Listening to language and the experience of poetry 3

Last week, I discussed the importance of the writings of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and the Prague school in re-thinking about the relationship between the uniqueness of a language, its phonetic structures and the experience of poetry. I wish to pursue that line of thinking further by focusing on two prominent perspectives on language, equally valid and thoughtful, but also containing many pitfalls. The idea is to explore them as a way of illuminating our own problematic of the poetic experience. The two perspectives I have in mind can be termed the universalist and the relativist.

It is the firmly held conviction of universalists that beneath the various differences that are perceptible in languages at the surface level, there is a unity and commonness; at bottom, all languages are the same. Those who subscribe to this view argue that it is the deep structure of language that should command our attention and not the happenings and variations that are discernible at the surface.

The surface is seen as of phonetic and historical interest while the deep structure is where the analysis should focus; how that deep structure generates diverse and singular grammars. The grammar of Roger Bacon, the grammarians of Port Royal and theorists of transformational grammar belong to this category.

The relativists, on the other hand, adopt a different world view and follow a different pathway of inquiry. Those who endorse this view believe that the differences among languages are more significant than the much touted unity and similarity. What they find of absorbing interest and potentially productive is the diversities and variations in languages that we observe at the surface.

They state that there are about five thousand languages in the world, and many have disappeared. It is only by examining carefully these divergences among languages that we will be able to expand our knowledge base significantly. The work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf are closely associated with this relativist approach.

The writing of Noam Chomsky represents the essence of the universalist approach. He remarked that all known languages are "cut from the same pattern." Therefore, his belief was that task of the linguist was "to develop an account of linguistic universals that, on the one hand, will not be falsified by the actual diversity of languages, and on the other hand, will be sufficiently rich and explicit to account for the rapidity and uniformity of language learning, and the remarkable complexity and range of the generative grammars that are the product of language learning." In this statement, Chomsky raises a number of issues that are of great importance to the study of the phenomenon of language, and they have continued to occupy the center of debates among scholars of language.

When we talk of language as universal, the immediate response is to think of neuro-physiological processes; the mechanisms by which human beings produce sound, send out and receive sounds. Hence it is hardly surprising that scholars such as Roman Jakobson have opted to focus on the phonetic structures of human language. However, others like Chomsky, are talking about something even deeper "they concentrate their attention on the grammatical universals of languages and how they produce diverse grammars. These issues are of great moment to students of literature and literary critics as well.

Chomsky and those of a similar disposition wished to go beyond the phonological aspects, important as they are. They were interested in the universal, deep structure of language and how through the instrumentality of rules they generate sentences or phonetic events at the surface level. It is these phonetic events that constitute verbal communication among human beings. The surface structures of languages vary a great deal; but the deep structures and the processes of transformation are the same. It is no doubt true that valuable work has been done by literary scholars drawing inspiration from this approach. However, to my mind, it is the second perspective that I outlined at the beginning that seems to promise the greatest benefits to literary scholars.

As I stated earlier Sapir and Whorf are two scholars who are closely identified with the relativist approach. Sapir once made the following observation; "The fact of the matter is that the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached." Whorf elaborated in the ideas of Sapir. Whorf asserted emphatically that the mother tongue of a person shapes and directs what he sees in the world and the way he or she thinks, feels, imagines regarding it.

Our thought worlds are constituted by the languages we use. He argued that instead of discussing "universal objective reality", it is far more profitable to examine the 'segmentations' brought about by varying language cultures.

Encapsulating his perspective on language, Whorf remarked that, "Every language is a vast pattern-system, differing from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality of not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness." The relativist approach advocated by Sapir, Whorf and others has come in for some hard criticism; yet, there is a certain truth contained in this approach that, in my judgment, holds great promise for the understanding of the complex relationship between the uniqueness of language and the experience of poetry.

Despite the fact that both approaches have their relative strengths and weaknesses, I feel that the line of inquiry pursued by the relativists offer greater scope for productive literary analysis.

The relativists focus on the verbal textures syntactical patterns, acoustic orders, rhythms of different languages. This is what literary critics are concerned with as they grapple with literary texts, explicate their meaning and assess their worth. As a distinguished literary critic astutely observed, "where Whorf finds that every language and the culture which that language articulates organizes (makes organic) its particular thought world, the reader of literature will say the same of every writer and, where penetrative response is pressed home, of every major poem, play, or novel."

In experiencing poetry as discerning readers we focus on the life of the words, how sound patterns reinforce meaning, the ways in which specific cultural imperatives shape the imagination informing the poem. All these aspects are connected to the surface of language and not the deep structure.

The bifurcation of the two tropes of depth and surface has the unfortunate consequence of de-valorizing the latter. In poetry, the surface tensions in language are extremely important; it is where the action is. Hence, the interactions at the surfaces of languages, the variations, singularities deserve the utmost care and attention.

The following comment by Steiner is right on target. "By definition, the reader and student of literature work at the surface. They deal with the phonetic facts, the words and sentences as we can actually see and hear them. That is the only reality available to us".

He goes on to assert that the transformational generative grammar assures us that the articulate presence of the text is a product of the deep structures of language. In terms of literary analysis, the surface provides us with a richness of verbal density that is unavailable in the deeper structure.

One important aspect of the surface is the phonetic make-up of a poem. As we discussed earlier, the form of a poem is more than an external manifestation; it is a product of the interpenetration of lexical, syntactic and phonetic dimensions. Meters, rhythms, rhymes, alliterations are vital elements of this acoustic make-up. What a poetic form, when well-produced, does is to enact the theme and feelings intended by the poet. Let us consider a passage of poetry from a modern Irish poet" Seamus Heaney.

Times when the cuckoo curled lobes of smooth music

Over sunny acres of hay coloured sound

And larks were spilling light pebbles of all

Sand falling, stumbling, tinkling,

Sound torn ragged and open with a corn-crakes

Jagged-edge noise

Rasping backwards and forwards

As metal through gravel.

Here, the poem enacts its theme through the form, and verbal music; the string of verbs serves to reinforce this. As time moves on, Eden disappears, and the poem's tone changes from 'smooth music' to 'jagged-edge' noise.

I have sought to focus on two very important perspectives on language, and underline the fact that in terms of poetic analysis, the relativists position, despite certain drawbacks, is the more potentially rewarding. The investigative space opened up by Sapir, Whorf and others allow us to focus on the uniqueness of a language; the uniqueness of the given language and the uniqueness of vision it produced stirred their deepest imagination.

This uniqueness is vitally connected to form. For example, in Milton's 'Lycidas', an intensity of feeling is generated by the tension between rhyme and syntax. While the rhyme desires closure, the syntax challenges it.

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude

And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,

Compels me to disturb your season due;

A poetic form constitutes a complex unity born of contending forces and tensions. What this discussion highlights is the fact that the experience of poetry is vitally connected to listening to language, and listening to language implies an ability to respond deeply to its lexical, syntactic, phonetic dimensions that are complexly and inextricably linked. I will explore this further in the ensuing columns

(To be continued)