Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry

designs of sentence structure" as opposed to "individual sentences" and to the vocabulary, which is a "somewhat rudimentary and not 26 V. Veresaev, "Zapiski dlja sebja," Novyj mir, 1960, No. 1, p. 156. 27 Cf. the comparative scrutiny of these two Puskin poems in the present volume, pp. 47-58. 28 See "Przesztosc' Cypriana Norwida," in SW ///, pp. 499-507. 29 C. Bragdon, The Beautiful Necessity (Rochester, New York, 1910). 30 Cf. R. Jakobson, "Boas' View of Grammatical Meaning," Selected Writings II: Word and Language (The Hague-Paris, 1971), pp. 489-496. 31 See G. Wallerand, Les oeuvres de Siger de Courtrai (Louvain, 1913), p. 46. 44 Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry self-sufficient part" of the linguistic order, and envisages "a 'geometry' of form principles characteristic of each language." A further comparison between grammar and geometry was outlined in Stalin's polemics of 1950 against Marr's linguistic bias: the distinctive property of grammar lies in its abstractive power; "abstracting itself from anything that is particular and concrete in words and sentences, grammar treats only the general patterns, underyling the word changes and the combination of words into sentences, and builds in such a way grammatical rules and laws. In this respect grammar bears a resemblance to geometry, which, when giving its laws, abstracts itself from concrete objects, treats objects as bodies deprived of concreteness and defines their mutual relations not as concrete relations of certain concrete objects but as relations of bodies in general, namely, relations deprived of any concreteness." The abstractive power of human thought, underlying—in the views of the two quoted authors—both geometrical relations and grammar, superimposes simple geometrical and grammatical figures upon the pictorial world of particular objects and upon the concrete lexical "wherewithal" of verbal art, as was shrewdly realized in the thirteenth century by Villard de Honnecourt for graphic arts and by Galfredus for poetry. The pivotal role performed in the grammatical texture of poetry by diverse kinds of pronouns is due to the fact that pronouns, in contradistinction to all other autonomous words, are purely grammatical, relational units, and besides substantival and adjectival pronouns we must include in this class also adverbial pronouns and the so-called substantive (rather pronominal) verbs such as to be and to have. The relation of pronouns to non-pronominal words has been repeatedly compared with the relation between geometrical and physical bodies. Beside common or widespread devices the grammatical texture of poetry offers many salient differential features, typical of a given national literature or of a limited period, a specific trend, an individual poet or even one single work. The thirteenth-century students of arts whose names we have quoted remind us of the extraordinary compositional sense and skill of the Gothic epoch and help us to interpret the impressive structure of the Hussite battle song "Ktoz jsii bozi bojovnici." We deliberately dwell on this incentive revolutionary poem almost free of tropes, far from decorativeness and mannerism. The grammatical structure of this work reveals a particularly elaborate articulation. As shown by the analysis of the song, its three strophes in turn display a trinitarian form: they are divided into three smaller strophic units—membra. Each of the three strophes exhibits its specific grammatical features which we 32 B. L. Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality (New York, 1956), pp. 253, 257. 1. Stalin, Marksizm i voprosy jazykoznanija (Moscow, 1950), p. 20. As V. A. Zvegincev brought to my attention, Stalin's confrontation of grammar with geometry was prompted by the views of V. Bogorodickij, an outstanding disciple of the young Baudouin de Courtenay and M. Kruszewski. 34 See, e.g., A. Zareckij, "O mestoimenii," Russkij jazyk v skole, 1960, No. 6. pp. 16-22. 35 See SW HI, 215-231, in particular the graphs on 226-231. Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry 45 labeled "vertical similarities." Each of the three membra throughout the three strophes has its particular properties, termed "horizontal similarities" and distinguishing any given membrum in the strophe from its two other membra. The initial and the final membra of the song are linked together with its central membrum (the second membrum of the second strophe) and differ from the rest of the membra by special features, enabling us to connect these three membra through a "falling diagonal," in contradistinction to the "rising diagonal" linking the central membrum of the song with the final membrum of the initial strophe and with the initial membrum of the final strophe. Furthermore, noticeable similarities bring together (and separate from the rest of the song) the central membra of the first and third strophes with the initial membrum of the second strophe, and, on the other hand, the final membra of the first and third strophes with the central membrum of the second strophe. The former disposition may be labeled "higher upright arc," while the latter will be called "lower upright arc." There appear, moreover, the "inverted arcs," likewise grammatically delimited, a "higher one, uniting the initial membra of the first and last strophes with the central membrum of the second strophe, and a "lower inverted arc," tying the central membra of the first and last strophes with the final membrum of the second strophe. This steadfast "membrification" and congruous geometricity must be viewed against the background of Gothic art and scholasticism, convincingly compared by Erwin Panofsky. In its shape the Czech song of the early fifteenth century approximates the authoritative precepts of the "classic Summa with its three requirements of (1) totality (sufficient enumeration), (2) arrangement according to a system of homologous parts and parts of parts (sufficient articulation), and (3) distinctness and deductive cogency (sufficient interrelation)." However immense the difference is between Thomism and the ideology of the anonymous author of Zisskiana cantio, the shape of this song totally satisfies the artistic request of Thomas Aquinas: "the senses delight in things duly proportioned as in something akin to them; for, the sense, too, is a kind of reason as is every cognitive power." The grammatical texture of the Hussite chorale corresponds to the compositional principles of Czech contemporaneous painting. In his monograph about the pictorial art of the Hussite epoch, Kropacek analyzes the style of the early fifteenth century and points out a congruous and systematic articulation of the surface, a strict subordination of the individual parts to the total compositional tasks, and a deliberate use of contrasts. The Czech example helps us to glance into the intricacy of correspondences between the functions of grammar in poetry and of relational geometry in painting. We are faced with the phenomenological problem of an intrinsic kinship between both factors and with a concrete historical search for the convergent development and for the interaction between verbal and 36 E. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York, 1957), p. 31. 37 Quoted ibid., p. 38. 46 Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry representational art. Furthermore, in the quest for a delineation of artistic trends and traditions, the analysis of grammatical texture provides us with important clues, and, finally, we approach the vital question of how a poetic work exploits the extant inventory of masterly devices for a new end and re-evaluates them in the light of their novel tasks. Thus, for instance, the masterpiece of Hussite revolutionary poetry has inherited from the opulent Gothic stock both kinds of grammatical parallelism, in Hopkins' parlance "comparison for likeness" and "comparison for unlikeness," and we have to investigate how the combination of these two, mainly grammatical, ways of proceeding enabled the poet to achieve a coherent, convincing, effective transition from the initial spiritual through the belligerent argumentation of the second strophe to the military orders and battle cries of the finale, or—in other words—how the poetic delight in verbal structures duly proportioned grows into a preceptive power leading to direct action. 38 Hopkins, op. cit., p. 106.