Here are some interesting
thoughts by Owen Barfield, friend of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and one
of the Inklings. This chapter, ‘Language
and Poetry’, comes from his major, highly influential work
Poetic Diction: A Study of Meaning.
Barfield here considers the
stages through which poetry and poetic vision have passed, and the
accompanying changes in language and thought. He begins, in a
necessarily simplistic way, with the ‘concrete vocabulary’ of
the world’s first mythologies, to Greek mythology as vector of
meaning alongside living Nature, to the language of modernity.
Particularly interesting are
his remarks on the ancient Greek language of Homer being ‘looser’
than our more usual ‘architectural’ linguistic and poetic
forms: ‘a living, muscular organism rather than as a structure...’.
This move from an ‘organic’, ‘fluid’ type of poetry to
the ‘architectural’ he places more or less in English from the
seventeenth century onwards, for instance in Milton and the
Metaphysicals, not so much in Chaucer or Shakespeare. The more
‘fluid’ types of verse are made for reciting, the more
‘architectural’, for reading, for seeing on the page.
He draws out the inherent tension between the ‘rational’ and the ‘poetic’
in the history of poetic utterance; the ‘rational, abstracting,
formal principle’ and the ‘primal flow of meaning’. It is
surely in a great poet like Shakespeare that we find the perfect
balance; the great intelligence of an organising principle working
with the ‘flow’ of life.
Compare the extracts of
Shakespeare we have studied with Milton or John Donne, for example. The
seventeenth century really is a watershed. Think of Milton's highly elaborate poetic architecture, the latinate syntax. I think in the twentieth
century T. S. Eliot gave much thought to this, and brought back in a
modern way the organic forms of poetic utterance in the context of
Modernism.
Click here to download the
chapter in pdf format:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHhj9DtB1ELzCVTPTbVu83n6-OML6B7-/view?usp=sharing
Ce texte est vraiment brillant !! Mais j’ai eu l’impression que Barfield « historicisait » un peu trop les choses à la fin, en émettant, si j’ai bien compris, l’hypothèse d’une transition historique (« this period would be found... ») de la « fluid type of poetry » vers la « archetypal one ». Je me demande s’il n’était pas un peu marxiste sur les bords...
ReplyDeleteIl me semble qu’il y a au moins un poète moderne, en France, qui échapperait à cette « règle » (à suivre son raisonnement), ce qui me fait penser que Barfield a peut-être tort en partie. Je pense à Benjamin Péret (XXème siècle), ce poète qu’on relit trop peu. Il souhaitait le retour total à la nature du langage, voulait des « cultures d’adverbes revenus à l’état sauvage » (cf préface du Grand jeu). Ses vers me paraissent infiniment plus proches de la « fluid poetry » que de la « archetypal one », en tout cas dans le Grand Jeu: c’est une poésie irrationnelle, peu organisée, primitive, souvent proche de la comptine… et aussi, à bien des égards, incompréhensible pour nous! Et peut-être y a t-il d’autres poètes dans son cas, dans l’ère de l’archetypal poetry, si l'on y réfléchissait bien.
C’était seulement pour dire, en toute naïveté assumée, que le génie d’un homme peut faire, au moins en partie, «déborder» son écriture, sa diction, au-delà des tendances de son époque, et que la littérature (le monde, c’est autre chose...) n’est pas coincée dans une évolution absolument irréversible entre « poetic » et « rationnel »… comme l’exemple de TS Eliott le suggère bien en effet !
Enfin c’est mon humble avis, à d’autres le dernier mot haha :)
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Quitterie. I am glad you appreciate the text!
ReplyDeleteI think he 'historicises' necessarily because he is talking about the very concrete evolution of modes of poetic expression, some of which we cannot return to as they were; we cannot return to the primal apprehension of Nature and its expression through the gods of the ancient world, and the pantheon of gods and heroes of ancient mythology. At least, not as the Ancients did, because this mode of consciousness is so far removed from our own, and our own relationship to things. We don't actually, at present, have any clear relationship, even notion, of a cosmos as such, let alone a sacred cosmos. Likewise, the fabric of ancient Greek itself is forever lost to most of us, and we certainly wouldn't be composing in it any more.
I think you mean 'architectural', not 'archetypal'? This is the term used by Barfield.
Do you think he is being political in his approach? You mention Marx, humorously, I appreciate. I'm not sure he sees the 'architectural' mode as a power structure.
It is true that the 'historical' approach is limited, because as you say, with the poet you mention whom I do not know and really must look into thank you, poets have returned and will continue to return to the less 'architectural' and the more fluid ways of speaking. This was one of the imperatives of the Modernist movement, and post-modernist; almost 'irrational', as you say, or perhaps 'non-rational' would be a better term. Lawrence would mock excessive rationality, we have seen this in his poetry and essay in class.
You put it very well; I think so, literature is never 'stuck' in one mode. Although there are certain modes we cannot really return to in the spirit they were lived and experienced, because our consciousness and apprehension of things have changed. T. S.Eliot is the perfect example of a return to fluidity, yet within the ancient traditions of the West. He is both modern and ancient, an extraordinary feat! Perhaps I could put up some extracts?
I can also scan other parts of the Barfield book, in which he considers these ancient modes of poetic apprehension, which we have largely lost.
AJ
ReplyDelete
Thanks for your reply
DeleteAll you say is true, I just wonder if there's not people in remote places that still have a sort of access to this primal apprehension of Nature. I remember a friend saying that to me concerning the content of the famous and controversial Castaneda's books about shamanism, but I know nothing about it, I may have a look to them to see if it can be a bit compared to what you say, though it's probably much different, over now or no link with literature.
Yes I meant architectural and non-rational is a much better term indeed. And sorry I forgot to write in English last time
I'll be interested in reading these extracts if you don't mind, I guess some others too. I'm trying to fix my ideas on these kind of debates. I just red a brillant text a bit linked to all this, but seen from a scientific point of view, in Le hasard et la nécessité chapter Vitalismes et animismes. Mr Ribot advised us to read it, so some of you might check if they want to
Have a nice week-end