Burckhardt 1956

The Poet as Fool and Priest
Author(s): Sigurd Burckhardt

Source: ELH, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec., 1956), pp. 279-298
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2871813
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THE POET AS FOOL AND PRIEST
BY SIGURD BURCKHARDT
Feste: But indeedwordsare veryrascals

sincebondsdisgracedthem.
Viola: Thy reason,man?
Feste: Troth,sir,I can yieldyou none
withoutwords; and words are
provenso false,I am loath to
provereasonwiththem.
(Twelfth Night, III, 1)
We knowof Goethethathe was promptedto resumeworkon
his " tragedyof the poet "-Torquato Tasso-while he was
modellinga footin a sculptor'sstudioin Rome. Followingthis
evidentlypotent impulse,he recast the unfinishedplay into
blank verse and painfullycompletedit, with what he called
" scarcelyjustifiabletransfusions of my own blood." What the
connectionwas betweenmodellingand the decisionto take up
again a long abandoned and extraordinarily difficult
project,
he did not say; but perhaps one may speculate. While his
hands shaped the formless,malleable clay, may he not have
wonderedabout the radical and dismayingdifference between
the sculptor'smediumand his own: betweenclay-or marble,
pigment,tones-and words?
For the differenceis radical. All otherartistshave fortheir
medium what Aristotlecalled a materialcause: more or less
shapeless, always meaninglessmatter,upon which they can
imprintformand meaning. Their media becomemedia proper
only under theirhands; throughshaping they communicate.
As artists they are uniquely sovereign,mintingunminted
bullioninto currency,stampingtheirimage upon it. The poet
is denied this creative sovereignty.His " material cause" is
a mediumbeforehe starts to fashionit; he must deal in an
alreadycurrentand largelydefacedcoinage. In fact it is not
even a coinage,but rathera paper currency.Words, as the
poet findsthem,are tokensfor" real" things,whichthey are
Sigurd Burckhardt 9279
supposed to signify-draftsupon a hoard of realitywhichit
would be too cumbersometo put into circulation.Not merely
is the poet denied the creative privilegeof coininghis own
medium;his mediumlacks all corporeality, is a systemof signs
whichhave only a secondary,referential substance.
A painterpaints a tree or a triangle-and thereit is. He
may be representational, but he need not; whetherhe paints
treesor triangles,they are corporeallythereforus to respond
to. There can be no non-representational poetry; the very
mediumforbids. MacLeish's " A poem should not mean but
be " pointsto an importanttruth;but as it standsit is nonsense,
because the mediumofpoetryis unlikeany other. Wordsmust
mean; if they don't they are gibberish. The painter's tree
is an image; but if the poet writes"tree," he does not create
an image. He uses one; the poetic "image " is one only in a
metaphoricalsense. Actually it is somethingthat evokes an
image,a signpointingto a certainpreestablishedconfiguration
in our visual memory. The man who first"imagined" a
unicorncould paint it; the poet could use the wordonly after
the image had been created and seen( or else he would have
had to describeit, i. e., to establishit as a compositeof other
preexistentimages). The so-called poetic image achieves its
effectonlyby denyingits essence;it is a word,but it functions
by makingus aware of somethingotherthan it is. If manykey
termsof literaryanalysis-" color," " texture" and " image,"
for example-are in fact metaphorsborrowedfromthe other
arts,this is the reason: poetryhas no-materialcause. Words
alreadyhave whatthe artistfirstwantsto give them-meaning
-and fatallylack whathe needsin orderto shape them-body.
I proposethat the natureand primaryfunctionof the most
importantpoetic devices-especially rhyme,meterand meta-
phor-is to releasewordsin some measurefromtheirbondage
to meaning,theirpurelyreferential role,and to give or restore
to themthe corporeality whicha truemediumneeds. To attain
the positionof creativesovereignty over matter,the poet must
firstof all reducelanguageto somethingresemblinga material.
He can neverdo so completely,only proximately.But he can
-and that is his firsttask-drive a wedgebetweenwordsand
theirmeanings,lessen as much as possible their designatory
280 The Poet as Fool and Priest
forceand therebyinhibitour all too readyflightfromthemto
the thingsthey point to. Brieflyput, the functionof poetic
devicesis dissociative,or divestive.
The pun is one-I would say the second most primitive-
way of divestinga wordof its meaning. Wherewritersfindso
primitivea methodespeciallyappealing,we may suspect that
they feel the need to create a true medium,and so to rebel
against a token language, with particular intensity. When
Shakespeareconcludeshis 138thsonnet,whichexploresthevery
complicatedinversionsof truth and falsehood between him
and his mistress,withthe couplet:
ThereforeI lie withherand she withme,
be,
And in our faultsby lies we flattered
the pun is morethan a joke, howeverbitter. It is the creation
of a semanticidentitybetweenwordswhose phoneticidentity
is, forordinarylanguage,the merestcoincidence. That is to
say, it is an act of verbal violence,designedto tear the close
bond betweena word and its meaning. It asserts that mere
phonetic-i. e. material,corporeal-likenessestablisheslikeness
of meaning. The pun gives the word as entityprimacyover
the word as sign.
In doing so it gives the lie directto the social convention
thatis language.Punningfellintodisreputein the 18thcentury
and has only recentlyrecoveredits poetic respectability.Is
not perhapsthe reasonthat it is, by its verydirectness,revolu-
tionaryand anarchic? It denies the meaningfulness of words
and so calls into question the genuinenessof the linguistic
currencyon whichthe social orderdepends. It makes us aware
that wordsmay be counterfeits.When Adam asked Eve why
she called that huge,flapeared,trunknosedbeast an elephant,
she is said to have answered: "Because it looks like one."-
Somehow,insofaras we are good,law-abidinglinguisticcitizens,
we all share this feelingof our commonmother:that thereis
an inherentproprietyin the sounds we make, a preestablished
harmonybetween them and the thingsthey designate. The
pun shattersit. In an age whichwas determinedto createand
affirma purely human order,to awaken and strengthenin
men a sense of the fitnessof thingshere and now-in such an
age it was scarcely an accident that the no-nonsensecritic
Sigurd Bivrclhardt 281
Dennis classed punsters with pick-pockets,and the gentle
Addison was " desirousto get out of [their]world of magic,
which had almost turned my brain" (Spectator 63). The
covertlyrebelliousPope was partialto the pun's tamerbrother,
the zeugma; and Swift,anarchicidealist malgre soi, remained
a privatelypassionatepractitionerof thiskindof subversion.
But the dilemmawhichthe pun seeks to solve by violence
confrontsall poets; in a sense all poetic devices are more
civilizedformsof punning. That rhymesare partial puns is
obvious. It is not oftenthat theydo theirdissociativebusiness
as perfectlyas at timeswithPope:
Receive,greatEmpress!thyaccomplished
Son:
Thinefromthebirth,and sacredfromtherod,
A dauntlessinfant!neverscaredwithGod.
(Dunciad IV),
where,interacting with" Son " and " sacred" (and its impious
anagram" scared"), the words" rod " and " God " createthe
blasphemous identity schoolmaster'sbirchrod= Holy Cross.
But at least rhymesdo one thing: they call attentionto the
purely sonant nature of words. Though they rarely shatter
the unityof sound and meaning,as the pun does, theyaid the
poet in weightingthe balance on the side of sound and thus
givingthe words body, whichsimplyas signs they lack. To
the degreethat rhymebecomesa virtuallymandatoryconven-
tionof poetry,it necessarilyloses a greatdeal of thisforce;the
poet may then-as G. M. Hopkinsdoes almostsystematically-
revitalizeit by usingit whereit is not conventionallyexpected
and so discounted: internally.But even in its faded formit
servesits purpose.
Metaphors act analogously. When Octavius Caesar says
of Antonyand Cleopatra: " No grave upon the earth shall
clip in it a pair so famous,"he is doing more than comparing
two disparatethings.By saying" clip" he makes of the grave
a nuptialbed and beyondthat of the bed one of the partners
to the nuptials. As the bridegroom clips the bride,so the grave
will embrace the now finallyunited and inseparablepair. In
this way analysis transforms the metaphorinto a conceptual
simile,but the word" clip " does not invitecomparison;rather
it fuses separate and distinctmeanings into a new verbal
identity,a trinity.And therebyit does somethingalso to lan-
guage. A grave whichis likewisea bed and a bridegroomis, in
fact, no longer a grave; neitherare a pair of bodies corpses,
who are at the same timea bride. The metaphordoes not only
fuse,it dissociateswordsfromtheirmeanings.
Ideally the language of social intercourseshould be as
windowglass;we should not notice that it stands betweenus
and the meanings" behind" it. But when chemistsrecently
developeda plasticcoatingwhichmade the glass it was spread
on fullyinvisible,the resultswerefarfromsatisfactory:people
bumped into the glass. If therewere a language pure enough
to transmitall human experiencewithout distortion,there
would be no need forpoetry. But such a language not only
does not, it cannot exist. Language can no more do justice
to all human truththan law can to all human wishes. In its
very nature as a social instrumentit must be a convention,
mustarbitrarily orderthe chaos ofexperiences, allowingexpres-
sion to some, denyingit to others. It must provide common
denominators,and so it necessarilyfalsifies,just as the law
necessarilyinflictsinjustice. And these falsificationswill be
the more dangerous,the more " transparent" language seems
to become,themoreunquestioningly it is acceptedas an undis-
tortingmedium. It is not windowglass,but rathera systemof
lenses which focus and refractthe rays of an hypothetical
unmediatedvision. The firstpurpose of poetic language,and
of metaphorsin particular,is the very opposite of making
languagemoretransparent.Metaphorsincreaseour awareness
of the distortionsof language by increasingthe thicknessand
curvatureof the lensesand so exaggerating the anglesofrefrac-
tion. They shakeus loose fromthe comfortableconvictionthat
a grave is a grave is a grave. They are semanticpuns, just
as puns are phoneticmetaphors;thoughthey leave words as
sounds intact,theybreak theirsemanticidentity.
Metaphors,then,likepuns and rhyme,corporealizelanguage,
because any device whichinterposesitselfbetweenwords and
theirsupposedlysimplemeaningscalls attentionto the wordsas
things. Meter has the same function;it is most like rhymein
that it also is a conventionalmeans of stressingthe purely
phoneticmatterwhich words withoutmeaningsare. It does
not merelyestablisha mood; that can be done in thousands
of otherways. If it servesto channelthe chaotic emotionsof
the poet into a manageableflow,that has nothingto do with
us as readersor listeners.Insofar as it becomes,like ryhme,
a bindingconventionof poetry,it loses its dissociativeforce;
and so it is used by poets like, again, Hopkins in a special
way. What internalrhymedoes in a conventionallyrhyming
poetry,syncopatedrhythmsdo in a prosodywhichconvention-
ally demands a regularbeat; Hopkins' " sprungrhythm" is
the exact metricalanalogue to his internalrhyme. But even
in less systematicallysyncopatedpoetrythe counterpointof
metricaland speech rhythmsresultsin a dissociation. Since
the wordsof a poem functionsimultaneouslyin two rhythmic
systems,theybelongfullyto neither,just as the metaphorical
wordand the pun belongfullyto neitherof the two semantic
systemstheyfuse.
Primarilyall thesedevices do what the sea does in the song
fromThe Tempest:
Full fathomfivethyfatherlies,
Of his bonesare coralsmade:
Those are pearlsthat werehis eyes,
Nothingof himthat dothfade,
But dothsuffera sea-change
Into somethingrichand strange.
Sea-nymphshourlyringhis knell.
Burthen: ding dong
Heark,now I hear them;ding-dong
bell.
These lines state so perfectlywhat poetry does to ordinary
language,that one can hardlyresistreadingthemallegorically;
as the play is the poet-magician'stestamentto the world,so
this song is the glance he grantsus into his " bag of tricks."
The word,whichin prosefades into a sign,yieldingits original
invocativepowerto the thingwhich,by having named,it has
in a mannercreated-the word is transformed into something
rich and strangeby poetry. But to become rich it must first
become strange. Bones and eyes-purely functionalthings
in the living organism-no sooner are divorcedfromit than
they become macabre and grotesque. Yet if the poet allows
his wordsno more than theirfunctionalidentityin the body
of the " livinglanguage,"he surrendershis sovereigntyas an
284 The Poet X. Fool and Priest
artist;he createsnothing,says nothingthat is truebeyondthe
partial and distortedtruthsthis languagehas seen fitto grant
us. He must tear the words out of their living matrix,so
thattheymaynotmerelymean,but be. PerhapsI did Gertrude
Stein an injusticejust now whenI paraphrasedher to instance
the comfortableconvictionthat wordsare of coursewhat they
mean, neithermorenor less. For an even moreprimitiveway
thanpunningto stripwordsoftheirmeaningsis repetition.Say
" a rose is a rose is a rose" a few more times,and what you
have is a meaninglesssound,because you have tornthe word
out of its livinglinguisticmatrixand so are leftwith nothing
but a vile phonetic jelly. This firststep toward becoming
poets we all can take, even if we are not clever enough to
thinkof puns. And again it is oftenthe greatestpoets who
avail themselvesof repetition:
Theythathavepowerto hurt,and willdo none,
That do notdo thethingtheymostdo show.
So Shakespeareopens his 94th sonnet. The fourfoldrepetition
of do is of coursenot clumsiness;Shakespearetakes this seem-
inglymost transparent,most purelyfunctionalof words and
makes it gain body by repetition.A wordwe have been accus-
tomedto look throughas a mereauxiliaryand expletive,having
not even the referentialsubstantialityof a proper verb or
noun, becomes somethingin its own right,a dimensionof
existence,by repetition;so that when we read at the end:
"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds," we are
prepared for the frightening force of the act merelyas act.
And if here repetitionis used to give a " meaningless" word
meaning,the fact nowiseinvalidatesmy argument,but rather
enforcesit; it is preciselythe initial meaninglessnesswhich
makes thiskind of changepossible. Wherethereis a meaning
already,as in:
So shaltthoufeedon death,thatfeedson men,
Anddeathoncedead,there'sno moredyingthen.
the effectis, initiallyat least, the opposite (thoughbasically
the same): the word " death" and its derivativescome close
to losing their signatoryforce. Repetition-and it would be
easy to cite instancesfromotherpoets,especiallythose of the
SigurdBurckhardt 285
17th Century and of our time-makes the word malleable,
ready to take the imprintthe poet wants to give it. It might
not be bad pedagogy,in a course devoted to the teachingof
poetry,to make the studentrepeat a poem's key words over
and over, until they lose all semblanceof meaning. He may
then get a sense of what is the essenceof poetry: the making
such a vile jelly into a pearl.
What I have said of wordsholds true also of theircombina-
tions and relations:phrasesand syntacticalpatterns.Empson
has called attentionto the frequencyand efficacy of syntactical
ambiguities;I need onlyto add thatthroughthemthemeanings
of syntacticalrelationsare again called into question. A word
which can functionsimultaneouslyas two or more different
parts of speech,a phrase whichcan be parsed in two or more
ways-to the despairof all grammarteachers-simplyextends
the pervasiveincertitudeof poetryfromwordsto theirconnec-
tions into statements. And inversionsand similar poetic
" licenses" are afterall not merelyallowancesmade to com-
pensate forthe self-imposed handicaps of rhymeand meter-
as thoughthe poet were golferwho engagesto use only one
a
hand if we allow him two extra strokeson everyhole. They
tend to become that,it is true; but it is just this tendencyof
theirswhich causes the periodicrebellionsagainst them and
everythingthat bears the stigma of " poetic diction." For
poetic words and phrasingsare not exempt fromthe fading
processwhichbleaches ordinarylanguage; they soon come to
be felt as having an inherent"poeticalness," which relieves
the poet of the responsibilityto make them strange. They
-tooacquire a designatoryfunction;only instead of meaninga
thingor relationof thingsthey mean: " This is poetry." It
is not surprising,therefore, that poets oftenfeel impelledto
do the very opposite of what, by my analysis,they ought to
be doing-that they use the phrasingsof the most ordinary
speech and reject the built-in dissociationsof "elevated"
language. Once a generallyaccepted " poetic" idiom has de-
veloped,it is preciselyby the returnto the " Hurryup, please;
it's time" kind of dictionthat the effectof dissociationmay
be achieved and we are made to attend once more to words
as words. As the " pastoral" sentimentality of certainpeople's
poets shows,a returnto commonspeech which is motivated
by the will to " regaincontact withthe commonman " yields
poetryof a very low order. The true poetic meaningof such
a returnis almostthe opposite: when the commonreaderhas
learned to accept the " unnatural" as natural-" because it's
poetry,you know"-the poet may take to the " natural." The
real motiveremainsthe same: to wrestfroma functionalized
idiom the materialwhichthe artistneeds fora true medium.
Underthe headingspun, rhyme,metaphorand meterI have
in fact already been discussingan aspect of poetic language
which,since Empson, no treatmentof poetics can affordto
ignore: ambiguity. For Empson, ambiguitybecame all but
synonymouswith the essential quality of poetry; it meant
complexity,associativeand connotativerichness,texture,and
thepossibilityofirony.The ambiguouswordproliferated like a
vine,wove or revealedhiddenstrandsbetweenthemostvarious
and distinct spheres of our prosaically ordered world. By
exploitingthe ambiguityof words the poet could ironically
undercutthe surfacemeaningsof his statements,could avail
himselffullyof the entirefieldof meaningswhicha word has
and is. I want to shiftthe stressof Empson's analysisa little.
He made us aware that one word can-and in great poetry
commonlydoes-have many meanings;I would ratherinsist
on the converse,that many meaningscan have one word. For
the poet, the ambiguous word is the crux of the problemof
creatinga mediumforhimto workin. If meaningsare primary
and words only their signs,then ambiguouswords are false;
each meaningshouldhave its word,as each sound shouldhave
its letter. But if the reverseis true and wordsare primary-
if, that is, they are the corporealentitiesthe poet requires-
thenambiguityis somethingquite different: it is the fracturing
of a pristineunityby the analyticconceptualizationsof prose.
The poet must assume that where there is one word there
must, in some sense, be unity of meaning,no matter what
proseusage may have done to breakit. The pun is the extreme
formof this assumption,positingunity of meaningeven for
purely accidental homophones,such as the sound shiftsof a
languagewill happen to produce.
Ambiguity,then,becomesa test case forthe poet; insofaras
he can vanquish it-not by splittingthe word,but by fusing
its meanings-he has succeeded in making language into a
true medium;insofaras it vanquishes him, he must abdicate
his positionas a " maker." I would say, therefore,that he does
not primarilyexploitthe plurisignations of words,as though
they were a fortunateaccident; ratherhe accepts, even seeks
out their challenge,because he knows that in his encounter
withthemthe issue of his claim is finallyjoined and decided.
A pun may be a mere play, a rhymea mere jingle, even a
metaphoronly an invitationto conceptual comparisons;true
ambiguitiesare anothermatter. With themit is not a question
of taking two words or meaningsand showinghow, in some
sense,theyare one, but ratherof takingone wordand showing
that it is more than a potpourriof the meaningswe have a
mind to attach to it. Since the poet's credo must be the
openingof St. John: "In the beginningwas the Word," he
meetsthe temptationof meaningultimatelyin ambiguity.
Empson takes ambiguityin the widest sense; of his seven
types it is the last whichis of special interesthere. It is the
ambiguityof contradiction,or to take it more narrowly,of
negation. If the precedingargumentis valid, negationposes
forthe poet a crucialproblem:it deniesthe existenceof some-
thingwhich,simplyby mentioning,it affirms, almost creates.
The problemis not, of course, confinedto poetry; if I say,
" There is no God," I am caught in somethingof a contradic-
tion. But in proseI have a way out; I can interpretmy state-
mentto mean: " The word' God' refersto nothingthat exists
and thereforehas no true meaning"; or more cautiously:
"' God' is only a notionin the heads of some unenlightened
people and cannot be said to 'be '." This way out is not
available to thepoet,sinceeven thenegatedwordis corporeally
thereand so demonstratesits reality. Nietzsche said: "God
is dead."
There is a passage in the Aeneid in which Jupiterforetells
the futureachievementsof Rome and the Julian family;it
ends thus:
" Then shall war cease, and the iron ages soften. . . The dreadful
steel-clenchedgatesof War shallbe shutfast;inhumanFury,his
handsboundbehindhimwithan hundredrivetsof brass,shallsit
withinon murderous weapons,shrieking withghastlyblood-stained
lips."
This is ratherlikethe allegoricalsculpturesin whicha triumph-
ant main figurehas its foot firmlyplanted on the neck of a
now impotent, teeth-gnashingfigure of War (or perhaps
Disease, or Hunger). It is evidentthatthesculptor-orpainter,
or musician-cannot negate; he cannot express" There is no
war," since War, even to be negated,must be physicallythere.
In prose, a negativeparticle or pronounis a sign that what
followsis to be ignoredor discounted;ifI say " Nothingpleases
him," I expect my listenerto discount the word " pleases."
But it can, and in poetryoftenmust,be taken differently, as
" He is pleased by nothingness."The classical instanceof this
ambiguityis the story of Ulysses and Polyphemos;Ulysses
exploits it by giving his name as " Nobody." Polyphemos,
having visible proof of the corporealityof this " nobody,"
accepts the word in its poetic sense; his fellowslater,lacking
such proof,take the wordin its prose sense; it is throughthis
split in human discoursethat craftyUlysses escapes. But the
poet's purpose is to tell truths-truths which escape the
confinesof discursivespeech. And to do so, he is committedto
the word,even thenegative,as in somesensephysicallypresent.
How, then,can he expressnegations?
I believe that one of the more puzzling of Shakespeare's
sonnetsposes thisproblemsharplyand so may yieldan answer
-the 116th:
Let me notto themarriageof trueminds
Admitimpediments. Love is not love,
Whichalterswhenit alterationfinds
Or bendswiththe removerto remove.
o no! It is an everfixedmark
That lookson tempestsand is nevershaken;
It is the starto everywandring bark,
Whoseworth'sunknown, althoughhisheightbe taken.
Love's notTime'sfool,thoughrosylips and cheeks
Withinhis bendingsickle'scompasscome;
It altersnot withhis briefhoursand weeks,
But bearsit out e'ento theedgeofdoom.
If thisbe errorand uponme proved,
I neverwrit,norno maneverloved.
Shakespeare here tries to definethe core word of the entire
sonnetsequence in a seriesof negativeand positiveequations.
The rhetoricalstructureimpliesa debate; the disputatiousdare
ofthe coupletis almoststrident.We can do no less than accept
the challenge.
There is no arguingabout definitions; but this one of love is
morethan commonlywilful. Shakespeareis more of a " high-
flyer"even than Plato; wherePlato wiselyexceptedEros from
his Ideas so thathe mighthave somemeansofbridging thechasm
between them and the world of appearances, Shakespeare
Platonizes this veryforce. The definition he proposesremoves
love completelyfromthe sphereof human feeling,even puts
it into explicitcontrastwith the sole plainly human element
in the sonnet: " rosy lips and cheeks." Love is the Pole Star,
fixedin timelessimmobilityinfinitely far above the sublunary
world of change and decay; it is incommensurable to human
understanding, let alone attainableby humanstriving.A word
which in ordinaryusage is warm, intimate and caressing,
Shakespeare makes cold, hard and precise. Not even Dante
managedto live up to standardsas rigorousas the sonnetpre-
scribes; ordinarymen could claim to have loved only if the
definitionwere lowereda good deal. What we should expect
Shakespeareto say at the end is the oppositeof what he does
say: not " If thisbe error,"but rather" If thisbe true,no man
ever loved." (I am leavingaside, forthe moment,the equally
startlingotherconclusion: " I never writ.") We may not be
able to dispute his definition,but his conclusionis another
matter. On the face of it it seems nonsense.
There are two ways out of the dilemma;or to put it differ-
ently,the dilemmaresultsfromthe sonnet'sbeing read partly
as if it were prose,partly as if it were poetry. If I read the
second line ("Love is not love ") as a discursiveproposition
-" Love is not a feelingwhich. . ." or " That love is not true
love which. . ."-I must read the double negativeof the last
line in the same way, " so that [as Feste says], conclusionsto
be as kisses,ifyour[two]negativesmake your[one]affirmative,
why then"-everybody has always loved. Unless, that is,
the poet's definitionis the true one, anybody's claim to the
feelingis as good as anybodyelse's; brutallust and sophomoric
sentimentality, sordidcalculationand disguisedhatred-what-
ever feelingman has seen fitto baptize " love " is thenentitled
to the name. If we read " love " as we do in prose-as a sign
fora feeling-the firstnegationmust be in some mannerre-
phrased in orderto make sense at all; the simplestway is to
rewriteit so that withina largergenus of feelingslove is the
species whichhas immutabilityas its differentia.This logical
rewording-whichI thinkwe do almostwithoutbeingconscious
of it-compels us to a logical readingof the double negative,
so that the sonnetconcludes: If this definitionis erroneous,
if the differentiais not applicable,then love is not a separate
species but returnsinto' the chaos of meanings which men,
deceivingor self-deceived, have called " love"; that is, every
man who ever said he loved did so.
But in poetrytwo negatives do not make an affirmative.
To the poetic readingof the last line-in whichone negative
reinforcesthe other-correspondsa poetic readingalso of the
earlier negation. Then, since it is the word itself which is
negated,the wordis annulled,struckfromthe language. " On
any termsless than mine," so Shakespeare says, " the word
'love' is expunged." The corporealentityhe put there was
cancellable by nothingless than an absolute negation, the
negationof the word itself. He could not say: " Love which
alters is only lust (or some otherfeeling)," because one real
entitydoes notcancel another.He couldnot say: " Love which
altersis not reallove," because entitiesare real simplyby being
there. He could not equate negativelyin the ordinaryway,
because a negative equation always impliesthat the word is
used differently on the two sides. If I say: " Your love is no
love," I mean: " You are using the wrongwordforthe thing
(feeling)in question." One ofthe twoloves standsin quotation
marks,or else the statementis nonsense. But the poet does
not have this out, since his universeis a verbal one; every
one of his wordshas quotationmarksaroundit. His negations
thereforeare absolute-they are destructions. Love which
alters is not-love,its own negation;it cancels itselfinto non-
existence. This readinglikewisemakes sense: with the word
" love " struckout-as it is if the poet is in error-no man
can everhave loved.
Now the firstconclusion ("I never writ") reveals itself
as no mere hyperbolicreaffirmation, but an equally rigorous
consequence. Shakespearedefineslove as a superhuman,tran-
scendentconstancyand offers,as the only alternativeto his
definition,not any change or reductionof criteria,but the
annulmentof the word,and withit of whateverit may stand
for. It is as thoughone were to definelight and then claim
that if one's definitionwere proved false,light did not exist.
The claim is as arrogantas it is, for the poet, necessary;it
can, in fact,be justifiedby nothingless than his stakinghis
existenceas poet on it. If the word has not the absolute con-
stancyassignedit by the poet,it is nothing;and thenthewords
he has been writingare meaninglessdoodles. If the word is
a signdrawingforits substanceupon the multifarious and ever
shiftingmeaningsgivenit in the intercourseof men,the poet's
businessis at an end-and reallyalso thatof ordinarylanguage,
whichrestson the faiththat wordsare fixedand determinable.
If " love " receivesits semanticcontentfromwhat I happen
to be feelingat the momentI say it, it is not a wordany longer
but an emotionalgrunt. Or, to put the matteragain in terms
of the other reading of the ambiguous double negative: If
everyonehas true title to saying " love " when he feels like
it-to coin the word withoutregardto what it " means" by
itself-everyoneis in effecta poet, using wordswith creative
sovereignty.Every fleetingutteranceis then poetry,and the
claim to more than momentaryvalidity which the poet
"proper" has enteredand symbolizedby the act of writing
is a vain pretension.It all comes to the same thing: thereis
no real difference betweenAll and Nothing,since both deny
the possibilityof differentiation. If all speech is poetry,no
speechis; ifwe all have alwaysloved,noneof us has everloved.
What I have done amountsto substituting the term" word"
for" love" in the sonnet;I believe we are meant to. I would
evenproposeas a workinghypothesisthata greatmanypuzzles
-and not only in Shakespeare-might be solved by such a
substitution.To stay withthe 116thsonnet: whatis the marri-
age of true minds? How is it to be consecratedand consum-
mated? In the already quoted 138th sonnetthe mere sexual
act is equated withlying;the marriageof true mindsmust be
its polar opposite. I do not see how it can be consummated
except verbally;speech is the marriageof true minds. And
the impedimentsto it are the infinitepossibilitiesof deception
which words,in their ambiguity,contain. Unless words are
consLant,union of minds is impossible,even if these minds
can be assumed to be individuallyand severallytrue.
But insofaras wordsare signsformeanings,theycannot be
constant,for meaningsare necessarilyprivate and may shift
frommomentto moment,frompersonto person. The problem
does not become acute in the crude approximationsof every-
day life,to be sure;as thelaws ofNewtonare stillveryadequate
to describethe behaviorof the grossphysicalbodies about us,
so ordinarylanguage will serve for the gross needs of social
intercourse.But none of us need rack his memorylong for
instanceswhere it did not serve-where one cannot be sure
that the meaningsone clothesin wordsare also the meanings
these words will convey to the person addressed. Occasions
of saying" love " will be the most signal examples. The laws
of verbal gravitationare operativeas long as we can rely on
an absolute frameof social reference;but when it comes to
determining the relationshipof two bodies in absoluteisolation
and no longerreferableto a systemof social coordinateswhich
posits a pre-establishedharmony-when,in other words,the
need of communionbecomes most insistent,the problem of
language most acute-precisely then these laws break down
and we are cast into a time-spacecontinuumof verbal rela-
tivitywhichseems to deny all possibilityof relation,because
none of our terms are meaningfulexcept as we arbitrarily
assume a referencepoint-which can be only ourselves.
The syntaxofthe sonnetdoes not determinewhether" love"
is to be consideredas synonymouswith "marriage of true
minds" or as an instanceof a possible impedimentto such a
marriage. But I do not thinkthis ambiguitymatters. Unlike
ordinarymarriage,that of true mindscan be consecratedand
consummatedonly verbally;it has no sacrament,nor ring,nor
ritual cohabitationto give it body. The impedimentspeople
are invited to bringforthwhen the banns are publishedare
thereforenot impedimentsto this kind of marriage;there is
no physicalfact,such as consanguinity, whichcould invalidate
it, since it is of minds. The only possible impedimentlies in
the dangerthat the wordsby whichthe marriageis consecrated
and consummatedare not valid-as, for example,the words
"I now pronounceyou..." wouldnot be, if the speakerwere
not a true priest. It is the absence of this thirdparty to the
sacrament-this bodily representativeof both the social and
the divinecoordinates-whichmakes the questionof the valid-
ity of the words themselvesso extraordinarily urgent. The
Oxfordphilosophershave recentlycalled attentionto a class
of statementscalled " operative,"which do not describebut
ratherperformby statement.The sacramentalstatementsare
the readiest instances. But what makes them possible, or
" operative," is the entire order and authority,human and
divine,whichthespeakerrepresents, thesanctionsand penalties
it commands. A marriageof true minds is withoutbenefitof
clergyand consequentlyhas no othersanctionand sanctitythan
what is containedin the words themselveswhich seal it. If
words are ambiguous,such a marriageis a farce.
It can, therefore,be challenged simply by the question:
"What do you mean by love? " (Indeed, what do you mean
by anythingyou say to anotherperson?) It is this challenge,
and the impliedimpediment,which the sonnet is writtento
meet. But it cannotmeetit by saying: " By love I mean...."
Feelings,and consequentlymeanings,can neverbe enoughhere;
what is wantedis an operative word,not a meaning-a sacra-
mentalword,whichcarriesits sacramentalforcewithinit, as
an immanentmeaning. And that means: a word no longera
sign; a word removed from the mutabilityof things, the
infinitelygreatermutabilityoffeelings, ofwhichordinarywords
are the signs. This kind of word does not have meanings,but
rathergives them.
Of course there is a paradox here: such a word is empty
sound. In order to rescue it fromthe tempestuouschaos of
meaning,the poet,so it seems,has had to removeit to a height
so great, to reduce it to a point so without area, that its
" worth'sunknown." The gyratingplanets and signs of the
zodiac have a known worth-i.e., determinableastrological
meaning;but theyhave it only,the languageof the Heavens is
intelligibleonly, because their gyrationsare referableto the
Pole Star, whichcould not give meaningif it had any itself.
Words are infinitely"meaningful"; they are man's cry for
unionand the answeringcry. But morethan a cryis required,
if a wordis to be morethan mereanimal sound; in orderthat
a marriageof mindsmay be celebrated,not only the pathetic,
inarticulate" bark" of the dog baying at the stars is needed,
but likewise the sacramental sign-the " mark." Both sign
and sound are meaningless,taken by themselves;hence the
syntacticambiguityof" whose" in line8, whichhas forpossible
antecedents both "star" and "bark." (The ambiguityof
" bark" itself,as driftingship and aimless animal sound is a
relativelysimple one.)
What Shakespeare is saying,then, is somethinglike this:
"You have raised an impediment,challengedthe possibility
of human communion,called into questionthe legitimacyand
sanctity of speech, where its meaning is not authorizedby
churchand state. This challengeI will not-as poet cannot-
admit. If you ask: 'What do you mean by . . . ?,' I answer:
' I mean what I say.' As poet I pledge myselfto use words
with a constancyso inhuman and remote fromthe chaotic
meaningsyou attach to themthat theywould,taken by them-
selves, be emptysigns. You may rely on it that when I say
'love' or any otherword,I do not mean by it whatevervapor-
ous feelingsor notionsmay be agitatingmy viscera or brain.
I shall be the priestto this marriage;that is, I shall forego
human love so that your love may be sanctified.I will be
celibate and renounceself-expression,so that you may speak
trulyor, what is the same thing,truly speak. But there is
meaningin what I say, because withoutme you are merely
making emotionalgrunts. The meaningsof your words can
never be just what you have in mind when you say them; to
have anythinglike meaningthey must have an externalpole.
Meaning is the productof what you ' mean ' and of the word
as an absoluteconstantindependentof yourprivatethoughts,
just as marriageis the productof yourhuman intentionsand
the sacramentalact. Where there is no social and religious
authorityto guarantee and compel validity and constancy,
thereI am and speak. If I am hereticalin makingthis claim,
then I have done nothingbut made doodles on a sheet of
paper; but likewise no man has ever talked meaningfully,
exceptwherehe spoke foror answeredto authority."
It is temptingto trace,in its minuteprecision,the sonnet's
verbalstructureand therebyto show how Shakespeare,in this
reply, also refutesthe traditional,common-sensemethod of
fixingmeaningsby definitions.From line 2 throughline 11 he
ironicallydemonstrates insteadof fixingwords,
that definitions,
split them. In the firstquatrain,identityis denied-" love is
not love "-but denied througha monotonoussequence of
verbal identities:love-love, alter-alteration, remover-remove.
In thesecondquatrainidentityis affirmed-loveis something-
but affirmedthroughequations with two terms completely
different fromthe termto be defined. Lines 9-11 involve in
theirnegationnot only man, the fool of time, nor only the
terms" alter" and "bend " of the firstquatrain, but also-
through " bending sickle" (= moon) and " compass"-the
hithertopositive celestial-navigation metaphorof the second.
In otherwords,as long as Shakespearetries to defineby the
traditionalmethodof predication,he gets only into a muddle
of self-contradictions: the word is not what it is; it is what it
is not; it is not what it is not. When Sir Toby Belch greets
the disguisedFeste as " Master Parson," Feste accepts the
honor thus: " As the old hermitof Prague, that never saw
pen and ink, very wittilysaid to a niece of King Gorboduc,
'That that is is'; so I, beingmasterParson,am masterParson;
forwhat is ' that ' but 'that,' and ' is ' but ' is '? " The point
is, of course,that he is not a parson,but Feste the Fool, the
" corrupterof words." As soon as a real word is set for the
hermit'spronoun,the mostunchallengeableof all tautologies-
the principleof identity-turnsinto a falsehood. (Not a com-
plete one, however;in takingon a parson's appearance,Feste
in a sense becomes one.) The poet must always be half fool,
the corrupter ofwords;but he has seenpen and ink,has written,
and must thereforebe a parson in a much more serioussense
than Feste; else he " neverwrit."
All theseparadoxesand contradictionsare resolved-insofar
as wordscan ever resolvethem-in line 192.Alreadyin line 11
an action has been predicatedof 'love,' but onlya negatedone;
now finally,afterall the contradictoryattemptsto say what
love is, we are told that it does something." But bears it out "
is the poet's final and unequivocal answer to the challenge.
The word (" love ") is not an entity,but ratheran act; this
is the firsttime in the sonnetthat the subject is not directly
followedby its predicate,but stands removedfromit by a
whole line. Moreover, whereas action necessarilyinvolves
change,this action is duration,the oppositeof change. Yet it
is not passive and intransitive,as durationnormallywould be;
it has no subject in a sense,but it does have an object: " it,"
whichhithertohas always stood for " love," but now stands
not really foranything.The word is an act whichis neither
subject to time nor transcendsit, but is time's coequal. But
beyond all this the word is pregnantand fruitful, it " bears
and so servesthe true purpose of all marriages.
These few notes must do to show how aware Shakespeare
the paradoxesof his medium,
is of the ironiesof his enterprise,
and withwhat almostdesperateprecisionhe seeks to overcome
them. As a poet he cannotnegate,thoughthat mustagain and
again be his impulsetoward false words; the limitationupon
omnipotenceis that it cannot say " no "; it can only destroy.
The poet's negationsare destructions;" love is not love." But
he cannot affirmeither;that is, he cannot predicateby equa-
tions;forto say of a wordthat it is somethingotherthan itself
is to lie. The definitionsof logic are monstrousconfusions
if we hold words sacred, as the poet must. Indeed, the poet
hardly dare write words; ambiguityalways threatens. The
poet's undertaking-to make words into a material cause-
draws with it such formidabledangers that he is constantly
teeteringon the edge between the lie and silence: between
tyrannyand abdication. (Shakespeare'srepeatedtreatmentof
thistheme-King Lear, MeasureforMeasure and The Tempest
are not the only instances-suggeststhat it is a besettingand
lasting problem for him, demandingagain and again to be
solved.)
What sustainshim in thisperilousbalance is the love of the
Word in its absolute integrity.As Othello demonstrates, that
is no easy matter; the most sacred thing is also the most
vulnerable.The poet wouldbe muchsaferifhe did not commit
himselfto the Word, but in ironicdetachmentexploitedthe
infiniteambiguitiesof speech. Or he could retreatto the safety
of a socio-religiousorder,give up his claim to verbalpriesthood
and turn" mouthpiece."Both roads have been taken; but they
lead to self-abnegation.The poet as a foolmust be a corrupter
of words,a punster,rhymster, verbal trickster,forthereis no
other way to break the disgracefulbonds into which words
have fallen. But if he is not also, and ultimately,priest-if
he is not a parsondisguisedas a foolratherthan a fooldisguised
as a parson-speech will be " wanton" rather than sacra-
mental: " Why,sir,her name's a word;and to dally withthat
wordmightmake my sisterwanton."
Our Empsonian delightin the poet's play with ambiguities,
our Richardsianmistrustof a criticalmystiqueought not to
dissolve our awarenessthat, when all is " said and done," the
poet acts by speaking. The bawdy of his fools is necessary;
poetic devices must be dissociative,forthe commonlawmarri-
age between meaning and sound-ordinary language-is a
denial both of sanctityand freedom.But lust is not the last
word; it is an expense of spiritin a waste of shame. In the
end the poet must commit himselfunequivocally; the last
wordis love. It is the poet's minimumindefinable(in Russell's
sense); the word withoutwhichnot only all otherwords,but
the veryact of speech,the veryattemptto enterinto a marri-
age ofminds,wouldbe meaningless.WhenShakespeareequates
it withthe star,the equation is not reductive,as in logic,but
transformative:" love " is both itselfand the star, both the
inarticulatesound and the emptysign. Wherethe philosopher
seeks certitudein the sign-the 'p ' of propositionalcalculus-
and the mysticin the ineffable-the" OM " of the Hindoos-
the poet takes upon himselfthe paradox of the human word,
whichis both and neitherand whichhe creativelytransforms
in his " powerfulrhyme."This rhymeis his deed; it dissociates,
dissolvesthe word into its components-markand bark-but
simultaneouslyfusesit into a new and now sacramentalunion.
The Ohio State University.

Burckhardt 1956

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The Poet as Fool and Priest

Author(s): Sigurd Burckhardt

Feste: But indeedwordsare veryrascals

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