Friday, June 21, 1963
Summer Session Kansan
Page 7
Art Forms May Conceal Subtle Meanings
(Editor's note: This is the second of three articles.)
By Bernard Henrie
THIS IS the formal device called simile and it is a constituent of the greater process of metaphor. With the metaphoric process the writer creates "words" or at least rational mergers of old words with the result that we have new ideas which express what there are not words for. Metaphor will be discussed more completely in the final article. This article is concerned with the reader who sometimes gets lost in the metaphoric language.
If you want to get as much as you can from a work of art—think about it.
What, then, can the reader expect? There are two major—and opposing—answers.
ONE, AS advanced by G. E. Moore in "Principia Ethica" and by Clive Bell in his book called "Art," is that the reader or viewer need not expect anything more than "aesthetic emotion."
call the reader.
If the writer wishes to make the reader "feel" the unhappiness he feels, he will have to say something like this: "I feel like an unkept promise."
Just "feeling it" is fine, and a lot of people can't even manage that; but the critical individual will want to know—as well as feel.
The artist who wishes to "say" something significant realizes that many of the things he feels—and perhaps wants to convey—lack words. We all have been unhappy at some time or other, but to simply say: "I am unhappy" fails to capture the feelings we know make up what we call the state of unhappiness.
THE DIFFICULTY IS that the more profound the art, the less exact the knowledge to be derived from it. The reason for this is that a written word—or painted picture—must arrest motion while seeming not to do so, catch the subtle nuances of life as the more obvious, and it must effect us in a highly significant and subjective way.
This aesthetic emotion is some inner rapture which is above "mere" sensual pleasure. However, both men admit that they cannot define this exotic emotion they profess to experience when viewing great art.
A second school of thought ascribed to by Robert Penn Warren, E.M. Forster, and T. S. Eliot, concerning what the reader can expect from art is this: Art should yield insights into human experience; or, at least, some new ways of seeing.
THIS POSITION would seem of more interest to the individual desiring both understanding more of art and something more of himself and his world.
Not so, says James N. Neelley. As assistant professor of speech at the University of Kansas, he might be biased.
This position, if it is to recognize its goal of yielding new ways of seeing, involves the use of ambitious
Neelley Joins Research on Speech Faults
But right now Neelley has better arguments, as one of 31 young workers in speech and voice science participating in the first seminar on communication sciences that the University of Florida is conducting for the U.S. Vocational Rehabilitation Administration.
THEY ARE concerned with the way sounds are produced in a human being and formed into language.
Silence is golden?
Neeley and most of the participants in the 2-week seminar already have the Ph.D. degree. Among them are professors, linguists, social scientists, research experts, administrators, and medical doctors. They were selected for their high research potential.
They are working with engineers in shops producing "Rube Goldberg devices" as equipment in areas where no blueprints have been drawn.
The reader must be willing to "work" with the author and be willing to accept the fact that complete understanding is not possible if the work in question is to be expansive and a piece of art.
thinking on the part of the reader or viewer.
BUT THE reader should not settle for anything less than at least partial understanding. But understanding, even partial understanding, does not mean, necessarily, the kind of understanding that we can express in the words of, say, a critical essay, but rather this understanding means an involvement, at first on an emotional level, and then—if the viewer wants more—a certain intellectual recognition of the forms provoking the first emotional response.
To discover meaning, or to feel some involvement with the forms offered, requires the most liberal thinking. The reader must be willing to experiment, or at least listen attentively to the metaphoric language of the author, and not hobble himself with any dogmatic assertions about the content of form—form being what we recognize.
We understand that the only thing we need from art is significant form, but we also understand that form can consist of any number of constituent parts or structures.
OFTEN THE UNcovering of one primary symbol can add greatly to the understanding we receive from a work of art. This is not always as
difficult as it sounds. It can be as simple as exploring the use of certain key words. For example:
The possibly ambiguous use of the word "country" in "My Antonia" gives universal significance to the book's regional theme. One meaning is the one often derived from a literal interpretation of the text in which the word appears; a second meaning may be postulated, however, if the word is not thought to mean rural life but to mean the country or nation, America. The first use of the word, "country," denotes rural life but in subsequent uses an ambiguous use seems implied.
"I thought this was America," the old tramp says answering a farm worker's distinction between Bohemian and Norwegian farmers. Our two possible meanings, then, become defined. When the word "country" is used it may mean rural life or it may mean the country called America. Thus considered lines containing the word become doubly significant.
"... THEY would sit chattering and laughting telling me all the news from the country." Jim writes of the hired girls. He has already said that these girls, with their strength and spirit, will be the hardy stock required to make a great nation. Jim seems to be saying that these girls are the ones in touch with America; such a theme provides the novel with an undercurrent of significance and transcends the overt, regionalist tone.
There is an interesting consideration which would not support this notion of so ambitious a function for the word, "country." Cleric explains that Virgil used the word to mean not nation but the country of his father's farm. But a few pages later Jim writes: "I walked slowly out into the country part of town where I lived." Clearly a limited definition of country is not possible here, the words sound of a more profound theme. It would seem Miss Cather's purpose, by mentioning Virgil, is to show her reader the possibility of a double meaning rather than the denoting of which meaning is to be taken; this in the fashion of Henry James.
What "My Antonia" has in common with say, "after Apple-Picking," Robert Frost's poem of death, is that both require the reader to look for potential sub-story level meanings. Here are the first eight lines from the Frost poem:
at long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toothpaste between every stit
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the right The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
The process of analyzing a poem is a process of discovering as many possibilities of meaning. Consequently, we need to keep our minds open. There will be certain key words, usually, in a poem that lend themselves to a number of possible interpretations and these usually catch our eye first.
Frost's poem begins on a basic note of ambiguity. The author tells us his "long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree." Does he mean the two uppermost points or does he mean the point at the top and the point at the bottom—which might imply heaven, at the top point, and the anti-Christ forces at the bottom point?
**IS "STILL" to be taken literally, and if so, what is the literal meaning? Does it mean "not moving" or does it mean "again"?**
Is "bough" a pun for bow—which might have some additional meaning if the "apples I didn't pick" is taken to refer to the Christian apple in Genesis? Is "scent" a pun for sent and if so what does it contribute to the form of the poem?
Is the poem about death or are we reading too much into the apparent death images of "winter sleep" and "drowsing off?"
The arrangement of meanings are many, and they are dependent on the reader. For only the reader will decide if he is willing to embark upon some adventure in abstraction and leave the literal and obvious behind—if the poem, book, or picture, or symphony seems to require such ambitious analysis.
HEY GANG!
Take a break from studies and come on out to DIXON'S.
Enjoy a cooling LIMEADE
LEMONADE made with fresh lemons & limes
OR try the new thirst quencher BLEND ( lemon & orange drink.
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2500 West 6th
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