TRANSINTERAVANT Rhetoric, semiotics and poetics of avantgarde and experimental literature

1
TRANSINTERAVANTRhetoric, semiotics and poetics
of avant-garde and experimental literature

• Harri Veivo
• Spring term, 2009

2
Theories of the poetic image

• The notion of image has been central for
  several avant-garde movements
• Motivations
• Vision related to science (empirical observation)
  - imagination related to the arts
• Imagery often becomes strongly conventionalized
  (for ex. locus amoenus)
• Metaphor is the most important tool of the poet
  discussion creative or re-creative
• In this sense, image and imagery are at the
  intersections where a-g and exp. litrerature
  define themselves
• Opposition to science, or imitation of science
• Opposition to canon and conventions
• Also the development of different technologies
  of image

3
Reverdy and Breton on images

• Pierre Reverdy Limage (Nord-Sud,1918)
• The image is a pure creation of the mind. It
  cannot be born from a comparison but only from
  bringing together two more or less distant
  realities. The more the relations of the two
  realities brought together are distant and
  fitting, the stronger the image the more
  emotive power and poetic reality they will have.
  (In Caws, Manifesto, p. 351)
• Bretons interpretation in Manifesto of
  Surrealism (1924)
• Fortuitous juxtaposition, not premediated by the
  mind, the reasons role limited to taking note
  of
• The effect the beauty is function of the
  difference of potential between the two elements
  of the image
• Reveal the surreal The mind becomes aware of
  the limitless expanses wherein its desires are
  made manifest the lightning-filled night

4
Breton on surreal images

• Virtues of poetic images for Breton
• Distance from practical language
  (untranslatability)
• The amount of seeming contradiction abstract
  represented as concrete or vice-versa
• Internal imbalance sensational beginning weak
  ending gives rise to ridiculous formal
  justification implies negation of an elementary
  physical property
• Hallucinatory provokes laughter...
• Characterized in scholarly terms
• Analogies or simili that defy conventional modes
  of interpretation
• Chain metaphors that give rise to truncated or
  contradictory comparisons and inferences
• Creative, not recreactive revelatory of the
  surreal

5
Bretons examples

• On the bridge the dew with the head of a tabby
  cat lulls itself to sleep. (Breton)
• Beautiful as the law of arrested development of
  the breast in adults, whose propensity to growth
  is not in proportion to the quantity of molecules
  that their organism assimilated. (Lautréamont)
• The color of a womans stockings is not
  necessarily in the likeness of her eyes, which
  led a philosopher who it is pointless to mention,
  to say Cephalopods have more reasons to hate
  progress than do quadrupeds. (Max Morise)

6
Ezra Pound Image in Imagism and Vorticism

• Imagism c. 1912-1914 in England and America
  Vorticism c. 1914-1918
• Figures Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, Wyndham
  Lewis
• Ezra Pound principles of imagism
• Direct treatment of the topic, whether subjective
  or objective
• No superfluous words that do not reveal something
• Musical phrase as model for verse
• Image as an intellectual and affective sum
  energy as most important in art force of
  fusion and unification electricity
• Emphasis on precision, clarity, training and the
  natural world ( science ? impressionism,
  symbolism)

7
Ezra Pound Image in Imagism and Vorticism

• All poetic language is the language of
  exploration. The image is itself the speech.
  The image is the word beyond formulated
  language.
• Pound comp. to a painter, who must have
  pigments or shades more numerous than the
  existing names of the colours.
• The notion of vortex
• Radiant node or cluster ... a VORTEXT, from
  which, and through which, and into which, ideas
  are constantly rushing, the greatest
  efficiency
• Process, not a stable aesthetic image
• Vorticism in the field of the avant-gardes
• Fascination for machines, technology and the
  present ? Futurisms sentimental future
  boring automobilism
• Also emphasis on vortex vs. accelerated sort
  of impressions in Impressionism and Futurism
• Influences from chinese writing and calligraphy

8
Pound In a station of the metro (1913)

• The apparition of these faces in the
  crowd Petals, on a wet, black bough.
• Describes the experience of metro result of a
  work of condensation
• Pounds commentary In a poem of this sort one
  is trying to record the precise instant when a
  thing outward and objective transforms itself, or
  darts into a thing inward and subjective. The
  'one image poem' is a form of super-position,
  that is to say it is one idea set on top of
  another.
• Apparition Thematizes perception faces
  inviduals becoming discernible from the crowd
  religious or supernatural connotations
• Transition from percpetion or visual impression
  to metaphor without transition, but logic
  expressed with the double column ()
• Note also the use of ponctuation that mimetically
  emphasizes the relationship between appearing
  elements (faces, petals) and the background
  (crowd, bough)