DE-LITERATURIZATION OF LITERATURE AND THE WORLD (An Excerpt) To begin with, poetry shoudnt be a forced art. If it comes, said Keats, not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. This is because, poetry originates in the necessity of creating a metaphysic (an explanation of knowledge and existence of the universe). Necessity so said, is the mother of invention and invention is another word for imagination. By the same token, imagination precedes knowledge or rather, before knowledge was possible, imagination filled the unexplained vacuum created by the questionable existence of man. In other words, man sought answers to the endless questions that surround his mysterious existence and therefore, resorted to some imaginative chants, invocations and magical conjurations, sung hypnotically to effect changes in the external world around him. Through such incantations, man invented gods to explain all that was beyond his power of apprehension. These sonorous, melodious and rhythmic songs were believed to be the earliest form of poetry. This is a clear indication that poetry can be a religious act, as was found among the ancient Celts who regarded poets as magicians and priests, and whoever insulted one of them might expect to receive a curse, potent enough to afflict him with boils and to curdle the milk of cows. Benedetto Croce (1913), summarised the philosophy of the famous Italian political philosopher, historian and jurist, Giambattista Vico, who gives us an insight about the origin and nature of poets and poetry when he said: Poetry could be a more primitive mode of expression with a transcendental quality obviously produced, not by mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. This means that man, before he has arrived at the stage of forming knowledge, forms imaginary ideas. Before he reflects with a clear mind, he apprehends with faculties confused and disturbed: before he can articulate, he sings: before speaking in prose, he speaks in verse: before using technical terms, he uses metaphors, and the metaphorical use of words is as natural to him as that which we call natural. Furthermore, the Greeks believed that a poet is a person possessed and assisted by supernatural powers. That was clear from the invocation to the Muse that begins the Iliad and the Odyssey and from the opinion of Socrates (in Platos Ion) that a poet has no powers of invention untill divinely inspired. Therefore poetry is sacred and shouldnt be a fun for every toddler-poet. Poetry should be for serious minds and natural geniuses only. Additionally, in psychoanalysis today, a poet is neither inspired nor possessed by divine or supernatural powers; rather he is only lost in his mythical mind, being visited by voices that come from deep within the self. Therefore, in the process of poetic composition, words rise into a conscious mind with a definite equivalence in the poets state of mental intensity. They are arranged or composed in a sequence or rhythm which is sustained until the mental state of tention in the poet is exhausted or released by this objective equivalence. This indicates that the intuition or vision of the poet is expressed simply by a musical equivalence in the words. Thus, the sounds of the words and their very appearance are, of course, everything to the poet. Similarly, words have associations carrying mind beyond sound to visual image and abstract idea. Even as the poet becomes conscious of words in the act of composition, he feels them tincturing his consciousness not only with sound, but also with colour, and light and power, in short, with meaning. Hence, poetry depends, not only on the sound of words, but even more on their mental reverberations. So, a poet is he who is usually more sensitive to the sights, sound and sensation of the world within and around him. He is more sensitive to the behaviour of people; their follies, sufferings and pleasures. To crown it all, he is one who is capable of expressing these things in precise language and thought, with greater awareness, greater sensitivity and greater artistry. He exceeds the limits of customary expressions, and invents more frequently new uses of words and figures of speech that condense or broaden, shorten or lengthen, beautify and embellish an idea. Precisely, a poet is one who commits to language more than event. On the language used by poets in poetry, formalists declare that it should be non-discursive, symbolic rather than narrative. This means that the language is highly literary to the extent that it defamiliarises all that is dulled by familiarity and habit. And therefore, it freshens and sharpens our perception. The language should draw attention to itself through imagery, unusual word combinations, sound patterning, metre, rhyme, inversions and, or unusual word order. Thats why, Jakobson views poetry as organised violence committed on ordinary speech. Conclusively, poetry should be given more concentration. For those literary-bankrupt writers, poetry writing should be delayed until we are vocabularily and imaginatively ready for this intellectual confrontation. It is not only that, we should also wait until we are instinctively inspired. Only then we can write with accuracy, fresh imagination and beauty. (c)2014 M. M. Ibrahim.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 16:31:13 +0000
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