TIe Foen as Evenl

AulIov|s) Louise M. BosenIIall

Bevieved vovI|s)
Souvce CoIIege EngIisI, VoI. 26, No. 2 |Nov., 1964), pp. 123-128
FuIIisIed I National Council of Teachers of English
SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/373663 .
Accessed 26/12/2011 1204
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
College English.
http://www.jstor.org
THE POEM AS EVENT
The Poem as Event
LOUISE M. ROSENBLATT
It Bids
Pretty
Fair
The
play
seems out for an almost
infinite run.
Don't mind a little
thing
like the
actors
fighting.
The
only thing
I
worry
about is the
sun.
We'll
be all
right
if
nothing goes
wrong
with the
lighting.
As
PART OF AN INVESTIGATION
Of
the
proc-
esses involved in
reading
a
poem,
this
quatrain by
Robert Frost was
presented
to a
group
of readers.
They
were told to
start
writing
as soon as
possible
after
beginning
to read the
text,
and
they
were
asked to
jot
down whatever came to
them as
they
read. In this
way, although
they undoubtedly
did not
report
their
very
first
responses, they presented
at
least some of the
very early
ones.
Note that this differs from the
pro-
cedure
reported
in Richards' Practical
Criticism,
in which the readers' com-
ments
represent
the end-result of re-
peated readings
and reflections on the
text. In the
present study,
the aim was
rather to discover the
paths by
which
these readers reached an
interpretation.
Their notes serve as "candid camera"
glimpses
into what
happens
as an un-
familiar text is encountered. The materials
from which I shall draw were
produced
by
a
group
of men and
women, mainly
high
school teachers of
English,
who had
thirty
minutes with the text
(which
did
not
carry
the author's
name).
Here
are
typical opening
notes in two
commentaries:
(1)
"This seems to me to
be bits of conversation between
people
who are interested in
moviemaking
or a
legitimate play." (2)
"Sounds as if it
could be
producer
of a
play giving
encouragement
to backers."
These notes
reflect,
we would
say,
a
rudimentary literary response, yet they
already represent
a
very high
level of
organization.
To the literal sense of each
word,
there had
clearly
been added some
idea about a framework into which to fit
the
meanings
of the individual words and
sentences. Who is
speaking?
Under what
circumstances? To whom? are
questions
already
assumed in these first tentative
comments.
The
following
note reveals another
step
or kind of
awareness;
it starts like the
others,
but
quickly
makes articulate the
realization that this text is to be read as a
poem:
"This seems to be bits of conver-
sation between
people
who are interested
in
moviemaking
or a
legitimate play.
On
second
thought,
the
rhymes
show it is
a
poem."
This led to a
rereading
of the
text for the
purpose
of
paying
attention
to
rhythm;
the lines had
evidently
first
been read as
simple conversation,
with no
effort to sense a
rhythmic pattern.
One
reader,
who
happened
to be in-
volved as a
leading
man in an
amateur
A member
of
the C.E.E.B. Commission on
Eng-
lish, Louise M.
Rosenblatt, professor of English
Education at New
York-University,
is author
of
books on the art
for art's sake movement and on
the nature
of
the
literary experience.
This
paper,
which was read at the 1963 NCTE
meeting,
is
drawn from a book on critical
theory
that she is
currently preparing.
123
duction to
Shakespeare,
a
body
of
signifi-
cant fiction that does not insult the adult
and the free child
intelligence,
a
body
of rich and
compelling poetry,
and an
introduction to the
systematic study
of
our
lovely
noble
language-this
is what
our
elementary
teachers not
only
need
but want.
124 COLLEGE ENGLISH
play
at his
school,
and who had been
having
trouble with a
temperamental
leading lady,
focused
initially
on the
second line: "At
first,
it seemed a some-
what
cynical
statement about the nature
of the theatre
(my
own
experiences
somehow
forcing
me
mainly
to envision
the
squabbling)."
Some of the readers became involved
with ideas called
up by
the first two
lines,
and
neglected
the rest. But for most
readers,
the third
line,
with its reference
to the
sun,
created the
necessity
for a
revision in some
way
of the tentative
response
to the first two lines. In com-
ment after
comment,
there occurs a
phrase
such as "on second
thought,"
"a
second
look,"
"another idea." One reader
spells
out the
problem:
"The third line
seems most
confusing.
If I stick to
my
theory
of
producer talking
to backers
it
really
makes no sense."
Many
of the
readers, having
called
up
such a vivid notion of a director or
pro-
ducer
talking
about a
play, immediately
attempted
to
adapt
this to a situation in
which there
might reasonably
be a con-
cern about the sun: "I am reminded of
the Elizabethan theatre
open to
the
skies,
which indeed was
dependent upon
the
sun
(good weather)";
"Seems to be about
life in a summer stock
theatre";
"Is it a
summer theatre? But then there would
be
worry
about the
rain,
rather than the
sun."
Within the brief time
given
for read-
ing
and
comment,
a number of the
readers never freed themselves from the
problem
of
finding
such a
practical
ex-
planation
for a
play's
success
being
dependent
on the sun. One comment
ends on this realization: "I'm afraid this
is a
very
literal
reading."
Others more
quickly
became aware of
the need for another level of
interpreta-
tion:
"However,
after a moment or
two,
the
implied stage begins clearly
to
rep-
resent the world, and the actors, the
world's
population";
"On second thought,
play metaphor-'all
the world's a
stage'
-Life
goes
on in
spite
of
quarreling,
but
it won't if the
'lighting' (moral? spiri-
tual?)
fails . . .
Anyway, war, disagree-
ment, etc.,
don't matter so much-so
long
as we still have the
'light' (sun-source
of
light-nature? God?)."
Several readers were
alerted, evidently,
by
the contrast between the word "in-
finite" and the
colloquial
tone of the rest
of the line. When
they
were led to
wonder about the kind of
play
for which
the sun
provides lighting,
the notion of
infinity evidently
had
prepared
them to
think of the
great
drama
being played
out
through
the
ages by
mankind on this
planet. Some, however,
felt it
necessary
to
pack
in as much
symbolism
as
possible
and tried in addition to find another level
of
meaning
for the sun.
A few readers sensed the
Olympian
remoteness of the "I" who could find it
possible
to view man's life on this
planet
in the
light, almost,
of
eternity,
and who
was thus
able
to see as "little
things"
such
momentous
episodes
as wars.
The
following
notes illustrate the
range
covered in one
commentary:
"Sounds as if it could be
producer
of a
play giving encouragement
to backers
..
I
just got
another idea: First line-
the world will
always
be here. Second
line-there will
always
be
fighting.
We
shouldn't
worry
too much about it.
Third line-worries about H-bomb."
(Here
we see how the reader's fears of
an atomic
catastrophe
were activated
by
the reference to
"worry"
about the
sun.)
For another
reader,
the reference to
something happening
to the sun awak-
ened a recollection of
Bums',
"Till a' the
seas
gang dry"
as another
image
of
boundless time. This led to a
feeling
that
the
persona's "worry"
was
ironic,
a be-
littling
of human conflicts when viewed
against
the
background
of the life of the
sun.
Recall that we are not here concerned
with
evaluating
the
responses
to this text,
THE POEM AS EVENT 125
since these commentaries were not
pre-
sented as finished
interpretations.
The
notes
quoted
are rather to be considered
snapshots
or "stills" of
stages
in a slow-
motion
picture
of the
ongoing process by
which a reader arrives at an
interpreta-
tion of such a
quatrain.
The readers had
been invited to make articulate the
very
processes
that are often
ignored
or for-
gotten by
the time a
satisfactory reading
has been
completed.
For the
very experi-
enced
reader,
such arousal and
rejection
of irrelevant or
inadequate responses may
be almost automatic.
Certain
points emerge clearly
from
even these few
excerpts.
First of
all,
the
reader is active. He is not a blank
tape
registering
a
ready-made message.
He is
actively
involved in
building up
a
poem
for himself out of the lines. He must
select from the various referents that
occur to him in
response
to the verbal
symbols.
He must find some context
within which these referents can be re-
lated. He must be
ready
to
reinterpret
earlier
parts
of the
poem
in the
light
of
later
parts. Actually,
he has not
fully
read the first line until he has read the
last,
and interrelated them. There seems
to be a kind of
shuttling
back and forth
as one
synthesis-one context,
one
per-
sona,
etc.-after another
suggests
itself
to him.
Moreover,
we see that even in these
rudimentary responses
the reader is
pay-
ing
attention to the
images, feelings,
atti-
tudes,
associations that the words evoke
in him. It is true that what looks like a
certain amount of
reasoning
went on in
the effort to fix on a kind of
"play"
that
would
depend
on the sun.
Actually,
how-
ever,
the notes indicate
that,
for
example,
the
feeling
for the
"play"
as
metaphoric
for the life of
mankind,
and the "sun" as
suggesting
the
backdrop
of
space
and
time
against
which
to view
it,
seems to
have been arrived at
largely by paying
attention to
qualities
of
feeling
due to
such
things
as
literary
associations or
tonal variations created
by
the diction.
Notions of mankind as a
whole, war,
or
astronomical
time,
were
part
of the
readers' contribution to the
"meaning."
As the reader's attention
plays
over the
sequence
of
words,
he
seeks, then,
more
or less
consciously,
for cues that will
enable him to
organize
the elements of
thought
and
feeling-the images, feelings,
ideas,
aroused
by
the text-into some kind
of structure or
meaning.
He can
respond
to the words
only
out of the substance
of his own
past experience
and
present
preoccupations.
The selection and
organ-
ization of cues will to some
degree hinge
on the
assumptions,
the sense of
possible
structures,
that he
brings
out of the
stream of his life.
But the text
may
also lead him to be
critical of those
assumptions
and associ-
ations-as was the reader with too vivid
a recollection of an actor's
quarrel,
or
the reader
fearing
the H-bomb. He
may
discover that he has
projected
on to the
text
aspects
of his
past experience
not
relevant to
it,
which are not
susceptible
of coherent
incorporation
into it. Or he
may
have failed for various reasons to
respond
at all to some of the cues offered
by
the text.
The
specific
means
by
which the
reader can
hope
to make himself increas-
ingly capable
of sensitive and sound lit-
erary experiences
cannot be
enlarged
on
here. Most
important
is the fact that the
reader's creation of a
poem
out of a text
must be a
self-ordering
and
self-correct-
ing process.
The text is a
unique pattern
of
words, providing
a context which
regulates
what should be in the forefront
of consciousness in
response
to
any
one
of its words. Hence we have seen how
the
interpretation
even of a brief
quat-
rain did not
proceed
line
by line,
block
by block,
but consisted in a subtle
adjust-
ment and
readjustment
of
meaning
and
tone,
to achieve a unified and coherent
synthesis.
Thus the text itself leads the
reader toward this self-corrective
process.
126 COLLEGE ENGLISH
In
addition, seeing
what others have made
of the
text, seeing
others'
interpretations,
will enable him to discover elements of
the text that he has
ignored
or
exagger-
ated. Or he
may
learn that what he
brought
to the text-either in
knowledge
of
language
and
literature,
or in
experi-
ence of life-was
inadequate,
that the
text demanded of him more than he
possessed.
We have been
exploring
some of the
phases
of the
process-lived-through
in the
evocation of the
poem,
of that which is
felt to be the referent of the text. An-
other
important part
of the actual
literary
process
is the reader's awareness of a
stream of attitudes and ideas aroused in
him
by
this evocation itself. This
phase
was
present
in the
responses
to the
quat-
rain,
but
perhaps
it will be
simpler
to
identify
this level of
response
in the
drama or novel. The reader will
conjure
up, say,
the characters of
Oedipus
the
King,
and share in their
acts,
their uttered
thoughts,
and their emotions. But that is
not all. He will also
probably
be aware
of his own
feelings
of
foreboding
and
tension as he lives
through
his evocation
of the fate of
Oedipus. Similarly,
the
wily
lago may
be called forth with
great
vividness, yet
the reader
may
at the same
time be aware of
strong feelings
toward
this
character,
and even
perhaps
be con-
scious of
skepticism
about the
consistency
of the behavior and motivations with
which the text
permits
him to be
endowed.
Even the
fragmentary responses
to
Frost's
quatrain
enabled us to see
clearly
the two functions of the
unique pattern
of words which constitutes the text.
First,
the text is a stimulus
activating
elements
of the reader's
past experience-his expe-
rience with literature and with life. Sec-
ondly,
the text serves as a
"control,"
a
blueprint,
a
guide
for a critical rework-
ing
and
ordering
of what has been called
forth into the reader's consciousness.
"The
poem"
is what the reader, under
the
guidance
of the
text, crystallizes
out
from the stuff of
memory, image,
thought,
and
feeling
which he
brings
to
it. To do
this,
he does not erase his own
past experience
or his own
present per-
sonality.
Under the
magnetism
of the
ordered
symbols
of the
text,
he marshalls
his
resources,
and from them
brings
forth
the new
order,
the new
experience,
which he sees as the
poem.
The reader is
engaged
in a creative
process
at once
intensely personal,
since
the
poem
is
something lived-through,
and
intensely social,
since the
text,
as a "con-
trol,"
can be shared with others. Assess-
ment of the relative
validity
of different
individual
interpretations
is hence
pos-
sible,
as we have
seen,
in terms of their
greater
or lesser relevance to the text.
Thus,
Maud Bodkin
explains precisely
what she has been
analysing
in her dis-
cussion of Hamlet.' She has
not,
she
says,
been
speaking
of the character of Hamlet
as
though
he were an actual
man;
nor has
she been
analysing
"the intention in the
mind of
Shakespeare."
"Our
analysis,"
she
says,
"is of the
experience
communi-
cated to ourselves when we live in the
art of the
play attending
with all the
resources of our own minds to the words
and structure of the drama that Shake-
speare
has
given
us."
A
poem, then,
must be
thought
of as
an event in time. It is not an
object
or an
ideal
entity.
It is an
occurrence,
a
coming-together,
a
compenetration,
of a
reader and a text. The reader
brings
to
the text his
past experience;
the en-
counter
gives
rise to a new
experience,
a
poem.
This becomes
part
of the
ongoing
stream of his
life,
to be reflected on from
any angle important
to him as a human
being-aesthetic, ethical,
or
metaphysical.
Much confusion in current critical
theory
would be eliminated
by
a seman-
tic revision which would make a clear
distinction between the text and the lit-
1Archetypal
Patterns in
Poetry (New York,
1958), p.
323.
THE POEM AS EVENT 127
erary
work-the
poem,
the
play,
the
novel: Text should
designate
a set or
series of
signs interpretable
as verbal
symbols. (This,
of
course,
has been
pro-
duced at a
particular
time and
place,
usually by
a
particular author.)
Poem
should
designate
an involvement of both
reader and text. This distinction will
pre-
vent the confusion of
talking
about the
relationship
of a reader to "a
poem"
when
what is meant is a relation to "a text.")
We cannot
simply
look at the text and
predict
the
poem.
For
this,
a reader or
readers with
particular
attributes must
be
postulated: e.g.,
the author-as-reader
as he is
creating
the
text,
or as he reads
it
years later;
a
contemporary
of the
author with similar or different back-
ground
of education and
experience;
other individuals
living
in
specific places,
times and milieus. Both text and reader
are essential
aspects
or
components,
one
might say,
of that which is manifested
as the
poem.
The
text,
we have
seen,
delimits and
patterns,
but it
ultimately
functions like a chemical element: it it-
self is
merged
in the
synthesis
with
other
elements to
produce,
in this
instance,
a
particular
event-a
poem.
The view that the
poem
is a
special
kind of
experience
lived
through by
a
reader arouses the fear of
fostering
an
irresponsible impressionism
or
dogmatic
subjectivity.
The
reader,
we
know,
must
eliminate from the center of awareness
all that does not cohere within the net-
work of the text. This has been made
the basis for
ignoring altogether
the
reader's contribution. He is counseled
simply
to "surrender his own
meanings,"
to
become,
as he indeed never can be-
come,
a blank
page,
a wraith-like
receptor
of an alien
message.
The New
Critics, building
on one facet
of Richards'
work,
did much to rescue
the
poem
as a work of art from earlier
confusions with the
poem
as a
biographi-
cal document or as a document in intel-
lectual and social
history.
But in their
reaction from
vague impressionistic
crit-
icism, they
fostered the notion of an
impersonal
or
objective
criticism which
neglects
the role of the reader. The text
is assumed to be the
poem,
or at
any
rate
"the
poem"
is treated as an
object,
like
a
machine,
whose
parts
can be described
without reference to the
observer,
or
reader.
T. S.
Eliot,
in his 1956
lecture,
"The
Frontiers of
Criticism,"2
indicated that
the reaction
against
"the
subjective
and
the
impressionistic,"
which he had done
so much to
generate
three decades
before,
had
probably gone
too far. He
warned,
among
other
things, against
the
"danger
...
of
assuming
that there must be
just
one
interpretation
of the
poem
as a
whole,
that must be
right."
Eliot
continues:
I
suspect,
in
fact,
that a
good
deal of the
value of an
interpretation
is-that it
should be
my
own
interpretation.
There
are
many things, perhaps,
to know
about this
poem,
or
that, many
facts
about which scholars can instruct me
which will
help
me to avoid definite
misunderstandings;
but a valid
interpre-
tation, I believe,
must be at the same
time an
interpretation of my
own
feel-
ing
when
I
read it.
(p. 127, my italics)
Ultimately,
the critic's notions of the
nature of that which he criticizes will
affect the criteria he
applies.
The
teacher,
too,
is
perhaps
even more
decidedly
af-
fected both in his selection of
literary
materials and in his
techniques
of teach-
ing.
Even so admirable a work as Wellek
and Warren's
Theory of
Literature3 has
evidently
reinforced the reluctance to
recognize
the role of the reader. The
authors do
actually
affirm that a
poem
can be known
only through
individual
experiences,
but their
predominant
con-
cern is to counter this with a view of the
"existence" of the work as a set of
21n On
Poetry
and Poets
(New York, 1957),
pp. 113
ff.
3(New York, 1949.)
See
especially chapter
12.
128 COLLEGE ENGLISH
norms which are
independent
of the
experience
of
any particular
reader and
which will remain
incompletely
and
imperfectly
realized. "The
poem"
would
then exist somewhere as an
object, sepa-
rate and
complete
like the
moon,
if
only
partially
seen at
any
time
by any
one
reader. This
neglects
the fact that the
various levels or
norms-sound, syntax,
fictional
situations, images, metaphysical
implications-must
be
synthesized by
some,
at least
hypothetical,
reader with
a
particular
set of values.
The
untapped possibilities
of the vari-
ous levels of the text do not add
up
to
a
single
absolute structure never to be
realized.
Instead, they represent
the
broad limits within which the
text, say,
of Othello or The Divine
Comedy, pre-
sents the
potentialities
for a whole
gamut
of related
yet differing interpretations.
The
possibility
of ever-new evocations of
a work
argues,
not for the existence of a
single
unattainable ideal
conception
of
it,
but
only
the fact that new
readers,
with
different
personalities, bringing
to the
text different sets of values and
experi-
ences,
will within its limits fashion new
syntheses,
new
interpretations.
Another
extremely
influential
work,
Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism,
also
may
foster critical
neglect
of the
reader's creative activities. Because the
direct
experience
of the work is
personal
and
"incommunicable,"
because "the
original experience"
cannot be
recap-
tured, Frye
excludes it from the realm of
criticism and
relegates
it to
something
called the
history
of taste. He narrows
the
sphere
of criticism too much in mak-
ing
this absolute division. Critical activ-
ity,
no matter how
rudimentary,
is
impli-
cated in the reader's actual evocation of
the
literary
work. What he makes of the
text will be conditioned
by
his
literary
expectations,
his sense of
literary modes,
his awareness of criteria of sound inter-
pretation
or relevance to the text.
Criticism begins
with the reader's re-
flection on one or more
aspects
of the
process:
the
poem-as-evoked,
the accom-
panying
reactions to
it,
the
text,
and the
reader's contribution. This event in
time,
this
intensely complex
and evanescent
web of
ideas, feelings, sensations,
atti-
tudes,
which he weaves between himself
and the
text,
is the critic's
primary
sub-
ject-matter.
No matter how
impersonal
and
objective may
seem his critical in-
terests,
he must deal with such
events,
report them, compare them, explain
and
defend or
attack,
in short
evaluate,
them.
The critic
goes astray
when he loses
sight
of "the
poem"
as a
doing,
a
making,
a combustion fed
by
both a
particular
personality
and a
particular
text. The
poem
as an event in
the
life of a
reader,
as embodied in a
process resulting
from
the confluence of reader and
text,
should
be central to a
systematic theory
of crit-
icism. This would make it
possible
to
avoid
oversimplified
aestheticism or
crude
didacticism, dogmatic
absolutes or
chaotic relativisms.
Reader,
like
author,
would be
acknowledged
a
creator,
with
his own
skills, disciplines,
and
responsi-
bilities.
Thus criticism and
literary study
will
be freed from the
temptation
of
analysis
for its own sake. Poems will not be
chosen for
study mainly
because
they
lend themselves
especially
to what Eliot
has called the "lemon
squeezer"
method
of criticism. The student reader will be
helped
to handle
critically
his own re-
sponses
to the text. He will be led to the
self-ordering
and the self-criticism which
should
usually precede
the technical anal-
ysis,
the
labeling, classifying
activities
which often are made substitutes for
poetic experience.
As he
proceeds
to
relate his
poetic experience
to his
ongoing
life,
a
systematic
critical framework will
make room for
parallel applications
of
aesthetic, ethical, social,
or
metaphysical
considerations. We
may
thus be saved
from the
sterility
of a critical
orthodoxy
which threatens both the criticism and
the teaching
of literature.