Sunday, July 04, 2010


Poetic Diction

Owen Barfield, friend of C.S. Lewis & Anthroposophist, proposes that poetic diction is about gain of consciousness. He believes early languages carried more meaning-per-word than current ones, since people hadn't yet made as many distinctions. (I'll give an example: the words for "hat, hood, and hut all come from the same old word meaning a shelter/covering, and later they were separated to mean more specific things.) and that as language progresses with human development, words become more specialized. In the process, they also lose meaning, and the men who use them lose the awareness of connections that have been lost in the splitting of words. the poet's task is to produce this felt change by uniting words that have a connected meaning to reawaken the consciousness of these unities. Barfield claims that "Language is fossil poetry" (meaning, all the words we use now are poetic and/or metaphors, e.g. "purchase" now means to buy, but comes from old english "to pursue, seek")
Therefore, poetry is a constant process of reminding mankind of meanings that have been lost.

The process never ends, but humanity has reached a point where the rational mind is much more dominant now. Words have lost their intrinsic native poetry, but sice we're more conscious, with poetry we can reclaim our lost perceptions of reality in a more conscious way now.

He also says that poetic diction isn't the same thing as "verse" (rhyming, meter, stanzas) but can be used in what we call "prose" as well. It's any use of language that produces that "felt change of consciousness".

I liked it, It's taken me quite a while to get through the whole thing, and it's the kind of book you know you'll have to read a couple more times to really "get" it.

He's not a reductionist, and believes that words really mean something, and that there are realities out there that we're trying to capture and communicate when we speak. Meaning, his "gain of consciousness" is a real gain, we're understanding more about the real world. He also went into "meaning" at the end where he challenged the "subject object" (subject=the conscious observer, object=the thing observed) way of looking at things, saying that it's not "subjective" to make a connection between a concept and a perceived object-as most modern people would say-since it's thought, not the subject, that makes the connection. In fact, we only recognize ourselves as 'subjects' by the 'grace of thought'.

Basically, that we percieve ourselves as distinct people because of "thought". He almost makes it sound like we "participate" in thought, rather than producing it autonomously. I wondered about the implications of that take on things...at first it sounded heretical, but then I thought about how in John 1 it says that "The true life that gives light to all men was coming into the world". If Jesus gives and gave light to "all men" and light is usually used in scripture to mean "perception", then that would basically mean what Barfield says it means, that Jesus is the one upholding our thought process moment by moment - "In Him we live and move and have our being". I vaguely remembered Job says something about thought and wisdom, and found the spot where Elihu says "It is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, tha makes him understand".

Hmmmm....

I guess, if I believe that Jesus holds all material things together moment by moment (In him all things hold together-Colossians) It's not too much of a stretch to say that He does the same thing with thought.

Anyhow, Barfield's main deal is that poetry is a means of acquiring real consciousness & meaning.

Of course, we'd have to go back to Galatea 2.2 and say that sure, this may be so, but all the poetry and gain in consciousness in the world isn't going to keep us from dying or "doing ourselves in with tire irons". Like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: "Then I saw that there was more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than darkness. The wise has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet, I perceived that the same event [death] happens to all of them."

The fool "walks in darkness", Solomon says. Now, we know that, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

Like Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light...of life." the light that comes from Jesus, as we follow him, is the remedy that Solomon sought. The light of human wisdom frustrated Solomon because it left the wise man dead in the end, just as dead as any fool. But the Light of God, in Jesus, is the light (understanding/wisdom) of life. Not the kind that leaves you cold in the end, but the kind that initiates you into the life without end.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was a little difficult for me to understand, and I had a hard time imagining that Jesus or God are my thought...because that would be pantheism wouldn't it? Or it would mean that I don't really exist and only God exists. I have thought a lot about einstein and his breakthrough with the emc squared bit and I will never forget the sense of spiritual/intellectual struggle that there was in him prior to the breakthrough. I have always felt that Einstein labored before God, sought and wrought the answer from God, which supports my belief that God is honored when we wrestle with him, in effect he is proud, and he sees a son in the making. So I do see how it could be that our thoughts are inhabited by God,directed by God but I would hazard a speculation that the vast majority of thought is foolishness, and that even the thought that is inhabited by God never makes it into the internal eye of most of mankind.
Pretty intense and joblike readings you are doing lately. I really appreciate your reviewing them and sharing them, how you get the single strain of truth in it and talk about that.

Uriel said...

I'm pretty sure you're the only one who's gonna read any of these. Most people can't bear more than a couple paragraphs of blog. Thanks for muscling through :-)

I don't think he's saying that they ARE our thought, per se, I actually think he meant something more like the collective unconscious or a pantheistic (at least panentheistic)concept.
I'd disagree there too, what I was saying is that from scripture it does seem that understanding is a gift that's upheld by God, in the same way creation in general is. I guess we could say that in the same way God shares his moral nature with all men through conscience, without us being God, or even acting in accord with him, he can do the same with his reasonable nature.

Luke said...

I lost my breath when I saw a post about Poetic Diction...I was introduced to it by my friend Christopher Rice quite a while ago, but more as a novelty and less as a potential read, but sir, you have piqued an interest in me. I started it today and for my sake of mind I had to stop towards the end of the second chapter, so as not to bite off more than I can chew at once.

Has it affected your poetry?