Lyricism and lyrically crafted fiction

Part 4

By Dilshan BOANGE

In this fourth and final installment of this series the focus moves from the discussion on lyrical techniques that can be built into the texture of a work of fiction, such as narratives marked with (the) 'lyric tense' propounded by George T. Wright, and Elder Olson's views on how poetic quality can be imbued into a text with economy of words which is sourced in the formalistic of haiku, to the concept of the 'Lyrical novel'. At a glance one may question whether the form of such a work would be constituted of a range of poetic devices that textures a piece of fiction labeled as a 'lyrical novel' to the point it blurs the boundaries between poem and prose narrative.

Michael Ondaatje

The answer of course can and in fact has been widely debated as to where the demarcations may be set and identified to distinguish what qualifies as novel and what as poem. The hybridization of these two mediums of literary expression took significant strides through the advents of modernist writers of Europe and the United States and over the years has paved the way for newer formal developments to unfold in the creative medium of the novel.

What is the lyrical novel?

If one were to look at genre when it comes to fiction, the numerous categories that 'novels' would belong to nowadays would not find a well known label as 'lyrical novel' when it comes to general classifications. The purposes of marketing related to the publishing industry would generally mark novels being classified by their subject matter and the theme of the story -romance, crime, political fiction, thriller, horror, mystery, and so on. And when it comes to classifications based on a more academic orientation novels could be categorized for their relations to theoretical grounds -modernist, postmodernist, post-colonial, Migrant Writing etc. But it appears that when the idea of the 'lyrical novel' is approached it marks a distinct basis of formal distinctions being the means by which is it identified. In other words it is the narrative form that is made the basis on which it may be placed in such a genre over concerns of what the story of the novel is about. One of the hallmarks amongst academic works contributing to literary theory, in respect of classifying the 'lyrical novel', is, undoubtedly, Ralph Freedman's- "The Lyrical Novel. Studies in Hermann Hesses, Andre Gilde and Virginia Woolf". The theoretical base and framework developed and expounded in Freedman's work is discussed with practical application to the text of the Soviet novel "Coloured Winds" by Vsevolod Ivanov in the academic essay by Friederike F. Snyder titled Vsevolod Ivanov's Coloured Winds: A Lyrical Novel published in 1982 in The Slavic and East European Journal (Vol. 26 No.2). Snyder's essay gives much insight on the theoretical grounds to identify the qualities and characteristics related to the 'lyrical novel'.

Ivanov whose first novel was "Coloured Winds" was a writer whose works of fiction had been harshly criticized by Bolshevik critics at times for not clearly portraying whether it was the 'Reds' or the Right-Wing 'Whites' who were the heroes in his stories. As a writer his contributions to world literature had been significant, within the soviet milieu, having making the Asiatic part of Russia the background for his stories.

When it comes to the identifying of defining qualities of the lyrical novel, Snyder cites Freedman in saying that elements of lyrical poetry combined to create paradoxes in their meanings and created new expanses in "metaphoric suggestiveness" which could not be achieved through "purely narrative means", which one may safely assume is what the conventional novel form would not offer.

'Metaphoric suggestiveness' as said by Freedman shows what a central role the method or technique to devising metaphors to play a role in the narrative (as in poetry) has taken shape in defining the lyrical novel. A meataphor as commonly known communicates indirectly, becoming an idea revealed through an image, symbol which may be seen to embody a concept, idea or sentiment and so on, which is not explicitly stated an in conventional prosaic narratives, be it in fiction or non-fiction.

I remember in my freshman year in Colombo varsity, Dr. Dushyanthi Mendis of the English department raised the question of what differs a 'metaphor' from a 'simile'? in a lecture of the first year course on poetry. The answer I offered was that a simile would be more direct, less implicit than a metaphor, in presenting the idea, concept etc with which it is linked, and seeks to provide an image, an illustration of, to the reader. One could suggest that the metaphor as a device acts very much within the larger scheme of imagery in a given work. However the nature of implicit communication of metaphors carries a subtlety to the manner in which ideas are conveyed and thereby as a creative 'device' presents a virtue a poetic virtue.

In the essay of Snyder he clearly states that imagery is key in defining the lyrical novel and cites Freedman to substantiate the theorem. According to Freedman the imagery in a lyrical novel provides a scheme by which the theme of the novel is progressed as well as its rhythmic patters that builds in the course of the narrative. Thus one may deduce that one of the tasks of imagery in the scheme of the novel is to expand the ideas that the story projects in the course of the narrative. And the key tenet in this respect would be the patters of imagery. Snyder cites Freedman in his article -"In lyrical novels such a progression exists in conjunction with narrative...lyrical novels exploit the expectation of narrative by turning it into its opposite: a lyrical process." By Freedman's views it is clear that imagery would not only serve descriptivism in the lyrical novel and contributes to the narrative in a significant way which one may view as a craft on form.

Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

Since one of the author's Freedman's work focuses on is Virginia Woolf, it would seem pertinent to comment at this point on some of the narrative features of one of her most famous works -"Mrs. Dalloway", which was written in the narrative technique, which became the prototypical form that marked the modernist novel -Stream of consciousness. In "Mrs. Dalloway" Woolf crafted the interior monologue that has tonal combinations that range from jagged staccato to long stretchy sentences that may seem like rambles.

Virginia Woolf

The discursive that one finds seems like sequences where the narrative deftly mixes images and descriptivism and also dialogues. This quality builds the strong impression that the 'image effect' developed in the narrative style has what may be propounded as a 'snapshot discursive' where the focus flits from one image to the next rapidly and feels very much like a montage. In fact Snyder observes the same montage likeness in "Coloured Winds" which he comments on while analyzing the brevity of some of the sentential features of Ivanov's novel.

Commenting on the ideas propounded by Freedman, Snyder says in his essay that the conventional novel has a set of expectations to fulfill by the reader, when it comes to the aspect of narrative. This "expectation of narrative" as termed so by Freedman is to do with some of the most salient fulfillments such as -plot structure, character exposition and development, successions in time (the chronology factor) as well as certain questions of ethics (perhaps social) which the novel as a work of art would deal with.

The breaking down of chronology is one of the fundamentals that defined the modernist novel from the Victorian novel, as well as the conceptions of plot-structure and the manner of telling the story. In contrast the modernist novel wasn't a work that had as its primary objective the narration of a story in the conventional manner as from A to Z. However this is not to suggest that the developments in the genre of the novel that trace back to the advents of modernist literature (to which the lyrical novel also belongs) disregarded the components of plot advancement, character development etc.

Commenting on this line of argument Snyder says -"But where as some or all of these elements may be found in a lyrical novel or ornamental prose, they are subordinated to a discernible formal design, in which men and events are "refashioned as a pattern of images," ".

Consider for example the following excerpt from "Mrs. Dalloway" -"He pulled off his boots. He emptied his pockets. Out came his pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white, with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming; very dark; the best he had ever seen of her. It did come, after all, so naturally; so much more naturally than Clarissa. No fuss. No bother. No finicking and fidgeting. All plain sailing." The technique of weaving a fabric of images therefore is one of the foremost crafts of a lyrical novel. In a way its imagery becomes a sequence of narrative that builds the idea in the subtleness of poetry.

The reader's role

To a certain extent one may suggest that unlike the conventional Victorian novel the departures that occurred with the advents of modernism, has created a role for the reader as much as the narrator of the novel.

The reader may not find the whole story with all its expectations neatly laid out as in the conventional novel and therefore the fitting together of the 'picture' may become a task placed upon the reader in the case of works like lyrical novels.

For example if one thinks of work like Michael Ondaatje's debut novel "Coming Through Slaughter", the reader has a large amount of fusing together of the range of images and narrative devices that at a glance seem very much chaotically disparate. Observing this factor Snyder states the following -"The reader of a lyrical novel, as well as of much ornamental prose, is faced with a monumental task.

He must "retroactively fuse seemingly disparate experiences into an organic unity" and discern and reconcile that precarious balance of antithetical techniques between a "poetry of the imagination and narrative of fact" that is the hallmark of this genre." Thereby one may even suggest that the development of modernist literature has somewhat created 'a new deal' between the writer and reader.

Speech patterns and the device of 'colloquy'

Adopting the theoretical framework of Freedman to analyze Ivanov's "Coloured Winds" Snyder observes several interesting componential features of the novel that contributes to the lyrical quality of the work. One of these is 'speech patterns', an element analyzed by Snyder who says -"[T]he narrator records the substandard, colloquial and dialect Russian via phonetic transcriptions, preserving variations in speech and mispronunciations that characterize the milieu."

This aspect could resonate well with the lyrical element of 'colloquy' which captures the rhythmic patterns of speech, which is a very evident technique in Ondaatje's "Coming Through Slaughter".

This particular feature in a novel could be valuable as from a point of cultural study to allow the reader insight into the speech and language features of the community which the novel is set in and intends to portray.

Lyricism as an entry point

The discussion on lyricism and how fiction writing can be made lyrical through narrative techniques, devices that developed mainly through the emergence of modernist literature is one that can certainly extend to new vistas in Sri Lanka especially concerning the newly emerging homegrown literature and provide direction for stylistic developments in local writers.

And if one may suggest that local university curricula which has a lacuna in courses in creative writing may find a suitable ground to eventually introduce such courses by developing study courses focal on writing forms such as lyrical writing, which would be bound to captivate the student by journeying into the avenues of the literary beauty of poetic forms of expression.