Linguistic Structures in Poetry [4. Aufl. Reprint 2016] 9783110805390, 9789027906786

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA

MEMORIAE

N I C O L A I V A N WIJK edencia

DEDICATA

curai

C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana

University

Series Minor, 23

LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES IN POETRY

by

SAMUEL R. LEVIN Hunter College

MOUTON PUBLISHERS • THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK

ISBN: 9 0 2 7 9 0 6 7 8 5 First e d i t i o n , f i f t h p r i n t i n g 1977 © 196?, M o u t o n P u b l i s h e r s , T h e H a g u e P r i n t e d in T h e N e t h e r l a n d s

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In preparing this volume, I have had the benefit of advice and criticism from a number of people, whose assistance I wish to acknowledge. I first wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues, Albert Cook, Mac Hammond, and Isaac Levi, for reading sections while the work was in progress and for making a number of valuable comments and criticisms. Francis Lee Utley was kind enough to read several chapters and send me his reactions. I am heavily indebted to Seymour Chatman and Sol Saporta, who read an early draft and pointed out a number of ways in which the argument could be strengthened. Finally, Archibald A. Hill and Henry M. Hoenigswald read a completed version and made several suggestions which led to further revisions. Although I have not always adopted the suggestions made by these people, i am, nevertheless, aware of the improvement which their general criticism has effected on the work. The responsibility for the statements made in the chapters that follow remains my own, however. Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio September 15, 1961

SAMUEL

R.

LEVIN

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

S

1. INTRODUCTION

9

2. POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTTCS

11

3. PARADIGMS AND POSITIONS

19

4. COUPLING

30

5. THE CONVENTIONAL MATRIX

42

6. A SONNET

51

7. CONCLUSION

59

Bibliography

63

1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Various techniques are employed in literary criticism, but a standard result seems to be that one of the attributes of poetry, as opposed to prose, is a special unity of structure. Most commonly the statement is to the effect that in poetry the form of the discourse and its meaning are fused into a higher unity. Thus, in the Epilogue of their long book, Wimsatt and Brooks say, " . . . our final view, implicit in our whole narrative and in whatever moments of argument we may have allowed ourselves, has been that 'form* in fact embraces and penetrates 'message' in a way that constitutes a deeper and more substantial meaning than either abstract message or separable ornament. In both the scientific or abstract dimension and in the practical or rhetorical dimension there is both message and the means of conveying message, but the poetic dimension is just that dramatically unified meaning which is coterminous with form." 1 Although, in the nature of the case, literary critics deal with the language of poetry in their analyses, they do not, as a rule, employ the techniques of structural linguistics in arriving at their judgments. In the chapters thai follow, poetry is examined from the point of view of structural linguistics. The results of the analysis are consistent with the view that poetry is marked by a special kind of unity. The analysis discloses certain structures which are peculiar to the language of poetry, and which function so as indeed to unify the texts in which they appear. These structures we call COUPLINGS. Since this structure has not, to my knowledge, been previously specified for poetry, it may be looked upon as providing another basis, a linguistic one, for the judgment that poetry displays this special unity. Moreover, the agreement arrived 1 William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Cleanth Brooks, Literary criticism: a short history (New York, 1957), p. 748.

10

INTRODUCTION

at by a linguistic analysis and the analyses of literary critics, whose theoretical apparatus embodies such features as metaphor, symbolism, imagery, etc., may be said to strengthen reciprocally the conclusions arrived at by the different approaches. 1.2 In addition to supporting the critical judgment of a poem's unity, the notion of coupling serves to explain a common experience; namely, that poetry tends to remain in one's mind. Poetry has an enduring quality, and this not in the Static sense of document or public property, but in the dynamic sense of individual recreation. As Valéry has said, "Poetry can be recognized by this remarkable fact, which could serve as its definition: it tends to reproduce itself in its own form, it stimulates our minds to reconstruct it as it is."» It is these two responses to poetry then - that it is unified and that it is memorable - which the following study attempts to provide some explanation for.

•

Paul Valéry, The ari ofpoetry, tr. Denise Folliot (New York, 1958), p. 209.

2

P O E T R Y , G R A M M A R S , STYLIST1CS

2.1 In approaching any study of poetry from the linguistic point of view, it is necessary to decide at the outset whether the techniques developed for the linguistic analysis of ordinary language are equally valid for the analysis of poetry. The posing of this question implies what is well-known, namely, that poetry consists of language, yet produces effects that ordinary language does not produce. If this is the case, then the inference is that poetry is language differently ordered or arranged. This would make it appear that linguistic analysis, when applied to poetry, would result in a grammar that is different from the grammar that a linguistic analysis of ordinary language would produce. In general this is true; that is, many poetic sequences are generable by the kind of grammar constructed for ordinary language, but some are not. It is necessary at this point to indicate what we mean by a grammar. In doing so, we shall not enter into the controversy over whether a grammar is discovered by the application of a linguistic theory to the raw data, or whether a grammar is simply gotten together somehow and then merely evaluated by the linguistic theory. 1 For our purposes, we shall consider the grammar of English to consist of a certain finite number of classes of linguistic elements and a certain finite number of rules - of whatever kind may be necessary. Such a general conception of grammar is completely adequate to generate the grammatical sentences of English, and purely linguistic analysis,2 as opposed to stylistics or content 1 See Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (= Janua Linguarum, No. 4) ('s-Gravenhage, 19S7), pp. 50ff., where this question is discussed. See also Robert B. Lees' review of this book in Language 33.378fT. (1957). ' This position has been stated by Zellig S. Harris in "Discourse analysis," Language 28.1 f. (1952) as follows: "...descriptive linguistics generally stops at sentence boundaries. This is not due to any prior decision. The techniques of

12

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLIST1CS

analysis, is usually satisfied with such a grammar - that is, one making possible the description of sentences. 2.2 Chomsky has discussed various linguistic theories which might be supposed capable of developing grammars that would be adequate for natural languages. 3 He has shown that certain types of grammar design - the finite state design and the phrase structure design - are inadequate to perform the task expected of grammars for a language like English. The finite state design is inadequate because it will not generate all and only the grammatical sentences of English. In particular, it will not generate sentences that incorporate the 'nesting' or 'self-embedding' properties typical of certain English sentences. 4 The phrase structure or constituent analysis design of grammar does not fail in this way, but is held by Chomsky to be inadequate for other reasons, fn the first place, it would have to be a very complex structure if it were to generate all and only grammatical sentences. In the second place, such a grammar would fail to explain certain relations which obtain between English sentences - relations that a native speaker would be aware of. 6 This deficiency of phrase structure grammar is linguistics were constructed to study any stretch of speech, of whatever length. But in every language it turns out that almost all the results tie within a relatively short stretch, which we may call a sentence. That is, when we can state a restriction on the occurrence of element A in respect to the occurrence of element B, it will almost always be the case that A and B are regarded as occurring within the same sentence." In his discourse analysis, Harris is of course interested in relations that extend beyond sentence limits - that is the point of discourse analysis - but in his analysis, Harris is not concerned with the forms in the text; he is interested only in their distributions (cf. pp. 4f. of his article). The same position is taken by Chomsky, op. cit., p. 13: "The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a language L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences." Cf. also Robert B. Lees, The grammar of English nominalizations (Baltimore, 1960), p. 1. * Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 18fT. * Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 18ff. ' Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 85flf. The inter-sentence relations that Chomsky is interested in here are not of the same kind as those that have been discussed in this chapter. In our discussion, we were interested in relations obtaining

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTICS

13

evidenced by the fact that it does not account for the intuitively apprehended different 'meanings' of two sequences like (1) the growling of lions (2) the raising of flowers which would both be represented on the level of phrase structure identically as the - V+ing - of+NP and, conversely, it does not account for sentences of different phrase structure being understood similarly.8 For these reasons, Chomsky develops another level of linguistic analysis, the transformational level. This level introduces a layer of structure which accounts for the type of native-speaker reactions mentioned above. Chomsky's study shows that we require of a linguistic theory more than the sole requirement that a grammar based on it generate all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. We require also a degree of simplicity and, in addition, that certain intuitive reactions which native speakers of a language have about sentences and relations between them should also be explicated by such a grammar. Such relations may be indicated in a formal way by analysis in terms of abstract linguistic levels. Thus, the abstract level of morphology explains those intuitive native-speaker reactions which remain unexplained on the phonological level (for example, the reason for the ambiguity of the phonemic sequence /aneym/ is made clear only after we have analyzed the morphemes "a", "an", "aim", and "name"), the abstract level of phrase structure explains such reactions which remain unexplained on the morphological level (for example, the fact that the sentences "John played tennis" and "my friend likes music" are somehow understood as similar is explained on the level of phrase structure, since both are there represented as NP - Verb - NP); and the abstract level of transformations explains such reactions which remain unexplained on the phrase structure level.7 between sentences in the same discourse; Chomsky is interested in relations between sentences in the code or grammar: in the present instance, whether or not the two sequences that follow in our discussion undergo the same transformations. • Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 88ff. ' Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 85ff. It has been suggested that additional levels

14

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTICS

2.3 It is not the purpose of the present study to construct a grammar that will mechanically generate all existing poems - much less predict new ones. Its purpose is rather to suggest that, while it may not be necessary to construct a grammar of a different kind in order to explain some of the effects of poetry, at least certain extensions of analysis might have to be introduced into the existing models. It appears, for example, that, in explicating the linguistic structure of poetry, some account must be given of linguistic relations whose domain is greater than the sentence. It appears, also, that the rules of the grammar will have to be modified so as to permit, on the one hand, certain liberties, and so as to account, on the other hand, for novel kinds of restrictions that are imposed on linguistic units in poetry - both within and beyond the sentence. The first aim, as we have seen (fn. 2), takes us beyond the limits of grammars constructed for ordinary language; the second requires us to extend the notions of restriction as these are expressed in such grammars. 8 In this connection, Voegelin has recently pointed out that grammars devised for ordinary (his 'casual') language are 'class grammars', that is, they are "model-directed structuralizations which have in common this minimum concern: to provide formal definition of classes in morphemics as well as in phonemics." 9 In taking account then of 'selections' in poetic texts (one type of his 'noncasual' language), one has a choice between two alternatives. One can list as deviants from the class grammar those selections which do not conform to the class structure of the grammar devised for the ordinary language, or one may attempt to construct a of analysis may have to be developed in order to resolve certain difficulties that remain even in grammars containing the level of transformations. See Lees' review of Syntactic structures, in Language 33.403 (1957). * The notion of restriction subsumes both liberties and constraints. If jiew syntagms are produced, essentially by using a member of one formclass in a novel position, we may say that restriction is here suspended. The other sense of restriction, as used in this study, refers to constraints on the lexicon employed within poems and is discussed in § 4.8. • C. F. Voegelin, "Casual and noncasual utterances within unified structure," in Style in language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (New York, 1960), pp. 57ff. (the quotation is from p. 67).

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTICS

15

grammar in such a way as to directly account for the selections - by incorporating into the one grammar the data from the noncasual as well as from the casual language. This would presumably be done by expanding the classes and/or modifying the rules. The former recourse leads to a grammar that 'leaks', the latter approach, which Voegelin favors, leads to a 'unified' grammar which does not. Like many alternative solutions in linguistic analysis, each one has its merits and its disadvantages. These should be evident from the exposition. It is not necessary, however, to think only in terms of grammars for casual language and grammars for noncasual language, either separate or unified. One could consider a grammar incorporating only one type of noncasual language; in the present instance, poetry. Such a grammar would reveal, by a comparison with the grammar of the casual language, a great deal more about the difference between poetic language and ordinary language than would a mere listing of deviants and, at the same time, would not be as complex and heterogeneous as would a grammar devised for casual and all noncasual language. Naturally, such a grammar would still be more complex than a grammar for the casual language alone. 2.4 The question of 'selection', discussed above, introduces us to a consideration of stylistics. The work of American linguists has resulted in two main approaches to the question of what constitutes style. One approach may be illustrated by the following definition proposed by Bernard Bloch: "The STYLE of a discourse is the message carried by the frequency-distributions and transitional probabilities of its linguistic features, especially as they differ from those of the same features in the language as a whole." 10 The 14

Bernard Bloch, "Linguistic structure and linguistic analysis," in Report of the fourth annual round table meeting on linguistics and language teaching (Washington, D. C., 1953), p. 42. Such a definition of style covers the same ground, from the linguistic point of view, as do formulations in terms of 'choice'. Choice is a function of the user of the language, but the choices that he makes will be reflected in the frequency-distributions and transitional probabilities in his utterances, and it is these that linguistic analysis can undertake to study.

16

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYUSTICS

other main approach to the question, advocated by Archibald A. Hill, maintains that style is the message carried by relations between linguistic elements occurring in wider-than-sentence compass, that is, in texts or extended discourse. 11 The approach to style adopted in this study is essentially along the lines described by Hill - for the following reasons: Stylistic analysis in terms of frequency distributions and transitional probabilities would seem to yield information primarily about an individual's style, whereas stylistic analysis in terms of relations between linguistic items in texts would seem to yield information about the style of a genre, and i t ' s in the latter that we are interested here. The contrast in views described above is not easy tp substantiate, inasmuch as the study of frequency distributions and transitional probabilities is also carried out over extended discourse, and thus might be regarded as approximating the second approach. The difference is, however, that the second approach to style confines itself to studying elements within the message and sets up its own code, only then comparing this code with the ordinary language code, whereas the first approach proceeds at the outset to compare the frequencies and distributions of the elements in the message to the frequencies and distributions of these same elements in a large sample of messages. Although comparison with the features of such a sample may be informative or interesting in a stylistic analysis carried out by the second approach, it is not essential; in the first approach, it is indispensable. Since we are interested, in the present study, in 11

Cf. Archibald A. Hill, Introduction to linguistic structures (New York, 1958), pp. 406f. See also, by the same author, "A program for the definition of literature," Texas studies in English 37.50 (1958). Stylistics thus differs from ordinary linguistic analysis, which is concerned with relations between linguistic elements within sentences. Stylistics, defined as above, would apply as equally to the analysis of a report or a cake recipe as it would to the analysis of a poem or a folktale. Texts which are worth analyzing, however, are texts which have a style. By having a style, we usually mean that a text in some way deviates from the statistical norms of the language. The norms, of course, will have to be determined by a prior study of the ordinary language. For a discussion of the question of norms and style, see Sol Saporta and Thomas A. Sebeok, "Linguistics and content analysis," in Trends in content analysis (Urbana, 1959), pp. 134f.

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTICS

17

describing structure in poetry, not in the work of individual poets, most of the discussion will deal with the relations obtaining between linguistic elements in poems; that is, frequency and transitional probabilities will be left out of account. 12 Many of these relations transcend sentence limits, although some do not. The formulation of the stylistic approach adopted in this study is here given in general terms; its specific application to the language of poetry is described in the chapters that follow. Relations that exist between linguistic elements over an extended text do not necessarily lead to results which are interesting for stylistic analysis. Thus, even in ordinary discourse, there are suprasentence relations. We find such relations, for example, in the use of pronouns to refer to antecedents in preceding sentences, and also in certain other types of agreement - for example, of number or tense - between elements occurring in successive sentences. The second type of agreement is an obligatory one and so cannot be relevant to the question of style. The first type, while not obligatory in the strict sense, is nevertheless so normal that only the failure to observe it would be relevant for stylistic analysis. 13 Such relations are therefore of no interest to us. " The work of the Prague School on stylistics bears certain resemblances to the view that style is connected with frequency-distributions and transitional probabilities. According to Havrdnek and Mukafovsky, linguistic elements in ordinary communicative messages are, as a rule, automatized, whereas in poetry they are deautomatized, or foregrounded. Automatized linguistic elements do not call attention to themselves; they merely communicate. Foregrounded linguistic elements, on the other hand, do call attention to themselves. See Bohuslav Havrinek, "The functional differentiation of the standard language," pp. 9ff., and Jan Mukafovsky, "Standard language and poetic language," pp. 2lff., both contained among the translated selections in A Prague School reader, by Paul L. Garvin (Washington, D.C., 1958). We can thus say that automatized linguistic elements are elements that occur with high-order probability and are hence to that extent redundant. Foregrounding is thus a function of transitional probability, one in which the linguistic element is of a low-order probability in its occurrence in the particular sentence. Notice that foregrounding implies a comparison with automatized messages. '* A discourse like "My friend arrived last night. My friend just got in from Chicago." would be 'marked' and hence stylistically relevant, as opposed to " M y friend arrived last night. He just got in from Chicago." which, as the 'unmarked' or normal form would not. The use of such 'marked' forms,

18

POETRY, GRAMMARS, STYLISTICS

2.5 The kinds of supra-sentence relations that interest us here are those which result in imposing on the discourse some structure additional to that which derives from the language as it is normally used. At this point, we may say something about two structures which satisfy the above requirement: the structures constituted by features of rhyme and meter. These two structures, which are discussed in § 5, are certainly characteristic of a great deal of poetry, but they are not the only structures which an analysis of poetry must consider. Meter of some kind is probably a necessary condition for poetry, but rhyme certainly is not. Neither meter nor rhyme, however, are sufficient conditions - as the various kinds of doggerel attest. The poetic effect - whatever it may be - can thus not be explained by exclusive recourse to these two structures. In poetry, these two structures accompany a linguistic structure which is itself 'poetic'. This linguistic structure is discussed in §§ 3, 4. It comprises the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic functions of language. It is a structure in which semantically and/or phonically equivalent forms occur in equivalent syntagmatic positions, the forms so occurring thus constituting special types of paradigms (cf. § 4.8). These semantic and phonic correspondences frequently extend throughout a poem, or through significant, multi-sentence portions of a poem. If it is necessary for poetry that such paradigms be built up, then the analysis of a poem will show a lexicon constrained by this need. This is a constraint that a grammar of poetry might be required to make explicit. Quite apart from this, however, is the question of constructing the grammar in such a way as to generate certain constructions that occur in poetry, but not at the same time (by the same rule) generate similar constructions that are not grammatical. This question is discussed in §§ 3.7, 4.3.

however, would only be eccentric. For a discussion of 'marked' and 'unmarked' forms in stylistic analysis, see Saporta and Sebeok, op. cit., pp. 139ff.

3

PARADIGMS A N D POSITIONS

3.1 Linguistic analysis distinguishes two planes of language - the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic - and, although it is customary, in American linguistics, to treat the syntagmatic plane as somehow the more important of the two - inasmuch as presumably it exists as such and is therefore open to inspection - it would be a mistake to believe that it is any more important to the linguistic act than the paradigmatic plane; it is simply more amenable to analysis. The fact is, of course, that there is a real interdependence between these two planes of language: when we consider each plane from the point of view of the other, paradigms are found to consist of members of syntagms and syntagms to consist of members of paradigms. In this study considerable attention is paid to the paradigmatic plane of language, because it is felt that some of the ways in which poetry produces its most characteristic effects are best explained by a discussion of this plane. Any linguistic analysis of poetry must deal with the syntagmatic plane, since this is what is immediately available for analysis. But the study of paradigms is equally important, since certain structures which poems incorporate turn out to be more readily apprehensible when we consider the poem not merely as a succession of syntagms, but rather/also as a system of paradigms. 3.2 Paradigms may be discussed in a purely linguistic framework or in a framework that includes extralinguistic factors as well. For reasons discussed in § 3.7, we shall discuss paradigms from both points of view. Traditionally, the term paradigm is applied to the array constituted by the inflected forms of a base or stem. This is the procedure that leads to the isolation of the declensions and

20

PARADIGMS AND POSITIONS

conjugations of Latin and Greek, and it is also the procedure that leads to the isolation of such English paradigms as child, child's, children and break, breaks, broke, broken, breaking.1 In modern discussions, an attempt is frequently made to incorporate into the definition of a paradigm some account of the environmental features and to say that the paradigm is constituted in respect to those features. Thus "A system of morphemic variations which corresponds to a parallel system of variations in environment (and hence of structural meaning) is a paradigm." 2 The foregoing definitions, all based on linguistic features, have one thing in common: they all take as their point of departure the word-base or -stem. The base or stem is fixed and the environment changes; the different forms of the paradigm are found in different environments. Correlating with ox and oxen, for example, we have the environments This - is good and These - are good.3 We can isolate classes and call them paradigms by working in the opposite direction, however; that is, we can take as our point of departure environments, not bases or stems, and then class as members of the same paradigm all those forms that occur in that environment (or those environments). For example, the environment This - is good would generate a paradigm consisting of ox, house, book, etc. (as well as expansions of these forms). Actually, of course, working in either direction may be regarded as a case of working from a fixed environment. In the former method we select some base or stem as the environment and determine what suffixes occur with that base or stem; in the latter method we select any linguistic environment we choose and in this way determine a paradigm. One difference between the two methods is that the former method - yielding declensions and conjugations - leads to a class of a definite number of members, whereas the membership of clarses yielded by the second method is indefinite. The latter method is 1

Cf. Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager, Outline of linguistic analysis (Baltimore, 1942), p 56. * W. Nelson Francis, The structure of American English (New York, 1958), p. 192. ' Francis, op. cit., p. 186.

PARADIGMS AND POSITIONS

21

the way in which classes are built up in the language code, while the former method is merely one subtype of this operation, which has some value in certain kinds of grammatical analysis. 3.3 We adopt the latter method of analysis in this treatment and shall speak of paradigms as equivalence classes; that is, classes whose members are equivalent in respect to some feature or features, these features always to be understood as lying outside the forms in question - as constituting a tertium comparationis. Later in this chapter we shall introduce extralinguistic references for this equivalence, but in the present section these outside features are all linguistic, that is, features in the linguistic environment. Thus the forms happy, sad, and kind are equivalent in that each may occur in the environment -ness, for example. On this basis, and to this extent, they are members of the same paradigm. In the same manner we may speak of the paradigms or classes constituted by the words we call nouns, or verbs; we may speak of certain morphological classes, the derivational or inflectional suffixes, for example; we may speak of on ;ain constructions - for example, the class of prepositional phrases or the class of subordinate clauses. We may speak, in fact, of as many classes as we can find environmental defining characteristics for. Characteristic of all the classes just mentioned is that they are defined according to the way their members pattern in utterances, that is, by position. We define a class, which we call the class of nouns, because its members habitually follow words like a/an, the, my, etc., because its members habitually precede certain suffixes that we call 'plural' and 'possessive', and so on; we define a class, which we call the class of verbs, because its members may immediately follow the auxiliaries, because they habitually precede the suffixes that we call '3rd person singular', 'past', and 'past participle', and so on. Another such class would be the class defined as the set of forms that may immediately precede the base -vert, for example. This criterion would yield a class consisting of the prefixes 10 (grieve) - at - NPW (grievances foregone), C-VPn (heavily tell o'er) -from - NP21 (woe) -toNP2i(woe) NP23 (The sad account of forebemoaned moan), NP2i (Account I new-pay as if not paid before).* Following are the major couplings in these two sentences; the natural equivalence is semantic, or semantic and phonic: VP, plus N P is (drown an eye)~VP10 (grieve); N P I 7 ~ N P 2 0 (hid in death's dateless night is syntagmatically and semantically equivalent to foregone, and this fact causes precious friends and grievances, which occupy equivalent positions in their constructions, to be interpreted as semantic equivalents, hence coupled (cf. § 4.6)); V P 8 ~ V P n ; NP18~NPJ3. 6.5 The rhyme scheme of the poem is abab, cdcd, e f e f , gg. As we have seen (§ 5.2), rhymes constitute couplings. The alternate rhymes of the first four lines occur with the first if-then sentence, and alternate rhymes occur with the amplification of this sentence through lines 5-12. The second if-then sentence (11. 13-14) is accompanied by the immediate rhyme, gg. There is thus reinforcement of the syntagmatic structure by the rhyme structure. The fact that the sonnet employs the two types of rhyme and that the two immediate syntagmatic constituents correlate with these two ' The transformation in line 10 is a case of simple word order change. The substitution of which by account in line 12 is made to facilitate labeling line 12 a ,V/>.

56

A SONNET

types is largely responsible (along with the use of the adversative conjunction but of line 13) for the sense of juncture at the concluding couplet of the sonnet, and the sense of unity at its close. 6.6 In the first amplifying then clause (beginning with line 3), we find the following verbs, all semantically equivalent monosyllables, predicated of the subject I: sigh, wail, drown (an eye), weep, moan, and grieve. Inasmuch as these verbs are all predicated of the same subject, they occur in equivalent syntagmatic positions, in a comparable construction (cf. § 4.5), and thus constitute a series of couplings. The fact that they all occur under the metrical stress renders them couplings on the conventional axis also. As objects of sigh, wail, and moan, we find lack, waste, and expense, the latter likewise constituting a series of couplings. 6.7 The use of the principle of couplings in the analysis of a poem can be of assistance in determining, or at least in suggesting a way to determine, other features in a poem's structure. Consider the phrase sweet silent thought in line 1. As the phrase stands, there is no way to decide whether its immediate constituents are sweet silent and thought or sweet and silent thought, that is, whether sweet silent is a compound or two separate adjectives modifying thought. (Without going into a discussion of the question, it can be said that no reliable inference can be made from punctuation or its absence especially in a case like the present one.) sweet and silent, since they alliterate and both fall under metrical stress, constitute a coupling. In line 6 we have a comparable phrase in death's dateless night, where death's and dateless constitute a coupling for reasons similar to those discussed above. There are other structural similarities between the two phrases: in both, two words modify a head-word, and these head-words, thought and night, end in the same consonant. The immediate constituents of death's dateless night are unambiguous: death's and dateless night. This fact gives us a structural reason for analyzing sweet silent thought into sweet and silent thought, that is, making sweet and silent separate modifiers and not a compound. In line with this same analysis, we may wish

A SONNET

57

to consider the phrase love's long since canceled woe in line 7. Here, even though love's and long alliterate, it could not properly be claimed that they constitute a coupling, since they do not occur in equivalent metrical (or syntagmatic) positions. Constructionally, however, the phrase corresponds to death's dateless night. This suggests that it should be construed as consisting of love's and long since canceled woe\ that is, long since canceled is a single constituent, modifying woe.9 6.8 Falling under metrical stresses is a whole class of semantically equivalent words that have to do with a court or legal bar. Beginning with sessions in line 1, we come successively upon summon, canceled, expense, grievances, and account - all technical terms associated with action at law. These words thus constitute a series of couplings. Moreover, the word thing, in lines 2 and 3, which from the synchronic point of view is a quite neutral word, even flat, assumes a much more significant function in the poem when it is remembered that it was used in Old English documents to translate Latin res in the latter's meaning of case or action at law. Other meanings cluster, around thing, which may be inferred from the meaning of the Old English verb dingian, namely: 'to beg, pray, intercede for, come to terms with, covenant, conciliate, compound with, settle.' The older meaning of tell, namely 'to count' and of pay 'to appease' are also exploited in the poem. If these historical meanings are summoned up so as to cluster around the present meanings of these words, then thing, tell, and pay also enter into the series of couplings constituted by the court-room terms. 7 • Cf. the analysis of dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon in Archibald A. Hill, " A n analysis of The Windhover: an experiment in structural m e t h o d , " Publications of the Modern Language Association 70.970f. (1955). 7 The introduction of the diachronic dimension into our analysis has obviously important implications. W e shall not go into them, except to say that the analogy to the diachronic dimension of ordinary language analysis is not in the sense of change or process as these take place in a language's development, but to whatever of a linguistic form's background is still viable on the synchronic level. For a discussion of diachronic meanings in stylistic analysis, see Michael Rifaterre, "Criteria for style analysis," Word 15.l65ff. (1959).

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A SONNET

6.9 In the matrix of meter, there are a number of couplings constituted also by phonically equivalent forms. In lines 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, to mention only the more striking instances, there is alliteration of [s]'s, [w]'s, [n]'s, [d]'s, [l]'s, [n]'s, and [g]'s respectively. In lines 9-12, again in the matrix of meter, there are couplings constituted by the repetition of words or word-bases: thus, grieve~ grievances', woe~ woe\ forebemoanéd~moan', a n d p a y ~ p a i d . These may be regarded as cases of assonance or internal rhyme. Other couplings could be described for this sonnet, but perhaps enough has already been done to indicate the integral and thoroughgoing role that these structures play in the poem's organization. Their major function is to unify the poem, this unity being due to the various and interlocking kinds of equivalence which lie behind couplings. But another result of the coupling principle as it is used in poetry is to make the poem memorable. It is frequently maintained, for instance, that rhyme is a mnemonic aid. Obviously, rhyme is such an aid because, having thought of one line in a rhymed piece, the possibilities at the end of the succeeding lines are restricted quite severely by the rhyme requirement. But couplings, by definition, impose similar restrictions at equivalent metrical and syntagmatic positions also. In a poem there are thus numerous points - syntagmatic, metrical,, or rhyme - at which the mind is prompted to selection from among the stringently restricted subgroups of forms that are semantically and/or phonically equivalent to the form occurring in the preceding equivalent position. The unity and memorability. of poetry are thus related, and find their common basis in coupling.

7

CONCLUSION

7.1 Poetry differs from normal discourse, among other respects, in the way in which it uses the language. As we have seen (§ 5), many of these differences derive from certain literary conventions; that is, many features distinguishing poetry from ordinary discourse result from the mere fact that a writer addresses himself to writing a poem. In itself, this fact entails a considerable number and variety of linguistic particularities. The traditions and conventions of the poetic form entail features like rhyme, alliteration, meter, and so on. The contributions of these features to the poetic effect all ultimately derive, however, not from manipulation and exploitation of possibilities in the ordinary language structure, but rather from a body of received conventions which, while they originally may have been derived from ordinary language, have now become features incorporated in the body of characteristics making up the poetic convention. The use of these strictly literary conventions serves to impart to a stretch of language a characteristic impression, but these features do not, by themselves, impart to a poem the sense of unity which poems produce. Any text, poetic or otherwise, may be said to display a unity. If it does not display this unity, then it is not a text but a mere aggregation of words. In non-poetic texts the unity results from the fact that, presumably, the subject matter is more or less uniform, and the grammatical units are linked by agreement, anaphora, repetition, etc. In preparing such a text, however, no particular care need be given to the selection of individual units beyond that necessary to insure that the uniformity of the subject matter is conveyed. Moreover, no particular care need be given to the arrangement of the individual units beyond that necessary to insure a certain degree of grammaticalness. Needless to say, care

60

CONCLUSION

in both the selection and arrangement of individual units may be, and frequently is, exercised. In the degree that this care is exercised, however, the text is elevated from the status of casual, non-poetic text to a text exhibiting certain characteristics of style. This suggests an entire area of investigation, but is not our immediate concern. The important fact for us is that in those texts admittedly poetic a special kind of unity is presented. This unity results not merely from the application of the poetic conventions mentioned in the preceding paragraph, nor does it result merely from the presence of a uniform subject matter and grammatical links - the features mentioned above as contributing to the unity presented by a nonpoetic text. The body of poetic conventions constitute neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poetry, and the second set of features do not constitute a sufficient condition and constitute a necessary condition only in the trivial sense that any text has to be communicative, by definition. It turns out, from our study, that at least part of the characteristic sense of unity which a poem projects is imparted by the special use and exploitation of ordinary language factors and derives from the structure we have called coupling. 7.2 Valéry has said that the primary characteristic of ordinary language is that as soon as it is understood it vanishes - being replaced by the impressions, ideas, acts, etc. which it conveys. 1 Ordinary language remains as language only when it does not fulfill its function - which is to produce these impressions, ideas, acts, etc. In such cases we ask that the language be repeated. As soon as we understand what is said, however, the language is replaced in our minds by what it has signified - the language itself does not last. The particular quality of poetic language, on the other hand, is that it lasts. In poetry, both form and impression remain. In other words, poetic messages enjoy a permanence which is not enjoyed by ordinary language messages. By permanence here we are not referring to the fact that a poem survives across genera1 Paul Valéry, The art of poetry, tr. Denise Folliot (New York, 1958), pp. 64f., 71 f.

CONCLUSION

61

tions or centuries (general permanence), but rather to the fact that a poem has a faculty for staying in the individual mind; it is memorable. It is this individual permanence that is important, for it would seem to be necessary in order to insure the general permanence of a poem, whereas the converse is not true. Valéry, in describing this quality of permanence in poetry, says, "The poem, on the other hand, does not die for having lived: it is expressly designed to be born again from its ashes and to become endlessly what it has just been. Poetry can be recognized by this property, that it tends to get itself reproduced in its own form: it stimulates us to reconstruct it identically." 2 Since permanence is a function of a text's unity, this effect of pbetic language is also partially explained by the structure we have called coupling. 7*3 How the structure of coupling contributes to a poem's memorability and, hence, to its permanence may perhaps be brought into sharper focus by a short discussion of the language phenomenon. All of us, as members of a speech community, know the code of a language. The code comprises many intricate and subtle relations but, in general, it may be said to consist of a set of classes of linguistic elements and a set of rules for combining or relating these elements. Knowledge of the code enables us to encode and decode messages. Ordinary messages represent the temporary, ad hoc selection of elements (members of classes, rules) from the code. There is essentially nothing in such messages which would assist a decoder in re-encoding them. In order for such messages to be re-encoded, an individual would first of all have to find himself in the same general circumstances under which the original message was encoded. He then might or might not duplicate the original message; various non-linguistic factors might interpose themselves. There is, in any case, essentially nothing in the original message itself which would prompt the re-encoder to select one element rather than another in attempting to duplicate it. A poem, on the other hand, which is presented to an individual as a message, has * Vakry, op. CH., p. 72.

62

CONCLUSION

built into it such equivalences (couplings) that it assists the individual in re-encoding it uniquely; it p r o m p t s , as a result of its own systemic pressure, the same selections f r o m the language code. In this way, the actual message - t h a t is, the poem - is m a d e p e r m a n e n t .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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