Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (c) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (c)


See last post in this series.  This, I think, gets rough.   

Since the Positivists "substituted syntax for the forms of perception, and scrapped the things as otiose [me: useless]", introducing words or phrases which appear to stand for the "thing itself", it should have been clear that syntax (rules for making sentences) would end up ruling not only by substituting for forms of perception (i.e. appearances, or phenomenal "things") but also when it comes to the things-in-themselves, or the "noumenal" [me: so there is no confusion, in Kant's philosophy, this is "an object as it is in itself independent of the mind"].  Since the mind seems to be such a real-world thing, Gilbert Ryle was able to conclude that it is an illusion that the mind is "an autonomous agent, distinguishable from the body" ("the ghost in the machine"), based as this is on "a confusion arising from men's misunderstanding of the 'rules' of the very language they themselves have made" (20). 

Ryle goes on to criticize words like "experience" and "consciousness" as "smacking of this illusion" and denies altogether... "the hallowed antithesis between the public, physical world and the private mental world", concerned as he is to "deny that there is such a thing as private experience at all". According to Ryle, the reason you can't say you feel the pain in my foot is not because you are excluded from the "peep-show open only to me," but because it "would make no sense to say that you were in my pain".  Barfield has some fun here, saying that for Ryle, "the theory is, that what is self-evident may for that very reason be profitably ignored" - here the palpable is dismissed by writing off the language in which it is affirmed as tautologous!  The mind as agent is said to not exist on grounds considered to be semantic. (21)

At this point, Barfield comments (in 1927) that he does not think the particular doctrines of linguistic analysis are likely to be a live issue, although he thinks what drives them will continue.  This is because:

Between those for whom 'knowledge' means ignorant but effective power, and those for whom the individual imagination is the medium of all knowledge from perception upward, a truce will not readily be struck.... Before he even begins to write, the Logical Positivist has taken the step from ‘I prefer not to interest myself  in propositions which cannot be empirically verified’ to ‘all propositions which cannot be empirically verified are meaningless’. The next step to ‘I shall legislate to prevent anyone else wasting his time on meaningless propositions’ is unlikely to appear either illogical or negative to his successor in title. Those who mistake efficiency for meaning inevitably end by loving compulsion, even if it takes them, like Bernard Shaw, the best part of a lifetime to get there. (22)

Barfield says that he respects Shaw, but points out his "mania" as regards his "reform" of spelling.  "I think that those...who are driven by an impulse to reduce the specifically human to a mechanical or animal regularity, will continue to be increasingly irritated by the nature of the mother tongue and make it their point of attack" (23)




My summary: Barfield says it best: "Between those for whom 'knowledge' means ignorant but effective power , and those for whom the individual imagination is the medium of all knowledge from perception upward, a truce will not readily be struck....".  In short, I think we can say that what drives this is the underlying belief that all language is simply a contextually-determined useful fiction.  This, however, as Barfield points out, does not logically satisfy... 
 

My critique/comments:  More comments will be in next post.  

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (b) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (b)


Barfield says that "in the days of Locke and Hume it was felt that science was the newcomer, requiring a foundation in philosophy; but since then the two have changed places".  Despite the "ever-changing assumptions" of science, modern philosophers do not try to question the scientific assumptions of the day (seeing them as "given"), but seek to "justify the ways of science to man".  Who can argue with success? 

He notes that there is one assumption of science that has remained unchanged longer than the rest, and that is that the real world is a "somewhat" in "the construction which the mind of man does not participate; of which it is purely a detached observer" (here, Hume's philosophy is relevant).  "It is of course in attempting to describe more precisely the nature of the 'somewhat' that science both parts company with the man in the street and keeps changing its ground".  In the 19th century the real world was assumed to consist, in the last resort, or things.  These things kept getting smaller and smaller, but they were at least there, and if you ad a powerful enough microscope, for example, you'd be able to see them (18).  In like fashion, Hume had been content to say that the "'impressions' which were the material of knowledge were produced in the senses by 'objects'" (19).  

20th century science though, complains Barfield 

"has abolished the 'thing' altogether; and twentieth-century philosophy (that part of it, at least, which takes no account of imagination) has obediently followed  suit.  There are no objects, says the voice of Science, there are only bundles of waves - or possibly something else; adding that, although it is convenient to think of them, it would be naive to suppose that the waves or the something else actually exist.  There is no 'referent', echoes the philosophy of linguistic analysis deferentially, no substance or underlying reality which is 'meant' by words.   There are only descriptions, only the words themselves, though it 'happens to be the case' that men have from the beginning so persistently supposed the contrary that they positively cannot open their mouths without doing so" (19).  

Barfield then quotes Logical Positivist A.J. Ayer saying "that we cannot, in our language, refer to the sensible properties of a thing, without introducing a word or phrase which appears to stand for the thing itself as opposed to anything which may be said about it."  


He goes on:  "Kant erected the Forms of Perception as a kind of impenetrable screen between the real world of 'things in themselves' and the mind of man.  The Positivists have substituted syntax for the forms of perception, and scrapped the things as otiose" (19).  


My summary: Barfield seems to be on the verge of concluding that given scientist's skepticism about finding out what is really real - and positivist's corresponding expulsion of the referent in language - we are stuck with not really being able to know anything (i.e. if we take their presuppositions to their logical conclusion).  

My critique/comments:  When Barfield talks about how twentieth-century philosophy has abolished the "thing" altogether, I think his qualifier, "that part of {20th c. philosophy], at least, which takes no account of imagination" is more important than ever.  Again, it seems to me that we have come a long way from the Logical Positivists.  I think many persons want to make Karl Popper into one of these, for example, but I do not think that we can do that so easily, as his thought does take account of the imagination and he does not seem to insist that philosophical naturalism is true.

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (a) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (a)


He says the book "claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge.  It is as such, I see, that it must be judged.  Apparently, the author was determined that the title should at least be unassuming" (14).


The current generation of people, Barfield notes (23 years after the first ed.), is not quite so interested in the "various theories of language, life and literature" that Barfield was concerned to address (rationalizing his own observations in terms of these) when the book was written.  This is because it now regards them as "irrelevant to its own more maturely skeptical philosophy".  It is confidently asserted of Kant, Berkeley, and Locke, for example, that they were not so much wrong, but "asked the wrong questions" (14, 15).  He says that if he were doing the book today, he would criticize Hume and his more recent disciples in the Appendices instead, "not the less so because [now] the fashionable method is to analyse language itself - which is the heart of my matter" (15).


He notes that any readers coming "fresh to the subject" may at this point want to start reading at Chapter One, coming back to the Preface later (you have been forewarned!)  It becomes clear why he says this: he gets into very philosophical territory.  He discusses and dismisses the ideas Dr. I. A. Richards and the Logical Positivists, starting with this:

"Now in a footnote to page 113 in this book it is pointed out that 'logical judgments, by their nature, can only render more explicit some one part of a truth already implicit in their terms'.  And in another, to page 131, that the logician is continually seeking to reduce the meaning of his terms, and that 'he could only evolve a language whose propositions would really obey the laws of thought by eliminating meaning altogether'" (16). 

He goes on to say that "I do not think it too sweeping to say that the doctrines of linguistic analysis, or as it has sometimes been called, Logical Positivism, are no more than an extensive gloss on this principle".  The Logical Positivists basically said that "all propositions except those from which some observation-statement can be deduce are, it is averred, meaningless, either as misuse of language, or as tautologies" (16, 17), (me: therefore eliminating the claimed importance of religious language, for example, which they believed was completely unverifiable)


Barfield then naturally moves on to talking about Locke and Hume, who attributed great importance to observation, or sense-impression, and dismissed any notions of "innate ideas" or innate thoughts.  For Hume, he notes, "man, as knower, is above all a passive recipient of impressions [or ideas, which for Hume are the perceptions].  Such is also the assumption on which the edifice of physical science is erected" (17).


My summary: The whole idea of science has (so far at least, when he is writing this) been based on the idea that we can, through the power of our sense impressions and the careful use of descriptive language, "pin things down" (I say: to capture and use the truth).  In order to do this, they often have to reduce the meaning of the terms they use.  Furthermore, Logical Positivists insist that this is the only kind of real knowledge there is.  

My critique/comments:  It seems to me that since Barfield wrote this much has happened.  Looking at individuals like Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Thomas Kuhn, science is much more nuanced now about how our observations work hand in hand with our ideas, or presuppositions.  In addition, persons like Popper, although embracing some of the Logical Positivists points, distinguished himself from them, and it is much more nuanced views like his that hold influence.  That said, the indented quotation above is fascinating.  I wonder if I am right in saying that if one can really understand Barfield  here, one will get to the heart of his work and concern.  It seems he is speaking to the idea that we often want to pin things down, clearly and distinctly defining them, and then universally applying these definitions to our entire range of experiences and circumstances - and this, he seems to be saying (whatever the feasibility of such a project) comes with a cost, namely the loss of the meaning in our language.  There is much more to be said here, but that will need to wait for later. 

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the first edition [1927]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 1st ed.

Barfield notes that the form of the book is in one sense autobiographical, and that it progresses from his own aesthetic and psychological experiences to general principles, which are applied to the various problems of literature (esp. “poetic diction” in its narrower sense).  The “general principles”, however, take on the form of pictures and metaphors instead of propositions, for reasons that will become clear in the book. (11)

The author recalls his early perception that “poetry reacts on the meanings of the words it employs” which was “followed by a dim, yet apodeictically [me: evident beyond contradiction] certain, conviction that there are 'two sorts of poetry'; and a series of unsuccessful events to rationalize these and other aesthetic experiences in terms of the various theories of language, literature and life, with which the author happened to come in touch, resulted in the present volume.” (12)  

He also thanks a man named Rudolf Steiner, for inspiring his thinking, while being careful not to “father upon him many of the views on poetry which I have expressed”.  Barfield says his work would be valuable to anyone “engaged on either the theory or practice of any art.” (12, 13).  He also mentions with approval Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (“a profound and alarmingly learned study of the historical – as opposed to the literary – relation between prosaic and poetic”—italics his).

Finally, countering those who say his theory of poetry “takes no account of feeling”, he says the kind of “inspired thinking which I have attempted to depict, assumes the utmost intensity of feeling as a necessary pre-requisite.  There could be no other way of reaching it.  It can only begin when feeling has become too powerful to remain only personal, so that the individual is compelled by his human nature, either to THINK in reality, or to find, more of less instinctively, some suitable device for dimming his consciousness.” (13)

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  This is all very interesting.  I look forward to hearing more about his journey of discovery.  I do need to find out more about exactly what poets mean when they talk about theories though.  : ) Finally, regarding his comments about feeling, I must say they resonate with me, and I look forward to seeing what kinds of insights are inspired by, this conviction, and how those insights serve to reinforce the conviction.  I do believe that life, at bottom, is fundamentally personal – and this cannot but inspire strong feeling…

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, foreward b (by Howard Nemerov)

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927) 
 

Forward (con't)

In Shakespeare’s time, poetic diction really belonged to the study of rhetoric, and most of what was emphasized were common sense techniques (practice, imitation, reading) for creating persuasive speakers.

Nemerov goes on to write: "In the 17th and 18th centuries it would appear that prose and poetry which had formerly been rather close together in their choice of language, were decisively differentiated from one another , and there gradually grew up a kind of language special to poetry and not admissible in prose except on the most exalted occasions." (5).

Hence, the concept of “poetic diction” is born. 

Me: This seems very interesting.  Still, to say “decisively differentiated” is to acknowledge that there had always been a bit of a differentiation here, right?  In other words, the chasm, likely due in part to the success of the experimental sciences - and their emphasis on the “objective” – simply got wider.  A distinction became a complete separation in the minds of many… 

Back to the book: Originally, Nemeov avers, as this occurred people did not seem to realize this was happening, and regarding questions of the past, attention was focused on things people could clearly see: like the historical works that Homer, who taught “that language of the Gods to men” (Pope), composed.  What this part about the Gods and their language might have really meant did not require explanation… (5, 6)

But now, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries we observe that when we try to say what something is (see Darwin and Freud) we “go back and talk about how it got to be the way it looks now” (6).  With Genesis losing influence, new scientific mythologies had to fill the void.

The Romantic movement rebelled not only against poetic diction in the technical sense (vs conventional language) but against “the belief about the world and the place of mankind in the world that produced the [intolerable] technical conventions”.  (The rebel makes his own creation myth if he pursues things to the end).   

Blake decried “systematic abstraction, priesthood, scientism, the loss of the good of the imagination”.  Wordsworth talked about how poetry had been corrupted by intellectualizing imitation of the “supposed practice of the earliest poets [of all nations]”, who he says “generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring, and figurative.” (7) 

“For the great Romantics, then, poetic diction becomes a subject of the first importance, because out of their efforts to reform this highly specialized diction and reach back instead to ‘nature’ arose the deeper question of the extent of the imagination’s role as creator of the visible and sensible world.  For Blake that extent was total: Imagination is the Savior.  For Wordsworth the relation was a more tentative and balancing one, in which the world and thought were mutually adjusted to one another…” (8)

This idea of the primacy of imagination was a “point of considerable anxiety” as well, given the “[evidently triumphant] view of a universe of independently and fatally moving things” (“scientific materialism”) (8)

Nemerov goes on to say that it appears that recurring outbreaks of “modernism”, regarding themselves as anti-romantic, actually are variations on “superficial aspects of the Romantic Movement”, “while something submerged and unfinished about that movement remains largely untouched” (8).  Nevertheless, poetry and criticism today seems “enthralled by the false realism of the reason [and] spellbound to the merely picturesque”…it is prevented “from dreaming deeply or other than the common dream” (9).

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  This is all very interesting, and I don’t find much to criticize or question yet.  I have no reason to think that he analysis is not sound.  Still, although I am “willing to open this question of imagination again to a candid exploration” (9) I am uneasy and a bit skeptical about this journey.  When it comes to the way of the scientist, is our biggest problem that people uncritically reify, thinking that, for instance, "extended things" have intrinsic characteristics like "length, breadth, and depth" in the same way that, for example, elephants have intrinsic characteristics like tusks, trunks, and hair (or is talking about elephants in this way even permissible, as any such observations and descriptions cannot be conceived as arising from general human curiosity and a non-insidious desire to label?)?  Or is it an even bigger problem that people would think that there are no "joints" to reality whatsoever – and that it can be "carved up" in any way we like?  In other words: that there are no limits to our interpretations of reality or to what our imaginations can construct and build?

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, foreward a (by Howard Nemerov)

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Forward

“Among the few poets and teachers of my acquaintance who know POETIC DICTION it has been valued not only as a secret book, but nearly as a sacred one; with a certain sense that its teaching was quite properly esoteric…”

Continued:

“…not as the possession of a few snobs but as something that would easily fail of being understood by even the most learned of those jugheads whose mouths continually pour forth but whose ears will serve only for carrying purposes.” (1)

“Two main ways of taking poetic diction as a subject of study”:

1. Technical matter belonging to the art of poetry.  More: How could it ever have appeared seemly, appropriate, natural, to a poet, in his character of angler, to call fish “the finney prey”? (today, [1973] if someone did, he’d not only feel silly but be silly).  A reflective poet may realize he has been using words as if were natural, “as if the words really belonged to things, as if the words were really the ‘souls’ of things, their essences or Logoi, and not by any means the mere conventional tags they are said to be.” (2)

Leads to...

  
2. Poetic diction as a psychological, metaphysical – and extremely problematic – subject.  More: The poet may go from thinking that the fact that words change from age to age and even from context to context is interesting because it is a nuisance to thinking more critically about what this means.  This may become “the question of primary perception, of imagination itself, of how thought ever emerged (if it did) out of a world of things” (3).

For a poet who thinks about these things “their want of formal [philosophical] training may be not altogether a disadvantage” (“irony of Socrates”: he could only afford the one-drachma course about the correctness of names) (3,4)

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  Not much to object to here.  How could I, not being much of a poet?  Perhaps I would note that although it “may become ‘the question of primary perception, of imagination itself, of how thought ever emerged (if it did) out of a world of things’” (3), it may not as well, depending on what one believes about God – or on what one believes men ought to believe about God, given the evidence… Also, will be thinking about the “finney prey” thing for a long while I think…