Connotations

A Journal for Critical Debate

Volume 23 (2013/2014) Number 2

Waxmann Münster / New York
Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate
Published by Connotations: Society for Critical Debate
EDITORS
Inge Leimberg (Münster), Matthias Bauer (Tübingen),
Burkhard Niederhoff (Bochum) and Angelika Zirker (Tübingen)

Secretary: Eva Maria Rettner

Editorial Assistants: Martina Bross, Yvonne Hertzler

EDITORIAL ADDRESS
Professor Matthias Bauer, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen,
Department of English, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074 Tübingen, Germany
Email: editors@connotations.de http://www.connotations.de

EDITORIAL BOARD
M. H. Abrams, Cornell University
Åke Bergvall, University of Karlstad
Christiane Maria Binder, Universität Dortmund
John Russell Brown, University College London
Ursula Brumm, Freie Universität Berlin
Paul Budra, Simon Fraser University
Lothar Černý, Fachhochschule Köln
Eleanor Cook, University of Toronto
William E. Engel, The University of the South
Bernd Engler, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
David Fishelov, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A. C. Hamilton, Queen’s University, Ontario
John P. Hermann, University of Alabama
Lothar Hönnighausen, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Arthur F. Kinney, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Frances M. Malpezzi, Arkansas State University
J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
Martin Procházka, Charles University, Prague
Dale B. J. Randall, Duke University
Alan Rudrum, Simon Fraser University
Michael Steppat, Universität Bayreuth
Leona Toker, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
John Whalen-Bridge, National University of Singapore
Joseph Wiesenfarth, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Waxmann Münster / New York

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 Connotations
A Journal for Critical Debate
Volume 23 (2013/2014) Number 2

Poetry in Fiction (I)

“Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options

MATTHIAS BAUER 173

Turning: From Verse to Prose

MICHAL PELED GINSBURG 189

Embedded and Embodied Poetry

in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
ELENA ANASTASAKI 207

The Function of Poetic Epigraphs

in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda
EIKE KRONSHAGE 230

Poetry and Poeticity in Joyce’s “The Dead,”

Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris,
and Yehuda Amichai
DAVID FISHELOV 261

Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s

The Lord of the Rings
THOMAS KULLMANN 283
 Other ARTICLES and RESPONSES

Names and Real Names in

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe:
A Response to Maurice Hunt
KREG SEGALL 310

Signs of Life in Robert Lowell’s

“Skunk Hour”
FRANK J. KEARFUL 317

Geoffrey Household’s The Watcher

in the Shadows and Dance of the Dwarfs:
A Response to Robert Lance Snyder
DAVID SEED 336

Fracturing the Critical Conversation

on Pinter’s Language: A Response to
Maurice Charney
MIREIA ARAGAY 347
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

“Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options*

MATTHIAS BAUER

“Poetry in Fiction,” the title of a special section in this and the follow-
ing issues of Connotations, is deliberately ambiguous.1 It may denote
the fact that works of fiction occasionally include poems or that poems
are referred to within the narrative, and it may mean that fiction can
be or comprise poetry, that we may note and discover poetry in the
fictional prose text. We may realize its “poeticity.”2 Our suggestion is
that these meanings of “Poetry in Fiction” belong together, even
though they may not all be present in the same work. What I hope to
do in these introductory remarks is to suggest some of the dimensions
or perspectives in which this link can be seen but also to draw atten-
tion to some of the conceptual and terminological problems involved.
We all know, more or less, what fiction is and what poetry is. But
joining the terms makes us realize that we are by no means always
sure what we are talking about.
The difficulties begin when we consider the kind of terms we are
combining. In one perspective, they refer to genres. Analogous titles
would thus be: drama in fiction; or: sonnets in tragedy. But it is hard
to delimit these combinations to genre. Only think of: comedy in
fiction—this will not only, or it will even only rarely, refer to actual
comedies within fiction. “Comedy” in this context rather refers to
what Alastair Fowler has called a “mode” (i.e. comprising a more
limited set of representative features, such as a specific kind of de-
nouement and anagnorisis; he gives the example of Emma being a
“comic novel” and says that “modal terms tend to adjectival”; 106).

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debbauer0232.htm>.
174 MATTHIAS BAUER

“Poetry” (or rather “poetic”) can be such a mode, too, even though
there has been an ongoing debate about its constitutive elements. New
genres can develop by the mixing of modes. Plato in the Politeia an-
ticipates this when he speaks of “epic poetry” in which the mixing of
mimesis and diegesis contributes to the epic mode being present in
poetry (392D-394D). One of the early definitions of the novel also
refers to such a mixture: When Henry Fielding describes Joseph An-
drews as a “kind of Writing,” which he does “not remember to have
been hitherto attempted in our Language,” he famously calls this
novel, this new kind of writing, a “comic Epic-Poem in Prose” (49). If
fiction is epic poetry in prose, however, the very notion of “poetry in
fiction” will draw our attention to the fact that we are not only consid-
ering genres and modes but also the way in which something is writ-
ten. “Poetry in fiction” may also mean “verse in prose.” For even
though “poetry” in this more general sense of a mode may be written
in prose, we tend to think of poetry as something being written in
verse.
The terminological confusion that may arise is a familiar one. Sev-
eral contemporary writers about prose, such as Simon Goodhill in The
Invention of Prose (on ancient Greece), and Wlad Godzich and Jeffrey
Kittay in The Emergence of Prose (on medieval French literature), begin
by citing the bourgeois in Molière’s comedy Le bourgeois gentilhomme. In
this play, M. Jourdain hires a maitre de philosophie who is to instruct
him in the art of writing a love letter to a lady of quality (2.4). The
teacher asks him if he wants to write it in verse, which the bourgeois
denies. But when he is asked if he wants it to be written in prose, he
denies this too, which causes the teacher to explain to him that it must
be either the one or the other: “Everything that is not prose is verse,
and everything that is not verse is prose” (Godzich and Kittay ix). M.
Jourdain is proud of having discovered the competence of speaking
prose, an ability he never knew of, and goes on to impart his newly
acquired knowledge to his wife. Unfortunately, however, in repeating
his teacher’s statement to her he somehow gets it wrong; what he says
is: “Everything that is prose is not verse; and everything that is not
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 175

verse is not prose” (x). Godzich and Kittay suspect Molière’s bour-
geois, while he is the butt of his author’s ridicule, to have stated a
deeper truth (cf. x). They remain a bit vague about what that truth
might exactly be but point out that M. Jourdain’s statement could
perhaps teach us that prose and verse are by no means as mutually
exclusive as his teacher thinks. I agree with them, but I also believe
that the deeper joke (or wisdom) derives from the fact that prose only
comes into its own when it participates in certain qualities which are
commonly attributed to verse. Prose and verse are contrastive catego-
ries but, at the same time, especially when it comes to qualities associ-
ated with them, the one (especially prose) cannot do without taking a
share in the other.
Accordingly, when we think of the ways in which poetry may be
related to prose narrative, it appears to me that we can distinguish
three basic kinds of their relationship which are not schematic catego-
ries but are closely linked to each other and may overlap. In each case,
we may consider poetry as a broad generic term, we may consider it
as a mode (certain features belonging to poetry can be found in fiction
and drama and elsewhere), and we may regard it as a form of speak-
ing and writing, i.e. as verse. “Fiction,” in this context, could be para-
phrased as literary prose narrative.
In the first place, we can think of poetry in fiction as motivated by a
principle of difference and even contrast. Even when difference is
stressed, however, the two modes of expression etc. may nevertheless
supplement each other and together form a whole. We may secondly
see that, whenever certain qualities are assigned to either prose or
poetry, the one may take precedence over the other. Poetry, for exam-
ple, may be the genre, mode, or form which represents an intensifica-
tion, enhancement, or concentration of the matter and style that has
been presented in the prose narrative. The relation is thus a teleologi-
cal or hierarchical one rather than being (merely) contrastive or com-
plementary. In a third perspective, poetry and prose are not really
different from each other, and the presence of both in one and the
same text may serve to make us realize this very fact.
176 MATTHIAS BAUER

Difference and Contrast

Generic, modal, and/or formal distinctions can be used within the

same text to stress difference. If we may switch over to drama for a
moment, the analogous case of prose and verse in Shakespeare’s plays
will help us see this most clearly. When we think of the two couples in
Much Ado About Nothing, for example, who are contrasted with each
other, Benedick and Beatrice are always speaking prose, whereas
Claudio, when it comes to his love and wooing of Hero, speaks verse.
Only at the end, when Benedick and Beatrice recognize each other and
their love (5.4.72-90), do they switch into poetry for a moment. This
has been anticipated in 3.1 when Beatrice, in her rhymed soliloquy,
has admitted her love for Benedick to herself. Prose is predominant in
this play; thus we find poetry in prose. Certain expectations going
together with verse (or “poetry”) as the language of love are recogniz-
able here, which Shakespeare uses for a sort of chiaroscuro effect; this
is not invalidated by our realization that Claudio’s love is not as con-
stant as it at first appeared.
Likewise, the use of poetry in a nondramatic prose context may be
based on a principle of difference and contrast. Michal Peled Gins-
burg, for example, proposes such a contrast for Goldsmith’s The Vicar
of Wakefield and Godwin’s Caleb Williams in this issue of Connotations.
Another case in point is Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which is composed of
“John Shades’s” poem and “Charles Kinbote’s” seemingly unrelated
prose annotations. Even though we may then go on to discover a close
relationship between the two, this is based on their apparent contrast.
The principle is also borne out by the fact that Nabokov’s work,
strictly speaking, is not really an example of “Poetry in Fiction” but of
a prose introduction and commentary added to poetry, which to-
gether establish a fictional text. It is fictional in the sense of being
invented, but it is not fiction in the sense of prose narrative. The poem,
which provides the title to the whole, is far too predominant in Pale
Fire to be regarded merely as being “in” fiction.
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 177

This takes me to a genre-related observation. In order to think of

poetry and narrative prose as contrasting elements of a literary work,
each of them must have sufficient weight to influence our perception
of the whole. From a historical perspective, this will bring up the
genre of prosimetrum which, according to the Princeton Encyclopedia, is
“a text composed in alternating segments of prose and verse” (Brogan
1115). We are reminded that satura, satire (the word meaning “med-
ley”), is among the earliest examples of the prosimetrum; in particular,
the works of Menippus (which are lost) consisted of such a mixture of
prose and verse, and we may say that the principle of contrast which
forms the basis of ridicule in satire (not just of the Menippean kind)
fits in well with this generic mixture. Perhaps the most influential
example of prosimetrum in Western literature, however, is of a quite
different kind, namely Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524). The
importance of the alternation between prose and poetry in the Latin
original of this work may have escaped those who read Alfred’s and
Chaucer’s English translations, which are entirely in prose, but it was
frequently commented upon throughout the Middle Ages and has
given rise to a number of poetological considerations (cf. Dronke 3, 38-
52).
Medieval commentators on this and other cases of prosimetrum (e.g.
Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii on the wedding of
learning and eloquence) stress the function of the combination (see
Pabst 1: 204-307). In the first place, it serves the rhetorical and aes-
thetic principle of variatio, which makes the work as a whole more
attractive to readers: this is a psychological purpose and effect, in that
the alternation helps to avoid fatigue. The brevity of verse3 and its
sound patterns enhances our ability to remember the text. Alongside
with this goes the interpretation of the prose-poetry combination as a
linking of rhetoric and music, which is seen by medieval commenta-
tors to be analogous to Horace’s combination of prodesse and delectare,
the usefulness being aligned with prose, and the delightful sweetness
with poetry. At first, this appears to be divorced from content; utility
and delight entirely depend on the mode or form of speech.4 In par-
178 MATTHIAS BAUER

ticular, the soul of the reader is addressed in different ways: in

Boethius’s work, for example, the consolation is understood to be
rational and argumentative in the prose parts and affective and even
narcotic in and through the poetry.5 Here we see, however, that prose
and verse not only correspond to the different kinds of effect upon the
reader but also to the matter presented. Thus Lady Philosophy, in
Book 4 of the Consolation, tells the prisoner, i.e. the first-person narra-
tor: “But now I see thè burdned with waight of question, & wearied
with length of reasoning, to expect the sweetness of som verse. Take
therfore a draught wherby refreshed thou mayst trye strong further to
go” (Boethius 96). The quotation is from Queen Elizabeth I’s transla-
tion of Boethius’s work, which not only maintains the alteration of
prose and verse but also imitates the variety of metrical forms that can
be found in the Latin original.
The passage just quoted is an example of immanent poetics, in so far
as the nature and effect of the text is the subject of the communication
within the text. Poetry and prose have their different effects, but they
also correspond to different kinds of content. The latter aspect, how-
ever, is less frequently emphasized than the former, as shows the
tradition of turning verse texts into prose and vice versa (the dérimages
of late twelfth- and thirteenth-century France, for example; cf. God-
zich and Kittay xv), which evinces a belief in the adaptability of the
same subject matter. At the same time, the evaluation of prose and
verse has always gone along with certain kinds of content and with
the importance assigned to them. As we have seen, reasoning is con-
sidered by Boethius to be better suited to prose, probably because the
metre restricts the rendering of complex subject matter (cf. Pabst 1:
303-04). As we read in Elizabeth’s Boethius (in the 6th Prose of Bk. IV),
“For if thou delyte in a musicall song, thou must differ [i.e. defer] a
little thy delyte, while I doo tune in order the Reasons knyt togither”
(91). Prose is seen as a tuning which is to lead up to a song, but it is
also described as an ordering of reasons which cannot be replaced by
the delight of the song.6
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 179

I would like to mention one further classic example of poetry with

prose, in which poetry and prose are both contrasted and complemen-
tary. This is Dante’s Vita Nuova, which is, among other things, a key
text in the development of autobiography. Peter Dronke, who dis-
cusses it in the context of other medieval texts based on the mixed
form for the account of a first-person protagonist, has suggested
(using a distinction made by Leo Spitzer) that we can distinguish
“between the empirical ‘I’ of a poet—that is, the specific personality
revealed in the writing—and the poetic ‘I,’ which can stand for ‘the
human soul as such,’ and which enables the author to speak represen-
tatively, on behalf of humanity” (83-84). Dronke stresses that, in
Dante’s work, “[t]he poems always remain very deliberately detached
from the surrounding prose,” with the prose primarily “supplying a
background of purported inner autobiography,” whereas the poetry
establishes “a certain objectivity and exemplary force” (111-12), in this
case the role of Beatrice as a heavenly being.

Transformation and Intensification

Historically speaking, the qualities assigned to verse and prose, and

the kinds of subject matter, attitudes, emotions etc. best presented by
them, are subject to change. So is their relationship. In fifth-century
Greece, for example, “unmetered logoi challenged and over time large-
ly supplanted traditional poetic forms as the privileged expression of
the culture” (Graff 304). Accordingly, there was no word for prose, as
it was defined in entirely negative terms as non-poetry. Thus, even
though prose may have taken precedence over poetry, or, as Simon
Godhill puts it, even though “prose becomes […] the expression of
power” (5) in the classical period of Greek writing, it is still a relation-
al term, and neither formally nor with regard to subject matter and
function can the one really do without the other. That is to say, the one
is more powerful in relation to the other, or the rational discourse
associated with the one is more important than the emotional dis-
180 MATTHIAS BAUER

course associated with the other, etc. Godzich and Kittay describe the
medieval French change of emphasis from verse to prose as the con-
sequence of a shift in authority as regards the claim of truth. They cite
Nicholas de Senlis’s statement that “No rhymed tale is true” (xv); i.e.
prose as the language of legal documents was (or became) a far more
trustworthy guarantee of truth than poetry or verse with its formal
restrictions.
But of course you also get the opposite view. In some ways, the
more objective presentation of Beatrice in the poems of the Vita Nuova
is an example of this. Referring to a completely different context,
Emerson, in his essay on “Heroism,” writes about “the heroic cast of
character and dialogue” in Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragicomedies,
“wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep
grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional
incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry” (245). This is reminis-
cent of the example from Much Ado About Nothing: especially when
poetry occurs together with prose, the relational meaning of each
mode or form of writing becomes obvious, but the relation can be seen
dynamically as an enhancement. In Emerson’s view, poetry is related
to prose in terms of elevation, a rising which has to do with depth of
character and sincerity of feeling (“earnest and cordial”). This notion
of poetry as something special and intensified (compare the popular
etymology of the German word Dichtung as Verdichtung)7 is based on
an implicit relation to prose and has made its way even into the OED,
“poetry” n. 2.a.: “Composition in verse or some comparable patterned
arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas
is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; the art of
such a composition. Traditionally associated with explicit formal
departure from the patterns of ordinary speech or prose, e.g. in the
use of elevated diction, figurative language, and syntactical reorder-
ing.” We notice the implied evaluation, and even though we have
seen that the very opposite ranking may be true, too (you turn to
prose for a more rational, truthful argument), I guess that in most of
the texts which consist of poetry and prose (or poetry in fiction) po-
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 181

etry is used in order to bring about such an intensification. Poetry,

though marked by formal restrictions, thus helps to overcome the
limitations of prose.8
How ingrained this evaluation is with regard to poetry and prose
can be seen by a conspicuous (not to say infamous) case of misappre-
hension, i.e. Henry James’s review of Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps of
1865, which he regarded as an utter failure. This is relevant to us not
so much for the appropriateness of James’s criticism but for the crite-
ria and standards he uses. Whitman’s book of poetry, according to
Henry James, “exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift
itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry” (1). James’s vitu-
peration is an example of how the generally evaluative meaning of a
word (“prosaic”) goes together with the criticism of style. Prose and
poetry become qualities of the mind, and it is of course the master of
prose, Henry James, who is sceptical of a poetry that looks like prose.
“He pursues these objects through a hundred pages of matter which
remind us irresistibly of the story of the college professor who, on a
venturesome youth’s bringing him a theme done in blank verse,
reminded him that it was not customary in writing prose to begin
each line with a capital. The frequent capitals are the only marks of
verse in Mr. Whitman’s writing” (2). To Henry James, the imperfec-
tion of poetry as a form of writing is not remedied by poetry as a
mode; to him this is neither poetry nor poetry in prose but prose
dressed up as poetry: “As we have said, it begins for all the world like
verse and turns out to be arrant prose. It is more like Mr. Tupper’s
proverbs than anything we have met. But what if, in form, it is prose?
it may be asked. Very good poetry has come out of prose before this.
To this we would reply that it must first have gone into it. Prose, in
order to be good poetry, must first be good prose” (3). James regards
Whitman’s form of free-verse writing as pretentious rather than as the
result of a painstaking process of poeticizing prose. What James ad-
dresses is the relationship of prose and verse as forms of writing and
as qualities (modes; states of mind, even) that need not correspond to
them. “Poetry in fiction” may thus mean that a mind elevated to
182 MATTHIAS BAUER

poetry finds expression in prose narrative. There is a hierarchy of

modes but not of ways of writing. Still, in James’s utterances there is
the latent insistence that we should be able to see this in the form, the
style.

Similarity and Identity

Henry James’s statement about Whitman leads up to the third point,

and will take us back once more to Molière. We have noted that M.
Jourdain’s garbled-up definition (“Everything that is prose is not
verse; and everything that is not verse is not prose”) implies that
prose and verse are not necessarily strict alternatives, they are not
mutually exclusive. If prose is to be to defined positively, i.e. not just
negatively as “unmarked” speech or “as having no deliberate metrical
structure” (OED “prose” n. 1.a.), it must have certain qualities that
make us see the similarity to verse rather than merely the difference.
With respect to developments in ancient Greece, Graff has pointed
out that “the basic distinction between poetic and appropriately pro-
saic language is extremely tenuous” (306). He shows this in particular
with regard to tragedy, which is not only poetry but also “approxi-
mates the style of ordinary spoken language” (331). This concerns
both rhythm and diction, the point of convergence being the fact that,
in Aristotle’s view, the iambic trimeter used in tragedy “has the
rhythm of speech [and] an indication of this is that we speak many
iambs in conversation with each other” (Poetics 4, 1449a23-26; quoted
from Graff 330). If another historical leap may be permitted, we may
notice an analogous prose-poetry continuum with the rise of the novel
in the early eighteenth century; as Gabrielle Starr reminds us, “novel-
ists consistently used patterns taken from the amatory lyric, lament,
epithalamium, elegy, and Pindaric ode as primary models for con-
structing shared emotional experience between characters and from
character to reader” (Starr 7-8). In this case, poetry in narrative prose
does not (or not primarily) refer to form or to the poetic mode in
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 183

general but to specific features of poetic sub-genres. Still, neither the

form of language (prose/verse) nor the genre (poetry/fiction) can be
established on the basis of a strict difference or separation. We are
reminded once more of Fielding’s “comic epic poem in prose” with its
ambiguous “in.”
If we wish to describe this continuum systematically, we should first
realize that poetry and prose may differ metrically, formally and
stylistically, but may both be “poetical”—or, for that matter, “pro-
saic.” The latter case is exemplified by Wordsworth, who, in his “Pref-
ace to Lyrical Ballads,” not only defines the poet as “a man speaking
to men” (71)9 but also, as a concomitant of his emphasis on the ordi-
nary human nature of the poet, maintains that “some of the most
interesting parts of the best Poems will be found to be strictly the
language of Prose, when Prose is well written” (67).10 The former case,
however, is the more frequent one. In this version, “poetry in fiction”
could mean that a text is completely written in prose but nevertheless
belongs to the mode of poetry or includes that mode. We can again
distinguish different kinds in this first variant, namely the prose
narrative comprising certain poetic modes (e.g. an elegiac mode), or
the prose narrative being poetry in the sense of evincing a general
quality; poetry could be seen as a general term (cf. German
“Dichtung”) which still designates certain common features.
Both kinds are covered by Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, in which we
read that “the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical
inventions in that numbrous kind of writing which is called verse—
indeed but appareled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to
Poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never
versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to
the name of poets” (87). An even more radical version of this view can
be found in Joseph Wharton’s Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope
which goes back to a test devised in Horace’s Satires I.iv: “Nothing can
be more judicious than the method he prescribes, of trying whether
any composition be essentially poetical or not; which is, to drop en-
tirely the measures and numbers, and transpose and invert the order
184 MATTHIAS BAUER

of the words: and in this unadorned manner to peruse the passage. If

there be really in it a true poetical spirit, all your inversion and trans-
positions will not disguise and extinguish it; but it will retain its lus-
tre, like a diamond, unset […]” (vii-viii).11 The “poetical spirit” here
seems to be something not related to genre or mode but a quality
located outside the text (probably the genius of the author). This kind
of “poetry” is hard to grasp. Sidney is more specific when he says that
“it is that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with
that delightful teaching, which must be the right describing note to
know a poet by” (87); it is fiction (“feigning”), the presentation of
archetypal qualities and the fusion of teaching and delight that ac-
count for poetry. “Poetry in fiction” is thus almost tautological.
But Sidney, though an idealist, does not leave out form and style
altogether. Poetry is not just “matter” but also “manner,” namely:
“not speaking […] words as they chanceably fall from the mouth, but
peizing [weighing] each syllable of each word by just proportion
according to the dignity of the subject” (87). The criteria of musicality
(“just proportion”) and appropriateness (the aptum or decorum) loom
large. In this perspective, “poetry in fiction” will mean that the work
is true because it is invented. Being independent of historical contin-
gency, it will give evidence to its ratio (101) through its harmonious
ordering of language. John Donne puts it similarly in a Sermon
preached at Lincoln’s Inn (1618) on Psalm 38:2: “God gives us […] our
instruction in cheerfull forms, not in a sowre, and sullen, and angry,
and unacceptable way, but cheerfully, in Psalms […]; Not in an Ora-
tion, not in Prose, but in Psalms; […]. Therefore is Gods will delivered
to us in Psalms, that we might have it the more cheerfully, and that we
might have it the more certainly, because where all the words are
numbred, and measured, and weighed, the whole work is lesse sub-
ject to falsification, either by subtraction or addition” (2: 49-50).
Where does this leave us, finally, with our subject? Our starting
point has been the ambiguity of our title, “Poetry in Fiction”: there is
something in prose, inserted poems or even just a reference to a poem,
or a noticeable change of irregular language into a harmonic and
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 185

rhythmical form that will distinguish these texts from others which do
not make us consider poetry at all. Whether we regard this presence
of poetry as contrastive, dialogic and complementary, or whether we
see a transformation and perhaps elevation into poetry, or whether
this arrangement makes us realize that there is actually no prose
without poetry (and vice versa)—in each case the coexistence of prose
and verse, of poetry and narrative fiction will have a metapoetic di-
mension, showing us literature aware of all its options to extend its
reach.

Eberhard Karls Universität

Tübingen

NOTES
1
The articles in this section are derived from papers presented at the 12th Inter-
national Connotations Symposium, “Poetry in Fiction: Poetic Insertions, Allusions,
and Rhythms in Narrative Texts,” which took place from 28 July to 1 August 2013
at Mülheim an der Ruhr. The editors of Connotations are grateful to Sven Wagner
for suggesting the topic and instigating our talks and discussion. I would like to
thank both him and Burkhard Niederhoff for organizing an inspiring and produc-
tive conference. Furthermore, I am grateful to the participants of the symposium,
and in particular my co-editors Burkhard Niederhoff and Angelika Zirker, for
helpful feedback and suggestions.
2
On this notion, see Fishelov in this issue of Connotations.
3
In this respect, there is a link to the topic of the previous Connotations sympo-
sium, “Poetic Economy.”
See <http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/topics.htm#poeticeconomy>.
4
Their combination creates a kind of effect which is not unlike the “epigraph
effect” described by Kronshage below (247, following Genette 160), which is
independent of what is the actual content, and indicates (e.g.) highbrow cultural
aspirations of the writer. Analogously, the mixture of poetry and prose may serve
to indicate a comprehensive claim of the text, comprising both (e.g.) instruction
and delight. Furthermore, the prosimetrum being a genre particularly popular
throughout the Middle Ages, its imitation may be part of a strategy to evoke
connotations of medievalism. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ring seems a likely
candidate. On the poetic insertions in Tolkien, see Kullmann in this issue.
186 MATTHIAS BAUER

5
See Dronke 41-45 for the function of poetry in the Consolatio. He cites (42)
Thomas F. Curley III for the view that “Verse in the Consolatio functions as a
‘pharmakon,’ that is, as a potent substance of mysterious, almost magical, proper-
ties, which can either cure or kill” (Curley 245-46).
6
An analogous example is Edgar Allan Poe’s reserving the function of beauty to
poetry and truth to prose. As Anastasaki shows, Poe, even though he does not
condone the mixing of the two in his theoretical writings, actually does so in his
own tales—as part of “a strategy in favour of poetry’s supremacy” (209). The
contrast thus serves the transformation of the one into the other (my second kind).
7
See the beginning of ch. 4 of Ezra Pound’s ABC of Reading: “‘Great literature is
simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.’ Dichten =
condensare” (36).
8
See Ginsburg and Nandrea, who discuss Hegel’s use of the expression “the
prose of the world” in his Aesthetics: “for Hegel, this phrase indicts all the external
factors that limit an individual’s freedom and independence, hindering ‘the
higher aims of spirit’” (244, citing Hegel 149). Prose, as the “new” form, is thus
also the mark of a loss. They point out that the positive (e.g. Bakhtinian) evaluati-
on of prose as “‘new’ in the sense of unpredictable, free, and infinitely open […]
has not become the dominant one” (247). Michel Foucault’s discussion of the
“Prose of the World,” by contrast, is not premised on the distinction of prose and
verse or poetry. Neither does he identify “poetry” with an older worldview or
state of society which is replaced by a new social and ideological order that could
be characterized by “prose.” To him, the expression rather denotes a world that is
characterized by similarity and analogy and in which things are signs. In his view,
this world dissolves at the end of the sixteenth century, as can be seen in Cervan-
tes’s Don Quixote: “[…] writing has ceased to be the prose of the world; […]
similitudes have become deceptive and verge upon the visionary or madness”
(47). Ginsburg (below 202), aligns Foucault with a change of episteme that can be
marked by a change from poetry to prose, even though, as Ginsburg and Nandrea
(255) point out, “prose” marks the earlier stage in Foucault.
9
The passages are quoted from the 1802 version but were already included in
the 1800 preface.
10
Marks is bewildered by this statement, especially in the light of Wordsworth’s
emphasis on metre: “When […] it is given the efficacy ascribed to it by Words-
worth, it is difficult to conceive how an otherwise stylistic conflation of prose and
verse can be tenable, or even what it could mean” (119). It seems not unlikely that
“language of prose,” as a modal feature, is meant to denote that very humanity of
discourse of which, according to Wordsworth, poetry must partake.
11
The passage is partly cited by Starr (9), without reference to its origin in
Horace.
 “Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options 187

WORKS CITED
Anastasaki, Elena. “Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe’s
‘Ligeia’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Connotations 23.2 (2013/2014):
207-29. See also <http://www.connotations.de/debanastasaki0232.htm>.
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Queen
Elizabeth’s Englishings of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, A.D. 1593,
Plutarch, De Curiositate, Horace, De Arte Poetica (part), A. D. 1598. Ed. Caroline
Pemberton. EETS (O.S.) 113. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899.
Brogan, T. V. F. “Prosimetrum.” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4th
ed. Ed. Roland Greene et al. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. 1115-16.
Curley III, Thomas F. “How to Read the Consolation of Philosophy.” Interpretation 14
(1986): 211-63.
Donne, John. The Sermons. Ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson. 10 vols.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1953-62.
Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the
Mixed Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1994.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Heroism.” The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Essays. First Series. 12 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903-04. 2: 243-64.
<http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/emerson/4957107.0002.001>.
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Ed. Judith Hawley. London: Pen-
guin, 1999.
Fishelov, David. “Poetry and Poeticity in Joyce’s ‘The Dead,’ Baudelaire’s Le
Spleen de Paris, and Yehuda Amichai.” Connotations 23.2 (2013/2014): 261-82. See
also <http://www.connotations.de/debfishelov0232.htm>.
Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and
Modes. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1982.
Ginsburg, Michal Peled. “Turning: From Verse to Prose.” Connotations 23.2
(2013/2014): 189-206.
See also <http://www.connotations.de/debginsburg0232.htm>.
Ginsburg, Michal Peled, and Lorri Nandrea. “The Prose of the World.” The Novel.
Ed. Franco Moretti. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2006. 2: 244-73.
Godzich, Wlad, and Jeffrey Kittay. The Emergence of Prose. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1987.
Goodhill, Simon. The Invention of Prose. Oxford: OUP, 2002.
Graff, Richard. “Prose versus Poetry in Early Greek Theories of Style.” Rhetorica
23.4 (2005): 303-35.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. T. M.
Knox. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1975.
James, Henry. “Mr. Walt Whitman.” The Nation 1 (16 November 1865): 625-26.
Repr. Henry James: Selected Literary Criticism. Ed. Morris Shapira. London:
Heinemann, 1963. 1-5.
188 MATTHIAS BAUER

Kronshage, Eike. “The Function of Poetic Epigraphs in George Eliot’s Daniel

Deronda.” Connotations 23.2 (2013/2014): 230-60.See also
<http://www.connotations.de/debkronshage0232.htm>.
Kullmann, Thomas. “Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Connota-
tions 23.2 (2013/2014): 283-309.
See also <http://www.connotations.de/debkullmann0232.htm>.
Marks, Emerson R. Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renais-
sance. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998.
Pabst, Bernhard. Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen
Spätantike und Spätmittelalter. 2 vols. Cologne: Böhlau, 1994.
Plato. The Republic. With an English trans. by Paul Shorey. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1930-35.
Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. 1934. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.
Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Claire McEachern. The Arden
Shakespeare. London: Thomson Learning, 2006.
Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry. Ed. Geoffrey Shepherd. Rev ed. R. W.
Maslen. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002.
Starr, G. Gabrielle. Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth
Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004.
Wharton, Joseph. An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. London, 1756.
<http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/004831970.0001.000>.
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. 2nd ed. Ed.
Michael Mason and John Mullan. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Turning: From Verse to Prose*

MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

In their study of the history of prose in France, Jeffrey Kittay and

Wlad Godzich trace the manner in which prose and poetry get con-
structed as opposites of each other in the fourteenth century.1 They
argue that “the emergence of prose” was related to a change in the
structures of authority: whereas the authority of verse was invested in
the person of the performer, prose, in the Middle Ages, established its
authority mainly by making a claim to referential truth (153). This is
also the manner in which the novel, in England, established its author-
ity during the eighteenth century (as Ian Watt has long ago argued in
his analysis of the “rise of the novel”). In both cases, the emergence of
a “new” form—prose, the novel—is related to class-based struggles
for epistemological authority, social power, and political legitimacy.
In this essay I will discuss two literary texts dating from the second
half of the eighteenth century, in which the contest between prose and
verse is in some way dramatized or thematized, in order to examine
more closely what was at stake in the opposition between these two
terms at that point in literary history. My discussion of Oliver Gold-
smith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) will focus on the formal aspect of
the opposition between prose and verse: prose, prorsus in Latin, means
straightforward, straight, direct, as opposed to verse which “turns”
(versus).2 The straightforwardness of prose connotes an ongoing
movement forward, an unlimited extendability.3 In the English lan-
guage, however, the straightforwardness of prose has connoted also
honesty, candor, telling things as they are: “the frank prose of undis-

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debginsburg0232.htm>.
190 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

sembling noon” (J. R. Lowell, OED, “prose” n. and adj. A.1.b.). When
opposed to verse, which is sometimes linked to deception (“fraud and
imposition,” OED), prose appears as the language of truth. My read-
ing of William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), then, will center on this
association of prose with truth as full disclosure. Though both texts
valorize prose, they also allow us to see why at a certain point prose
had to be altered—why its ongoing forward movement as well as its
commitment to truth as full disclosure needed to be limited. In my
conclusion I will suggest that this limitation is one of the ways in
which, to use Virginia Woolf’s words in her essay on Robinson Crusoe,
prose “accommodated itself to the demand” of a rising middle class
and “had fitted itself” (The Second Common Reader 50) to express its
values and ideology.

The Vicar of Wakefield

The Vicar of Wakefield provides us with a unique window onto the

wide field of possibilities for narrative available to authors before the
novel has become a distinct (and later on, hegemonic) genre with a
more or less normative plot structure. The “tale,” as Goldsmith called
his text, exemplifies the peaceful coexistence in one cultural space of a
large number of literary forms and genres—ballad, (mock) elegy,
song, romance, sermon, political discourse and a fable being some of
them. That Goldsmith’s tale is hospitable to many forms of discourse
and different types of narrative does not in the least imply that the
differences among these forms or types are erased or should be
considered negligible. Rather, the tale can be seen as an example of a
“dialogic” text where different modes of discourse co-exist without
being hierarchized so that with all their differences they are treated as
equally valid options.
The first genre we encounter is the ballad. Burchell introduces the
ballad as a counter-example to contemporary English poetry (Sophia’s
praise of Mr. Gay) as well as classical poetry (Moses’s praise of Ovid),
both of which he criticizes. The ballad’s language, he says, is simple
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 191

rather than “luxuriant,” emphasizes “plot or connexion” over descrip-

tion (or images), and in it sound is less important than “carrying on
the sense” (331).4 Since simplicity, lack of images, and emphasis on
sense rather than sound are features commonly associated with prose
(whether prose is considered “plain,” or “ordinary” or “direct”),
Burchell’s comments raise the question of where the specificity of the
ballad as verse might reside. I will argue that it resides in the depend-
ence of the ballad’s narrative on verse/versus as “turn.”
The ballad tells the story of two lovers: Angelina—rich, proud, and
coquettish—and Edwin, poor and virtuous. Dejected by her pretended
scorn, Edwin disappears. Full of regrets and sure he is dead, Angelina,
disguised as a man, wanders in search of the dead and of death. She
happens upon the dwelling of a hermit who is none other than Edwin,
alive and in love.
The importance of “turns” for the ballad (the word is repeated six
times) is signaled from the very first line: “Turn, gentle hermit of the
dale, / And guide my lonely way” (331). Since the poem starts
abruptly, it is not clear from what the hermit needs to “turn,” and thus
the request to turn appears as an absolute: the poem cannot start, the
encounter between the hermit and the wanderer cannot take place,
without an act of “turning.” Since the ballad starts at a point near the
plot’s climax and dénouement—the meeting between the wan-
derer/Angelina and the hermit/Edwin—much of its story is told
through the wanderer’s retrospective narrative. This turn back to the
past as the cause of the present is also what brings about recognition,
reversal, and closure. The ending, like the beginning, depends on a
turn.
Further turns are predicated on symmetrical oppositions and rever-
sals. The wanderer asks the hermit to “turn” and guide him “To
where yon taper cheers the vale/ With hospitable ray” (stanza 1),
opposing this hospitable “yon” to a “here” which is threatening since
it seems to actively prevent the wanderer from reaching his goal: “For
here forlorn and lost I tread, / With fainting steps and slow; / Where
wilds immeasurably spread, / Seem lengthening as I go” (stanza 2).
192 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

But the hermit recasts this “there” as a false goal, since it leads to
death: “yonder […] phantom flies / To lure thee to thy doom” (stanza
3). He opposes to it a “here,” the site of true hospitality (“Here to the
houseless child of want, / My door is open still,” stanza 4), inviting
the wanderer to “turn” away from the false goal and find safety in his
cell: “Then turn to-night, and freely share / Whate’er my cell be-
stows” (stanza 5). Thus turn and counter-turn create an opposition
between “here” and “there” which is also an opposition between true
and false goal, true and false hospitality.
But the false goal from which the hermit asks the wanderer to turn
away is not entirely false: as we find out, the wanderer was seeking
both death and a lover presumed to be dead (and which the hermit’s
“yonder phantom” uncannily designates). In turning away from this
original goal the wanderer finds something she thought was irrevoca-
bly lost: her lover alive and loving. In the following stanzas the hermit
exhorts the wanderer to “turn, thy cares forego” (stanza 8) thus invit-
ing the wanderer to renounce all earthly attachments, to die to the
world, as he presumably has done (since he asserts “All earth born
cares are wrong [...] / And what is friendship but a name [...] / And
love is still an emptier sound [...]”; stanzas 8, 19, 20). But as in the case
of the wanderer, the hermit’s renunciation of life is the result of a false
assumption, here that his beloved was indifferent to his love. In turn-
ing away from their original (and symmetrical) goals of seeking death
and renouncing life, the wanderer and the hermit find what they truly
desired.
The hermit’s exhortation and his discourse against love and earthly
attachments bring about the first “turn” in the plot of the ballad, when
the wanderer “stands confest /A maid in all her charms” (stanza 23).
As she “turn’d to chide” the hermit for clasping her in his arms
(stanza 36), the second “turn” in the plot occurs and the hermit reveals
himself to be Edwin. Edwin then invites Angelina once more to turn:
“Turn Angelina […] / […] turn to see/Thy own, thy long-lost Edwin
here, / Restor’d to love and thee” (stanza 37). Now Angelina can
again be asked to “every care resign” (stanza 38) but not, as before,
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 193

because earthly cares are “wrong” but rather because “‘Never from
this hour to part/ We’ll live and love so true’” (stanza 39). The opposi-
tion between his constancy and her “fickle art” is proved to be false:
Angelina’s “wandering” and “straying” (both physical and moral)
have led to a “true end” which is at the same time a restoration (the
lovers are “restor’d to love,” life, and to each other).
The symmetrical reversal of oppositions, the mirroring of true and
false goals, the repeated irony that shows us the two lovers moving
towards their true goal without fully recognizing it,5 all suggest the
presence of some hidden force (fate, providence) that leads the plot
inexorably towards a goal already present from the beginning. It is
this “turn”—the recursive form of plot—that differentiates the ballad
from a prose tale whose “straightforwardness” should therefore be
understood as forward oriented extension not circumscribed by a final
cause. Such straightforwardness, I will argue, characterizes the Vicar’s
own tale, as well as some of the tales told by other characters, such as
the story of the reunion of the Vicar’s son, George, with his lost love,
Arabella, which the ballad is sometimes said—wrongly in my
opinion—to resemble and foreshadow.6
After the Vicar has lost his fortune, the engagement between his
oldest son, George, and Arabella Wilmot is broken, and George leaves
home. Though he initially sets himself a goal—seeking his fortune in
London—once he fails to make it in the market of talent, his move-
ments and actions are determined by chance encounters: a man he
meets as he “was meditating one day in a coffee-house” (388); a young
gentleman of distinction he encounters “on a bench in St. James’s
Park” (390); a captain of a ship he meets just after having decided to
sell himself for a slave (393); an Irish student into whose company he
falls (394); an old acquaintance who belongs to a company of comedi-
ans (397). Each new acquaintance steers him in a new direction, and so
he keeps going. Soon, rather than seeking to make his fortune, he is
trying simply to survive. The lack of a specific goal makes his travels
open-ended, and this is what defines his movement—wherever it
leads him—as a movement forward: “In this manner I proceeded to
194 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

Paris, with no design but just to look about me, and then to go for-
ward” (395). He works his way back to England and intends to return
to his father’s house, but does not: another chance encounter changes
his course. A few more chances down the road he runs into his father
and Arabella.
This double encounter is not the result of the kind of “turns” we
have seen in the ballad. Rather, it is the result of the intersection of
different straight lines, chains of events that are independent of each
other (George’s peregrinations; the Vicar’s travel back home from his
futile search for his daughter, Olivia; Arabella’s visit to her aunt and
uncle). Though the two lovers meet again after a long separation, this
meeting does not, in itself, lead to their happy reunion; before that can
happen, a whole series of further chance events (detailed in eleven
chapters) has to take place. The union of George and Arabella there-
fore does not have either the necessity or the finality of the reunion,
caused by turns, of the lovers in the ballad, and George’s story, de-
pendent on chance, remains in principle open-ended, always going
forward.
The story of George’s adventures is not the only example of the
“straightforwardness” of prose narrative. Critics have noted the un-
compromisingly linear nature of the Vicar’s own tale of woes, pro-
ceeding as it does with no digressions, flashbacks, or foreshadowing.7
The absence of strong causal relations (there is not one single overrid-
ing cause, fate or a flaw that can account for all the disasters which
befall the Vicar and his family nor are the various events linked to
each other in a chain of cause and effect) means that the movement of
the plot is chronological rather than logical. This further highlights the
tale’s structure as a forward-oriented extension not circumscribed by a
final cause. But whereas the emphasis on chance in George’s story
means that there is no compelling reason why its episodes (including,
of course, that of his reunion with Arabella) should be in the order
they are told (we can change much in the order of the episodes with-
out loss of meaning), this is not the case in the tale of the Vicar where
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 195

the main events create an ordered series. This can be seen most clearly
by looking at the changes to the home.8
At the beginning of the story the Vicar and his family live in “an
elegant house, situated in a fine country, and a good neighborhood”
(306). When the Vicar is forced to leave Wakefield after losing his
fortune he moves to “a little neighborhood” among farmers to whom
he feels socially and intellectually superior, in a house which
“consisted of but one story and was covered with thatch” (318). When
this “snug abode” is destroyed by fire, the family is reduced to live in
one of the outhouses, made “as convenient as possible” by the
contributions of his farmer neighbors (408). From there the Vicar,
through the machinations of the Squire Thornhill, goes to prison
where all he has in his cell is a bed made of a bundle of straw and
some clothes he receives from a fellow prisoner. At this point, with the
structure of downward progression firmly established and the Vicar
and his family reduced to a bare minimum, the series of disasters can
only either continue to the point of complete annihilation or be
reversed.
And yet there is also a sense in which the reversal of the Vicar’s plot
does not contradict or compromise its straightforwardness. As we
have seen, the ordering of the events that constitute the Vicar’s plot is
not only chronological but also one of intensification: losses (of home
and family), and the affective reaction to them, become more and
more intense. Though the Vicar’s forbearance of his losses is firmly
grounded in his Christian faith, his salient character trait is not ascetic
resignation but an unlimited capacity for affective experience. Indeed,
the Vicar shows an exultation in his suffering that foregrounds affect
in and of itself (rather than a particular manifestation of it—pain or
joy).9 Suffering and enjoyment are here not the negation of each other
but are both experiences of powerful affect; passing from one to the
other carries an increase in intensity by virtue of “contrast,” that is,
difference.
This point is made in the sermon the Vicar preaches when he
reaches the nadir of his misfortune. The focus of the sermon is the
196 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

difference between the rich and the poor, and this difference is one of
intensity: in heaven the poor and the wretched have “all that
superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment”
(438).10 In this sense, the Vicar’s joy at the reversal of his fortune at the
end of the tale does not contradict the thesis of the sermon, as some
critics claim.11 Enjoyment is possible even after many losses and when
everything is lost, then the loss itself guarantees a greater enjoyment
when reversed. The reversal is subsumed in the movement forward
since it increases the intensity of affect and it is this increase in
intensity that gives the plot of the Vicar’s misfortunes its
uncompromisingly linear character.
In The Vicar of Wakefield, then, prose narrative is “straightforward”
in the sense of going on, without a predetermined goal and the
closure produced by a “turn.”12 This “on-goingness” is related to the
story being that of survival as well as of affect, that is, describing a
process in time that is not a progress: it is neither governed by a goal
nor serves as the means to an end that exceeds and negates it.

Caleb Williams

Godwin’s Caleb Williams is different in tone, style, and plot from Gold-
smith’s tale but its main thematic concern—the relation between
tyranny and freedom, between power and justice—is pertinent to
Goldsmith’s tale too. Both texts show power as primarily that of a
privileged class that has the ability to bend the law and its institutions
in its own favor. In the first part of Caleb Williams, tyrannical power is
primarily expressed as physical force, and it is embodied in the squire,
Tyrell; when it comes to a contest of words, however, Tyrell, who can
barely read or write, is no match for his antagonists. But in the rest of
the novel, where the conflict is between Caleb and Falkland, the focus
shifts from physical to discursive power. In this part, the novel
articulates a struggle between two discursive practices—prose and
verse—and the competing, indeed conflicting values and ideals they
represent. The world of prose is the democratic world, the world of
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 197

social mobility due to merit; it is opposed to the old “poetic” world of

privilege and social hierarchy. The novel can thus be read as an
allegory dramatizing the change in authority that enabled prose to
gain ground over poetry as a means of expression.13
The aristocratic Falkland, who has “imbibed the love of chivalry and
romance” from “the heroic poets of Italy” (10) and is the author of “an
Ode to the Genius of Chivalry” (25) is consistently associated with
verse, which he reads, writes, analyzes and imitates. Caleb is not
Falkland’s equal since his parents were peasants but he has a keen
intelligence and is well-educated. His fundamentally democratic
values (equal rights, justice, freedom) contradict Falkland’s aristo-
cratic code of honor and investment in appearances (reputation rather
than truth or justice). Caleb is consistently associated with prose,
specifically prose of the “plain style” (characterized by the avoidance
of figuration). In contrast to Falkland’s elaborate figures, Caleb’s
speech is “artless and untaught […] having an air of innocence, frank-
ness and courage” (108); he gives “honest explanations” that are
“clear, collected, and simple” (297).
Caleb’s conflict with Falkland was caused initially by the former’s
curiosity, his desire to uncover the mystery in Falkland’s past (the
murder of Tyrell of which he rightly thinks Falkland is guilty). But the
discovery of the secret turns out to be not the end of his story but
rather its beginning. From a mystery plot that culminates with the
revelation of a past, hidden truth (a recursive plot), his tale becomes a
narrative of persecution and pursuit, a tale of the continuously
renewed task of eluding the pursuer. The endlessness of this tale is
especially pronounced because Falkland decides not to kill Caleb but
simply to continue the chase, rousting him from every roost. Thus,
even the physical action of the novel participates in the opposition
between prose and verse (Falkland, for example, repeatedly forces
Caleb to turn back where he would go forward). But this action is
punctuated by a series of overtly rhetorical contests, in which Caleb’s
story is pitted against Falkland’s word.
198 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

Falkland’s word, of course, is guaranteed by the enormous social

and political power of its author. Caleb has to make his story hold in
the absence of such a guarantee, independently of the social position
or reputation of the teller; it has to convince readers or listeners
through its own internal qualities. “Virtue rising superior to every
calumny, defeating by a plain, unvarnished tale all the stratagems of
vice, and throwing back upon her adversary the confusion with which
he had hope to overwhelm her, was one of the favorite subjects of my
youthful reveries” (160), Caleb writes.
What is on trial in the court scene that brings the novel to its end is,
first, whether the “truth” of prose can compete with the “word” of
verse (and the sheer social power to which it is attached); second,
whether prose can succeed in establishing its own authority. In
Godwin’s original manuscript ending, prose loses both contests.14 In
the published ending, prose achieves an ambivalent victory: Caleb
defeats the “godlike” Falkland, but the victory takes place only be-
cause verse gives its word to prose: “I stand now completely detected.
My name will be consecrated to infamy, while your heroism, your
patience and your virtues will be for ever admired” (324), Falkland
declares. Moreover, Falkland’s concession is brought about by Caleb’s
adoption of Falkland’s view of reputation as the highest good: Caleb’s
feeling of guilt for bringing Falkland to trial derives from his sense
that he himself is a murderer since he is destroying Falkland’s reputa-
tion. The result of the contest is, therefore, highly ambiguous: prose
has overcome verse, declaring victory over the other principle, but its
victory is overshadowed by guilt; what it has overcome is preserved
as a lost, sacrificed, mourned ideal.
Towards the ending of the novel, however, Godwin provides a
glimpse of another kind of conflict, between the values of prose and
those espoused by the domestic realm. For the most part, Caleb’s story
is that of persecution and survival, taking place on the road and in
spaces typical of the Gothic (prisons, ruined castles). Each episode
seems to bring the story to a climax of horror, and hence to its end, but
the next episode presents Caleb and the reader with yet a more crush-
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 199

ing defeat, thus suggesting that the tale of persecution can go on

forever. But at a certain point Caleb believes that he has found a rest-
ing place in “an obscure market-town in Wales [...] clean, cheerful and
of great simplicity of appearance” (289-92). While living in the village,
Caleb for the first time generates an income that brings him above the
level of mere subsistence; he has leisure to spend in intellectual, non-
remunerative pursuits (he begins an “etymological analysis of the
English language”; 295); he forms well-mannered friendships with the
local gentry and contemplates the possibility of marriage. This brief
village interlude has all the marks of a scene of closure in a novel by,
for example, Dickens. But if this had been the closing scene, we would
not have the novel, since at this point Caleb feels no inclination to
write it. Lasting domestic happiness would not be the ending of the
novel; it would altogether prevent the novel’s creation.
In a scenario which might have been the beginning of story for a
writer like Jane Austen, Caleb’s stay in the village is disrupted when
the false, fictional tale of his life, a pamphlet called “The Wonderful
and Surprising History of Caleb Williams,” is smuggled into the
village by his tracker. Whether or not the story is true—indeed,
especially because the truth of the story is open to question—this
public representation of Caleb’s life, and his new ability to incite
inquiry, make him a threat to the stasis of the village world.15 He is
immediately avoided as a contaminant: “It seemed as if I had some
contagious disease, from which every man shrunk with alarm, and
left me to perish unassisted and alone” (295).
At this moment of crisis, Caleb appeals to Laura, a friend and bene-
factress whom he has come to regard as a mother, confident that she
“will not cast [him] off unheard, nor without strictly examining a
question on all sides” (298). Yet to his surprise, Laura stops him from
telling his story, because it threatens to put her absolute values in flux
and to introduce shades of difference into clear oppositions. “‘Good
God!’” he exclaims, “‘Can you think of condemning a man, when you
have heard only one side of his story?’ ‘Indeed I can,’ replied she, with
dignity: ‘True virtue refuses the drudgery of explanation and apology.
200 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

True virtue shines by its own light, and needs no art to set it off. You
have the first principles of morality yet to learn’” (299).
Laura, who is the novel’s chief personification and proponent of
domestic values, defines “true virtue” as something that is immediate
and self-evident (“shines by its own light”), that consists of actions
rather than words; words become then equated with eloquence, un-
derstood as sophistry.16 Indeed, for Laura, Caleb’s virtue, or lack
thereof, does not depend on the truth or falsity of the tale. According
to her, what is legitimate or truly virtuous will never give rise to
ambiguity, never need to defend itself—it will never produce a tale.
Preserving one’s virtue entails remaining outside the province not
only of “art” and “eloquence” but of “plain and unadorned” tales as
well as of “explanation and apology”: keeping the domestic realm as
the site of virtue and morality means keeping it outside the whole
realm of narrative and discourse.
Though Caleb is inclined to dismiss Laura’s attitude as unreasona-
ble, perhaps it is only from her conservative point of view that the
radically destabilizing potential of prose can be glimpsed. Caleb’s
notion is that, as a tool of democratic equality, prose would be free of
power differentials; bringing all to light will result in clarity, im-
proved understanding, and accurate interpretation. When the whole
story is told the truth will emerge, which will result in just and fair
treatment of all parties by right-minded persons. But Laura’s attitude
is that “examining a question on all sides” will, on the contrary, create
ambiguity; fuller knowledge will destroy moral certainty. Her deter-
mination to stop listening suggests that bringing all to light would
result not in an ultimate transparency or total legibility, but rather in
an overabundance of illumination that renders distinction impossible
and thus abolishes clarity. For her, the threat resides in the endless-
ness or inconclusiveness implied by “telling all.” The episode ends
with Caleb’s being denied a hearing and forced to leave the village;
Godwin thus leaves intact an implication that prose as full disclosure
would undermine a domestic realm defined as the site of stable moral
values.
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 201

Expelled from the village Caleb resumes his flight and begins writ-
ing his story in the belief that “my story faithfully digested would
carry in it an impression of truth […] posterity might be induced to do
me justice” (303-04). But because his story of persecution is not over
yet when he begins writing, the story does not end when it catches up
with Caleb’s present. Instead of casting the moment of writing as the
stable point towards which the story recursively leads, the end Caleb
arrives at is so unexpected that it moots his original motives for writ-
ing: “I began these memoirs with the idea of vindicating my character.
I have now no character that I wish to vindicate” (326). Including the
temporality of writing within the narrative thus highlights its incon-
clusiveness. Though Caleb steadfastly persists in his attempt to tell the
whole story, so that “the world may at least not hear and repeat a
half-told and mangled tale“ (326), he is forced to relinquish his notion
that telling all will yield anything like simplicity, stability, justice, or
moral clarity. Implying that things would have been better if Falk-
land’s story had never been told, Caleb ends up giving support to
Laura’s belief that moral certainty is best preserved by excluding the
kind of honesty and full disclosure, associated with prose.
In this light, Caleb Williams can be said to bring out one of the prob-
lems involved in prose’s attempt to legitimize itself as the discourse of
truth. Being completely truthful, withholding nothing, actually im-
plies going on, continuing forward indefinitely (as prose does). But
such a continuing forward entails a risky epistemological instability,
since everything must always be re-interpreted in the light of what
comes next (rather than of what came before and to which one can
“turn” for closure). As long as it adheres to the principle of full and
faithful telling of the truth about the world, prose cannot achieve full
legitimacy since it undermines its own foundation. And while its
cumulative structure may be suited to the road and for tales of sur-
vival it is not “fitted to express” the domestic ideals towards which
the novel was leaning.

***
202 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

In spite of their many differences, Caleb Williams and The Vicar of

Wakefield have one feature in common: the association of prose with
ongoing movement, continuing forward indefinitely. Both suggest
also the affinity of prose thus understood with narratives of survival,
that is narratives that foreground the continuous, in principle endless,
creation anew (production and reproduction) of life, self, affect,
sociality. Such narratives are characterized by a forward movement
that is not a progress, an expenditure that does not result in gain;
rather than sustaining suspense they “climax” repeatedly; limited
only by the energy or lifespan of the characters or the writer, their
endings often appear arbitrary.17
One can speculate (and this if of course only a speculation) that
around the turn of the eighteenth century—Austen would be the
important transitional figure here—the middle class has achieved
enough economic, political, and cultural power so that the question of
survival—which the straightforward, additive, repetitive, and endless
narratives one finds in novels of sensibility as well as in picaresque
and gothic tales not only represented but embodied—was no longer
the issue. Survival then becomes merely the pre-condition for “high-
er” pursuits—a transparent means to other ends—the acquisition of
knowledge as well as identity, spouses, fortunes, and homes. To be fit
to represent this new outlook, prose itself needed to change: it needed
to limit itself and did it by subordinating forward movement to a final
cause.
Does this mean that we are back in the world of verse? Not quite.
Following Michel Foucault’s argument in The Order of Things, one can
say that poetry and prose depend on two conflicting epistemologies or
competing interpretive principles.18 The old, “poetic” world of privi-
lege and social hierarchy was sustained and made to appear natural
by a belief in a universal order of correspondences where events find
their meaning as elements in a larger design or as a manifestation of
an overarching idea. By contrast, the new world of social mobility and
rights of individuals is subtended by the modern view of a universe
governed by cause and effect where events find their meaning as links
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 203

in a causal chain, whose effects are unpredictable. Within this new

epistemology the “turn”—the recursive plot that imposes closure—
appears as undermining the principle on which the narrative is predi-
cated rather than supporting it. It represents a “discontent” within
narrative, “a discomfort with the processes and implications of narra-
tive itself” (Miller, Narrative and Its Discontents x).

Northwestern University
Evanston, IL

NOTES
1
Part of the argument I will be making in this essay derives from an earlier es-
say, co-authored with Lorri Nandrea, entitled “The Prose of the World.”
2
I do not intend to imply that prose and verse can be opposed to each other in
an absolute way: just as prose contains pauses and breaks in which the reader
rests and reflects back so verse has various forms of “linking forward” (e.g.
enjambement). Nor, of course, can one argue that prose lacks turns in the sense of
tropes or figures of speech; since no language can dispense with figuration the
impression of “plainness” is merely the effect of a particular use of figuration. The
difference between them is a matter of degree and especially of value judgment.
For further discussion of this question see Ginsburg and Nandrea.
3
The “unlimited” nature of prose has been part of its definition since Aristotle’s
Rhetoric (3.8) where it is associated with the lack of meter. In Rhetoric 3.9 Aristotle
condemns an “ancient” prose style he calls “strung-on” (or “free-running”) which
he characterizes as having no end in itself. He argues that this style is unsatisfying
because it goes on indefinitely (is “unlimited”) and contrasts it with the “turned-
down” (or “compact”) style, which is in periods. He argues that the latter is
satisfying because it is the reverse of the unlimited, indefinite style. This opposi-
tion underlies eighteenth-century debates among grammarians about the differ-
ence between the cumulative and periodic sentence structure. For a discussion of
this debate and its relation to the novel see Nandrea, Misfit Forms.
4
The simplicity of the ballad, as opposed to the luxuriance of the poetry
Burchell rejects, echoes Goldsmith’s own characterization of his tale in the “Ad-
vertisement,” where he doubts whether the “simplicity of [the Vicar’s] country
fire-side” will please “in this age of opulence and refinement” (305).
5
Thus the wanderer’s lines in stanza 2, ”For here forlorn and lost I tread / with
fainting steps and slow,” anticipate already the union of the two lovers by echo-
ing the penultimate line of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve walk hand and in
hand out of Eden “with wandering steps and slow” (Milton 678, Book XII, line
204 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

643). Whether or not this echo opens up another layer of irony, as Robert Hunting
suggested (it would have been better for them had they not found each other)
depends on how we evaluate human love outside the paradise of ignorance.
6
See, for example, Brown 169. It would be similarly misleading to read the bal-
lad as foreshadowing the happy coming together of Burchell and Sophia. Though
Burchell, like Edwin, is disguised, when he reveals himself it is not a long-lost
lover who reappears but a new and quite formidable person: the rich Sir William
Thornhill. Sophia, for her part, was never fickle or scornful (as Angelina was) but
has shown herself to be exactly what Sir William was looking for: a woman who
can love him for himself rather than for his riches. But instead of reclaiming her as
his own (and alleviating the worry his metamorphoses has caused her) Sir Wil-
liam indulges in a gratuitous act of cruelty by offering her to Jenkinson, an act
that could have resulted in his losing her. The very gratuity of this gesture shows
us how far this story is from the one told in the ballad, where closure, brought
about by symmetrical oppositions and reversals, allows no residue, no excess or
lack.
7
The narrator deviates from the straight line of the story only when members of
the family who were away from home tell the Vicar what happened to them while
away, or when strangers tell him their life story. None of these stories reveal
important new facts or shift the course of the plot. The tale contains no flashbacks,
and the narrator does not provide foreshadowing of future events or of the
ending. Brown has characterized the Vicar as a “consecutive narration without
retrospect” (167). But Brown argues that “in the second half of the novel we are no
longer dealing with a linear array of plot elements” (148)—a claim with which I
disagree.
8
From this perspective the opposite of chance is not the illusory desire to im-
pose order, to plan according to one’s wishes, as Preston, for example, argues. The
ordered series here is not the product of a plan and its result is not control (or its
failure) but intensity of affect.
9
This exultation in suffering is reinforced by its dramatic, indeed, theatrical
quality. As Brown has pointed out, the Vicar is “essentially never alone” (155),
and his most private feelings are always displayed in public.
10
Most critics argue that the focus of the sermon is on providence as a mysteri-
ous but ultimately just design. See, for example, Rogers 8.
11
See, for example, Hopkins 217.
12
Discussions of closure often associated the open text with both a subversive
resistance to containment and the failure or inability to fix meaning. They just as
often produced counter-arguments showing how closure fails to occur in “closed”
texts. These discussions fail to account for narratives in which process or move-
ment in time is not goal oriented (where “reading for the plot” cannot be equated
with “reading for the ending”), where the goal is immanent to the process (so that
the notion of “deferral” or even of a “middle” ceases to be meaningful), and
where the notion of closure is irrelevant rather than subverted or unattainable. It
is to such narratives that I give the name of “narratives of survival.”
 Turning: From Verse to Prose 205
13
For a fuller discussion of this issue see Ginsburg and Nandrea. Scheiber inter-
prets the power struggle in the novel in terms of the challenge posed by enlight-
enment values of reason and empiricism to old “laws of decorum” (261). Without
making distinctions between verse and prose, Jacqueline Miller uses Godwin’s
own writings on language to analyze the competition for authorship in the novel.
14
For a discussion of the original manuscript ending see Ginsburg and Nandrea.
15
Sullivan reads this pamphlet scene in the context of “post-revolutionary print
culture,” arguing that Godwin ultimately presents this culture “not as an expand-
ing set of practices to which writers of all classes have equal or near-equal access,
but as another vehicle for upper-class power” (336).
16
One can read Laura as a representation of the romance idealism of unmixed
character. But since she is the sole representative of the domestic realm in the text
it seems more pertinent to link her to the idealization of the domestic sphere, as it
will be articulated later on by Ruskin (“Of Queen’s Gardens”) and others. These
two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.
17
On narratives of survival see Ginsburg, “Narratives of Survival” and “Senti-
mentality and Survival.”
18
See primarily his discussion of the “Prose of the World,” a propos of Don Qui-
xote (46-50).

WORKS CITED
Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: OUP, 2007.
Brown, Marshall. Preromanticism. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1991.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Vintage, 1994.
Ginsburg, Michal Peled. “Narratives of Survival.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42
(2009): 410-16.
——. “Sentimentality and Survival: The Double Narrative of The Old Curiosity
Shop.” Dickens Quarterly 27 (2010): 85-101.
Ginsburg, Michal Peled, and Lorri Nandrea. “The Prose of the World.” The Novel.
Ed. Franco Moretti. Vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2006. 244-73.
Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. Ed. David McCracken. New York: Norton, 1977.
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield and Other Writings. Ed. Frederick W.
Hilles. New York: Modern Library, 1955.
Hopkins, Robert H. The True Genius of Oliver Goldsmith. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins UP, 1969.
Hunting, Robert. “The Poems in The Vicar of Wakefield.” Criticism 15.3 (1973): 234-
41.
Kittay, Jeffrey, and Wlad Godzich. The Emergence of Prose: An Essay in Prosaics.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
206 MICHAL PELED GINSBURG

Miller, D. A. Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional

Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981.
Miller, Jacqueline T. “The Imperfect Tale: Articulation, Rhetoric, and Self in Caleb
Williams.” Criticism 20 (1978): 366-82.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. 2nd ed. London: Pearson Educa-
tion, 2007.
Nandrea, Lorri. Misfit Forms: Divergences in the History of the British Novel. New
York: Fordham UP, forthcoming.
Preston, Thomas R. “Moral Spin Doctoring, Delusion, and Chance: Wakefield’s
Vicar Writes an Enlightenment Parable.” The Age of Johnson 11 (2000): 237-81.
Rogers, Henry N. “God’s Implausible Plot: The Providential Design of The Vicar of
Wakefield.” Philological Review 28 (2002): 5-17.
Scheiber, Andrew J. “Falkland’s Story: Caleb Williams’ Other Voice.” Studies in the
Novel 17 (1985): 255-66.
Sullivan, Garrett A. “‘A Story to Be Hastily Gobbled Up’: Caleb Williams and Print
Culture.” Studies in Romanticism 32 (1993): 323-37.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley: U
of California P, 1957.
Woolf, Virginia. The Second Common Reader. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1932.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe’s

“Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”*

ELENA ANASTASAKI

Edgar Allan Poe constantly revised everything he wrote from publica-

tion to publication. His revisions consisted mainly of deletions or
alterations of phrases, but they also sometimes included more ex-
tended insertions of text, such as epigraphs and even poems. Al-
though there are other instances of inserted poetical elements in Poe’s
tales (e.g. The Assignation 1850), this paper will focus on two examples
in which Poe incorporated a poem of his own in one of his short sto-
ries. The first is “The Haunted Palace,” published in April 1839 and
inserted a few months later in his famous short story “The Fall of the
House of Usher,” and the other “The Conqueror Worm,” first pub-
lished in 1843 and incorporated a few years later, in 1845, in a second
revised reprint of his short story “Ligeia” (first published in 1838).
What I propose to show is that, despite their seeming obscurity, the
poems are invested with a crucial double function within the narrati-
ve. In terms of content, they offer the reader a key for interpreting the
mysterious poetic characters who utter them. As narrative devices, by
their placement in the middle of the stories in which they are embed-
ded, they are figuring as an omen of the bad fortune ahead, foreshad-
owing the sinister ending of the tales. I will attempt to show that
poetic speech in this context is given as a source of solemnity and
authority so as to enhance the effect of inevitability in the outcome of
the narrated tales. This addition of a disruptive element in the narra-
tive level, aiming to draw the reader’s attention on the semantic level,
takes a major significance in the tales and contrasts with Poe’s strict

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debanastasaki0232.htm>.
208 ELENA ANASTASASKI

technique of composition, as he himself described it in his “Philoso-

phy of Composition” (1846). According to Poe, the achievement of a
specific desired effect calls for a tight, strictly focused structure, with
no deviation from the dénouement.1 The insertion of an autonomous
piece of literature originally disconnected from the story seems to
disregard this fundamental rule. Furthermore, the mixture of genres
seems equally at odds with his philosophy.

Poe’s Poetic Deviations: Theory and Practice

Poe reserves different functions to the modes of literary writing, with

poetry being particularly attuned to the expression of “Beauty,” and
prose being the right mode to convey “Truth”:

Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an

obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct
causes—that objects should be attained through means best adapted for
their attainment—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the
peculiar elevation alluded to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the
object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the
excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in po-
etry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, demands a precision,
and Passion a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me) which
are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excite-
ment, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. (Poe, “Philosophy of Composi-
tion” 456)

If, as Poe claims, Beauty is the province of the poem and appeals to
the soul, while Truth and Passion, appealing to the intellect and the
heart respectively, are far better rendered in prose and are viewed as
“antagonistic” to Beauty, then the insertion of the poems into the
prose narrative could be viewed as a possible threat to the coherence
of the structural edifice of the story; unless we were to see it as an
attempt to achieve, through this intrusion, a synergy of the two genres
for the production of a more complete work. This is however not
discussed or even hinted at in Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition.”
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 209

Before rushing to declare that Poe disregards the rules he has laid
himself in his theoretical writings, it would be of interest to further
investigate this discrepancy between Poe’s theory and practice. In his
“Poetic Principle” (published posthumously in 1850) Poe grounds one
of his central ideas, namely the positioning of the poem as the su-
preme artistic form, in the intuition of the human soul:

[…] but the simple fact is, that, would we but permit ourselves to look into
our own souls, we should immediately there discover that under the sun
there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified—more
supremely noble than this very poem—this poem per se—this poem which is
a poem and nothing more—this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.
(131)

Although the essay is presented as a scientific treatise on the subject,

Poe is choosing to appeal to the emotion in a similar way as he claims
poetry does. He is investing “pure” poetry with an aura of mystic
truth, while emphasizing its ability to bypass the intellect and have a
direct effect on the soul. One would then expect him to very con-
sciously safeguard this autonomy of the poem. And yet, Poe delights
in being subversive even regarding his own ideas, and seeming incon-
sistencies appear often in his writings.2 As it has been invariably
repeated by writers and scholars alike,3 given Poe’s penchant for satire
and his predilection for hoaxes, one most often not only can but also
should question Poe’s earnestness in his writings. However, I would
like to put forth the idea that Poe actually needs his tenets to be taken
seriously so as to build upon a well-secured set of ideas concerning
the nature of poetry in order to create the right reception for his liter-
ary work, which is then based on a circular argument4 pertaining to
the function of poetry. In other words, while Poe seems to contradict
his theory in his own tales, this is in fact a strategy in favour of po-
etry’s supremacy, a means to an end. And to this end, the emphasis on
the separate “provinces” of poetry and prose—namely Beauty and
Truth—is of central importance.5
Despite Poe’s quite “purist” ideas as they are exposed in his theo-
retical writings concerning the autonomy of the poem and its suprem-
210 ELENA ANASTASASKI

acy as an artistic form, it is no surprise that scholars have often

pointed out the peculiar poetical nature in Poe’s tales as a general
characteristic permeating his works. This characteristic can be viewed
as blurring, to some extent, the clear divide between the two forms
which Poe argues for, at least in terms of what those modes of expres-
sion can reveal (namely Beauty for the poem and Truth for prose).6

Inserted Poems and Their Multiple Functions

Poe’s predilection for the form of the tale and his insistence on its tight
structure which best serves its strong point, the “unity of effect,” is
well known.7 Viewed in the light of this unity of effect, the insertion at
a later date of poems which were originally standing on their own,
into tales that were also already completed, raises a series of questions
regarding their function. If we look at those two instances of inser-
tions in connection with this compositional rule, then his insistence on
a tight structure and on a strategy of no deviation for a perfect result
leads us to interpret these insertions either as a deviation from the rule
(which is further emphasized by the fact that they were later additions
to the text), or to assume that the poems are a necessary structural
element to the creation of the “unity of effect.” The first issue to take
into account is that the insertion of the poems necessarily “reorgan-
izes” the narrative structure of the tales. Both poems are placed in the
middle of the story and, although related by the narrator, they clearly
break his narration and momentarily eclipse the narrative “I.” This
breaking of the narrative serves multiple functions, including temper-
ing with the unity of effect.
On the narrative level, the temporary shift away from the narrator’s
point of view makes possible the subversion of the well-known issue
of the often hinted “madness” of the narrator. In “Ligeia” the narrator
repeatedly questions his ability to see clearly; for instance, he talks of
his “incipient madness” (83); admits that “There was a mad disorder
in [his] thoughts” (88); wonders “What inexpressible madness seized
me with that thought?” (88). The only secure objective view of Ligeia
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 211

as a character, in terms of her being seen from another perspective

than the eyes of the narrator, is the quotation of her own words which
constitute the poem. In “Usher” both the narrator, who avows: “I was
obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness”
(95); and Roderick Usher, who exclaims “MADMAN! I TELL YOU
THAT SHE NOW STANDS WITHOUT THE DOOR!” (98), bring to
our attention the narrator’s possibly clouded mental faculty. The
quoted poem offers the reader the chance to have, at least seemingly,
an unmediated glimpse of Roderick. For, although it is the narrator
who is repeating Roderick’s poem, we still get to bypass his possibly
distorted and certainly objective view. The interpretation given is still
the narrator’s, but we as readers also have Roderick’s verses in hand
and can proceed to interpret them according to our own judgment. As
James W. Gargano has pointed out,

the structure of many of Poe’s stories clearly reveals an ironical and com-
prehensive intelligence critically and artistically ordering events so as to es-
tablish a vision of life and character which the narrator’s very inadequacies
help to “prove.” […] Poe suggests to his readers ideas never entertained by
the narrators. Poe intends his readers to keep their powers of analysis and
judgment ever alert; he does not require or desire complete surrender to the
experience of the sensations being felt by his characters. (178)

This communication on an external level that the implied author

conveys “over the shoulder” of the narrator, so to speak, gives the
reader important information while offering a broader scope than the
narrator’s focalization. In the case of the two poems, this allows for
the feeling that, regardless of the narrators’ reliability in giving an
accurate portrait of the respective characters of Ligeia and Roderick,
we get to evaluate on our own their most important concerns which
are the subject matter of their artistic expression (the will to live for
Ligeia and the fear of madness for Roderick).
I would further like to suggest that the inserted poems are one of the
narrative devices8 Poe uses not only to “reveal” to the reader more
than the narrator can convey in terms of plot, but also to communicate
more than prose, as a literary form, can convey regarding existential
212 ELENA ANASTASASKI

higher truths. Although Truth is the province of prose, the unreliabil-

ity of Poe’s narrators due to their unstable mental state undermines, at
least to a certain extent, the veracity of their tale. In these cases then,
paradoxically, it is poetry which conveys the “truth” rather than
prose, but it does so in a special way. Poetry in those tales is presented
as conveying a higher form of Truth, one that bypasses both the unre-
liability of the narrator and the limitations of the rationality of prose.
It is a truth attained through beauty and intuition, rather than rational
thought. On the plot level this translates into the artistic inspiration
that is able to access hidden recesses of the artist’s soul; on the theo-
retical level, for poetry to convey Truth through Beauty, it needs to be
incorporated into prose in order to gain a firm grip on the reality the
prose narrative has constructed.
In the tales, the poems are given as the artistic work of the mysteri-
ous characters on which the narration focuses and are therefore a
means of self-expression of those characters. Poetry possesses the
peculiarity of being a self-expression even without the use of “I,” and
this gives an extra dimension to the access of “truth” that cannot be
attained through the characters’ regular speech within the narrative.
In terms of how the reader is to receive and interpret them as a form
of expression, the implication is that those poems are revealing the
innermost part of the character who composed them, which cannot be
conveyed by the narrator’s description nor by their own self-
perception. They are then an added means of characterization which
“escapes” not only the narrative frame, but also the consciousness of
both the narrator and the character, thus being the repository of some
element pertaining to their soul, the part through which, according to
Poe, poetry is conceived and perceived.
In both stories the narrators know the characters well, but somehow
their essence remains out of their grasp. Both narrators give a meticu-
lous physical description before expressing their inability to portray
them, their admittance that the most important element eludes them,
or at least that it cannot be conveyed through words. The poems come
to supplement this lack. The narrator in “Ligeia” opens his story with
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 213

putting emphasis on the limitations of his memory concerning his

departed wife who haunts his mind: “I cannot, for my soul, remember
how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with
the lady Ligeia” (79).9 At the same time, he is also aware that her
essence10 is something he has often sensed, but which has always
escaped him at every attempt to grasp it intellectually.11 In “Usher,”
too, the narrator has known Usher since childhood but finds him
“terribly altered” (90); and after describing the physical ravages of his
illness he is at a loss what to make of the profound mental changes it
has produced in Usher’s being. A series of undecided nouns and
adjectives—“incoherence,” “inconsistency,” “tremulous indecision,”
“unnatural sensations,” “anomalous species of terror” (91)—express
his inability to convey who Usher has become.
Where the narrators stop and avow their limitations, the poems ex-
press what the narrators are unable to do with their narrative, func-
tioning as condensed, albeit abstract portraits of the characters. The
limitations of prose narration are thus extended through the poetical
expression. Poetry is circumventing logical conscious thinking and
allows access to a deeper and less conscious part of the characters.
Vagueness, which is a disadvantage in prose, is the means of poetry to
convey meaning. Poe asserts that “Words cannot hem it [poetry] in. Its
intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound down
within the widest horizon of mere sounds” (“Drake-Halleck” 419).
The core element of Ligeia’s personality, the trait that cannot be ex-
pressed in prose narrative, is presented to be the extraordinary power
of her will in her uneven fight with death. “It is this wild longing—it
is this eager vehemence of desire for life—but for life—that I have no
power to portray—no utterance capable of expressing” (82-83), con-
fesses the narrator. He is describing as best he can a feeling that can
only be displayed through the poem. Ligeia’s own regular speech
would not be enough to express what her artistic expression is con-
veying. Through her ultimate poetical work are revealed all the
acuteness of the tragic fight of her will against the inevitability of
death and her deep knowledge of the mysteries of life that will allow
214 ELENA ANASTASASKI

her to come back once more from the realm of the dead. For a more
comprehensive understanding of the person of Ligeia, the poem
should also be viewed in connection to the tale’s epigraph which is
repeated by the narrator and by Ligeia herself just after the declama-
tion of the poem. The words are attributed to Joseph Glanvill but are
of Poe’s own invention12:

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its in-
tentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only
through the weakness of his feeble will. (79)

The narrator sees a “remote connection between this passage in the

English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia” (81); these
words are also Ligeia’s only direct verbal expression in the narrative.
The emphasis that is put on them by means of a four-time repetition
in the tale (including the epigraph) leaves no room to question their
significance to the understanding of the work. If there is a central
effect for the tale, then it must be the conveyance of this extraordinary
desire and power of the will to conquer death. To this effect the poem
gives an added dimension through its capability to encapsulate the
main element in the story and present it in a concentrated abstract
form.
Usher’s “indescribable” attribute, that is his connection with the
house of Usher and his ability to see interconnections everywhere, to
feel them with his over-excited and acute senses, is the counterpart to
Ligeia’s extraordinary will to live; it is the elusive part the narrator
cannot relate and that the poem will reveal. Again it is the core ele-
ment of the tale, and this is also alluded to by the epigraph which
describes the strange ability of the character to resonate what is
around him. Usher’s descent into insanity due to his overly excited
mind is given a powerful expression in “The Haunted Palace,” where
the edifice and the mind of its master and inhabitant are superim-
posed13 and shown to be inextricably linked by one of the most ele-
mentary characteristics of poetry: metaphor. The interconnections
Usher experiences are projected in his artistic work, and the bond
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 215

between Roderick Usher, his sister and the house is manifested not
through rational explanation (which makes Usher sound mad) but
through artistic sublimation, which elevates it into the sphere of intui-
tive attestation. Qualified that way, his ability needs no rational ex-
planation (since there is none), but what a poem asserts requires no
“proof” as such, it only requires to work in aesthetic terms; if those are
met, then it has sufficiently verified what the narrator cannot express
without sounding mad.
Another function those poems have within the narrative is
connected with the stories’ dénouement. In his theoretical writings, Poe
repeatedly stressed the importance of all elements of the story wor-
king towards one ultimate goal.14 Both poems foreshadow the tragic
ending, sealing its inevitability like a sinister omen of fate. In the
“Conqueror Worm” the inevitable death and the futility of fighting
against it is indicated first by the “angel throng” (83.3) who,
“drowned in tears” (83.4), is silently watching “a play of hopes and
fears” (83.6) that they have seen over and over again. The “circle that
ever returneth in / To the self-same spot” (83.21-22) alludes to the
circularity of death and life and its inevitability. The final lines reveal
that “the play is the tragedy, ‘Man,’ / And its hero the Conqueror
Worm” (83.39-40) and are announcing that, no matter the extraordi-
nary nature of Ligeia’s will, the end is predetermined. In “The
Haunted Palace” the final collapse of the Usher siblings, Roderick’s
mind, and the house, which is the physical manifestation of the men-
tal collapse, is also foreseen. Once the description of the house is
connected to the person of Roderick, the serenity and prosperity of the
palace presented in the first four stanzas is seen to falter: “evil things,
in robes of sorrow, / Assailed the monarch’s high estate” (93.33-34),
the windows turn crimson, and the “well-tunéd” (93.20) music of the
first part becomes “a discordant melody” (93.44). “A hideous throng”
(93.47) rushes out, and haunting laughter is heard.
This function of the poems to contain the ending of the story they
are part of is reinforced by the sense of a-temporality, a sort of sus-
pension of the narrative time that the poems bring within the tale.
216 ELENA ANASTASASKI

Both stories are narrated retrospectively, giving a linear account of

events, but the poems, as we have seen, come to interrupt the narra-
tive voice; they also have the same effect on narrative time. They act
like little pockets of a-temporality, giving an overall view of past and
future that encompasses, but also supersedes, the characters of the
tales. It is significant that they are both impersonal15 and adopt an
almost metaphysical point of view using a vintage point outside
earthly affairs, which reinforces the effect of the omniscient authorita-
tive poetical voice. Both poems begin with reference to the realm of
angels. In “The Conqueror Worm,” the angels are the saddened but
passive spectators of the tragedy of man, a play they have witnessed
many times before, rendering time unessential. Human time, and the
human struggle within it, are reduced to a mere part of the play that
the timeless angels are witnessing again and again in their eternity. In
“The Haunted Palace” the scene is set in some indeterminate place
and time: “In the greenest of our valleys, / By good angels tenanted, /
Once a fair and stately palace” (93.1-3).
This remoteness from earthly and narrative time allows for the feel-
ing of the poems encompassing the tales, even though they are em-
bedded in them. While their form is condensed, their time-span is
enclosing the time covered within the narrative. They include a re-
mote and indeterminate past as well as the inevitable future fall of
both characters, who have created them in a moment of artistic insight
brought by the overexcitement of their souls, thus surpassing their
creator’s intellectual faculties and revealing their own future.16 This
effect of the poems encompassing the tales is further reinforced by
their connection to the epigraphs: in “Ligeia,” the strong sense of
helplessness17 and the lack of free will,18 as well as the anonymity the
tragedy of “Man” suggests, contrast sharply with the emphasis on the
boundless power of the individual will expressed in the epigraph.
They also contrast with Ligeia’s own extraordinary will that permits
her to conquer death and momentarily come back to life through the
narrator’s second bride’s body in the horrifying scene which con-
cludes the tale.
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 217

The poems have yet another function, as they are the structural ele-
ments of the tale which convey both the extra “complexity” and the
“undercurrent” meaning which gives the tale its depth. According to
Poe’s theoretical exposition of the genre, these are indispensable
elements for the composition of a good tale:

Two things are invariably required—first, some amount of complexity, or

more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness—
some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in espe-
cial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow from
colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with the
ideal. (“The Philosophy of Composition” 463)19

This function of the poems is reinforced by Ligeia herself and by both

the narrator and Usher. Ligeia only speaks once throughout the narra-
tive, and her words, coming directly after the declamation of the
poem, stress its connection to the epigraph, thus hinting at the poem’s
function as the key to the understanding of the tale:

“O God!” half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms
aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines—“O God!
O Divine Father!—shall these things be undeviatingly so?—shall this Con-
queror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who—
who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield
him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of
his feeble will.” (83)

By linking the epigraph on the power of the will as a general human

tragic trait with her own personal struggle against death, and by
giving it a religious tone through her address to the “Divine Father,”
Ligeia is bringing together in her character the different elements of
the story (epigraph, narrative, inserted poem), thus making visible the
necessary interconnections that form the “undercurrent of meaning”
that lends its unity of effect to the tale. The narrator in “Usher” also
draws the reader’s attention quite overtly (we could even say bluntly)
to this function of the poem: “I was, perhaps, the more forcibly im-
pressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of
218 ELENA ANASTASASKI

its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason
upon her throne” (93; italics mine).
The “Haunted Palace” is in a way the manifestation of Roderick
Usher’s mysterious “illness” (for lack of a better word from the narra-
tor) which makes him able to sense all the intricate and mystical con-
nections that are not visible to the “sane” mind. In the poem, the
palace takes the shape of its sovereign: the blending of the person and
the edifice is suggested from the very beginning (“Radiant palace—
reared its head,” 93.4) and is sustained all through the poem with the
“two luminous windows” turning into “red-litten” windows (93.18,
93.42) marking, with this colour denoting turmoil, the point when
madness takes over. The character of Usher is in fact the connecting
agent both between poem and narrative on the structural narrative
level, and between literal and metaphorical (i.e. poetic) meaning on
the semantic level.
A fusion can be seen to take place if we interpret Roderick Usher as
being madness or poeticity20 personified. Already in the epigraph
Usher is likened to art: “Son cœur est un luth suspendu; / Sitôt qu’on le
touche il résonne.—De Béranger” (88), and the poem, which represents
Usher himself,21 is also stressing its link to the epigraph. Usher’s
thoughts are first portrayed in the poem as being organized “To a
lute’s well-tunéd law” (93.20), only to develop into “a discordant
melody” (93.44) when he sinks into madness.
Roderick Usher interprets (“reads”) the house through the intercon-
nections of its structure,22 inviting us to do the same with the poem
and the tale: when the narrator reads to him a passage from “The Mad
Trist,” he interprets it through its analogy with his reality: “And
now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!—say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of
her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
vault! Oh whither shall I fly?” (98; italics mine). The events in the text
correspond indeed to the narrative reality. Madeline stands in front of
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 219

her brother demanding revenge and blurring the limits between the
literary text which is read out loud and reality, leaving the question of
the “order” of events unanswered. Is it that Usher “reads” his ines-
capable fate in the texts, or is it the texts that “evoke” the events? In
either case, the texts (both the poem and “The Mad Trist”) double the
events, investing them with solemnity, and creating an atmosphere of
inevitability; the fall is “written” and therefore inescapable. This
feeling of being caught in a vicious circle with no way out is also
intensified by the fully circular motion on the structural level, with
both tales closing with the repetition of their title. “The Fall of the
House of Usher” starts with the narrator’s description of the decaying
house itself surrounded by the tarn, and ends with the phrase “and
the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the ‘HOUSE OF USHER’” (98). “Ligeia” as well begins
with the narrator expressing his inability to remember when he “first
became acquainted with the lady Ligeia” (79) and ends with the
words “LADY LIGEIA!” (88).

How Poetry Conveys Truth

Within this circular, enclosed and confined space of the tales, the
poems are no longer self-sufficient textual entities; they are part of the
tale, but also “part” of the fictional characters. The uttering of the
poems, which not only exist as written text but are also words spoken
out loud, provides a two-way communication between prose narra-
tive and poetic form. It gives the poems more than just a voice; it gives
them a body through which they intrude into the narrative, while at
the same time they become an intrinsic part of the characterization
concerning the utterer, uncovering his supernatural abilities to access
something more beautiful, more powerful, and elusive than what
earthly existence can offer. Ligeia has the name of a Siren,23 which
hints at her song being as fatal as it is unearthly beautiful. The “thrill-
ing and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language” (79), “the
220 ELENA ANASTASASKI

almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her

very low voice” (81) imply that the ascendance she has over the narra-
tor is not only due to the content of her teachings but also to the poetic
form through which they are expressed. She does not only produce
poems, she is poetic in her nature by virtue of her siren qualities
which are manifested through her entire being. She is presented, even
in her physical attributes, as a work of art: her skin “set[s] forth the
full force of the Homeric epithet, ‘hyacinthine!’” (80), and in her chin
the narrator finds “the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the
majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek—the contour
which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son
of the Athenian” (80). But it is the eyes, in which the narrator senses
there is to be found “something more profound than the well of De-
mocritus” (81), that hold all the mystic secrets.24
Usher functions as an incarnation of the poetic principle in a similar
way. His quasi-assimilation into the lyrical instrument of the lute and
his quality to vibrate in unison with the cosmic interconnections
through his unnaturally heightened physical and spiritual senses
present him as a sort of “medium” through which higher truths and
hidden meanings can be reached. The narrator here again stresses the
idea that mystical truths which cannot be conveyed through words
are expressed in Usher’s entire being: “Yet I should fail in any attempt
to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occu-
pations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and
highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His
long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears” (92).
This function of poetry as a medium for the conveyance of some
higher truth in general is one of Poe’s main theoretical tenets. In “The
Poetic Principle” he identifies the source of the power poetry has to
move us as “a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to
grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine
and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music,
we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses” (“The Poetic Prin-
ciple” 470).25 It is this exact same feeling that the narrator of “Ligeia”
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 221

describes as his response to her entire person, which functions as the

trigger for the reminiscence of what the soul knows as truth:

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the sci-

ence of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact—never, I believe, no-
ticed in the schools—that in our endeavours to recall to memory something
long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance,
without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in
my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the full
knowledge of their expression—felt it approaching—yet not quite be mine—
and so at length entirely depart! (81)

Ligeia’s poetic quality thus allows the narrator to access a truth that is
beyond the mortal scope of man: “My brain reeled as I hearkened
entranced, to a melody more than mortal—to assumptions and aspira-
tions which mortality had never before known” (82). This transcen-
dent quality of poetry is a constant in Poe’s artistic expression. As
Edward Davidson has demonstrated, poetry was for Poe “an act of
discovery and penetration; from Coleridge he had obtained the view
that man’s perceptive powers can transcend this world of space and
time and give him insights as profound and earth-disturbing as the
great discoveries in the physical sciences” (40).
This brings us back to Poe’s clearly distinguished realms of poetry
and prose which he emphasized in his theoretical writings. By assign-
ing the realm of Truth to prose and reserving the realm of Beauty to
poetry, Poe indirectly puts them in opposition with one another, while
prompting the reader to give primacy in his reading to either the one
or the other, depending on the form of expression chosen by the au-
thor. A mixture of the two seems somehow contradictory in a genre
like the tale, in which, Poe insisted, everything should converge to one
single aim. What I would like to suggest is that the insertions of the
poems in the tales do not constitute, however, a contradiction in Poe’s
thought, but are rather part of a strategy which has the ultimate goal
of merging the two in a deliberately circular argument. That argu-
ment, if successful, brings out poetry as a self-evident truth because it
appeals to intuition and not to the intellect. The turning point of this
222 ELENA ANASTASASKI

strategy, the final step, is to be found in the preface of what Poe con-
sidered his masterpiece, Eureka: A Prose Poem. This work, which con-
tains Poe’s intuitional view of the universe, is dedicated:

To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to
those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in
the only realities—I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-
Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To
these I present the composition as an Art-product alone,—let us say as a
Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem.
What I here propound is true:—therefore it cannot die:—or if by any means
it be now trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again to the Life Everlast-
ing.”
Nevertheless, it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after
I am dead. (Eureka 132)

By addressing Eureka to “those who feel rather than to those who

think,” it is “as a Poem only” that Poe wishes us to judge it; and yet he
boldly declares that it is a “Book of Truths,” and, what is more, a book
of scientific truths that need, however, no scientific proof other than
their beauty. Although Eureka is written in prose, Poe asks us to judge
his work as a poem, that is on such aesthetic terms which need no
empirical proof other than the soul’s elevation due to the Beauty
expressed, only to then turn his argument on its head and say that it
is, however, this Beauty which is “constituting it true,” thus providing
the “proof of Truth” through the non-demonstrable quality of Beauty.
Poe’s demand for the judgment of his work “as a Poem” is to be
viewed in connection with what he considers as poetry and its func-
tion. It is clear that the plea for poetry is a plea not to look for the
“proof” in the conventional sense, but to take the text’s truth at face
value. Poe further explains this process in Eureka insisting on the sense
of symmetry:

The sense of the symmetrical is an instinct which may be depended upon

with an almost blindfold reliance. It is the poetical essence of the Universe—
of the Universe which, in the supremeness of its symmetry, is but the most
sublime of poems. Now symmetry and consistency are convertible terms:—
thus Poetry and Truth are one. A thing is consistent in the ratio of its truth—
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 223

true in the ratio of its consistency. A perfect consistency, I repeat, can be nothing
but an absolute truth. We may take it for granted, then, that man cannot long
or widely err if he suffer himself to be guided by his poetical, which I have
maintained to be his truthful, in being his symmetrical, instinct. (Eureka 134)

This symmetry, which is traditionally a characteristic of poetry as a

form,26 is also carefully provided in the two tales discussed here
through the introduction of the poems which reflect into the world of
Beauty the Truth that is the ultimate goal of the tales, thus providing
the guarantee for their success as credible narratives. Read in this
light, the poems in “Ligeia” and in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
add more than just a different point of view. By virtue of their poetic
nature, they introduce into the tales, at the point where the narrator’s
reliability is questioned, the guarantee of the Truth which pertains to
poetry, a truth directly aiming at the soul’s intuition which, through a
circular argument pointing to the notion of symmetry, encloses its
proof within itself.

Eberhard Karls Universität

Tübingen

NOTES
1
For a detailed analysis of Poe’s conception of the tale as a genre see Thompson.
2
For instance, in his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe emphasizes the impor-
tance of a well-organized plot and presents it as the prerequisite to any literary
attempt: “Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be
elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen” (453). But
in a review on Edward Lytton Bulwer, we find him claiming plot is not important:
“A good tale may be written without it. Some of the finest fictions in the world
have neglected it altogether. We see nothing of it in Gil Blas, in the Pilgrim’s
Progress, or in Robinson Crusoe. Thus it is not an essential in story-telling at all”
(Graham’s Magazine, November 1841; Essays and Reviews 151). Another instance of
his inconsistency is that he often goes against his own rules. While Poe stresses
that a work, especially a poem, should be short enough to be read in one sitting,
and while he also gives a precise account of what constitutes a poem and how it
operates differently than prose, he nevertheless considered as his best work his
lengthy Eureka, which deviated from these rules. He also characterized this hybrid
224 ELENA ANASTASASKI

text as a “prose poem.” Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine, the editors of Poe’s
Critical Theory: The Major Documents, are right in giving the author’s inconsistency
the prominent place it deserves in his work: “That Poe’s ideas sometimes contra-
dict one another should not upset readers overmuch; indeed, acquiring a feel for
his inconsistency is a good first step toward getting to know Poe’s mind” (4).
3
Henry James and T. S. Eliot considered Poe’s work mainly to appeal to the
adolescent mind. According to Henry James, to take Poe “with more than a
certain degree of seriousness is to lack seriousness one’s self” (French Poets and
Novelists 76); Eliot attributes to Poe “the intellect of a highly gifted young person
before puberty” (“From Poe to Valéry” 35). Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine
describe Poe’s theoretical text “The Rationale of Verse” as “bluffing and shoddy
scholarship” (78). More recently, Stott argued that Eureka should be interpreted as
a hoax attempting to reveal the gullibility of its readers, thus refuelling an old
scholarly debate on that matter. It is interesting and quite telling for the case of
Poe’s reception by critics that, although Stott points out that we could “talk of
irony rather than deception” and quotes critics who stress this aspect of his work,
he however insists that: “Yet Poe was a hoaxer: one who took pleasure in mocking
the public” (58). The reception of Poe’s theoretical essays has also suffered due to
this “hoaxer” image of the author. Even at the time of its publication, “The Phi-
losophy of Composition,” where Poe illustrates his theoretical ideas through his
step by step description of how he composed “The Raven,” was suspected to be a
hoax; “Mallarmé called it an intellectual game” (see Voloshin 292n5).
4
Poe is providing a prescriptive theory which comes from his own way of writ-
ing, thus making his work the perfect embodiment of artistic production. He even
goes further than that in order to secure its reception; in 1845 he anonymously
publishes a review of his own Tales where he asserts the originality and novelty of
his work and establishes himself as a “genius”: “A writer must have the fullest
belief in his statements, or must simulate that belief perfectly, to produce an
absorbing interest in the mind of his reader. That power of simulation can only be
possessed by a man of high genius. It is the result of a peculiar combination of
mental faculties […] It is possessed by Mr. POE, in its perfection” (Poe qtd. in
Voloshin 285-86).
5
In his famous review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales Poe seizes the
opportunity to stress this point once more: “We have said that the tale has a point
of superiority even over the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an
essential aid in the development of the poem’s highest idea—the idea of the
Beautiful—the artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable bar to the develop-
ment of all points of thought or expression which have their basis in Truth. But
Truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale. [...] The writer of the
prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections
of thought and expression—(The ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the
humorous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but
absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable adjuncts; we
allude of course, to rhythm” (Essays and Reviews 573).
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 225
6
As Walter Evans points out in his overview of the scholarship on that matter,
Edward Davidson has stipulated that “[t]hese tales are indeed ‘Poems’” (154);
Thomas Woodson sees Poe’s fiction as tending “toward the conditions of lyric
poetry” (Evans 141); Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate point to a “poetical” unity
in “Usher” (Evans 141). Evans himself puts forth the view that “Poe demonstrably
composed the body of the story of elements central to the lyric method but largely
irrelevant to plotted narrative progression; he clearly subordinates combined
incidents to patterned images” (140). The poems themselves have not so much
been regarded as intrinsic elements of the narrative but rather as pointers to the
poetic nature of the text. Tallack has seen “The Haunted Palace” as “imag[ing] the
story’s poetic status” (51); and Kennedy has proposed that “Ligeia represents the
presence of poetry within the sphere of the fictional text” (120). Bruce Olson has
tackled the issue of the presence of the poem within the narrative but only as
“proof” of the narrative itself: “Paradoxically, the poem really exists, embedded
within the ‘fiction’ which accounts for its possibility; and the very existence of the
poem itself helps to establish the ‘truth’ of the ‘fiction’” (558).
7
In his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales Poe repeats this unde-
viating rule for the success of a tale: “If his [the author’s] very initial sentence tend
[sic] not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the
whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency,
direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means,
with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of
him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The
idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is
an end unattainable by the novel” (A Study of the Short Fiction 125).
8
The most common device Poe uses is the narrator’s own inconsistencies or
obsessions. As the following example shows, the narrator is presented as being
aware of his obsessions, often even questioning the reality of his own experiences
due to their unnatural nature (in this instance, Ligeia trying to come back to life
through Rowena’s body): “And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia—and again,
(what marvel that I shudder while I write?) again there reached my ears a low sob
from the region of the ebony bed” (“Ligeia” 87).
9
On the function of memory in Poe’s poetic economy as well as for an analysis
of how the two poems work within the tales as a device for an economy “that
always is doubled” (28) see William E. Engel.
10
This sensation that Ligeia is more than he knows is expressed a few times in
the tale; see, e.g.: “how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I
felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression—felt it approaching—yet
not quite be mine—and so at length entirely depart!” (81).
11
Right in the opening paragraph the narrator is struggling with his knowledge
of Ligeia that seems to be intuitive and emotional but for that very reason also
quite elusive: “Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in
truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast
of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical lan-
226 ELENA ANASTASASKI

guage, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progres-
sive that they have been unnoticed and unknown” (79).
12
On possible functions of epigraphs in literary texts see Kronshage in this issue
of Connotations <http://www.connotations.de/debkronshage0232.htm>.
13
The palace takes the shape of a face, it “rear[s] its head” (93.4), has “two lumi-
nous windows” (93.18) for eyes, and “pearl and ruby” (93.25) for teeth and lips.
The two images of the palace and the face are blended in the poem.
14
“It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its
indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and
especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention” (“The
Philosophy of Composition” 453). See also the quote in n7 from Poe’s review of
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.
15
Both poems are narrative and not lyrical poems, which might have been ex-
pected because they are given as expressing the character’s inmost being.
However, this impersonal poetic voice allows for the poems to function as a mise
en abyme, containing the expression of the core element of the entire tale.
16
This form of trance is characteristic of all of Roderick’s artistic creations: “the
fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have
been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he
not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the
result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest
artificial excitement” (“Usher” 93). Concerning Ligeia’s poem we only learn that it
was “composed by herself not many days before,” but her strong emotional
reaction to hearing the narrator read it at her own request shows that her compo-
sition was conceived in internal turmoil. Her own words pronounced by the
narrator excite her emotions anew: “‘O God!’ half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her
feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end
of these lines—‘O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be undeviatingly
so?’” (“Ligeia” 83).
17
Even the angels are merely spectators of “A play of hopes and fears” (93.6).
18
Men are described as “Mimes,” “Mere puppets” (83.9, 83.12).
19
Poe goes on in this passage to show the wrong usage of this literary device
and its detrimental effects in the poetry of the transcendentalists: “It is the excess
of the suggested meaning—it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under
current of the theme—which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind)
the socalled poetry of the socalled transcendentalists” (“The Philosophy of Com-
position” 463).
20
In his article on “Poeticity,” András Sándor defines the term as follows: “po-
eticity is an experiential phenomenon that emerges when verbal processes, activa-
tions of the linguistic system in discourse, trigger and interact with nonverbal
mental processes, activations of nonlinguistic systems, that prove strong or
predominant” (299). He stresses that “[p]oetic texts differ from non-poetic texts by
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 227

having a specific kind of openness or indeterminacy, and a specific kind of strat-

egy for dealing with it” (300n1) that is textually based and can be analyzed lin-
guistically. This is the way both poems function within their narrative prose
frameworks.
21
The spontaneous and peculiar artistic expression is said to be “the result of
that intense mental collectedness and concentration” Usher exhibits (93), and the
narrator fancies he perceives in the specific poem “a full consciousness on the part
of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne” (93).
22
“The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well
as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees
which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this ar-
rangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn […]. The result
was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet importunate and terrible influence
which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him
what I now saw him—what he was” (“Usher” 94).
23
For a discussion of this aspect of the tale see Jones.
24
“The ‘strangeness,’ however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature dis-
tinct from the formation, or the colour, or the brilliancy of the features, and must,
after all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast
latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The
expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it!
How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it!
What was it—that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which
lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a
passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they
became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers” (“Ligeia”
80-81).
25
We can see here a strong Platonic influence. Poe, however, seems to suggest
that poetry can convey, albeit briefly, a clearer picture of the imperfect images of
the true Forms or Ideas of which, according to Plato’s myth of the cave (The
Republic, Book 7, 514a-517e), man can only see the reflection. Poetry is then
presented as a means to transcend momentarily man’s limitations and gain access
to a higher form of knowledge.
26
In “The Haunted Palace” the poem is divided into two uneven sections with
the first four stanzas describing the prosperity of the kingdom in the past which
corresponds to the time when Roderick Usher still had a clear mind, and the last
two describing the descent into madness. We notice the same slight imbalance in
Ligeia’s poem, with the entering in the scene of the “conqueror worm” occurring
in the fourth of the five stanzas. Both poems have the rhyme scheme
ABABCDCD. This slight deviation of poetical symmetry is the indication that
something is wrong; in the case of Usher it mirrors the imbalance of his mental
faculties and in Ligeia’s case it reflects her excessive fear of death that causes her
228 ELENA ANASTASASKI

to lose her mental serenity. For an analysis of the theme of symmetry in “Usher”
see Herrmann and Kostis.

WORKS CITED
Davidson, Edward. Poe: A Critical Study. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard UP,
1957.
Eliot, T. S. To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1992.
27-42.
Engel, William E. “Echoic Effects in Poe’s Poetic Double Economy—of Memory: A
Response to Hannes Bergthaller and Dennis Pahl.” Connotations 23.1
(2013/2014): 26-48.
<http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/engel0231.htm>.
Evans, Walter. “‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Poe’s Theory of the Tale.”
Studies in Short Fiction 14.2 (1977): 137-44.
Gargano, James W. “The Question of Poe’s Narrators.” College English 25.3 (1963):
177-81.
Herrmann, Claudine, and Nicholas Kostis. “‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ or
The Art of Duplication.” SubStance 9.1 (1980): 36-42.
James, Henry. French Poets and Novelists. London: Macmillan, 1878.
Jones, Daryl E. “Poe’s Siren: Character and Meaning in Ligeia.” Studies in Short
Fiction 20.1 (1983): 33-37.
Kennedy, Gerald J. “Poe’s ‘Ligeia,’ and the Problem of Dying Women.” New
Essays on Poe’s Major Tales. Ed. Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge: CUP, 1993. 113-
29.
Olson, Bruce. “Poe’s Strategy in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Modern Lan-
guage Notes 75.7 (1960): 556-59.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Critical Theory: The Major Documents. Ed. Stuart Levine and
Susan F. Levine. Urbana: Illinois UP, 2009.
——. “Drake-Halleck.” Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Edward H. David-
son. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. 418-21.
——. Essays and Reviews: Theory of Poetry, Reviews of British and Continental Authors,
Reviews of American Authors and American Literature, Magazines and Criticism, The
Literary and Social Scene, Articles and Marginalia. Ed. G. R. Thomson. New York:
Library of America, 1984.
——. Eureka. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Charles Edward May.
Boston: Twayne, 1991. 132-135.
——. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An
Annotated Edition. Ed. Stuart Levine and Susan Levine. Urbana: U of Illinois P,
1990. 88-98.
——. “Ligeia.” The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Stuart
Levine and Susan F. Levine. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1990. 79-88.
 Embedded and Embodied Poetry in Edgar Allan Poe 229

——. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed.
Edward H. Davidson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. 452-64.
——. “The Poetic Principle.” Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Edward H.
Davidson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. 464-85.
Sándor, András. “Poeticity.” Poetics 18.3 (June 1989): 299-316.
Stott, G. St. John. “Neither Genius nor Fudge: Edgar Allen Poe and Eureka.” 452°F.
Electronic Journal of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature 1(2009): 52-64.
Asociación Cultural 452°F. 15 May 2014.
<http://www.452F.com/pdf/numero01/01_452f-mon-stott.pdf>
Tallack, Douglas. The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story: Language, Form and
Ideology. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Thompson, G. R. “Literary Politics and the ‘Legitimate Sphere’: Poe, Hawthorne,
and the ‘Tale Proper.’” Nineteenth-Century Literature 49.2 (1994): 167-95.
Voloshin, Beverly R. “The Essays and ‘Marginalia’: Poe’s Literary Theory.” A
Companion to Poe Studies. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Westport, CT: Greenwood P,
1996. 276-95.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

The Function of Poetic Epigraphs

in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda*

EIKE KRONSHAGE

Daniel Deronda was never what one might call a “popular” novel.
When F. R. Leavis, in 1946-47, notoriously described it as consisting of
two separate halves, he was merely summarizing the critical reception
of the book since its publication. By comparing the “magnificent […]
achievement [of] the good half” to the “astonishing badness of the bad
half” (94), Leavis voiced the common discontent with the book’s lack
of unity. He therefore suggested a new title for “the good part of
Daniel Deronda,” which he then kept using throughout his essay:
“Gwendolen Harleth” (100). The considerable impact of Leavis’s Great
Tradition on the further reception of Daniel Deronda can be seen by the
humble scholarly interest the novel attracted in the period immediate-
ly after the publication of Leavis’s book.1
Leavis’s criticism is at odds with Eliot’s expressed belief in the nov-
el’s unity. In 1876 she complained to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
about readers who “cut the books to scraps and talk of nothing but
Gwendolen,” and added: “I meant everything in the book to be relat-
ed to everything else there” (The George Eliot Letters 6: 290). The sharp
contrast between the notion of unity on the one hand (Eliot), and the
feeling of a split between plot lines on the other (Leavis) has been an
issue of critical debate ever since, and an unresolved one, mostly due
to the fact that literary critics never agreed on what “unity” in a fic-
tional text is supposed to denote. Apologists of the novel’s unity have
argued for such diverse forms of “unity” as self-sufficiency (Leavis
138), “thematic unity” (Beaty 18), “structural unity” (Carroll 369),

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debkronshage0232.htm>.
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 231

“unity of imaginative conception” (Daleski 28), and a unity of imagery

(Hardy 14). In addition, the general dissatisfaction that readers have
felt about Daniel Deronda’s bipartite structure ever since its publication
seems to be based on the Aristotelian notion of the unity of plot, in
which the “various incidents must be so arranged that if any one of
them is differently placed or taken away the effect of wholeness will
be seriously disrupted” (Aristotle, Poetics 1451a). That concept rever-
berates in one of Eliot’s later poetic essays, “Notes on Form in Art”
(1868), in which she defines unity as that in which “no part can suffer
increase or diminution without a participation of all other parts in the
effect produced and a consequent modification of the organism as a
whole” (Selected Critical Writing 358). The resemblance between Eliot’s
definition of formal unity and Aristotle’s definition of plot unity
points at her notion of the novel as a “wholeness […] which may be
broken up into other wholes” (Selected Critical Writing 358), i.e. formal
unity and plot unity.
I argue that Eliot attempted to achieve an overall unity by, perhaps
somewhat paradoxically, including quotations from other texts than
her own in the form of epigraphs. These paratextual elements link the
main text of the novel to numerous other texts outside it, thereby
potentially threatening the sense of closure that a novel often is sup-
posed to have. Eliot’s specific use of epigraphs does, however, achieve
a unifying effect by linking several aspects of the novel (different
topics, characters, plot lines, images and so forth) together. To high-
light this idea of internal unity achieved through the inclusion of
external texts, I will confine the following analysis to the poetic epi-
graphs in the novel. Thereby I intend to demonstrate how Eliot uses
texts from another genre (poetry) to unite different characters and
topics of her prose work, the novel Daniel Deronda. I further argue that
Eliot employs a dialectic method to create a sense of unity, by sublat-
ing the epigraph’s internal/external, textual/paratextual, and poet-
ic/prose dichotomies. A detailed survey of the epigraph’s literary
functions, its formal classification, and its quality to indicate literary
232 EIKE KRONSHAGE

history is added to the analysis of the organic function in Daniel

Deronda in form of a comprehensive supplement.

Poetic Epigraphs and Organic Unity in Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda contains a total of 74 epigraphs, one book epigraph,

and one epigraph for each of the 70 chapters, of which three contain
an additional second epigraph. Of these 74 epigraphs almost two
thirds, 44, are poetic epigraphs (i.e. heterogeneric, see supplement
1.a),2 while only one third is written in prose (homogeneric). It is
conspicuous that the poetic epigraphs in Daniel Deronda constantly
resurface in the main body of the text. The epigraph to chapter 17—
the crucial chapter in which Deronda meets his future wife, Mirah
Lapidoth, for the first time and saves her from drowning herself in the
Thames—is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s dramatic monologue
“Locksley Hall” (written in 1835; published 1842):

This is truth the poet sings

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
—TENNYSON: Locksley Hall

By quoting the Poet Laureate of her day (1850-92), Eliot includes the
authoritative voice of a prominent poet in her own text. The final
word of the first line, “sings,” adumbrates some of the events in the
chapter itself (proleptic function; supplement 2.e), as it is through
singing that Deronda and Mirah meet in this chapter. In addition, the
twice repeated word “sorrow” foreshadows the desperate situation of
Mirah, which gives her the idea of committing suicide, thus providing
emotional foreshadowing (supplement 2.f). Furthermore, these two
lines have a clear affective function: the “crown of sorrow” is meant to
set readers in the appropriate mood for the encounter with Mirah
Lapidoth, and to rouse their compassion.
The two lines from Tennyson’s poem reappear in the chapter itself.
Deronda is rowing in his boat on the Thames one fine summer eve-
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 233

ning. While he follows the current he thinks about the course of his
own life, feeling deeply insecure about which road to choose. A barge
approaches him, and he is forced to navigate closer to the shore. Un-
consciously, he sings a song, a

low-toned chant which had haunted his throat all the way up the river—the
gondolier’s song in the “Otello,” where Rossini has worthily set to music the
immortal words of Dante—
“Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria:”—
and, as he rested on his oar, the pianissimo fall of the melodic wail “nella
miseria” was distinctly audible on the brink of the water. […] Deronda,
awaiting the barge, now turned his head to the river-side, and saw at a few
yard’s distance from him a figure which might have been an impersonation
of the misery he was unconsciously giving voice to: a girl […] (187).

This passage corresponds both directly and indirectly to the poetic

epigraph to this chapter, the two lines from Tennyson. Firstly, it con-
tains singing: Deronda is singing a song from an Italian opera (Rossi-
ni) based on an English play (Shakespeare’s Othello), which also con-
tains the words of yet another poet, Dante, in the form of a quotation
from the Inferno (5.121-23). Then, it also describes, just as Tennyson’s
poem does, the “sorrow’s crown of sorrow,” the “maggior dolore,”
which is (Tennyson again) “remembering happier things,” “ricordarsi
del tempo felice.” In order to further highlight this connection, Eliot
even inserts a footnote (i.e. another paratextual device) after the Dante
quotation, in which she explains: “Dante’s words are best rendered by
our own poet in the lines at the head of the chapter” (187).
This is not an isolated case. Chapter 39 of Daniel Deronda displays a
similar structure of quotation and repetition. After having rescued
Mirah from committing suicide, Deronda intends to establish her as a
singing teacher in London’s high society and arranges an audition
with the famous German musician, Herr Klesmer. The chapter opens
with a poetic epigraph taken from Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan,
quoted in German:
234 EIKE KRONSHAGE

Vor den Wissenden sich stellen

Sicher ist’s in allen Fällen!
Wenn du lange dich gequälet
Weiß er gleich wo dir es fehlet;
Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen,
Denn er weiß wo du’s getroffen. (Daniel Deronda 481)3

At this point of the novel the reader knows that the expert in question
(“der Wissende”) is Herr Klesmer (and his wife, the pianist Catherine
Arrowpoint, now Mrs. Klesmer), and that it is Mirah who wants to
step before that “Wissender” to sing—which she does (affording an
opportunity to quote numerous songs and poems put to music in the
course of the chapter). Finally, Herr Klesmer passes his judgment,
saying to Mirah: “Let us shake hands: you are a musician” (484). He
recommends her an appropriate teacher to further her musical educa-
tion and explains:

“She [the teacher] is a thorough musician, and has a soul with more ears to it
than you will often get in a musician. Your singing will satisfy her:—
‘Vor den Wissenden sich stellen;’
you know the rest?”
“‘Sicher ist’s in allen Fällen,’”
said Mirah, promptly. And Klesmer saying “Schön!” put out his hand again
as a good-bye. (485)

Here the epigraph recurs, quoted by one of the characters. It thus

becomes directly incorporated in the main text itself, making explicit
what the reader already knew, namely the quite straightforward
relation between epigraph and plot of this particular chapter. The
epigraph, generally separated from the rest of the text (written, as
Genette says, en exergue, literally meaning “off the work”; Genette
144), is thus made an organic part of the chapter itself. The poem by
Goethe reappears a second time in the chapter when Mrs. Meyrick,
the woman who has taken care of Mirah in London, approaches and
asks her about the meaning of Klesmer’s final words. Mirah trans-
lates—both for Mrs. Meyrick’s convenience and for the convenience of
those readers of the novel who do not understand German: “It means
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 235

that it is safer to do anything—singing or anything else—before those

who know and understand all about it” (487).
Both examples (from chapters 17 and 39) demonstrate the recur-
rence of words and phrases from the poetic epigraphs either in the
discourse of the narrator or the direct speech of characters: sometimes
verbatim, sometimes slightly modified, sometimes translated. More-
over, both poetic epigraphs occur in chapters that are deeply con-
cerned with singing. Following this hint of a nexus between music
and poetry, I would like to bring into consideration a contrasting
example.
Unlike the chapters that deal with Mirah’s success as a singer, those
telling of Gwendolen’s complete failure to ascend to the high ranks of
musical genius are preceded not by poetic epigraphs, but by epi-
graphs written in an extremely vitriolic prose, like the following,
which precedes chapter 23:

The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such
as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of
their self-satisfaction—as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence
that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or
lever. (250)

As if the smashing of Gwendolen’s hopes by Herr Klesmer had at this

point in the novel not yet been made obvious enough, the narrator
evokes, just before the arrival of the sincere musician, the two roles in
which Gwendolen had formerly imagined herself: that of Saint Cecilia
(chapter 3) and Hermione in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (chapter
6). Gwendolen is waiting for Klesmer, while

the melancholy waning sunshine of autumn rested on the leaf-strown grass

and came mildly through the windows in slanting bands of brightness over
the old furniture […] over […] the superannuated organ at which
Gwendolen had pleased herself with acting Saint Cecilia on her first joyous
arrival, the crowd of pallid, dusty knick-knacks seen through the open doors
of the ante-chamber where she had achieved the wearing of her Greek dress
as Hermione. (251)
236 EIKE KRONSHAGE

Not only does the “superannuated organ” in this scene foreshadow

the failure of her musical career, it also signals the role evoked by
Hermione, which had peculiarly mortified her. When Herr Klesmer,
accompanying the play, had struck a chord, a hidden panel in the wall
had sprung open, revealing the portrait of an upturned dead face. On
this occasion, Gwendolen “looked like a statue into which a soul of
Fear had entered: her pallid lips were parted […] she fell on her knees
and put her hands before her face” (61). The reader is alerted that the
upcoming meeting with Klesmer will have disastrous consequences
for her future life: a warning conducted by both the extensive allu-
sions to two of Gwendolen’s greatest artistic failures and the epigraph
itself. The epigraph, against all expectations, is not a poetic epigraph,
but a sardonic and biting criticism in a matter-of-fact prose, finding
fault with “obstinate beliefs,” “madness,” and “self-satisfaction”—in
reference to Gwendolen, as the reader may understand. It is not diffi-
cult to see the difference between this prose and the earlier quoted
poetry, “Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen, / Denn er weiß wo du’s
getroffen.” Again there are words and phrases from the epigraph
which resurface in the chapter itself, as for instance the quoted “self-
satisfaction,” which variedly recurs as Gwendolen’s “self-estimate,”
“her self-confidence,” her “self-opinion,” her “self-contentment,” and
her “self-confident visions,” all against which Klesmer in his speech
sets the need for her “self-denial” (251, 256-57, 262-63).
The novel’s preoccupation with music and musicians brings me to
the musical aspects of the epigraph. The recurrence of words and
phrases from the poetic epigraphs within the chapters proper can be
compared to the musical motif, especially since this interpretation is in
line with the musical content of the respective chapters that deal with
Gwendolen’s failed opera career, Mirah’s beginning musical career,
and Leonora’s former musical career. The epigraphs establish a nexus
between poetry (in the form of poetic epigraphs) and music, which
remains mostly constant throughout the novel.
A further illustration of this connection between music and poetry
in the novel occurs in chapter 51, when Deronda travels to Italy in
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 237

order to meet, for the first time in his life, his mother, the princess
Leonora von Halm-Eberstein, the former Primadonna Alcharisi. Pre-
fixed to this chapter is another poetic epigraph which deals with
musical art:

She held the spindle as she sat,

Erinna with the thick-coiled mat
Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes,
Gazing with a sad surprise
At surging visions of her destiny—
To spin the byssus drearily
In insect-labour, while the throng
Of gods and men wrought deeds that poets wrought in song. (624)

This poem is Eliot’s own, “Erinna,” and deals with the eponymous
young Greek poet who was chained to the spinning wheel by her
mother, which precluded the development of her artistic talent. The
final word of the poetic epigraph (“song”) opens up a door to the
story of Leonora’s life, just as Deronda is opening the door to her hotel
rooms in the very first sentence of the chapter directly following the
epigraph. The reader is thus invited to compare Erinna, the poet who
was forced into a social code of conduct by her parents and who died
in consequence, to Leonora, the artist who disobeyed the law of the
father and lived. The relationship is thrown into further relief by the
resurfacing of certain motifs from the poetic epigraph, when Leonora
tells her son:

“[…] you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius in
you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. […] My father […] hated
that Jewish women should be thought of by the Christian world as a sort of
ware to make public singers and actresses of. As if we were not the more
enviable for that! That is a chance of escaping from bondage.” (631)

The difficulties depicted in the poetic epigraph, Erinna’s inability to

free herself from the fetters of social constraint in order to write poet-
ry, recur in Leonora’s narration, yet with a decisive turn. Unlike
238 EIKE KRONSHAGE

Erinna, she managed to use her talent as a singer to surmount her

father’s will, even though this decision forced her to give her two-year
old son Daniel Deronda into the care of Sir Hugo, where he grew up
in ignorance of his mother’s identity.
Thus Eliot’s epigraphs form throughout her novel an almost Wag-
nerian leitmotif, a musical phrase, as, for instance, a particular melody
or chord, which announces the occurrence or approach of some char-
acter or some action, or which even—and this was certainly the real
innovation of Wagner’s technique—evokes some thought process, a
psychological dimension otherwise inexpressible. Yet Wagner’s music
is, as Carl Dahlhaus has pointed out, more than just a leitmotif collec-
tion (“Ansammlung von Leitmotiven”; Dahlhaus 230) of simply illus-
trating character. What is more important about Wagner’s technique
is the combination of the motifs into a symphonic fabric (“Verknüp-
fung der Motive zu einem ‘symphonischen Gewebe’”; Dahlhaus 231),
or, in other words, into an “organic whole,” a phrase that Eliot uses in
her essay “Liszt, Wagner, and Weimar” when she describes Wagner’s
theory of the music drama:

An opera must be no mosaic of melodies stuck together with no other meth-

od than is supplied by accidental contrast, no mere succession of ill-
prepared crises, but an organic whole, which grows up like a palm, its earli-
est portion containing the germ and prevision of all the rest. (Selected Critical
Writing 86)

Just like the Wagnerian leitmotif, Eliot’s use of epigraphs accomplishes

two effects. It both creates foreshadowing (largely preempting the
feeling of a “mere succession of ill-prepared crises”) and enhances the
sense of an organic whole. The recurring word “sorrow” from the
Tennyson epigraph in chapter 17, for instance, not only evokes the
sadness of Mirah but also the idea expressed in the poetic epigraph,
that this sadness derives from “remembering happier things.” When
Deronda in the same chapter describes Mirah as a “sorrowful image
of womanhood,” an “image of helpless sorrow,” and thinks that
“sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality,” this sorrow
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 239

is explained in this chapter exclusively through the epigraph—for

Mirah tells her own life story only three chapters later. Here, the
poetic epigraph in its function as leitmotif helps the reader to under-
stand Mirah’s psychology—despite the fact that the scene is internally
focalized through Deronda and contains no free indirect speech for
Mirah, which elsewhere is Eliot’s preferred literary device for the
presentation of thought processes. Through the emphasis of the con-
nection of song and sorrow, the epigraph links Mirah’s fate to that of
Gwendolen (who fails at banishing her sorrowful thoughts through
music) and Leonora (whose sorrows are the result of her music, i.e.
her decision to value her professional career higher than her personal
feelings toward her son).
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Eliot famously said
about Daniel Deronda that she meant “everything in the book to be
related to everything else there.” The poetic epigraphs are an impor-
tant technique by which she achieves this high level of unity in the
novel,4 a unity which holds together the two different plot lines that F.
R. Leavis wanted to separate: the (in his view) inferior Deronda and
the superior Gwendolen parts. In addition to the numerous general
epigraphic functions (see supplement), the organic function of the
poetic epigraphs in Daniel Deronda stands out as most important for
Eliot’s conception of the novel’s unity.

***

Supplement: The Epigraph: Formal Classification, Literary Function

and Historical Symptoms

The following supplement focuses on the form of the epigraph,5 its

functions within the literary text, and its quality to indicate literary
history. Where possible, I try to adhere to the established terminology
and to build upon existing research.
240 EIKE KRONSHAGE

1. Formal Classification

a. Generic Qualification

It may well be the case that the generic distinction is so obvious that
no one has yet cared to point it out. I believe, however, that it is im-
portant to differentiate between prose and poetic epigraphs. When a
poetic epigraph is included in a prose text (and vice versa), the epi-
graph is heterogeneric. Poetic epigraphs in poetic texts and prose
epigraphs in prose texts, on the other hand, are homogeneric.
Heterogeneric epigraphs may introduce aspects traditionally associ-
ated with a different genre. A case in point is the topos of poetry as
vocation, which can be found in the epigraph to Elizabeth Gaskell’s
The Life of Charlotte Brontë.6 Here we find a biography of a novelist,
written by another novelist, using a poetic epigraph by a prominent
Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, taken from Aurora Leigh,
her “novel-poem,” as she herself called it in many of her letters (Bar-
rett Browning 330 et passim), which describes the life of yet another
poet. The apostrophe to God in the quoted passage seems to echo the
extensive prayer in the Book of Esther and serves to link the social role
of Victorian women with the topos of divine vocation.7 The poetic
epigraph skillfully anticipates the combination of two central aspects
of Brontë’s life (as presented in Gaskell’s biography). First, the fact
that the rural Yorkshire environment clearly restricted the free devel-
opment of a female writer’s skills; and, second, the fact that any
woman in such circumstances must have felt a truly strong vocation
to overcome those limitations, perhaps even a divine vocation. Gas-
kell’s choice may therefore be understood as the transfer of a well-
established poetic topos to the domain of the novel; it is doubtful
whether Gaskell would have found an equally suggestive prose epi-
graph. The intended connotation could be given complete expression
only in the poetic form of the epigraph, i.e. in a heterogeneric quota-
tion.
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 241

b. Allographic vs. Autographic

The general need for distinguishing between autographic and al-

lographic epigraphs seems to date back to the large-scale “invention”
of epigraphs by Sir Walter Scott. Scott had confessed in Chronicles of
the Canongate that many of his mottoes were invented rather than
taken from actual literary texts.8 His epigraphs have attracted rela-
tively large scholarly attention, and several attempts have been made
to label the invented mottoes, for instance as “feigned mottoes,” “fab-
ricated epigraphs,” and “faked mottoes” (Berger 378-79). Genette
suggests more neutral terms: “autographic” epigraphs (written by the
author of the text to which they are prefixed) and “allographic” epi-
graphs (taken from the work of another writer) (Genette 151-52).
The allographic motto seems to be the norm, both in nineteenth-
century and contemporary literature,9 and yet its autographic coun-
terpart never went out of fashion since Scott.10 Writers “invented”
epigraphs either out of necessity or as a conscious game between
author and reader (see Grutman 293; Higdon 129). Daniel Deronda
itself is prefixed by an autographic motto,11 although, as Leah Price
has shown, Eliot’s authorship of the poem was revealed shortly after
the novel’s publication by Alexander Main’s anthology Wise, Witty,
and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse Selected from the Works of George
Eliot (Price 145-47), thus putting an end to any conscious game Eliot
might have intended.

c. Identified vs. Unidentified (or Ascribed vs. Unascribed)

At first sight, this category seems closely related to the previous one.
Yet even autographic epigraphs are sometimes (falsely or misleading-
ly) ascribed. Scott, for instance, often referenced ominous sources like
an “Old Play,” an “Old Ballad,” or an “Old Poem” for his epigraphs,
when they were in fact written by himself without any preexisting
literary text.12
242 EIKE KRONSHAGE

Sometimes the epigraph is ascribed to a fictional character, as for

instance in Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, where the book’s
epigraph features an aphoristic remark ostensibly by Miss Haldin,
who is a character in the novel itself. Similarly, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby, the poetic epigraph is ascribed to Thomas Parke
D’Invilliers, who is a character in Fitzgerald’s debut novel, This Side of
Paradise. There does not yet exist any statistical survey of the distribu-
tion of identified and unidentified epigraphs. It seems, however, that
in nineteenth-century fiction unascribed mottoes gradually made way
for ascribed ones, so that the lack of (unambiguous) ascription could
commonly be considered an indicator of autographic mottoes.
Often, as Genette remarks, the purpose of the ascription is merely to
include the authority of a prominent name, and the content becomes
subordinate to the epigraph’s author (see Genette 159). Charlotte
Smith’s choice of epigraph in The Old Manor House, taken from Ario-
sto’s Orlando Furioso, is obviously such an inclusion of external au-
thority, as the epigraph is not related to the novel’s content. It is not
unlikely that Jane Austen had this function of authoritative quotations
in mind when she opened the first chapter of Northanger Abbey by
ironically stating that Catherine Morland received the better part of
her education from Pope, Gray, Thompson, and Shakespeare, for the
quotations the narrator lists are themselves rather arbitrary, and
receive their value largely from their ascription.

d. Complete vs. Incomplete

The epigraph is by definition a short text. As an inscription, it needs to

fit the limited space of a plate. Consequently, most epigraphs are
incomplete, i.e. brief quotations extracted from longer texts. Not sur-
prisingly, therefore, the only examples of complete epigraphs that I
was able to detect were poetic mottoes, as for instance the short poem
“Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne” by Heinrich Heine, prefixed to
chapter 62 of Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 243

Incompleteness of the epigraph may generate various effects, for

instance through the omission of important information (ellipsis13) or
the deliberate breaking off of a sentence (aposiopesis14). Completeness,
however, is a difficult category regarding autographic epigraphs, as
these mottoes are potentially interminable. Yet the autographic sonnet
that precedes chapter 57 of Middlemarch demonstrates that auto-
graphic epigraphs might sometimes be considered as at least formally
complete or as conveying a clear sense of completeness (e.g. the short
poem in chapter 8 of Daniel Deronda, “What name doth Joy most
borrow,” see below).

e. Language

The example of Heine’s poem further demonstrates that epigraphs are

written either in the same language as the text in which they are in-
cluded (homolinguistic) or in a different language (heterolinguistic).
In the early stages of the literary epigraph, the foreign-language epi-
graph was clearly the standard form, as books in modern languages
commonly included mottoes in classical Greek or Latin. Only in late
eighteenth-century literature, epigraphs of the same language gradu-
ally replaced the classical quotations. In Eliot’s novels both kinds can
be found: epigraphs in the same language (i.e. English) and in differ-
ent languages, for polyglot Eliot commonly quotes Dante, Molière,
Goethe and others in their original languages. In Daniel Deronda, for
instance, eleven of the 74 total epigraphs are written in a language
other than English, including the two that are given in English transla-
tion (the quotation of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in chapter 57,
presumably translated by Eliot herself, and the one by Guido
Guinicelli in chapter 61, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti). The
inclusion of a great number of foreign-language quotations poses a
considerable challenge to any reader, and increases the risk that he or
she might eventually decide to skip the epigraphs. Tye believes that
Eliot removed the chapter epigraphs from Romola before the novel’s
244 EIKE KRONSHAGE

publication because she might “have felt it prudent to lighten the

burden of erudition,” which resulted especially from epigraphs in
foreign and classical languages (Tye 237).15 Single book epigraphs in
foreign languages, however, seem to have prevailed (again) since
early modernism.16
The increase of epigraphs in foreign languages from the late-
nineteenth century onwards may be understood as an increase in
international literary exchange. The demise of circulating libraries in
England, which notoriously refused the inclusion of foreign novels in
their programme (Mudie’s Select Library is only the most prominent
case in point), marks the international expansion of the British narra-
tive market.17 Since epigraphs remind us that all writers are always
also readers, the usage of quotations in foreign languages may signal
changing reading habits around the turn of the century, probably as a
direct influence of the changing European book markets.18 Neverthe-
less, the fact remains uncontested that quotation in languages other
than English had its heyday in the romantic and the modernist period,
and almost completely disappeared from realist fiction—with the one
canonic exception of George Eliot’s novels.

2. Literary Functions

Although no empirical study of general reading behavior regarding

epigraphs has yet been carried out, there is reason to believe that
mottoes are often read with diminished attention, or even skipped
over entirely (see Berger 396; Simon-Baumann 156). Whenever epi-
graphs serve a particular function within the literary text, the reader
skipping them runs the risk of missing input vital for a full under-
standing.19 As an intertextual device, the epigraph commonly exceeds
the merely ornamental; it rather opens up the semantic horizon of
another literary work of art, which may invite comparison, affirm or
contradict the general meaning of the main text, elucidate otherwise
unintelligible passages, or foreshadow plot events. The epigraph is
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 245

not limited to a single function but can perform several functions at

the same time. The following list outlines six frequent epigraphic
functions (or rather functional groups).

a. Contrastive vs. Affirmative Function

Among the most obvious epigraphic functions are affirmation and

contrast. Both have been analyzed repeatedly, although under differ-
ent names. Tye calls affirmative epigraphs “illuminating adjuncts”
(249), Ginsburg understands the relationship as “one of illustration”
(547), Higdon describes the relationship, in his analysis of epigraphs’
“organic function,” as one of “structural allusion” (134-35), and
Simon-Baumann points out the general affinity in terms of subject
matter (“äußere Stoffähnlichkeit”; 163). Such epigraphs affirm by
repeating the general idea of the following text, although it would be
more correct to say that the text repeats the idea of the epigraph,
because the epigraph precedes the text and not the other way round.
Since the reader cannot possibly know that a given epigraph is af-
firmative, its function is realized only in hindsight, after the text itself
has been read.
The same holds true for contrastive epigraphs, whose function is
also realized retrospectively. They, too, repeat the general idea of a
given text, yet in inversion. Such epigraphs oppose the main text by
inviting possible alternative readings that are not otherwise inherent
to the text. This is illustrated by an example given by Ginsburg: the
short quotation from Dante’s Purgatorio that is prefixed to chapter 19
of Middlemarch is slightly changed by Eliot, reading “altra” instead of
the correct “altro” (Ginsburg 547). The change of grammatical gender
invites a direct comparison between Dorothea Brooke and Henry I of
Navarre (c. 1244-1274), who is described by Dante as the one “ch’ha
fatto alla guancia della sua palma, sospirando, letto” (Purgatorio 7.107-
0820; quoted in Middlemarch 176), a phrase that resurfaces in the chap-
ter proper: “one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her [Dorothea’s]
246 EIKE KRONSHAGE

cheek” (177). The complex allusion to the French king in the Antipur-
gatorio—“who neglected what he should have done” (Purgatorio
7.92)—indicates Dorothea’s current awareness of her own failure to
live up to “the lofty conception of the world” that her mind has
formed, as the very first chapter of the novel tells the reader (8). In
chapter 19, when Dorothea is secretly observed by the German painter
Naumann, he seems to see only her “antique beauty” (177) and is
consequently reprimanded by Will Ladislaw, who reminds him that
“the true seeing is within” (179). This “within” is expressed by the
contrastive epigraph at the beginning of the chapter, especially by the
word “sospirando” (“sighing”), which does not appear in the other-
wise quite literal translation of Dante’s lines in the chapter proper.
The epigraph adds a layer of meaning to the text, which the text itself
cannot (or cannot easily) express. That additional meaning must not
necessarily contradict the meaning of the primary text; it rather com-
plements it by saying something that the text itself does not say, i.e. it
serves as a contrastive foil.

b. Ironic Function

The ironic epigraph, however, is more than just a complementary

contrastive foil; it expresses the exact opposite of the main text. Often
analyzed by scholars, the ironic function is, along with the affirmative
function, the most prominent topic of research. Higdon discusses at
great length epigraphs containing “ironic comments on the material
within the following chapter” (142) and lists irony as one of the “or-
ganic functions” of the epigraph. Böhm subsumes the ironic function
under the contrastive function (164), thereby limiting the contrastive
to a binary opposition, rather than embracing its potential as juxtapo-
sition.21 Wayne C. Booth discusses the epigraph in A Rhetoric of Irony
as “a kind of nudge” and a “straightforward warning in the author’s
own voice” (53, 55) that the following text should be taken with a
pinch of salt. This may well generate dramatic irony; the reader,
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 247

alerted by the epigraph, presumes that the ensuing text means the
exact opposite of what it says (see Higdon 144-45).
As such, the ironic epigraph has a certain signal effect, for instance,
when it is taken from the works of a well-known ironist (see Booth
54). However, the signal effect of the epigraph usually only marks the
irony that the text already possesses; it does not establish the irony for
an otherwise irony-free text or textual part. An exception is chapter
five of Daniel Deronda, which is free from all irony in its description of
Gwendolen’s failure to excel in her musical talents at a dinner-party at
the Arrowpoints’ Quetcham Hall (43-51). It is through the epigraph
from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (3.1.55-57) that her fail-
ure receives the decisive ironic twist:

Her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
All matter else seems weak
—Much Ado about Nothing (Daniel Deronda 43).

With hindsight the reader understands at the end of this chapter that
Gwendolen’s failure is tragic because she believes herself to be supe-
rior to everyone else—Catherine Arrowpoint included. The point
about that excessive self-confidence is conveyed only by the epigraph,
which in this case therefore establishes the irony, rather than simply
marking it.22

c. The “Epigraph-Effect”

According to Genette, the most complicated function of the epigraph

is the effect of its mere presence: the “epigraph-effect” (160). In a
literary work, epigraphs are part of a cultural currency, or, as Rainier
Grutman writes, “much like smoke indicates fire (i.e. is an index of
fire), an epigraph signals culture” (284). To be more precise, an epi-
graph signals a particular culture in which it was considered a valu-
248 EIKE KRONSHAGE

able currency. That was especially the case in (late) eighteenth and
(early) nineteenth-century literature, in Radcliffe, Scott and Stendhal.
Yet in every economic system excess inevitably leads to inflation, and
the “mottomania” of the early nineteenth century soon became an
“eccentric mannerism, an annoying tic” (Grutman 284), serving to
inflate the value of that literary currency, thus leading to its aban-
donment by the subsequent generation of writers.
The epigraph-effect can be intensified when the motto is identi-
fied/ascribed (see above). In this case the epigraph exceeds its own
status as a mere sign of culture and becomes the sign of a very par-
ticular culture, often of high culture, by referencing certain
“highbrow” writers. The opposite, i.e. references to popular culture,
certainly became more common by the late twentieth century (al-
though such references are not automatically to be classified as the
opposite of “highbrow” culture). Interestingly, such epigraphs seem
to derive quite often from (pop) songs, and are therefore hetero-
generic: e.g. in Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (epigraph by US-American
blues singer Johnny Copeland’s “Every Dog’s Got His Day”); John
Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River (Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue”);
and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot (Talking Heads, “Once In A
Lifetime”).

d. Explanatory/Commenting Function

While affirmative epigraphs (see above) function as amplifiers of a

given text, explanatory epigraphs serve to elucidate that text. Without
them, understanding the text might appear difficult, in some extreme
cases even impossible (although that is rather a theoretical case).
According to Genette, the epigraph explains either title or text (156);
he adds that the explanation must not necessarily be unambiguously
clear, but can also be rather enigmatic. Berger’s more nuanced account
distinguishes between six different explanatory relationships: that of
epigraph and the following text; the plot; the general theme; charac-
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 249

ters; setting; and “other constituent parts” (388). Tye adds another
form of relationship, that of the text toward itself. In such cases the
author uses the epigraph to “address the reader on the technical prob-
lems of writing” (244). The explanatory function of such metatextual
epigraphs is therefore self-reflexive.
Whenever the epigraph suggests a certain interpretation of the fol-
lowing text, its function is not so much explanatory, but rather that of
making a commentary. Such epigraphs are indeed often used to con-
vey moral lessons. Tye identifies direct moral comments in many of
Eliot’s epigraphs, such as the prose motto prefixed to chapter 39 of
Felix Holt,23 which “undoubtedly provided her [Eliot] with an addi-
tional opportunity to exert the moral force of her medium without
intrusion in propria persona where she might have felt such intrusion
inappropriate” (239). Grutman agrees with Tye’s interpretation when
he describes epigraphs as “ideal vehicles for ideological messages”
(293). At any rate, such explanatory, commenting epigraphs demon-
strate the independence of the motto from the main text, even show-
ing that sometimes the main text seems to depend on the epigraph.
Such cases provide the most obvious evidence of the epigraph’s sur-
passing the status of the merely ornamental, but these clear cases are
rare indeed.

e. Proleptic vs. Analeptic Function

In his brief analysis of the epigraphs in H. C. Andersen’s novels, Søren

Kierkegaard expresses his reservations about mottoes that only sum-
marize the content of the following chapter.24 One must not necessar-
ily share Kierkegaard’s critique, for even when the epigraph really
does summarize, it usually relates to the following chapter, i.e. it
foreshadows its content. These epigraphs therefore have a proleptic
function, anticipating either certain elements of the following plot,
aspects of particular characters, thematic strata, or even textual strate-
gies. My research has not yielded a single example of an epigraph that
250 EIKE KRONSHAGE

could be considered a “dull general statement” of a precursory plot

summary, as Kierkegaard obviously regarded the epigraphs in An-
dersen’s novels, when he dismissed them, polemically, as
“Selbstzweck” (50; German in the original). What Kierkegaard really
seems to condemn is the epigraph-effect (see above), and not the fact
that epigraphs sometimes do relate to and foreshadow something of
the following chapter (which, as Kierkegaard acknowledges, may well
be a meaningful literary device, if properly done; see 49).
Since the reader does not know whether a given epigraph is in fact
proleptic, he or she may be induced to make suppositions concerning
the subsequent text; and yet such suppositions are, as already stated,
rarely unambiguous. The autographic epigraph to chapter 8 of Daniel
Deronda, for instance, speaks both of young people’s joys and sorrows,
without making explicit which of these two aspects will turn out to be
dominant in the chapter proper (it is in fact sorrow or, more precisely,
Rex’s first experience of lovesickness):

What name doth Joy most borrow

When life is fair?
To-morrow.
What name doth best fit Sorrow
In young despair?
To-morrow. (83)

The joy of a “fair” life that projects all its hopes to an indistinct “To-
morrow” is not, as the reader will soon find out, a prolepsis, an antici-
pation of Rex’s bliss of love. Rather, the first part of the epigraph is an
analepsis, referring back to the previous chapter, which presents Rex
as “a youthful lover” who, in his “spring of joy,” regards Gwendolen
as the “object of his love” (68). The epigraph therefore works in two
different directions, backwards in time (toward chapter 7), and for-
wards in time (toward chapter 8), while it simultaneously highlights
the structural similarity of both chapters, as well as of hopes and
sorrows of youthful love. Epigraphs that unite both the proleptic and
analeptic function occur conspicuously often in the novels of George
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 251

Eliot, though more usually one of the two functions seems to be

dominant in literary epigraphs. However, the epigraph in question is
not made redundant by simply being a distillate of the longer narra-
tive that is about to follow in the ensuing text; rather, it has a certain
“guiding function” (see Berger 384),25 structuring the material. This
also implies the possibility of a conscious confusion of the reader; the
guiding function then becomes a “misguiding function,” for instance,
when a seemingly proleptic epigraph in fact serves an ironic pur-
pose—which may be interpreted as another form of the conscious
game between author and reader that I mentioned above (see also
Grutman 293).

f. Emotional vs. Intellectual Function

The distinction between the emotional and the intellectual function is

less clear-cut than the others. Both functions may even overlap with
the other functions of the epigraph at certain points. It may therefore
also be regarded as complementary to the former distinctions. Genette
treats it as such when he distinguishes between the emotional and
intellectual effects of the explanatory epigraph (158), whereas Böhm
interprets them as distinct, autonomous categories: emotional attune-
ment (“emotionale Einstimmung”; 115) and rational preparation
(“rationale Vorbereitung”; 122). Böhm’s former category is consistent
with Kierkegaard’s more positive account of the ideal epigraph’s
power as a “prelude which may get the reader into a certain mood.”26
The latter features only en passant in Kierkegaard’s theory of the epi-
graph as a “relationship [forhold] to the entire passage” (49; my trans-
lation). Kierkegaard’s dialectical use of the Danish word forhold (rela-
tionship27) proves that he also understands the (intellectual) relation-
ship between epigraph and text as dialectical. Higdon expresses a
similar thought in his reference to a letter from George Eliot to
Frederic Harrison (The George Eliot Letters 4: 300-01), when he writes:
252 EIKE KRONSHAGE

“The epigraphs often cite the ‘spirit’ which the chapter develops as
‘flesh’” (Higdon 140).28 Without the epigraph, Higdon seems to imply,
the chapter sometimes would be nothing but “flesh” (or “spiritless”
flesh), while, without the flesh of the actual chapter, the epigraph
would lose its sensual certainty (“sinnliche Gewissheit” in Hegel’s
terminology; see Phänomenologie des Geistes 82 et passim). In this con-
text, Böhm’s idea of the intellectual dimension of the epigraph as
rational preparation must be extended; the epigraph not only prepares
the reader for the (complex and intricate) argument that is about to
follow, but is already part of the very argument itself (in the dialecti-
cal process described by Kierkegaard and Higdon). A case in point is
Eliot’s autographic motto to chapter 16 of Daniel Deronda, which be-
gins with the words, “Men, like planets, have both a visible and an
invisible history” (164). The chapter itself, however, tells us about
Deronda’s visible history, his “education [as] an English gentleman”
(172), while only slightly hinting at the existence of the invisible part
of his biography (his Jewish ancestry). The chapter therefore seems to
contradict the theory formulated in the epigraph, establishing a dia-
lectical relation (Kierkegaard’s forhold) between the two, leaving its
final import in suspense for another 35 chapters.
The emotional aspect pertains either to the reader or to certain strata
of the text itself, although it is often difficult to keep these two levels
separate. The above-mentioned example of how the “crown of sor-
row” in chapter 17 of Daniel Deronda is meant to set the reader in the
right mood for the ensuing description of Mirah Lapidoth’s attempted
suicide, illustrates Böhm’s concept of “emotionale Einstimmung”
(115). At the same time, as Tye remarks, epigraphs also “reflect the
mood and temperament of the principal character of the chapter, in
the form of introspection” (239). Tye gives examples from Eliot’s Felix
Holt, where the epigraphs describe the feeling of a character in the
chapter: Ch. 1, Mrs. Transome; Ch. 14, Mr. Lyon; Ch. 41, Esther (see
Tye 240). These examples clearly demonstrate that the idea of the
reader’s emotional attunement by and of the reflection of a character’s
emotions through the epigraph often go hand in hand.
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 253

3. Epigraphs as Indicators of Literary History

The literary epigraph may be considered a symptom of a particular

historical constellation, development or occurrence, especially since its
history is a relatively short one. Genette provides a substantial histori-
cal survey (144-49), demonstrating that the earliest canonic examples
only date back to the late seventeenth century. Long into the eight-
eenth century, classical Latin epigraphs prevailed, although they
were, as Genette points out, mostly prefixed to philosophical, (au-
to)biographical or scientific texts, and not to fictional ones. During the
period of the “rise of the novel,” as Ian Watt has termed it, only a
handful of novels were preceded by epigraphs, for instance, Rous-
seau’s epistolary novel La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), Fielding’s Tom Jones
(1749), and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67). Epigraphs achieved the
status of a common literary device only in the days of the English
Gothic novel. Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), for instance,
contains not only a book epigraph, but also continuous chapter epi-
graphs. Moreover, Radcliffe exclusively chooses quotes from British
poets (i.e. heterogeneric and homolinguistic quotes): Shakespeare,
Milton, Pope, Collins, Thomson, and others. This also partly explains
the additional title to Radcliffe’s novel: The Mysteries of Udolpho: A
Romance. Interspersed With Some Pieces of Poetry.
As mentioned above, the literary epigraph clearly reached its pre-
liminary climax with the novels of Sir Walter Scott, who used them in
all of his novels except Waverley. With the broad success of Scott, other
European writers soon began to employ the chapter epigraph as
literary device. The later generation of realist writers, however,
dropped the epigraph almost completely. There are no chapter epi-
graphs in Austen, Balzac, Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thackeray,
Trollope, Flaubert, and Zola. This may be seen as marking the differ-
ence between romantic fiction and these novelists’ realist writing, as
well as their awareness of the radical departure from the (still basi-
cally Aristotelian) poetic rules of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
century literature. Instead of chapter epigraphs, realist writers pre-
254 EIKE KRONSHAGE

ferred the use of brief and descriptive (and largely proleptic) chapter
titles; this is the practice in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist,
David Copperfield; in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair; in Trollope’s Barchester
novels; and in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. There are also chapter
titles in the early novels of George Eliot, in Adam Bede (1859), The Mill
on the Floss (1860), and Romola (1862-63), although Eliot had originally
intended to use chapter epigraphs in Romola.
Considering the predominance of chapter titles in the time between
1832 (Scott’s death) and 1866 (the publication of Felix Holt, Eliot’s fifth
novel and the first of novels to contain chapter epigraphs), it can justly
be said that Eliot revived and promoted a literary device that had
been out of fashion for almost thirty-five years. The epigraph to her
Gothic novella The Lifted Veil (1859), for instance, connects the short
novella with the epigraphic tradition of Gothic novels by Ann Rad-
cliffe and C. R. Maturin, simply through its presence. By the mid-
1860s, Eliot was experimenting with new subject matter in her novels,
and with new forms, especially poetry.29 These two distinct reorienta-
tions demonstrate Eliot’s search for new ways of aesthetic expression.
Indeed, her two approaches overlap, at least in one direction, as her
last three novels contain chapter epigraphs (as a new form in a new
genre), and, what is more, an abundance of poetic chapter epigraphs.30
In doing so, Eliot attempted to transcend not only literary genres but
also the historical gap that separated her realist novels from the ro-
mantic, Gothic and proto-realist novels by Radcliffe, Scott, Yonge, and
Bulwer-Lytton.
Literary epigraphs can be seen as symptoms of both an increased
cultural exchange and an increased literary historical consciousness,
and, in Eliot’s case, as her desire to extend cultural horizons. Her
inclusion of epigraphs from non-English poets and writers furthers
the concept of Weltliteratur, a comparative (not competitive) approach
to literature, and an interest in exchange (not exclusion). Eliot’s inter-
textual strategies are as extraordinary as her revival of the literary
epigraph, and, I believe, both have substantially contributed to the
reception of her fiction as a prime example of cosmopolitan open-
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 255

mindedness (see Appiah xv-xvi).31 The combination of both is indeed

unprecedented, providing further evidence for her epigraphs to be
indicators of an increased cultural exchange and of an increased liter-
ary historical consciousness,32 which interprets Weltliteratur as an
organic whole.

Freie Universität Berlin

NOTES
1
For the 1950s, the MLA database lists only nine articles on the novel, three of
which address, in direct response to Leavis, the aspect of the novel’s unity: Mau-
rice Beebe’s article “‘Visions are Creators’: The Unity of Daniel Deronda” (1955);
Jerome Beaty’s article on “Daniel Deronda and the Question of Unity in Fiction”
(1959); and David R. Carroll’s excellent article “The Unity of Daniel Deronda”
(1959).
2
Counting quotes in verse from plays by Shakespeare and others as “poetic
epigraphs,” the exact percentage is 59.5 percent.
3
This is the twentieth poem of the fourth book of Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan,
“Tefkir Nameh, Buch der Betrachtungen.” The poem was added to the Divan in
1827, eight years after the first publication of the text.
4
In his appropriately titled book Unities, H. M. Daleski identifies another unify-
ing technique in Daniel Deronda. He writes “that one sure indication of a unity of
imaginative conception in a given work is the proliferation of analogous situa-
tions in it” (28), interpreting the owning and disowning of the forsaken child as
“the core situation that, repeated again and again, functions to relate everything
in the book to everything else” (32).
5
The content of epigraphs varies so widely that it is not expedient to bring
about a list of its dominant content-related characteristics. In a given novel,
however, it sometimes seems that certain topics dominate the numerous epi-
graphs. J. R. Tye, for instance, has made a strong argument for the metadiscursive
function of literary epigraphs in Daniel Deronda, by showing that their content is
often poetry itself, or rather “the technical problems of writing” (244).
6
O my God,
—Thou hast knowledge, only Thou,
How dreary ‘tis for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires
And hear the nations praising them far off
(Aurora Leigh, 5.434-41; qtd. in Gaskell 1).
256 EIKE KRONSHAGE

7
Barrett Browning’s phrasing is very close to the additions to the Book of
Esther, i.e. Esther’s prayer (Esther 4:38-39 and 4:43): “open the mouths of the
nations for the praise […] O Lord!” and “You have knowledge of all things” (The
New Revised Standard Version). Seen in this light, Gaskell’s choice seems hardly
accidental, given the importance of Esther’s predecessor, Queen Vasthi, for
Charlotte Brontë (see Villette, ch. 23: “Vashti”). For further discussion of Brontë’s
Vashti, see Johnson.
8
“I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to dis-
cover apposite mottos, and [instead] I drew on my memory as long as I could,
and, when that failed, eked it out with invention” (Scott 144).
9
David Leon Higdon’s affiliation of Eliot’s allographic epigraphs with certain
formal characteristics of the main text seems unconvincing. He writes that
“chapters entailing recognitions, confrontations, and reversals almost without
exception bear epigraphs from authors other than George Eliot” (Higdon 128). His
theory is vulnerable to counterexamples: the central (first) confrontation of
Deronda with his mother in chapter 51, for instance, which also includes the
central revelation that Deronda in fact is Jewish, is preceded by an autographic
motto.
10
As Elena Anastasaki demonstrates in her article on E. A. Poe in this issue of
Connotations, the epigraph to Poe’s short story “Ligeia” is ascribed to Joseph
Glanvill, while it is in fact by Poe himself.
<http://www.connotations.de/debanastasaki0232.htm>.
11
58 percent of all epigraphs in Daniel Deronda are allographic, with the remain-
ing 42 percent being autographic. The distribution of ascribed/unascribed epi-
graphs (see below) largely follows the number of allographic/autographic ones.
Eliot’s letters and notebooks shed no light on the question of whether she was
forced (like Scott) to invent epigraphs because of her being pressed for time. That
is, however, not unlikely, as her novels were published in separate installments,
and she was still working on the last installments when the first ones were out
already and readers and critics alike discussed the possible outcome of the plot.
Daniel Deronda, for instance, was published in eight monthly installments between
February and September 1876, yet Eliot only finished the entire book on 8 June
1876, i.e. after the publication of the fifth installment (see Haight 482-85).
12
Walter Graham identifies an impressively large number of such epigraphs:
“[i]n novels following the Antiquary, Scott quoted from ‘Old Play’ ninety-one
times, ‘Old Ballad’ twenty times, ‘Old Song’ seven times, ‘Anonymous’ (which
was probably employed in the same way) twenty-five times, ‘Old Poem’ once,
and ‘Ancient Drama’ once; and in nearly every case the motto is believed by
[John] Dennis and other editors to be the novelist’s own work” (16).
13
See, for instance, the omission of the second stanza of a poem by William
Blake, which Eliot used as an epigraph to chapter 25 of Middlemarch.
14
See, for instance, the unfinished sentence in chapter 3 of Middlemarch, a quo-
tation from Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Say, goddess, what ensued, when Raphaël,
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 257

The affable archangel, had forewarned

Adam, by dire example, to beware
Apostasy […] (Paradise Lost vii.40-43; my italics)
Eliot breaks off the quotation after “archangel,” leaving out the rest of the sen-
tence (here in italics).
15
The manuscript contains chapter epigraphs for the first nine chapters of Ro-
mola, or at least leaves a blank space at the top of the first page of each chapter for
later insertion of an epigraph. Before publication, however, she abandoned the
idea and replaced the already existing epigraphs with descriptive chapter titles.
16
Joseph Conrad’s novels contain many book epigraphs in foreign languages,
for instance An Outcast of the Islands (Calderón de la Barca quoted in Spanish) and
Almayer’s Folly (Henri-Frédéric Amiel quoted in French), which contribute to the
international settings in the Malay Archipelago. Other modernist writers also
preferred epigraphs in foreign languages, as can be seen in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste
Land (Dante, Italian), Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (Psalms, Latin), and
Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Nemesianus, Latin).
17
For an extensive analysis of the number of “foreign novels in British circulat-
ing libraries (1766-1861),” see Moretti 148-58, esp. fig. 70.
18
Some scholars have expressed their reservations about an overly assertive
interpretation of cultural exchange in the nineteenth century. Rainier Grutman,
for instance, recently called into question the idea of a growing literary network.
He writes: “We should therefore […] question the idea that the mere fact of
quoting foreign writers guarantees knowledge of or even familiarity with foreign
literatures. It might well be a self-serving gesture, used to delineate national
spaces and thereby reaffirm borders rather than abolish them” (292).
19
Another imminent danger is that epigraphs may well encompass a broader
semantic horizon than intended and thus take on a life of their own, even to the
extent that such epigraphs develop “unforeseen and undesired effects” (Berger
396).
20
“[…] who has sighing made of his palm a bed for his cheek” (Purgatorio 7.107-
08).
21
One definition in the OED understands “contrast” in aesthetic contexts as the
“juxtaposition of varied forms, colours, etc., so as to heighten by comparison the
effect of corresponding parts and of the whole composition” (II.2.a).
22
It also invites the reader to compare Gwendolen’s character to that of Beatrice,
who is the person spoken of in the epigraph—and also indirectly spoken to, since
Hero knows that the hidden Beatrice is listening to her conversation with Ursula.
23
“No man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill—as a just idea of
the solar system, or the power of painting flesh, or of reading written harmo-
nies—can come late and of a sudden; yet many will not stick at believing that
happiness can come at any day and hour solely by a new disposition of events;
though there is naught less capable of a magical production than a mortal’s
happiness, which is mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions not to
258 EIKE KRONSHAGE

be wrought by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of fortune’s wheel for
one on whose brow Time has written legibly” (371).
24
“[…] et fadt almindeligt Udsagn om det, som Capitlet indeholder” (48) [a dull
general statement about that which the chapter contains; my translation].
25
Berger seems to think of the reader-response criticism of the Constance School
when he describes the “guiding function” of the epigraph as one that “has to
rouse the reader’s expectation and to draw his attention to a particular issue”
(384). Shortly before, he briefly discusses Rainer Warning’s “aesthetics of the
reader,” although he does not make explicit this reference in his discussion of the
epigraphs’ guiding function.
26
My English translation of: “[…] et Motto […] bør ligesom præludere og
derved sætte Læserne i en bestemt Stemning” (48). Kierkegaard’s description of
the epigraph’s effect is saturated with musical metaphors: “musicalske Magt,”
“præludere,” “Stemning,” “Stemningens Temperatur,” and “den Rhythmus,
hvori Afsnittet er skrevet” [“musical power … to prelude … mood/tuning …
temperament … the rhythm in which the passage is written”]. This circumstance
links his analysis particularly well to my discussion of the organic function of
poetic epigraphs in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (see above).
27
See the famous opening paragraph of The Sickness Unto Death (Sygdommen til
Døden, 1849).
28
The dialectical opposition refers to scripture: “For the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other:
so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (King James Bible, Galatians 5:17).
29
Right after the publication of Romola in 1863, she began writing the verse play
The Spanish Gypsy (published in 1868). In 1869, she simultaneously wrote her
“Brother and Sister” sonnets, the quite well-known poem “Armgart,” and
Middlemarch, while in the years after that she sat down to write “The Legend of
Jubal and Other Poems” (published 1874) and her final novel Daniel Deronda
(published 1876). In the light of the particular function that the poetic epigraph
fulfills in her last novel, the simultaneity of poetry writing and the inclusion of
epigraphs in Eliot’s late work hardly seem coincidental.
30
As Leah Price has shown in her excellent analysis of the many editions of
Alexander Main’s Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse Selected from
the Works of George Eliot (first published in 1870/71), Eliot was quite aware of the
anthologization of her own poetry and poetic epigraphs (Price 145-47). In a letter,
she once wrote, “there should be a good sprinkling of the best quotations from my
Poems and poetical mottoes” (The George Eliot Letters 6: 431).
31
As Kwame Anthony Appiah has correctly observed, Eliot calls any form of
naïve impartial ethics into question by presenting the moral shortcomings of a
main character to whom “tolerance was the easiest attitude” (Daniel Deronda 545).
Only at the end of the novel is Deronda able to leave the “mazes of impartial
sympathy” and to choose “with that noble partiality which is man’s best strength,
the close fellowship that makes sympathy practical” (Daniel Deronda 745).
 Poetic Epigraphs in Daniel Deronda 259
32
While Grutman’s general skepticism does not necessarily apply to Eliot’s use
of epigraphs, Ginsburg in this context strikes another note against any overly
affirmative interpretation of the relation Eliot establishes to a past tradition
through her epigraphs. Ginsburg concedes that “[t]he use of epigraphs establishes
a relation between the text and a past tradition.” She adds the cautionary remark
that “the relation to the past in George Eliot is never unambiguous,” and that in
her novels every “acceptance of the past is also a rejection. On the thematic, as on
the formal level (in the epigraphs), there is not, in the novels of George Eliot, a
simple rejection, or a simple acceptance of past and tradition” (547-49). I agree
with Ginsburg’s interpretation and add that she points out the dialectics of Eliot’s
method. It is dialectic insofar that it sublates the past tradition in the double sense
of the Hegelian word Aufhebung: as preservation and annihilation.

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‘Ligeia’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Connotations 23.2 (2013/2014):
207-29. See also <http://www.connotations.de/debanastasaki0232.htm>.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. London:
Penguin, 2006.
Aristotle. Poetics. Classical Literary Criticism. Trans. T. S. Dorsch and Penelope
Murray. Ed. Penelope Murray. London: Penguin, 2004. 57-97.
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. Aurora Leigh. Ed. Margaret Reynolds. New York:
Norton, 1996.
Beaty, Jerome. “Daniel Deronda and the Question of Unity in Fiction.” The Victorian
Newsletter 15 (1959): 16-20.
Beebe, Maurice. “‘Visions are Creators’: The Unity of Daniel Deronda.” Boston
University Studies in English (BUSE) 1 (1955): 166-77.
Berger, Dieter A. “‘Damn the Mottoe’: Scott and the Epigraph.” Anglia 100 (1982):
373-96.
Böhm, Rudolf. Das Motto in der englischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts. München:
Fink, 1975.
Booth, Wayne C[layton]. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1975.
Carroll, David R. “The Unity of Daniel Deronda.” Essays in Criticism 9 (1959): 369-
80.
Dahlhaus, Carl. Richard Wagners Musikdramen. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996.
Daleski, H. M. Unities: Studies in the English Novel. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P,
1985.
Dante. The Divine Comedy. 3 vols. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling. Oxford: OUP,
1996.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. 1876. Ed. Terence Cave. London: Penguin, 2003.
——. Felix Holt: The Radical. Ed. Lynda Mugglestone. London: Penguin, 1995.
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——. The George Eliot Letters. 9 vols. Ed. Gordon S. Haight. New Haven, CT: Yale
UP, 1954-78.
——. Middlemarch. Ed. David Carroll. Oxford: OUP, 1998.
——. Selected Critical Writing. Ed. Rosemary Ashton. Oxford: OUP, 1992.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Ed. Angus Easson. Oxford: OUP,
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Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cam-
bridge: CUP, 1997.
Ginsburg, Michael Peled. “Pseudonym, Epigraphs, and Narrative Voice: Middle-
march and the Problem of Authorship.” ELH 47.3 (1980): 542-58.
Graham, Walter. “Notes on Sir Walter Scott.” Modern Language Notes 30.1 (1915):
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Grutman, Rainier. “Quoting Europe: Mottomania in the Romantic Age.” Time
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Procházka and Ondřej Pilný. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2005. 281-95.
Haight, Gordon S[herman]. George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Penguin, 1968.
Hardy, Barbara. “Imagery in George Eliot’s Last Novels.” Modern Language Review
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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ed. Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986.
Higdon, David Leon. “George Eliot and the Art of the Epigraph.” Nineteenth-
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Johnson, Patricia E. “‘This Heretic Narrative’: The Strategy of the Split Narrative
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Kierkegaard, Søren. Af en endnu Levendes Papirer. 1838. SKS-E 1.6. Ed. Niels Jørgen
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 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Poetry and Poeticity in Joyce’s “The Dead,”

Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris, and Yehuda Amichai1*

DAVID FISHELOV

In this article I analyze various aspects of poeticity in James Joyce’s

“The Dead,” especially in its concluding paragraph. To illustrate my
general argument about the multi-faceted relationships between
poetry and prose, I also examine three paragraphs from Baudelaire’s
Le Spleen de Paris and two poems by Amichai, which deliberately
problematize the conventional distinction between poetry and prose.
Whereas the notion of poeticity is difficult to define, it is still a useful
term for analyzing a variety of poetic texts, and it is especially perti-
nent to different kinds of “amalgamation” of poetry and prose. The
term poeticity refers to the place in which certain linguistic patterns of
parallelism and/or tense semantic relations of incongruity and para-
doxes meet an attentive reader tuned to these textual characteristics.
Thus, it is a complex notion that involves formal, semantic, and prag-
matic aspects. If certain textual qualities are lacking, it will be difficult
for a reader to experience the text’s poeticity; without an attentive
reader, the text’s poeticity could be lost despite the fact that the text
contains certain formal and semantic features. The term refers to the
complex process by which a string of words is endowed with a poetic
“aura,” and can thus help us understand how prose is “transformed”
into poetry.
When Roman Jakobson describes poeticity, he leaves, at one point,
straightforward language and turns to an analogy that I find quite
suggestive:

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debfishelov0232.htm>.
262 DAVID FISHELOV

For the most part poeticity is only a part of a complex structure, but it is a
part that necessarily transforms the other elements and determines with
them the nature of the whole. In the same way, oil is neither a complete dish
in and of itself nor a chance addition to the meal, a mechanical component; it
changes the taste of food and can sometimes be so penetrating that a fish
packed in oil has begun to lose, as in Czech, its original genetic name,
sardinka (sardine), and is being baptized anew as olejovka (olej-, oil- + ovka, a
derivational suffix). Only when a verbal work acquires poeticity, a poetic
function of a determinative significance, can we speak of poetry. (Jakobson,
“What Is Poetry” 378)

The heterogeneity of the examples chosen in the following discussion

illustrates how poeticity “emerges” from texts differing in language
and specific literary traditions as well as in their formal framing: a
long short-story (Joyce), a self-declared hybrid of poetry-in-prose
(Baudelaire), and texts printed as half poems and half prose para-
graphs (Amichai). Still, all these modern texts evoke (or, at the very
least, attempt to evoke) a poetic effect that challenges traditional
distinctions of poetry and prose. To paraphrase Jakobson’s analogy:
all these texts turn prosaic sardinka into poetic olejovka. Furthermore, as
I will show, they all use two kinds of “oil” to produce poeticity: lin-
guistic patterns of parallelism and deep semantic contrasts, notably
paradox. In many cases, we encounter both of these two textual ele-
ments, but sometimes one of them is dominant. When deep semantic
contrasts are developed in a text, the role of an attentive reader be-
comes more important for detecting the poetic effect, i.e. poeticity. In
other words, these two kinds of “oil,” especially the one that involves
deep semantic relations, need an attentive reader to activate them.2
Thus, in the following discussion about the meeting ground of poetry
and prose, I attempt to integrate the work of Jakobson (1960) about the
important role of linguistic patterns of parallelism for creating
poeticity with Brooks’s emphasis on the place of deep semantic con-
trasts, notably paradox, in the language of poetry, and, finally, with an
awareness of the active role played by readers (Culler) in producing
the mysterious, yet quite familiar effect of poeticity.
 Poetry and Poeticity 263

Poeticity in the Conclusion of Joyce’s “The Dead”

Anyone who has read Joyce’s “The Dead” will have noticed that it is
full of music and poetry: characters play the piano, listen to music,
sing popular songs, talk about the opera, prepare to recite lines from a
poem, and reminisce about a song associated with a young, dead
lover. The text itself is also rich in alliteration, repetition, figurative
language, recurring motifs, and parallelism, at least some of which are
considered poetic devices and associated with the poetic function
because they call attention to the text qua text rather than to the fic-
tional world created in the text (cf. Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poet-
ics”).3 Furthermore, despite the fact that “The Dead” is a relatively
long short-story, not much happens in the present time of the story,
and the action that does happen is quite disconnected and episodic :
there is a Christmas party in the house of two elderly sisters, Kate and
Julia Morkan; their nephew Gabriel Conroy and Gretta, his wife,
attend the party and meet several old acquaintances; there are ex-
changes of words between different characters; music is played; par-
ticipants dance; sit down to eat; Gabriel delivers his welcome speech
to the gathering; he and Gretta return to the hotel in which they are
staying; they have a short conversation about an episode from
Gretta’s youth: she was in love with a young man (Michael Furey),
and, despite the fact that Furey was very sick at the time, he came to
part from her before she went into a convent in Dublin, and he died
soon afterwards.
The fact that no dramatic event takes place during the present story
time, and the fact that the story focuses on Gabriel’s inner world,
together with the poetic qualities of the text mentioned above—all
encourage the reader to further concentrate on minute textual details
and on small emotional and semantic nuances, characteristics that are
traditionally associated with lyric poetry (see Freedman; Todorov, “A
Poetic Novel”). This specific combination of a minimally developed
plot and poetic qualities has made the story not only a masterpiece of
264 DAVID FISHELOV

modernism but can also teach us something about the meeting

ground of poetry and fiction.
I would like to argue that, in addition to several formal and struc-
tural qualities that are usually associated with poetry, there is another
element that contributes to the story’s overall poetic effect. This ele-
ment lies in the unexpected semantic relationships suggested between
two contrasting poles, inviting the reader to see one pole through the
lenses of its opposite, and ultimately merging the two into a unifying,
paradoxical whole. When we discuss the poeticity of fictional texts we
need to distinguish between these two elements: formal and structural
devices, on the one hand, and deep semantic relationships, on the
other. These two elements are frequently connected and reinforce one
another, as in Joyce’s “The Dead.” Nevertheless, an overall poetic
effect, in verse or in prose fiction, can sometimes emerge without a
conspicuous use of formal devices or a noticeable poetic structure.4 In
a complementary manner, the use of certain poetic forms (e.g. meter,
rhyme) does not guarantee, in and of itself, attaining an overall poetic
effect.5
These two related but autonomous dimensions can be found in the
concluding paragraph of Joyce’s “The Dead.” Let us first read it care-
fully, preferably even read it out loud:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun
to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling
obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his
journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all
over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the
treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward,
softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, up-
on every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay
buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the
spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he
heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like
the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. (Joyce, Dublin-
ers 223-24)
 Poetry and Poeticity 265

Many critics have discussed the “epiphany” and the symbolism of the
conclusion of “The Dead.”6 The fact that the narrator does not offer a
comment or clue leaves room for different ways to interpret the con-
cluding scene: we could interpret the conclusion as Gabriel’s moment
of redemption, a moment in which he transcends his personal feel-
ings, frustrations, and limitations and connects to the universe. How-
ever, we could also suggest a more skeptical or cynical reading: in-
stead of facing his true, hurt feelings after discovering Gretta’s love
for Michael Furey, Gabriel escapes to the vague, metaphysical gener-
alizations presented in the concluding paragraph. Regardless of our
specific interpretation of Gabriel’s psyche, I would like to argue that
the story’s conclusion evokes a distinct sense of poeticity, a feeling
that transcends a regular, “prosaic” mode of narration.7
What is the source of the poetic effect of this passage? First, we can
detect in these lines several patterns that are many times associated
with poetry, first and foremost intensive patterns of repetition and
parallelism: repetition of sounds or alliteration (e.g. the sound /s/ is
repeated thirty times, the sound /f/ twenty-two times); repetition of
words (e.g. “falling”—seven times; “snow”—three times; “dark”—
three times); repetition of phrases in chiastic form: “falling
softly/softly falling,” “falling faintly/faintly falling.” Verbal repeti-
tions, especially those of complete words and strings of words, help
establish the rhythm of the text. The cumulative effect created by repeti-
tion of sounds, words, and phrases is usually observed in poetry and
poetic texts.
The “Yes” in the concluding paragraph of “The Dead” (“Yes, the
newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland”) indicates
Joyce’s use of free indirect style, i.e. the narrator integrates into his
narration elements that are part of Gabriel’s thoughts and words. This
“Yes” may remind us of another place in which the word was used by
Joyce: the conclusion of Ulysses. In the culmination of Molly Bloom’s
interior monologue, the “yes” plays a major part in creating the text’s
rhythm. As we approach the very last sentences of the novel, the
266 DAVID FISHELOV

repetition of “yes” creates a rapid, intense, almost ecstatic rhythm of

incantation:

and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all
the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the
rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as
a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my
hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he
kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another
and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me
would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around
him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume
yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (Joyce,
Ulysses 704; my added emphases)

The units (or “building blocks”) used to create rhythm in poetry,

notably in structured patterns of meter, are syllables. In prose, on the
other hand, the linguistic units used more often to create rhythm are
larger: words and sentences. Needless to say, these two options for
creating rhythm are not mutually exclusive: a poem that uses a regu-
lated metric pattern (e.g. iambic pentameter) can also employ the
repetition of larger units (e.g. words and sentences) to achieve differ-
ent rhythmic and semantic effects (e.g. to emphasize certain themes,
etc.). In a complementary manner, we can sometimes detect in prose
fiction a pattern formed by syllables (e.g. a paragraph written in iam-
bic pentameter), but such cases are relatively rare, and when they
occur they will probably be perceived as “poetic.”
As we have seen, the concluding paragraph of “The Dead” is rich
with linguistic patterns of repetition that create its rhythm. These
linguistic repetitions, however, are not necessarily structured sound
patterns associated with poetry (i.e. meter and rhyme). In addition to
the repetition of sounds, of words, and of strings of words, there are
also interesting repetitions on the semantic level. These can be de-
scribed as building up the motif of death or, in linguistic terms, of the
occurrence of words that are associated with the semantic field of
death. Before the actual word “dead” appears as the story’s final word
(“upon the living and the dead”), there are several words in the para-
 Poetry and Poeticity 267

graph that are linked metaphorically or metonymically to death,

either directly (e.g. “dark,” “buried,” “barren”) or indirectly (e.g.
“falling”—seven times, “treeless”).
Thus far, we have established that the passage is replete with repeti-
tions (of sounds and words), and with words associated with the
semantic field of death, and we can describe these formal and seman-
tic forms of parallelism as one source of our sense of the text’s poetic-
ity. There is yet another, more elusive source of the text’s poeticity
which lies at a deeper semantic level and requires a more active read-
ing. The fact that this layer is below the text’s surface does not, how-
ever, make it less effective: it stems from a latent invitation to readers
to consider how death might be related to its antonym, life; in other
words, the passage juxtaposes life and death in ways that unsettle this
well-entrenched opposition.8
The story’s concluding phrase—“upon all the living and the dead”
—explicitly states two poles of a binary opposition. Words associated
with the semantic field of death not only pervade the passage before
the word is stated but also “color” neutral words that are associated to
them in the continuum of the text. Thus, for example, the image of
“spears of the little gate” acquires deadly overtones because it is
interpolated between a graveyard’s “headstones” and “barren
thorns.” Furthermore, since snow is portrayed in the paragraph as
“the great equalizer” (i.e. death), since snow can freeze life, and since
its color, white, may also symbolize death—the sense of death seems
to engulf the entire passage and the whole universe.
This intense sense of death, however, is not the whole story. An at-
tentive reading may also detect several elements in the paragraph that
are associated—directly or indirectly, literally or metaphorically—
with life. It is true that these elements are scarce, but nevertheless they
are there. The “mutinous Shannon waves” (my added emphases), for
example, connote something rebellious, and vital, which is definitely
the opposite of deadly stagnation. Note also that, while snow is freez-
ing (hence death), because water and snow are the same natural ele-
ment, differing only in (physical) state, we can realize that the over-
268 DAVID FISHELOV

whelming blanket of white snow that falls upon Ireland will eventu-
ally turn into fresh water, i.e., a source of life and growth (perhaps
even adding strength to the “mutinous Shannon waves”). Thus, the
deadening snow can also be perceived as one stage in the overall cycle
of life.
The most intriguing element in creating unpredictable, paradoxical
relationships between life and death can be found in the mentioning
of Michael Furey. Needless to say, as far as Michael’s body is con-
cerned, he is definitely dead. But is he indeed dead? The startling
discovery that Gabriel makes during the evening about the place that
Michael still has in Gretta’s heart suggests that physical death is not
necessarily the end. A dead person (perhaps especially a dead per-
son?) can be very much alive in the minds and hearts of the living.
Thus, the binary opposition of life and death is questioned and reshuf-
fled. The text suggests that we see the two terms of the opposition (life
and death) as part of something larger than both, wherein life is fol-
lowed by death, which is then followed by life. Furthermore, we are
invited to see the two opposing terms as co-existence: every moment
of life is also a moment of death, and every moment of death is also a
moment of life, with no “pure life” followed by “pure death.”
A recurrent theme in “The Dead” and in Dubliners in general is that
of the different forms of death-in-life: the unauthentic, frightened,
paralyzed, stagnated mode of life is associated with many characters
in Dubliners, Gabriel included. In a complementary manner, perhaps
in a minor key, there are also moments when we are invited to con-
sider the possibility of its opposite, namely life-in-death, and the
conclusion of “The Dead” is one such moment, especially if we read
the story’s ending as a turning point in Gabriel’s consciousness and
existence. Joyce invites us to entertain the paradox of death-in-life
and, at certain rare moments, also to ponder on life-in-death; and this
fresh perspective on the deeply entrenched binary opposition of life
and death is, I believe, another source of the text’s poeticity. It was
Cleanth Brooks (1947) who suggested that the language of poetry is
the language of paradox, and the concluding paragraph of “The
 Poetry and Poeticity 269

Dead” illustrates this kind of paradoxical language. Note, however,

that the term “language” in Brooks’s discussion does not refer neces-
sarily to explicit paradoxical formulations (e.g. “the last shall be the
first, and the first last”) but, rather, to a deep semantic layer that
underlies, and generates, the text (when a poem “is based on a para-
doxical situation,” Brooks 4). Thus, even when no explicit paradoxical
statements are present, the best way to construct the meaning of the
text is by seeing it as emerging from a deep, underlying paradox—like
in Brooks’s analysis of Wordsworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening,
Calm and Free” or, as I suggest, in the conclusion of Joyce’s “The
Dead.”
One may argue that paradox is but one semantic instance of the
general principle of parallelism in which a term is followed by its
opposite, hence the text continuum is built on the principle of similar-
ity and contrasts (i.e. parallelism), just like any other phenomenon
discussed by Jakobson. Consequently, thus goes the argument, we do
not need two relatively independent principles (parallelism and para-
dox) responsible for producing poeticity, only one (parallelism). This
argument is probably valid when explicit, direct oppositions are
introduced one just after the other (e.g. “The last shall be the first”),
but it will hardly apply to more complex, subtle and indirect para-
doxes discussed here. These paradoxes (a) do not necessarily consist
of direct oppositions, and (b) they require an active act of interpreta-
tion that integrates a variety of semantic elements, some of which are
scattered in different places of the text. Thus, there is a good reason to
maintain the distinction between the two principles, especially be-
cause the one associated with paradox is sometimes responsible for
creating poeticity in cases that lack conspicuous patterns of parallel-
ism.

Poeticity in Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris

To illustrate how poeticity can emerge from conspicuous parallel

structures but also from paradoxical relations on the deep semantic
270 DAVID FISHELOV

level, I present three short passages from the modern locus classicus of
the juxtaposition of poetry and prose: Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris or
Petits Poèmes en prose. Thanks to the prominent position of its author in
modern literature, this collection has probably become the prototypi-
cal attempt to combine poetry and prose fiction. The first passage is
the opening to the first text of the collection, entitled “L’Etranger”
[The Stranger]:

Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère, ta

sœur ou ton frère?
—Je n’ai ni père, ni mère, ni sœur, ni frère. (Baudelaire, Œuvres Complètes
162)

[Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your moth-
er, your sister, or your brother?
—I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.] (Baudelaire,
The Poems and Prose Poems)

In these opening lines we immediately notice a very distinct structure:

the list of four family members is doubly organized in pairs: in terms
of generations, we have two pairs organized in an AABB pattern: two
parents (father, mother) and two siblings (sister, brother); when we
consider the list from the point of view of gender, another, a compet-
ing pair emerges, this time organized in a chiastic pattern of ABBA:
masculine (father), feminine (mother), feminine (sister), masculine
(brother). The rich parallelism does not stop there: the question pre-
sented to the stranger is responded to with an exact repetition of the
four terms, with one negating word (“ni”) prefixed to each of these
terms. Thus, we have condensed patterns of parallelism on both the
formal and the (surface) semantic levels, patterns which Jakobson and
Lévi-Strauss liked so much to analyze in Baudelaire’s poetry
(Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss, “Baudelaire’s Les Chats”). Such patterns
are undoubtedly responsible for creating the poetic effect or poeticity
in Baudelaire’s collection of poetry in prose.
Not all the texts of Le Spleen de Paris contain explicit patterns of par-
allelism (cf. Todorov, “Poetry without Verse”). Let us, for example,
 Poetry and Poeticity 271

take a look at a short paragraph from the text entitled “Les Foules”
(Crowds):

Multitude, solitude: termes égaux et convertibles pour le poète actif et fé-

cond. Qui ne sait pas peupler sa solitude, ne sait pas non plus être seul dans
une foule affairée. (Baudelaire, Œuvres Complètes 170)

[Multitude, solitude: identical terms and interchangeable by the active and

fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable
to be alone in a bustling crowd.] (Baudelaire, Paris Spleen 20)

Here, too, can we detect different forms of parallelism: the paragraph

opens with an indirect opposition that also rhymes (“Multitude, soli-
tude”), it has two words closely related in meaning (“égaux […] con-
vertibles”),9 the second sentence is structured as two parallel halves
(“ne sait […] ne sait”), and there is a network of partial synonyms and
antonyms: “multitude,” “peupler,” and “foule” form a group which is
contrasted to “solitude,” “solitude,” and “être seul.” I would like to
argue, however, that grammatical or linguistic parallelism plays only
a secondary role in creating a poetic effect in this paragraph. What
Baudelaire tells us is that, from a certain point of view, that of the poet
(!), to be alone and to be in a crowd should not be considered any
longer as opposition; rather, they should be treated as interchangeable
(or synonymous) in the “language” of the poem. Someone who is
alone (physically) can still have company (mentally); and someone
who is (physically) part of a crowd can still be very lonely (mentally).
In other words, Baudelaire invites us to reshuffle an ordinary opposi-
tion and to see loneliness-in-company and company-in-loneliness; and
he explicitly links this invitation to the mind of “the active and fertile
poet,” i.e., to a “poetical” perspective that the reader is invited to
share.
Finally, let us take a look at another famous passage from Baude-
laire’s Le Spleen de Paris: the opening lines of “Enivrez-vous” (“Intoxi-
cation” in the 1919 translation):
272 DAVID FISHELOV

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas
sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers
la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-
vous. (Baudelaire, Œuvres Complètes 197)

[One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If
you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders
and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease.
But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But
be drunken.] (Baudelaire, The Poems and Prose Poems)

These emphatic sentences strike the reader twice. First, the opening
categorical declaration that one must be forever drunken (“Il faut être
toujours ivre”) might raise objections, guided by common wisdom
and moral principles: to be drunken occasionally is acceptable, even
forgivable, but to recommend a permanent mode of being (i.e. drunk-
enness) that is inappropriate, degrading, and possibly dangerous is
outrageous. To lessen the shock of the opening declaration, Baudelaire
introduces the existential motivation behind his recommendation: one
should get drunk to soften the acute distress that stems from the
“horrible burden of Time” that “bends you to the earth,” i.e. to death.
In light of this “background information,” the readers’ initial shock is
reduced: what was first perceived as outrageous now appears more
understandable.
The specific list of ways to get drunk offered by Baudelaire creates
yet another surprise: whereas the first element in the list (with wine)
is quite predictable, the second (with poetry) is a bit puzzling. How
does one get drunk on poetry? To make sense of this phrase we may
call to mind images and ideas that associate poetry with high emo-
tional intensity and the transcendence of oneself. These ideas, which
can be traced back to Plato’s portrayal of poets as possessed by divine
madness in Phaedrus, suggest a semantic bridge between getting
drunk and being “intoxicated” with poetry.10 The third element pre-
sented as a means for getting drunk (with virtue) is quite perplexing.
At face value, the two juxtaposed notions—to get drunk with wine
and to be absorbed in virtuous activity or to promote virtue—seem
 Poetry and Poeticity 273

opposites, at least from a social, normative point of view: the former is

a debased form of behavior wherein one indulges; while the latter is a
commendable form of behavior wherein one devotes oneself to high
moral principles existing beyond oneself. By creating this surprising
sequence, a zeugma with a tense, conceit-like quality (i.e. the yoking
together of different ideas under the same grammatical construction),
Baudelaire compels us to view virtuous activity (or the advocacy of
virtue) as a form of intoxication. We are invited to perceive a person
deeply absorbed in virtuous activity as a drunk: both of them go
beyond themselves, they both forget themselves, and they are both
engrossed in an intense, out-of-the-ordinary emotional state. Fur-
thermore, according to Baudelaire, these two seemingly opposite
modes of behavior are basically the same: they are both forms of escape
from the frightening awareness of death.11
True, in addition to the invitation to reshuffle our cognitive and
moral categories and to see one notion through the lenses of a totally
different one (i.e. poetry and virtue as modes of intoxication), one can
also find in Baudelaire’s “Enivrez-vous” several forms of linguistic
parallelism.12 I would like to argue, though, that the passage’s most
powerful effect stems precisely from this innovative, even provocative
invitation. This invitation makes Baudelaire’s text so memorable: we
note the text’s highly suggestive phrasing which compels us to go
back and forth from its chosen words to the provocative ideas they
convey. This unorthodox invitation, produced by the mind of “the
active and fertile poet,” is the special “ingredient” from which poetic-
ity emerges.

Amichai’s Complication of the Poetry-Prose Distinction

During the 1980s the highly regarded (and widely translated) Israeli
poet Yehuda Amichai published several texts that challenge the dis-
tinction between poetry and prose. Although these texts appeared in
volumes of poetry, framed by “regular” poems, they did not use the
274 DAVID FISHELOV

conventional, truncated layout of verse but rather were printed as

paragraphs of prose. Amichai did not, however, abandon in these
texts all markers of poetry: modern Hebrew poems are usually print-
ed with vowel marks (niqqud), and Amichai retained these also in the
justified-margins, prose-like, paragraphs, thus sending mixed signals
as to the text’s “true” nature: published in a collection of poetry and
using vowel marks, but printed in a typical prose layout. Moreover, in
several texts Amichai deliberately calls attention to the distinction
between poetry and prose by printing one part of the text in verse
form (truncated lines with niqqud) and another part in prose layout.
Amichai’s “Tourists,” for example, effectively illustrates this mix-
ture. In this text Amichai addresses experiences and phenomena
familiar to anyone who has either lived in Jerusalem or has visited the
city as a tourist:

1
So condolence visits is what they’re here for,
sitting around at the Holocaust Memorial, putting on a serious face
at the Wailing Wall,
laughing behind heavy curtains in hotel rooms.
They get themselves photographed with the important dead
at Rachel’s Tomb and Herzl’s Tomb, and up on Ammunition Hill.
They weep at the beautiful prowess of our boys,
lust after our tough girls
and hang up their underwear
to dry quickly
in cool blue bathrooms.

2
Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David’s Citadel and I put
down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there
around their guide, and I became their point of reference. “You see that man
over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there’s an arch
from the Roman period. A little to the right of his head.” “But he’s moving,
he’s moving!” I said to myself: Redemption will come only when they are
told, “Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn’t
matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there’s a man who
has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family.” (Amichai, Selected Poems
137-38)
 Poetry and Poeticity 275

The first section (stanzas? paragraphs?) depicts a series of “mandato-

ry” tourist photo ops in Jerusalem. The common denominator of all
these tourist stops is death, i.e. places associated with ancient and
modern wars, destruction and bereavement: be it the Holocaust Me-
morial (Yad Vashem), the remnants of the ancient Temple (Wailing
Wall), a fierce battlefield of the Six-Day War of 1967 (Ammunition
Hill), a tomb from biblical times (Rachel’s tomb), or of modern times
(Herzl’s tomb). The tourists are satirically exposed here, firstly, as
moving through a series of sites in which they display a “standard”
serious appearance, as opposed to showing genuine interest and
authentic, individual reactions. Secondly, and more importantly,
Amichai exposes the contrast between the tourists’ façade and their
true, hidden feelings and likings: between the way in which they “put
on a serious face” at the Wailing Wall and their “laughing behind
heavy curtains in hotel rooms,” between weeping “at the beautiful
prowess of our boys” and lusting “for our tough girls.” Amichai does
not necessarily satirize the tourists’ hidden behavior as such (which
reveals, after all, authentic feelings) but rather their hypocritical be-
havior, the gap between their displayed demeanor and their hidden
genuine feelings.
The second section (paragraph?) develops another contrast. This
time Amichai does not refer to tourists in general (“they”) but, rather,
focuses on a specific situation with a specific group of tourists, their
guide, and the speaker himself (probably representing Amichai). If the
first section creates the impression that Amichai is critical only of the
tourists, the second broadens the scope of the poem’s satire and now
includes tourist guides. Tourists and tourist guides alike seem to
participate in and perpetuate the official and artificial approach to-
wards Jerusalem. This approach puts at its center “solemn” monu-
ments, sacrifice, death, and stones, as opposed to the quotidian lives
of real people in ordinary Jerusalem. The speaker in the poem openly
calls for a total reversal of values: the trivial, day-to-day actions of a
man who takes care of his family, who brings home fruit and vegeta-
bles (i.e. providing for life’s basic needs), should be “put on a pedes-
276 DAVID FISHELOV

tal,” rather than the official monuments. Simple life should be cher-
ished and consecrated rather than the glorified sites of death and
destruction.
According to Amichai, redemption is not an extraordinary, miracu-
lous event that transcends worldly affairs; it is embedded in ordinary,
mundane actions—but only when the latter are recognized to be the
most significant because “a man who has just bought fruit and vege-
tables for his family” represents caring for his family and providing it
with basic needs of life. Note that Amichai chose to express this sur-
prising, paradoxical idea about redemption not in “solemn” poetic
form, but rather in the section that resembles plain prose.13 Thus, in
addition to openly challenging our notions about what constitutes
important places and about what redemption will or at least should
look like, Amichai also challenges the regular hierarchy between
poetry and prose. In our regular expectations poetry is associated with
the elevated, the spiritual, and the profound; and prose with the low,
the material, and the mundane. While the text’s first section with its
truncated lines, conventionally associated with poetry, focuses on
places and practices that are usually perceived as important or pro-
found, this section in fact exposes these places and the social practices
associated with them as shallow, superficial, and stained with hypoc-
risy. It is the second, prose-like section that unexpectedly addresses
profound metaphysical and existential questions. Thus, Amichai
simultaneously challenges our set of social values and the conven-
tional hierarchy between poetry and prose.
I would like to conclude with another text by Amichai that also de-
liberately plays with different aspects of poetry, prose, and poeticity,
“On the Day My Daughter Was Born No One Died”:

On the day my daughter was born not a single person

died in the hospital, and at the entrance gate
the sign said: “Today kohanim14 are permitted to enter.”
And it was the longest day of the year.
In my great joy
I drove with my friend to the hills of Sha’ar Ha-Gai.
 Poetry and Poeticity 277

We saw a bare, sick pine tree, nothing on it but a lot of pine cones. Zvi said
trees that are about to die produce more pine cones than healthy trees. And I
said to him: That was a poem and you didn’t realize it. Even though you’re a
man of the exact sciences, you’ve made a poem. And he answered: And you,
though you’re a man of dreams, have made an exact little girl with all the
exact instruments for her life. (Amichai, Selected Poems 131-32)15

I will not go into a detailed analysis of Amichai’s text. But I would like
to call attention to the way he challenges or problematizes the conven-
tional typography of poetry and prose in this text: the first section,
which is printed in the form of a poem, tells in a prosaic manner a
sequence of events; while the second section, which is printed in the
form of a prose paragraph, contains poetical and meta-poetical state-
ments. Amichai further complicates the opposition between poetry
and prose, because in the seemingly prosaic first section (which uses a
poetic layout), he touches upon personal, emotional moments—
notably giving birth—which are frequently associated with poetry or
at least with lyrical poetry. The first section indirectly but persistently
evokes the charged opposition of life and death: while referring to his
daughter’s birth (hence life) it also evokes death when he mentions
that “not a single person died in the hospital”(my emphasis). Further-
more, the seemingly neutral mention of Sha’ar Ha-Gai, a place on the
way from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, reminds readers (at least Israeli
readers) of scenes of war and death: a memorial composed of burnt-
out armed vehicles is deployed along Sha’ar Ha-Gai to commemorate
the people who were killed in an attempt to reach the blockaded
Jerusalem during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Thus, through its very unorthodox mix of “poetic” and “prosaic”
typography, and through the introduction of “poetic” and “prosaic”
elements into both sections, Amichai invites us to reconsider the fixed
boundaries between poetry and prose and the conventional expecta-
tions associated with these two forms or modes of expression. Fur-
thermore, when Amichai labels his friend’s botanical observation
(“trees that are about to die produce more pine cones than healthy
trees”)—a “poem,” we may wonder what triggered him to say this. I
suggest that Amichai detected in his friend’s words a poetic quality
278 DAVID FISHELOV

because they offer an unexpected, paradoxical relationship between

life and death: “trees that are about to die” can nevertheless exhibit a
final burst of fertility, which is associated with life. The connection
between an invitation to reshuffle fixed oppositions and a sense of
poetic quality or poeticity can be found, yet again, also in Amichai’s
text.

Parallelism, Paradoxes and Poeticity—Conclusion

I began my article with Joyce’s concluding paragraph of “The Dead,”

in which one can detect several linguistic patterns of repetition and in
which the reader is invited to see death-in-life and life-in-death. I then
moved to examine selected passages from Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de
Paris, in which the author uses conspicuous patterns of parallelism,
and the reader is also invited to reshuffle accepted semantic and
cognitive oppositions. I concluded with Amichai’s texts which openly
challenge the conventional layouts of poetry and prose and invite us
to reconsider several fixed oppositions: important places and actions
against mundane ones, life and death, a newborn child and old age,
scientists and poets. In some of the discussed texts, linguistic patterns
of parallelism accompany an overt or a covert invitation to reshuffle
deep semantic oppositions and both seem to join forces in creating the
text’s poeticity (e.g. the conclusion of Joyce’s “The Dead”; Baudelaire’s
“Les Foules”). In some cases, however, the role of linguistic parallel-
ism seems minor—relative to the role played by an unorthodox invita-
tion to reconsider and reshuffle accepted semantic oppositions (e.g.
Baudelaire’s “Enivrez-vous”). In other cases yet, the poetic effect
emerges almost entirely from an explicit invitation to consider the
poeticity embedded in a seemingly prosaic, botanical statement, in
which a paradox is embedded (e.g. Amichai’s “On the Day My
Daughter Was Born No One Died”). Thus, when the two elements—
linguistic parallelism and an invitation to see anew deep semantic
oppositions—are detected, they seem to reinforce each other in creat-
 Poetry and Poeticity 279

ing a poetic effect. An author can, however, create a poetic effect even
without using conspicuous linguistic patterns of parallelism—by
directing the reader’s attention to interesting, unexpected, paradoxical
relations between the two poles of a familiar semantic opposition, as
Amichai does in his texts.
By using poetic and prosaic layouts in the same text, Amichai force-
fully reminds us that the conventional opposition of poetry and prose
is by no means fixed or static.16 There may be prosaic elements in
poetry, and there may be a poetical quality in fiction, or in prose, or in
everyday speech, or even in certain scientific observations; a poetic
quality created by unexpected, paradoxical relationships between
ordinary oppositions. All it takes to detect that poetic quality in such
texts is the attentive mind of a poet or a critic.

The Hebrew University

Jerusalem

NOTES
1
I would like to thank the participants in the discussion following my paper at
the 12th International Connotations Symposium in 2013 for offering useful and
enlightening comments, the two anonymous readers of the article whose critical
comments spurred me to clarify my argument and, last but not least, Matthias
Bauer and Angelika Zirker for their eagle-eyed reading of the manuscript.
2
For the active role played by the reader in detecting and sometimes even con-
struing such poetic qualities, see Culler, especially 188-209.
3
Jakobson’s formulation in his “Linguistics and Poetics” about the linguistic
principle (“the projection of the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection
to the axis of combination” 358) for attaining the poetic function has raised several
objections (e.g. Riffaterre, Ruwett). Critics point out that not every linguistic
parallel participates in creating the poetic function (i.e. focusing readers’ attention
on the text qua text). Furthermore, according to the critics, the poetic function can
be achieved in ways other than the one pointed out by Jakobson (hence, it is not a
necessary condition), and that not every occurrence of the principle of equivalence
achieves the poetic function (hence, it is also not a sufficient condition). Despite
such valid objections, Jakobson’s formulation captures a very important principle
underlying a wide variety of poetic devices that create the poetic function (but not
necessarily its dominance).
280 DAVID FISHELOV

4
In an empirical test conducted with a group of students (Fishelov “The Institu-
tional Approach”), I showed that readers recognize a text’s poeticity (or its “poetic
qualities”) even when the text is presented as a paragraph of prose fiction.
5
Aristotle already pointed out that a treatise on medicine or natural science can
be written in verse but this does not make it a poem, i.e. an artistic text (Aristotle,
Poetics 1447b). The notion of poeticity developed in this essay differs from Aris-
totle’s concept of a poem: the former is associated with the dominance of the
poetic function and/or the offering of “poetical,” paradoxical insight, whereas the
latter is grounded in the notion of mimesis. In both cases verse alone is not
sufficient for constituting a poem or for attaining poeticity.
6
See, for example, the essays by Allen Tate, Kenneth Burke, C. C. Loomis, and
Florence L. Walzl in Joyce, Dubliners.
7
There is interesting indirect evidence for the existence of such a poetic effect in
a YouTube video of the conclusion of John Huston’s adaptation of “The Dead,”
which is closely based on Joyce’s text, with only a few small alterations (e.g.
introducing phrases from previous paragraphs into the concluding paragraph; see
Hollymarg). The person who put this video on YouTube added subtitles that do
not use their conventional format; instead, he or she animated the subtitles in
verse-form, i.e. the lines are truncated with changing length, position, and size
(even color), so that we watch a text that looks much like a poem. Whereas I came
across this YouTube video by sheer accident, the animator’s decision to present
Joyce’s text as a poem is probably no accident: unless we assume that he or she
acted on a whim, it seems likely that it is an attempt to express typographically
the text’s poetic qualities, i.e. that the text has a strong poetic quality, and hence
“deserves” poetic typography.
8
From a broader perspective, this invitation to reconsider and reshuffle estab-
lished semantic categories can be described as another illustration of art’s function
to “make strange” common concepts, phenomena and modes of presentation
(Shklovsky).
9
These words are not synonyms in the strict sense of the word, but they still can
be treated as partial synonyms (cf. Lyons 60-64).
10
“And a third kind of possession and madness comes from the Muses. This
takes hold upon a gentle and pure soul, arouses it and inspires it to songs and
other poetry, and thus by adoring countless deeds of the ancients educates later
generations“ (Phaedrus 245a).
11
Baudelaire’s zeugma in “Enivrez-vous” can be described (see Glucksberg and
Keysar) as creating an ad hoc category (i.e. metaphor, according to their theory) of
“intoxication” that consists of three members: drinking wine, and being immersed
in poetry, or in virtue.
12
Todorov expands on the thematic contrasts in Baudelaire in Le Spleen de Paris
and points out that they can be grouped under three headings: implausibility,
ambivalence, and antithesis (Todorov, “Poetry without Verse” 63-64). I believe
 Poetry and Poeticity 281

that the term paradox should also be introduced in discussing the poetic effect in
Baudelaire’s work, perhaps as a variation of antithesis.
13
For Amichai’s use of conceit and paradox in his poetry, see Fishelov, “Yehuda
Amichai: A Modernist Metaphysical Poet,” and Fishelov, “Poetic and Non-Poetic
Simile”; for a detailed analysis of his poetry-in-prose texts, see Fishelov Like a
Rainfall, especially 164-71.
14
Jews whose family name is Cohen, considered to be descendents of priests in
the Temple, were forbidden to be in proximity to the dead.
15
For the original Hebrew, see Amichai, Selected Poems 44.
16
For a dynamic perspective on other literary forms and genres, see Fishelov,
Metaphors of Genre.

WORKS CITED
Amichai, Yehuda. Shalva Gdolah: Shelot utshuvot [Great Tranquility: Questions and
Answers]. Jerusalem: Schocken P, 1980. [In Hebrew]
——. Selected Poems. Ed. and trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Samuel H. Butcher. London: Macmillan, 1895.
Baudelaire, Charles. Œuvres Complètes. Pref. Claude Roy; notes Michel Jamet.
Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1980.
——. The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Trans. James Huneker. New
York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1919. Project Gutenberg. 31 May 2011. 10 July 2014.
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36287/36287-h/36287-
h.htm#INTOXICATION>.
——. Paris Spleen. Trans. Louise Varèse. New York: New Directions, 1970.
Brooks, Cleanth. “The Language of Paradox.” The Well Wrought Urn. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1947. 3-21.
Burke, Kenneth. “’Stages’ in ‘The Dead.’” Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed.
Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. 410-16.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
Fishelov, David. “Yehuda Amichai: A Modernist Metaphysical Poet.” Orbis
Litterarum 47 (1992): 178-91.
——. Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory. University Park:
Penn State UP, 1993.
——. “Poetic and Non-Poetic Simile: Structure, Semantics, Rhetoric.” Poetics Today
14.1 (1993): 1-23.
——. Like a Rainfall: Studies in Poetic Simile. Jerusalem: Magnes P, 1996. [In He-
brew]
——. “The Institutional Approach to the Definition of Poetry: Some Heretical
Thoughts.” Empirical Studies of the Arts 16.1 (1998): 5-13.
Freedman, Ralph. The Lyrical Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1963.
282 DAVID FISHELOV

Glucksberg, Sam, and Boaz Keysar. “How Metaphors Work.” Metaphors and
Thought. Ed. Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: CUP, 1993. 401-24.
Hollymarg. “Huston’s ‘The Dead’—subtitled ending.” Youtube. 11 Dec. 2011. 31
July 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRD_UNGE4Zs>.
Jakobson, Roman. “Linguistics and Poetics.” Style in Language. Ed. Thomas A.
Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1960. 350-77.
——. “What Is Poetry?” Language in Literature. Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Ste-
phen Rudy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P, 1987. 368-78.
Jakobson, Roman, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. “Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats.’” Language
in Literature. Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, MA: Belk-
nap P, 1987. 180-97.
Joyce, James. Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Robert Scholes and A.
Walton Litz. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
——. Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Loomis, C. C. “Structure and Sympathy in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead.’” Dubliners:
Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. 417-22.
Lyons, John. Linguistic Semantics. Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1966.
Riffaterre, Michael. “Describing Poetic Structures: Two Approaches to Baude-
laire’s ‘Les Chats’.” Yale French Studies 36-37 (1966): 200-42.
Ruwet, Nicolas. “Linguistics and Poetics.” The Structuralist Controversy. Ed.
Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1972. 296-
313.
Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.” Russian Formalist Criticism. Trans. and ed.
Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3-24.
Tate, Allen. “The Dead.” Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Robert Scholes
and A. Walton Litz. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. 404-09.
Todorov, Tzvetan. “A Poetic Novel.” Genres of Discourse. Trans. Catherine Porter.
Cambridge: CUP, 1990. 50-59.
——. “Poetry without Verse.” Genres of Discourse. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cam-
bridge: CUP, 1990. 60-71.
Walzl, Florence L. “Gabriel and Michael: The Conclusion of ‘The Dead.’” Dublin-
ers: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. 423-43.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings*

THOMAS KULLMANN

1. Poems and Songs in The Lord of the Rings: A Survey

Throughout The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), narrative prose is supple-

mented by poems and songs.1 As this practice does not correspond to
the established conventions of twentieth-century novel writing, I
propose to investigate the nature and functions of these insertions in
Tolkien’s work of fiction, with a view to providing some indications
as to the poetics of this mixture of genres.
Concerning the poetic insertions in The Lord of the Rings (more than
60) I should like to proceed from two observations: firstly, all of them
appear to fulfil a function within the narrative; they are all part of the
plot and motivated by narrative developments.2 Most of the poems
and songs are sung by a group of characters or recited by one charac-
ter for the benefit of a group of listeners; they constitute or record
communal experiences; and they serve to convey important informa-
tion.
Secondly, the poems and songs inserted belong to different, and of-
ten very specific, genres and traditions: they include songs which
accompany wandering, marching to war, drinking, and even bathing;
songs which, like ballads, tell a tale from ancient mythology or recent
events; riddles, prophecies and incantations; hymns and songs of
praise and complaint. They are of varying length and make use of a
large variety of metres and rhyme schemes (a list of the poems and
songs is given in the Appendix to this article).

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debkullmann0232.htm>.
284 THOMAS KULLMANN

The origins of some of these genres go back to Anglo-Saxon poetry,

which includes riddles, charms, complaints (or “elegies”), poems of
memorizing as well as tales of heroic deeds (corresponding to nos. 2,
7, 10, 11 and 12 on the list printed in the Appendix).3 The nature po-
ems (no. 6) may remind us of songs in Middle English, like the Harley
Lyrics, and their French and Provençal antecedents. Others of the
poems and songs in The Lord of the Rings belong to genres or traditions
which are part of English “folklore”; they are reminiscent of songs
sung at festivals, in taverns, in the nursery, in barracks, at school or in
church, serving communal functions specific to the environments
mentioned. This particularly applies to the poems and songs listed
under nos. 1, 4, 5 and 13, which accompany habitual social activities.
Drinking songs (no. 4) have been recorded since antiquity, and some
are also found in modern anthologies of English folk-song4; similarly,
military officers have always made use of the stimulating effects of
music and song (no. 13). Wandering songs (no. 1) are rather well-
known in Germany, while they may have been less prevalent in Eng-
land. The hymns listed under no. 3 can also be considered as “func-
tional poetry” as they obviously accompany some kind of religious
observance.5
The communal functions of the poems and songs listed under the
headings of nos. 8 and 10 are not as obvious, as their main purpose is
a narrative one. They belong to poetic traditions, however, which
certainly flourished (and flourish?) at festivals and in taverns. Narra-
tive verse, in the form of “ballads,” constitutes the bulk of the texts
found in anthologies from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry (1765) to The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (2012).
Many of the traditional ballads deal with England’s or Britain’s his-
torical and mythological past (like “The Ancient Ballad of Chevy
Chace,” “The Ancient Ballad of the Battle of Otterbourne,” “Sir Lance-
lot du Lake,” etc.)6 and can thus be compared to the tales told in verse
about Gil-galad, Tinúviel and Eärendil (Appendix 8.1, 8.2, 8.4).7
The poems and songs found in The Lord of the Rings are thus remi-
niscent of a wide range of English poetic traditions and practices8;
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 285

they do not, however, belong to the category of poetry which is con-

sidered to constitute the literary canon. Common definitions of poetry
or “the lyric” emphasize the subjectivity of poetry and its function of
expressing the poet’s personal feelings, as well as “the immediacy of
felt experience” (Lindley 3),9 qualities which are certainly found in the
work of “canonized” poets like Petrarca, Shakespeare, Wordsworth
and Keats. In The Lord of the Rings, it is only in some few poems (listed
under the heading of “meditation,” no. 9) that the speaker or singer
gives words to his or her personal outlook and plans, using the first
person singular pronoun; but even here, as in the songs composed
and sung by Bilbo, the hobbit, and by Galadriel, the elf queen, the
outlook voiced is a typical rather than an individual or subjective one.
An analysis of the metrical forms used corroborates these observa-
tions: the poems and songs of The Lord of the Rings make use of a wide
variety of metres, the most original of which is certainly the allitera-
tive verse used by the “Ents” and the “Riders of Rohan,” which obvi-
ously follows the rules of Old English alliterative poetry (as e.g. in the
Beowulf epic).10 It is mainly used for heroic praise (no. 10) and memo-
rizing (no. 12), two “genres” which are also found in Old English
poetry.
Most (if not all) of the other metres used are part of the repertoire of
English folksong. The most prominent metre found in the novel is
iambic tetrameter, with rhyming couplets. This metre is mainly used
for the walking songs (no. 1), for some of the hymns (no. 3) and some
of the mythological tales (no. 8). Tolkien here resorts to a metre some-
times found in narrative folk poetry—there are several examples in
Percy’s Reliques11—, but which was also used by Geoffrey Chaucer
(The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Romaunt of the Rose) and
occurs in Renaissance pastoral poetry (e.g. Marlowe, “Come live with
me and be my love,” The Penguin Book of English Verse 31-32), in some
metaphysical poems (e.g. Marvell, “Had We but World Enough and
Time,” The Penguin Book of English Verse 135-36) and in nineteenth-
century children’s poems (e.g. Stevenson, “In winter I get up at
night,” A Child’s Garden of Verses 1). While it is a very simple metre, it
286 THOMAS KULLMANN

is also a metrical form which links Tolkien to canonized, highbrow

poetry. Sometimes iambic tetrameter poems take a more sophisticated
form by using alternate rhymes (10.1) or a complex strophic structure
(8.2).
The poems listed under the heading of “riddling informa-
tion/prophesy” (no. 2) are mostly composed in a dactylic mode, with
lines in which a stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed ones.12
This metre certainly allows for verse which is closer to the rhythms of
English prose; many narrative folksongs make use of this metre.13
Another of the metres used, however, has often been considered to
be characteristic of folklore: the ballad metre which can be analysed as
iambic heptameter, with a caesura (or even a pause) after the fourth
stress, used for poem 6.3 (“When spring unfolds the beechen leaf”)
and 9.2 (“I sang of leaves”).14 According to Geoffrey Russom, this
metre is sometimes called “common metre” (57). There may also be a
rhyme at the end of the first part of the heptametric line, so that we
could speak of a ballad stanza (with four stresses in lines 1 and 3, and
three in lines 2 and 4) rhyming alternately; this is the metre used in a
song sung by Legolas, telling a mythological tale (8.6), and in the
meditative verses by Bilbo (9.1) and Sam (9.4). In Percy’s Reliques the
ballad metre is the most prominent form of narrative verse (e.g. “King
Estmere,” “Sir Patrick Spence,” “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,”
“The Children in the Wood”).15 The iambic octometer used in the long
tale of Eärendil the mariner (8.4; 227-30), which on the page is ren-
dered as four-line stanzas with four metrical feet each, the second and
fourth line rhyming, also constituted a metrical form much used in
popular narrative verse.16
Some of the poems and songs found in The Lord of the Rings resist
metrical categorization: while they are rhymed in couplets and con-
tain a fixed number of stresses, the number of unstressed syllables
between the stresses is not determined. When using traditional terms
of prosody, we can only classify these metres as “irregular”; this term,
however, might be considered a misnomer, as, in the poetry in Old
and (in part) Middle English, as well as in the early stages of the
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 287

ballad and folksong traditions, it is “regular” that stresses rather than

syllables are counted.17 As an Anglo-Saxon scholar, Tolkien may have
considered syllabic metres as an import from French and other Ro-
mance languages, and set store by the “accentual metre” (Leech 118)
characteristic of native (Germanic) poetic traditions. Characteristically,
accentual metres most often occur in songs and poems which belong
to Old English genres: incantations (no. 7, but also cf. 2.1), praise
(10),18 complaint (11); they are also used for “familiar” poetry: drink-
ing and bathing songs (4, 5), and “natural magic” (6).19
We see that Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings makes use of a wide va-
riety of traditional and popular metrical forms, choosing metres with
respect to situation and genre. Sometimes a variation goes along with
a shift in the addresser or addressee: in Frodo’s elegy on Gandalf,
supposed dead, his lines rhyme alternately; when Sam adds a stanza,
he switches to couplets (10.1; 350-51). The message in verse by Queen
Galadriel addressed to Aragorn is much less regular than that given to
Legolas (491-92). With all these variations Tolkien consistently avoids
the metres prominent in canonized and anthologized poetry from
Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare to Wordsworth, Keats and Tenny-
son, most notably iambic pentameter, rhymed or unrhymed.20 As with
the poetic genres, Tolkien seems to draw attention to the wealth of a
literary and cultural undercurrent which (while it has been the object
of study of antiquarian and folklore societies and individual research-
ers since the sixteenth century)21 has not usually been recognized by
representatives of the literary establishment. His pre-texts from popu-
lar and folk culture can be located in forms known from the periods of
Old and Middle English, as well as folkloristic traditions from the
fifteenth to the nineteenth century.22
However, two aspects the poems do have in common with a lot of
canonical poetry, and Romantic poetry in particular: they are some-
times difficult to understand; and that they often give voice to some
transcendental experience, open up vistas into a “world beyond.”23 In
The Lord of the Rings it is the listeners and sometimes even the singers
themselves who are baffled by the poems’ words, and this uncertainty
288 THOMAS KULLMANN

sometimes provides suspense and furthers the plot.24 It should also be

noted that, while the poems are part and parcel of the plot, they are
clearly marked as a distinct type of utterance; they are sung or recited;
and the beginning and end of song or recitation are clearly marked.
On the printed page this distinction between poetry and prose is
emphasized by the italics invariably used to reproduce poetry.25

2. Poetry and the World Beyond

As an example of the transcendental quality of poetry I should like to

refer to the poem recited by Gandalf the wizard (2.1):

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. (The Lord of the Rings 49)

Alliterations (“Mortal men”) and repetitions (“Dark Lord on his dark

throne”) serve to set off the poetic text from ordinary narrative prose
and evoke the sentiment of a world beyond the ordinary world, full of
mystery and danger. The poem climaxes in a kind of incantation,
describing the superior powers of the One Ring, with its triadic phras-
ing and the repetition of the place-name of Mordor. With the discov-
ery of this very ring, the supernatural world, or rather the world
beyond, has entered the cosy environment of Frodo the hobbit at
Hobbiton in the Shire. To the reader, Frodo’s experience of the super-
natural is conveyed as an experience of poetic language. The shift
from prose to poetry serves to direct the focus of the reader’s attention
away from the meaning to sound and form, from the signifié to the
signifiant. It is the beauty of the language—of repetition, metre, and
rhyme—which suggests a notion of a world beyond the extent of
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 289

which cannot be comprehended in ordinary words, i.e. words which

only convey a meaning rather than an experience of sound.
When Frodo sets off on his quest, this to him constitutes a setting-off
to the unknown, and again this experience of reaching out into an
unknown world is expressed through a poem (1.1):

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say. (72)

To Frodo, this poem conveys the notion of the world beyond the
confines of the known world, the Shire. To the reader, it is again
through the poetic devices of repetition, metre, and rhyme that this
experience of crossing boundaries is represented.
It comes as no surprise that the Elves are also introduced through a
poetic insertion. At the hobbits’ first meeting with the Fair Folk, they
hear a song (no. 3.1):

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!

O Queen beyond the Western Seas!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees! (78)

If the hobbits only partly understand the song, so will the readers: the
elves sing of a world “beyond the Western Seas” which we have not
heard about yet. This world is apparently characterized by beauty, by
extreme whiteness, light, shining, and silver. The hobbits’ excitement
at meeting the elves, this supernatural people, is conveyed to the
reader as an experience of language, with repetition, metre, and
rhyme elevating the words from common speech. The language does
not just denote beauty, it becomes beauty. This is not least because of
the beautiful names mentioned in stanzas 2 and 4, of Elbereth and
Gilthoniel, names that emphasize the letter l, which obviously charac-
290 THOMAS KULLMANN

terizes this people of Elves. Their association with the letter and sound
of l seems to convey the notion of the elves being -l-ight, -l-iquid, e-l-
usive, possessing a set of characteristics conveyed by the sound itself,
which is clearly iconic in that it appears to resemble the meanings
attached to it.26 The elvish song, of course, becomes pure sound, pure
signifiant, when we hear or read it in the original Elvish tongue (poem
no. 3.2).27
It is in the form of poems, as well, that mythological tales from the
world of the elves are made known to the characters and the reader,
as in the verses on Gil-galad the Elven-king (no. 8.1) and the tale of
Tinúviel and Beren (no. 8.2). The “enchantment” mentioned in the
latter text (beginning of third stanza, 187), is transmitted to the reader
by the poetic form. Again, an experience out of the ordinary (the
passion of love) is experienced as language out of the ordinary.

3. Hobbits (and Readers) as Philologists

The main phenomenon which characterizes the poetry found in The

Lord of the Rings is the embedding of these poems in the narrative: the
characters do not just recite or listen to poetry, they usually set about
commenting on it or interpreting it.28 Their interpretations do not
primarily consist in elucidating the meaning; indeed, sometimes
uncertainties are left as they are. What interests the characters more is
the provenance of these poetic texts. The poems and songs of The Lord
of the Rings have a history which is often discussed by the listeners
and sometimes proves to be relevant to the plot; like the ballads men-
tioned above, they also appear to be part of a living tradition, as some
of the characters are shown as being engaged in translating and com-
municating ancient as well as more recent poetry.
Let us look at the first quotation again containing the poem about
the Rings: Frodo finds engraved on the mysterious and indestructible
ring an unreadable script which is represented on the printed page.
The mystery of the ring’s magic is conveyed to the reader as a mystery
about a piece of ancient writing. Gandalf can identify the characters
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 291

and the language as “Elvish, of an ancient mode” (49). It was not just
written by elves, but by elves of some former period of time. Gandalf
also knows the meaning, which he renders in poetic language, using
the Common Tongue spoken by the hobbits, rendered as English on
the printed page. It is the complexity of the provenance of the poetic
text which greatly enhances its significance and conveys a notion of
the ring’s importance to the reader. At the same time, Gandalf’s com-
petence as a wizard manifests itself as a philological competence
which the reader can witness on the printed page.
The hobbits themselves also engage in a philological exercise when
Frodo, on setting out, speaks the poem beginning “The Road goes
ever on and on.” Pippin remarks “that [it] sounds like a bit of old
Bilbo’s rhyming” (72), reminding him of the style of Bilbo as a poet.
He wonders if Frodo imitated Bilbo’s verses; Frodo himself cannot say
if he made up the poem on the spot or heard it long ago. Actually, the
words are almost identical to those sung by Bilbo seventeen years and
thirty-seven pages before (35) when saying farewell to Gandalf. While
Bilbo sung the lines, Frodo is speaking them. The reader is invited to
become a philologist, to make an attempt at supplying those pieces of
interpretation which the characters are trying to grasp.29
The hobbits also discuss the tone and meaning of these lines. On
Pippin’s remarking that the poem “does not sound altogether encour-
aging,” Frodo replies by giving an outline of Bilbo’s philosophy of life:

He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river:
its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary: “It’s a
dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You
step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing
where you might be swept off to [...]” (72)

Bilbo is certainly unique among the hobbits in imagining life as a

journey toward the unknown, to a world beyond, a journey beset by
dangers and uncertainties. Frodo, and the reader, enter into this im-
age, and premonition, when Frodo sets out on his quest, the poem
emphasizing the importance of this step. We should also note that, as
292 THOMAS KULLMANN

with the poem on the ring, the significance of the poem is enhanced
by its being old. If Frodo had made it up on the spot it would not
carry the connotations of ancient wisdom and general truth.
If the poem, as recited by Frodo, does not sound altogether encour-
aging, this is certainly due to a slight but significant change in the
wording: while the fifth line in Frodo’s version reads “Pursuing it
with weary feet,” Bilbo sung “Pursuing it with eager feet.” This
change of adjectives obviously characterizes the greater psychological
depth of Frodo’s quest which, more than Bilbo’s journeys, can perhaps
be understood as emblematic of the storms and stresses of human
life.30
This poem can well be compared to another one, which two other
hobbits, Pippin and Merry, make up, albeit using phrases from previ-
ous texts (1.3):

Farewell we call to hearth and hall!

Though wind may blow and rain may fall,
We must away ere break of day
Far over wood and mountain tall. (104)

The narrator informs us that this song “was made on the model of the
dwarf-song that started Bilbo on his adventure long ago, and went to
the same tune” (104). The reference is to the story of Bilbo and the
dwarves setting out to regain the treasure stolen by Smaug the
dragon, as told in Tolkien’s previous work of fiction, The Hobbit (1937).
Readers of The Lord of the Rings are invited to look up the reference
themselves, in case they have a copy of The Hobbit ready. The main
similarity consists in the exclamation: “We must away! We must
away! / We ride before the break of day!” (104). In The Hobbit, the
song contains several stanzas with a very similar wording; this is what
Bilbo hears when going to sleep:

Far over the misty mountain cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold. (36, cf. 24-25)
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 293

Actually, the messages or tendencies of the two songs are rather dif-
ferent. While the song in The Hobbit conveys the dwarves’ greed and
stubbornness, Pippin and Merry give voice to a spirit of adventure,
looking forward to seeing the elves, among other things.31
The borrowing from the dwarf-song, however, is not the only one:
Readers of The Lord of the Rings will easily recognize the line “and
whither then we cannot tell,” from Bilbo’s and Frodo’s song. The
poem turns out to be a composite of previous texts. This, of course, as
Julia Kristeva has taught us (see 66), applies to all texts, but in The Lord
of the Rings this intertextual mechanism is “metatextually” rendered
explicit (cf. Kullmann 37-38).
A different sort of metapoetical reflection is provoked when Frodo
answers the poem as if it were an ordinary communicative utterance:

“Very good!” said Frodo. “But in that case there are a lot of things to do
before we go to bed—under a roof, for tonight at any rate.”
“Oh! That was poetry!” said Pippin. “Do you really mean to start before
the break of day?” (The Lord of the Rings 104)

Pippin seems to share the assumption of many amateur poets that

poetry is not to be taken seriously, that it is an exercise in wit rather
than in conveying some truth. Frodo will soon remind his friends of
the real dangers awaiting them on their journey which do indeed
necessitate an early start.
Poems, and indeed texts in general, are shown to be dependent on
one another, and thus to tell a story, additional to the information
conveyed by the words. The poetic sensibility of the characters of The
Lord of the Rings, and, by implication, the reader, is based on an aes-
thetics of imitation rather than originality. The value of a poetical text
is enhanced by its age and history. In order to read and appreciate the
story told by a poem’s history, readers become philologists.
Another example of philology entering the plot of The Lord of the
Rings occurs when Sam Gamgee recites a poem, provoked by Strider’s
remark on the history of the ground they are crossing:
294 THOMAS KULLMANN

“[...] It is told that Elendil stood there watching for the coming of Gil-galad
out of the West, in the days of the Last Alliance.”
The hobbits gazed at Strider. It seemed that he was learned in old lore, as
well as in the ways of the wild. “Who was Gil-galad?” asked Merry; but
Strider did not answer, and seemed to be lost in thought. (185)

Strider, whom the hobbits only knew as a wanderer, unexpectedly

turns out to be learned in “old lore.” But more surprises are coming
when Sam Gamgee begins “murmuring” the poem (no. 8.1):

Gil-galad was an Elven-king.

Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea. (181)

If the company was surprised by Strider, they are even more so when
learning that Sam, the ordinary hobbit, has also been infiltrated by elf-
lore.
Sam Gamgee rather inadvertently provides a poetic answer to the
question “Who was Gil-galad?” by repeating a song he had heard
from Bilbo, but never understood. Now it is Strider’s turn to be sur-
prised, as he never knew that Bilbo had been aware of elfen-lore to
that extent. Sam’s lines appear as “part of the lay that is called The Fall
of Gil-galad, which is in an ancient tongue” (181-82). Readers of The
Lord of the Rings will of course be able to notice the similarity of the
line on Mordor: “in Mordor where the shadows are” (181) to that of
the ring poem, “in the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie” (49)
and begin to be aware of the hidden connectedness of the ancient
history of Middle-earth (cf. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 85). They
are also put in a position to reflect on the process of oral traditions:
Just as with some nonsensical nursery rhymes, words and sounds
may have been preserved while the meaning has not.
Poetry emerges as the main medium in the process of handing
down ancient history or myth. This also applies to the tale of Tinúviel
which is told, or rather “chanted,” by Strider (no. 8.2):
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 295

The leaves were long, the grass was green,

The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glittering. (The Lord of the Rings 187)

Strider then proceeds to give the footnotes: the song is a translation of

an elf poem composed in a special genre which is given an elfish
name, “ann-thennath” (189). As the present version only provides a
“rough echo” (189) of it, curiosity is raised to know the original. The
hobbits’ desire to see the elves is conveyed to the reader as a philol-
ogical desire of discovering a hidden source and understanding an
ancient language.
Strider’s introduction to his chanting contains a discussion of the
effects of this poem: it is fair, it is sad, and it lifts up our hearts (187).
The poem tells an archetypal love-story; it is fair because the beauty of
the lady is conveyed through the beauty of the song’s form, tune, and
language; it is sad because we are induced to imagine the difficulties
experienced by the lovers; and it is uplifting because it allows us to
experience the grand feeling of love and brings us closer to the ulti-
mate potential of humanity.32
On the plot level, the poem takes the hobbits deeper into the world
of the elves and the history of Middle-earth in which they are going to
take a part; they can certainly do with an uplifting of hearts, given the
heroism which will be expected of them. Strider’s interpretive re-
marks allow the reader to see the potential of the interpretation of old
texts with regard to a widening of his or her outlook on the world.33
In another instance it is the readers themselves who are called upon
to become philologists: like many other songs in The Lord of the Rings,
the song sung by Frodo at the Prancing Pony inn (no. 4.2) is reputed
to have been written by Bilbo; its genre is given as “ridiculous song”
(154). It is composed using a five-line stanza, which may remind us of
nineteenth-century comic verse.34 Before the poem is quoted, the
narrator gives the reader a subtle hint as to the poem’s intertextual
296 THOMAS KULLMANN

connections, saying: “Only a few words of it are now, as a rule, re-

membered” (154). It is only in the course of reading the poem that we
become aware of the words we remember.35
At the beginning, the poem records a rather idyllic scene at a coun-
try inn, so that it could serve as a song which accompanies drinking.
The only nonsensical elements are the Man in the Moon who patron-
izes that inn, a tipsy cat who provides entertainment as a fiddler, and
a dog who can understand jokes.

There is an inn, a merry old inn

beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat

that plays a five-stringed fiddle;
And up and down he runs his bow,
Now squeaking high, now purring low,
now sawing in the middle. (155)

The cow who begins to dance when listening to music could even be
considered to come from real life (stanza 4):

They also keep a hornéd cow

as proud as any queen;
But music turns her head like ale,
And makes her wave her tufted tail
and dance upon the green. (155)

It is when the Man in the Moon has drunk a lot that the dish and the
spoon begin to dance, too, which is possibly a quirk of the man’s
drunken imagination (6th stanza):

The Man in the Moon was drinking deep,

and the cat began to wail;
A dish and a spoon on the table danced,
The cow in the garden madly pranced,
and the little dog chased his tail. (155)
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 297

The mad prancing of the cow in the garden and the little dog chasing
his tail, however, appear to belong to real life. So do the man rolling
beneath his chair, the innkeeper’s appeal to his assistant (the cat) to
look after the Man in the Moon’s horses, the fiddler’s attempts to
wake the man by fiddling hard, and the transferral of the man out-
side. At this point, things get out of hand. The man is bundled back
into the moon, the dish runs up with the spoon, the cow and horses
stand on their head, and finally (penultimate stanza):

With a ping and a pong the fiddle-strings broke!

the cow jumped over the Moon,
And the little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the Saturday dish went off at a run
with the silver Sunday spoon. (186)

It is then, at the latest, that we recognize the few words of this song
which are still remembered. They consist of the famous nursery
rhyme:

Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
(The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, no. 213 [240])

Like many nonsensical nursery rhymes, this one might originally have
carried some meaning which, however, has not been found.36
As Thomas Honegger notes, Frodo’s song had originally been pub-
lished by Tolkien in 1923, entitled “The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery
Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked” (see 43).
Through Frodo’s song, Tolkien obviously offers a playful theory on
how to account for this nursery rhyme. While Honegger in his article
concentrates on the literary antecedents of the Man in the Moon motif,
I should like to make some remarks on the impact of Frodo’s song on
the reader: he or she is playfully given a source text and invited to
deal with it philologically, i.e. to engage in tracing the further devel-
298 THOMAS KULLMANN

opments of this text until it reaches its present mutilated form. We are
also invited to speculate on the plausibility of this comic drinking-
song being the origin of the rhyme (cf. Shippey, The Road to Middle-
earth 28-30). To add to this philological game, Tolkien appends two
footnotes to the text of this poem. One of them refers the reader to
another footnote in one of the appendices, where Tolkien, as author,
explains that the hobbits observe Fridays as holidays rather than
Sundays, and that he substituted the original references to Thursday
and Friday in the poem by Saturday and Sunday (1084). The other
footnote provides an explanation of the personal pronoun given to the
sun: “Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She” (156). Read-
ers with some philological training will realize that this gendering
follows Germanic conventions, as in the German language, rather
than the English poetic convention of referring to the sun as “he,” as
in Latin.

4. Conclusion

Poetic insertions in The Lord of the Rings invariably serve to introduce

the notion of a world beyond that of ordinary experience. They do so
by turning the readers’ attention to the element of language—of lan-
guage change and language history—and they induce the readers to
become philologists in order to enter the intricacies of the plot. These
metalinguistic elements thus create an awareness of the historical
dimension of human experience and invite comparison with the
scholarly endeavour of historical philologists like Tolkien himself. The
Lord of the Rings is to a considerable extent a comment not just on
language and literature, but on philological scholarship, with a glance
not just at the academic study of Old and Middle English, but also at
the research of folklorists not infrequently undertaken by amateur
scholars.
The position of Tolkien in literary scholarship is a precarious one.
His reputation as an author has been damaged on the one hand by the
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 299

excessive sales of his books (nothing but trash could possibly be so

popular), and on the other hand by well-meant but rather incompe-
tent attempts at criticism by members of the community of Tolkien
fans.37 These fans (who usually appear to know Tolkien by heart, but
have read little else) tend to lose themselves in the intricacies of the
genealogy of Tolkien’s elves and wizards but fail to take account of
the central tangible property of his writing: language.38 While some
Tolkien aficionados have devoted a lot of time and energy to deci-
phering the Elvish languages invented by Tolkien, his interest in the
poetic, rhythmic, and musical qualities of English has largely gone
unnoticed.39 Tolkien, as far as I am aware, is not mentioned in any
general account of twentieth-century English poetry. I hope that this
contribution may help establish Tolkien’s language as an object of
scholarship and provide some answers to the question asked by
American critic Edmund Wilson:

Why was this “balderdash” so popular, Edmund Wilson asked himself, in

The Nation (14 April 1956). Well, he concluded, it was because “certain peo-
ple—especially, perhaps, in Britain—have a lifelong appetite for juvenile
trash.” (Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 1)

The Lord of the Rings, I should like to contend, does indeed appeal to a
childlike or juvenile interest in sounds, in mechanisms and functions
of language, in the creation of meaning, in the potential of stories to
structure experience. As a philologist, Tolkien retained this juvenile
interest and curiosity in adult life; and in his novel, he appeals to the
hidden philologist in his young and adult readers, to those who have
retained their childish or childlike curiosity about the potential of
sounds and language.

University of Osnabrück
300 THOMAS KULLMANN

NOTES
1
“[...] the verse embedded throughout The Lord of the Rings [...] must count as
the most widely read poetry of the century” (Jones 13); according to Vit Wagner,
150 million copies of The Lord of the Rings were sold (by 2007). Perhaps, though,
Tolkien’s verse has by now been surpassed by the verse embedded in J. K. Row-
ling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997).
2
“The outstanding feature of the verse in The Lord of the Rings is the individua-
tion of poetic styles to suit the expressive needs of a given character or narrative
moment” (Rosebury 106-07).
3
On the genres of Old English poetry see, e.g., Pilch and Tristram 21-81.
4
For example, “Ye Mar’ners all,” English Folk Songs 101.
5
Cf. A. L. Lloyd’s thesis: “In primitive Europe nearly every song was performed
for a particular occasion or purpose, notably for seasonal magic-making, for social
ceremonial, and for work” (53).
6
These are nos. 1.1.1 and 2, and 1.2.9 in Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry (1-10, 53-55).
7
Many other traditional English ballads, of course, tell stories of various forms
of sexual misconduct and their tragic or comic consequences. This topic, it is true,
is not represented (and appears to be strenuously avoided) in The Lord of the Rings.
A. L. Lloyd contends that “the road of the ballad runs from the magical to the
heroic to the domestic. What was once a kind of narrative incantation becomes a
complex tale in recitative form whose aim is to encourage and inspire, and finally
the sung narrative becomes a romance with little more purpose than to divert and
entertain” (131). If Lloyd is right, examples of all three stages of ballad are found
in The Lord of the Rings; the second, “heroic,” type, however, seems to be promi-
nent.
8
On the Englishness of the hobbits and their environment, see Harvey: “Hobbits
represent the archetypal pre-Industrial Revolution English yeomen with simple
needs, simple goals, and a common-sense approach to life” (114). See also
Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 76-79.
9
For a discussion of the generic qualities of lyric poetry see Lindley 1-24; and
Shurbanov 16-55. From a structuralist point of view, Todorov (130-31) distin-
guishes between literature engaged in “présentation”—poetry in verse or prose,
and “représentation”—epic narration and prose fiction. If we follow this
dichotomy, most of the poems in The Lord of the Rings, being representations of
past or imagined events, could not be considered poetry at all. Nor could the bulk
of medieval poetry or English folklore be considered “poetic.”
10
Concerning Tolkien‘s use of the Old English metrical rules see Shippey,
“Tolkien’s Development”; and Phelpstead 440-47. Phelpstead (445) also comments
on the “cultural kinship” of “the Riders of Rohan” to Anglo-Saxons.
11
For example, “Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament” 2.2.13 (138), “Jane Shore” 2.2.26
(154), “The Lady Turned Serving-Man” 3.1.17 (217). The last text mentioned “is
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 301

given from a written copy, containing some improvements (perhaps modern

ones), upon the popular ballad, intitled, ‘The famous flower of Serving-men; or
the Lady turned Serving-man’” (Percy 217). As Roy Palmer points out, the ballad
was written and published in 1656 (Everyman’s Book of British Ballads 187). Palmer
himself prints a gorier version, recorded in 1908, the metre of which had
undergone a change to a dactylic rhythm (“The Flower of Serving Men,” no. 91,
187-88).
12
In spite of the fact that the first stress is often preceded by an unstressed sylla-
ble, this metre should not be called “a special form of iambic trimeter” as Russom
suggests (60), as the pattern of two unstressed syllables following a stressed one is
fairly regular.
13
For example, “Golden Glove,” The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, no.
26 (64-65); “The Bonny Blue Handkerchief,” no. 61 (149-50); “The Wild Rover,”
no. 88 (213-14), etc. The metre is also found in recent children’s books (e.g.
Donaldson, The Gruffalo [1999]: “A mouse took a stroll through the deep, dark
wood [...]”).
14
On the ballad metre and its musical setting, see Julia Bishop, “Introduction to
the Music,” The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs xlvi.
15
Percy, Reliques 1.1.6-8 (16-24) and 3.2.18 (238-39). Alternate rhyming occurs,
for example, in “The More Modern Ballad of Chevy Chace” and “Gilderoy,”
Reliques 1.3.1 and 12 (66-70, 83-84). According to Percy, the “modern” version of
“Chevy Chace” “cannot be older than the time of Elizabeth” (1).
16
For example, “The Heir of Linne,” Reliques 2.2.5 (Percy 121-23); “Lord Bate-
man,” New Penguin Book of English Folk Song no. 33 (78-80). On this poem’s metre
cf. Russom 59-60. As Russom remarks: “By undoing the usual relations between
rhyme and meter, Tolkien encourages us to look more deeply into both” (60).
17
As Saintsbury remarks, “a strictly syllabic system of prosody has hardly at
any time been a sufficient key, even in appearance, to English verse [...]. It is, of
course, French in origin” (14). Saintsbury proceeds to describe English prosody as
a system of “feet” (19-36) which allows for a certain variation in the number of
unstressed syllables. His examples are usually taken from the literary canon
(which he himself helped to establish). This system, however, is based on the
quantitative prosody of ancient Latin and Greek and would not be sufficient to
account for the “irregular” metres found in some early English ballads as well as
some Tolkien poems; on the inadequacy of “traditional prosody” based on the
notion of “feet” see Leech 112-14, esp. 113: “When we turn away from the learned
tradition, towards the ‘folk prosody’ of nursery rhymes and popular songs, the
metrical foot becomes a patently unsuitable tool of analysis.” Leech himself
describes the metre “which has dominated English prosody for the past six
centuries” as “‘accentual syllabic’; that is, it is a pattern of regularity both in the
number of syllables and in the number of stresses” (111). Concerning “accentual
metre” as “the type of metre based on an equal number of stresses per line,
without respect to the exact number of syllables per stress,” Leech states that,
“although in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was replaced by the conti-
302 THOMAS KULLMANN

nental accentual-syllabic metric as the main syllabic foundation of English poetry,

it has survived in popular verse (ballads, nursery rhymes, etc.), and has enjoyed a
revival at the hands of twentieth-century poets like Eliot and Auden. Hopkins’s
‘sprung rhythm’ is also a variant of accentual metre” (118).
18
As Lynn Forest-Hill points out, the great Eagle’s song “Sing now, ye people of
the Tower of Anor” (10.9) is “composed in the style of psalms in the Authorized
Version of the Bible” (93) and may be considered to be part of the story’s “spiri-
tual dimension” (92).
19
Concerning the metre of Tom Bombadil’s poetry (6.1) and its resemblance to
that of “Good King Wenceslas,” see Russom 63-64.
20
Cf. Russom 53. If the metre of the song sung by Galadriel “in the ancient
tongue of the Elves beyond the Sea” (368, no. 3.3) is iambic pentameter, it might
be considered the exception which proves the rule.
21
See, e.g., Roy Palmer, “Introduction,” Everyman’s Book of British Ballads 9.
22
On the history and dating of folk song and ballad composition in England, see
Lloyd 149 and 161. Shippey’s contention that, “when it comes to modern writers,
Tolkien was notoriously beyond influence” (The Road to Middle-earth 225) should
evidently be reexamined. Concerning modern influences on Tolkien’s prose, see,
e.g., Kullmann, esp. 43-47.
23
On connections between Tolkien and Romanticism, see Hither Shore: Interdisci-
plinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature 7 (2010). While the articles collected in
this issue discuss Romantic ideas and attitudes at some length, little attention is
paid to formal aspects of poetry or prose, or to specific literary motifs.
24
Cf. Shippey’s assessment of the poetic technique of “Eärendil was a mariner”
(8.4): “Describing the technique is difficult, but its result is obvious: rich and
continuous uncertainty, a pattern forever being glimpsed but never quite grasped.
In this way sound very clearly echoes or perhaps rather gives the lead to sense.
Just as the rhymes, assonances and phrasal structures hover at the edge of identi-
fication, so the poem as a whole offers romantic glimpses of ‘old unhappy far-off
things’ (to cite Wordsworth), or ‘magic casements opening on the foam / Of
perilous seas, in faery lands, forlorn’ (to remember Keats)” (The Road to Middle-
earth 146).
25
Tolkien’s prose might certainly also be called “poetic,” but the “poetry” of the
prose narrative follows other rules than that of the poems; for a possible exception
(Tom Bombadil’s speeches) see Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 81.
26
“Tolkien’s idea of poetry mirrored his ideas on language; in neither did he
think sound should be divorced from sense. In reality this ‘elvish tradition’ was
an English tradition too” (Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 148).
27
Shippey’s suggestion that readers can to some extent “feel” what the Elvish
poem means (The Road to Middle-earth 88), appears to me to be a romantic miscon-
ception. The narrative point is that the hobbits cannot understand the song, but
that this failure of comprehension only enhances their fascination by the exoticism
and beauty of the sounds. The import of the song in its situational frame is pro-
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 303

vided by the narrative—in English—which precedes and follows the lines in

Elvish. That the Rivendell song (3.2) is in “Sindarin,” while Galadriel’s (3.3) is in
“Quenya” (The Road to Middle-earth 88) need not concern us here as the names of
the Elvish languages are not mentioned in the text of The Lord of the Rings and
obviously not supposed to be known by the novel’s implied reader. As Tolkien
points out in a letter to a reader: “Part of the attraction of The L. R. is, I think, due
to the glimpses of a large history in the background [...]. To go there is to destroy
the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed” (Letters 333)—as
might happen, if “the ancient tongue of the Elves beyond the Sea” (368) were
given a name. It is true that there is some discussion of the languages provided in
the appendices (1087-93, 1101-02), but, to quote from another Tolkien letter (to his
publisher, Rayner Unwin): “those who enjoy the book as an ‘heroic romance’
only, and find ‘unexplained vistas’ part of the literary effect, will neglect the
appendices, very properly” (Letters 210).
28
For another analysis of this phenomenon, see Zimmermann, who calls the
narrative text which surrounds a poem “semantic co-text” (60), rather strangely,
for what is “semantic” about it?
29
This is not meant as a “joke,” as an anonymous reviewer of this article sup-
poses. I believe that analyzing the relationship between a text and its implied or
intended readers is a legitimate critical concern, and I would like to suggest that
(implied and actual) readers of The Lord of the Rings are indeed meant to join the
game of trying to make sense of obscure textual material—as in detective stories,
some modernist fiction (like Joyce’s Ulysses) and, most prominently, children’s
and young adults’ fiction (as in Kingsley’s Water-Babies, George MacDonald, John
Buchan etc.). This requires some philological competence—which we have all
given proof of by successfully acquiring our mother-tongue.
30
Cf. Shippey’s interpretation of the poem and its variants (The Road to Middle-
earth 140-42). According to Shippey, “the Road” can be seen as an image of life
and Providence, and Frodo seems to be much more aware of his doubts about the
future and the necessity of “will-power” to pursue it to its end. See also Zimmer-
mann 72-74, who contends that the “empirical code” used by Bilbo has changed
into a “figurative code” in Frodo’s version. In Bilbo’s song, however, the “Road”
already carried a metaphorical meaning, which becomes obvious from Bilbo’s
Road philosophy as recounted by Frodo.
31
As Shippey notes, “Hobbit poetry does not lend itself well to tidy listings,” as
it is characteristic of “a living oral tradition” rather than “a literary tradition”
(“Indexing and Poetry” 236-37).
32
On this poem see Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth 147. While Shippey duly
notices the romantic elements of the poem, he does not do justice to the
metapoetical quality of Aragorn’s comments.
33
The poem, as Zimmermann notes, also offers a glimpse at Strider’s/Aragorn’s
own outlook at the world, as the tale of Beren and Tinúviel clearly mirrors that of
their descendants, Arwen and Aragorn himself (see 66-67).
304 THOMAS KULLMANN

34
It occurs, for example, in Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies” (The Complete Non-
sense 71-74), published in 1871.
35
It should be noted that the capacity of establishing intertextual connections is
one shared by characters (like Sam who remembers the poem about Gil-galad
[181]), readers (who will be reminded of the Ring poem by the line on Mordor
[181]) and the narrator (who establishes a connection between Bilbo’s song about
the Man in the Moon and the nursery rhyme known from the primary world). The
world of fictional myth is thus connected to the reader’s textual world and may be
considered as (in a certain sense) mirroring it.
36
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (240-41) provides a list of theories
about the poem’s possible origins which only confirms the notion that the rhyme
is indeed unexplained.
37
The account of Tolkien scholarship published by Frank Weinreich and Tho-
mas Honegger in the Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung in 2011 provides an impres-
sive survey of activities surrounding Tolkien’s work, but on the whole confirms
the general pattern: there are Tolkien societies, Tolkien periodicals, and publish-
ing houses specializing in Tolkien studies. Tolkien is analysed and explained by
means of Tolkien; material to work with is provided by biographical sources,
posthumous Tolkien publications, and manuscripts. There is little input from
contemporary English scholarship, linguistics, as well as literary and cultural
studies. Nor does Tolkien scholarship appear to make attempts at influencing
discussions about literary history or literary and linguistic theory.
38
See Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth: “The real horror for Tolkien would
probably have come when he realised that there were people writing about him
who could not tell Old English from Old Norse, and genuinely thought the
difference didn’t matter” (216).
39
Some of the contributions to the recent volume on Tolkien’s Poetry, edited by
Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner, do address these issues (see Forest-Hill;
Zimmermann; and Shippey, “Tolkien’s Development”; see also Russom), albeit in
a rather tentative way. Except for Shippey, the authors mentioned evidently
approach their subject from the vantage point of Tolkien expertise rather than that
of English poetry, prosody, and speech analysis.
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 305

APPENDIX

List of poems and songs inserted into The Lord of the Rings.

Note: Page numbers refer to the paperback edition published by HarperCollins

(2004). The poems/songs contain rhyming couplets unless stated otherwise.

genre/first line number metre

of lines
1. wandering/ walking:
1.1 “The road goes ever on and on” 8 iambic tetrameter
(35, slightly changed 72, changed 965)
1.2 “Upon the hearth the fire is red” 30 iambic tetrameter (with
(76) irregular, strophic coda)
1.3 “Farewell we call to hearth and 14 iambic tetrameter
hall!” (104)
1.4 “O! Wanderers in the shadowed 7 iambic tetrameter
land...” (110)
2. riddling information/ prophecy:
2.1 “Three rings...”(49, partly repeated 8 irregular
247 [in Elvish] and 248)
2.2 “All that is gold does not glitter” 8 dactylic trimeter, alternate
(167, repeated 241) rhymes
2.3 “Seek for the sword that was 8 dactylic trimeter, complex
broken” (240, partly repeated 644) rhyme scheme
2.4 “Where now are the Dúnedain, 6 irregular, four stresses
Elessar, Elessar?” (491)
2.5 “Legolas Greenleaf” (492) 4 dactylic tetrameter
2.6 “Grey as a mouse” (632) 22 dactylic dimeter/ some
unstressed first syllables
2.7 “Over the land there lies a long 12 alliterative verse, unrhymed
shadow” (764)
3. hymn (evocation of mythological past):
3.1 “Snow-white ...” (78) 16 iambic tetrameter
3.2 “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” [in Elvish] 7 iambic tetrameter (?)
(231; partly repeated, 3 English lines
added 1005)
3.3 “Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen” [in 17 iambic pentameter (?)
Elvish] (368)
3.4 “Gondor! Gondor, beneath the 6 irregular couplets (alexan-
Mountains and the Sea!” (412-13) drines?)
3.5 “Ere iron was found” (531) 4 iambic tetrameter
3.6 “Tall ships and tall kings” (583) 6 irregular
3.7 “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” [in Elvish] 4 iambic tetrameter
(712)
306 THOMAS KULLMANN

4. drinking:
4.1 “Hey ho, to the bottle I go” (88) 6 irregular, four stresses
4.2 “There is an inn, a merry old inn...” 65 irregular (four/three stresses)
(155-56) strophic
5. “bath-song”:
5.1 “Sing hey! for the bath at close of 16 irregular, four stresses
day” (99)
6 a). evocation of natural magic:
6.1 “Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong 84 irregular, seven stresses
dillo! (116-31, 138-44)
6.2 “In the willow-meads of 19 irregular, unrhymed
Tasarinan” (458)
6.3 “When Spring upfolds the beechen 26 ballad stanza (iambic hep-
leaf” (466) tameter)
6.4 “O Orofarnë” (472) 8 (20) strophic (iambic
dimeter/trimeter)
6.5 “The cold hard lands” (606) 10 iambic dimeter
6.6 “Alive without breath” (607) 14 irregular, two stresses
6.7 “Silver flow the streams” (857) 7 irregular, unrhymed
6 b). seasonal advice:
6.8 “When winter first begins to bite” 4 iambic tetrameter
(266)
7. incantation:
7.1 “Cold be hand and heart and 8 irregular, four stresses
bone” (138)
7.2 “Annon edhellen” [in Elvish] (299) 2 irregular, four stresses
7.3 “When the black breath blows” 6 irregular, two stresses
(847)
8. mythological tale:
8.1 “Gil-galad was an Elven-king” 12 iambic tetrameter
(181)
8.2 “The leaves were long, the grass 72 iambic tetrameter, com-
was green” (187-89) plex(strophic) rhyme scheme
8.3 “Troll sat alone on his seat of 56 irregular, complex(strophic)
stone” (201-03) rhyme sheme
8.4 “Eärendil was a mariner” (227-30) 124 iambic octometer
(62)
8.5 “The world was young, the moun- 46 iambic tetrameter
tains green” (308-09)
8.6 “An Elven-maid there was of old” 52 ballad stanza (4+3 iambic
(330-32) stresses, alternate rhymes)
9. meditation:
9.1 “I sit beside the fire and think” 24 ballad stanza (iambic hep-
(271-72) tameter)
 Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 307

9.2 “I sang of leaves” (363) 14 ballad stanza (iambic hep-

tameter)
9.3 “Out of doubt” (829) 4 alliterative verse, unrhymed
9.4 “In western lands beneath the sea” 16 ballad stanza (4+3 iambic
(888) stresses, alternate rhymes)
9.5 “To the Sea” (935) 12 irregular, four stresses
9.6 “Still round the corner” (1005) 6 iambic tetrameter
10. heroic tribute:
10.1 “When evening in the Shire was 24 iambic tetrameter, alternate
grey” (350-51) rhymes
10.2 “The finest rockets ever seen” 4 iambic tetrameter
(351)
10.3 “In Dwimordene” (502-03) 10 iambic tetrameter
10.4 “From dark Dunharrow in the 21 alliterative verse, unrhymed
dim morning” (786)
10.5 “Mourn not overmuch” (825) 3 alliterative verse, unrhymed
10.6 “Faithful servant” (827) 2 irregular, four stresses
10.7 “We heard of the horns of the hills 27 alliterative verse, unrhymed
ringing” (831)
10.8 “Long live the Halflings!” [partly 10 irregular, unrhymed
in Elvish] (932)
10.9 “Sing now, ye people of the 16 irregular, unrhymed
Tower of Anor” (942)
10.10 “Out of doubt, out of dark” (954) 5 alliterative verse, unrhymed
11. complaint:
11.1 “Through Rohan over fen and 30 irregular
field” (407-08)
11.2 “Where now the horse and the 8 irregular
rider” (497)
12. memorizing:
12.1 “Learn now the lore of Living 11 alliterative verse, unrhymed
Creatures” (453)
12.2 “Ents the earthborn” (572) 4 alliterative verse, unrhymed
13. war song:
13.1 ”We come”/ “To Isengard”” (473, 9 (36) iambic dimeter (some alter-
474) (partly repeated 551) nating rhymes)
13.2 “Arise now, arise, Riders of 4/5 alliterative verse, unrhymed
Théoden!” (506, text changed 820)
308 THOMAS KULLMANN

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 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Names and Real Names in Colin Clouts

Come Home Againe: A Response to Maurice Hunt*

KREG SEGALL

Maurice Hunt’s study of the difficulty of successful naming in Colin

Clouts Come Home Againe considers issues that would be familiar to the
White Knight of Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass Land.1 For example, if
someone is named, but they are called by a name that is not really
their name, have they then been really named? What if you strongly
imply their name but never say it? Does that count as naming? Hunt is
on to something important in this article: names and naming are very
much at stake here, and his discussion gets at the structural im-
portance of this theme to the poem as a whole. I do, however, want to
offer some questions, objections, and provocations in response to
some of Hunt’s conclusions and arguments with the hope of stimulat-
ing further discussion of this poem.
In addition to names already familiar to readers of The Shepheardes
Calendar, like Colin Clout, Cuddie, Rosalind, Hobbinol, as well as “Sir
Walter Raleigh” and “Ed. Sp.” from the dedication, Colin Clouts Come
Home Againe offers the reader a riot of names introduced for our delec-
tation in the description of court, including Harpalus, Corydon, Al-
cyon, Daphne, Merifleure, Palin, Alcon, Palemon, Alabaster, Daniell,
Amyntas, Amaryllis, Aetion, Astrofell, Urania, Theana, Marian, Man-
silia, Galathea, Maa, Neaera, Stella, Phyllis, Charillis, Flavia, and
Candida. The traditional reading of these names is that they refer to
contemporaries who Spenser wished to discuss under pastoral pseu-

*Reference: Maurice Hunt, “Naming and Unnaming in Spenser's Colin Clouts

Come Home Againe,” Connotations 22.2 (2012/2013): 235-59.
For the original article as well as all contributions to this debate, please check
the Connotations website at <http://www.connotations.de/debhunt0222.htm>.
 A Response to Maurice Hunt 311

donyms. In some cases, the riddle is easy: we can without difficulty

discern that “Astrofell” is meant to be Philip Sidney; in other cases,
there are only reasonable guesses, like Thomas Lodge for “Alcon.” But
some names are totally obscure (“Flavia” and “Candida”) and may
never have been intended to indicate anyone specific; and two names
are wholly undisguised: “Alabaster” and “Daniell” for William Ala-
baster and Samuel Daniel (see Hunt 247). One thing is for sure: this
list has no easy one-for-one translation of person-for-pseudonym.
Hunt’s primary argument, then, begins with the recognition that
naming is not always a straightforward process in Colin Clouts Come
Home Againe, and, as he suggests, this uncertainty about whether
someone is named or not, is thematically at the core of the poem.
Hunt’s title is witty—he is not implying that people get named and
then get unnamed—he is implying that naming and unnaming are
difficult to distinguish, and melt into each other.
The story of Bregog and Mulla is a good test case for Hunt’s thesis.
Bregog the river, in seeking to secretly possess his love Mulla without
the permission of Father Mole, is punished by being “scattred all to
nought, / And lost emong those rocks into him rold,” and thus “Did
lose his name” (153-55). Hunt notes that the story serves also to alle-
gorize Ralegh’s loss of status at court (which Hunt equates to “equiva-
lent to the erasure of his name”), where Elizabeth Throckmorton
equates to Mulla and Queen Elizabeth to Father Mole. Hunt offers this
reading as an example of the poem’s “focus on the loss of identity”
(240-41). Hunt’s example here is a good one for his claim (though I
would question whether Elizabeth “regularly” [Hunt 240] referred to
herself with a masculine pronoun—Elizabeth as Mole seems a shaky
analogy). I wonder whether Bregog’s identity is as lost as we might
first think, considering that the name wasn’t at all lost: surely we can
see that the sentence “the name Bregog has been lost” is a paradox.
But the interesting ambiguity goes even deeper. As Hunt notes, “Bre-
gog” means “deceitful” according to Colin Clout (118, see Hunt 238).
But he is called “Bregog” because of his deceit that got his name de-
stroyed—so what was he called before?
312 KREG SEGALL

Full faine she lov‘d, and was belov‘d full faine,

Of her owne brother river, Bregog hight,
So hight because of this deceitfull traine (116-18)

Hunt translates “hight” as “named”; I would prefer to take the etymo-

logical ambiguity of “hight” from OE hatan, “to be called.” That is,
Bregog is called Bregog, called “deceitful,” after his scheme is commit-
ted, while his real, previous name is lost forever or morphed into his
new name. So there is a plausible reading of this episode as one not
only of unnaming, but renaming. This serves to underscore Hunt’s
central point: names are fragile in this poem.
The moment where Colin Clout most explicitly grapples with nam-
ing is his attempt to describe his queen:

For when I thinke of her, as oft I ought,

Then want I words to speake it fitly forth:
And when I speake of her what I have thought,
I cannot thinke according to her worth.
Yet will I thinke of her, yet will I speake,
So long as life my limbs doth hold together,
And when as death these vitall bands shall breake,
Her name recorded will I leave for ever.
Her name in every tree I will endosse,
That as the trees do grow, her name may grow:
And in the ground each where will it engrosse,
And fill it with stones, that all men may it know.
The speaking woods and murmuring waters fall,
Her name Ile teach in knowen termes to frame:
And eke my lambs when for their dams they call,
Ile teach to call for Cynthia by name.
And long while after I am dead and rotten:
Amongst the shepheards daughters dancing rownd,
My layes made of her shall not be forgotten,
But sung by them with flowry gyrlonds crownd.
(Hunt 243; Colin Clouts 624-43)

Hunt notes that, in this passage, “[f]ive times Colin names the never-
named name of the queen, which is Elizabeth—not Cynthia” (243).
This reading of Colin’s speech is central to Hunt’s argument, as he
 A Response to Maurice Hunt 313

uses it to demonstrate the contrast between this failed naming of the

queen and the later, more successful, paean to Elizabeth Boyle. Hunt’s
point is that this Cynthia-focused section is a failed bit of naming—
that the naming does not work, because “Cynthia” is not the queen’s
real name. However, Hunt’s reading of this passage brings up a num-
ber of questions. I would argue that, if we are playing with names in
the way an allegory asks us to do, then “Cynthia” is indeed the name
of the woman Colin is speaking of. Hunt continues, “(If Cynthia were
in fact the queen’s name, Colin—Spenser—would not in this passage
express such frustration about naming her. He would have named her
five or six times, not simply once as Cynthia)” (243-44).2 If we can
perform the dash-mediated hop of “Colin—Spenser,” from pseudo-
nym to real name, then “Cynthia—Elizabeth” seems a reasonable
jump to make as well. This is not an isolated moment, as the name
“Cynthia” or a form of it appears twenty-five times in the poem;
further, Colin speaks his words in response to the request of his fellow
shepherd, Aglaura, who specifically requests “the storie” “of great
Cynthiaes goodnesse and high grace” (588-89).3
Hunt calls this passage a “remarkably sustained emphasis upon the
indistinctiveness or loss of name” (245) in the poem. He offers addi-
tional evidence for this emphasis by observing how the Cynthia pas-
sage is “focused” by other figures like Aetion, briefly mentioned in
the list of names at court, but not positively identified in the way
“Astrofell” can be. Hunt notes that “[t]he point is not whether Aetion
is Michael Drayton, or William Shakespeare, or someone else, but that
knowing who he represents died with Spenser and those court read-
ers in the know, so to say” (246). It is here that I find it most difficult
to travel along with Hunt, as, far from focusing, Aetion makes Hunt’s
definition more fuzzy: if the point of Aetion is that his real identity is
dead (an assertion that I think we could argue about as well) it is not
clear how that operates as an analogue or focusing lens for the Cyn-
thia passage, whose referent is perfectly clear.4 Hunt, I suspect, would
respond by noting that he is pointing to poetic frustration over both
indistinct names and lost names—that Cynthia is an indistinct name
314 KREG SEGALL

and Aetion is a lost name (or, rather, who “Aetion” stands for is lost).
It seems to me that Colin’s—Spenser’s—frustration about failure to
successfully name the queen is a different sort of frustration, a differ-
ent frame of meaning, than contemporary scholars’ frustration in
being unable to identify Aetion.
Finally, Hunt comes to the numerical and aesthetic center of the
poem, Colin’s paean to his beloved:

The beame of beautie sparkled from above,

The floure of vertue and pure chastitie,
The blossome of sweet joy and perfect love,
The pearle of peerlesse grace and modestie:
To her my thoughts I daily dedicate,
To her my heart I nightly martyrize:
To her my love I lowly do prostrate,
To her my life I wholly sacrifice:
My thought, my heart, my love, my life is shee,
And I hers ever onely, ever one:
One ever I all vowed hers to bee,
One ever I, and others never none. (468-79)

Hunt introduces this passage by observing that “[s]ome commenta-

tors on Colin Clouts Come Home Againe believe that Spenser’s beloved
[...] is the Rosalind of The Shepheardes Calender” while “others believe
that she is his second wife Elizabeth Boyle, or that she is the queen
herself” (248).5 Hunt accepts Elizabeth Boyle as the subject of the
passage, stating that “Spenser’s beloved, described in Colin Clout, is
not Rosalind” (248).6 Hunt says of the passage as a whole: “Carefully,
beautifully, Spenser never names his beloved, but intimately, pri-
vately, names her forever in his heart in the twelve-verse passage
quoted above” (249).
I, too, feel the tremendous power of this passage, but Hunt’s argu-
ment here seems like special pleading. Why, when the absence of
“Elizabeth” or “Aetion” is problematic, is this name’s absence not felt
as a loss, a hole in the poem? “She, too, will one day die, but she will
remain alive as long as printers reproduce Colin Clout and readers
exist who can infer her name” (249). Why is this inference relatively
 A Response to Maurice Hunt 315

unproblematic, while the far easier connection between Elizabeth and

Cynthia is vexed? Hunt makes the good point that the ubiquity of the
name “Elizabeth” in the sixteenth-century would make it difficult to
name Elizabeth Boyle with the loving precision and adoration that the
poet might desire (235). However, I am less certain that we can clearly
call this absence of name an “indistinct” name, an “unorthodox nam-
ing” and most surprisingly, “this central process of successful nam-
ing” (235-36).
In other words, to sum up my objection, in the Elizabeth/Cynthia
section of Hunt’s argument, the presence of pseudonym points to the
absence of name, to the hole in the poem; in the case of Colin’s beloved,
the absence of any name at all (even a pseudonym), far from suggest-
ing absence, indicates a transcendent presence. As I noted earlier, Hunt
does say that naming and unnaming are difficult to distinguish. I
would argue that this looseness of definition, however, makes it more
difficult to accept Hunt’s thesis that we are to read a sharp distinction
between the beloved’s successful naming at the center of the poem,
and the problematized unnaming and failed naming of figures like
Bregog and Queen Elizabeth.

Regis College
Weston, MA

NOTES
1
Carroll’s White Knight and Alice consider the distinctions between “the song”;
“what the song is called”; “the name of the song”; and “what the name of the
song is called” (Through the Looking-Glass ch. 8).
2
If one wanted to, one could then object that “Elizabeth” is not really any nearer
the essence of the queen than “Cynthia”—that essence could only be achieved if
the queen in the flesh could somehow be produced by Colin’s song. In language
we are always at a remove from the thing.
3
Spenser’s own words on the various names of his queen in “A Letter of the
Authors,” prefatory to the 1590 The Faerie Queene, read: “In that Faery Queene I
meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceiue the most
excellent and glorious person of our soueraine the Queene, and her kingdome in
316 KREG SEGALL

Faery Land. And yet, in some places els, I doe otherwise shadow her. For consid-
ering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall queene or empresse, the
other of a most vertuous and beautifull Lady, this latter part in some places I doe
expresse in Belphœbe, fashioning her name according to your owne excellent
conceipt of Cynthia, (Phæbe and Cynthia being both names of Diana).” I would
offer this passage as at least a slightly analogous praising-without-naming mo-
ment, as his queen is only named “Elizabeth” in the dedication and never in the
Letter proper.
4
My main objection to this argument about Aetion is that it makes the poem‘s
theme of indistinctiveness contingent on the reader’s ignorance. If, in some
dreadful future, the knowledge that Astrofell is a name for Sidney becomes lost, I
would be hard pressed to agree that this loss of knowledge would enhance the
thematic work of the passage.
5
Hunt’s primary source for this claim is Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life; also
see Hadfield’s “Spenser’s Rosalind.”
6
Hunt notes, rightly, that this passage is at the mathematical center of the poem,
and, following David Burchmore, argues that “Spenser's verses create a symmet-
rical balance throughout Colin Clout” (248). However, in discussing the hypothesis
that Colin’s “gentle mayd” may be Rosalind and not Elizabeth Boyle, Hunt
dismisses Rosalind, “who most likely represents the woman Spenser loved in The
Shepheardes Calender (and who remains possibly in a latter part of Colin Clout
composed at a time different from the writing of the poetry under analysis)”
(249). These arguments seem at cross-purposes; if the poem is a carefully crafted,
symmetrical whole, surely we cannot dismiss the evidence of “a latter part” of the
poem.

WORKS CITED
Hadfield, Andrew. Edmund Spenser: A Life. Oxford: OUP, 2012.
——. “Spenser's Rosalind.” Modern Language Review 104.4 (Oct 2009): 935-46.
Spenser, Edmund. Colin Clout Comes Home Againe. The Yale Edition of the Shorter
Poems of Edmund Spenser. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989
——. The Fairie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. Second edition. Harlow: Pearson,
2007.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Signs of Life in Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour”*

FRANK J. KEARFUL

Our colloquial phrase “signs of life” presupposes signs of death, and

plenty of them, in the midst of which, or despite which, signs of life
emerge. In order to detect any in Lowell’s poetry, where illness and
death threaten to prevail, we need to become textual exegetes, rogue
semiologists, and adepts in sign reading ranging from biblical typol-
ogy to textual phonology. In this article I will be linking textual pho-
nology with three of Lowell’s master tropes that participate in a con-
tested formation of signs of life in “Skunk Hour”: fal-
ling/rising/standing, hands/touch, and hunger/food/eating.
Illness and death pervade Life Studies (1959), and as Part IV pro-
gresses, heading toward “Skunk Hour,” Lowell shifts attention to his
own recurrent manic-depressive illness. “Waking in the Blue” adverts
to a stay in “a house for the mentally ill” (183) that was neither his
first nor his last. The following poem, “Home After Three Months
Away,” depicts his homecoming as a “cured” mental patient, “Cured,
I am frizzled, stale and small” (186). The sylleptic play on “cured”
here at the end harks back to the “gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of
gauze” that were tied on a tree to feed hungry sparrows in line 5. The
poet’s bouts with mental illness reach a climax in “Skunk Hour,” in
which “the season’s ill” (stanza 3), the speaker’s “mind’s not right”
(stanza 5), and he hears his “ill-spirit sob” (stanza 6). Furthermore, the
phoneme cluster ill infiltrates the entire poem, creating an acoustic
chamber of ill-ness, until in stanza 7 it is consumed in an ameliorative

*For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debkearful0232.htm>.
318 FRANK J. KEARFUL

trope of hunger, food, and eating, thanks this time not to sparrows but
to hungry skunks.1
Ill first makes itself heard as a phoneme cluster in the opening line,
“Nautilus Island’s hermit,” followed in stanza 1 by “heiress still,” “her
sheep still,” and “our village”:

Nautilus Island’s hermit

heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she’s in her dotage.

Ill as an acoustic sign is augmented orthographically by age in “vil-

lage,” which joins “cottage” and “dotage” in an age-ing weak rhyme. At
the outset, “us” follows the phoneme cluster “ill” in “Nautilus,” which
also harbors an acoustic play on “Naut” / naught. The incorporation
of ill in “still lives” fashions a sign of ongoing life that gives credit to
the hermit heiress’s pertinacity, however “ill” she may be. In “Skunk
Hour,” the terminal poem in Life Studies, the hermit heiress is the
terminal “life study” of a dying New England aristocracy, to which
Lowell himself belonged.
The opening stanza resounds with ill and is occupied by her, the
“hermit / heiress.” Everyone and everything are hers. Her cottage, her
sheep, her farmer, her son fill designated roles—pastoral, agricultural,
political, religious—within the mock-feudal domain of this lady of the
manor. “Her sheep still graze above the sea” is the only line that does
not end on a falling rhythmical note, and within it “above” rises. For a
nostalgic, idyllic moment we are transported into a changeless pas-
toral world, a “still” world of otium and timelessness.2 Little do they
know it, but the sheep also inaugurate hunger, food, and eating as a
trope that skunks will appropriate in the final stanza.
In stanza 2, the hermit heiress seeks to preserve her best of all
worlds by removing visual signs of a new order, the “eyesores” facing
“her shore”:
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 319

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria’s century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The phrasal verb “buys up” and the verbal phrase “lets fall” team up
to invert the primal trope of falling/rising/standing that endows
Lowell’s poetry with signs of life restored. Pitch first rises—“she buys
up all”—then falls—“lets them fall.” The theme of the poem thus far
might be summarized ill all fall, which also encapsulates the doctrine
of original sin, that congenital spiritual “illness” which we all inherit.
Puritan schoolchildren learned this while learning the alphabet as a
rhyming system of religious signs in The New England Primer. Thus the
letter A: “In Adam’s Fall / We sinned all” (355). “Skunk Hour” adds,
homophonically, the “I-sores” in “eyesores.” But it is not just eyesores
that disturb the hermit heiress, she also thirsts for “the hierarchic
privacy / of Queen Victoria’s century.” “Skunk Hour” needs to be
read against the foil of Cold War cultural, political, and legal issues
that merged in major Supreme Court decisions regarding privacy.3
The phoneme cluster ill becomes a full-blown predicative adjective
at the outset of stanza 3:

The season’s ill—

we’ve lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

A long dash imposes a pregnant pause after two iambs, “The season’s
ill,” before the verse spreads to iambic tetrameter in line 2. “The sea-
son’s ill” was also the first line of an early draft of “Skunk Hour,”
which suggests the salience of “ill” in Lowell’s poetic thinking during
his composition of the poem.4 After the pause, it immediately infects
“our summer millionaire,” whom we have “lost.” Did his “leap from
an L. L. Bean / catalogue” anticipate a subsequent “leap,” to be fol-
320 FRANK J. KEARFUL

lowed by a fall?5 Did he act upon what Philip Hobsbaum calls “the
Death Wish” lurking in this and other stanzas (94)? I share Stephen
Yenser’s view that “the stanza intimates that ‘the summer millionaire’
was a suicide” and that “the means of suicide is implicit in ‘leap’”
(161). “His nine-knot yawl / was auctioned off to lobstermen” sug-
gests that he has abruptly gone to meet his maker, leaving behind a
yawl, that joins an all / fall / ill keening chorus, with “yawl” taking on
its function as a verb, to wail.6 Acoustically, “L. L. Bean” is not pre-
cisely “ill ill been,” but is close enough for the alert textual exegete to
take aural notice. The tone of the poem at this stage is complex, and
simply to refer to it as “elegiac” would miss the boat. Lowell’s fellow
poet Richard Wilbur got the tone about as right as anyone has: “the
humor grows more emphatic in stanza III, at the expense of a de-
ceased conspicuous consumer who looked, when alive, like a sport-
ing-goods dummy, and whose death is a blow to the summer resort’s
economy and distinction. At the same time, we are half aware in this
stanza of accumulating ideas of death and decay: to the addled heiress
and the collapsing eyesores we must add the dead millionaire, the
passing summer, and the decline of a fishing port into a vacation
town” (85-86).
Wilbur’s evocation of the summer millionaire in his dummy perfec-
tion summons up Lowell’s image of himself in “My Last Afternoon
with Uncle Devereux Winslow,” the inaugural poem in the “Life
Studies” sequence, which introduces the theme of pervasive illness
and death: “I was five and a half. / My formal pearl gray shorts / had
been worn for three minutes. / My perfection was the Olympian /
poise of my models in the imperishable autumn / display windows /
of Rogers Peet’s boys’ store below the State House / in Boston [...]”
(164). This first self-representation of Lowell standing in Life Studies
comes to life by association with lifeless dummies standing in the
windows of a traditional store favored by proper Bostonians for
themselves and their suitably accoutred male offspring.7 The last self-
representation of himself standing, having resisted a suicide impulse,
will initiate the final stanza of “Skunk Hour.” In the meantime the
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 321

lobstermen provide a sign of life more vigorous than the hermit

heiress who “still lives.” Not infected by “illness,” they fulfill their
life-sustaining, traditional vocation of providing succulent food for
the hungry.8 Summer millionaires may come and go, but they remain,
now making productive use of the yawl, which I fancy they acquired
at a knock-down price in coordinated bidding.
That doesn’t stop ill from infiltrating a rhyme-word at the end of the
stanza, which moves back to the present tense of the opening line: “A
red fox stain covers Blue Hill.” The line progresses deliberately,
slowly, sounding six even stresses and seven different vowels, one per
word: “A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.”9 “Red” initially modifies “fox,”
but spreads to “stain” before encountering a “Blue Hill.” “Stain” bears
within itself etymological traces of Old Norse steinen = “to paint,” as a
deranged sort of expressionist painting suggests itself, one in which a
blue (= “despondent”) hill (infected with illness) is covered with
blood, thus evoking the “blight on the countryside” topos of the clas-
sical elegiac tradition (see Race 109-10). Taken together, “The season’s
ill” and “A red fox stain covers Blue Hill” form a rural New England
pendant to Ezra Pound’s haikuish two-line “In a Station at the Metro.”
There are no petals on a wet black bough in Lowell’s poem, but the
“stained” New England fall foliage is emblematically appropriate. The
season’s ill, a sign of which is that leaves are “ill” and dying, as they
turn from green to orange to red.
The New England fall motif continues on into stanza 4, now as a
decorative orange:

And now our fairy

decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he’d rather marry.

The line-break construction “fairy / decorator” replicates the “hermit

/ heiress” construct of stanza 1, but whereas “hermit / heiress” pulls
322 FRANK J. KEARFUL

a surprise, “fairy / decorator” delivers a type figure to make sport of.

His “cobbler’s bench and awl” echoes the idiomatic phrase some-
thing-or-other “and all,” connoting a motley assemblage. Whereas a
red stain covered Blue Hill, orange covers his cobbler’s bench and awl.
Orange thus tastefully applied harmonizes with the orange cork that
fills his fishnet. Lowell does not actually argue, in sync with enlight-
ened thought of the times, that homosexuality is an illness, but echo-
ing the pervasive illness of the poem, ill acoustically occupies “filled.”
Within the socio-economic frame of the poem, the decorator is at
home neither in the mock-feudal world of the hermit heiress, nor in
the wheeler-dealer capitalist world of the summer millionaire: “there
is no money in his work.” The humorously crunched off-rhyme
“cork” / “work” makes a jest of his plight. A parting shot, “he’d
rather marry,” rhythmically echoes “And now our fairy,” with which
the stanza began. The “fairy” / “marry” off-rhyme adds a final sarcas-
tic note. William Doreski also has a bit of fun in juxtaposing the des-
perate straits of the summer millionaire and the gay decorator:
“wealth leads to loneliness and death, homosexuality leads to
thoughts of marriage” (90). A fate worse than death?
All this is, of course, good clean fun, at any rate in 1950s terms, be-
fore gays could tie the knot and homosexuality was still, charitably
viewed, an illness. But if there is something ill in the state of this New
England town, there is also something ill within Lowell’s persona.
Various critics have indeed found connections, homosexually in-
flected or otherwise, between the poet and the “ill” characters he
sketches, all isolated figures: the hermit heiress, the summer million-
aire, the fairy decorator.10 The poet’s own illness becomes life-
threatening in stanza five:

One dark night,

my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town...
My mind’s not right.
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 323

“One dark night” evokes the opening line (“En una noche oscura”) of
St. John of the Cross’s mystical poem “The Dark Night of the Soul”
(38) and thus harbors a potential sign of life. But we should not get
our hopes up. Lowell later wrote: “I hope my readers would remem-
ber John of the Cross’s poem. My night is not gracious, but secular,
Puritan, and agnostic. An existentialist night. Somewhere in my mind
was a passage from Sartre or Camus about reaching some point of
final darkness where the one free act is suicide” (Collected Prose 226).
The headlights of the love-cars are dimmed this dark night, as if to
ward off the canonical night / light rhyme that Dylan Thomas resound-
ingly employed as the governing A rhyme in his classic villanelle “Do
not go gentle into that good night.”11 Lowell’s rhyming response to
“night” is “My mind’s not right.” In his second tercet, Thomas himself
works a right / night variation on the seeded A rhyme, but as an af-
firmative, “dark is right.” Lowell’s mind is not. Lowell’s “dark night”
ends with a sign of illness, “My mind’s not right.” Blue Hill morphs
into “hill’s skull,” evoking Golgotha, from Hebrew gulgōleth for
“skull,” a verbal sign for the shape of the hill on which Jesus was
crucified. A “hull to hull” rhyme with “skull” moves toward a
“graveyard” that “shelves on the town.” “Shelves” as an intransitive
verb signifies “to slope away gradually, to incline,” but “shelves on”
sounds somewhat sinister, as if the graveyard were purposefully,
gradually moving closer to the “ill” town.12
The love-cars’ lights are turned down, but one radio is turned up
enough to be heard:

A car radio bleats,

“Love, O careless Love...” I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat...
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—

What Lowell’s persona hears, however, is less the bleating of “Love, O

Careless Love” than the sobbing of his own “ill-spirit”: “I hear / my
ill-spirit sob in each blood cell.”13 The ill in “ill-spirit” may denote
324 FRANK J. KEARFUL

illness, but it can also be taken in the sense of “hostile,” “harmful,” or

“pernicious,” as in “ill will,” or “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody
any good.” Never speak ill of the dead.
The speaker’s agon with his “ill-spirit [...] as if my hand were at its
throat” evokes a tradition of debate poems between body and soul
such as Andrew Marvell’s “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body,”
in which the wretched body speaks of itself as “A Body that could
never rest, / Since this ill Spirit it possest” (ll. 19-20). The diabolical
associations of “possest” suggest that the soul, itself possessed, in turn
possesses the body. In Marvell’s poem the soul is indeed figuratively
imprisoned in a prison cell within the body, and it complains of its ill
treatment.14 In “Skunk Hour,” the poet’s ill-spirit possesses each blood
“cell,” which in turn imprison the ill-spirit.15 Lowell’s line “as if my
hand were at it is throat” also brings to mind, however, “your life is in
your hands,” the sign of life that brings closure to “The Exile’s Re-
turn” in Lord Weary’s Castle (1946). The idiomatic phrase now acquires
a new twist: your life is in your hands, and it is there for the taking.
Lowell’s persona in “Skunk Hour” is on the verge of following as best
he can the satanic directive in “After the Surprising Conversions”:
“‘My friend, / Cut your own throat. Cut your own throat. Now!
Now!’” (62).16
The diabolical associations of “possessed” in Marvell’s no-win de-
bate poem, in which the “ill Spirit” is imprisoned within the body,
become more dire in Lowell’s next line, “I myself am hell,” as the
speaker’s voice is usurped by Milton’s Satan: “Which way I fly is hell;
myself am hell” (Paradise Lost 4.75). Lowell’s “one dark night” culmi-
nates, unlike John of the Cross’s, in a self-identification with the arche-
typal “ill spirit,” for whom hell is his own private cell. Lowell’s virtu-
oso rhyming and off-rhyming conjoin “cell” and “hell”; “hear” and
“hell” alliterate; assonance links “bleats” and “hear”; and the homo-
phones “hear” and “here” sound a rich rhyme. The one end-word that
acoustically sticks out painfully on its own is “throat,” which rang out
in Satan’s call to “cut your own throat” in “The Surprising Conver-
sions.”
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 325

The long dash after “nobody’s here” would seem to leave the iso-
lated poet-speaker on the verge of taking his own life, but it turns out
to be a bridge leading in the next stanza to a change of place and to a
vision of life persisting:

only skunks, that search

in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

Whatever symbolic weight the skunks heft as they “march on their

soles up Main Street,” ill and its off-rhyming symptoms are nowhere
to be heard.17 Instead hunger/food/eating—earlier associated only
indirectly with sheep and lobstermen—begin to emerge as the domi-
nant trope of the last two stanzas, bringing closure to the poem and to
Life Studies.
The skunks find what they are looking for in the final stanza, while
the poet, standing “on top / of our back steps,” now views them
instead of love-cars. The graveyard gives way to the poet’s backyard,
and standing supersedes earlier tropes of falling. The poet himself
stands:

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air—
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

This is one of Lowell’s several representations of himself standing, his

own erect figure constituting a battered sign of life. In this instance,
the back steps serve as a pedestal for his monumentalizing self-
representation.18 He also stands on top of the stanza, whose opening
line—“I stand on top”—rhythmically counters the iambic dimeter—
“and lets them fall”—that concludes stanza 2. In “Summer Tides,”
326 FRANK J. KEARFUL

completed three weeks before Lowell’s death, the back steps become a
gradually rotting “bulwark where I stand” (853). I read “Skunk Hour”
and “Summer Tides” as responses to the injunction “Stand and live”
in “Where the Rainbow Ends” (69), the terminal poem in Lord Weary’s
Castle. There it is accompanied by remedial tropes of hun-
ger/food/eating and of exile/return.
The spatial transition from the hill’s skull, to Main Street, to the
poet’s backyard where the skunks head, has been rapid. Their march
had an end in view. The skunks put in, as it were, a guest appearance,
designed for the poet’s viewing.19 He is no longer a voyeur of “love
cars,” but a witness to an emblematic scene, a sign of life that is as
much olfactory and acoustic as visual. The phoneme cluster ill which
has spread through the poem like a virus is, finally, swilled by a trope
of hunger, food, and eating when the mother skunk with her column
of kittens “swills the garbage pail.” Surrounding sound patterns, also
symptoms of illness, are simultaneously swilled. Pail, a homophone of
“pale,” harbors “ail” and off-rhymes with ill. But having been swilled,
ill is converted into will, a sign of life. As a modal verb, will is, admit-
tedly, part of a negation, “will not scare,” that is potentially both
transitive and intransitive. A reader who activates both grammatical
senses ratifies an easeful mutuality: the mother skunk will not scare
the poet and she will not be scared. She and her kittens will not run
away, nor will he. But still the reader must choose, either / or, be-
tween two senses of “will”: as staunch determination or, quite simply,
a serene statement of fact. A reader who consciously opts for the latter
joins in the formation of a healing fiction.20
On another level of twoness, there are now, thanks to “Skunk
Hour,” two indomitable mothers in Life Studies, and two families, one
dysfunctional, the other marvelously functional. Hunger, food, and
eating are recurrent tropes in Life Studies, and the family dinner that
brings closure swills, as it were, those earlier family dinners that
Lowell endured as a child, “absorbing cold and anxiety from the
table” (147), as he puts it in “91 Revere Street.” The dysfunctional
family theme enters the closing “Life Studies” sequence at the very
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 327

outset in “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow,” which

begins with a family dinner (163).21 In “Skunk Hour” it ends with one.
Thanks to a family of skunks, Lowell as an adult can now stand and
live, breathing “the rich air.” For the reader who has been keenly
attentive to acoustic signs and their askew suggestions, the poem
comes homophonically full circle. The hermit heiress is now super-
seded by a rich heir, as Lowell’s persona, himself a “dotty” isolate, is
reanimated.22

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität
Bonn

NOTES
1
David Kalstone draws passing attention to “[s]yllables [...] from the start [...]
beating insistently through the poem” (51). His examples, confined to stanzas 1
and 3, include a few of the syllables that I foreground in conjunction with the
phoneme cluster ill. John Frederick Nims remarks: “Rhymes and off-rhymes run
from stanza to stanza: ‘all’—‘fall’—‘yawl’—‘skull’—‘cell’—‘pail,’ etc” (88), but he
does not associate them with “ill.” Michael Toolan’s linguistically oriented stylis-
tic analysis of “Skunk Hour” shares none of my phonological concerns. Jackson
Barry’s “Robert Lowell: The Poet as Sign” contends that “in Lowell we find a very
complex sign function where a physical signifier, the figure chosen, stands for a
cluster of meanings attributed to but not inherent in the actual person” (180).
Barry does not mention “Skunk Hour,” and our essays in no respect overlap.
2
Whenever I read “her sheep still graze above the sea” I hear in the background
John McCormack singing “Sheep may safely graze” (“Schafe können sicher
weiden”), aria 4 from Bach’s Cantata No. 208. For a sign of Lowell’s interest in
Bach, see Mariani 213.
3
See Deborah Nelson’s chapter on Lowell in her Pursuing Privacy in Cold War
Culture (42-73). Nelson reads “Skunk Hour” as “an epochal poem poised at a
generational and temporal shift. The opening two stanzas of the poem register
uneasiness with the upheavals in contemporary life occasioned by the loss of a
certain kind of privacy” (47). Nelson traces the privacy issue throughout the
poem.
4
The draft, titled “Inspiration,” is reprinted in Axelrod, Robert Lowell: Life and
Art 250.
5
Today one cannot leap from but may consult an online catalogue at
www.llbean.com. I remember when Brooks Brothers ads and L. L. Bean ads in The
328 FRANK J. KEARFUL

New Yorker would clearly be appealing to the same clientele. A New York or
Boston businessman accustomed to wearing a Brooks Brothers suit could don his
L. L. Bean outdoorsman’s gear for use at his “summer place,” quite often in
Maine. The company was founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean in Freeport,
Maine. For a fascinating history of the company, see the Wikipedia entry on L. L.
Bean. In “Flee on Your Donkey” from her collection Live or Die Anne Sexton
records: “I carried a knife in my pocketbook—/ my husband’s good L. L. Bean
hunting knife. / I wasn’t sure if I should slash a tire / or scrape the guts out of
some dream” (8).
6
I have been asked: “Is there anything in the text that suggests he died and did
not simply lose his money?” This query prioritizes one hypothesis as the obvious
one, takes for granted that there is something “in the text” to justify prioritizing it,
and leaves the hypothesis standing as one which will remain “true” as long as it
cannot be disproved. I cannot disprove the hypothesis that the millionaire left
town because he suddenly went bankrupt. Nor can I say what “in the text” grants
it prioritized status. As for my own hypothesis, I grant that “the text” provides no
explicit evidence that death, death by his own hand, was the “real” reason we
have lost him. It doesn’t provide any such indication for any other hypothesis,
either. It could be that our summer millionaire just up and left after the summer
was over, eager to get back to work and earn more millions. What else would one
have expected of him after summer was over? He’s gone, but why is never spelled
out. “We’ve lost our summer millionaire” is phrased in the laconic manner of a
Maine countryman’s oral speech which Lowell adopts, using the communal “our”
just as he does for “our fairy decorator.” Perhaps “millionaire” is humorously
hyperbolic, but the “our” suggests that he was a regular summer visitor, now
never more to return. Did he suddenly go bankrupt during the summer? “Mebbe
yes, and mebbe no” (to try to put it in rural New England speech). My hypothesis
underscores a contrast between him and the pertinacious hermit heiress, made of
sterner New England stuff, who “still lives.” It also responds to the aura of mys-
tery about the millionaire’s departure and the auctioning off of his yawl to lob-
stermen. I don’t want to invoke Wolfgang Iser’s notion of “gaps” in a text for the
reader to fill in, but Lowell often leaves open to the reader how to “fill in” a key
line or phrase for which “the text” provides no clearly determined answer. Take,
for example, the unidentified “kind hands” in Lowell’s “The March 2” (546) and
how the poem thematically hinges on the reader’s construction of whose hands
they are; see my article on “The March 1” and “The March 2.” Textual exegesis,
including exegesis of biblical passages, may call for a good deal of filling in gaps.
The very absence of a stated “real” reason “in the text,” combined with the laconic
speaking manner assumed by the poet, helps form my hypothesis. In “Skunk
Hour” the speaker resists a suicide compulsion, but during Lowell’s lifetime five
poets who were students of his or friends didn’t: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John
Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz. Lowell foregrounds suicide in
“A Suicidal Nightmare”(865), “Suicide” (724-25), and most chillingly in “After the
Surprising Conversions” (574). Life Studies includes a poem “To Delmore
Schwartz (157-58) and “Words for Hart Crane” (159), who committed suicide by
leaping from a ship. None of this “proves” that the millionaire joined the crowd,
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 329

perhaps following Crane’s example, but it may subconsciously affect my reading

of what is and is not “in the text.” It also reinforces my reading of “Skunk Hour”
as, among other things, a celebration of the poet’s triumphant resistance to a
suicide impulse, thanks to some skunks.
7
The “Marry the Man Today” number in the 1950 musical Guys and Dolls im-
mortalized Rogers Peet as the place to send a gentleman in the making: “Slowly
introduce him to the better things / respectable, conservative, and clean. / Read-
ers Digest! / Guy Lombardo! / Rogers Peet! / Golf! / Galoshes! / Ovaltine!” (qtd.
from Jones 185). Nostalgic fans of Rogers, Peet & Co. should consult <www.ivy-
style.com/better-things-rogers-peet-co.html>, which offers numerous illustrations
of Rogers Peet advertisements from times past, including for boys’ wear. Its
sartorial cousin, Brooks Brothers, still lives, but Rogers, Peet & Co., founded in
1874, gave up the ghost in the mid-1980s. I vaguely remember the store that
Lowell refers to, at 104 Tremont Street.
8
The best lobsters in the world are Maine lobsters. And the most expensive,
although a current glut in lobster stocks due to global warming of waters off the
Maine coast means that Maine lobstermen are earning catastrophically less de-
spite consumers still having to pay premium prices; see Jess Bidgood, “Some
Wary as Lobstermen Unite,” New York Times 20 Oct. 2013, 14 April 2014
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/us/some-wary-as-lobstermen-
unite.html?_r=0>. A textual clue to the poem’s setting as Castine, Maine, where
Lowell frequently spent summers, is given at the outset, “Nautilus Island,” which
is at the head of Castine Harbor in Penobscot Bay.
9
I cannot read the line without associatively thinking of Winslow Homer’s
painting “The Fox Hunt” (1893, now hanging in the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts). Nicolai Cikovsky’s Winslow Homer provides a large reproduction (115-
16). In the painting, fall has already turned to winter in Maine.
10
Helen Vendler comments: “The manuscript suggests that all of these are fig-
ures for the poet himself. Whereas the final version says ‘There is no money in his
work, / he’d rather marry’ about the ‘fairy decorator,’ in the draft the poet says
this about himself: ‘There is no money in this work / I’d rather marry.’ Lowell
inherited his house in Castine, Maine, from his aunt who lived there, but he only
went there in summers, like the ‘summer millionaire.’ No longer living in one of
the roles proper to his Brahmin lineage—hermit, or bishop, or landowner—the
speaker has declined into the unvirile role of the artist, comparable to that of the
man whom the town contemptuously calls the ‘fairy decorator’” (56-67). By
indicating that it is the town that has given the decorator his label, Vendler leaves
Lowell off the homophobic hook. Taking a deeper plunge into Lowell’s psyche
than Vendler ventures, Lawrence Kramer maintains that “the homosexuality of
the decorator exposes a deep current of early childhood (Oedipal) homosexuality
in the autobiographical speaker” (242). Kathleen Spivack, who knew Lowell well,
writes insightfully of his publicly expressed homophobia as “protective colora-
tion” in mid-century Bostonian cultural contexts (122). Ian Gregson does not
touch upon “Skunk Hour” in his well-considered chapter on masculinity as a
330 FRANK J. KEARFUL

recurrent topic in Lowell’s poetry (“Men and Mermaids: Robert Lowell’s Martial
Masculinity and Beyond,” 12-38).
11
St. John of the Cross was stuck with “luz,” Spanish for “light,” and uses “in-
flamada” (“inflamed”) in line 2 to rhyme with “oscura” in line 1. His English
translator Willis Barnstone uses “light” at the end of the second stanza to parry
“night” at the end of the first, so strong is the pull of the “night / light“ rhyme,
whereas John of the Cross uses “segura” (“sure” or “surely”). Lowell also identi-
fied two German poems as sources for his “One dark night” stanza, Friedrich
Hölderlin’s “Brod und Wein” [“Bread and Wine”] and Annette von Droste-
Hülshoff’s “Am letzten Tage des Jahres”[“On the Last Day of the Year”], both of
which he quotes in German (Collected Prose 228). Droste-Hülshoff’s grim medita-
tion employs six-line stanzas, beginning and ending with rhyming iambic dime-
ters, as in stanza two: “‘s ist tiefe Nacht” (literally, “it is deep night”) and “Einsam
durchwacht” (translatable as “lonely, awake throughout”). Lowell quotes the
entire second stanza and the beginning of the third.
12
A “scull” is a boat, and as a homophone of “skull” it adds to the nautical im-
agery of the passage. Given the nautical context, the “love-cars” bring to mind, at
least mine, the “love-boats” that in the good old days passed through a darkened
“Tunnel of Love,” giving an impetuous teenager a chance to steal a kiss before the
boat emerged into the amusement park light of day. A tunnel-of-love cartoon in
The New Yorker 28 Oct. 2013: 55 takes things a bit farther in the direction of “Skunk
Hour.” On the left, a couple in a boat is about to enter a darkened tunnel, over
which a sign reads “Tunnel of Love.” On the right, a lone male wearing a baseball
cap, also sitting in a boat, is about to enter at the opposite end of the tunnel, over
which a sign reads “Tunnel of Voyeurism.” By line 7, transformed into boats, the
love-cars lie together “hull to hull,” as if beached, while “shelves” may awaken
associations with sandbars.
13
The “love-cars” provide dubious service as a sign of life for the speaker, and
the song that “bleats” from the interior of one of them—the grazing sheep of
stanza one felt no need to bleat—conveys signs of illness and of death. The editors
of Lowell’s Collected Poems cite lines from Big Joe Turner’s February 1941 re-
cording of “Careless Love”: “Love, O Love, O careless love [...] / You worried my
mother until she died / You caused my father to lose his mind / You worried my
mother until she died / You made my father lose his mind” (1046). In connection
with the “privacy” theme (see n3), Deborah Nelson remarks that “from the first
elegy in Life Studies, Lowell had figured himself as a voyeur: ‘unseen but all-
seeing, I was Agrippina / in the Golden House of Nero’ (‘My Last Afternoon with
Uncle Devereux Winslow’)” (166). One need not assume, however, that Robert
Lowell was himself a voyeur given to haunting lovers’ lanes. He notes that
“watching the lovers was not mine, but from an anecdote about Walt Whitman in
his old age” (Collected Prose 228). The editors of Lowell’s Collected Poems quote
Lowell’s source, Logan Pearsall Smith’s Unforgotten Years: “Almost every after-
noon my father would take Walt Whitman driving in the Park; it was an unfailing
interest to them to drive as close as they could behind buggies in which pairs of
lovers were seated, and observe the degree of slope towards each other, or
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 331

‘buggy-angle,’ as they called it, of these couples; and if they ever saw this angle of
separation narrowed to an embrace, my father and Walt Whitman, who had ever
honored that joy-giving power of nature symbolized under the name of Venus,
would return home with happy hearts” (99; qtd. from Lowell, Collected Poems
1046).
14
Marvell’s opening lines, spoken by the soul, inaugurate the topos: “O Who
shall, from this Dungeon, raise / A Soul enslav’d so many wayes?” The rest of the
ten-line stanza elaborates on its ill treatment by the body. The body replies in the
next stanza—beginning “O who shall me deliver whole, / From bonds of this
Tyrannic Soul?”—with its own complaint about its ill treatment by the soul.
Neither body nor soul wins the debate, each is in effect the prisoner of the other.
David Reid observes that Marvell “develops the contradiction between the two
sides of the one being to express, with every appearance of levity and control, an
unbearable state of discord” (213). An emblem book illustration from Herman
Hugo’s Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) depicting a soul imprisoned in a body can
be found in Rosalie Colie’s book on Marvell. The body is a skeleton whose ribs
form the bars of the cell within which the soul, a rather hapless creature, is incar-
cerated (Illustration 2, facing 238).
15
In his biography of Lowell, Charles Mariani reports on Donald Junkins’s visit-
ing Lowell in his “locked cell at McLean’s” mental asylum in December 1957
(262).
16
“After the Surprising Conversions,” in Lord Weary’s Castle, is a verse epistle
closely based on the ending of Jonathan Edwards’s letter known as “Narrative of
Surprising Conversions” (November 6, 1736). A note in the Collected Poems quotes
portions of it, including: “And many who seemed under no melancholy, some
pious persons, who had no special darkness or doubts about the goodness of their
state—nor were under any special trouble or concern or mind about anything
temporal—had it urged upon them as if somebody had spoke to them. Cut your
own throat, now is a good opportunity. Now! Now!” (1023). One inevitably thinks
of the last line of Lowell’s “Waking in the Blue,” “each of us holds a locked razor”
(184).
17
Given the “dark night of the soul” evocation of the previous stanza, I grant
that it is hard to ignore a latent pun on “soles” and “souls.” These skunks’ soles /
souls are not “ill,” and when they “march on their soles up Main Street,” all ills
are flattened. Far be it from me to point out that a cobbler’s awl, such as may be
found in the decorator’s emporium, might be used in repairing soles. For punning
turns on “awl” / “sole,” see Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar 1.1.
18
On the monumentalizing impulse in Lowell’s poetry, particularly with refer-
ence to “For the Union Dead,” see Guy Rotella (41-80).
19
Elizabeth Bishop dedicated “The Armadillo” (83-84) to Lowell, and he dedi-
cated his “Skunk Hour” to her. Lowell also sneaked a bishop if not Bishop into his
poem: “Her son’s a bishop.” In a 1978 interview conducted by Eileen McMahon,
Bishop sought to minimize affiliations between the two poems and the signifi-
cance of the dedications. She also reports on Lowell’s, and her, rather humdrum
332 FRANK J. KEARFUL

encounter with the skunks in Lowell’s backyard at Castine: “I visited Lowell in

Castine, Maine in 1957 when I was up from Brazil with a Brazilian friend of mine.
The skunk business then was going on at the back door, where we saw it with a
flashlight. Then he wrote ‘Skunk Hour’” (109). On the impact of “The Armadillo”
on Lowell and “Skunk Hour” in particular, see Thomas Travisano (225-33).
Bishop rhymes “night” and “height” in her first quatrain, before turning on the
“light” in the next. Lowell’s “dark night” is at least partially illumined by
“moonlight” in the present stanza.
20
Stephen Matterson focuses more on the poet’s primary role in the creation of
what I call a healing fiction: “Life Studies has explored the failure of the imagina-
tion to give order and meaning to objects and experiences, the failure to transform
reality. Yet in the end Lowell’s survival is engineered by a fiction, by the tempo-
rary restoration of his lost esemplastic power. The line “My mind’s not right” and
the following sentence represent a nadir. But then Lowell introduces the skunks,
suggesting the presence of disinterested care in the world, and providing a kind
of reproach for the introverted narrator. Thus Lowell interprets the skunks’
actions in a self-conscious way, giving meaning to them. This ability momentarily
transforming reality through language and imagination becomes fused with the
ability to endure. The skunks are fictions” (68).
21
Steven Gould Axelrod analyzes the “opaque, swirling linguistic signs” of the
poem, in which “home becomes a nexus of isolation, paralysis, impoverishment,
discord, and death. It is revealed as the most unhomelike space of all” (255).
Home nevertheless was not short of garbage cans. In “91 Revere Street” we learn
of three family garbage cans, each inscribed “R. T. S. Lowell—U.S.N” (148) to
identify them as the property of the feckless head of the house, a former naval
officer.
22
The “Life Studies” sequence traces Lowell’s family history from 1922 to 1957,
with family members dying off one by one, leaving him as an heir of two distin-
guished but played out New England families, the Lowells and the Winslows,
whose credentials go back to the Mayflower. “I [...] / breathe the rich air” resusci-
tates “I breathe the ether of my marriage feast,” a line with religious and mystical
import in “Where the Rainbow Ends” (69). Vereen Bell is not sanguine about any
reanimation: “Breathing ‘rich air’ is not likely to contribute much more regenera-
tion than a pang for one who is a hell to himself and whose ill-spirit is threatened
by his own hand” (69). Adam Beardsworth thinks otherwise: “As the speaker
watches the skunks, he breathes ‘the rich air,’ indicating that in the actions (and
foul odour) he finds a sense of redemption, even within his own hell” (112).
Richard J. Fein writes of Lowell as “a family heir in Life Studies” who attains “a
reclamation in the ‘rich air’ of the self” (72, 48). Sandra M. Gilbert extends the
salutary working of “the rich air” to the rest of us: “At the end of his poem Lowell
pauses on the ‘back steps’ and breathes ‘the rich air.’ The air of ‘Skunk Hour’ is
rich indeed, rich with the seething of ancient powers, rich with moiling Modernist
and Postmodernist anxieties. Rich, most of all, with what is finally, odd as it may
seem, a kind of nourishment for poets and their readers, a nourishment as neces-
sary to us as the ‘sour cream’ is to the skunks” (78-79). One could add that even
 Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” 333

the phonic “air” in the “Trinitarian Church” has been refreshed by the rich air and
that the fairy decorator can breathe more easily. By contrast, in “The Prodigal,”
Elizabeth Bishop’s ironic rendition of the prodigal son parable, pig-sty stink
remains stink: “The brown enormous odor he lived by / was too close, with its
breathing and thick hair, / for him to judge” (54). I think that “The Prodigal” may
have been nearly as much of an imaginative influence on “Skunk Hour” as “The
Armadillo.” The personal illness to which Bishop’s poem relates is alcoholism:
“The Prodigal was suggested by my stretch with psychoanalysis—that, and the
actual incident of being offered a drink of rum in a pig-pen in Nova Scotia at 9
o’clock one morning” [from a letter to May Swenson, Sept. 6, 1955] (806). Her use
of “stretch” brings to mind the length of a prison sentence.

WORKS CITED
Axelrod, Steven Gould. Robert Lowell: Life and Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978.
——. “Lowell’s Postmodernity: Life Studies and the Shattered Image of Home.”
Jarrell, Bishop, Lowell & Co.: Middle Generation Poets in Context. Ed. Suzanne Fer-
guson. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003. 251-68.
Barry, Jackson. “Robert Lowell: The Poet as Sign.” Semiotics 1995. Ed. C. W. Spinks
and John Deely. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. 179-87.
Beardsworth, Adam. “Learning to Love the Bomb: Robert Lowell’s Pathological
Poetics.” Canadian Review of American Studies 40.1 (2010): 95-116.
Bell, Vereen. Robert Lowell: Nihilist as Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983.
Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems, Prose, and Letters. Ed. Robert Giroux and Lloyd
Schwartz. New York: Library of America, 2008.
Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai. Winslow Homer. New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1990.
Colie, Rosalie. “My Echoing Song”: Andrew Marvell’s Poetry of Criticism. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1970.
Doreksi, William. Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors: The Poetics of the Public and the
Personal. Athens: Ohio UP, 1990.
von Droste-Hülshoff, Annette. “Am letzten Tag des Jahres.” Das große deutsche
Gedichtbuch. Ed. Karl Otto Conrady. Kronberg: Athenäum, 1977. 432.
Fein, Richard J. Robert Lowell. 2nd ed. Boston: Twayne. 1979.
Gilbert, Sandra M. “Mephistophilis in Maine: Rereading ‘Skunk Hour.’” Robert
Lowell: Essays on the Poetry. Ed. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese. Cam-
bridge: CUP, 1986. 70-79.
Gregson, Ian. The Male Image: Representations of Masculinity in Postwar Poetry.
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.
Hobsbaum, Philip. A Reader’s Guide to Robert Lowell. London: Thames and Hud-
son, 1988.
Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Our Selves: A Social History of American Musical
Theatre. Hanover, NH. Brandeis UP, 2003.
334 FRANK J. KEARFUL

Kalstone, David. Five Temperaments: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill,
Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery. New York: OUP, 1977.
Kearful, Frank J. “Poetics and Politics in Robert Lowell’s ‘The March 1’ and ‘The
March 2.’” Connotations 22.1 (2012/2013): 89-117.
Kramer, Lawrence. “Freud and the Skunks: Genre and Language in Life Studies.”
Robert Lowell: Essays on the Poetry. Ed. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese.
Cambridge: CUP, 1986. 80-98.
Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. Ed. Frank Bidart and David Gewanter. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
——. Collected Prose. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1987.
——. The Letters of Robert Lowell. Ed. Saskia Hamilton. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1987.
Mariani, Charles. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: Norton, 1994.
Marvell, Andrew. Complete Poetry. Ed. George deForest Lord. New York: Modern
Library, 1968.
Matterson, Stephen. Berryman and Lowell: The Art of Losing. Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan, 1988.
McMahon, Eileen. “Elizabeth Bishop Speaks about Her Poetry.” Conversations with
Elizabeth Bishop. Ed. George Monteiro. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996. 107-10.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. Rev. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman,
2007.
Nelson, Deborah. Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America. New York: Columbia UP,
2002.
The New England Primer. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina
Baym. Beginnings to 1820. 7th ed. Vol. A. New York: Norton, 2007. 353-55.
Nims, John Frederick. “On Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour.’” The Contemporary Poet
as Artist and Critic. Ed. Anthony Ostroff. Boston: Little Brown, 1964. 88-92.
Race, William H. Classical Genres and English Poetry. London: Croom Helm, 1988.
Reid, David. The Metaphysical Poets. Harlow: Longman, 2000.
Rotella, Guy. Castings: Monuments and Monumentality in Poems by Elizabeth Bishop,
Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. Nashville: Van-
derbilt UP, 2004.
St. John of the Cross. The Poems of St. John of the Cross. Trans. Willis Barnstone.
New York: New Directions, 1972.
Sexton, Anne. Live or Die. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
Smith, Logan Pearsall. Unforgotten Years. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1939.
Spivack, Kathleen. With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton,
Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, and Others. Boston: Northeastern UP, 2012.
Thomas, Dylan. “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night.” Collected Poems 1934-
52. London: Dent, 1962. 116.
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Toolan, Michael. “Poem, Reader, Response: Making Sense with ‘Skunk Hour.’”
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don: Routledge, 2008. 85-95.
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Martin’s P, 2010.
Wilbur, Richard. “On Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour.’” The Contemporary Poet as
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 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows

and Dance of the Dwarfs: A Response to
Robert Lance Snyder*

DAVID SEED

Robert Lance Snyder’s recent article on Geoffrey Household in Conno-

tations deserves praise on two counts. Firstly, it helps rescue House-
hold from almost total critical neglect; and, secondly, it opens up
helpful new avenues for interpreting his fiction. The discussion which
follows is intended as a constructive extension of the analysis pre-
sented in Snyder’s essay together with suggestions of its limitations.
One of Snyder’s main arguments is that Household revises the ge-
neric conventions of the Edwardian thriller by removing characters’
national features because he regards the latter as anachronistic. Thus,
Household narrows down the action to a battle of wits between the
narrator and his antagonist. As this battle develops, it gradually
becomes evident that the narrator and opponent are in some way
mirror images of each other. This doubling is signalled through
exchanges of dress, hints of physical resemblance, and other details
which suggest such a close relation between the two characters that
the action of Household’s narratives can be read as a psychodrama
quite different from conventional thrillers.
Snyder’s argument risks simplifying the action of Household’s ficti-
on in such a way that its political resonances and circumstantial detail
tend to be lost in the emphasis on doubling. His reading of
Household’s thrillers as tales of detection similarly understates the
generic variety of his fiction.1 Household produced works ranging

*Reference: Robert Lance Snyder, “‘Occult Sympathy:’ Geoffrey Household’s

Watcher in the Shadows and Dance of the Dwarfs,” Connotations 22.2 (2012/2013):
301-17.
For the original article as well as all contributions to this debate, please check
the Connotations website at <http://www.connotations.de/debsnyder0222.htm>.
 A Response to Robert Lance Snyder 337

from horror stories to science fiction and even shifts genre temporarily
within individual works. Snyder compares Household’s doubling to
classics like James Hogg’s Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner,
but the Household’s narrowing down of the action connects his novels
with a different subset of thrillers, where the conspiracies of super-
criminals have to be thwarted by the protagonist. Whether Denis
Nayland Smith is pitted against Fu Manchu or Bulldog Drummond
against Carl Peterson, the pattern stays of the protagonist engaging in
a battle of wits against his opponent. Partly this process involves
detection—the uncovering of the conspiracy—and partly strategy in
anticipating and thwarting the master-criminal’s plot. In Sax Roh-
mer’s fiction, of course, the action is heavily coloured with racial
threat as Nayland Smith battles to protect civilization as we know it,
but in all these cases the evil genius possesses an unnerving ability to
change appearance at will and manoeuvre his way through all levels
of society.2 Characteristically in these narratives protagonist and
antagonist form an elite whose intellects match each other in reach,
but it is crucial for the drama of these novels that the opposition be-
tween these characters be maintained throughout.
The popularity of the criminal mastermind in fiction between the
wars may have been a factor in Household turning to thrillers in the
1930s. However, a direct influence which Snyder rightly stresses was
that of John Buchan. The latter’s evocation of suspense through the
immediate drama of his protagonists’ attempts to outwit their adver-
saries clearly feeds into Household’s fiction, as does Buchan’s use of
reversals and his detailed attention to setting. What distinguishes his
thrillers from Household’s is that Buchan’s most famous serial hero,
Richard Hannay, never works in isolation from his friends in British
intelligence and has important connections with the USA and South
Africa. For all his versatility, Hannay remains a soldier, and for that
reason we never lose our consciousness of national and political issues
during the novels describing Hannay’s exploits. Buchan’s endings
regularly signal the reaffirmation of institutional order through the
removal of threats to the nation. In that respect, the politics of Bu-
338 DAVID SEED

chan’s narratives contrast strikingly with those of Household, who

described himself as a “romantic anarchist.”3
Snyder suggests that Household tends to lose this broader institu-
tional dimension by concentrating his action more and more closely
on his protagonists’ psyche, but it does not follow that the political
and social issues are lost as a result. More importantly, we should note
the framing devices and other strategies which Household follows to
render his narratives ambiguous. Rogue Male (1939), for instance,
carries an accompanying letter where he declares: “I write this from a
pleasant inn where I am accustoming myself to a new avatar” (181).
The suggestion of a serial re-invention of the self would be totally
alien in Buchan, as would the suggestion in the letter that the narrator
wrongly chose the countryside as a setting for pursuit which would
have been more powerfully described in a city. The effect is as if the
speaker had stepped out of his role and was approaching the position
of the author himself.
Snyder focuses specifically on this novel’s concluding scene for its
evoked identification between the narrator and his pursuer, but by so
doing fails to comment on the introverted, self-reflexive nature of the
narrative. As frequently happens in Household, the narrator repeat-
edly stresses his process of recollection, describing his account as a
confession: “I create a second self, a man of the past by whom the man
of the present may be measured” (8). As early as this preamble we can
see how the narrator has become his own subject. The narrative pre-
sents an extended exercise in self-examination, where the narrator
looks out for signs of weakness and self-deception. And this is not an
isolated case in Household. His narrators frequently incorporate
comments on their own methods, thereby inducing in the reader an
alert attention to representational technique. At one point in Rogue
Male, for instance, he stresses the time lapse between the events and
his description: “when I write that I did this because of that, it is true.
At the time of the action, however, it was not always true” (61). Such
reflective moments are rare in Buchan, who repeatedly attempts to
maximize the immediacy of events.
 A Response to Robert Lance Snyder 339

Partly because he has discussed the novel elsewhere, Snyder uses

Rogue Male as a springboard into his discussion of two post-war nov-
els, but in fact this novel already demonstrates Household’s method
of selective exclusion.4 The narrator is a lone adventurer who has
travelled to an unnamed country in Europe to kill its dictator. A
reader in 1939 would need no further information to pick up that
contemporary resonance. By 1941, in his film adaptation as Man Hunt,
Fritz Lang had explicitly made the target Hitler, as indeed he is
named in Household’s 1982 sequel Rogue Justice. In the novel, the
narrator’s plan misfires, he is arrested and then flees the country.
Through a reversal which was to become one of Household’s hall-
marks, the hunter becomes the hunted, and the novel demonstrates
the threatening reach of the European dictator through this pursuit.
Here we have one of the main features which distinguishes House-
hold’s novel from Buchan’s. In the epistolary foreword to The Thirty-
Nine Steps Buchan announces his intention to imitate the method of
American “shockers,” what we would now call thrillers, which are
based on the rapid pace of events.5 Accordingly, Richard Hannay
opens that novel with a brief back story on his business activities in
Africa and recent arrival in London. Having established that he is an
enterprising and seasoned traveller, the action begins. In Rogue Male,
the narrator’s consciousness supplies the ground of the story, and the
action centres on the persistent consequences of his original attempt at
assassination. This does not mean, however, that Rogue Male is thin on
specifics, only that Household selects his details according to the
immediate necessities of his narrator’s local situation. The latter flees
back to London secretly stowed away on a cargo boat and is then
followed around the London Underground, until he kills one of his
pursuers. This estranges him from the authorities: “I was an outlaw in
my own country,” he admits (41). In The Thirty-Nine Steps Richard
Hannay also becomes a fugitive, wrongly accused of a murder by the
conspirators, but we never lose the background conviction that his
actions are to protect the nation or that he will be ultimately vindi-
cated.
340 DAVID SEED

Rogue Male, by contrast, opens more obliquely with a description not

of events themselves, but of the reactions of the narrator’s opponents:
“I cannot blame them.” The reader is thus drawn into a judgemental
relation with the narrator even before we have the data to pass such
judgements. Similarly, unlike Buchan, the end point is always uncer-
tain. The narrator puts together his “kit” (63) and flees to Dorset,
where he finally confronts his pursuer, one Major Quive-Smith, whose
identity is bogus and who masquerades as a gentleman farmer. The
latter’s purpose is to make the narrator sign a confession that he had
indeed tried to kill the “great man” (137). This presents a certain
temptation to the narrator, who has from the very beginning admitted
a confessional impulse in his account. When the narrator finally kills
his pursuer, he takes on the latter’s identity and leaves England. The
novel ends inconclusively with the narrator temporarily in Tangier, at
the time of publication still within the International Zone and there-
fore outside any nation.
The most dramatic section of Rogue Male is that where the narrator is
being pursued round the Dorset countryside, and it is the physical
detail of this terrain which Snyder’s emphasis on doubling under-
states. The landscape is encoded through avenues of attack and es-
cape, and the travel writer Robert Macfarlane has even argued that
the narrator becomes a “hybrid version of the landscape itself” since
both place and the narrator are conveyed to the reader through rhe-
torical oppositions like that between “cover” and “open” (“Reread-
ing”).6 The grounded nature of Household’s narratives can never be
forgotten without over-simplifying their action.
As Snyder has pointed out, World War II marked a crucial transition
point for Household and an end to his Wanderjahre—he had lived
variously in Romania, Spain and America. During the war he served
with British military intelligence, experience which fed into his 1960
novel Watcher in the Shadows. Here Charles Dennim, an Austrian
former intelligence officer, is shocked out of his suburban peace when
a letter bomb explodes at his door. Information gradually emerges
that there have been a series of killings—probably from revenge—of
 A Response to Robert Lance Snyder 341

officials from the Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps,

where Dennim had worked while within the Austrian resistance. In
other words, the action has a clear historical dimension. It seems as if
Dennim is being wrongly targeted, because he was active in an anti-
Nazi movement; at least, that is what he tells the reader. Just as we
have once again a Household narrator struggling with uncertainty, so
the reader is left wondering about the reliability of the information he
supplies. Throughout the novel he (and the reader too) can only work
from what a character calls “intelligent conjecture” (140). Once again
the action centres on flight, this time to the Buckinghamshire country-
side.
Here again a preoccupation with doubling diverts us from the
physical specifics of pursuit. In The Three Hostages (1924) and other
novels Buchan evokes the landscape as an emblem of peaceful cul-
tural inheritance, but one which is constantly under threat. The land-
scape in Watcher in the Shadows lacks this directly national significance
because Dennim’s relation to place is more oblique. He is revealed to
be British by adoption and, even though he knows the countryside so
well that one character mistakes him for a game-keeper, he reads the
terrain strategically, mapping out possible routes of attack and ave-
nues of flight. Thus, the features of the landscape are not simply
picturesque. A wood, for instance, could offer the narrator refuge, or
might even be a hiding-place for his opponent. As in Rogue Male, the
countryside is described in close detail, and it is that detail which is
used to evoke the drama. This tight focus on a protagonist using his
survival skills to avoid pursuit was to become central to David
Morrell’s 1972 debut novel First Blood, where a decorated Vietnam
veteran becomes a fugitive from a local sheriff. As happens in House-
hold’s fiction, the action results from a transposition of scenes, here of
the traumas of Vietnam on to the American landscape. Morrell has
acknowledged how skilfully Household managed the claustrophobia
of his action by constantly evoking the concrete physical details of his
protagonist’s situation.7
342 DAVID SEED

Because Household uses the narrative first person, the pursuit of

Dennim seems at times paranoid, ambiguous at the very least. Den-
nim evokes his enemy melodramatically as his “dedicated execu-
tioner” (45), or more generally as a featureless “dark gentleman” (80),
uncannily shadowing his movements around the landscape. For
Snyder this figure is yet another double, and yet Household histori-
cizes the terrain by having Dennim rent a cottage near a disused
aerodrome. In short, there is no escaping the past, and Dennim’s
painstaking mapping out of the area reflects his attempts to bring his
situation under control. As Snyder has noted, these attempts have a
rhetorical dimension because Dennim draws on the analogy of the
hunt, whether by humans or animals. His chosen analogy in Watcher
in the Shadows is with “German Intelligence chess” (60). Chess has
been a traditional metaphor of strategy for many years, but House-
hold adds the complication that the player cannot see his opponent,
can only infer moves.
So far it could sound as if the novel’s action is speculative to the
point of abstraction, but then Household introduces a whole series of
what Snyder calls “character and gender relationships unmistakably
associated with a bygone time” (307): a retired admiral, a vicar who is
an expert naturalist, a former general, and so the list could continue.
In the second half of the novel a whole gallery of comic rural stereo-
types passes before us, and consequently the suspense is temporarily
lost, another characteristic lost by an emphasis on doubling. It is as if
the novel temporarily changes genres. Dennim now figures the action
as a private theatre where he is the sole spectator. The scenic comedy
of this section pulls against the drama of the impending confrontation
with his opponent, who reveals himself as the Vicomte de Saint Sabas.
The last episodes in the novel contrast anachronistically with its mod-
ern setting when Dennim and the Vicomte engage in a duel, first on
horseback and then on foot. Though Snyder notes the aristocratic
throwback in these events, he understates the theatricality of the
Vicomte’s final confession that he is responsible for the killings. The
 A Response to Robert Lance Snyder 343

latter’s ceremonial style, reminiscent of Alexandre Dumas, brings to a

peak the unresolved disparity between style and subject.
Whereas Watcher in the Shadows evokes a story of revenge for earlier
wrongs, the 1972 TV adaptation transposes setting and subject. In
Deadly Harvest the protagonist is a defector from the Communist bloc
living out a cover identity in California as a wine cultivator.8 The
suspense from his subjective point of view in the novel is lost in the
film when the camera closes up on a bomb fixed under his truck,
which explodes when a hitch-hiker tries to drive it away. The latter’s
girl companion questions the protagonist about the threat he imagines
being posed to him, which she tries to dismiss as ancient history.
However, there is no doubt of the protagonist’s history, only that the
agency supplying him with the cover is no longer interested in his
situation. So, although we actually witness a gun battle between the
protagonist and his would-be assassin, the film totally undercuts its
drama through the laid-back questions of the girl and the repeated use
of the song Blowin’ in the Wind, which could imply that the whole
subject lacks substance.
When Snyder turns to Dance of the Dwarfs (1968), his concern with
doubling becomes more awkward because the terms of reference have
shifted dramatically. This time Household uses the found manuscript
convention, framing his narrative as the record of a solitary naturalist
living on a field station in the wilds of Colombia. Owen Dawnay
initially lives passively on his settlement and then, under the cumula-
tive impact of native tales of pygmies living in the forest, begins to
search not exactly for a primordial version of himself, as Snyder sug-
gests, but rather for a primitive race he can appropriate. What had
served as a metaphor unifying the action of the earlier novels—the
hunt—now becomes actualized through Dawnay’s need for survival,
but in the wilds the hunter-hunted relation can reverse unnervingly.
While he constantly dreams of discovering a new species, “Homo
Dawnayensis,” his sightings remain fleeting and ambiguous. It is
never certain that he is seeing a human being and not an animal.
Characteristically, his journal records this as a caution: “What you
344 DAVID SEED

think your eye is recording has more relation to your beliefs than to
facts” (136). At some points he seems to glimpse a pygmy, and then he
is gone; at other points he sees a “mustelid” (188), a weasel-like crea-
ture. As in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, however, the forest retains its
mysteries. Near the opening of his journal Dawnay notes how the
natives show no capacity for mapping out the terrain and, as the novel
progresses, he himself falls prey to a process of disorientation which
undermines his attempts to explore the wilderness. The explicit fram-
ing of Dawnay’s journal distances the reader from his narrative and
carries satirical implications for his colonial attitude.
Dance of the Dwarfs projects the narrator’s gradual spiral into self-
obsession. The lure of the “primitive” motivates his sexual relation
with two native girls, who are repeatedly described as animalistic.9
Dawnay blatantly uses Chucha (and a successor he does not bother to
name) as a means of indulging his fantasies in the name of some
elusive truth which eludes him right to the end. His last broken sen-
tence (“I lack imagi”) sums up the absence at the heart of his narra-
tive, at once of a clear visual image and of self-knowledge. In this
novel, Snyder’s model of doubling works least well because the narra-
tor lacks an identifiable opponent and because he appears to be in-
dulging in an extended fantasy of evolutionary regression. While the
novel presents many signs of danger, it could hardly be classed as a
thriller. On the contrary, the action has a disconcertingly hybrid as-
pect. We are told in the introductory frame that Dawnay’s death has
been attributed to Colombian freedom fighters, and indeed several
meetings take place between himself and revolutionaries from Cuba
and elsewhere. Thus, we have on one level a quasi-scientific narrative
reminiscent of Wells and Conrad, on the other passing references to
the politics of the 1960s like Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
What Snyder understates is the hybrid nature of Household’s narra-
tives, where characteristically setting pulls against subject. In Watcher
in the Shadows the problematic legacy of the Nazi concentration camps
is superimposed on a timeless rural landscape in the English home
counties. In Dance of the Dwarfs ancient and modern are starkly juxta-
 A Response to Robert Lance Snyder 345

posed, as if Dawnay is trying to flee his own present. Household’s

1985 novel Arrows of Desire even more startlingly disorients the reader
in place and time by evoking a future where Britain has become a
minor enclave in the Euro-African Federation. “Federal” names in-
cluding Tito, Pasha, and Pretorius reflect a new regime where British
identity has either been lost completely or is seen as a throw-back to
an out-dated nationalism. The primitive wilderness which Dawnay
tentatively explores in Dance of the Dwarfs has now become an es-
tranged way of viewing mid-1980s Britain. Such reversals, the use of
framing devices, the hybridity noted above, and meta-reference
within the narratives are all features of Household’s practice which
reflect his variety of experimentation and which in turn suggest the
difficulty of fitting his works into a single genre, whether that of
thriller or the tale of detection.

Liverpool University

NOTES
1
Snyder makes a similar argument in his essay “Eric Ambler’s Revisionist
Thrillers,” collected in his monograph The Art of Indirection in British Espionage
Fiction. The six novelists discussed there are Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Len
Deighton, John le Carré, Stella Rimington, and Charles Cumming.
2
This pattern of opposition also figures in John Buchan’s fiction, in the Anar-
chist intellectual Andrew Lumley in The Power House (1916) and Medina the
hypnotist in The Three Hostages (1924).
3
Mike Ripley discusses this aspect of Household, but also finds a certain nostal-
gia for pre-World War I Europe in his work.
4
See Snyder, “Confession, Class, and Conscience in Geoffrey Household’s Rogue
Male.” Here he argues that the novel has more in common with the tale of detec-
tion than the old-style thriller and even anticipates some aspects of Postmodern-
ism.
5
In the epistolary foreword to The Thirty-Nine Steps, to his friend the publisher
Thomas Nelson, Buchan writes: “You and I have long cherished an affection for
that elementary type of tale which the Americans call the ‘dime novel’ and which
we know as the ‘shocker’—the romance where the incidents defy the probabili-
ties” (3). The statement helpfully highlights shifts in generic labels.
346 DAVID SEED

6
Macfarlane has co-written an extended homage to Household’s novel in Hollo-
way (2013), an account of exploring the Dorset countryside.
7
See David Morrell, “Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male (1939)”; and also
“David Morrell on Geoffrey Household.” Morrell was recommended Rogue Male
during his postgraduate studies at Penn State University. Among other novels
showing Household’s influence we could note The Spy Who Came for Christmas
(2008), which describes the efforts of an intelligence agent to shake off his
pursuers. The novel minimizes its back story in order to build up the moment-by-
moment drama of this hunt.
8
Deadly Harvest was made by CBS, directed by Michael O’Herlihy, starring
Richard Boone as the protagonist.
9
The narrator refers to his “mating” (146) as part of his nature watching and
records his sexual experiences as if they were actions cutting across species: “So
much for the intrusion into my bed of unity with my fellow animals!” (194).

WORKS CITED
Buchan, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. Ed. Christopher Harvie. Oxford: OUP, 1993.
Household, Geoffrey. Arrows of Desire. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
——. Dance of the Dwarfs. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
——. Rogue Male. London: Orion, 2002.
——. Watcher in the Shadows. Oxford: Clio P, 1987.
Lang, Fritz, dir. Man Hunt. 20th-Century Fox, 1941.
Macfarlane, Robert. “Rereading Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male.” The Guardian
15 March 2013. 27 March 2014
<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/15/robert-macfarlane-
household-rogue-male>.
Macfarlane, Robert, Dan Richards, and Stanley Danwood. Holloway. London:
Faber, 2013.
Morrell, David. “David Morrell on Geoffrey Household.” Mystery Scene. May
2013. 27 March 2014 <http://mysteryscenemag.com>.
——. “Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male (1939).” Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads. Ed.
David Morrell and Hank Wagner. Longboat Key, FL: Oceanview Publishing,
2010. 135-38. David Morrell. 27 March 2014 <http://davidmorrell.net/geoffrey-
households-rogue-male-1939/>.
O’Herlihy, Michael, dir. Deadly Harvest. Columbia Broadcasting System, 1972.
Ripley, Mike. “A Household Name.” Ostara Publishing. 14 June 2011. 27 March
2014 <http://www.ostarapublishing.co.uk/article-101.html/>.
Snyder, Robert Lance. “Confession, Class, and Conscience in Geoffrey House-
hold’s Rogue Male.” CLUES: A Journal of Detection 27.2 (2009): 85-94.
——. The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction: A Critical Study of Six
Novelists. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.
 Connotations
Vol. 23.2 (2013/2014)

Fracturing the Critical Conversation

on Pinter’s Language:
A Response to Maurice Charney*

MIREIA ARAGAY

Maurice Charney’s “Pinter’s Fractured Discourse in The Homecoming”

sets out to examine what is probably one of the central, most fascinat-
ing questions in Pinter criticism, namely, the playwright’s use of
language in his plays. Arguably, the article’s main limitation is that it
coins a term, “fractured,” for Pinter’s use of language in The Homecom-
ing that rehearses well-worn arguments about “text” and “subtext”
(244-45) and about conversations being “fractured in the sense that
[they] are full of disconnected hints and subterranean suggestions that
do not appear in the words of the dialogue” (246). These arguments
can barely hold their ground in the light of the critical and theoretical
turns that have taken place within Pinter criticism since the mid-
1970s, much less provide fresh insights or signal a novel contribution
to the ongoing critical dialogue.
The publication in 1975 of Austin E. Quigley’s seminal The Pinter
Problem was instrumental in re-framing the discussion of the play-
wright’s relation to language in his plays. As is well known, Quigley
began by examining in detail previous criticism of Pinter’s use of
language, which led him to diagnose a mismatch between the critics’
often perceptive, accurate observations of its dynamics and an
inaccurate theorization of those observations (see Quigley 32). In other
words, Quigley identified a recurring, problematic pattern in Pinter
criticism: “A widespread agreement that Pinter’s language [was]

*Reference: Maurice Charney, “Pinter’s Fractured Discourse in The Homecoming,”

Connotations 21.2-3 (2011/2012): 241-55. For the original article as well as all
contributions to this debate, please check the Connotations website at
<http://www.connotations.de/debcharney02123.htm>.
348 MIREIA ARAGAY

doing something new” (33) that coexisted with “a misleading attitude

towards the ways in which language functions” (45). Specifically,
Quigley questioned earlier critics’ (unacknowledged) reliance on “the
reference theory of meaning” (27), where language is conceptualized
as a tool that serves the purpose of referring to things or concepts. He
argued that “this function is not [...] the central function of language,
and neither is it the one upon which meaning is centrally based”
(40)—nor may it significantly illuminate the way in which language
functions in Pinter’s plays. Instead, Quigley articulated a theoretical
paradigm based on Wittgensteinian linguistics, where meaning is a
product of how language is used, rather than lying somewhere
“beyond” or “beneath” the words used. This led him to posit what he
called the “interrelational function” (53) of language as central to
Pinter’s plays:

The language of a Pinter play functions primarily as a means of dictating

and reinforcing relationships. This use of language is not, of course, exclu-
sive to a Pinter play and is a common component [...] in all language; but, in
giving this use such extensive scope, Pinter has [...] made his work unavail-
able to any critical analysis based on implicit appeals to the reference theory
of meaning. (52)

Or, as he put it elsewhere: “The point to be grasped about verbal

activity in a Pinter play is that language is not so much a means to
referring to structure in personal relationships as a means of creating
it” (66)—a change of paradigm that enabled Quigley to turn Pinter
criticism into a new direction. Moving away from the arguably fuzzy
notion of a “subtext” wherein meaning supposedly “hides” beneath
the surface of the text (14-15)—a notion that had been espoused by
Martin Esslin in The Peopled Wound: The Plays of Harold Pinter (1970)
and its subsequent (retitled) editions—Quigley pinpointed the nature
of the engagement Pinter’s use of language requires of spectators and
produced highly suggestive readings of The Room (1957), The Caretaker
(1960), Landscape (1968) and—yes—The Homecoming.
Building on Quigley’s insight, Marc Silverstein in his 1993 study
Harold Pinter and the Language of Cultural Power pointed out that the
 A Response to Maurice Charney 349

widespread reliance among Pinter critics on the reference theory of

language—or on what Silverstein, focusing on subjectivity, terms the
“expressive view” of language (13)—implies the metaphysical
assumption that Pinter’s plays seem at pains to steer clear of, namely,
a “belief in an extra-linguistic realm [reality and the subject
him/herself] that enjoys the status of transcendental signified” (16). In
Pinter, instead, “truth and reality [are] negotiable concepts” (Quigley
70), and subjectivity, rather than being “given in advance” (Quigley
53), “becomes the effect of signifying practices, produced through a
perpetual inscription and reinscription within language” (Silverstein
18).1 At this point, however, Silverstein moved away from Quigley by
appealing to the Saussurean distinction between langue and parole. In
his attempt to conceptualize both the subject and reality as an “effect
of language” (Silverstein 18), Quigley focused almost exclusively on
parole (the individual speech-act), thus failing to consider “how the
system of language [langue] both allows for and places certain con-
straints upon individual utterance” (Silverstein 18; empasis original).
Therefore, Silverstein argued that Quigley tended to “resituate the
subject outside of the language to which he remains superior” as an
“absolute or free agent” (Silverstein 18), to assume “an unproblematic
intentionality” and to neglect “the category of history” (Silverstein
19). In other words, from Quigley’s perspective the power struggles
encoded in Pinter’s interrelational dialogues seemed to take place in a
vacuum. Silverstein, in contrast, proposed to extend Quigley’s
argument about language in Pinter’s plays “to include langue as well
as parole” (21), that is, the Other—by which he refers not only to the
symbolic order in a Lacanian sense but also, more generally, to the
cultural codes or discourses that inform the subject positions we
inhabit—as well as two (or more) individual speakers. As he further
explicated in a passage worth quoting at some length:

I propose to re-problematize “the Pinter problem,” to rethink the question of

how Pinter utilizes language by broadening the scope of Quigley’s “interre-
lational function” to examine how the various battles for power enacted in
these plays are fought on the terrain of the Other’s discursive field with
350 MIREIA ARAGAY

weapons consisting of the codes that speak the various forms of cultural
power. In Pinter’s works, the process of negotiating relationships is insepa-
rable from the process through which the subject attempts to anchor himself
firmly within the symbolic order [...]. To argue, as I shall, that questions of
cultural power and the subject’s relationship to that power are of central
importance to these plays is to claim that Pinter’s work explores some fun-
damental political questions of [...] marginalization, sexuality and gender,
the ideological status of the family, the relation of violence to the coercive
power of language [...] (Silverstein 22-23)

On this basis, he embarked on extended analyses of The Birthday Party

(1958), The Collection (1961), Old Times (1971) and—again—The
Homecoming from the perspective of “contemporary theory” (25),
mainly Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques
Lacan.
No matter how one positions oneself in relation to them, Quigley’s
and Silverstein’s are unignorable contributions to the field of Pinter
studies, particularly as regards any discussion of the way language
operates in his plays. However, Charney’s article appears to be
entirely oblivious to this twofold paradigm shift. It references some
Pinter critics of the early- to mid-1970s whose work was arguably
superseded by Quigley and Silverstein, but does not mention such a
key contribution as Esslin’s The Peopled Wound, whose arguments both
Quigley and, to a lesser extent, Silverstein, engage with. In contrast,
Susan Hollis Merritt’s Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of
Harold Pinter (1990) contains a comprehensive survey of the reception
of The Pinter Problem, including a sensitive account of the debate
between Esslin and Quigley about Pinter’s language (see Merritt 137-
64). Her nuanced discussion of Esslin’s relentlessly negative, aggres-
sive review of The Pinter Problem—which she sees as deriving in equal
measure from Esslin’s view of Quigley as “an opponent trying to
wrest power away from himself” (147) and from Quigley’s having
perhaps failed “to practice what he preaches theoretically: what
people say to one another has an effect on their relationships” (149) in
his (somewhat blunt) dismissal of earlier critics—highlights the
indispensable cooperation that must exist between critics, even when
 A Response to Maurice Charney 351

they disagree, if “investigative progress” is to be made and “a more

potent community of knowledge” is to emerge (Merritt 147-48; empha-
sis original). But for this to take place, the essential prerequisite is for
critics to engage with the work of their predecessors in the first place,
that is, to enter the critical dialogue in meaningful ways.
By remaining circumscribed within an earlier critical paradigm,
Charney’s article runs into revealing cul-de-sacs and contradictions.
Thus, after stating that “the characters do not seem to act from
obvious, plot-oriented motives” and that “[i]t doesn’t seem to matter
an awful lot what the characters say” (242), he goes on to discuss
several episodes in the play—Ruth’s interruption of the pseudo-
philosophical discussion about a table between Teddy and Lenny
(242-43), the first meeting between Lenny and Ruth (245-50), the
ending of the play (250-51), and various moments involving Teddy
(251-53) —in precisely the terms he has denied, namely the characters’
motives and the importance of what they say. This brings to mind the
comment by Quigley on Esslin’s claim that Pinter’s language “has
almost totally lost its [...] informative element” (Pinter: The Playwright
238). As Quigley points out, if Esslin can, as he surely can, “perceive
the ‘emotional and psychological action’ underlying the words, then
the language is very informative” (Pinter Problem 25-26)—which it no
doubt is in ways that reveal the inherent power structures of both
langue and parole, as Quigley and Silverstein, among others, have
thrown abundant light on. The key point here is that Charney’s article
does not contribute to advancing the critical conversation because it
does not join it at the relevant point. It would have been an entirely
different matter if his article had acknowledged Quigley’s and
Silverstein’s—as well as other post-Pinter Problem—contributions and
gone on to dispute them on the basis of reasoned argumentation, or
else extend them in a fresh direction.
A couple of examples should suffice to further illustrate the points
made so far. After having established that “the play is also Ruth’s
homecoming” (243), that she “plays mind games and language games
with Lenny, Joey, Max, and Teddy” (245), and that her main conflict is
352 MIREIA ARAGAY

with Lenny, whom she “dominat[es] (and infantiliz[es])” (242)—

surely descriptions of the emotional and psychological motivations of
Ruth’s (linguistic) behaviour in the play, albeit hardly novel ones—
Charney homes in on the crucial first meeting between Ruth and
Lenny (Plays: Three 43-51). Here, as is well known, Lenny eventually
launches into telling Ruth two stories about violence inflicted by him
on women, a young one who “one night down by the docks [...] came
up to [him] and made [him] a certain proposal” (Plays: Three 46) and
an old lady who “asked [him] if [he] would give her a hand with her
iron mangle” (Plays: Three 48). While Charney describes both stories as
“irrelevant” (247), he nevertheless places them in the context of the
ongoing conflict between Lenny and Ruth and discusses them in
terms of their respective motivations: “Lenny obviously wants to
impress Ruth with his macho insouciance” but finds himself “blocked
at every turn” by Ruth’s flat answers, while Ruth herself “refuses
Lenny’s sexual gambits” repeatedly and successfully (247). Now, in
order to gain some sense of what is being glossed over, it is well
worth placing these (hardly fresh) insights into the Ruth-Lenny power
dynamics alongside Deborah A. Sarbin’s and Silverstein’s respective
discussions of the same scene.
Reading The Homecoming in the light of French feminist theory,
Sarbin sees the play as “revealing the way in which normally unana-
lyzed assumptions about the roles of women in society are actually
constructed and created through language” (34). In her view, Ruth
performs a series of disruptive acts that “call into question the
representation of women in language dominated by men” (36). A key
moment in this respect is Ruth’s response to Lenny’s story about the
young woman who made him “a certain proposal” which he would
“normally [...] have subscribed to”, except “she was falling apart with
the pox” (Plays: Three 46). Ruth simply asks: “How did you know she
was diseased?,” which prompts Lenny’s, “How did I know? (Pause.) I
decided she was” (Plays: Three 47). In other words, Sarbin points out,
Ruth forces Lenny to admit “that any representation in language must
be arbitrary” and subversively calls attention to his “attempt to pass
 A Response to Maurice Charney 353

off the arbitrary as fact” (37). Read in this way, the scene is no longer
merely a personal confrontation between the “macho” Lenny and the
sexually tantalizing Ruth, but rather it opens out onto key critical
issues having to do with gender, language, culture and representa-
tion.
Along similar lines, Silverstein argues that “Lenny’s dependence
upon narrative [...] suggests the central role played by representa-
tional practices in the production of masculine power” (95), adding
that the two stories he tells Ruth not only “detail acts of violence that
allow [him] to dominate women who attempt to transgress the
boundaries defining the marginal space patriarchy assigns them” (95),
but are also themselves “act[s] of violence against Ruth” (95), who
“resists [Lenny’s] sadism [...] by challenging his ability to exercise
narrative power” (95) through her question, “How did you know she
was diseased?” (Plays: Three 47). Lenny’s answer, “I decided she was”
(Plays: Three 47), amounts to an “equation of narrative power and
epistemological mastery” (Silverstein 95-96) that, in highlighting the
“arbitrary bond between signifier and signified” (Silverstein 96),
ultimately reveals that language cannot “create the kind of extra-
linguistic power that transforms words into the Word, utterance into
law, and representation into reality” (Silverstein 96-97). Lacking in a
“material” basis for power, when Ruth “begins to mimic the image of
woman he produces in his narrative” (Silverstein 96) and threatens to
“take” him (Plays: Three 50), “Lenny inevitably [...] fails to declare his
mastery through a saving act of nomination”—“What was that
supposed to be? Some kind of proposal?” is all he can impotently ask
as Ruth leaves the room having quenched her thirst (Plays: Three 51).
Sarbin’s and Silverstein’s approaches illuminate The Homecoming in
ways that far exceed any imprecise references to the dated concept of
subtext, and that have been deemed worth engaging with by numer-
ous subsequent critics. Again, the key issue here is not whether or
not—or the extent to which—one concurs with their views, much less
any attempt to establish some essential “truth” about The Homecoming
or Pinter’s use of language in the plays at large, but rather the fact
354 MIREIA ARAGAY

that, unfortunately, Charney’s article simply ignores all contributions

to the post-Pinter Problem critical conversation. A similar point applies
to his discussion of the ending of the play, which he concludes by
stating that “There is no doubt that [...] Ruth dominates the scene” (251;
emphasis added). It is, once more, a reading that harks back to earlier,
pre-Pinter Problem ones such as Esslin’s (see 159) or Anita R. Osh-
erow’s feminist account of the play (see 423), while it turns a deaf ear
to other approaches that have drawn attention to the ambivalence
embedded in the play’s final moments. Thus, Quigley pointed out that
for Ruth “the ending is of uncertain value”—she may, as Pinter
himself put it, have achieved “a certain kind of freedom,” but it is
clearly also “a certain kind of captivity” (225). For Sarbin, Ruth’s
power at the end of the play is “paradoxical”; while she disrupts
patriarchal language by “driv[ing] home the economic issue, refusing
to treat prostitution in any other terms” (40), the play’s final stage
direction, “Lenny stands, watching” (Plays: Three 98), indicates that
“Ruth is still the object of the male gaze” (41) and that the role of
dominant male has passed on to Lenny (where it resided before is
itself an open question). In my own discussion of the play’s final
moments, I suggested that “[Ruth] both subversively demonstrates the
constructedness of the dominant sexual and gender relations and of
the language which inscribes those relations and she is bounded by
the patriarchal symbolic order, thus remaining an object in the men’s
homosocial traffic, ‘inside’ rather than ‘outside’” (Aragay 288; empha-
sis original). In other words, there is ample room for doubt, from the
point of view of these and other critics, as to the extent of Ruth’s
domination at the end of The Homecoming, so it hardly seems legiti-
mate for any subsequent discussion of the play to simply state the
opposite without engaging in conversation—in the form of critical
dispute, if needs be—with those alternative readings.
Merritt’s perceptive interrogation of the concept of progress at the
start of her book-length metacritical reflection on Pinter criticism
provides a fitting coda for the present metacritical commentary on
Charney’s “Pinter’s Fractured Discourse in The Homecoming.” In the
 A Response to Maurice Charney 355

context of her discussion of Quigley’s 1975 claim that the field of

Pinter criticism was “proliferating but not progressing” (Pinter
Problem 4), she points out that, to see change as occurring gradually
and linearly, “progressing from ignorance to knowledge in unified
patterns or stages can blind us to some developments in criticism [...]
[and] actually hinder our progress” (Merritt 4). Change, she adds, is
“an ongoing ‘process’” (Merritt 7), involving “both continuities and
discontinuities, similarity and difference, tradition and innovation”
(Merritt 5; emphasis original), while progress “is both relative and
instrumental to the aims and purposes of critics” (Merritt 10) rather
than a matter of establishing “ultimate truth-value[s]” (Merritt 11).
Absolutely so, of course. And yet, between a rigidly linear notion of
critical “progress” and a largely reiterative proliferation of well-worn
critical “truths,” there lies the capacious territory of critical coopera-
tion that Merritt advocates (47-48), where critics listen and respond to
one another, agree with or (passionately) dispute each other’s views—
in other words, acknowledge the importance and significance of each
other’s contributions.

University of Barcelona

NOTE
1
That is why Quigley had renamed M. A. K. Halliday’s “interpersonal” function
of language “interrelational”: “Interpersonal tends to suggest that the personali-
ties, the identities of those participating, are given in advance” (53).

WORKS CITED
Aragay, Mireia. “Pinter, Politics and Postmodernism.” The Cambridge Companion to
Harold Pinter. Ed. Peter Raby. 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. 283-96.
Esslin, Martin. The Peopled Wound: The Plays of Harold Pinter. London: Methuen,
1970.
——. Pinter: A Study of His Plays. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1973.
——. Pinter: A Study of His Plays. Expanded ed. London: Methuen, 1977.
——. Pinter: The Playwright. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1982.
356 MIREIA ARAGAY

——. Rev. of The Pinter Problem, by Austin E. Quigley. Journal of Beckett Studies 2
(1977): 102-05.
Merritt, Susan Hollis. Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter.
Durham: Duke UP, 1990.
Osherow, Anita R. “Mother and Whole: The Role of Woman in The Homecoming.”
Modern Drama 17.4 (1974): 423-32.
Pinter, Harold. Plays: Three (The Homecoming, Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape,
Silence). London: Methuen, 1978.
Quigley, Austin E. The Pinter Problem. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975.
Sarbin, Deborah A. “‘I Decided She Was’: Representation of Women in The
Homecoming.” The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 3 (1989): 34-42.
Silverstein, Marc. Harold Pinter and the Language of Cultural Power. Lewisburg:
Bucknell UP, 1993.
 Connotations
A Journal for Critical Debate
Contents of Volume 23 (2013/2014)

Keeping You Unnatural: Against the

Homogenization of Second Person Writing.
A Response to Joshua Parker
BRIAN RICHARDSON 49

The Influence of Narrative Tense

in Second Person Narration:
A Response to Joshua Parker
MATT DELCONTE 55

Studying Writing in Second Person:

A Response to Joshua Parker
JARMILA MILDORF 63

“Poetry in Fiction”: A Range of Options

MATTHIAS BAUER 173

Names and Real Names in

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe:
A Response to Maurice Hunt
KREG SEGALL 310

*
Gulliver as a Novelistic, Quixotic Character?
A Response to Aaron R. Hanlon
DAVID FISHELOV 79

Turning: From Verse to Prose

MICHAL PELED GINSBURG 189

Telling Differences:
Complicating, Challenging, and Expanding
Amit Marcus’s Discussion of Clones and Doubles
NICOLE A. DIEDERICH 96

Poe’s Faltering Economies:

A Response to Hannes Bergthaller
DENNIS PAHL 16

Echoic Effects in Poe’s Poetic Double

Economy—of Memory: A Response to
Hannes Bergthaller and Dennis Pahl
WILLIAM E. ENGEL 26

Embedded and Embodied Poetry

in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
ELENA ANASTASAKI 207

*
Three “Homes” which Gerard Manley Hopkins
Enjoyed: A Counterbalance to Adrian Grafe’s
“Hopkins and Home”
JOSEPH J. FEENEY 110

The Function of Poetic Epigraphs

in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda
EIKE KRONSHAGE 230

Symbolism, Imagism, and Hermeneutic Anxiety:

A Response to Andrew Hay
NICHOLAS HALMI 127

The Curious History of Imagism: Of Hulme,

Bergson, Worringer, and Imagism’s Readers.
A Response to Andrew Hay
MARY ANN GILLIES 140

Poetry and Poeticity in Joyce’s “The Dead,”

Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris,
and Yehuda Amichai
DAVID FISHELOV 261

Poetic Insertions in Tolkien’s

The Lord of the Rings
THOMAS KULLMANN 283

*
Signs of Life in Robert Lowell’s
“Skunk Hour”
FRANK J. KEARFUL 317

Geoffrey Household’s The Watcher

in the Shadows and Dance of the Dwarfs:
A Response to Robert Lance Snyder
DAVID SEED 336

Fracturing the Critical Conversation

on Pinter’s Language: A Response to
Maurice Charney
MIREIA ARAGAY 347

“Undressed— / today’s role dangles / from a metal hanger”:

Figurativity and the Economy of Means in
Contemporary English Haiku
SVEN WAGNER 1

Beyond Authenticity of Voice:

A Response to Barbara Korte
MIRIAM NANDI 153
Bringing together critical practice and literary theory

CRITICAL SURVEY
General Editor: Graham Holderness, University of Hertfordshire
Editor: Andrew Maunder, University of Hertfordshire
Poetry Editor: John Lucas, Nottingham Trent University
Editor Emeritus: Bryan Loughrey

Critical Survey addresses central issues of

critical practice and literary theory in a
language that is clear, concise, and
accessible, with a primary focus on
Renaissance and Modern writing and cul-
ture. The journal combines criticism with
reviews and poetry, providing an essen-
tial resource for everyone involved in the
field of literary studies.

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