ADAM FIELED ON

MODERNISM AND
POST-MODERNISM
2003-2013
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Exclusive Artifice: Eliots Four Quartets

T.S. Eliots Four Quartets may be taken as a many-tiered inquiry into the effect

of temporality on human consciousness. Notions of the subjective, and of subjectivity

itself, are blended with an omnipresent awareness of the subjugation of subjective

consciousness to temporal elements. Subjectivity is defined as a manner of being-in-

time1. Through defining subjectivity in this way, Eliot is able to glimpse the possibility of

transcending subjectivity. The triumph over subjectivity would then be the triumph over

temporality. The authorial voice in this poem, or the lack thereof, seems to arise from an

assumed timelessness. It speaks from, and about, specific places and people, but uses

these as a starting point for ontological investigation, rather than as sites which directly

involve an author in contingent situations, on which we see a window opened.

Eliots timeless stance is, or seems to be, beyond mere subjectivity, and thus

able to define and transcend it. It is a post-subjective voice/presence, but makes few

claims to objectivity or impartiality. By adopting this stance, which is also a non-stance,

this presence, which is also a non-presence, Eliot is able to treat poetry exclusively as

artifice(Easthope, 143), as Anthony Easthope imagined. We do not get a consistent

voice, leading us through the epiphanies and vicissitudes that accrue to being-in-time; we

get language, fiction, artifice, means of representation, poem(Easthope, 141). As the

narrating voice chafes against its own presence in the poem, Eliot convincingly presents

1
This phrase is borrowed from Martin Heidegger.
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transparent subjectivity deferred, if not denied outright. Exclusive artifice allows Eliot

the freedom to investigate a number of stances, all involved with temporality and

subjectivity, without getting unduly caught in them. Exclusive artifice in this context

might be defined as an authorial decision to eschew the illusion of transparency in favor

of a constantly shifting, restless exploration of different representational modes. Like a

skillful movie director, Eliot makes jump-cuts and edits which keep the action and

discourse moving. Consistency and transparency are, for the most part, excluded.

Eliot does, however, employ an I-voice intermittently in Four Quartets. Its

manner of appearance in the poem emphasizes indeterminacy, lack of certainty, and

self-mistrust. Andrew Kennedy notes that, when it appears, the I is not too dominant,

not quite at the center(Kennedy, 168). Beyond being pushed from the center, Eliot

makes his I an example of subjectivity not transcended; he writes, I can only say,

there we have been: but I cannot say where./ And I cannot say, how long, for that is to

place it in time(Eliot, 16). Parallel structure here (I can say/ I cannot say) serves as a

formal representation of indeterminacy pinpointed; an identical syllable count adds

intensity to this tension, marking a melopoeaic mini-climax or crescendo.

Using the I-voice sparingly, and making explicit that it is not privileged (i.e.

transcendent and/or timeless), gives parts of the poem a confessional feel, while backing

away from direct confession. That is, at times Eliot encourages us to engage what appears

to be an illusion of transparency. However, the I which we see represented is quick to

point out the tenuous nature of selfhood, rather than confidently opening a vista onto a

narrated event or perception. The I-voice becomes a strategic device for expressing
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solidarity with those bound in, and to, temporality. Then, Eliot quickly backs away into

more abstract ruminations, and we see that I here is both personal and impersonal, an

expression of subjectivity which is not transparent. Eliots strategic use of the first person

singular suggests a sophisticated awareness that actuality and representation are

different planes of reality(Easthope,141). Simply put, Eliot knows how to blend this

particular, seemingly personal piece into the scenery, in the context of a densely woven

tapestry of images and objective meditations. The personal is merely one more prop.

Eliot subtly shifts the mood of the poem by shifting personal pronouns. When he

moves from the first person singular to the first person plural, he further reinforces an

assumed solidarity with an audience, or with the entire human race. He expresses a kind

of aphoristic universalism, emphasizing timeless human truths and collective

disappointments: There is, it seems to/ us,/ At best, only a limited value/ In the

knowledge derived from experience(Eliot, 26). The impression of a posited solidarity is

reinforced by Eliots unusual decision to give one one-syllable word, us, its own line;

disappointment is dispersed in us in this formal gesture. Rhyme here (to/value) would

also seem to signify the harmony which arises from voicing a shared sentiment; tension

explodes in the loaded last line, which also features an internal near-rhyme

(in/experience). Tension and release in formal gestures creates an effect of liberation.

One thing seen here is suffering....presented as an all-pervasive

undercurrent(Delamotte, 345). However, suffering is generalized beyond the merely

subjective and not tied to a specific temporal experience or situation. The flexibility of

Eliots timeless stance allows him to enunciate human disappointments, if not exactly
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from on high, then certainly not in a strictly subjective or situational framework.

Though this particular passage, from East Coker, could be read naively, as a personal

expression, or even as complex, Eliots use of the first person plural would tend to

emphasize the reality of it as poetry, as text. After all, whoever the us may be,

Eliot never defines it. It is an us which could be anyone, or no one. Eliot seems to be

strategically employing a pronoun, to open up a space in his readers for identification, for

empathy; readers can read themselves in to this passage. A timeless stance allows him

the freedom to do this, and then quickly change the scenery again, foregrounding the

staged quality of the construct, its made-ness. Also seen here is Eliots penchant for

aphorism, a priority of the signifier(Easthope, 137) over any transparently subjective

signified. Text stands for itself, on its own; it shows itself. Suffering is demonstrated in

text, rather than narrated through it, out of the adequate objectivity of signifieds.

The presentation of text as an end in itself, apart from its instrumentality as

expressing a signified, is also highlighted in this poem. Eliots use of deliberate

contradictions vexing, uncompromising, and not to be transcended makes clear his

own realization that poetryis not to be read for truth or falsity of reference(Easthope,

141). He writes, what you do not know is the only thing you know/ And what you own

is what you do not own/ And where you are is where you are not(Eliot, 29). These lines

are unusually self-contained, with internal, circular rhymes and rhythms; the finished

pattern feels almost sing-song. Such language basks in its own literariness, its self-

knowledge as paradox-in-text. If this were not presented from a distant stance, it might

seem awkward; but Eliot creates a realm from which he can play oracle without seeming
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gratuitous. Truth and falsity here have no direct referential bearing; paradox is its own

kind of artifice, that happens to fit in with Eliots hovering, sublime stance. It is possible

to read these lines without noticing an authorial presence at all; they can be appreciated

on the page, purely as word. Moreover, paradox seems to enact its being free of temporal

constraints. Paradoxes strive not to act in time, but in the kind of timeless space through

with Eliot presents them; they fit in. They decoy temporal existence, from beyond it.

Another pronoun shift accompanies this particular presentation: we have moved

to the second person singular. This is a new effect; for a you to exist in a text, there

must be an implied I. When these pronouns exist simultaneously, a relationship is

posited. This creates a sense of intimacy, of being talked to. Yet the distance of an

implied author writing from a timeless, demonstrably detached stance, might inhibit this

intimacy. Eliots ambition seems to be to surmount this perceived distance with the

brilliance of paradox, its textual ingenuity, existent beyond temporality, in a kind of

Platonic2 space. The you addressed here is not so much talked to as instructed, in an

oracular tone and rhythm. Yet, like all shifts predominant in FQ, this lasts for only a short

time, until another jump-cut takes over. Not constrained by the linearity of temporal

movement, Eliots lofty implied narrator may move the action along in any chosen

direction. It is a form of omnipotence which can only arise out of generated situation. A

transparent subject would seem to want both more consistency and more linearity.

Eliot uses explicit paradox in this poem; he also uses implicit paradox. This is

seen most readily when Eliot chooses to address temporality itself, head-on, rather than

2
Platonic in the sense that they are detached from concrete reality.
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merely referentially. This address sometimes places temporality in a vacuum, where it

can be deconstructed as a thing-in-itself3; thus, the famous opening lines of the poem,

Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future

contained in time past(Eliot, 13). Doubt asserts itself only in a single perhaps; the

tone is otherwise authoritative and confident. The implicit paradox here is that this

presentation of time and temporality takes place from a posited timeless stance, which

emphasizes its own protean quality throughout the poem. Time is addressed from

a vantage point outside of time; it is this impossible scenario, created in the opening lines

of the poem, which forms the basis of an artifice which moves the text forward. Eliots

approach is exclusive because it keeps any one style or mode, confessional, meditative,

or lyrical, from gaining predominance. Currents of text shift, wind, and meander, but do

not settle into a narrow groove. To hold a mirror up to temporality, Eliot must craft a

voice not strictly bound to one contingent perspective. This creates irony and distance;

Eliots voice has a disembodied quality. The temporal, conventionally perceived as

linear, is represented through opacity and disjuncture. This opacity is a demonstration

of time present, time past, and time future conflated into a reified-in-ambiguity entity.

As Eliot seems to be straining against the limits of temporality, he also strains

against the limits of an ideology of the primacy of the individual human subject

(Easthope, 138). The subjectivity which is defined and (textually) transcended in this

poem is usually attached to a seeking subject, who wants to transcend temporality and

break through to a higher, cleaner site. In a self-reflexive moment, Eliots I-voice bids

itself be still, and let the dark come upon you/ Which shall be the darkness of God
3
This phrase is borrowed from Kant.
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(Eliot, 27). The strict iambic rhythm of this second line gives it a classic feel; this

dovetails nicely with Eliots lofty sentiment. Still, this is a complex moment in an already

complex scenarioEliots I-voice, which is employed intermittently and sits some

distance from the timeless stance of the dominant narrator, is speaking to itself as

another, which becomes the third entity in a kind of trinity. In the three-in-one here

enacted, the momentarily eclipsed, main voice can be perceived as a kind of Father, the I-

voice a kind of Son, and the Self that is being addressed, that is apparently disturbed and

must be stilled, a ghost, which, far from being holy in and of itself, nevertheless strives

for holiness. It is unclear in precisely what realm this is happening, what form it takes.

This is how the individual subject appears in FQ; as a ghost, a cipher, a vapor,

always in danger of evaporating, never secure. Far from any kind of primacy, it is what

Eliot is going to elaborate lengths to eschew. The gambit of a timeless narrative voice

seems predicated on the notion that the individual voice, unmediated by a higher purpose,

is of little worth. If a Self is presented, it must be within the context of a multiplicity of

Selves. The narrative voice seems to be not only beyond temporality, but beyond

selfhood. The idea of a timeless voice that is also selfless adds another layer of artifice to

the poem. The iambic, like other formal elements, is brought in at opportune times to

represent this. Text is not constrained to be anything but text, with little outside it.

It is to Eliots credit that the oracular tone, sometimes adopted by his implied

narrator, or anti-narrator, does not subsist throughout the poem. The other side of the

oracular is often a resigned fatalism; the timelessness from which lines are uttered seems

to involve a subject that, though beyond temporality, is nonetheless cognizant of both

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collective and individual suffering, of not being saved. Eliot instructs an unnamed

other, sans the device of the I-voice, wait without/ love/ For love would be love of the

wrong thing: there is yet faith/ But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the

waiting (Eliot, 28). As seen previously in East Coker, Eliot gives marked emphasis to

one word, singling it out by line-break. It is an abstract noun which demonstrates concern

with concepts, as much as with concrete realities, and stands alone in evanescence.

Content-wise, this is a variation of the trinity scenario; only the absence of an I-

voice, and of any personal pronouns, depersonalizes it to an extent. That we see similar

constructs presented with slight variations is a demonstration of Eliots craft. In this

particular case, Eliot seems to be addressing mortality. Because we see that there is

faith, and is is generally associated with temporal existence, being-in-time, this can be

taken as Eliot making a break with the made-ness of a timeless stance. However, this is

balanced by the lack of pronouns, and the atomized, liminal limbo it suggests. Eliot

presents an instance of waiting, not inhabited by any known entity; it seems to be a kind

of textual Purgatory (Purgatory being a transitional realm, between salvation and

damnation, where the soul waits, and these lines being a possible textual representation of

this process). It is a Purgatory in anticipation of an unknown; Eliots stance suggests

knowledge of everything except this unknown. This is a visible contradiction; we are

being impelled by implication to wait, which suggests knowledge of a root cause for

waiting; yet this knowledge is immediately disavowed. A confident tone is belied by

ambivalent content. We, as readers, are caught in Eliots labyrinthine effects.

It would seem that the center of Eliots timeless stance cannot hold; it is broken in
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the recognition of the ineffable, what perhaps cannot be said in text. To use Easthopes

terms, actuality and representation are perceived as being so different, that an attempt

cannot be made. In the implied universalism of this passage, all subjects must wait for a

transcendent presence which cannot be known, in text or post. This passage is a break

in the overt staginess of the poems self-presentation that injects a new form of artifice

textual enactment of seemingly silent preparation, waiting, for ineffable revelation.

Later in the poem, we see this scenario from another angle, assimilated, yet

without satisfaction: the sudden illumi-/ nation/ We had the experience but missed the

meaning,/ And approach to the meaning restores the experience/ In a different form,

beyond any meaning/ We can assign to happiness(Eliot, 39). Eliot returns to familiar

ground, expressing solidarity with an unnamed but confidently asserted us. The

significance of lineation here is unclear why Eliot would need to break up

illumination into two parts, and dedicate an entire line to nation. It could be argued

that a binary tension is being expressed; what an illumination could or should be, and

what it is in actuality. It is a textual circle which will not close.

There is a sense of betrayal expressed towards temporality; what appeared

revelatory was, at best, misunderstood, at worst, a mere illusion. Eliot is again

straddling many different textual zones; he is standing above the temporal and the

subjective so as to define both, standing inside the temporal and the subjective to express

empathy and solidarity, enacting an oracular understanding that things are not

comprehensible, while comprehending the limits of understanding. The illusion of

transparency seems very far away; the subject of the enounced, beyond being coherent
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and substantial(Easthope,144), partakes of ethereality and substantiality at once.

This essential duality, of the ethereal opposed to the substantial, mirrors Eliots

preoccupation with temporality and the means of transcending it. The ambition of Eliots

undertaking necessitates the use of opaque strategies; a nave transparency could never

deliver the ends which Eliot hopes to achieve. These ends, though achieved through

artificial means, convey the contradictory reality of a temporality which both exists and

does not exist, partakes of an illusory nature which nonetheless shapes, transforms, and

defines human consciousness. Poetry, treated exclusively as artifice, mirrors the nature

of temporality, which can itself be perceived as artificial, and ethereal. The end of this

exploration must be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first

time(Eliot, 59). When worked through, temporality emerges as circular rather than

linear, revelatory rather than incomprehensible, if not substantial than not strictly

insubstantial either. The revelatory nature of examined temporality is an epistemological

triumph, a sense of knowing. The assuredness of Eliots prosody mirrors this.

Indeterminacy and artificiality remain hewn into the text through what seems

to be a deliberate vagueness; we are not told what or where this place is. This suggests

a respect for any given reader as an individual subject; a premise is given sans oracular

specifics. Eliot employs his wonted universalism, but seems to appreciate the inadequacy

of textual representation where substantial revelation is concerned; it is implicitly

asserted that we, whoever we may be, must each start from a different place.

Thus, the Four Quartets ends with what may be taken as an acknowledgement of

the provisional nature of all that has come before. Eliot has used the constructed-ness of
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his timeless stance, formal poetic devices, his I-voice, and other pronoun configurations

to develop and mirror the indeterminate nature of temporality, human consciousness as it

exists in and through temporality, and ways through which temporality can be

transcended. This poem attests to the fact that release from temporality, or at least its

effects, can be achieved through textual practice. Opacity can be used instrumentally just

as surely as the illusion of transparency can. Artifice, which foregrounds the unreal, may

be used to achieve definition of real forces, the authentic nature of which eludes us.

The effect of artifice, and opacity as its agent, can be to make the reader aware of

the many layers and levels that constitute consciousness. Consciousness itself then comes

into question; what in it is artificial, what in it is real. This poem is certainly not to be

read for truth or falsity of reference, but for insight into what constitutes truth or falsity,

how both objective and subjective truth and falsity are defined by temporality, and how

all these ideas act on and engage both individual and collective consciousness. Artifice,

far from being merely artificial, may exist in the very manner that we represent reality to

ourselves, and the manner in which temporality represents things to us. What is true and

what is false remain vapor; what text may do to lead us to genuine inquiry, becomes

clear in the many-faceted unfolding of the poems textual gambits and salvos.
 ENDNOTES

DeLamotte, Eugenia. Dissonance and Resolution in Four Quartets. Modern Language

Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History, 1988 December; 49 (4): 342-61.

Easthope, Anthony. Re-Reading English. New York: Methuen, 1982.

Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1943.

Kennedy, Andrew. The Speaking I in Four Quartets. English Studies: A Journal

of English Language and Literature, 1979; 60: 166-75.
 Parallel Structures and Repeated Motifs in Eliots Four
Quartets (Burnt Norton/East Coker)

T.S. Eliot uses repeated motifs and parallel structures in his extended poem, Four
Quartets, to express an overriding concern with the nature of time and temporality.
Repetitions become a kind of echo, and Eliot deliberately leads our thoughts in circular
patterns. This intention is made explicit in the first lines of the poem, which assert that
Time present and time past/ are both perhaps present in time future/ and time future
contained in time past. Eliot wants to create a new kind of non-linear poetic form, which
will mimic what he sees as the circular, indeterminate nature of time. His aim is as
metaphysical and philosophical as it is poetic, recalling both the idealist theories of Kant
and the prose of Marcel Proust. Eliots motifs and parallel structures become a way of
enhancing his remembrance of things past, as well as creating poetic rhythms which
mirror a heightened state of consciousness. The radical impersonality of much of this text
could easily be construed as cold and/or arid, another reason it made sense for Eliot to
use the devices of repeated motifs and parallel structures. Repetitions create, if not
genuine human warmth, at least a semblance of warmth and kinetic movement.
The first repeated motif in this poem is the phrase what might have been.
Eliot does not employ this phrase as a lyric poet would, to rue a personal loss or fond
regret, but instead treats it as a philosopher would, looking for a metaphysical root.
What might have been is an abstraction/ remaining a perpetual possibility/ only in a
world of speculation. The hint Eliot gives us that this is prosodic is the brevity of the
lines and the musical near-rhyme of abstraction and speculation. The second
repetition, or echo of what might have been presents the phrase in a new light, as a
metaphysical problem solved by the absolving one end, which is always present. This
is later referred back to by Eliot as the still point of the turning world, and, since it
becomes a repeated motif, it would seem necessary to attempt definition. For a Kabbalist,
the still point is Kether, the crown, the ultimate root of all things. For a Taoist, the still
point might be the Tao itself. For Eliot, the still point, the one end is simply the
eternal presence of the present moment in the human world, an analogue to Heideggers
Dasein. It is as if time present, time past, and time future create a circle, and the still
point is the circles center, which has inherent Being-In.
A motif which has resonance for the entire poem, as well as in the limited context
of this section, is echo. Eliot first deconstructs the process by which a work of art is
ingested; my words echo/ thus, in your mind. The use of the personal pronoun your
adds a personal touch to an often impersonal context. However, we are not necessarily
reassured the direct effect of these lines is to make us self-conscious. Also, it is
important (and revealing) to note that Eliot imagines his words echoing in our minds,
rather than our hearts or souls. This is cerebral poetry, and meant to be appreciated as
such; and poetry which addresses cognition in the Modernistic, rather than Romantic,
objective manner, past the necessity for cohesion and fluidity.
The next echo brings in another key motif to the poem that of place.
Other echoes/ inhabit the garden. We are reminded that Burnt Norton is an actual
place, existing in the world. For the first time in the poem, we get a substantial visual
image, of a garden. It is an image of the Natural, unlike the artificial settings which Eliot
perfected in Prufrock and The Waste Land. What kind of echoes inhabit a garden?
The most obvious answer is that, as we take in the garden, natural images remind us
of the frailty and transient beauty of nature itself. It also reminds us of the roots of
things, the ultimate source of being, where we all come from, what Eliot calls our
first world; but the primordial is thought, rather than felt.
The motif of the first world, and the fact that Eliot is referring to a
garden, echoes both the Biblical story of the garden of Eden, the first world
of mankind, and the retelling of this story by Milton in Paradise Lost. Rather
than a deceptive snake, Eliot refers to the deception of the thrush. Many meanings
may be inferred from this; it seems most likely that the flight of the thrush is a
metaphor for an impossible metaphysical transcendence, possibly a leap in time, and
that this imaginary flight deceives us into believing that transcendence is more accessible
than it actually is; all of which amplifies Eliots by now wonted impersonality and the
objective distance he builds into a trans-temporal landscape.
Into our first world is also a textual milieu of natural possibility, of the pliant
physical, the organic. Interestingly, Eliot emphasizes that this garden we are visiting,
which can be perceived both as an actual place and a metaphysical realm, does not exist,
as we would expect our first world to, in perpetual springtime. Eliot notes the dead
leaves and the autumn heat, and we are roughly brought down, in the rush of a run-on
poetic sentence with short, staccato phrases, out of the metaphysical, the realm of
possibility, into the bounded, season-governed, finite world. Even our first world is
subject to the law of cycles, which Eliot mirrors textually by carving circular structures
into his traditional prosodic reliance on the left-hand margin.
The bird as symbol of transcendence is repeated several lines down. Now the
bird acts as both symbol and instructor; go, said the bird, and one line down, more
expansively, go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/ cannot bear very much reality.
This is no analogue to Shelley listening to his skylark, representing its harmonious
thoughts. Eliot does not attempt to forge a subjective meta-link to the bird, as Shelley
does; the bird is a thing-in-itself, an objective (and thus, sober and sobering) reality, not
intentionally instructing, but an example to the philosophic mind attuned to the Natural.
What disturbs is that the bird is telling Eliot (and, by implication, us) to get out of the
garden, away from Eden, our first world, the Natural. Original Sin is not mentioned
explicitly, but knowledge of human impurity, of our unfitness for the garden, hangs
over this passage; clearly meant to underscore two World Wars as a subtext.
If we are unfit for the garden, we still partake of the grace and motion of life,
what Eliot (and Yeats, elsewhere) calls the dance. The repeated motif of the dance
suggests man as artist, creator, crafter of forms. It also suggests that Eliot perceives,
against his objectivism, beauty and harmony in the physical body. The first dance
mentioned is the dance along the artery. Eliot apprehends perfection in the physical
mechanism; the hand of an artist lies behind its delicate symbiotic processes. Eliot then
employs dance to explain the preponderance of the ever-present moment; except for
the point, the still/ point/ there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
Dance implies interaction. We do not exist independently; every
breath we take, every motion of our body, every thought posits us as a thing among
things, a being surrounded by beings, a tiny part of an immense whole. What allows us
the luxury of our existence is time, that which is always present, which envelopes us. Our
dance with other beings is contingent on our participation in the dance of each
infinitesimal moment as it passes. Each moment which passes seems different to us, yet is
essentially the same a point, a still point. The world turns, but the point subsists.
To lead us to the resolution of the dance, Eliot uses the parallel structure of
contradictory phrases, each beginning with the word neither, each broken off abruptly
by a semi-colon. These opposites: flesh/fleshless, from/towards, arrest/movement,
ascent/decline, are used to delineate the metaphysical sensation of Being, what amounts
to a perfect stasis. Stasis is achieved at a median, a balancing point, which we can only
comprehend abstractly. Yet, the poem tells us we are still at Burnt Norton. This
section conveys a feeling of limbo, of being hung between two worlds, physical
and metaphysical, temporal and timeless. A final contradiction is that the dance is both
within this stasis and beyond it, emerging from and back into evanescence like the themes
of the poem itself, in its dance with linearity and circularity.
The dance of life plays itself out in moments. In a miniaturized parallel structure
towards the end of this section, Eliot presents three moments, in the rose garden/ in the
arbor where the rain beat/ in the draughty church at smoke-fall, as memories through
which time is conquered. The garden we have seen before, and the arbor is not a
significant departure in theme from the garden. The inclusion of the church as a
remembered, momentous image, is new to the poem, and significant. It demonstrates
that the protagonist of the poem is engaged with the world, is a real person like other
people, rather than an impersonal Modernist cipher. (As a side note, it is also helpful
to realize that a rabid cult of personality had grown up around Eliot by the time
he published this poem, and his Christianity was a well-known and public feature of it,
balancing and refining his early avant-gardism and association with Ezra Pound.)
Eliot has chosen all three of these moments because they have become embedded
in his memory, presumably owing to their timeless quality. Yet, Eliot notes that only in
timecan they be remembered. This returns us to contradiction and paradox, and brings
to mind the Eastern notion that opposites create each other, and are necessary to each
others survival. The conclusion of this passage is positive time can be conquered,
timelessness achieved. The final paradox is that this conquest can only be enacted in
time; and that it is just this, a conquest, with a sense of the defeat of (textual) stasis.
In the third section of Burnt Norton, Eliot leads us away from the natural solitude
of the garden back to the restless mlange of human civilization. Eliots response to
civilization is not engagement, but retreat. He imagines descending into the world
of perpetual solitude, where, using a four-line parallel structure, property, sense, fancy,
and spirit, everything that lies on the surface of consciousness, disintegrates. As earlier,
Eliot is imagining a stasis-in-limbo, but this is the negative image of the still point, the
Void or void-ness which animates so much of Modernisms despair and nihilism.
The implication is that Eliot finds all of civilization, its supposed progress
and its endless distractions, to be fundamentally unreal. He would rather be destitute of
property. Retreat is the one way to find metaphysical satisfaction, yet metaphysical
speculation leads into the Void just as surely as engagement with the unreality of the
civilized world. This is why, though retreat into solitude is the one way, the other
way, of engagement, is essentially the same. Those in society and those in solitude are
subject to the same laws of space, the same vicissitudes and developments of spirit, the
vagaries of time present, time past, and time future, Dasein and emptiness.
Eliot responds to this conundrum by retreating into formalized verse in the section
which follows. The meter is somewhat uneven (AABACDECDE), but effectively enacts
a retreat into the implied historicity of the formal. The images of this section enact
a wish for the consolation of the Natural, with its unforced pleasures; will the sunflower
turn to us/ will the clematisbend to us/ clutch and cling? The enactment of this
formalized wish takes place against an ominous backdrop, of a buried day, and black
clouds carrying away the sun. The fingers of yew enhance the foreboding mood; yew
leaves were traditionally used for burial. By the tenth line, a sort of truce of natural forces
has been achieved, and Eliot has moved in a circular fashion right back to where he
started from, at the still point of the turning world. Time has supremacy over
Nature, as Nature will be subservient to time as long as birth and death inhere in it.
Finally, in the last segment of Burnt Norton, Eliot addresses something which
could be construed as personal: words. Eliot places words and music side by side: as a
master of verse as well as modern form, this association was natural for Eliot. The
movement of words takes place in time, but by achieving form or pattern, Eliot implies
that words become more than merely living, and thus can take on a life of their own,
out of the domain of time, reaching into the stillness of isolation and interiority.
Eliot again uses a run-on sentence, broken by commas, with short, staccato
phrases, to express the word assailed, forced to exist in a world of time, an uncertain
world. Referring possibly to critics, possibly to a fickle public, Eliot notes the shrieking
voices scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, which force fragile gestalts to crack,
and sometimes break. Eliots perfectionism rears its head as well, as he imagines words
decaying with imprecision. Words are our creations; they are a form of engagement, a
part of the dance. This segment is Eliot taking stock of his being-in-the-world, his
status, his stature, the fragility of it and its dependence on textualitys efficacy.
The poem has become personal and personalized. This process of personalization
prepares the poem to move into its next phase. However, the themes initiated in Burnt
Norton continue to dominate the text: the nature of time, the time-frame of nature, the
unfathomable nature of existence, the frustrations of age. The parallel structures and
repeated motifs become more elaborate, but always serve to illustrate and enact the
theme of time and the perishable. Burnt Norton may thus be seen as a microcosmic
representation of the entire Four Quartets.
East Coker begins with an aphoristic contradiction, later to become a repeated
motif; in my beginning is my end. This can be taken two ways. Because things, places,
states of being arise in time, they are doomed to the transience of the temporal. An origin
in the temporal guarantees a similar ending. Taken differently, this contradiction could
express a belief that the ultimate end of all things is initiation. The temporal is a circle,
and its crux is the principle of initiation, each moment as it comes and passes (in the
process both initiating and annihilating itself) at the still point of the turning world.
Importantly, the phrase is personalized; my beginning/my end, hinting both at the
transience of an individual life and at the human capacity for initiation. To initiate is both
to venture forth and to return, to enact the circular motion of time and to have embraced
the still point. Metaphysical levels form a womb around texts own patterns.
It is possible to achieve a sense of spiritual equilibrium within the transient, but
physical transience is an undeniable fact. Eliot emphasizes this by following his
aphoristic contradiction with a return to the concrete. As in Burnt Norton, he uses a long
sentence structure, in which the placement of commas and short phrases creates a
tumbling rhythm. The subject of this miniature construct is houses, a part of the human
landscape often thought to suggest permanence, stability, solidity. Eliot catalogues the
various fates of houses at various times; they crumble/extend/are removed/destroyed/
restored. Houses are things built (initiated) by us. The rhythm of these lines create a
sense of tumult, of movement, which doesnt necessarily end in an absolute negative;
Eliot acknowledges that what crumbles can be restored, if only temporarily. Even when
houses are destroyed, they can be replaced by new initiations; factories, by-passes.
East Coker is certainly not a repeat of the ominous, elemental purity of Burnt Norton. We
are facing the fracas of human existence, this time without retreat into timelessness.
Behind much human initiation lies the principle of regeneration. Not everything
has a built-in obsolescence; component parts can live on to play new roles in the newly
initiated. In a structure parallel to the one he has just completed, using the same tumbling
rhythms and short phrases, Eliot mirrors this natural process. Within the compressed
context of this structure, the word old is used three times, combined with to,
assigning each thing its new function. Thus, stones are added to buildings, timber to fires,
and fire is reduced to ash, which then becomes part of the earth. Nothing is wasted. This
is indeed a shift from Burnt Norton, the world of perpetual solitude, where everything
comes to naught and we are not ready to face the reality of the primeval garden.
Interestingly, Eliot returns to houses immediately after he seems to have
abandoned them. In the most pronounced parallel structure in this section of East Coker,
Eliot takes a destroyed/removed house and resurrects it. This structure fills up five
lines, four of which begin with and, three of which explicitly mention time. There is an
obvious echo here to Prufrock (there will be time, there will be time to murder and
create). What is surprising is how blatantly life affirming these lines are. In a
primarily abstract work, Eliot dares to embrace the concrete; the wainscot where the
field-mouse trots, the tattered arras woven with a silent motto. This is conclusive
evidence that Eliot the poet did, in fact, value human life. His vision goes beyond a mere
Modernistic nihilism. Eliot does not posit the concrete against the ravaging circularity of
time, at least in this instance. Nor does he seek to align the concrete with the still point
of the turning world. Concrete is a thing-in-itself, and worth acknowledging as such.
By bringing in the seemingly banal reference to a field mouse, Eliot even shows some
regard for the more basic elements of physical life. The Four Quartets has now extended
into personalization and is sensitively textually aware of physical energies.
Eliot extends this theme of physicality into the following section of East Coker.
He begins by repeating the same aphoristic contradiction that began the first segment of
this section; in my beginning is my end. The context in which this phrase arises has
changed; Eliot has embraced and affirmed the tangible world. We now see a third
possible nuance of meaning expressed in this repeated motif; that we are born into
physical bodies, and our ultimate death will likewise be physical. This demonstrates with
what skill Eliot crafted this motif. Taken alone, it seems the essence of simplicity. In the
context of a dense, complexly layered poem, it serves the dual purpose of grounding his
more abstract insights, and making explicit the circular nature of his words as they arise
in time, compressed into universalized, aphoristic form.
As we expand outward from the still point of the repeated motif again, Eliot
leads us back into the kind of natural environment that was introduced in Burnt Norton;
this time, an open field. Unlike the solemn quietude of the garden, Eliot imagines this
field lit by a bonfire on a summer midnight. Ominous undertones intrude, though, as
Eliot warns us, in a miniaturized repeated motif, that we can only partake of this
celebration if you do not come too close/ if you do not come too close. The implication
seems to be that those involved in these summer rites, of the weak pipe and the little
drum, cannot appreciate the significance of their actions, being too near them, lacking
objectivity and perspective in their primitivism like the London crowds in Waste Land.
By maintaining his objectivity, Eliot can affirm the rustic simplicity of the
celebrants. Not being part of their circle, he can see what they are doing. It is a dance of
consolidation, of maintenance, of keeping time/ keeping the rhythm. The dancers are
not expanding themselves or their consciousness; they are enclosing themselves in the
circle which already constitutes their existence. Eliot can admire this, because essentially
he is doing the same thing in writing the Four Quartets. His is an intellectual dance, at
the still point of his turning world; as such, it entails a degree of sophistication
inaccessible to the bonfire dancers. Still, his words leap through the flames, join in
circles, lift heavy feet in clumsy shoes, all to strive for a metaphysical essence. We
may say that a parallel structure exists, if not in formal construction, then in construction
of content, between the dancers of East Coker and the amorphous figure of Eliot, the
poet. The dance, an actual, formal, repeated motif in Burnt Norton, becomes actualized
(albeit on a different level) in East Coker, and this actualization occurs on two levels.
Eliot examines the dancers from a distance, and realizes his metaphysical self in this
actualization of the textual patterning, occurring in trans-temporal ambiguities.
The dancers keep themselves and their ways, maintain, and consolidate. To
bring the arc of his metaphysical rhetoric back to its root, to complete the circle, Eliot
connects the physical world of the dancers to the force of time. He creates a parallel
structure which almost precisely replicates that which has occurred in the first segment of
East Coker; five lines, three of which begin with the time of, two of which extend the
meaning of the first three with short sentences (two per line) which continue the
catalogue. It is the catalogue of rural life, rustic simplicity;
seasons/harvests/coupling/beasts/eating and drinking/dung and death. Again, Eliot is
playing two levels at once. He does not claim to find any esoteric significance in these
simpletons; they are, more or less, exactly what they appear to be. Yet, Eliot knows that
the activity of the intellect mirrors the activity of the body; the mind has its seasons, its
harvests, etc. Hence, Eliot cannot dismiss the rustics out of hand. He recognizes that, held
up to the light of an infinite, unknowable universe, we are all primitives. The best we can
do is dance when we can, consolidate, and maintain; express the Stoic.
Eliot does not close the circle completely on this segment of the poem. Rather, he
takes the aphorism which began it and halves it; we end with the narrator ensconced
in (his) beginning. This brings with it the expectation that we are about to leap off into
the boundless, a world without ends. This echoes Eliots use of the phrase our first
world in Burnt Norton, which creates an anticipatory positivity in the reader. As in
Burnt Norton, our expectations are immediately toppled by Eliots insistence on positing
an autumnal landscape, in this case that of late November. The situation has shifted
beyond the stasis of Burnt Norton and into the confusion of chaos; in the context of a
parallel structure (four lines, three of which begin with and), a Bosch-like catalogue is
delineated, of the incongruous and the uncomfortable. Creatures of the summer heat are
set alongside snowdrops writhing under feet and hollyhocks that aim too high. It is as
if Eliot is seeing all seasons erupt at once, as if the still point of the turning world has
moved out of the stillness and into frenzy. This chaotic strain continues through the
following lines, leading Eliot to conclude with a vision of the heavens and the plains/
whirled in a vortex that shall bring/ the world to that destructive fire/ which burns before
the ice-cap reigns.
This is the first moment of definite climax in East Coker; a premature
Armageddon. It is also an apogee of impersonality; the poet has dissolved in his own
vision. Eliot is clearly uncomfortable with what he has put forth, and immediately
dismisses it as not very satisfactory. He appears to suddenly recall that he is merely a
poet, not a sage, and that it is not for him to prophecy the end of the world; and comes
to the apparent conclusion that his advancing years have led him away from rationality
and into undisciplined raving. This brings his consciousness back to the concrete subject
of aging. In a two-line parallel structure, Eliot catalogues two supposed characteristics of
age (wisdom and serenity) and exposes them as illusory. Eliot concludes that all the
years can attain for an individual is humility humility is endless. To close the circle
of this segment, Eliot devises the parallel structure of two lines, each set apart from the
main text by several spaces. The subject of these are the concrete, physical forms which
we first encountered in East Coker: houses and dancers. What Eliot prognosticates is
gloomy; the houses are gone under the sea and the dancers are gone under the hill.
These forms were doomed by the inherent transience of their initiation; born in a world
both temporal and physical, doomed to die both temporally and physically. Eliot has
broadened the range of the poem by re-personalizing it; now, he lays his creation at
the feet of the sublimely indifferent, the Natural, a repository for the moribund.
We have seen that parallel structures and repeated motifs apply, not only to the
form of the poem, but to the content. Words are symbolic gestures as well as physical
entities. By leading us through an elaborate circle of symbols, Eliot shows us the whole
of the Natural process of birth, existence, and extinction. Parallel structures of form show
us correspondences between concepts; parallel structures of content show us
correspondences between things. Likewise, repeated motifs in form show us links
between thoughts; repeated motifs in content show us the subtle linkage between
thoughts, feelings, and things. Eliot has successfully created a self-enclosed poetic world,
capable of enacting the circle of the temporal. Four Quartets functions as a metaphysical
mirror, laying bare the process by which time, things, and thoughts move without moving
at all. Each time the circle closes, it immediately opens again. This we may call the
temporal nexus of the poem; indebted not just to Heidegger but to Nietzsche.
To what extent we can grasp the curlicues of time is another matter. We can trace the
outlines, take rest and nourishment at the still point of the turning world, consolidate
our position, whatever it may be; but the larger plan, the substance of the circle itself, is
both beyond our grasp and beyond our control. Thus, it may be said that we move in
darkness, the darkness of our own limited minds, frail bodies, our errant
emotions. It is to the theme of this darkness that Eliot next turns his attention.
Cagily, Eliot begins by quoting a great poet who was himself (literally) blind;
John Milton. Milton wrote his Samson Agonistes both to relate a Biblical story (Samson
was blinded and made a slave after being emasculated by his wife Delilah), and to affect
a personal catharsis. In the context of his poem, Samsons grief may as well be his own;
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon/ irrevocably dark, total eclipse/ without all
hope of day! Eliot grafts the first phrase of Miltons poem (O dark dark dark) onto the
opening segment of this section of East Coker. It is his way of rooting his daringly
abstract insights in literary history. As this section proceeds, the word dark becomes a
repeated motif, lacing together the disparate fragments of Eliots harrowing vision of the
Void. It is a Void which exists both in the living world and in the realm of the dead,
within the ambiguous temporal nexus text-represented and without it.
Miltons phrase is presented as a complete sentence. He then presents another
device cherished by poets from Homer to Milton; the epic catalogue. Eliot is cataloguing
a cross-section of the most prominent members of human society; captains/ merchant
bankers/ eminent men of letters/ distinguished civil servants, etc. The catalogue itself
runs for four lines, each consisting of two phrases, broken by a comma. Eliot prefaces the
catalogue by contextualizing it; they are all going into the dark. Thus, even within
the first line of this section of East Coker, we have the word dark, established as a
motif, used four times, often as Modernity-signifier.
Immediately following this, a miniaturized repeated motif helps
to reinforce the sense of the moribund which Eliot is trying to impart, centered around the
theme of vacancy. Just as Eliot quickly establishes the importance of dark by
frequent usage, so vacant shows up three times in the second line of this segment. The
first hints at the actual substance of Eliots vision of the Void; the dead are to venture into
vacant interstellar spaces. Why interstellar? It is a curious word-choice, suggesting as
it does a continual involvement with the physical (stellar). The next repetition of
vacant seems more apropos; Eliot prefaces his catalogue with an insinuation that
worldly prestige (and even personality) amounts to vacancy, calling his subjects the
vacant even as they enter into the vacant. On another level, this could be read as an
admission (supported by the suggestion of interstellar physicality) that life after
physical death isnt entirely dissimilar to life on Earth. Even as it continues, every
existence, by its individuality, is necessarily incomplete, lacking the substance of the
entire universe beyond itself. Thus, it is characterized, on one level, by vacancy.
The epic catalogue is, in this case, extended to include things as well as people.
Following up the issue of vacant interstellar spaces, Eliot makes the assertion that
all-permeating darkness is a characteristic of those celestial bodies on which we rely for
light, the sun and moon. This begins a second catalogue, a thing-catalogue, built into a
parallel structure which takes up five lines, four of which begin with and, two of which
contain within them another phrase beginning similarly. This stacking of catalogues
creates a sense of turgidity, of the excessive, stuffed quality of the world.
Curiously, of all the things in his thing-catalogue, Eliot singles out the most banal,
the Directory of Directors, and grants it emphasis and stature by giving it its own line
(the Directory of/ Directors/ and cold the sense..). Eliot is stressing the arbitrary,
absurd monotony of human life by making a seemingly arbitrary structural decision in his
poem. The rhythm is clunky and awkward (Directors not being a spondee or having a
feminine ending), sounding like the clunk of an out-of-tune bass drum, jerking our
attention away from the natural cadence of his catalogue. In a small way, this structural
decisions thwarts our expectations, denies us the pleasure of regular rhythm, makes us
feel the vacancy, emptiness, and futility of human life. As such, it is a purposeful
absurdity which emphasizes the stuck sense of human temporal engagement.
Significantly, it is also the final thing we encounter in the context of Eliots
catalogue. We may say that the abruptness of Directors is a kind of death, signaling
a shift from the tangible to the intangible. The structure of the thing-catalogue still holds,
but we are immediately confronted with the metaphysical realities of sense and motive
of action. It is sense and motives which compel beings to create things. It has also been
argued that sense and motives are a priori characteristics of the human entity. Sense and
motives fill metaphysical space, and determine physical space. Sense and motives are the
antithesis of vacancy. When the senses grow cold, and the motive of action lost, the
vacant asserts is preponderance. It is the precursor to go(ing) into the dark. Yet,
because this segment is still hung on the structure of the thing-catalogue, we have not
been completely torn away from the rhythm of the tangible. We are still in the world,
even as we tremble over the abyss of the Void.

Adam Fieled 2003-2013

 Centre as a Textual Marker in the Rooms Section
of Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

It seems axiomatic, when gazing with the intension of analysis at Gertrude

Steins Tender Buttons, to note the difficulty of the endeavor. As Pamela Hadas notes,
approaches to Tender Buttons are not easy (Hadas, 59). Tender Buttons would tend
to confound standard hermeneutic practices; it is written in a very private idiolect. No
certain criticism being possible in such a case, all we can do is try to translate into more
common languagea piece here and there (Hadas, 72). While it is certain that the
idiolect of TB is private, hermetic, it is possible to discern definite patterns which
emerge within the text. With the help of Steins own critical writings, we can understand
how these patterns were generated, and what they might mean within the context of TB.
One case in point is Steins usage of the word centre in the Rooms section
of TB. Centre appears nine times in this nine-page section. The placements of this
word in this section are more-or-less evenly spaced, though in a few cases centre
appears more than once in a brief space. This is significant because Stein revealed
elsewhere that the idea of centre or centering in regards to works of art was
significant to her. The specific context in which Stein discusses centre is that of
Cubist painting. Stein addresses this idea in detail in her book Picasso. She notes that
the composition of Cubist paintings like Picassos display no definite center; that every
part is as important as every other part. Stein believed that this idea, of there being no
definite center to things (aesthetic or otherwise), was American (or Spanish), new to the
twentieth century and visible around her in other important ways. This is Steins
commentary on the composition of World War I:

Really the composition of this warwas not the composition

of all previous wars, the composition was not a composition
in which there was one man in the centre surrounded by a lot
of other men but a composition that had neither a beginning
nor an end, a composition of which one corner was as important
as another corner, in fact the composition of cubism (Stein, 11).

It is important to note that Stein herself was self-avowedly, purposefully engaged in

developing this specific mode of composition in literature. She viewed what she was
doing as a semantic equivalent of Cubism; she says of Picasso, I was alone at this time
in understanding him, perhaps because I was expressing the same thing in literature
(Stein, 16). That Modernity hinged on aesthetic decentralization, initiated in practice by
Stein, Picasso, and others, is now a commonplace; and that this was the product of a
definite, shared intention which pushed back at the attempted cohesions and Realisms of
nineteenth century art, the comprehensiveness of which did not represent the fractured
realities of the twentieth century, as it developed from the Continent to America and back
in a chiasmus, felt and assimilated in new technologies and two World Wars.
Thus, the many appearances of centre in Rooms can hardly be an accident. I
would opine that, in Rooms, the word centre acts as a textual marker, making sure
that, as in a Cubist painting, the centre is everywhere, evenly distributed, and that any
component part of Rooms is as important as any other part not just decentralization
but democratization of textual space, from a self-avowed American artist. This
demonstrates Steins conscious creative awareness of painterly composition, as translated
into text. The use of the word centre as a textual marker is especially significant
because, in a certain sense, a centre is exactly what Stein is fighting against. Any part
must be as important as any other part; as the first line in Rooms states, act so that
there is no use in a center (Stein, 43). Following this through, it may be noted that every
one of the nine appearances of centre in Rooms ostensibly has two levels; a
straightforward level and an ironic one. Straightforwardly, centre acts as a textual
marker to establish a Cubist composition in which all component parts are equally
important; yet there is irony in the quiddity that Stein uses the word centre to designate
that, within the textual confines of Rooms, there is no specific centre. In this way, Stein
is foregrounding her materialslanguage and print (Kaufmann, 449). Though there is
fruitful terrain in a possible discussion of Stein and irony, it is the initial level which I am,
for the most part, addressing here. There is much implicit in an approach to centre as a
textual marker: both what it signifies, and the melopoeiac resonance of the signification,
which adds some joie de vivre to TB as a gestalt.
It is surprising that the painterly aspect of TB, and of Rooms is particular, is
often missed. Michael Edward Kaufmann simplifies things when he calls TB a narrative
of naming a narrative with no plot, character, or action in the conventional sense
simply a narrative of the mind encountering language and print (Kaufmann, 450).
Beyond the somewhat objectionable suggestion that there is anything simple about
TB, Kaufmann seems to miss the painterly aspect of the work, and the methods being
used to mirror Picasso and Cubist composition. TB does, of course, concern the mind
encountering language and print; but it important to recognize that it is the mind of a
self-conscious creator, with a stated, developed aesthetic agenda. Steins comments
about Picasso reveal that she knew what she was doing; that though a work like TB
might seem to have the quality of a childs narrative (Poetzsche, 449), Stein was
in fact using a sophisticated technique. Stein was painting with words and to Stein
language itself was material, as present and touchable as a body or an object (Scherr,
193). A final look at the appearances of centre in Rooms will help to illustrate this.
Rather than starting with the first appearance of centre in Rooms and
dutifully following through with the next eight, it may be more edifying to look at
some patterns which accrue to the appearance of the word. The most notable pattern is a
contiguity of centre to negative words, such as no and not. The first line of Rooms
has already been stated, but bears repeating: act so that there is no use in a centre
(Stein, 43). Book-ending this, the final two appearances of centre in Rooms appear
as follows: and the section seeing yellow and the centre having spelling and no solitude
and no quaintness and yet solid so solid and the single surface centred (Stein, 49).
Centre is, in fact, contiguous to negative words a majority of the time. This shows that
Stein wanted to have her cake and eat it, too: to use centre as a textual marker, and
thereby establish a balanced, each-part-equally-important Cubist composition, while also
demonstrating a certain kind of disdain for the word and its connotations. Conversely,
it is interesting to note what seems to be a final acknowledgement of a kind of solidity in
centre; yet solid so solid is about as emphatic as Stein gets in TB. One interpretive
vista would be the admittance on Steins part to an ambivalence, where centre is
concerned; that though she must act as if there is no use in a center, both the word
centre and the process of centering can be a useful endeavor. Other contiguities are
less revealing; hanging, dressing, shape, color and outline. What is most
notable is the contiguity of centre to no and not, and the final appearance of
centre, three pages from the end, which opens up a possible vista of acknowledgement
and truce. Steins dialectic here is cluttered and Americanized, but legible.

Adam Fieled 2008-2013

Contextualists and Dissidents: Talking Gertrude Steins
Tender Buttons

1st presented at Temple University in Philadelphia, Fall 06

Published in Cordite Magazine (Australia), 2011

Twice Re-Published in the UK by M. Blackburn, 2012-

2013

The world of literary critical discourse is governed by one central imperative: to

expound. Every point must be developed, every quote parsed, every nuance and
inflection (whether of tone, dialect, or syntax) unpacked to find a maximum density of
critical material. This is an industry that thrives on complexity, with the assumed premise
that (usually) great works of literary art (though greatness or privilege are now much
debated, and do not hold the currency they once did) are complex organisms, in need of
a specialists expert appraisal. Whether it is a Deconstructionist or a Formalist reading,
we can generally expect complex reactions and complex schematizations, and essential
simplicity and simplistic reactions to be avoided like the plague.

How strange, then, to hear Paul Padgette make the following remark about
Gertrude Steins Tender Buttons in the New York Review of Books: You either get it or
you dont. The breathtakingly blunt simplicity of this statement cuts right to the central
critical crux that runs through the bulk of what has been written about TB; can it be
criticized (as in, expounded upon) or can it not? Those that do engage in criticism of TB
almost always do so within some contextual framework: Stein-as-Cubist, Stein-as-
feminist, Stein-as-language manipulator. Others, like Padgette, are reduced by the
extreme opacity of Steins text to a bare assertion that the text is too hermetic to be
parsed in the normal way. It is interesting to note that the dissidents (as opposed
to the contextualists) are often great fans of TB (as Padgette is), but evidently believe
that the work either holds some ineffable essence or else must be read, first-hand, to be
appreciated. That Steins fans (literary critics, no less), would lobby against critical
discourse is a tribute both to the power and the singularity of her work.

The contextualists have a problem, too. Because TB is determinedly non-

referential, any attempt at contextualization must also be rooted in an acknowledgment
that the work is beyond a single contextual interpretation. As Christopher Knight noted in
a 1991 article, One can locate it in the long history of nonsense literaturein the French
Cubist movementin the Anglo-American tradition of literary modernismand in that
relatively new artistic order the post-modern. What is so baffling to literary critics is
that, more often than not, one cannot turn to the text in order to verify these kinds of
assertions. TBs sense (or non-sense) is determined largely by who happens to be reading
it; it is extreme enough to stymie but not as extreme as, say, Finnegans Wake, which by
general consensus need only be touched by Joyce specialists. Simply put, there is enough
sense in TB to make an attempt at locating it, but not enough so that any stated location
could be feasible to large numbers of critics or readers. Thus, to this day, the pattern
holds; dissidents argue against interpretation (and for first-hand experience),
contextualists argue (with foreknowledge of defeat, in the sense that no contextual
argument about TB in almost a century has seemed to stick) for a specialized
interpretation. As Christopher Knight concludes, TB embodies alltraditions even as it
can be said never to be completely defined by any of them.

The most influential writing about TB seeks to straddle the line between
dissension and contextualization. Richard Bridgmans Gertrude Stein In
Pieces, more frequently cited than most Stein critical tomes, adopts something of a
centrist stance. Bridgman makes clear that the ineffable quality of TB is not lost to him;
the book is all but impossible to transform adequately into normal exposition(127) and
unusually resistant to interpretation(125). Bridgmans use of the word transform in
this context is very relevant. Just as Steins language experiments transform conventional
vernacular usage, so normal exposition would have to transform Steins language back
into something resembling a normal vernacular. Bridgmans work also points out the
central critical dilemma surrounding TB; it is all but impossible to expound upon, but
the ineffable essence that makes it so compelling also becomes a goad to try and
expound nonetheless. Adequately also points to the manner in which TB turns literary
critics back on themselves; critics are forced to confront the limitations of their own
methodologies, criticize themselves and their own competence. Stein makes critics feel
inadequate, and it seems likely that, were she here to see the bulk of TB criticism, this
would have pleased her.

Of those brave enough to jump into the ring with Stein, none does so with more
panache than Marjorie Perloff. Perloffs attack on the locked semantic gates of TB is
multi-tiered and determinedly contextual. In Of Objects and Readymades: Gertrude
Stein and Marcel Duchamp, Perloff posits a space for Steins experiment alongside
Dada-ists Duchamp and Jean Arp, while also granting its unique nature and inscrutable
texture. Though this texture seems interpretation-proof, when Stein, for instance, talks
about a carafe (A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange(3)),
Perloff claims that Steins verbal dissection(s) give us the very essence of what we
might call carafe-ness. For Perloff, Stein is not talking around objects, but using
language to dissect them, in much the same way that Picasso and Braque dissected
objects, using Cubist techniques to put them back together. Or, in the same manner
Arp and Duchamp dissected the nature of works of art by presenting readymades.

It would seem that Perloffs use of the word dissection would make a Cubist
analogy more apropos than a Dada one. TB, however, is so much like a Rorschach blot
that almost anything can be made to fit, and the more perceptive contextualiats, like
Bridgman, realize this and foreground their assertions with a central disavowal. Perloff
goes on to say, to use words responsibly, Stein implies, is to become aware that no
two words, no two morphemes or phonemes for that matter, are ever exactly the same.
It could be stated, without too much hyperbole, that a discussion of literary
responsibility, as regards TB, is an extreme stretch. This leads to the major problem
contextualists have in dealing with TB; no two of them seem able to agree about even
the most general framework. Thus, reading contextual criticism about TB is like looking
at snowflakes; no two contextual critics say the same thing, which makes grouping a
problem and talking of a majority an impossibility.

Perloff saves her most provocative card for last; she says, long before Derrida
defined difference as both difference and deferral of meaning, Stein had expressed this
profound recognition. This is a plausible interpretation, and it would seem likely that
others might come to similar conclusions. However, this is not the case. Virgil Thomson
takes the more centrist tack that if (Steins) simplifications occasionally approached
incomprehensibility, this aim was less urgentthan opening up realityfor getting an
inside view. Between Thomson and Perloff, we get opposite ends of the contextualist
stance, as presented in criticism. From Perloff, we get definite, authoritatively presented
analogies (Duchamp, Arp, Derrida) that seek to situate Stein and her work in a specific
literary and aesthetic context. In fact, Perloffs approach is both more definite and more
authoritative than the vast majority of approaches that have been made to TB. From
Thomson, we get a very anti-authoritative sentiment, which leans towards an abject-
seeming generality; Thomson talks of getting an inside view of reality, but he
cannot commit to a single or singular definition of what this reality is. He does not
join in with the dissidents who argue against critical interpretation and/or the ineffable
quality of this text, and in fact somewhat boldly claims to surmise Steins aim; yet,
though the why is accounted for in his interpretation, the what is lightly brushed
aside in a platitude. Considering that Thomson is writing, like Paul Padgette, in the
prestigious New York Review of Books, it is remarkable that a platitudinous statement
in this context seems par for the course. Few knew what to do with Stein
and her work during her lifetime; it appears that little has changed.

Platitudes and arguments against critical discourse are both anomalies and
rebellions against critical orthodoxy. Marianne DeKoven takes this one step further. As a
fan of TB, she asserts that We neednt plough through it all. We need pay attention only
as long as the thrill lasts, the tantalizing pleasure of the flood of meaning of which we
cannot quite make sense. This statement breaks important critical rules, and seems to
relegate TB to the status of a sort of meta-literary freak show, even though DeKoven
(like most who write about TB) is clearly a Stein supporter. By suggesting that TB
need not be read in full, DeKoven shows that it is a work which flouts normal, thorough
critical reading patterns, forcing critics into compromising positions that arent natural
for them. By speaking for an assumed we, DeKoven awkwardly posits her own words
as panacea for a problem-text, for which she has a solution. However, the snowflake
scenario previously mentioned applies here too. All attempts at an authoritative judgment
of TB thus far have failed, just as the flood has yet to be fully levied or dammed. There
is a condescension to DeKovens stance, a tone of smug complacency-within-dissension.
Rather than even try to grapple with Steins conundrums (in the form of a contextualist
reading or only a centrist one), she creates a half-baked we that can safely and without
fear disavow literary responsibility (like a full reading, or an honest interpretive attempt)
toward TB. Thus, by deferring responsibility, DeKovens problem is solved.

The flip side to this kind of responsibility-deferral is the centrist approach of

honest, long-suffering bewilderment. In this scenario (which has also not achieved
hegemony in TB criticism), a critic takes a long, hard stare at the entire text, then
throws up his or her hands, owning up, honestly and without condescension towards
Stein, to total defeat. This is how Mena Mitron chooses to approach analysis of TB.
She writes, Perhaps more than any other text of the same period, Gertrude Steins
Tender Buttons remains impermeable to any interpretive operation aimed at thematic
synthesis. This is a more balanced approach than that used by DeKoven, but we do get
an authoritative statement (Perhaps more), which asserts a comprehensive
knowledge of the Modernist era. Mitron sticks to critical terminology to make the point
that the text is impermeable, but also leaves room for other methodologies; she does
not say that contextual approaches cannot work, or that the text is somehow closed
by its impermeability. It is all a matter, as with Virgil Thomsons approach, of aim;
if a critic is aiming for a conventional victory in closing a conventional hermeneutic
circle, the attempt will probably fail; but Mitron is careful enough with her wording to
suggest that approaches aimed at something other than thematic synthesis, such as
contextual approaches that focus on language alone, might work. Mitron further
emphasizes the unique place TB holds in Steins oeuvre, its intransigence and
uncompromising linguistic surface.

Marjorie Perloff sought to situate TB contextually via a discussion of Dada and

Derrida. Her bold, assertive, authoritative style is doubled by Lisa Ruddick, who
nonetheless makes a somewhat different claim: I find what amounts to a set of powerful
feminist reflections in this text. Tender Buttons represents Steins fully developed vision
of the making and unmaking of patriarchy.(191) As we have seen, TB is a text that
seems to force extreme reactions; critics throw up their hands, generalize, become
pedantic or didactic, lose the kind of disinterested balance that criticism often aims for.
Here, we have a case being made for an interpretation so definite that it obviously and
demonstrably belies the quality of the text it is glossing. A fully developed vision of
patriarchy overthrown seems an unlikely designation for a text whose subtitle is
Objects, Food, Rooms. Moreover, Ruddicks assertion stands more or less alone; she is
somewhat seconded by Franziska Gygax, who more moderately claims to hear in TB a
definite female voice speak(ing) about things female.(21) Again, we see how a text
that is both provocative and opaque can become a Rorschach blot, in which anyone can
claim to see anything.

It would be disingenuous, however, not to admit the close tie that has developed
between Stein and feminists. Stein has become a symbol of the emancipated female artist,
blazing trails and covering new ground whilst not sparing any of her power to the male
superstructures that dominated society in her era, and persist today. Stein never
volunteered for this role; it was foisted upon her. So, when Lisa Ruddick continues her
argument with once one sees male dominance as dependent on sacrifice, one is in a
position to undo sacrifice and to transcend patriarchal thinking(191), it is easy to wonder
whether the essential nature of TB is being lost so that a critic may pursue a specific,
specialized agenda. A close look at Ruddicks statement confirms this; it is suggested that
in TB, male dominance is both visible and visibly dependent on sacrifice. However,
this begs the question; how could such a complex issue (the inner structure of male
societal instinct and domination) be adequately and authoritatively addressed (as Ruddick
is claiming) in a work completely devoid of a narrative, or even of conventional sense?
Ruddicks claim postulates a TB that works in a conventional fashion towards a
conventional aim (to challenge society, in a broad sense, when it is understood that
society is patriarchal). She is trying to transform TB into normal exposition, which, as
Richard Bridgman said, is all but impossible.

Yet perhaps Ruddick deserves points for going out on a limb, trying something
different, however specious it may seem. This contextual interpretation, Stein-as-
feminist, at least has the virtue of lending TB a social utility is might not otherwise have.
When modified down into a less shrill key, it could even approach plausibility, as when
Franziska Gygax claims to hear in TB a female speaker address(ing) another female
person in a very intimate and private tone.(13) Even in a modified, toned-down setting,
the contextual reading of Stein-as-feminist forces critics to stretch; the intimate and
private tone Gygax speaks of could well be apparent, but it is by no means apparent in
TB that anyone is being addressed. Pick up TB; you may find If lilies are lily white if
they exhaust noise and distance(6) or Asparagus in a lean in a lean to hot(33), but
nowhere will you find an I and a you looped together in such a way that one could
see something epistolary happening here. Gygax, like Ruddick, is coming to this text with
a very specific hermeneutic agenda; but the text makes it difficult for her to make a
convincing case for her assertions.

One thing that this text does encourage is close reading. There is a certain irony
here, in that close reading as we know it was created by the New Critical generation,
who had no time for Stein and her potently weird experiments. Nevertheless, when Randa
Dubnick, in The Structure of Obscurity, takes this tack with TB, the results seem both
more satisfying and more feasible than other contextual approaches. Dubnick writes,
Tender Buttons has a less abstract vocabulary in that it contains many more concrete
nouns, sensual adjectives, and action verbs than does her earlier style.(31) Dubnicks
attack is two-pronged; she is both applying close reading skills to TB and attempting
to situate it in Steins imposing and inscrutable oeuvre. What distinguishes TB as a text
is its concrete, sensual, and active language, which seems counterintuitive, in that
a concrete text is usually more accessible than an abstract one. As usual, Stein proves
anomalous, and rules that apply to most literary works do not seem to apply as readily to
hers.

Dubnick, unlike other contextual interpreters (who seek to impose a structured

schema on an unstable and destabilized text), always seeks to understand what Stein,
herself, was trying to achieve. She notes that the new interest in the world itselfwas
what Stein considered the essence of poetry.(36) New interest in the world is both
general (world being a broad term) and specific (new interest in this context
suggesting the process by which Stein recreated both literature and physical objects in
TB), and fits with Steins own attitude toward art. Dubnick also nods to the contextual
trope of Stein-as-Cubist, asserting that the formal style of TB is a flat and opaque rather
than a deep and transparent style.(44) In forging an analysis of TB that draws from all
the various contextual camps (Stein-as-language-transformer, Stein-as-visual artist, etc.),
Dubnick seems to be on to something. It would seem that the most balanced approach to
TB would have to be a various or eclectic one, rather than one that would be situated
and singular.

Dubnick seems to understand both the Rorschach quality of the text and the
snowflake effect that it gave birth to. By trying to see the text from all angles, she gives
us the most complete possible picture of TB criticism. In a strange way, the uneven,
contradictory, haphazard quality of the criticism mirrors the text itself; one could almost
say that, in interpreting TB, critics are forced to enact a mimesis of Steins own skewered
aesthetic. It is remarkable that a text almost a hundred years old could remain so
confounding to so many trained, seasoned critical minds. It is likely that the body of
criticism about TB will continue to expand, and it also seems probable that few
consensuses will be reached.

Adam Fieled
 WORKS CITED

Bridgman, Richard. Gertrude Stein in Pieces. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

DeKoven, Marianne. A Different Language: Gertrude Steins Experimental Writing.

Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003.

Dubnick, Randa. The Structure of Obscurity: Gertrude Stein, Language, and Cubism.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

Gygax, Franziska. Gender and Genre in Gertrude Stein. London: Greenwood Press,
1998.

Knight, Christopher. Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, and the Premises of

Classicalism. Modern Language Studies, 21-3 (1991): 35-47.
http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003.

Mitrone, Mena. Linguistic Exoticism and Literary Alienation: Gertrude Steins Tender
Buttons. Modern Language Studies, 28-2 (1994): 87-102.
http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003.

Perloff, Marjorie. Of Objects and Readymades: Gertrude Stein and Marcel Duchamp.
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 23-2 (1996): 137-154.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/finnegan/English%20256/tender_buttons.htm.

Padgette, Paul. Tender Buttons. New York Review of Books, 16-12 (1971).
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10510.

Ruddick, Lisa. Reading Gertrude Stein. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. New York: Dover Publications, 1997.

Thomson, Virgil. A Very Difficult Author. New York Review of Books, 16-6 (1971).
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10510.
 Reverdys Shadows: A Poetics of the Implicit

Close reading of Pierre Reverdys poems reveals a sensibility intent on

suggestion rather than assertion; a poetics of the implicit. Reverdys poems create
systems which, if viewed synchronically, demonstrate a plurality of meanings through the
repeated use of a handful of linguistic signs. Perhaps the most prevalent sign we find
used by Reverdy is the shadow. The shadow is a complex sign with a potentially and
effectively complex instrumentality in these poems. Reverdys shadows can move
beyond inanimate passivity, become endowed with being; they are not mere shadows.
Conversely, Reverdys shadows can signify beings-in-themselves, people-as-shadows.
Shadows may also signify abstract concepts as perceived by people times shadow.
In whatever context Reverdy chooses to use the shadow as an instrumental
device, we see the playing out of essential dichotomies. A small catalog may be helpful
here, to introduce these dichotomies pre-analysis: being and non-being, consciousness
and unconsciousness, complexity and simplicity, humanity and non-humanity,
metaphoric sense and literal sense, presence and absence, identity and non-identity.
Above and beyond these binaries, Reverdys aesthetic hinges on negative
capability; the ability to express dichotomy and contradiction without grasping irritably
after reason. Not only does Reverdy avoid reasoning these dichotomies away; he presents
them in such a form that two, three, or four dichotomies may be expressed at one and the
same time. The shadows instrumentality derives from its versatility in this regard.
Necessarily relational, a thing-among-things, the shadow suffices to signify contradiction
with or without intellectual mediation, psychological twists, or judgment. Shadows
subsist as protean entities in a perpetual middle ground; Reverdy depends on them to act
as balancing links (meta-rational agents) between dichotomous states of being. As
such, Reverdys shadows are simultaneously and contradictorily foundational and
evanescent. The meta-rational, linkage, across subject/object alterity lines, grants them
subsistence in the context of judiciously clipped prosodies.
The word being, as it is used in art and ontological philosophy, has a dual sense.
It can suggest a state of continuous presence, a state of being, or a continually present
entity, a being. Shadow, as used by Reverdy, stretches across these two meanings,
representing both beings and states-of-being. The shadow effectively suggests this
contradiction due to its connection both to concrete, exterior reality, and psycho-
affective, interior reality. In the prose poem The Poets, Reverdy
writes, On the roof shadows can be seen shifting about and tumbling into emptiness.
One by one they fall, unharmed. Unharmed seems counterintuitive, unless we make
the assumption that shadows, in this context, are actually people (presumably the poets
from which this piece derives its title). This begs the question of intention; why would
Reverdy choose to represent his poets as shadows? What kind of beings must they
constitute to warrant this treatment; merely agents of dream-wakefulness conflation, the
stated gist of Surrealistic poetry? Shadows dehumanize or re-humanize what being is.
The shadow-poets are seen climbing a staircase which leads nowhere. This
suggests the futility of their profession, of seeking salvation in art and artifice. That the
poets are shadows reinforces the impression of futile force. Yet the tone of the poem, far
from being corrosive or ironic, is one of bemusement and wonder. If the nature of the
shadow-poets is vague or insubstantial, Reverdy balances this by placing them out of
harms way, eternally charmed, protected by their own perverse aesthetic enjoyment.
Though Reverdy avoids the first person singular here, theres a certain implicit
complicity with these shadow-poets; Reverdy is, after all, a poet himself.
Furthermore, the routine which Reverdy has the shadow-poets enact (climbing the
stairs, mounting the roof, falling off the roof, starting over, where the roof may be seen as
a stand-in for inspired creation) is an apt metaphor for the cyclical, mind-heightening
creative process. This process draws the poet into himself (making him appear shadow-
like) as he climbs to find the peak expression of his own skill. Yet the cyclical
nature of the process necessitates that he fall from this height, only to start again.
The poets surface personality is a shadow of his exalted creative self, so he can be
seen as a shadow. The poets appearance is used as a metaphor for his own
transcendent capabilities. It is implicit in the poetic construction of the shadow-poet
that he is a dichotomous being, whose appearance belies his charmed, quick-
moving interior. This appearance seems shadow-like in its anonymity, its
inconspicuousness. So, the corporeal appearance of the poet doubles as a shadow in its
lack of presence, the manner in which it is not representative of the poets interiority.
Appearance is crucial to the shadow-as-being; it is, after all, what reveals shadow
in its outward form. Reverdy is also able, in Anguish, to posit a non-apparent
shadow, which functions as a container of beings rather than a physical form of beings-
in-themselves. He writes, Prayer is unknown to the inhabitants of shadow. Shadow here
is a place, indeterminate and without physical ground perhaps a spiritual place, a
state of mind. Reverdys poetic-of-the-implicit makes it difficult to gloss his poems in an
authoritative way. We must look at the context clues embedded in the poems in order to
make a valiant stab at interpretation, as befits hermeneutics imposed upon Surreality.
Anguish contains, besides one someone, no personal pronouns. Perhaps
shadow, as a realm (rather than a being-in-itself) signifies a sort of identity vacuum,
a place where self-schemas and egocentric perceptions fall away. Whoever someone
is inhabits shadow owing to a vague, shadowy sense of self. Why is prayer
unknown to this person? Prayer signifies a being for whom faith in a higher power is
relevant. Clearly, for the shadow-inhabitants this is not the case. The shadow-realm
seems an existential space where identity is meaningless, higher powers nonexistent. One
must self-create in this realm, and be guided by only interior lights; the outside world of
dimmed light, crepuscular blues, and dissolute texts will provide none.
Yet, to write that prayer is unknown to the inhabitants of shadow seems to
undercut this interpretation. To reject prayer (and its assumed, posited higher power)
one must first know it. For shadow-inhabitants, prayer is unknown. The shadow-
realm may be a place of ignorance, and this ignorance could be a form of non-being.
The shadow-realm drains its inhabitants of life by sapping their knowledge. With this
loss of knowledge comes a loss of option; lips and hearts remain silent, knowing
nothing else. The shadow-realm, in its essentially negating, non-being nexus,
engenders Anguish by fostering forgetfulness. It functions much like the river
Lethe, as described by Dante. Between The Poets and Anguish, Reverdy has
shown that shadow can effectively constitute beings and non-beings, people and
psycho-affective states, with all the complex interpenetrations inherent in each.
The implicit indeterminacy of the shadow-as-text gives it that range, which is
consolidated by the manner in which Reverdys texts reject closure in their brevity.
The beings in Reverdys poems partake of the indeterminacy which characterizes
his shadow imagery. Sometimes his beings are actually presented as shadows. The
shadow, beyond being a signification of being and non-being, serves to elucidate states of
consciousness and unconsciousness. It could be the consciousness or unconsciousness of
a narrating I, a posited you, or an undetermined (or underdetermined) third party. In
any case, the shadow appears to reinforce the converse impressions of self-awareness and
delusion, waking acknowledgment or slumberous ignorance. Reverdy reverts to using
shadow because it is inherently dualistic, and conjures up an atmosphere of doubt,
equivocation, and ambiguity. It is the perfect objective correlative to the psycho-affective
states which Reverdy is mapping; and to the wonted lassitude of French verse as a gestalt
after Baudelaire, who (with other nineteenth century Decadents and Symbolists) also
employed shadows and twilights extensively. Shadows can also bequeath peace, in
contexts such as these, and appease nerves, imposed by modern cities and head-spaces.
In Carnival, Reverdy describes a struggle between light and shadow. Shadow
here is intimately connected to masks, which appear twice in the poem, first
straightforwardly (the passersby kept their masks), then obliquely (masked, the
totality of hatred collides.). Shadow and light thus double masked and
unmasked in the poems heart. If we take shadow to be a generalized echo of
masked or masking, Reverdy implies that properly used shadowing is a form of
intelligent, intelligible consciousness. In the radically socialized setting of the carnival,
the most cleverly hidden becomes the most daring. Shadow-consciousness is an
awareness of the act of concealment. Its an art thats perpetually tested light and
shadows struggle, in a chiasmus from concealment to clearing, as Heideggers
famous aesthetic dichotomy bears out in a text which flows around Dasein.
As used by Reverdy in Carnival, shadow reinforces an impression of extreme
versatility. Shadow literally shadows the salient theme of Carnival, adds a lower octave
note. However, Reverdy being Reverdy, this can hardly be taken for granted. A poetics of
the implicit depends on close reading to bestow signification. Shadow appears, in this
context, to imply a positive consciousness, an ability to mask. Yet it could easily be
something else. We could apprehend it at face value (i.e. the condition of sunset casting
shadows, etc.), or project an implication of positive consciousness onto it. A shadow, as
placed by Reverdy, could comfortably fit a dozen cognitive-aesthetic slates. New
possibilities constantly suggest themselves. The shadows in Carnival could be actual
shadowy people, street-hustlers, etc., or it could be subjects anguished projections of
other people (i.e. frightened people looking at shadowy people), or shadows could just
literally be shadows, as perceived from within or from a distance. Implicit poetics
anticipates Barthes, in its aim of involving readers in the act of poetic construction, and a
self-enclosed representation of Bakhtins heteroglossia.
Shadow-consciousness, for instance, can be construed as consciousness of
nothingness, of no-consciousness. The poem Road begins, On the threshold no one/
Or your shadow. Use of the preposition or signifies that the narrating I is placing a
conjunctive link between no one and shadow. So the shadow of the posited you is
no one, unconsciousness-of-self. The protagonist, however, is conscious of his
subjects unconsciousness. By placing this subject on the threshold, Reverdy suggests
indeterminacy; that unconsciousness, as made semi-palpable by the shadow, might
evolve into consciousness for him/her. It must be noted that Reverdys yous are almost
always gender-neutral. The level of romance/ relationship-consciousness is missing from
his poems, which are implicitly suggestive rather than overtly erotic (as Verlaine is.)
Thus, Reverdy uses the shadow as a suggestive form expressing Eros, capable of
representing metaphysical/physical realities, as in Road. The shadow, in-itself, is
unconsciousness made manifest. Because it is perceived, it becomes a form
of positive consciousness; Reverdy can make his subject aware of his/ her
unconsciousness, and its desires (erotic or not), and can bring them into objective light.
Shadows may also signify consciousness of the ambiguity of being. Shadow-
consciousness is consciousness of instability, potential duality. In Outpost, an
unspecified group (the poem is written from the perspective of a narrator conscious of
we) collectively perceives In the shadow a fixed stare. Duality-consciousness boldly
presents itself; is there a someone staring out from the shadow, or is the shadow itself
giving the impression of a stare? In either case, the shadow rivets the groups
consciousness, grants it focus. Yet its a consciousness not fully conscious; the
indeterminacy of Reverdys syntactical gestures makes conclusive determinations
impossible. Shadow-consciousness, in this case, is the consciousness of the impossibility
of resolution into full consciousness. The shadow may or may not be sentient, contain
sentience, or signify sentience. The appearance of the shadow is the appearance of a
complete and totalized consciousness-impasse. It presents what is mysterious, not-known,
to the inhabitants of the poem, and their perception of this not-known takes the palpable
form of the shadow. In this way Reverdy approaches metaphysics and metaphysical
engagement; objective correlatives issue from subjectivities in such a way that they either
cannot be directly discerned, can only partially be discerned, or can be discerned
relationally among subjects whose connections we are precluded from perceiving. It is
the Surreal representation of a limbo-realm, wherein fixed points dissolve in hazes.
The shadow can just as easily suggest personal loss of consciousness as a
consciousness-impasse afflicting a group. This loss can resonate emotionally to the extent
that a first-person narrator openly expresses a definite emotion; unusual for Reverdy. In
Last Season, a lyric I confesses, Im annoyed by a shadow in my eye/ And slip into
nightmare. Shadow is experienced as a direct, visceral irritant, which fixates
consciousness only to bind it. Moreover, the shadow is harbinger to consciousness of
worse things to come; in this case, nightmare. As always in Reverdy, theres a twist which
precludes too much literal engagement; in this case, the shadow placing itself in the
protagonists eye. Whats implicit is the sense that varied signifiers, like eye, can be
carried down different interpretive vistas by different perceiving subjects; eye is
allowed to resonate on multiple frequencies: physical, metaphysical, or sexual.
At first glance, this seems obvious; where else would a shadow, a visual,
appear? Yet we know that Reverdy creates an ambience, sensual and textual, of turbid
duality. A shadow in this characters eye might be a flaw in his way of seeing, the kind
of consciousness he cultivates. Shadow, in this scenario, would be a pure metaphor, a
psychological reality brought into physicality by the poets consciousness. As Reverdy
shies away from lyricism, its impossible to tell whether the lyric I in this poem is
meant as a stand-in for Reverdy himself. Reverdy is as far from Romanticisms
egotistical sublime as one can be. His entire poetic process is shadowy; process is a
definite form of consciousness. Implicit signifiers are seen to be preferable. Shadow-
consciousness isnt merely in the poems; its part of the atmosphere out of which they
were created. An aesthetic of the implicit isnt merely operative for the poets audience;
its operative for the poet as well. It seems unlikely that Reverdy knew with definite
certitude what his poetic ethos appeared to be, and the idea of knowing (i.e. definitive
aesthetic-intellectual interpretation) in this sense would probably be asphyxiating to him.
His shadows are his own multi-tiered consciousness made palpably manifest. They create
consciousness-in-itself, and may or may not be conscious-of-themselves, textually, in
their diasporic looseness. This fundamental duality is implicit in their manner of being in
these poems. A look at Last Season bears this out the shadow in the protagonists eye
creates the protagonists awareness of his discomfort; but, since the shadow may or may
not signify a psycho-affective quandary, its own self-consciousness is indeterminate, and
so in stasis in partial invisibility.
Duality is complexity. It would seem likely that these poems were constructed to
be complex entities; yet Reverdys language, more often than not, is spare, sparse, and
simple. Reverdy makes a point of stripping his poems down to structural essentials;
personal pronouns, nature imagery mixed with urban imagery, and a few consistent
signifiers, the shadow being the most obvious example. Shadows serve as links between
the simplicity of Reverdys language and the complexities of his meanings. Depending
on context, shadows can make a simple poem complex or grace a complex poem with
an image of simplicity. Either as a complex or a simple image, Reverdys shadows
lead us toward his perpetually implicit meanings, as they twist into evanescence and out
again, making and unmaking tangles with other signifiers, and dreams.

Adam Fieled 2005-2013

 Rhetopoeia: Ashbery and Parmigianino

What makes any given poem necessary? The necessity of a poem isnt built into
it we could survive without poems but the poet must convince us why, for some
reason, his or her poem is a necessary creation. Thus, poems have a rhetorical aspect
they are an attempt to convince us of their own substantiality. The rhetorical impact of an
any given poem might be called its rhetopoeia (employing and extending the lexicon of
the High Mods: phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia.)
The rhetopoeiac thrust of John Ashberys Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
must, in part, be centered on the substantiality of another work of art Parmigianinos
portrait of the same name. Ashbery, in creating this ekphrastic poems rhetorical stance,
implies that Parmigianinos painting is somehow incomplete. I would argue that what
Ashbery inverts from Parmigianinos painting is his concavity. Parmigianino, in true
Mannerist fashion, blows himself up, exaggerates himself. Ashberys concave strategy
is to paint his own portrait in a deconstructive, metaphysical analysis of Parmigianinos
portrait. Ashbery presents himself reduced, playing down his own importance, leaving the
I of the portrait undeveloped, hiding behind we, you, and us. The meta-psycho-
drama enacted is Parmigianino violently pushing Ashbery backwards, forcing him into a
defensive position, albeit in semi-eroticized fashion. It is this struggle to defend, in
deciphering a complex artistic iteration, which gives the poem its necessity, its
rhetopoeia. Ashberys catharsis represents Parmigianinos, and ours with his.
 Parmigianinos piece (beyond being an allegory of doing over being)
is about relationships. He contextualizes his portrait by placing it on a mirror
surface, in a mirror frame. When we see the portrait, we experience a jolt, because it
gives us an illusory sense that were looking into a mirror, as Parmigianino craftily
smudges boundary lines between himself and his audience. Mannerist that he is, his
hands are featured more prominently than his head. Half of his face is shaded, half in
light. The gist of the entire construct seems to be Parmigianino saying to us, I am
unbalanced and imperfect: yet I see you and am you. This is challenging, to the point
that Ashbery cannot look for long. Yet, the electricity which still vibrates through
Parmigianinos manifested idea is captivating and ineluctable to Ashbery he must
address it. If one does not feel as compelled by Parmigianinos portrait as Ashbery
does, it would be hard to accept the rhetopoeia of the poem. I, personally, am as
stunned, frightened, and fascinated by Parmigianinos painting as Ashbery was, so
his rhetopoeia functions adequately (rhetorically convincing me of the poems aesthetic,
and intellectual, necessity) for me. That it is a conflict of wills adds interest.
Thus, the poem decoys both as a response to Parmigianino and as a concave
portrait of Ashbery himself we look for him, try to find him, and cannot. Ashbery
hides behind (among other things) several Eliot references Those voices in the
dusk have told you all; your eyes which are empty, know nothing; April sunlight.
There is also a reference to Keats near the poems conclusion; waking dream. The
Keats reference (from Ode to a Nightingale) is very revealing. It connects Ashbery
to the Romantic tradition (where thoughts, moods, feelings, and all things personal
are sanctified into timelessness), even as the impersonality (concavity) of the poem (as
well as the Eliot references) align him with Modern or post-modern models. Ashberys
struggle with Parmigianino is in some ways reminiscent of Keats struggle with his
nightingale; Keats attempts to follow the nightingale into the forest (Already with
thee!), and to take on consonance as (to whatever extent possible) a nightingale himself.
He is left in isolation, doubting himself and his psycho-affective impressions. Likewise,
Ashbery follows Parmigianino into 17th century Parma, the atmosphere of a Mannerist
painters studio, but is left with the it was all a dream/ Syndrome, though the all tells
tersely/ Enough how it wasnt. The all of the artists vision becomes the heft of the
poems rhetorical thrust; what compels us is the contradiction, always visible in
aesthetics, of evanescence-within-existence, an all which is also a null set.
The irony of this situation is that Ashbery impresses us as more Romantic than
Parmigianino. Parmigianinos portrait could be considered a demonstration of Positive
Capability rather than consolidating binaries without irritably grasping after reason,
Parmigianino subsumes everything beneath a brazen assertion of Self, I-ness. All
binaries delineated in his portrait are self-contained, self-manufactured, and, while
he does not irritably grasp after reason, the assertive humor implicit in his concept
is designed to galvanize us with his individualized, positively expressed personality.
Parmigianino mightve been the first Conceptual artist, the first post-modern artist, the
first to skewer standard representational conventions in this perverse fashion.
By attempting to absorb Parmigianinos personality (as Keats absorbed the
nightingales), Ashbery exerts Negative Capability (concavity) to balance
Parmigianinos gutsy Positive (convexity). Ashberys own wonted non-linearity
and skewered perspective are being reflected back at him, making him grope for an
unwonted natural which reaches back further (both into Ashberys psyche and into
poetic history) than Ashbery perhaps intended. Again, the extent to which this reach
is successful (in the Aristotelian sense that it affects a catharsis for us, his audience, as
a good ekphrastic poem should) depends on our own response to Parmigianinos
painting. Ashberys rhetopoeia assumes that his audience can first comprehend
Parmigianino, before attempting to fathom the poem. Ashberys poem is thus
inherently a liminal venture, more so than the average ekphrastic undertaking, owing to
the extremity and perversity of Parmigianinos vision.
I am moved by the way the poem and the painting work together, balancing
each other as pistons in an engine. Parmigianino reaches out; Ashbery reaches back.
Parmigianino is yang; Ashbery reacts with yin. Parmigianino asserts a timeless
moment; Ashbery responds that all time/ Reduces to no special time. I find it
impossible to look at Parmigianinos painting without cognating Ashberys
response. They work together as a complete aesthetic unit. Thus, I am won over,
in this instance, by Ashberys rhetopoeia. This poem, for me at least, serves a
useful, historical, and emotional purpose. It argues for itself effectively.

Adam Fieled 2005-2013