I said above. some relation with position. is usually explained in terms of a '"principle of economy" operating in Old English. As Barbara Strang (1970: 301) put it: "so long as a preceding word carried the full differentiae the adjective could appear in a less highly differentiated form". In other words. when there is no other defining element. the strong adjective ending is useful because it is more distinctive of case and gender (unlike the weak adjective. see 121). while such a distinctive ending in a weak adjective is less useful because case and gender are usually clear from the preceding demonstrative pronoun. This principle. based as it is on the functional interdependence of article and adjective ending. provides also an explanation for the rise of the
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 253 article system in Middle English. or. so one wishes. for the disappearance of the weak/strong distinction in Middle English. Because the two are interpreted as clearly linked. the increasing presence of the one (the article) obviates the need for the other (the strong/weak adjectival distinction).
However. some linguists. such as. for instance. Karl Brunner. already remarked that a deeper eJtplanation must be sought for, i.e. that one must consider what the weak and strong forms of the adjectives in themselves stand for.ln this he is inspired by the evidence coming from Old English poetry. where both types of adjectives could still be used without any determiners. And. as we will see shortly below. I have also found examples in Old English prose where a weak adjective is used after an indefinite article (iinls11m), and examples where the postponed adjective is weak rather than strong (the strong adjective. according to Mitchell)l985: §126). is the rule postnominally when the determiner is not repeated). In other words, it seems that the weak/strong distinction may well be independent to some extent of article use. Brunner ( 1962: 53-54) writes. Die schwachen Formen sind daher individualisierend. gegenilber den allgemeinen starken. Sie werden zuerst wiederaufnehmend verwendet . . . Die schwache Form steht daher auributiv wenn eine hl..-stimmte Einzelpcrson beschrieben wird . . . AIs der bcstimmte Artikcl zur Kennzeichnung von Einzelpersonen oder Dingcn in Aufnahmc kam. wurde nach ihm die schwache Form des Adj. Verwendet. Daraus erkltirt sich auch. daB die ebenfalls individualisierenden Komparative und Superlative meist schwach flektiert werden .. (The weak forms arc therefore individuating. in contrast to the generalizing strong forms. They are at first used to refer back to an already mentioned entity ... The weak form is therefore used attributively when a l."ertain individual is described ... When the definite article was on the increase to characterize individual persons or things.thcn the weak form of the adjective continued to be used arter it. This also explains why the likewise individuating comparative and superlative forms usually carry a weak inflection). (My translation.)
It is clear that for Brunner. the prime distinction between weak and strong adjectives is that the weak adjective conveys 'given' information. and is individuating. and that the strong adjective is generalizing. I do not think that 'individuating' vs. ·generalizing' is the most useful distinction. but the idea that weak adjectives convey 'given' information (forming the 'theme' of the utterance) is something that seems supported by other studies, which I will discuss below. Weak adjectives would then contrast with strong ones in that the latter arc 'rhematic'. i.e. they provide 'new' information. Before we move to the question of adjective position. I would like to make two general introductory remarks. which touch also on my theoretical position.
254
OLGA FISCHER
First of all. I believe with linguists like Haiman. Giv6n. Hopper. Thompson. Dressler and many others. that "questions of the relationship between language and the mind can be approached only by considering language in its natural jimctional colltext" (Hopper and Thompson 1984:747-748, italics added). and that. more specifically. the cognitive strategies underlying language systems (or the theory of grammar) have a strong perceptual basis (cf. also Hopper and Thompson 1984: 747): i.e. diagrammatic iconicity plays a very imponant role in the way the rules of grammar are formed and maintained. Or. in the words of Dressler (1995: 22. see also Dressler 1990). in a study where he lists some tenets of the naturalness approach in hmguage theory: "It does not assume an autonomous module of grammar. but attempts to find cognitive and other extralinguistic bases[ ... ) for grammatical principles and preferences". I therefore believe that it would be worthwhile to find out whether the variation in the position of the adjective in Old English may be iconically or perceptually motivated. Secondly. I think it is important to realize that the category of Adjective is not a universal category. unlike those of Noun and Verb (cf. Dixon 1977; Thompson 1988). In many languages. the property characteristics which are in English typically expressed by the category of Adjective are exprcs.'ied by means of verbs or nouns or ·verbids' and ·nounids'. i.e. items that share many chamcteristics with verbs and nouns. It is not surprising. too. in this respect that in a (binary) feature analysis of the category Adjective. the Adjective is characterized by the features )+N) and [+VJ. Below I will show that the category Adjective in Old English has clearly nominal and verbal characteristics (much more so then in Present-day English). which can be linked up with the distinction between weak and strong respectively. and to some extent also with position.J With these ideas in mind. let us now brieHy look at what has been said in the literature about the position of adjectives. Bolinger has written two seminal articles on adjective position which touch both on the iconic (perceptual) as well as the categorial issues I referred to above. as is clear from their titles: .. Linear Modification·· (1952 )1972)) and "Adjectives in English: Attribution and Predication·· ( 1967). Bolinger ( 1972: 31) writes: "ITJhe linear geometry of the sentence imposes certain relationships upon the elements that compose it'". The principle that he uncovers is perceptual in that whatever comes first in a linear sequence determines to some extent how the next element is to be interpreted (p. 32). Linear sequence is of course more likely to be meaningful when the elements concerned can occupy more than one position. This is the case with adjectives in Modem Greek (see below), and also in Spanish (Bolinger's examples are from Spanish). but much less so in Modem English because adjectives are on the whole fixed to prenominal position. Bolinger schematizes his idea as follows:
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 255
(5)
a.
A
r·----------------
Nl
b. N
-----------------
~:::::::::::::1
A
The diagram expresses that the element that comes first (A or N) modifies the rest of the phrase. Thus. in Spanish 1111 hermo.w edi.fido (A-N}. refers to a building that has beauty as an inbuilt characteristic: in other words the topic of the sentence is a 'beautiful building'. When the adjective follows - un edificio hemwso -.the adjective as it were splits up the noun. the topic: 'building' is now colllra.~ted with other buildings that are not beautiful. Stavmu ( 1996: 83-84), basing herself on Bolinger's work. makes a similar distinction for Modem Greek. She writes ... the prchead AP IAdjective Phro1111e se .~wile gewynmed wbyrst nim gale meo/uc swa wearme when the .n,,..e/Jing fe.{tering bursts take goat:{ milk tllll.{ warm niwan amolcene sele drincan newly milked give (il) (toJ drink (Lch2.20.1.1)
In (15) .nm wearme clearly indicates that the milk must be given while it is still warm. When we compare this situation to Present-day English. we not only find 'very' used before an anributive adjective in a definite noun phrase ('the very old man', cf. Fischer 2000: note 9), but 01lso more elaborate adverbials in this position 4lS in these examples from Mmkus ( 1997): 'the normally timid soldier', 'this by no means irresponsible action' (slightly adapted). 4.4 Use as .w!cotrdary prediccue An example like (15) also makes clear that the difference between an adjective that is linked to the noun phmse and an object complement in which the adjective functions as a secondary predicate separate from the noun phrase. is much more difficult to make in Old English. It is quite possible to interpret swa wearme in (15). for instance. as an object complement. In Present-day English the phrase in (15) would normaJiy be translated a.'i 'take warm. newly milked goat's milk'. as if indeed the adjective is attributive. whereas the grammatical function of the adjective may well be more correctly tmnslated by an object complement: 'take it (while still) warm'. Other such structumlly ambiguous instances are given in ( 16).
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 263 (16)
a.
gijh1m his rihl«we lifigendeforla:te and on oVran wife if anyone his lawful-wife lit·ing leaves and another woman 011 unriltt gewijige unlawfully marries
(lawNorthu.64) b. eft
c.
wid gefigmt sceapes hohscancan unsodenne 1obrec then against cimosis (1) {a] Jlleep:f leg unetmked break gedo /Jtr!t mearh . put the marrow (Lch1.2.23.6) wi/J bryce fearres gor wearm lege 011 pone against ja] fracture oxen dung warm place on the bryce fractured-limb (Quad. 743)
d. gifmon
twyhyndne
mon unsynnigne mid with (a)
if one {a/ nm-hmtdred-shillingworrh man innocent lr/ode of.~lea troop-of-robbers kills (LawAf 1.29)
In an example like (16c), a translation into Present-day English with an object complement (i.e. with an adjective following the noun) seems still possible. but this is hardly the ca.o;e in (16a.d): we can no longer say 'break a leg uncooked'. It is quite pos. innanweard lme.~co.~t and unbrocheardost ·why not could you perceive that each creat11re ali\·e will-be in-
wardly most-soft and most-delicate' (Bo3.34.92.3)
b. 11e wen jm1wjul't se yfta auht godes gestryne mid Iris yfte ')do) not you think that the evil)one) something good may-beget with his evil' (Cato 1.28) c. EaciJsumtJingdigeleonptFreda•de (tECHom 11.13 134.228) also Ithere I is some thing secret in that deed d. t>one lit·hommr ge.whte sum deaf man andfe()e/eas 'that body )of the saint) sought-out a-certain deaf man and crippled' (Mart 5(Kotzor)l924) Here strong adjectives (some in the genitive case) are combined with a head noun that is ""relatively ·non-new-information-bearing'·· (Thompson 1988: 174).
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 269
In such cases. as Thompson notes for Modem English. the adjectives function prcdicatively even though in Modem English in cases like 'he is a really nice guy' and in (24d). they are grammatically attributive. All the adjectives here are salient. (24d) forms a nice contr.tst with (23b) because in this ca.e the ..deaf man .. is a particular man. who happens to be deaf. and his deafness is highly salient and manipulable in the further discourse. where we learn how he lost his hearing. The genitive case used in (24a. b) indicates source and therefore points to the adverbial nature of the adjective. Note that the cases where the adjective occurs with a non-referential noun ('something. anything') still have a postnominal adjective in Present-day English. 4.8 Adjectives doinR double duty: auributil'e and Cldl·erbial
This last remark leads us to another characteristic of strong. postnominal adjectives. showing again that they arc closer to the verbal pole than the nominal. Just as adverbs and prepositions can become verbs quite easily (e.g. 'up' > 'to up'), and verbs can become prepositions (e.g. so-called serial verbs) in grammaticalization processes. similarly the Old English postpositional adjectives may be adverbial in nature. This has already been often remarked with respect to the adjectives in- weard. which in postnominal position (in contmst to prenominal) clearly indicate direction or location. ila eagan him) 011 tJam lichomanforeweardum and 'therefore the eyes are on the body at-the-frolll and ufeweardum at-the-top' !CP I 1.29.13)
(25) fortJwl
Used prenominally. they indicate a quality. (26) gifwe hine biddcu) mid inneweardre heortan 'if we him pray with fa/sincere heart'
(JEHom 16 39) But there are also other interesting minimal pairs. One of them is grene. (27)
a.
b.
genim ... grene rut/on twa hand Julie 'take ... green me two hands full' (Lch 11(2(. 32.3.3) G1j mcm .~cyle mucgwyrt to la!ceclome Jwbban Jnmlle nime /Ja readan wwp11ellma11 & /Ja grenan wifnren to lwcecrafte
270
OLGA FISCHER
c.
d.
e.
'if one must mugwort as (a( medicine have lhen take the red formen and the green for-women as (a] remedy' (Med3[Granan-Singer( 178.25) genim Pa reade net/an ufewearde 'take the red nellie the-top-par( (Lch2. 8.1.6) G)jt>ll hygrene nt~bhe. genimhydryge 'if you it gree11 (fresh( do-not-have. use it dried' (Lch IIHcrbl 30.2)
nym belonican swa grene 'take betony
.ftill green (fresh)"
(PcriD 63.45.24) II is quite clear from all these examples that grene when used postnominally has the meaning of 'fresh'. 'freshly picked' (this is especially clear in (27e) with the adverb swa, see Section 4.3 above) and thus refers to a temporary state rather than to an inherent quality. II is also clear that when the adjective is used prenominally it refers to a type of plant. i.e. to red or green mugworl. to the red nettle. and probably also to the green rue (other references in Bald's LRechbook make clear that plants that are similar to the rue have red Rowers or red milk. so presumably there is a red as well as a green rue). Other postnominal adjectives that have an adverbial element in them ace: (28)
a.
he ... Oa ciricetm ll'jJellice gefretwatle ... mid woruhllicumfr~twum oferstEwiscum 'he ... the church nobly adorned ... with worldly omamentJfromm·er.{eas'
(Manl 101) b.
gif he gemeted of>enre ll't his tl'\\'llm 12 wife betynedum dllrlllll mMe 1111der a11re remr oOc)e ll'l his dehter rewumborrnre
'if he finds another [man[ with his lawful wife behind-closed doors or under a blanket or with his da11ghter hom-in-wedlock' (Lawa 42.7)
c.
jJtl'r
sim .nt'iOe micle
merasfersce
'there are very big {mml)''!f/ake.{ freJ/r' (Chron. A. 68.11) It is clear that in the last example it is not the lake itself that is fresh. but the water in it, so the postnominal adjective is a shortened form for an adverbial phrase 'with fresh water'.
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 271
S.
Conduding remarks
It is time for a brief conclusion. and some remarks about the literary use of postnominal adjectives in Modem English. I have tried to show that adjective position in Old English is iconically motivated in that prenominal adjectives.
when they are weak and definite. convey given information: they behave typically like anributive adjectives which are closer to the nominal pole of the adjective cline. and they are therefore an inseparable part of the head: together with the noun phrase they form the 'theme' of the utterance. Postnominal adjectives. on the other hand. which are typically strong. behave like predicates (are closer to the verbal pole), and they therefore give new information about the noun phrase. i.e. they are rhematic with respect to the noun that they modify. Thus, in the latter case. the nature of the noun phrase itself is not inherently changed by the adjective. As Bolinger showed, it is the linear order of the elements that naturally leads to such an interpretation. When strong adjectives arc used prenominally in Old English. they are presumably also predicative in nature and rhematic. but this is not shown linearly. It is likely that stress. which is a different form of iconicity (i.e. phonological iconicity. see Section 2) plays a role here. but without a native speaker of Old English we have no way of knowing. It is clear. however. that the linear system that operated in Old English has gmdually given way to a phonologically iconic system. Nowadays we indicate the differences I have discussed in this study mainly by stress and not by linear order. In this context (and in the context of the interdisciplinary nature of this book). it is interesting to observe. however. that especially in poetry, linear order may still be used to express these differences. I have not had enough time to look at examples in poetry in any systematic fashion. but the few poems I have looked at nearly all seem to use Noun· Adjective order according to the 'natural" rules I have sketched for Old English. Thus. in the example that Anderson (1998: 293) gives in his recently published book. of a rhetorical figure called anaJtrophe. (29)
In States unborn and accents yet unknown (Julius Cae.mr Ill. I. 111-13)
it is clear that the postnominal adjective phrases "unborn" and "yet unknown" have all the trappings of verbal or predicative adjectives: they are both derived from verbs. they contain a negative elemenl. and one adjective is even modified by the adverb of time yet. In a book I picked up randomly. containing poetry selections from the Renaissance up till the present day (Phythian 1970). I counted a total of thiny.four instances of Noun· Adjective order. All but three are
272
OLGA FISCHER
according to the parameters sketched in Section 4. In (30) I give some examples of this. (31) shows some possible exceptions. (30) a. b. c. d. e.
We are prepared: we build our house.~ squat (Seamus Heaney. 'Storm on the Island') If rubies. lo! her lips be rubies sound: (Spenser. Amorelli. Sonnet 15) And then to awake, and the fann. like a wanderer white With the dew ... (Dylan Thomas Fem Hill) When the tired flower of Aorence is in gloom beneath the glowing Brown hills .mrrmmdi11g (D. H. Lawrence. 'Bat') Studying im•nlfimtsfine, her wits to entertain: Oft turning others' leaves. to see if thence would How Some fresh and fruitful flowers upon my sun~bum'd brain.
(Sir Philip Sidney. 'Sonnef) how Love fled And paced upon the mmmtai'u o\'erlread (W. B. Yeats. 'When You Are Old and Grey') (31) a. b.
On russet floors. by water,\·itlle, The pine lets fall its cone (A. E. Housman, "Tell Me Not Here') When I consider how my light is spent. Ere half my days in thi.{ dark world and wide (Millon. ·on His Blindness')
Thus. in (30a). the adjective "squat" behaves like an object complement (in spite of the fact that the verb 'build' does not nonnally take object complements in English) rather than an attributive adjective: it refers not so much to the quality of the houses but to the way they are built. so to the activity of building. In (30b) the poet wants to emphasize that his lady's lips are not just like rubies (in love poems all ladies have ruby lips) but that they arc rubies with an e:~~:tra quaJity. that is. they are rubies and sound into the bargain. (30c) is an e:~~:ample where the adjective is further modified by a prepositional phrase. making it more verbal. In (30e) the adjective "fine" is highly salient as is clear from the ensuing discourses. which further elaborates the notion that "fine" e:~~:presses. FinaJly (300 is an instance where the adjective itself is adverbial in nature. e:~~:pressing location (d. the -ll't!ard adjectives discussed in Section 4.8). Of course. in all these cases there are also often metrical or rhythmical reasons for putting the adjective behind the noun. but it is clear that this usc of postposition. which is e:~~:ceptional in prose, is bound to rules. Intuitively. poets realise that postposed adjectives are verbal rather than nominal. they convey rhematic infonnation. describing
POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE FROM AN ICONIC PERSPECTIVE 273 qualities that are not inherent but which pertain to the activity of the moment. In other words. the way adjective position is used by poets in Modem English
shows that their choice is iconically motivated. This is what we would expect given the fact that iconic structures are by their very nature not language specific, and therefore the same 'rule' would apply whether the language is Old English or Modem English. Italian or Greek.
Adnowledgments I would like to thank Andrea.~ Fischer. Willem Koopman and Mv. Nilnny for their tarcful reading of an earlier version of this paper.
Notes I.
I have used the reference system as given in Healey iUld Venezky ( 1980). which is also employed in the machine readable \'trsion of lhe DO£. To s(m: spate I have not gin~n u gloos and translation in each ca.q:. I have been careful to give a liter.al tr.Ul.~lation of the noun and w;ljec.:tive phrases in question. while I have felt free to trnnslatc the rest of the scntcl!f;e somewhat less literally when nt(.-essary for comprehension. A da.<Ji between words in the tr.uullllion indicates that in the Old English tell.! these word.~ an: represented by one word. MjUan: brolckets indicate words not present in the Old English tell.!.
2.
I have found this to be definitely true for the glosses and also for te11.ts directly ba.'ied on a Latin tell.!. such as B~J~ and the Cura Pas/oralis. Here the authors simply follow the Latin word onkr very strictly. lliese ca..;es do not confunn to the rules that I will be presenting in the CtJUne of this ankle.
3.
Cf. also Vendlcr (1967: 175). who notes that "adjec.:tivcs an: tictl to their subjec.:ts [the nouns they qualify J in different manner", that is. some adjec.:tives, npressing naturol or inherent qualities of the thing they refer to. an: of a "substantial" nature (p. 1113). while othen; refer to an "appropriate action involving the thing" (p. 175), i.e. they an: tied to their subject verbally. 1be hypothesis I ~ putting forward here is that in Old English (and in Dutch) this difference could still be npressed by a dilferrbatoll) consists in arr.lllging words and thoughts out of the natural sequence. and is. as it were. the truest mark of vehement emotion. Just as people who are really angry or frightened or indignant. or arc carried away by jealousy or some other feeling - there are countless emotions. no one can say how many - often put forward one point and then spring off to another with \'arious illogical interpolations. and then wheel round again to their original positions, while. under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind. they lay their words and thoughts first on one tack then another. and keep altering the natural order of sequence into innumemble variations - so. too. in the best prose writers the usc of hyperbata allows imitation to approach the effects of nature. (longinus 1995: 239-241)
This is a dear description of the mimetic or iconic character of a rhetorical scheme. Deviations from the "natural sequence" of words are said to bear "the truest mark of vehement emotion" and the use of such forms of expression by writer.. is called an "imitation" of ''the effects of nature''. Now while it is undoubtedly true that such schemes as aposiopesis (breaking off of an utterance before it is completed), hyperbaton or repetition are frequently related to emotional states. it must also be realised that the whole reservoir of rhetorical schemes represents a system which provides a multitude of possibilities of express.ing meanings, among which emotions form only one variety. To mention just one further aspect relevant to the rhetorical triad of logo.~. etho.~.
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and pathos, I would hold that the iconicity of rhetorical figures (schemes) emerges also with respect to logical proof (logm). This is not to deny the fact that contrury to tropes - which change the meaning of words by 'metaphorical' use - figures or schemes (e.g. repetition or inversion) usually do not affect the meaning of words as such. but nonetheless it must be recognised that these devices are indispensable in giving argument and logical proof thrust or effective shape. Thus it is quite interesting that an article on rhetorical iconicity by Christoph KUper (1981) begins with a discussion of the structure of syllogism or its rhetorical equivalent. enthymeme, where an iconic arrdngement of the individual parts - the sequence of the premisses and the proposition deduced from them - is found which corresponds to the slructure of theme and rheme. In what follows the iconic implications of a number of rhetorical figures will be considered. Jconicity will be shown to occur in rhetoric in a great variety of types. which extend beyond the miming of emotionaJ states and logical operations. A comprehensive and systematic categorisation of types cannot be attempted in this study, but in the course of the examination of individual figures and groups of figures various kinds of iconic functions will be pointed out. and thus the paper hopes to take a little step on the way towards a more comprehensive account of rhetorical iconicity. Before analysing concrete examples it is. however. necessary to discuss some theoretical concepts and distinctions which have recently been utilised with regard to rhetorical iconicity.
3.
Autoico.Wm. exophoric and endophoric iconicity
A concept which has been introduced by Laurel Brinton ( 1988) in an article on the iconicity of rhetorical figures is that of "autoiconism". Referring to an earlier study by Roger Wescott ( 1971 ). Brinton makes a distinction between a ··vertical'' iconic relationship in language in general. which "holds between linguistic signs and nonlinguistic signata" and a "horizontal" relationship, which emerges in "the iconic dimension" of rhetorical schemes. The latter relationship she describes as follows: For rhc10rical M:hemc~. though. both the signan~ and the signatum are linguistic; language is iconic of it:.clf. We have here an example of autoiconism [... J or automorphism. in which there is reciprocal diagrammatization between one domain or one dimension and another. The automorphic relationship holds here between styles or register.. of language. formal and informal or literary/poetic and nonliterary/nonpoetic. or between modes of language. the written and the :.poken - a "horizontal'' relationship. (Brinton 1988: 166)
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While this passage does not convey any clear idea of iconicity. its main drift seems to be that with regard to rhetorical figures there is a kind of iconicity which works within language as such. That iconicity may occur on a purely linguistic or textual level has been noticed by several scholars (for instance Jakobson 1960; Johansen 1996; Fischer and Nanny 1999). Enkvist ( 1973: 123). for instance, states that ''Iconic Linkage" occurs in ''those situations in which two or more sentences cohere because they are. at some level of abstraction, isomorphic
(or. more popularly. 'pictures of each other')". In his discussion of rhetorical iconicity KUper ( 1981: 157) defines the principle of structural repetition operating in parallelism a" imitation. There are good reasons for introducing the concept of autoiconism. i.e. the idea of language being iconic or imitative of itself. An important terminological clarification has lately been provided by Winfried NOth. who. with regard to literature. makes a distinction between ''the traditional form of mimetic iconicity". which he designates "as exophoric icmricity, i.e., iconicity referring beyond the text", and "a second major form of iconicity" which consists of referrals by likeness within the text. either at the expression or at the content plane". The latter form of iconicity he calls "etrdopJroric iconidty" (NOth 1999:649, see also NOth in this volume). Both these fonns of iconicity are, as he demonstrates using the key terms of M. H. Abrams' famous book The Mirror atrd the Lamp (1953). to be found in literature: "( ... ] litemture is both iconic when it functions as a mirror of the nonlinguistic world and when it functions as a lamp creating its own patterns of endophoric referral" (NOth 1999: 649). However valuable NOth's distinction may be, he fails to consider the fact that in a text it may sometimes be difficult to separ.1tc exophoric and endophoric iconicity. As we shall sec. endophoric and exophoric iconicity may coincide at times. NOth's distinction can be profitably applied to rhetorical schemes. It is quite obvious - and Brinton makes a convincing case of it - that rhetorical figures such as anaphora, epistrophe. parellelism. etc. "must be seen as contributing in different ways to textuality". "that they function as cohesive devices. while at the same time they often contribute to thematic coherence" (Brinton 1988: 163). There is no doubt that rhetorical figures. from sound correspondences (alliteration. as.o;onancc) to larger structures such as gradation and climax. may evince endophoric iconicity. But. as I will try to demonstrate. rhetorical ligures frequently also exhibit exophoric iconicity in that they are used to express emotional states. processes of cognition. and point of view. Brinton's main thesis that rhetorical schemes contribute to textuality in that they provide cohesion and coherence, is entirely plausible and important, and our discussion will be aware of this aspect of rhetorical figures. although it is to be
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doubted whether 'mere' coherence can in any meaningful way be called a phenomenon of iconicity. The focus of the following analysis will mainly be on exophoric iconicity. although instances of endophoric iconicity will also be considered. To make a statement of principle at the outset, our analysis is based on a broad understanding of exophork iconicity, which. in addition to the mirroring of elements of the real world, includes instances of miming emotion. acts of cognition. attitude, point of view, and also world-picture. In my understanding of iconicity. a linguistic item can also be called iconic if it represents an analogue of external reality filtered through the subjectivity of em individual consciousness. This phenomenon can be related to Tabakowska"s above mentioned "experiential iconicity". Whenever there are linguistic equivalents of thoughts. thought processes. and psychic phenomena in a text. we can speak of iconicity. One problem of the following analysis lies in the already-mentioned fact that endophoric and exophoric iconicity cannot always be separated clearly. As far a.-. rhetorical figures are concerned, these two forms of iconicity tend to coincide. A rhetorical figure such as repetition of words or phrases may have a cohesive function and at the same time it may mime an emotion or a thought. Sometimes it is difficult to disentangle these functions. but it is a necessary analytical procedure to do so. For emphasis on the cohesive function of rhetorical figures may make us overlook their primary semiotic quality. which consists in their force of miming aspects of the external world. but also subjective phenomena such a. emotions. attitudes. thought structures. etc.
4.
The rhetoric: of emotion in Shakespeare's King Lear: Ellipsis and repetition as chief devices
Earlier. I referred to the tmditional notion that rhetorical figures are deviations from normal language use which are indicative of states of emotion. I will demonstrate this aspect of rhetorical iconicity by looking at King Lear as that Shakespeare tragedy which is written at the highest emotional pitch. 1 The play evinces a stunning rhetoric of passion. in which expressive figures of speech. such as exclamation. repetition. apostrophe. and invective. abound. I will concentmte on some examples of repetition. which is in the play frequently connected with ellipsis. which itself is a device often suggestive of emotion. The first quotation is an example of pure repetition: Old Gloucester. who is cheated into believing that his good son Edgar is seeking his life. says. ''my old heart is cracked. it's cmcked'" (II.I.9). The idea of the old man's heart being broken is
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reinforced by the repetition of the verb form ··cracked". An echo effect is caused by the fact that the word "cracked". which denotes one event coinciding with a
short. sharp. sudden sound. is utlered twice. The device of iconic repetition is here combined with onomatopoeia, the sound of the word "cracked" being similar to its non.Jinguistic referent. When Edgar meets his father with his eyes
gouged out and led by an old man. he shouts, "World. world. 0 world!'' (IV.I.IO). This quotation represents a characteristic combination of ellipsis and repetition as two devices iconising emotion. Edgar then reflects on the limits of human suffering: 0 gods~ Who is't can say 'I am the wonof? I am worse than e'er I was.j ... ] And worse I may yet the worst is not So long a~ we can .~ay 'This L~ the worst.'
The extreme grief felt by the speaker is mirrored in the repetition of the central words ''worse" and "worst", and particularly in the grammatical forms of comparative and superlative. The best example of the play's rhetoric of emotion is. of course, Lear who is driven to madness by his suffering. In the moment of recognition (anagnorisis). when he realises the wickedness of his elder daughters. his grief and self-torment are boundless. Here are some randomly chosen examples. in which ellipsis and repetition are characteristically combined: 0 Lear. Lear. Lear! (1.4.262) - 0 me. my heart: My rising heart! But down! (11.2.310) - Howl, howl. howl, howl! (V.3.255) - No. no. no life! [... [ Thourt come no more,/ Never. never, never. never. never. (V.3.304-307)
Lear's language is reduced to expressive exclamations and imperatives. all in the form of elliptic utterances. The climax of his passionate language occurs in the play's last scene (V.3). when Lear enters with his youngest daughter Cordelia in his anns. He is here reduced to an inarticulate frenzy by his grief. His last utterances are negative. as seen especially in the famous line which repeats the word "never" five times. an unheard-of verse. a blank-verse line which. with its metrical inversion. creates a grating sound (syncope). This is an extreme example of iconicity: Excessive emotion is iconised by an excessive repetition of a word. In these examples the rhetorical figures can hardly be understood as autoiconic devices which provide textual cohesion. It is their primary function to mime emotion.
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Further examples of the use of iconic repetition in Shakespeare's plays
As halpho. !he eighteenth·cmtury concern wirh ·novelty", which can be illustrated c .g. by Edmund Burke's A Philosophical E11q11iry imn tilt Orixin of Our ldras nftlle SublimrandBta11tijul (1757). is extended to the SC"Itings. whell!a.~ in the more n:ali!itic ·novels', 'originality' is restricted to "plot, chw"actcr and naming'" (Hunler 1990: 231.
23. This toprn; has been criticized by lobsicn ( 1981: 74-76), for whom botl! literature and painting foreground the ''henneneUiical structure of perception" (p. 75. my traru;lation). However. he disregard~ the fact !hat eighteenth-century aurhof!\ such as Fielding and Radcliffe frequently refer to painterly models themselves and !hat !he reference to the visual arts is often indicative. not of the forrf>:mundillg of perceptual S~.:hemata. but 11:1ther of !heir attempted imitatirm. Such intermedial references help to distinguish something which Lobsien does not take into account either. but which is import.wlt for my lll"gumcnt. namely !hat not all descripion.~ foii Sehen eine Geschichle?". In Werk und Di.fkur.f. Karlhein: Stierle :1111160. Gehurwag. D. lngenschey and H. Pfeiffer (eds), 179-188. Munich: Fink. Buisine, A. 1981. "The Fir:;t Eye". Tr.msl. by C. Frecerro. Yale Frmdt Studies 61: 261-275. Chatman, S. 1978. Story· 011d Discour.fe: Nurrati1·e Structure in Fictio11 and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chatman, S. 1990. Coming to Term.~: The RhetoricofNarratil"e in Ficti011 a11d Film. llhaca and London: Cornell Universily Press. Defoe. D. 171911965. Robi11son Cru.me. Ed. A. Ross. Hannondsworth: Penguin. Dennis, J. 1688/1967. "Letter Describing his Crossing lhe Alps. Dated from Turin. Oct. 25, 1688"'. In J. Dennis. The Critical Works. Ed. E.N. Hooker. 2 vols.; vol. 1. 380-382. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Downs, R. M. and D. Slea 1977. Map.f in Mi11ds: Refle,·tiom on Cog11iti•·e Mappi11g. New York: H:upe:r & Row.
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Dretske, F. 1995. "Meaningful Pcrceplion''. In Vi.~ual Cognition [An Invitation to Cognitive Science 2], St.M. Kosslyn and D.N. Osherson (eds). 331-352. Cam· bridge. Mass.: MIT Press. Eco, U. 1968. UJ struttura asseme. Milano: Bompiani. Eco, U. 1975. Tratluto di semiotica f{t?nt:rale. Milano: Bompiani. Enkvist, N.E. 1989. "Connexity, Interpretability. Universes of Discourse, and Text Worlds''. In Po.uihfe World.t ill Humanities, Arls and Scima.t. S. Allen {ed.). 162-186. Berlin: de Gruyter. Enkvist, N. E. 1990. "Discourse Comprehension. Text Strategies and Style'', AUMU. 73: 166-180. Fenk. A. 1997. "Representation and Iconicity". St'miotica 115: 215-234. Fielding, H. 1749/1966. Tom Jones. Ed. R.P.C. Mutter. Hannondsworth: Penguin. Fischer. 0. and M. Nanny. 1999. "lntroduction.lconicity as a Creative Force in Language Use". In Niinny and Fischer {eds) 1999. xv-uxvi. G~r. K. 1974. On locus amoemu und der locus rerribilis: Bild und Funktion der Natur in der deuuchen Schiifer· und Ltmdlebt'lldiclrtmrg des ll.lallrlllmderu. Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau. Gelley. A. 1989. "Premises for a Theory of Description··. In Fiction, texre, narrcllologie. J. BessiCre {ed.). 77-88. New York: Lang. Geneue, G. 1972. Figures Ill. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Gibson, J.S. 1979. The Ecolo~:icaf Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Miffiin. Goldstein, E. B. 1999. Sen.mtion and Perception. Pacific Grove: Brooks and Cole, fifth edition. Gombrich. Ernst H. 1960n7. An and lflusion: A Smdy in the Psyclrolog)" of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Guillen, C. 1968. ··on the Concept and Metaphor of Perspective". In Comparati.fts at Work: Sttulies ill Cmnparath·e Literature. St.G. Nichols and R. Vowles {eds), 28-'XI. Waltham, Mass.: Blaidell. Hagstrum, J.H. 1984. "Pictures to the Heart: The Psychological Picturesque in Ann Raddilfe"s The My.fteries of Udolplw". In Greene Centemrial Studies: Essays Pre.fented to Donald Gll'l'IJe in the Cente1111ial Year of tile Unh·ersity of Southern California. P.J. Korshin and R.R. Allen {eds). 434-441. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Hamon. Ph. 1972. "Qu'est·ce qu'une description?". Poltique 9: 465-485. Hamon. Ph. 1981. "Rhetorical Status of the Descriptive". Yale French Studies 61: 1-27. Heffernan. J.A.W. 1984. Tile Re-Creation of Landst·ape: A Study of Wordsworth. Coleridge, Con.ftabfe 011d Tumer. Hanover and London: University Press of New England. Hoffman, D. D. 1998. Vi.fuallmelligem·e: How We Create What We See. New York: Norton. Hoffmann. G. 1978. Raurn, Siwation. er:.iilllte Wirklichkeit: Poetologische UIJd historin·he Stlldien :.um enf(li:rcllen und amerikanischen Roman. Metzler: Stuttgart.
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Iconic dimensions in Margaret Atwood's poetry and prose Christina Ljungberg Utri\·ersily of Zurich
I.
Introduction
The iconic dimensions apparent in several recent litemry works suggest that. more than ever. writers are playing with the conventions of language in order to exploit the possibilities of linguistic signs and systems creatively. In particular. it is the diagrammatic aspect of iconicity that seems to altrdct contemporary writers. as they use form to add meaning. 1 A case in point is Margaret Atwood. whose playing with the relationship between the formal and semantic aspects of language has always been a chamcteristic of her work. Her interest in visual perception mnges from her use of mirrors and reflections. metaphors of the fragmentation and alienation of the self. to her own production of visual artwork: her watercolours, cover designs, book illustrations and collages. It is also evident in her close attention to words and word games. such as anagrams 2 and palindromes. In her writing, which centres on the revision and exploration of myths and literary conventions, Atwood frequently inverts liter.uy fonns and received images in order to question their origins and functions. This applies to both her poetry and her prose, where she often uses form with a parodic and intcrtcxtual intent, as a means of challenging tradition by rewriting it, transgressing restrictive limitations of genres and conventions in order to open up their creative potential. At the same time. her playing with form and meaning functions as a strategy to involve the reader in the creative process.
352 2.
CHRISTINA UUNGBERG
Iconic dimensions in AtwoOO's poetry
Atwood's dialogue with tradition is already apparent in an early poem from 1961. "Pastoral Elegy". an ironic parody ofT. S. Eliot's The Wa.~te Land. where it becomes doubly significant. By ordering her lines into a panem poem, Atwood uses fonn not only to reflect the content of her poem. but also to subvert Eliot's negative view of contemporary mores. At the same time. she makes a clear allusion to George Herbert, who is known as the originator of the camtefl figllratum. or pattern poem. in English. In her excellent article "Back to the Primal: The Apprenticeship of Margaret Atwood". Sandra Djwa (1995: 20) shows that Atwood. after having been heavily influenced by Elio!"s "mythical method" in her early poetry. began to distance he~lf from Eliot by reworking his concepts into parody and pastiche. But, as Djwa suggests. Atwood was still very intrigued by Eliot"s use of da.~sical fenility mythology to interpret contemporary seltuality. In her poem. however. she inverts the myth: PASTORAL ELEGY
I My landscape is becoming disarranged. The gardener is digging up the willows because their roots have grown into the .sewers: this spring has been warmer than most, but the early burgeoning is not my arrangement: I find too many fJowers get in the way. The only nymphs I could obtain this year. were less satisfactory than usual: they refused to unloose their crimped hair. 10 simpered, demanded extra pay, and strewed used tissues on the lawn. Something
ha.~
changed.
Yesterday. I tried Hiring another musician to provide 15 the right atmosphere, but he insisted on set hours, union mtes, and the sax.ophone, which really not what I had in mind. Once. I seem to recall. someone died, I think. I can find no evidence of it here: 20 the clean sky denies all sense of rain: eddies of swallows swirl again into the hollow branches. and the gardener is digging up the willows.
wa.~
ICONIC DIMENSIONS IN MARGARET ATWOOD
353
Times have changed: in Atwood's poem. Eliot's departed nymphs have been sub-
stituted by wilful women who no longer comply with the (implicitly male) speaker's desires for them "to unloose their crimped hair": instead. they ''simper ( ... )and demand( ... ) exlra pay" (1961:9.line IO).lhc musician the speaker lries to hire insists on "set hours. union rates, and the saxophone'' (lines 16-17), a far cry from Eliot's romantic "pleasant whining of a mandolin" (1993:2155, line 261). By shaping her poem into an icon of a butterfly to evoke metamorphosis or rebirth. Atwood replaces the negative views of sexuality presented by Eliot by an abundantly fertile landscape that asserts itself against Eliot's barren civilization.
The "dull roots" of Eliot's ''dead land" (1993: 2147. lines 4 and 2) have changed into a sturdy variety of willow whose roots grow into the sewers, and the warm weather has caused the flowers to bud and multiply. so that they overpower the speaker (Atwood 1961: 9.1ines 4-7). Furthennore. the butterfly shape evokes the wing shape used by the religious metaphysical poet George Herbert in his poem "Easter-wings". The iconic fonn of God's wing emphasizes the resurrection theme of the poem. as Easter is the time of death and renewal: this is one of the iconic devices pointed out by Matthias Bauer in his highly interesting essay. "konicity and Divine Likeness''. on the meta-iconicity used by the Metaphysical poets (Bauer 1999: 216).~ In her poem, Atwood lets the structure of the poem itself mirror the regularity of the muural cycle. It starts off with the speaker's comment on the impact of Nature on her civilized "landscape". where. as we have seen. the mpidly growing willow roots have secured their water supply. Then it moves on to human concerns and actions in the first 'butterfly wing' .In the second 'wing'. this order is inverted, reflecting the gardener's never-ending fight against the regenerative force of Nature. Furthennore, by placing the line "Something has changed" (1961: 9, line 12) at the very centre, where it fonns the butterfly's body and the core of the poem, Atwood places particular emphasis on the act of transfonnation: like God's wing. the butterfly emblem embodies rebirth and renewal. At the same time. she comments on Eliot's metamorphoses in The Waste Land, where he alludes to the fate of Procne and Philomel (1993: 2150. line 100: 2160.line 429). who. after death. tum into a swallow and a nightingale. respectively. And. as Max Nanny kindly pointed out to me. both the swallow and the nightingale arc migrating birds - hence, the iconic form of Atwood's poem. with its "eddies of swallows !that! swirl again" (1961:9.1inc 21). could allude to swallows' tails. which also signal the return of spring. The icon of a butterfly is also the emblem of Psyche. the allegorical figure of the soul. The tale of Psyche, which is a quest narmtive. corresponds both to the initiation into the cult of Isis and to episodes of the myth of Isis itself.
354
CHRISTINA UUNGBERG
The Wa.~te Land is a quest narr.uive, too: as Eliot points out. the theme and the structure of his poem were based on Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend. From Rillla/to Romance (Eliot 1993: 2146). Thus. by replacing Eliot's 'questing knight' by the icon of the 'questing' Psyche. Atwood alludes to the positive connotation of female generative and creative power associated with the Isis myth. This is something she returns to repeatedly in her fiction. for instance in the novel Cat'.~ Eye (1988). and in "Isis in Darkness" in the short story collection Wildemess Tip.f (1991):~ The themes of metamorphosis and perception reappear in Atwood's poem ''This is a Photogro~ph of Me''. which opens both the collection The Circle Game ( 1966). her first award-winning book of poems. and her Selected Poems ( 1976). Thus. this poem can be said to have an introductory function vital to an understanding of Atwood's poetry: not only because she places it before her other poems. but also because it concerns the reading process. with its complex relationship between reader. text and the world. 5 Furthermore. it discusses the presence of the speaker (and the author) in the written work. This issue. which reappears both in her poetry and in her fiction, can be argued to lie at the centre of her work and to constitUie one of her most fascinating abilities. namely to tum personal experience into art. At the same time. it is a prime example of Atwood's uncanny power to make her readers participate in the creation of meaning: TIUS IS A PHOT<XiRAPH OF ME II wa.~ taken some time ago. At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and grey IJccks 5 blended with the paper: then. as you scan it. you sec in the left-hand comer a thing that is like a brdnch: part of a tree (baham or spruce) emerging 10 and, to the right. halfway up what ought to be a gentle slope, a small frame house. In the background there is a lake, and beyond that. some lnw hills.
ICONIC DIMENSIONS IN MARGARET ATWOOD
355
15 (The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the center of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where 20 ~cisely. or to say how large or small I am: tlx: effect of water on light is a distonion but if you look long enough 25 eventually you will be able to see me.)
The deceptively conventionaJ beginning of the poem. which indicates the photograph's uncertain date and comments on its poor quality. evokes a familiar viewing situation, the intimacy of which is further enhanced by the speaker
addressing the presumed viewer of the photogro1ph as ··you". That this intimacy could apply to the act of reading is immediately aJiuded to in the very finot lines: the ''smeared/print: blurred lines and grey Heck.. Pa.uion.f 148, 151
D Dallenbach. L. 5. 33, 39, 45.49-51 I.e R~cit Spic••laire 34, 36 Danchev. A. 230 Daniel Ill, 12!1. 239
AUTHOR INDEX Danto, A. Anulytic·al PIJilo.wplry of Hi.ftory 301,
302 Davies, Sir John 154, 155 'The Sacred Muse that fin;t made love devine" 213 Deacon, T. 55 Defoe. Daniel 346 Rohin.fmr Cm.we 33 I Deleuze. G. 299 Denison. D. 233 Dennis. J. 341 Dickens, Charles 107, 149 Bleak Ho11se 344 Da1·idCoppnfteld 151-155 Nicholas Nickleh_\' 101 Dickinson. Emily 27, 87. 130, 158. 187, 274.321 "Poem 76" 174 "Poem 611'' 176 "Poem 661" 174 "Poem 764" 159 Diphilus 99 Di:~ton. R. M. W. 254 Donald. M. 55, 58 Donne, John 158,217. 218, 22.'-225. 260 The Broken Hr!art 223 Elr!Ry: His PiciU" 224 Song.f wrd So11ets 210 "Loven; Infiniteness" 223 "A Noctumall upon St Ludes Day" 9. 214 "Satire" 211 Downs. R. M. 238, 326, 327 Drr!am ofrlre Rood, Tire 129 Dressler. W. U. 254 Dretske. F. 327 Dryden, John 8, 143, 144. 154, 155, 158-170. 179-182. 187, 225 Ar!lleis (tran.-;Jation oO 164. 172 Allforl...m•r! 159. 177, 179, 184 Tire Indian Emperrmr 143
369
Religio Laid 180 'The Cock and the Fo:~t" 169 "Cymon and lphigenia" 163 "The Eleventh Book of the Aeneis"
172 "Epilogue to TheMallofMode" 182 "The First Book of Homer's Iliad" 162 ''The Fin;t Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses" 166. 185 'The Twelfth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses" 167 'The Flower and the l....eaf'' 163 "Horace, the Second Epode" 161 'The Medall. A Satire against Sedition" 175 "Ovid's An of Low!'' 168 "Palamon and Arcite" 162. 170 "To the Memory of Mr Oldham" 159 ''To Sir George Etherege" 170 "Upon Young Mr. Rogen; of Glosten;hire" 181 "Virgil's Gr!orgid' 101. 165, 172. 174 Dubinsky. S. 274 Dunbar. R. 59 Dupriez. B. 293
E Eco, U. 5, 43, 118, 343 Eggins, S. 51 Eliade. M. 114 Eliot. T(homa.-;) S(leams) 24. 130, 153, 186, 188 17rr! WtWt' Land 352-354 Engberg-Pedersen, E. 305 Enkvist, N.E. 242, 310, 343 Era.
