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EIHETORICAL HYBRIDITY: ASHBERY, BERNSTEIN AND THE POETICS OF CITAHON
DISSERTATION
Presented in. Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree Doctor of Philosophy m the Graduate
School o f The Ohio State University
By
\fatthew Richardson^ hlA .
*****
The Ohio State Unwersity 2001
Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Jon Erickson. Adviser
Professor Jessica Prinz . ___ Adviser Professor Stephen Melville Graduate Program m. English. UMI Number: 3031255
Copyright2002 by Richardson, Matthew John
All rights reserved.
UMI'
UMI Microform 3031255 Copyright 2002 by Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
Beil & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT
This dissertation attempts to answer two apparent^ straight&rward questions:
(1) What is the nature and function o fcitation? (2) How does contemporary poetry make use of it?
The &st question seems the easier one, because citation is of course quite familiar to scholars. Traditionally, one cites or quotes from another work to illustrate or decorate the citmg text. In the case o f illustration, a citation functions to support the aims and claans o f the citing text, which are typically advanced m a linear and expository way. In the case o fdecoration, citation's function is to adorn the text with a stylûtic flour^h. In both situations, however, a citation plays a role subservient to that of the citmg text. An illustrative citation is simply the indififerent mstrument for substantiatmg the citing text. And an ornamental citation, despite possessing more mdependence than an illustrative citation, is nevertheless shuffled away to the actual marginso f the page as epigraph or footnote, lest it mterrupt the flow o fthe writing and contammate the citmg text.
But what happens when châtions fmd their way into poetry, a mode o f writing that does not lend hself as well to Imear and expository expression? When the context is altered m this way, the mherent capachy o fcitations to déplace and substhute for the
n citing text may be explored, generating new possibilities for the status of authors, texts and readers. Citation's nature is thus revealed as hybrid, as capable of both illustratfoa and displacement.
Poetry would seeiato be the last place to fold citations, because poets are supposed to speak m thek own miinitable voices and o # r literary works of originaliQf.
But a host of poets have been makmg creative use of citation for nearly a century.
Eliot and Pound are obvious cases m. pomt and are discussed m Leonard Diepeveen’s
Changing Voices: The Modernist Quoting Poem. My project follows in the footsteps o f this work by addressing the postmodern situation, particularly so by examining John
Ashbery’s early poetry and the language poetry o f Charles Bernstein. Poets like these savor the latent possibility o f citations to dkrupt the citmg text and ofler multiple textures o f expression m a given poem.
m For my parents
IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my adviser, Jon Erickson, for the mteilectual support and thought-provoking challenges that made this dksertation possible, and for his patience as [ struggled with some burdens that occasionally stood m the way o f progress on this work.
I thank Jessica Prmz for her passion about post-modern art and literature and her unwavermg encouragement.
I am gratefiil to Stephen Melville for mtroducmg me to many of the key critical voices that appear m this work.
I am indebted to George Hartley for many long and mvaluable conversations about my project over the course o f several years.
I express much gratitude to Maqorie Perloff whose teachmgs, writings and suggestions led me both to graduate school and to work on this project.
And to my wife, Donna Baker, I owe the profound debt o f one who enjoys both critical and supportive attention day m and day out. VITA
November 4,1968 ...... Bom—Cmcinnati,OH
1992...... AÆ. Englisfa, Stanford University
1992 -1 9 9 8 ...... Graduate Teachmg Associate, The Ohio State University
1994 ...... MJV* English, The Ohio State University
1998 -1 9 9 9 ...... Lecturer, The Ohio State University
FIELDS OF STUDY
Vfejor Field: English
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Abstract...... ii
Dedication ...... iv
Acknowledgments...... v
Vita...... vi
Chapters:
1. Introduction: Metaphor and the Paradox of Citation ...... I
1.1 Citation and Metaphor...... 4 Previous Studies o f Citation...... 11 I J Previous Scholarship on Literary Uses of Citation ...... 22 1.4 A Brief Overview o f the Remammg Chapters ...... 26
2. Ut Pictura Poeisfst John Ashbery^s Art o fCitation ...... 31
2.1 Ashbery’s Background ...... J 4 2 2 The Role o f Surrealmn m Ashbery’s Art Criticfem ...... 43 22 The Right Balance: The Interplay of Conscious and Unconscious Forces mKftaj...... 47 2.4 Rhetorical Mhcmg and the Problem of Automatic Writing ...... 52 2.5 Art Risks: Metaphysics, Illustration and Politically Involved Art ...... 56
3. Citation and Paratactic Composition in Bernstein’s Essays ...... 63
3.1 Citation and Poetics: BemsteuTs “Tale of Terms”...... 67 3 2 Collage Composition m Bemstem’s Essays ...... 72 3.3 “Sightmg” and “Soundmgf’ Language ...... 87 3.3.1 Poetic Amblyopia ...... 93 3 2 2 Soundmg and Citation ...... 98 3.32 Performance: Sighting and Soundmg ...... 107 3.4 A Few Quahns...... 109
vii 4. Citation and Artifice in Ashbery’s Early Poetry ...... 114
4.1 Temptations and Trappmgs: Some Trees ...... 117 4.LI “ThePamter” ...... 119 4.12 “lUustration”...... 124 4.1.3 “The Picture o f Little JA . ni a Prospect of Flowers” ...... 128 4 2 Emptymg Out the Mmd: The Tennis Court Oath...... 131 42.1 “Europe”...... 132 42.2 “Thoughts o f a Young Girl” ...... 136 42.3 “’How Much Longer Will I Be Able To Inhabit the Divme Sepulcher...’” ...... 140 4.3 Citatfonal Triumph m Rivers and Mountains,...... 146 4.3.1 “These Lacustrme Cities”...... 147 4 3 2 “The Skaters”...... 151
5. Bemstem’s The Sophist: Citation and Philosophy ...... 159
5.1 Two Case Studies...... 161 5.1.1 “Dysraphism” ...... 162 5.12 “Three or Four” Revisited ...... 167 5 2 Sophist and Citation ...... 172 52.1 “The Simply” ...... 176 52.2 “’The Order o f...... 179 5.2.3 Plato and Bemstem ...... 184 53 Assessing Bemstem ...... 196
6. Conclusion...... 200
7. Bibliography ...... 205
vm CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: METAPHOR AND THE PARADOX OF CITATION
Perhaps due to the uncanny persistence m the academy o f romantic and symbolist poetics, scholarship has left largely untouched an important tradition m modem poetry. This tradition makes its presence felt when poets, anyone from Eliot and Pound up to the dozens of practitioners today, make use o f already spoken or written language in their poems, rather than relying absolutely on their own origmal words and phrases. It ^ m large part the purpose of this dksertation to uncover a signifrcant area o f this tradition that has gone unremarked: the post-war tradition, two strams o f which may be represented by John Ashbery and Charles Bemstem.
Initially, however, this dissertation attempts to answer a few apparently smiple questions: (I) What is the nature and fonction o f citation? (2) how does contemporary poetry make use o f it?
The fost question seems the easier one, especially as citation K somethmg quite femiliar to us as scholars. Traditional^, one cites or quotes another work or writer either to illustrate a specffîc argumentative pomt, or less signifrcant^, to decorate the text with a stylistic flourish. Both of the two lone book-length studies of citation make this clear: Antome Compagnon’s Seconde Main, ou Le Travail de la I Citation and Claudette Sartiliot’s Citation and Modernity: Derrida, Joyce, Brecht,
But most citations understood m this way tend toward marginalia.Even if the cited text is presented as important for the aims and claimso f the citmg text, a citation such as this ulthnatety serves only to achieve the goals of that citmg text, which may be characterized as linear or expository. A quotation or citation m this sense k an inanimate object mserted in critical narratwes to buttress arguments. Alternatively, if a quotation or citation is used for s^ l^ ic purposes, it begms to take on more lifo and mdependence. But then such a stylistic quotation somehow must be shufQed away to the literal margins o f the page as epigraph or footnote, lest it mterrupt the expositional flow o f the writmg and mterfore with the citmg text.
From common usage it would seem that the nature of citation lay m its subservience to the proper text. But then what, besides perhaps an uncharacteristic flippancy, would motivate as mciswe a literary critic as Walter Benjamin to remark that “Quotations in my work are like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions” (qtd. in Hertz 14-15)? What, for that matter, happens when citations and quotations appear in a less prosaic context such as poetry, especially poetry that does not lend itself so well to expository expression? If we take Benjamm’s remark seriously, we must register an otherwise hidden capacity m. both the act o f repeating the words o f another and in the repeated words themselves.
Such would be the capacity o fcitations and quotations to displace and substitute for the main body of writing and to challenge the authority o f the author usmg them.
Unruly citations like these would seem to question our received notions about authors. texts and readers. They could mean, fer instance, that the author does not speak m one voice, that the text is not complete^ autonomous and that readers may be called upon to take a more active role m making the text thaa previously thought
Issues such as these arise m the works o f modernist poets like Pound, Eliot
Moore, Williams and Zuko6ky, as well as contemporary poets like Ashbery, Berrigan,
Howe, Perehnan, Bemstem, and many others. These poets and ones like them use
citations and quotations in varyn% ways m accordance with a collage aesthetic m
which diverse Gagments of language are juxtaposed without easy transitional
moments, or indeed, without any connectives at all (Seitz 25). This citational attitude
is revolutionary with respect to some o f the most time-honored perspectives on poetry
and poets, which derive much o f their force both Gom Englhh romanticism and
French symbolism. Poets like the modems and postmodems mentioned above,
especially the postmodems, cease to ground the value o f writing m the poet’s
inwardness or psychology. They likewise remam distrustM o f language’s capacity to
pomt outside o f itself to some other reali^, especially to some transcendental one.
The split between author and text, on the one band, and between text and world, on the
other, becomes a necessary precondition for any citational poetic.
Before discussmg the poetry of Ashbery and Bemstem, it seems fovorable to
investigate further the question o f citation m itself. I do this Grst rather than focus on
citation m use, a discussion which takes up the bulk o f the remammg chapters o f this study. In this move I provide a brief survey of the writings on the topic of citation as well as a survey o f the literary critics who seem mvested in understanding the citational ethos o f certam strains of modem poetry.
Citation and Metaphor
In essence, the problem o f citation is the problem o f metaphor, the problem of explaining one thing m terms o f another.' When writers cite or quote the words o f others, they substitute the words o f others for those of then own, just as one might mvoke a metaphor as an altematwe means o f conveymg an idea. In citation, one’s own words are supposed to be amplified by the introduction o f another’s words. But the equal and opposite consequence, that the other’s words wOI displace those citing them and alter the status of the text, is always a latent possibility.
An unportant discussion by Ludwig Wittgenstem near the end o f Philosophical
Investigations^ provides a helpfiil background to this problem.^ It is true that the terms “citation” and “metaphor” never actually appear m this writmg. But
Wittgenstem’s presentation o f what Charles Altieri has termed “aspectual” thinking à an appropriate way to introduce the basic issues at stake m citation, especiaily if
‘ Most of those critics who discuss citation in itself begin their discussions with richly metaphorical writing much like that of Benjamin's comment above. See Compagnon and the following: BlaiseCronih,“The Need foraTheoryofCitmg,” Jbamafo/flocarônranbn 37.1 (1981) 16-24. André Topia, “The Matrûc and the Echo: Ihtertextuality m Ulysses^ Poststructuralist Joyce: Esse^sfrom the French, ed. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer (London: Cambridge 1984) 103-125. ^ See Charles AltierL “John Ashbery and the Challenge of Postmodernism m the Vbual Arts,” Critical bupiiry 14 (1988): 825. ^ Wittgenstem's idiosyncratic procedure of mvoidhg stock statements and then subjectihg the statements to phQosophicandaestheticscrutmy, is an mstance of citational writing in its own ri^ L See Bemstem on Cavell below and Marjorie Perloff Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language catd the Strmgeness ofthe Ordinary (Chicago: IT of Chicago P, 1996). 4 metaphor is understood as a substitution and citation as illustration (“Ashbery” 825),
This is the famous section o f the Investigations m which Mttgenstem treats o f optical illusions and offers up the conundrum, “If a lion could speak, we could not understand hhn” (223). Wittgenstein here often discusses how, for whatever reason, it becomes necessary at tunes to point to some alternative phenomenon m speakmg or writing to further some argumentative stance or snnply to illustrate what it is one might be stating. As we pomt at something with these apparent purposes in mmd, we engage in an act o f seemg. Wittgenstein 5 suggestmg that illustrating a pomt to convey meaning is at base this problem o f seeing and mdexmg some object for our subjective purposes.
In domg so it becomes necessary for the onlooker to distmguish, m the midst o f the
“tangled impression” Wittgenstem calls seeing, between figure and ground, even snnply to provide a mere “description o f what is seen.”
I look at the landscape, my gaze ranges over it, I see all sorts o f dûtmct and mdistmct movement; this nnpresses itself sharply on me, that is quite h a ^ . After all, how completely ragged what we see can appear! And now look at all that can be meant by “description o f what is seen”.—But this just is what is called description o f what is seen. There is not one genuine proper case of such description—the rest bemg Just vague, something which awaits clarification, or which must Just be swept aside as rubbish. {Investigations 200)
This k where metaphor enters the discussion. Metaphor as “a formal sunOanty between two different takes on reality” is “typified,” mthe words o f Jon Erickson, by the figure-ground relation in vision (8). To an ^reducible extent, one must accept this seemg as what Wfttgenstem. will call “seeing-as”: “How would the following account do: ‘What I can see something os, is what it can be a picture o f? ’ {Investigations 201)
A gap opens up between what we choose as figure and what is actually out there m the object realm as imdifierentiated phenomena and which necessarily entails representation of that “out-there,” the necessity of metaphor in the act of seeing and conveymg meanmg.
Th6 problem o f representation becomes even more marked in the shift ftom
the three-dimensional reality o f a landscape to the two-dimensional reali^ o f a painting of a landscape (or o f drawings on paper) and Gnally to the one-dimensional
scene of language itself Accordmg to Wittgenstem, the contradiction between figure
and ground is far more unstable m two-dimensional representation than in three-
dhnensions, however much the three-dhnensional situation is also marked by
representation and mterpretatiom The two-dhnensional context brings to light what
Charles Altieri, m an essay on John Ashbery, has called, followmg Wittgenstem, an
“aspectual” reality (Altieri 825). When, for mstance, we look at a two-dimensional
representation o f a cube, the unage's geometric abstraction fi’om reality makes it
possible to attend to the hnage m various ways, as here “a glass cube, there an mverted
open box, there a wire ftame o f that shape, there three boards formmg a solid angle”
{Investigations 193). The “aspectual” nature not simply o f the mage but of the act of
pomtmg to it and seeing ft m the apparent terms accordftig to which one pomts to ft,
reveal that figure and ground fti the ftoage, and foially m the citation, are constantly
shiftnig. We cannot ultmatety decide what is a metaphor or representation o f what. la this way it becomes necessary to submit that these acts o f seeing and pomtmg are mdeed acts* They are volitional and intentional and not snnply neutral descriptions o f objectively self-present phenomena. This is the consequence, for
Wittgenstem, o f establishmg that, to aa mexorahle degree, all seemg is “seemg-as
For mstance, Wittgenstem wonders whether he “realty see[s] somethmg different each time, or do[es]. . . Qie] only interpret what. . . [he] see[s] m a different way”
(Investigations 212). In this way, “seemg an aspect and imagming are subject to the will.” Wittgenstem fitrther illustrates this pomt with a metaphor. “In a law-court, for mstance the question might be ra6ed how someone meant a word. And thK can be inferred from certain fects.—It is a question o f intention. But could how he experienced a word—the word “bank” for instance—have been significant in the same way?” (Investigations 212) In terms o f citation, these remarks imply both a will to cite and a wül o f citation. The will to cite denotes both critics’ needs to illustrate them arguments and receivers’ needs to form the precise aspectual consciousness of the sender. A will o f citation, however, designates the subjective nature of citation itself, whose internal contradiction between figure and ground, as a “chnnera,” as “this queerty shifting construction,” is a producer of aspects (Investigations 196).
Jon Erickson’s discussion ofthe figure-ground relation in The Fate ofthe
Object: from Modem Object to Postmodern Sign in Performance, Art, and Poetry, seconds Wittgenstem’s discussion o f optical illusions and connects the figure-ground relation to metaphor.
* See Altieri, "‘John Ashbery” 826; also see Compagnon, Seconde Main 30-31. 7 A fîgure-ground relation typifies the wotkmgs o f metaphor: the relation o f a fermai similarity between two different takes on reality, each of which can be taken literally or used metaphorically acco rd ^ to which constitutes the figure and which the ground in any context. (8)
This remark, like Wittgenstem’s discussion o f optical metaphors, has the effect o f presentmg citation as the indication o f a figure-ground relation between author’s words and the cited words. Although the common understandmg unplicitly establfehes the cited text as the “vehicle” fer the “tenor” o f the author’s argumentative stance, the relation could just as easily be reversed.^ The secret to making use of citation m a way closer to its true bemg would be “to acknowledge and develop what would be the most productive tension between these thmgs and to stop worrying about overcoming any split; rather, by operating creatively within it, it is already overcome”
(8). The ferce o f Erickson’s move m this section b to show, like that o f Wittgenstem, how it is that the dichotomizmg mherent m metaphor and citation is never a settled issue. This portrait of metaphor and citation of course ^ contrary to the standard way of miagmmg both m which the metaphor and the cited text is subservient to the literal and mam text respectively.
The clash between figure and ground m metaphor, the clash between citing text and cited text in citation, implies the essential paradox o f citation mherent in Antome
Compagnon’s and Claudette Sartiliot’s respectwe mvestigations o f citation. But befere examming these critics, it is crucial to emphasize that, however much intention and wfll are constitutwe features o f citation, this does not mean that metaphor cannot
^ See Jessica Prmz Pecormo's readmg of Pound’s Cantos m which Pound “flatten[sl out” the relations between compositional elements to generate a metonymical network of association in “Resurgent Icons: Pound’s First Pisan Canto and the Vfeual Arts,” Journal o fModkm Literature 92 ( 1982 ): 159 - 174. 8 describe as well as mterpret, that citatfoa cannot illustrate as well as displace.
Perception is not elhnmated by thought, smce “the concept of a representation o f what is seen, like that o f a copy, is very elastic, and so together with it, is the concept of what b seen. The two are mtimately connected. (Which b not to say that they are alike.)”(Investigations 198). This trutà Wfttgensteni also attends to in his examination o f the possible mterpretations o fa geometric representation o f a shape.
Thus, when looking at the geometric representation o f a triangle,
a triangle can realty be standing up m one picture, be hangmg in another, and can in a third be somethmg that has fallen over.—That is, I who am lookmg at it say, not Tt may also be something that has fallen over,’ but ‘That glass has &llen over and is lying there m fragments.’ This is how we react to the picture. (Investigations 201)
It makes little sense to make the former of Wittgenstem’s hypothetical statements—“It may also be somethmg that has fallen over”—which would surety strike the Ifetener as odd, at least as an initial reaction to the hnage. We cannot “take account” o f all the difièrmg aspects o fthe hnage at once, cannot see both the frgure(s) and the groundfs) at the same thne.® This failure becomes the source for the eminently social criteria for what wOI constitute the figure m the hnage, what wOl efiectivety describe the thing it hidicates.
Stephen Melville, hi his provocative essay “Description,” engages this dichotomous problem o f metaphor and citation m the context o f phenomenology.
Drawmg upon the German hermeneutic tradition, particularly the writings of Martin
Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Melvflle reveals the dichotomy mherent hi the aesthetic enterpriæ. Rejectmg the notion that description of pahitmgs is inevitably overwhelmed by the feet o f mterpretation^that “if s mterpretation all the way down”—Melville shows how the contradictory forces o f interpretation and description cannot be reconciled (Seams 49). As regards Gadamer, for instance, Melville argues how “what Gadamer fînalfy o # rs is a way o f workmg through the question of mterpretation to a position feom which mterpretation can be seen not to be self- supportmg but to depend on somethmg like the terms o f our attachment to particular works”(Seams 49). This means that the “challenge” that phenomenology poses for art criticism “b to be located m its suggestion that no theoretical adjudication between the relatwe weights or roles of description and mterpretation is possible, even as neither o f these terms is snnply dfeposable” (Seams 49)7 The same dynamic holds true for the relation between citmg and cited texts. The dififermg roles of citing and cited texts are undecidable, though neither can snnp^ be cast oE
Wittgenstein has prepared the way for this situation m which art seems to be
Jomed with philosophy, art and philosophy as two very difièrent but mutually supporting mechanisms for knowledge and perception. Even in the section of the
Philosophical Investigations yoA discussed, Wittgenstem shows how the contrastmg
mterpretive and descriptive elements o f metaphor are to be understood, as the
distmction between, “workmg drawmgs’^ or “blueprmts,” on the one hand, and
“paintings,”on the other. A similar i ^ e is important m chapter five below as I
® See my readmg of Ashbety^s “The Skater^’ below m chapter four. ^ Melville’s essay is part of a forger work entitled Seams: Art As a Philosophical Context, ed. Jeremy GiIbert*Rolfo (Amsterdam: Arts, 1996) and part of his ongoing project to use the conditions of art as meanmg-makmg forces that provide a path for philosophical reflection. This stucfy extends Melville’s notions about art to mcludeart as a way of understandmg citation, particularly m the sections L devote to John Ashbery’s poetry. Ashbery’s work seems to derive many of its ideas and
10 present the clash between philosophy and poetry as embodymg the antagonisms in
Bemstem’s use o f citation. For now it will sufBce to say that while Ashbery seems content in his own understanding of citation to embrace mterpretation and description as a condition fôr the artwork, Charles Bemstem, on the other hand, engages the opposition between poetry and philosophy.*
Previous Studies o f Citation
Antome Compagnon’s 1979 v/oik. Seconde Main (“second hand”) is the first study to develop the topic o f citation at book length, providmg an historical and stmcturalist approach to the topic, a topic, he is careful to note, that cannot easily be defmed. As Compagnon notes m the &st Imes ofhb study, “Ce livre est sans object, sans objet identifié, car il en a plusieurs” (“This book is without an object o f study, without an identifiable object, because it has many objects.”) (9). Compagnon further offers an extensive history o f citation that he partitions mto three periods: (1) the classical (“la rhétorique ancienne”), (2) the canonical (“le commentante patristique”) and (3) modem (“Tavènement de la citation modeme”) (11).’ Although Compagnon aesthetic principles from the visual arts, especially fiom surrealism and dada and so many of the emergent trends in art since the end ofthe second world war. * It is not entirely clear, however, what Bemstem ffiially makes of this opposition, as in certain of his writmgs he attempts to override the difierences between the two in 6vor ofstressmg writmg as the concealed third term that trumps them both. Doing so would be tantamount to dispensing, in Melville^s terms, of the opposition between poetry and philosophy. In other writmgs, alternatively, Bemstem seems to respect their differences in the manner of a Stanlqr Cavell, an important American philosopher under whom Bemstem studied and about whom I have much to say in chapters three and five. ^Divisions such as these have proven useful for Claudette Sartiliot. See below. * II is careful to note that there can be no easy de&itfoa of citation, the first section of
Seconde Main, “La citatfoa telle qu’eaeile-même” (“citatioa as such”) offers a “pomte de traite” (“pomt o f departure”).
Compagnon relies extensively on C.S. Pence's unique semiotic categories to view citation as a curious hybrid of subject and object (59-65). He notes that we typically do not envision citation mthK way, usually seemg it as an object in itself
“Dans son emploi habituef la citation n'est ni facte du prélèvement ni celui de la
greffe, mais seulement la chose, comme si les manipulations n'etaient pas, comme si
la citation ne supposait pas un passage à facte.” (“In its common use, citation is
neither the act of excMon nor that o f graftmg, but only a thmg, as if it were not
manipulated, as if citation did not necessitate an element of action.”) (30-31). In
examiningmodemÈt and postmodernist uses o f citation, it will be necessary to
understand the ways in which citation takes on a life o f its own, ^ a subject, and not
snnply a deanunated element o f a system with a central plan. And, noted in our look
at Wittgenstem, citation nnplies the wfll o f another who makes use o f it.
Compagnon will further offer a definition ofcitation msphed horn “un
fi>rmaliste russe,” or Mikhail Bakhtin, whose theory o f dîalogrân is a significant
offering m understandmg citation and mtertextuality. Bakhtm (along with Jacques
Derrida) is also a figure upon whom Claudette Sartiliot relies in formulating her own
theory o f citation.^° Agam, Compagnon here stresses the active, subject-centered side
ofcitation as well as its typically object-rekited definition.
See Leonard Dtepeveen, Changing Voices: the Modernist Quoting Poem (Ann Arbor: Lf of Michigan P, 1993), who also makes use o fBakhtinas theory ofdialogism. 12 Prétendre que la citation n’est qu’énoncé répété partie^ d’une réduction dont la linguistique a l’habftude: celle de l’acte de parole, de dénonciation. L’acte de citation est une énonciation smgulîère: une énonciation de répétition ou la répétition d’une énonciation (une énoncmtion répétante), une ré-énonciation ou uned ’enonciation. L’énonciatîon est la force qui s’empare d’un énoncé et qui le répète; c’est pourquoi elle est au p rm c ^ de la citation qu’un formaliste russe dé&Âsait amsi: « u n énoncé à énonciation reproduite». Une « b o n n ^ > définition de la citation, c’est-à-dire une base acceptable, provisoire de travail, sera: m énoncé répété et une énonciation répétante; il ne fout jamais cesser de l’envisager dans cette ambivalence, la collusion, la confiision en elle de l’act^ et du passif; (55-56)
To pretend that citation consùts onty of a repeated statement participates in an oversùnplifîcation that is all too common in linguKtics, which forgets the act o f speech, o f speakmg. The act of citation is a particular sort o f speakmg: a speakmg o f repetition or a repetition o f a moment o f speakmg (a “repeatmg-speakmg”), a re stating or a re-statmg o f statmg. Speakmg is nothmg more than the force that lays hold o fa statement and the force that repeats it; thus a Russfon formalM defined the prmciple ofcitation: ‘‘a statement with a reproduced act o f speakmg.” A workmg définition would be: a repeated statement and a repeatmg statmg; what must not be forgotten here is citation’s ambivalence, its collusion, the confusion m it o f actwe and passive. (55-56)
This definition ofcitation is the most useful ut all o f the scholarship on the topic, as it pertains to poetic uses of citation.^ ^ Most significant m Compagnon’s definition is its presentation o f citation as a paradox or an instance of “ambwalence,” as be puts it.
This definition parallels the dichotomizmg mherent m metaphor.
Both ofthe poets I discuss m this paper mnagme citation m smnilar ways, even if they will surety part company with Compagnon m his dismisswe assessment o f the use ofcitation m modem literature. Despite settmg up a very workable definition o f
' ‘ Diepeveen’s defnMoa of literary quotatioa constitutes, along with Compagnon’s définition of citation, the most useful définition ofthe specific poetic phenomenon [ am discussmg. 13 cftatîon. Compagnon for some reason has trouble understandmg bow to apply it m examinmg the modernist texts o f a Joyce, Pound or Borges (384-386). To be sure, modems suck as these are outside ofCompagnon's focus, a focus that mciudes much older figures like Montaigne. But there is nothmg mherent m Compagnon’s theory of citation that would prevent it from appfying usefully to modem and contemporary literature. As I argue below, Compagnon’s theory ofcitation is a stronger model than the one offered by Claudette Sartiliot to apply to modem literature. Compagnon’s is also a theory that bears strikmg resemblance to the nuanced attention paid to modernist uses o f quotation m Leonard Diepeveen’s groundbreakmg Changing
Voices: The Modernist Quoting Poem. Surprismgfy, however. Compagnon recoils from the forms and uses o f citation exhibited by figures such as Joyce, Pound or
Borges. Thefr use ofcitation Compagnon terms, “la citation capricieuse” (“capricious citation”), and “la citation déviante n’est ni motivée ni nécessaire” (“deviant citation that is neither motivated nor necessary”) (384-385).
But we would do well to take heed of Compagnon’s challenge to modernist literature, gwen the sophistication of his mqufry into citation. However much the citational writmgs I shall discuss m this paper as prhnary texts are treated sympathetically as exemplary citational texts, it must not be forgotten that creative and avant-garde uses o f citation necessarily carry a certam risk within them. The risk mciudes the potentM to generate a mere mverted form o f the very phenomenon one would resist, which would flow from the dûparity between chmg and cited text: a citation or quotation that sits on the page as an mert object without resonatmg with anythmg outside itself 14 la the years separatmg C om p^oa’s study and Sartiliot's^ Fredric Jameson published h6 6mous article, "Post-modernism, Or the Cultural Logic o f Late
Capitalism.” This article provides further useful background on the topic o f citation.
Although Jameson never actual^ exammes citation dkectfy, whether in itself or as the secondary effect o f some other order, Jameson’s catalogue o f the formal features of postmodernism is nevertheless useful m understanding how citation has changed over
tune, especially m his discussion o f parody and pastiche.
The "aesthetic depthlessness” o f postmodernist cultural production is
postmodernism’s constitutive feature, Jameson submits. In discussing the contrast
between van Gogh’s modern^ pamtmg o f peasant shoes and Andy Warhol’s
postmodern^ “Diamond Dust Shoes,” Jameson contends that the Warhol reveals "the
emergence o f a new kmd o f flatness or depthlessness, a new kind o f superGcmlity m
the most literal sense—perhaps the supreme formal feature of all the post-modemisms
to which we wül have occasion to return m a number o f other contexts” (“Post
modernism” 60).
After a brief discourse on the "wanmg o f affect” as the fost theme m h6
mventory o f post-modern effects, Jameson’s next section “The Postmodern and the
Past,” reveals how "pastiche eclipses parody” ("Post-modemÈm.” 64-69). This
"waning o faffect” Jameson déçusses just prior to his section on parody and pastiche
and helps to ftame his presentation of those two mterrelated concepts ("Post
modernism” 61-62). One consequence o f the wanmg of affect is the “end” o f certam
expressivist tendencies m culture, "the end for example of style, m the sense o f the
unique and the personal, the end o f the mdividual brushstroke (as symbolÈed by the 15 emergent prunacy o f mechanical reproduction)” (“Post-modernism” 64). The
“wanmg o f affect” concept goes even fiirther because the mdividual subject enjoys (or laments) “a libération” not snnpfy^ from anxiety but one “from every other kind of feelmg as well, smce there is no longer a selfto do the feeling.”
This “disappearance o fthe mdividual subject,” coupled with “the mcreasmg unavailability o f the personal engenders the well-nigh universal practice today of what may be called pastiche” (“Post-modemfem” 64). Pastiche, for Jameson, is an effect o f postmodern^ cultural production (which itself Jameson links, m a circumstantial way, back to the force o f multinational capitalism). The novel qualities o f pastiche parallel the rise o f postmodernism and replace or “eclipse” parody as a way o f managing the past. Parody, unlike pastiche, is a way of encountering the past that necessarily entails the subjecthood o fthe figure havmg the encounter; pastiche, however, requnres no such antecedent consciousness to do its work. As “modernist styles become post-modernist codes,” parody, with all its norms and standards foils away, “ftid[mg] itself without a vocation.” “UJt has lived and that strange new thmg pastiche slowfy comes to take its place” (“Post-modernism” 65). Jameson elaborates this distmction fiirther.
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation o f a peculiar mask, speech m a dead language: but it is a neutral practice o f such niimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated o f the satfric nnpulse, devoid o f laughter and o f any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy Imguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs.. . . (“Post-modemÊm” 65)
1 6 Jameson then integrates this distioction between parody and pastiche mto a larger, more hütorical critique in which the newer dkpensation, pastiche, is thoroughly ahistoricai, however much pastiche seems to feed o£T of history.
For the purposes o f this dissertation, there is no need to go mto more detail about this discussion o f Jameson’^s, which is sim ilar to one seen, m any case, m
Claudette Sartiliot’s theory of citation. The only difference there is that Sartiliot would champion pastiche or, to use her own words, the “intertext” for the same reasons Jameson laments it (e.g. Sartiliot 103). But Jameson’s distmction will be usefiil in various ways throughout this study, because differences along these Imes do tend to appear between the modems and the postmodems. As Jameson might argue, with Eliot’s and Pound’s respective citational writmgs, the hand of the artfet, his
“mdividual brushstroke” is plamfy evident, especial^ m the case of Eliot in whose
“The Wasteland” the “satiric inpulse” is felt deeply.'^ Alternatively, Ashbery and
Bemstem would be the avatars of pastiche, randomly assemblmg tidbits o f mherited language and d^ourse m hopes of offermg up pleasmg aesthetic patterns. This representation of the postmodem might seem to be particular^ tme, at least at first blush, with Ashbery whose relationship to modem and postmodem art is so close and who, unlike Bemstem, espouses no discemable political stance, at least through his writmgs. But a look at both these poets surely reveals them as hybrids, as contammg elements of both parody and pastiche, ^even the postmodems make use o f the latter more than the modems would.
See MaijbriePerIofl^“NonnaIizihgAshbeiy,” home page, 15 June2001
Modernity: “The definition o f quotation derived ftom classical rhetoric no longer pertains to the role o f quotation ui modernist texts” (3). Jameson makes the same claim about parody and pastiche, as the latter would “eclipse” the former, but Sartiliot would praise pastiche or, to use her words, the “intertext” for the same reasons
Jameson challenges pastiche and postmodernism.
Extendmg Compagnon’s analysis, Sartiliot mamly wishes to ofier a detailed
account of modernist uses o f citation, since Compagnon's work offers a generalist
hâtory o f citation up to, but not truly includmg, modernist citation. In addition, she
seeks to separate herself fiom Compagnon in other ways, by affommg, probably too
indiscrhninately, the vhtues o f modernist citation, where Compagnon had labeled
modemkt uses ofcitation “capricieuse.” If Compagnon's dkmissal of modernist
citation seems unmoderate, he does nevertheless stress, m hb work, the formal and
aesthetic capacity o f citation m his dichotomous defoiMon of citation, mcludmg the
citation itself and the act o f citing. SartilioCs work is useful as a means of
understandmg awing o f modernist citation, what one might call the post-structuraiKt
understandmg o f citation, smce m the mam, hers is a book on Derrida. Also, Citation
and Modernity, while it ostenswety focuses on literature (Joyce, Brecht) as well as
philosophy, is finalty philosophical m its basic outlook, rather than literary or
aesthetic. The unfortunate consequence of her book for the purposes of this study,
however, is that Citation and Modernity is overrun by theory and philosophy, theory 18 and philosophy that tend to overwhelm the discussion o f the more overtfy literary figures o f Joyce and Brecht, who function merely as exemple m her analysis. In part, this study hopes to remedy this relative lack o f attention to literary and particularly poetic uses o f citation.
Nevertheless, Sartüiot's work is highly efifectwe on certain fi-onts. For one,
Sartiliot stresses the importance o f the shift fiom Renaissance modes o f citation to modernist ones. Relymg somewhat on André Topia’s remarks on the citationality o f
Joyce^s use o f mterior monologue mUlysses, Sartiliot notes that
till the end o f nineteenth century, or at least till Flaubert—who appears as a transitional figure—writers could borrow fieely fiom the traditions, add to the existmg canon, or struggle whh the tradition to mscribe their names whhm hs boundaries, whereas, for modernist and postmodern^ writers, quotation represents a de&ite break with the tradition as well as a means ofquestioning the nature of the literary text. (3)
Sartiliot betrays an evident tendency, in this passage, to celebrate historical ruptures m the modem and postmodern use of citation, without her remarkmg the hnportant sense in which, for Anglo-American modernist poets like Pound and Eliot, citation and quotation were means o f returning to history.^^ But Sartiliot is surely right to notice a change m the modem period m the textual treatment o f other sources. Leonard
Diepeveen makes a snnOar move when, fiom a more literary standpoint, he pomts out how Eliot, Pound, Moore and cummmgs offir us a snnilar moment of transition between the use of Ifteraiy allusion to the use o f citation and dfiect quotation m literary and poetic works.
^ See Stephen Melvflle^s discussion o f Stanly CavelL's take on modernism m P hihw phy Beside Itself: On Deconstruction and Modernism (Mhmeapolk: U of Mnmesota P, 1986) 3-33. Also
19 Also, Sartiliot’s text points out the crucial historical deftiMoa of quotation, the fimctfon o f which is either for illustratioa or ornamentation, and m particular the
“paradoxical” nature o f this de&ition.
The classical defiiitioa and theory o fquotation reflects the paradoxical nature and practices of chation, which writers turned to th er advantage through play and sunulation. Accordmg to classical rhetoric, the functions of quotation are either illustration or ornament. (4)
I will return to a smiilar dichotomy throughout this study, a dichotomy that is nevertheless closer to Wittgenstem and Compagnon (and Diepeveen), to show how various poets respond to it. My view o f this dichotomy differs in important ways flom
Sartiliot’s as the openmg paragraphs of this chapter suggest, but Sartiliot here comes closest, m my view, to hittmg up the basic citational dynamic. Unlike Sartiliot, however, I cannot accept that thü “ctassical” de&iition of citation is substantially less with us today in our modernity, than it was m the past, however much the outward mdications o f poetic writing and its use o f reference have changed markedly over recent generations. As a result, this dissertation wül take issue with Sartiliot’s novel thesis that “a traditional de&ntion o f quotation derived flom classical rhetoric no longer pertams to the role of quotation in modernist texts” (3). Her “call for a new defontion and theory of citation” seems sensible, gwenthe great difference between traditional and modernist uses o f citation (3). But m the process her work seems positioned too fiercely against the fllustrative possibflities of citation to the pomt that her affomation of mtertextuality is, m. the end, a deep affeont both to mtentionality and textual concreteness, even o f the foreshortened modem and postmodern varieties. see Rosalind Krauss, “Re-presentihg Picasso,” An in America, December 1980:91-96, discussmg the 20 In addition, Sartiliot seems to forget one side o fthe paradox o f modemûm, that while modernism shows our break with history it also offers us a return to hktory as the ground for the break with it/'*^ To be sure, Sartiliot notes m passmg that history b a resource to which writers must return, but thn admission goes agamst the gram of her thesis that the “classical" de&iition of citation must be thrown out. At its worst,
Sartiliot's attitude implies an mordmate (and ironic) fohh m hktorical progress, because the writers o f today she champions have allegedly avoided the “violence” of the oedipal scramble for authority that plagued pre-modem writers by mstitutmg a
utopia o f post-structuralist hee play and indetermmacy. This is especially so as she
foils to note the usefulness to modem and postmodem writers of Compagnon’s
defoiition o f citation. Sartiliot relies too much on the foce value of Compagnons
work and honically engages m precisety the sort o f citational violence that she uses to
condemn less “enlightened” historical figures bent on establishing their own authority.
But Sartiliot's study is clearly a valuable early step forward m understandmg how the
issue o f citation plays itself out m modernity.
same issue of history &r modernism with regard to the visual arts. " See MelvQIe, Philosophy 3-33. 21 Previous Scholarship oa Literary Uses o f Citation
Until Leonard Diepeveen^s Charting Voices, there was not, unfortunate^, much material available discussmg literary uses o f citation. Hugh Kenner's work: on
Ezra Pound and Louis ZukoÈky marked perhaps the first mstance of someone usmg terms such as “quotation” and “citation” to imagine a poetic.*^ Maqorie PerloK a critic who follows m Hugh Kenner's footsteps m ths respect, has made some provocative comments on one o f the figures I plan to discuss below: John Ashbery.
She has used Fredric Jameson's valuable distmction between parody and pastiche to show how Ashbery has practiced the “neutral nmnicry” o f pastiche m hfe poetry that is m sharp contrast to the forms o f citation employed m T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.”
In the consciousness o f the postmodern poet, fragments o f earlier poetry float to the surface, not to be satfrized as in, say, Eliot's work, or to make the past contemporaneous with the present as m Pound, but as the “blank parody” Fredric Jameson has defoed as pastiche, which is to say, the neutral nmnicry that takes place when there is no longer a norm to satfrkze orparodize. (Poetic License 282)'®
Perloff argues that, unlike Ashbery's use o f voice, Eliot's use o f voice in “The
Wasteland” is relatively consistent, whereas m Ashbery's most challenging work, the voices are ever-shiftmg (“Normalizmg”). I employ and extend Perloflf s way o f approachmg Eliot and Ashbery m the relevant sections below .A nd, recently, m an
See, eg., H u ^ Kenner, life PoHiKf£ra (Berkeley: U o fCalifornia P, 1971) 126(“So writmg is largely quotation, quotation newly energized. . . . ”) and introduction. Prepositions: The Collected EsscQfs o fLouis Z iko fify ,b yL o u ^Z x iko ù i:y,ed ^H 'a ^ Kenner (Berkelqc U of California P, 1967) ix. Also see Perlofif “Normalizing.’' Charles Bernstein, whom I discuss in this dissertation’s tiiird and fifth chapters, also started to examme th« topic in poetry during the eighties (at about the same tune as Perloff), although here [ use Bemstem as a primary text 22 essay dealmg explicitly with poetry entitled, “Gathered, Not Made: A Brief History of
Appropriative Writmg,” Raphael Rubmstem cites Perloff and lists both Ashbery and
Bernstein, among several others, as exemplars o f appropriative writmg (31-34).
Diepeveea’s work on uses o f quotation m American modemüt poetry marks a pivotal moment m the study o f literary uses o f citation and is easily the most significant work on the topic. But before I present the ultbnate significance of bis study, and its basic quality, it would do well here to define some key terms. As his title indicates, Diepeveen's emphasis is on the role o îquotation in modernist poetry rather than on citation. This is so because Diepeveen b at pams to distmguish literary uses o f allusion fiom those o f quotation.
This book. . . begms whh a simple premie: quotations are different fiom allusions The mdnection o f .. . allusion, its implied status, k its definmg and most usefiil characteristic. Not for nothmg can an allusion, wfth differmg degrees of precision, refer to many thmgs (not Just texts), for mexacfitude lies at its center. Quotation, on the other hand, is specffîc: the exact transferring o f a text into another, new text. In thk trzmsfer quotation duplicates the context and texture o f another work and consequent^ heightens the disruption that more general borrowmgs brmg into a text [Qn its exactness lies the quotation's power. The exactness o f the quotation introduces into the quoting poem a disruption that radicalty changes the structure of the poem, (vm)
This distmction between allusion and quotation that Diepeveen makes m this passage is essential and, I would argue, deepty formative o f our modernity.
Before outlming m greater detail the aims and clanns of Diepeveen's work, however, there are some semantic concerns. Diepeveen is against usmg the term
“citation” to describe the modernist use o f reference, because he sees citation as a general rubric mcludmg, among other terms, those such as “mtertextuality’ and
23 “allusion.” As a result, the term “citation” is for Diepeveen not specific enough to acknowledge the modernist revolution m reference that the term ’’quotation” ofi^rs.
On the other hand, Claudette Sartiliot will present citation as the term embodymg the very revolutionary qualities that Diepeveen attributes to quotation.
Even more honically, Sartiliot offers up citation as the “eclipse” o f quotation, the latter o f which she sees as an older, less mtrigumg form. Which term, quotation or citation, fe the revolutionary term? The elegance and clarity ofDiepeveen’s claims for quotation over agamst allusion notwithstandmg, 1 side m this study with Sartiliot (and
Compagnon) m presenting citation as the unportant, historically innovative term, if only because there is far more mteHectual treatment afforded citation than quotation.
Alternatively, “quotation” as a term describmg the more salient aspects o f Ashbery’s and Bemstem’s respective forms o f reference, seems too specific to be especially valuable, especially because, however much citation offers mdnection, the term nevertheless accurate^ describes the diverse and concrete textual referencing at work in Ashbery and Bemstem. Quotation is only one o f several forms o f reference of which these writers may make use to generate the textual disruptions Diepeveen attributes on^ to quotation. Likewise, Ashbery and Bemstem do tend to abjure literary allusion m fevor o f more specific forms o f textual and non-textuai reference.
As a result, Sartiliot’s and Compagnon’s opposition between illustration and déplacement seems to cover more ground for the objects of this study, even m the
literary uses o f the highly specific and express forms o f reference 1 am discussmg
here.
24 Dîepeveen’s study of modernist uses o f citation, however, is a highly significant work that helps to establish clear ways of understanding postmodern uses of citation in poetry. Diepeveen. offers not simply an opposition between allusion and quotation but rather a “contmuum” that presents each term at opposite ends. The more dhect and concrete the form o f reference in a poem, the more it approaches the condition o f quotation and likewise the mnovatwe and modem use o f reference.
Allusions are more conceptual, paraphrasable and more easily assimilated into the
flow o fthe alludmg text. Further, allusions can pomt not only to other texts but also to historical events and actual people, fiirther underscormg its indefiniteness.
‘^Allusion is a very general term. Because it has historical^ emphasized conceptual
paraphrase, allusion can include both textual and nontextual references” (8). On the
other hand, quotation is ruthlessly specific and essentmlly textuaL When a poet makes
use o f a quotation in a poem, worlds outside the text are only hnplied, never actually
mdicated. “When a work o f art quotes, the emphasis upon a 'paraphrasable,'
nontextual world fedes” and “the quotation's material texture begms to assert itselT
(16). Thfe opposition of Diepeveen's is parallel to the opposition I set up between a
citation's capacity to displace the citmg text and to illustrate it. As with Diepeveen, I
also see a spectrum m citation between these two poles. The more illustratwe a
citation is, the more subservient it is to the citmg text and the less jarrmg the juxtaposition between the two texts. Alternative^, the more the citation displaces the
surroundmg text, the less iHustrathre it is, the more mdependent status it acquires.
25 As we shall see, both Ashbery and Bemstem seem to acknowledge as mherent in usmg a citation the relative concreteness of the citation and its potential to displace the surroundmg text. Both poets manage hirther to produce texts that occasionally look remarkabty smiilar to one another, if we are to place such Ashbery poems as
‘‘America” and other of the more disjunctive and syntactically complex poems m his
The Tennis Court Oath side by side with several o f the poems in Bemstem’s The
Sophist. Nevertheless, the two poets manage to go off m very different dhections, as I pomt out below.
A Brief Overview o f the Remammg Chapters
The five chapters below cover, first, the citational background o f each poet discussed here. I mclude one background chapter on Ashbery, and one on Bemstem.
The background chapter on Ashbery makes much use o f Ashbery’s longstandmg preoccupation with surrealism and the avant-garde visual arts. Ashbery’s interest in surrealism, particular^ with its emphasis on jarrmg juxtaposition o f mcompatible objects, is a fittmg way of understandmg the citational quality of hm poems.
Bernstein, on the other hand, seems to derive his interest m citationali^ less fiom the vKual arts and more fiom philosophy, particularly the philosophy o f Stanley
Cavell and modem contmental philosophy. Bemstem’s citationality, as seen through his interest in philosophy, is revealed in his criticism and essays. Bemstem’s
Content’s Dream, m particular, shows this commhment m h6 early, serml essays and 26 m bis explicit discussions o f citation as he sees it m the work o f other writers. In these situations^ Bernstein presents citation as contammg two material components—
“sighting” and “soundmg”—that serve as mdicators for him when citational issues are at stake. In the end, Bemstem is more extreme than Ashbery about the role of citation
in poetry, in his utopian attempt to maxunize use of the displacing capacities of
citation.
I fiirther devote two chapters, again one to each poet, showing how each poet’s
citationality works m practice. With. Ashbery, I discuss his early poetry, mcludmg
Some Trees, The Tennis Court Oath, and Rivers and Mountains, I do this both to
show yet another way in which Ashbery's chationality reveals itself and, more
hnportantly, how Ashbery’s focationon poetic form reveals the multi-vocal nature of
his poetry.
A clear-cut extension o f his mterest m philosophy, Bemstem’s citational
practice is revealed m his collection o fpoems, entitled The Sophist and dKcussed in
chapter Gve. In this work, Bemstem o% rs the figure of the sophist, an alternative
philosopher, as emblematic o f his citationality. Unlike the philosopher, the sophist
does not believe in absolutes and must rely on already emergent discourse to achieve
knowledge and wWom. Bemstem’s sophist, however, is a for more extreme figure
than that hnagmed by Plato; for Bernstein’s figure mhabits a world m which nothmg is
origmal and aU that one can do is to regurgitate the already wrftten in ways that ideally
provoke the reader to new understandmgs.
27 In my S K th and concludmg chapter, I take a historical turn by presentmg
Ashbery and Bemstem as each embodying two competmg strains of postmodem^m, one connected with avant-garde art, the other with post-structurafet theory, h i this bifurcation, Ashbery represents the avant-garde moment and Bemstem the post- stmcturalist.^^ Smce citational poetics seem to arise m part horn cubkm and the collage art o f the early twentieth century, the tum to language mherent m such a move can provoke different forms o fcitationality dependmg on one’s view o f language.
A perplexing paradox that surfoces in th6 dissertation is that, however much the presence o f quotations or citations have the effect o f underscormg the texture or materiality o f the cited discourse, focusmg ihordmately on the materiality o f such citation, as Bemstem does, oddly tends to dematerialize rather than severely concretize the overall writmg. Hence the hypostatmng and theorÉmg that exists alongside Bemstem’s commitment to the materiality o f the signifier. By contrast,
Ashbery resists the apparent need for such abstraction by taking an attitude derived
fiom avant-garde art. In this respect, Ashbery is more mclined to mcorporate into his
writmg elements o f found dûcourse that have no concern with Bemstem’s ruthless
commitment to the non-instrumental dhnensfon o f language. To be sure, there are
several important Bemstem texts that militate agamst this tendency, and some o fthe
poems m Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath tend, as with Bemstem, likewise to make
a fotBh o f non-mstrumental language. But the general, opposing trends m the two
** See Marjorie PerioK “Postmodemism/Fm de siècle: The Prospects for Openness m a Decade ofQosure.” Home Page: II June200l.
Why is it that so many contemporary poets make use of found language m their poems? The ultimate answers are beyond this study, but one would do well to note a constellation o f foctors, some o f which are suggested in Jameson’s essay on post-modernism. Our consumer-driven economy seems pivotal in creatmg the possibilities for a citational poetics. Once the economy shifts horn one oriented toward production to one oriented toward consumption, romantic terms like
“origmality” and “creativity” fede mto the background.'^ The power o f modem advertising and public relations is yet another factor. To the extent that both o f these forces tend to strip the ability o f mdividuals to speak m their own voices, a citational poetics becomes mcreasmgly possible, because such voices are mcreasmgly overrun by the slogans o f consumerism. Finally, electronic media seem to have contributed, m the sense that cable television and computers tend to emphasize disjunction.
Economic and cultural global6m would further seem to be significant m this respect, as dbharmonious voices fiom other cultures intermmgle with those o f native cultures.
[ leave it to others to explore fiirther the cultural and historical bases for tfiis rampant poetic phenomenon. But at the very least, a fow general prmciples should be clear. First, however much it may be true that hêtorical forces contribute to citational
See Erickson,The Fate o f the Object: From Modernist Object to Postmodernist Sign in Performance, Art and Poetry (Ann Arbor: U of Mlchtgan P, 1995) 26-29. 29 poetries, there is an important sense m which citational writing remains outside of history and culture. As Bemsteui and Compagnon nnply, citationality is a feature o f all speaking, a problem Plato faced m his dWogue entitled Sophist, Second, contrary to popular stereotypes, poetry does not remam. rnimune horn historical contmgency, as both Ashbery and Bernstein are at all eager to demonstrate.
30 CHAPTER 2
UT PICTURA POEISIS^: JOHN ASHBERY’S ART OF CITATION
“You have to tread a narrow path between two thmgs.”
—Ashbery^
Ashbery’s entire oeuvre reveals a dfetmct mvestment in appropriatmg mherited language for poetic purposes. Such poetic purposes, however, are largely driven by
Ashbery’s long-term interest m the avant-garde visual arts, especially those, like dada and surrealism, that run counter to the high modernist attitude of seriousness and purity m art and literature. By the tm e Ashbery had begun writing in the late forties, the tendency of European art to purge itself of elements foreign to its own material nature had shown signs o f weakening. Clement Greenberg’s fomous essays on abstract expressionism notwfthstandmg/ dada and surrealism had offered new aesthetic alternatives to the general movement toward abstraction m modernist pamtmg.^
' The phrase, from Horace^s “Ars Poetica,” translates: whh the painter’s work, so with the poet’s” (Lehman 99). ’ John Ashbery,‘‘An Interview with John Ashbery,” By John Tranter, ycrç7sf4.1 (1986): 99. ^ See Clement Greenberg “Avant-C^de and Kitsch,” Collected Essa^ and Criticism^ John O’Brian, ed., vol. I (Chicago: tJ of Chicago P, 1986) 5-22. 31 At base, Ashbery details the great extent to which mherited language helps to form human consciousness. Because dada and surrealûm had ceased to be genumeiy new by the time Ashbery began writing, Ashbery was in a position to take their core prmciples as givens and use them for his own purposes. In the minds o f alert writers and a rt^ s m the Euro-American landscape, avant-garde art movements like dada and
surrealism had become traditions themselves. Either such trends had become
mtegrated into one’s assumptions about the world or they had become a primary
source for the aesthetic debates o f the day. As a result, it became possible to locate the
hybridity o f dada and surrealism m the unconscious, so much had times changed since
the days o f high modernism a generation before.
In America, however, matters were different, particularly for poets who, unless
they knew some Pound (and knew some French) were largely left outside of the avant-
garde. Painters, on the other hand, especially m New York City, the dawnmg capital
o f the art world, were drawmg upon these European trends and creating an art, whose
fulfillment m minimalism and pop art, would soon set the standard for the world.
Ashbery, along with his ftiend Frank O’Hara, poet and a curator o f New York’s
Museum o f Modem Art, was livmg and writmg m New York in the early fifties, the
heyday o f abstract expressionism. Quite naturally, Ashbery and O’Hara found
themselves on the brmk of a revolution m art, one m which an aesthetic runnmg
counter to modernism, empbasÊmg the mevitable contamination o fart with its foreign
* See Anna Ba\d!àwi,Surrealîsm:TheRoadto rteyt&softrfe(New York: The Noonday Press, 1959) 147. But also consider that Ashbery did manage to retain, to some extent, the high modernist trust m the materials ofthe medium o f poetry. See below: 32 other, would be developed to generate new forms. For Ashbery, the point o f such development was to understand how human consciousness was contammated and driven by already emergent discourse.
But Ashbery's precise stake m repeatmg the words o f others for poetic purposes is difhcult to discern. Ashbery is a for more eluswe figure Bemstem, leaving the student of his work wfth fow dôrect statements o f poetics by which to evaluate his writing. On the other hand, thfo general lack o f programmatic content m Ashbery’s corpus may actually be to the benefit of Ashbery’s output and may cast him as a more desirable citational poet. Ashbery’s success m this respect woud be so because citational poetics are most effective when selficonfiicted, when the balance between
Compagnons l ’énoncé répété and renonciation répétant is m. productive tension, when aesthetic material is as salient as meanmg. It fo to Ashbery’s credit that this balance rarely becomes especially precarious, topplmg, on the one hand, mto
Journalism, where the wordness ofthe words does not matter and, on the other, mto
Bemstem’s radically non-mstrumental writing that often reaches the same result of dematerialkmg the medium.^ So, it may be in Ashbery where the ethic o f citational poetry is better embodied.
Nevertheless, Ashbery has gwen some revealmg interviews and has written some valuable art criticism as a journalist for such publications asArt News, Art in
America and even Life and Newsweek^ The art critici^ offers a more direct
* See chapter three below. * See John Ashbery, Reported Sightings, ed. David Bergman (New York: KnopÇ 1989) which collects this art criticism. 33 way of entry into Ashbery’s aesthetic world and displays the great extent to which his cftational writing is driven by analogy between avant-garde pamtmg and his own writmg.
Ashbery’s Background
Ashbery began to write in the late forties. After graduating from Harvard, he settled m New York, jommg his college friend Frank O’Hara and begmnmg work on an M j\. m English at Columbia. While m New York, Ashbery remembered that
“there was little expernnental writmg occurrmg m America at the tune,” even m New
York{Reported Sightings 390). As a result, one mterested in poetic experimentation could not help but to gravitate toward the mnovative painters m the city who were busy making New York the center ofthe art world it would soon become. As Ashbery was to put it, “American pamtmg seemed the most excitmg art around. American poetry was very traditional at that tune, and there was no modem poetry in the sense that there was modem pamtmg. So one got one’s mspfration and ideas from watchmg the expernnents o f others” (qtd. m Kostelanetz 20).
Th6 was the age o f abstract expressioni^ an art movement that helped
Ashbery formulate his ideas about poetry and writmg. But, in the end, Ashbery was, at least mtpiicitfy, to decide that abstract expressionism was more an offrhoot oftwo o f the more significant art movements ofthe century—dada and surrealism, especially the latter (Bergman xiv). On surrealism, Ashbery was to devote much thmkmg and 34 writmg over the next three to four decades, and the writmgs lead the reader to understand why it is that Ashbery cares so about the juxtaposition of diverse fragments o f discourse/
Abstract expressionsun inspired Ashbery to consider two features of art that would play significant roles m fermulatmg his poetics. One of these features could be traced back to dada, the other to surrealism. On the one hand, Ashbery dwelled on the significance of abstract expression^ pamtmgs by Pollock and de Kooning and found in them somethmg they held in common with surrealism—what he was later to call
“automatism.” Such automatism in abstract expressionism mvolved the drip-work of
Pollock, which led to non-figurative canvases openly displaying the basic materials of the medium. The technique and attftude of abstract expressionism also had the paradoxical effect o f erasmg the hand o f the artist from the work and remstatmg it with the explicit evidence ofthe artist as actor.* This peculiar sort of self-effacement m abstract expressionism was attractwe to Ashbery, who abjured the more smiplistic conceits o f romantic subjectivity that stressed the value o f expressmg the artist’s kmer, psychological nature.
The sort o f psychology that was at least partMy acceptable to Ashbery was rather the psychological orientation of surrealism Surrealists, m them debt to Freud, were interested m letting unconscious processes de&e the content and style o f the pamtmg. But surreal^ canvases were mam^ figurative, rather than abstract, even if
^ See Balakian,Surrealism 134. * In the viords of Elarold Rosenberg, abstract expressionism was deemed “actioa pamtmg.” See “The American Action Pamters,” The Tradition o fthe New (New York: fforHon, 1959) 23-39. 35 that meant placing diverse objects in odd juxtaposition.^ In the end, however, Ashbery was to reject automatism, because he decided that automatism placed too great an emphasis on the workmgs o f the unconscious mind. This is certamly not to say that
Ashbery at all abjured the unconscious or its potential role m creating art; for Ashbery eventually came to favor an art that combined both conscious generated and unconscious generated elements. Such would ultmiately offer both a more complete model o f consciousness itself and a better art,'”
The interplay between consciousness and unconsciousness became, on the surfoce at least, a method for Ashbery to compose. In producing text, he self consciously embraced artifice as an ironic means o f lettmg his unconscious take over the composition. At least m the beginning, Ashbery would consciously rework his texts later after the mitial “unconscious” writmg. Ultimately, however, Ashbery was,
m hk own words, “trammg” himself to mediate between the two simultaneously, so that by the late sbcties he felt he didnT have to revke his writmg very frequently
(“Craft Interview” 115),
But thk dichotomy o f conscious artifice and unconscious mmd was to become
even more significant for Ashbery^s writmg and would form the ground agamst which
the poet’s citationality becomes thmkable. For modernists like Pound and Eliot, the
unconscious mmd was collectwe, contammg the wkdom o f the great thinkers and
artists of human history, wisdom that was becommg undone through the ever-
^ As Lautréamont had put itr “Beautifiil like the fertuitous meeting on a dissectmg table, of a typewriter and umbrella (qtd, m Balakian 154), In the surrealist art Ashbery admired particularly that ofde ChMco—rather than that of Dali, Magritte or Miro—Ashbery noted that the mterplay between conscious and unconscious was what made the paintings succeed. See below, 36 mcreasmg ratîonalizatîoa of society/ ^ Only through a strenuous effort to reform a shattered chnlization, by collecting the significant cultural elements ofthe past, could somethmg like the ideal mind be re-foshioned/^ This remained true even as Pound departed &om Eliot's aesthetic system m “The Wasteland” by stressmg the tension between citational fragments, not just the fragments themselves articulated in common.
For Ashbery, on the other hand, the unconscious mmd K distmctly difforent.
First, the unconscious mmd, while it nevertheless remains collective rather than individual, has lost its status as the privileged site o f culture that it had possessed m the work o f Eliot and Pound. Second, the unconscious, while retaming an hûtorical orientation to it, takes history less seriously and aestheticizes it. Third, historical forces such as the rûe of popular culture and mass society, the same forces that had contributed to the fiagmentation Pound and Eliot lamented, were eroding tradition and replacing it with multiple traditions.'* Miany o f these traditions would mevitably &id them way into the unconscious o f an mdividual who became mcreasmgly unable to keep such muhÿlici^ at arm’s length. As a result, there was no longer any question o f resisting the historical forces o f fragmentation m any heroic, large-scale way, as
See, eg.. Max Weber, Front Mar Weber^ trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford UP, 1958) 240-243. This is the evident purpose of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wastfand.” See Collected Poems:1909- 1962 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970) 51-76. See generally Jessica Prihz Pecoriho, “Resurgent icons.” Ses gmenHy AadKasHaÿssen, After the Great Divie&: Modemismy Mass Culttav, Postmodernism (Bloommgtoo: U oflndiana P, 1985). 37 Eliot and Pound sensed they could. By the tone o f Ashbery’s poetic flowermg ui the sbcties, the modemizmg currents o f culture were so strong that one could respond to them only with dhnmished expectations.
The unconscious m Ashbery is filled with a cacophony o f voices o f all kmds that are always ready to come out. “I am constantly usmg different voices without bemg aware o f it, o f different people who seem to be talkmg in these poems without bothermg to indicate to the reader where one stops and another one starts up again because I’m mterested m a kmd of po^honic quali^ that attracts me m music”
(Munn, “Interview” 61). Voices like these do not suggest that they are elements o fa unified personality, at least m the traditional sense; mdeed, the personality is reconfigured as multiple. As Ashbery wondered, m a speech on the avant-garde in the late sbcties, “has tradition finally managed to absorb the mdividual talent?’, paraphrasmg the title of Eliot’s essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talenf ’ {Reported
Sightings 390).*^ Inherited language has collapsed the cultural distmction between itselfand the rational mmd and has reversed the standard terms under which consciousness operates. Now, more than ever before, all that is considered rational will operate in terms ofthe already spoken.'^
^ See T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent, The Sacred Wood: Esst^s on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen Sc Co., 1967) 47-59. This is at least one sense hi which Platonic metaphysics is, as Marx might have put it, stood on its head. For now, pre6bricated representationsstructureour understanding of this truth. This state of a# irs fiiretells Bernstein's later commitment to the sophkt as the one who uses received opinions or conventional wisdom as the primary source for knowledge and mquny. See Chapter five below.
38 Surrealism was useful for yet another aspect o f Ashbery’s poetics o f appropriation: the practice o f jarring Juxtaposition. Had Ashbery refiised to embrace this side o f surrealism, his commitment to the unconscious might have led him to make a fetish o f the irrational, might have turned him mto something o f a beat poet.
But because Ashbery was an able critic o fsurrea&m, he was not snnply overwhelmed by its emphasis on the unconscious. Ashbery had sharply criticized one o f surrealKm’s literary (rather than pamterfy) techniques, that o f “automatic writing.” In the fece o f his unwavering commitment to record the movement o fconsciousness, a movement that is always driven by unconscious forces,Ashbery also remained enamored o f artifice, which prevented ban fiom imagmmg the unconscious as in some fundamental way more truthful than the conscious mmd.
On the other hand, the practice o f automatic writmg abjured artifice m fevor of letting the unconscious rule composition. But for Ashbery this commitment was disingenuous, smce the writerly and plastic means o f representation common to literature and art, remamed essential to theif respectwe natures. This was one attitude derwed fiom modernism that Ashbery never completely abandoned, however much
Ashbery was willing to embrace another dfeciplme—the avant-garde visual arts—as a necessary adjunct o f his own poetic writmg. in the end, art m general would serve as the ultimate baseline for Ashbery’^s writmgs.
“rm mterested m the movement of the mmd, how it goes ftom one place to the other. The places themselves don’t matter that much; ifs the movement that doef’ (Munn ‘interview” 62). 39 One could not, in Ashbety^s view, simply cast aside artifice in Êvor o f the
play o f the hnagmation. This critique of surrealism led Ashbety to gravitate more
toward the significant surrealist pamtem rather than writers, particularly to de Chirico.
Significant most of all m Ashbery*s embrace o f surrealism are both the elements o f
unconscious play as well as the conscious and artificial gestures of appropriation and juxtaposition surrealist pamtmg entailed. “[Tjhe complexity o f form mvolves makmg
so many conscious decisions that one’s unconscious is kind of left fi:ee to go ahead
and proceed with the poem” (Munn “Interview” 62). These commitments go a long
way toward formmg the background for Ashbery’s stake in poetic appropriations.
Ashbery also noted points o f convergence between abstract expressionsnn and
dada that would be crucial for understandmg his citationality. Ashbury’s explicit
interest m the dadaesque nature o f abstract expressionism concerned the sense
common to both m which art is at once a gamble and a game. These ideas he pursued
m the 1968 lecture “The InvBible Avant-Garde” in which Ashbery staked out a theory
o f art that would strive to be mdependent o f the “acceptance-world” commonly
associated with the avant-garde, in its never ending hunger for the novel. Ashbery’s
new theory involved the artist’s takmg risks with writmg, foshionmg poems that
defeated one’s expectations o f poetry, but which nevertheless mamtamed discernible
links both with expectation and the past. Pollock and de Koonmg’s genius, for
Ashbery, lay m then ability to generate this “mdependent” art, that was at the same
tine both new and not-new. “The Midas-like position into which our present
acceptance-world forces the avant-garde is actualty a disguised blessing which
previous artKts have not been able to enjoy, because it points the way out of the 40 predicament it sets up—that k» toward aa attitude which neither accepts nor rejects acceptance but is mdependent of i^ (Reported Sightings 394). By eliminating one’s mvestment m the cycle o facceptance or rejection, an artist or poet
could generate work that would be new m a more fundamental sense than that
commonly integrated mto the “acceptance” mania of the New York art world.
But, m an even more direct way was Ashbery mdebted to dada. As does
surrealism, dada likewise exhibits the spmt o f appropriation. Unlike surrealism,
however, it does so without at all emphasizmg the vagaries o f the unconscious. This
decidedly non-psychological orientation m dada helps one understand the signihcance
o f Ashbery’s specffic use ofappropriation and his general view and use ofartifice.
Further, while dada does display aa mvestment m juxtaposition, as some of
Duchamp’s 6mous canvases do, more hnportant is dada’s stress on the tension
between the appropriated obj'ect and the object’s new context, not simply on the act of
appropriation and subsequent juxtaposition. Duchamp’s upside down urmal, signed
“R. Mutt” and then placed man art museum, is an obvious example.
But the general context o f poetry enables Ashbery to serve up knowledge and
strategy he derwed &om avant-garde pamtmg m specific and the visual arts m general.
This twin drive to appropriate and recontextualize has enabled Ashbety’s poetry to
think itself in terms both o fits medium and the mevitable impurity o f that medium.
Ashbery’s citationality then becomes not only an mvestigatioa mto the ways m which
consciousness is shaped by mherited language but also the sense m which citationality
necessarily mvolves art, a sense that Ashbery has been able to explore m the literary
mode o f poetry. 41 Such, is the way m which. Ashbery^s chatfooaL commitment turns away &om the standard rhetorical use o fchatioa as ülustratiou or ornamentation. la Ashbery, citation becomes fundamental to expression and a way o f remarking the lack of equivalence between proper and cited text, as well as a way o f dismantling the commonplace distinction between proper and cited text. The multiple frammg and textual hybridity, the confusion o f figure and grotmd m Ashbery’s writing, broaches art as the model for understanding appropriation and. citation.
Ashbery’s commitment to the avant-garde b both critical and selective. While embracmg some of the core prmciples o f surrealmn—the cultivation o f the unconscious, the fascination with all manner of artifice, the spirit o f Juxtaposition—
Ashbery also managed to distance hhnself fiom many of the art world’s notorious excesses. Crucially, Ashbery m 1955 moved away fiom New York to France m the middle of buzz. He was to stay m Paris for the next ten years, and it can be argued that this move enabled Ashbery to know the avant-garde better than if he had remamed in New York durmg this time. In the end, Ashbery’s encounter with the avant-garde led hnn to be skeptical o f the latteris mordmate stress on the new that ultimate^ bespoke merety a superficM e # c t o f the deeper issues. Ulthnately,
Ashbery’s skepticism of and independence fiom the capriciousness o f the art world enabled tmn to formulate and enact a highly sophisticated theory o f art. More relevant to this study, however, Ashbery encourages us to consider cftation as an art and art as the real context for citation.
42 The Role of Surrealism ia Ashbery’s Art Criticism
John Ashbery’s art criticiism ofl^rs the scholar of his work with a useful means o f understandmg his ethos o f appropriatiba and citation, not to mention his general poetics. The antholo^ of his art criticism. Reported Sightings (1989), reveals
Ashbery to be preoccupied with the deepest questions o f modem art, ones investigated by such nnportant figures as Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Th6 remains true even as much as Ashbery wrote this criticism quickly and for a large audience.
Although it was surely the case that abstract expressionism led Ashbery to think seriously about avant-garde art and its relation with poetry, Ashbery was ulthnately to regard abstract expressionism, as David Bergman has put it, as an
“outgrowth o f surrealism” (viii). Indeed, it surrealism and its concern with appropriation. Juxtaposition, assemblage, “automatic writmg” and the unconscious that had arrested Ashbery’s attention from even a very early age. Surrealism—
particularly surrealist pamtmg—became a locus for envisionmg all the nnportant
questions of art and poetry. Through the various discussions m Ashbery’s writings of
surrealism and his wrftmgs on mdividual artKts, one can come to terms with
Ashbery’s attitude toward citation and his poetic writmg m generaL Again, this
attitude hnagmes both art and cftation as hybrid modes o f expression, whose hybridity
is en^loyed as an animating force in his poetry.
43 La fact, Ashbeiy's writmgs on specific artists lead one to his poetics of citation in much the same way that Bemstem’s critical writings on other poets do.‘* Further,
Ashbery seems to be aware o f this trend. “|P]oets when they write about other artists always tend to write about themselves” {Reported Sightings 106). Although here
Ashbery speaks o f other poets, he seems to wmk at the reader with this remark, implying the same is true for hnn, however uniquely he may see hnnseif as a poet.
This remark gives us yet another reason to read Ashbery’s art criticism, for it offers a way mto his poetics. This is so, because Ashbery says that when poets write about other artists they write about themselves, and Ashbery is precisely domg Just this m
Reported Sightings.
Ashbery acquired a taste for surrealism at a young age. As he remembered it m an mterview with Pietr Sommer, Ashbery noted that “jTln 1937 there was an exhibition at the Museum of Modem Art, ofFantastic Art Dada and Surrealism [sic].
And there was an article about it m Life magazme, and I saw all those sunealût pamters reproduced; Magritte, Dali, et cetera, and I hnmediately knew I wanted to be a surrealist pamter” (312). In the same way was Ashbery attracted to the canvases of
Chahn Soutme. Ashbery’s writing on Soutine renders the painter as a clear-cut
surrealist who mspned Ashbery to experiment with his poetry. “The foct that the sky
[m Soutine’s pamtings] could come crashmg joyously mto the grass, that trees could
dance upside down and horses rollover like cats eager to have then tummies scratched
was somethmg I hadn’t realized before, and I began pushmg my poems around and
standmg words on end” {Reported Sightings 241).
" See chapter three below. 44 The freedom to bend space m this way and enable plants and animals to behave m impossible ways led Ashbery to try to do the same in bis writing. Much of this is plainly evident in poems like “The Instruction Manual,” “The Skaters” and
“Self-Portrait m a Convex Mfrror,” all of which guide the reader through the viewmg o f an absent pamting as they sunuhaneously offer a document to be read as a poem.
Ashbery was ultimately to find his own ways of challengmg conventional understandings o f time and space and how these ways could be represented. One additional feature nnportant m Ashbery’s remark on Soutine would be that despite how much Ashbery stresses his need, after seemg Soutine’s pamtmgs, to “stand words on end,” Ashbery’s statement also foretells his annnistic commitment the mysterious life o f thmgs. This commitment will become part of Ashbery’s inqufry mto artifice and ultimate^ of mherited language.
In the sixties, Ashbery’s praise o f surrealism would often know no bounds.
Surrealism—always with a capital “S”—would be the paradigm for contemporary art.
“[W]e are all mdebted to Surrealkm, the signffîcant art o f our time could not have
been produced without it” (Reported Sightings 7). Accordmg to Ashbery, surrealism
embodies the prmciple that unifies the contemporary art of the sixties. “Surrealism is
. . . the connectmg Imk among any number o f current styles thought to be mutually
exclusive, such as Abstract Expressionism, Minmialism and ‘color-field’ pamtmg.”
In the post-war American art scene, what predominates, m Ashbery’s view, is
actuafiy an updated surrealÈm. “[Surrealism] was not to erupt meanmgfiiUy agam
45 untü after the war, m New York, faut it is still what’s happenmg” {Reported Sightings g).‘®
In Ashfaery’s view, surrealimhas faecome so prominent in contemporary art that its influence has filtered down mto popular culture and everyday life.
“Surrealism has faecome part o f our daily Iwes: its effects can fae seen everywhere, in the work o fartBts and writers who have no connection with the movement, in movies, mterior decoration and popular speech” {Reported Sightings 4). Specffically, though, it is surrealism’s preoccupation with the unconscious that attracts Ashfaery.
But, fer Ashbery, surrealism’s all-pervasiveness is not to fae mourned as a cheapenmg o f the movement, because such pervasiveness snnply means that Americans have correctly learned to acknowledge the existence of the unconscious. Therefore, the reach o f surrealism mto mcreasmg^ mundane areas of Ifte, as surrealbm becomes part o f pop culture, is not snnply a “degradation,” because “it is difficult to impose lunitations on the unconscious, which has a habit o f tummg up m unlikely places.”
In any event, “corruption,” accordmg to Ashfaery, ’%as part of... [the] program [of
Surrealism]” (“Growmg Up Surreal” 41).
The rise of psychiatry m the ffities and the Freudian elements of the new left that emerged m the sccties would provide suitable context for thm attitude. But the hnplications o f Ashfaery’s view o f surrea&m are significant, for they suggest that surrealism—and no other art form—is mdeed the voice o fthe unconscious. Second, they hnply that, for Ashfaery, mani^ulatmg the unconscious is enthely necessary to
[naseini-&cetious review ofa William Etubin exhibition, Ashbery went even fiirthen “[A]ll artists nowworkmg in America (except Frank Stelia and Kenneth Notand, for reasons [cannot fathom)
46 producing successful art. The mterplay between conscious and unconscious forces
grounds Ashbery’s theory o f art and poetry and serves up his view and use of
mherited language, as mtemally conflicted.
The Right Balance: The Interplay o f Conscious and Unconscious Forces in Kitaj
The pamter R.B. JCitaj' was for Ashbery both one of these latter-day surrealists and an artistic exemplar of the successfol mterplay of conscious and unconscious
forces. In fact, Ashbery was to devote much writmg on Kitaj', and if there is a
pamterly analogue for Ashbeiy’s poet, then it is no doubt Kitaj'.
First, Ashbery links Kitaj to the dream, yet another emblem o f unconscious
writmg and representation to which Ashbery returns throughout hk career, havmg
stressed the “onehic basis” o f surrealism. Kitaj’s “drawings are a kind o f anthology of
Visual’ human dreams, sufformg and errors, transmuted by the hand o f a master
draftsman mto a bizarre but genuine ‘high art’” {ReportedSightings 301).
For Ashbery, Kitaj seems to reach the ideal o f poetic reticence, an ideal where
one’s fixation on the dream necessitates a release fi:om the claustrophobic confoies o f
the self “ This fixation generates “selfabnegation in the mterests of a superior
realism, one which will reflect the realities both o f the spirit (rather than the mdividual
consciousness) and o f the world as percewed by it: the state m which Je suis un autre^
are Surrealists.” Further, “Congress is 95 percent Surrealist, President Johnson is a Surrealist, and Vietnam Is a Surrealist place” (“Growing Up Surreal” 65).
47 ia Rônbaud’s phrase” {Reported Sfghtfngs 26). The remark also offers the obverse o f
Ashbery’s practice o f combmmg diverse rhetorical modes that, while chartmg the movement o f consciousness, offers up a picture o f consciousness m general, rather than one o f the capricious wandermgs of an individual hnagmation. This movement, as Ashbery notes, necessitates a profeund otherness, the sense hi which we are never wholfy present to ourselves.
It is th6 general commitment to otherness that shows the mark of citation on
Ashbery’s poetics, the need to let other voices speak through one’s own. Ashbery’s
âschiatîon with dreams that are ulthnately collective hi nature helps one to understand the reasons for his need to mnc different voices in his poems. Indeed, one critic has noted that Ashbery achieves the Zen-like “empty mmd” necessary to tap hito the diverse rhetorical modes at hrs disposal (Bergman xk-xx). Agam, Kitaj’s dream representations constitute a model for Ashbery’s apparent need to assemble various rhetorical elements m his writmg. As a result, Ashbery is, like Khaj, “always speaking hi another voice” {Reported Sightings 300).
But at the same thne, Ashbery notes that fCitaj “seldom” speaks hi this way
“noticeably.” In the same sense, Ashbery and Kitaj do not for the most part engage
“frontally” the feet that they m k varymg, mherited speech patterns. “What is precisely new and excitmg in Kitaj’s work fe the hnmense culture which saturates it but seldom appears there fronta%. The works teem with references to ffhns, poetry, novels and photography, but th ^ make them effect with purely piastic means”
{ReportedSightings 300). This is to say that despite Kitaj’s fetation on diverse
“ Bernstein makes a similar move. See ^ below. cultural references, his pamtmgs remain pamtmgs, givmg off citational effects without exhibiting much evidence of actual citation. As Maqorie Perioffput it m
“Normalizing Ashbery,” agamechomg Jameson’s remarks on parody and pastiche
almost everythmg [m Ashbery] sounds like a citation, sounds like somethmg we’ve heard before or read somewhere—but where? And that K o f course one o fthe mam features o f Ashbery’s poetic: livmg at a moment when one’s language is so wholly permeated by the dkcourses that endlessly nnpihge on it, a Keatsian maage complex, or even an Elio tic distmction between citation and mvention. . . is felt to be no longer possible.
In this way, Kftaj manages to remain feithfol both to the medium m which he chooses to work and the wider culture outside of his work.
Ashbery attempts to do the same with regard to poetry, offermg elusive citations and quotations that nevertheless make them presence felt as poetic.
Additionally, Ashbery’s owncombmation o f voices, stored m the unconscious, with consciously employed poetic artifice, displays his poetic use of citation. For Ashbery, citation risks metaphysics and requires poetic artifice to give citation a proper place and voice.^‘
hi the end, Ashbery’s remarks on Kitaj bold the key to understandmg the citational nature of Ashbery’s writmg. For a poet such as Ashbery, who was as preoccupied with consciousness as he was o f artifice, it 6 small wonder that
Ashbery’s citationality is conditioned by consciousness. This means that the diverse voices that make up Ashbery’s poetry have been milled in subtle ways by thought.
The brute presence of a quotation or citation m a poem, that so conditions Eliot’s,
49 Pound’s and Bernsteûi’s respectwe modes o f citation, is absent m. Ashbery. In corroboration, Ashbery makes it clear that when the various cultural fragments m Kitaj make their presence felt, they do so not m the fashion o f an Eliot, Pound or Bernstein, where the citationali^ o f the writmg is made so manifest. Rather, such fragments seem a second-order reality organked both, by a mmd that is itself difficult to pm down and by selfconsciously manipulated poetic artifice.
In the modernist case, citational fragments exude the proper names, quotation marks and italics that explicitly mark them status as received. Bemstem seems to have extended this attitude to its logical extreme by emphasizmg, even more than do Eliot and Pound, the gesture o f citmg, to the pomt that it becomes less and less nnportant to be clued into the source o f the citation. In Eliot and Pound, especially the former, the source is important to responding to the poem adequately; m Bemstem it, rather de&ntly, b not, but the gesture of citation is nevertheless parodied and relied upon as essentml for poetic writmg.
As to the significance o f source (or lack thereof) m Bernstein, Asbhery is m agreement but doesn’t so “frontally” parade the very sourceness of his citationality.
He rather likes k blended mto the febric o f consciousness and artffice, which attends to laws o f its own. As Ashbery put it when asked m an mterview why he “once expressed an mterest in havmg no external references withm a poem,” Ashbery responded, “[bjecause I want the reader to be able to experience the poem without havii% to refer to outside sources to get the complete experience as one has to in Eliot
This attitude contrasts with that of Bemstem, who equates citation with the non- instnimentality of ianguage and does not trust poetic artifice nearly so much, mainly because of
50 sometimes or Pound” (“Craft Interview” 122). In Ashbery’s view, the requneraents o f the medium o f pamtmg make Kitaj’s citationality less overt; and perhaps it is out of
Ashbery’s love for painting that he cannot help but envision poetry m its terms.
Ashbery even does so m regard to the question of citation, which he places in relation to consciousness, the same consciousness that surrealism helped him to consider so deeply. Ashbery foially remains skeptical that the “frontal” presence o f a citation or quotation tells the truth of communication and language. Such a “frontal” presence rather seems for Ashbery to miss the problem o f consciousness and subjectivity, and it k in this sense (and others) that Ashbery remains a curious hybrid o f romantic subjectivity^ and avant-garde language play.
But when dealing with consciousness—one particular embodiment of the mystery to which Ashbery is wflling to attend—Ashbery refuses to sunplify such a ntystery. Even when the mystery of consciousness fe occasionally made clear m
Ashbery, such clarity B usualty qualified and conditioned by later imes, never allowmg the pomt o f elucidation to come wholly to rest. This is especially so, because the “avoidance o f all metaphysical temptations becomes itself a kmd o f religion”
{Reported Sightings 60). Likewise, for all o f Ashbery’s abstraction, the poet fe likewise committed to the physicality of appearances, thmgs and language. To be sure, m some writmgs Ashbery does show hfe longmg to touch the “mystery behmd physical appearances” {ReportedSightings 31). But Ashbery nevertheless manages not to forget about those physical appearances m reachmg for the metaphysicaL
Bemsteua’s own move to eavisiba writihg as the e^ p tfal term dcfihmg citatfoa. This is so as Ashbery notes the sense in. which, physical appearances themselves remam, perhaps to an irreducible extent, opaque. Thus, in an essay 6om the early sorties, “The New Realists,” in which Ashbery entertams the topic of dada and Duchamp, Ashbery speculates about the consequences for art o f already manufactured objects appropriated and placed ui an aesthetic milieu. According to
Ashbery, these are foially not mere “phenomena.” Rather, these are “part o f our experience, our lives—created by us and creatmg us” {Reported Sightings 82).^
Rhetorical Modng and the Problem o f Automatic Writmg
Ashbery’s apparent views on competmg contraries that are crucial to art— between conscious and unconscious, artifice and reality, metaphysics and physics— produce a hybrid or mixed overall effect, exuding Erickson’s “productive tension” proper to the figure/ground relation m metaphor that likewise accurately describes the dichotomy of citation (8). Ashbery’s desire is to mix such contraries. “Why should poetry be mtellectual and nonsensory or the reverse? Our eyes, mmds and fèelmgs do not exist in isolated counterparts but are part of each other, constantly cross-cuttmg, consultmg and reinforcing each other” {Reported Sightings 280).^ \fîxmg contraries such as these helps to generate a productive tension m he poetry that anns to attend to
“ The last remark about mherited objects—“created by us and creatmg u ^ —will deeply 6shion Bemstem^s understandmg ofcitation, conditibaed as it is by Stanley Cavelfs Heid%gerian theory of language. Such a tbeoryempbasizestbecircular instrumentality oflanguage; To paraphrase Hugh Kenner, we use words but words use us. See Kenner’s introduction to ZakofiltysPrepositions.
52 as many o fthe reader’s faculties as possible. Altemathrefy, “aa art constructed according to the above canons [where poetry would, be* for mstance, mtellectual or sensory, never both] will wither away smce, having left one or more of the feculties out o faccount, it will eventually lose the attention o f the others.” This mixing attitude will also have the efiftct of drawing on the greatest powers o f citation, itself a mixed phenomenon.
With this attitude, Ashbery is able to embrace artifice as a paradoxical way o f generating a more potent form of realism in art, “a counterfeit of reality more real than reality,” as he put it in an essay on Gertrude Stem (qtd. m Lehman 330). Snnilarly, artifice enables the unconscious “ùrrationaT forces necessary for producing strong art,
“makmg so many conscious decbions that one’s unconscious is kmd o f left ftee to go ahead and proceed with the poem.” (Munn “Interview” 62). Until Rfvers and
Mountains, Ashbery’s &st unqualified success as a poet, Ashbery was, m feet, deeply committed to artifice in his experùnents wfth highly structured, overdetermmed poetic
forms such as sestmas, pantoums or vOlanelles. As Ashbery put m the femous “Craft
Interview” o f1974, “[Fjorms such as the sestma were really devices at gettmg into
remoter areas o f consciousness. The really bizarre requnements o f a sestma I use as a
probmg too rather than as a form m. the traditional sense” (125). Of course, surrealist
assemblage and dadesque blague were also nnportant to Ashbery durmg this time and
afterward when he had learned to synthesfee his particular mâture o fcommitments to
° See below in chapter Rmr where I discuss Bemstem^s concerns with Plato’^s sophist as a mixmg ofthe contraries of being and non-being. 53 both artifice and consciousness. Artifice ûi general had ofkred a way to “remove the conscious mmd fiom the creative mmd so that the unconscious could take over”
(Reported Sightings 26).
Such was the source o f Ashbery^s difficulty with that shibboleth o f surrealist
literature, “automatic writing," with which he thought he had to come to terms, even
early in his career. In so much of his art criticism, “automatic writmg” is a stumblmg
block for Ashbery and a source for ambivalence. Ashbery’s trouble with “automatic
writmg” makes it clear in another sense how he wanted to medmte between conscious
and unconscious. In one sense Ashbery was “bored by the automatic writmg of
orthodox surrealism. As he put it “[tjhere is more to one’s mmd than the
unconscious” (qtd. m Kostelanetz 30).^** Apropos o f the artistic fieedom desfied by
proponents o f “automatic writmg,” Ashbery noted that “real fieedom would be to use
this method [“automatic writmg”] where it could be o f service and to correct it with
the conscious mmd where mdicated. And m foct the foiest writmg of the Surrealkts is
the product o f the conscious and the unconscious workmg hand m hand, as they have
been wont to do m all ages” (ReportedSightings 5). As it seems to be for Ashbery,
the real problem for a surrealist is how to do deal “m plastic terms with material fiom
the unconscious,” rather than how to get an accurate representation o f the unconscious
mto poetic form (ReportedSightings 8).
bi this it also becomes clear that the surrealism Ashbery finally championed was more a visual than written one, especially regardmg de Chirico, the “one great Surrealbt pamter” (Reported Sightings S). It was also more an individual one than a group one^ as Ashbery routinely went his own way in aesthetic pursuits, most 6mously in hfe removal fiom New York in 1955 to Paris for the ten years following. 54 as noted earlier, Ashbery has decided to de-emphasize his mmd and personality in his writmgs, m the mterests o f a “superior realism,” then here is yet another way m whick “automatic writmg” is suspect to Ashbery. David Bergman notes that “Ashbery locates the ‘superior realism’ not m the spontaneous outpourings of the diarist, where we have traditionally located the discourse of the authentic and smcere, but m the highly formal, even overelaborated rococo framework o f the self^ conscious a rt^ ” (vii). Artifice is necessary to derive from unconscious forms this greatest power.
However much Ashbery seems to reject a psychological understanding o f the self he nevertheless retams some very compromâed sense of self in his writmgs. As a result, Ashbery’s method of balancmg the self agamst the impersonal forces surroundmg it is highly mdirect. David Bergman is correct to note how this romantic attitude somehow survives m a decidedly non-romantic age but does so less out o f a retreat to a pre-industrial past and more so out of a discovery o f the modem objects and ways o f speaking and seemg that mvite his attention. Like Gertrude Stem, who mvented the form, Ashbery is skilled at the “nnpersonal selfiportrah.” For Ashbery differs from the English Romantics in that it is not “indMdual consciousness” that matters to poetry. Rather h is the collectwe “spfrit and what it sees” (Bergman xxi).“
Besides serving as the repository o f various voices, the unconscious is also driven by history and memory, mcludmg a particular commitment to hiaory as more an archeological investigation than one mto psychological forces. Bergman further
^ M sQy»iyssni.\jéasasx,The Last ÂMont-Gcarde: The Maimg o fthe New York School o f Poe»(New York: Anchor, 1998) 114. 55 pomts out the archeological orientation o f Ashbery’s examination of paintings and the mind. Here “the sur&ce o f the pamtmgs Ashbery admires is not a battlefield of competmg expressionistic forces but an archeological site, where the accreted objects o f various civO^tions lie m surprismg juxtaposition^’ (Bergman xxi). Significant here are the citational qualities of such an interest in history not to mention those arismg out of the notion o f a pamtmg as a field o f competmg and diverse elements.
Art Risks: Metaphysics, Illustration and Politically Involved Art
Another feature o f surrealism that mcited Ashbery to criticism mvolved shnilar questions about metaphysics. Ashbery was particularly skeptical of politically mvolved art that led to snnplktic abstractions. “[A] temptation to ideology. . . contmues to undermme the avant-garde m Europe today.” For, in the end, “art isn’t about ideas butis ideas” {Reported Sightings 223).
Metaphysics, m Ashbery’s view, are particularly toxic to art, especially if they are unmoored to the more concrete forces o f artifice. Regardmg pamter Fahfield
Porter, Ashbery believes that Porter’s pamtmgs “are mtellectual m the classic
American tradition because they have no ideas m them, that is no ideas that can be
separated fiom the rest. They are ideas, or consciousness, or light, or whatever”
{Reported Sightings 314). So, here, Ashbery resets the conventional, instrumental
56 notion o fart as a neutral contamer for ideas, that ideas are somehow detachable foom art. In this respect, Ashbery is, as Bemstem is, very anti-piatonic in his view o f metaphysics.
Porter himself went further, approachmg the polemics agamst mstrumental language that Bemstem was to chanqpion m the eighties. And Ashbery is willmg, in
his essay on Porter, to let such non-mstrumental ideas breathe, to exude, m Porter’s own words, a “respect for thmgs as they are” (qtd. in Lehman 81). Of course, m this
context, however, the issue one o f art (rather than language). For Porter, art can
never be “raw material” for a “factory” producmg a “commodity called
understandmg.” Porter named the bad art “art as sociology” {ReportedSightings 314).
But then Ashbery had already made remarks such as these m one of h^ great
poems, “These Lacustrine Cities” from Rivers and Mountains.'^ The cities o f which
Ashbery speaks are, to them detrhnent, “the product o f an idea: tliat man is horrible,
for mstance, / though tfiis is only one example” (9). What is most curious about these
Imes is that the cities are damned less because they have some puritanical investment
m man as essentially depraved and more because the lacustrme cities exist simply
because o f some antecedent consciousness, whatever the content of that consciousness
may be. In this respect, the cities have not achieved the benefit o f the American idiom
tfiat Ashbery is implicit^ articukttmg, that they suffer the burden o f the preplanned,
the lack o f comcidence or simultanei^ between physic and metaphysic.
57 Ashbety was a poet who had mastered his craft by the shcties, a decade, of course, rife with social and political unrest, and held fest to his view o f art over against the fenns o f political art that were surfecmg during the thne. In the same essay on
Porter, Ashbery extends hfe sympathetic account o fPorter’s hostility to ideas unmoored to physical reality by criticËmg overtly politicized art on the same grounds.
This political art fells prey to the crhne o f “illustration” m Ashbery’s view, which as we have seen fe one o f the standard uses o f citation.
Thus polhfeal^ ^concerned’ artists contmue to make pictures that illustrate the horrors of war, o f man’s inhumanity to man; feminist artists produce art hi which woman is exalted, and imagine that they have accomplkhed a useful act; and no doubt there are a number of spectators who £md h helpftil to be reminded that there is room fer improvement m the existmg order o f thmgs. (Reported Sightings 315)
But for Ashbery such overtfy^ political art here misses out on the “secret busmess of art”:
Yet beyond the narrow confeies of the ‘subject’ . . . the secret busmess o f art gets done according to mysterious rules o f its own. In this larger context ideology shnply doesn’t function as it is supposed to, when mdeed it isn’t direct^ threatenmg the work o f art by trivializmg it, and trîvialÊmg as well the hnportance o f the ideas it seeks to dramatic. (Reported Sighting 315)
Ashbery’s criticism here has much to say about this theory and use o f citation.
Illustration, again one o f the standard uses ofcitation, all too easily emphasizes the
content or, as Ashbery puts it, the “subject” o fthe artwork in place o f its formal
properties and, in a more general sense, the subject’s conditions o f appearance. This
^ See chapter fetir below for mocediscussfoa ofthis poem. 58 attitude about art wiU suggest a way of approaching inherited language not as a communication or message to help illustrate one’s own ideas but rather as a thmg m its own right, much as modernist pamters take the materials o f theu: medium—pamt, canvas, etc.—as things unto themselves. Especially so when manipulated by poetic artifice, this has the effect o f rebabilitatmg and fôregroundmg the aesthetic side of citation, generatmg the fiuits a productwe tension between the opposites.
Such illustration, and we would do well to recall Ashbery’s clever poem o f the
same name,^^ fells prey not sunpfy^ to idealism but rather to the wrong sort o f idealfem.
If I understand [Porter], it is not idealism that is dangerous, fer fiom it, but idealism perverted and destroyed by bemg made Hisefitl.’ Its uselessness is somethmg holy, just like Porter’s pictures, barren of messages and swept clean, m many cases by the clean bare light of November, no longer masked by romantic foliage. {Reported Sightings 316)
Like the Walter Benjamm o f‘The Work o f Art m the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,”^^ Ashbery stresses the value of art as ritual and magic at the same thne
that he notices the “withering” ofthe aura around the work o f art, when art is
reproduced (and hi Ashbery’s case) appropriated and recycled. Ashbery makes use of
the materials available to hfe poetic writmg, materials fiom mass culture, like the
Esquire magazme fiagments he used hi writing The Tennis Court O ath^ feidihg hi
such materfels something mysteriously artfiil and alive, especially when viewed
through the lens o f contemporary art. One must also underscore, however, that what
Ashbery is domg when he appropriates or cites mherited language is very new
^ See below fa chapter feur fir discussion o f this poem. ^ See Walter Benjamin, IHummations, ed. Ehinna. Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken, 1968) 217-252. ® See Lehman, Last 149. 59 historically, as he collapses the distance between art and life. Ashbery does so by takmg the artifîcml element of language and writmg so serious^ that it functions as a way o f lookmg at the world, a world to be read, a “cryptogram” as he was to put it in his discussions oflLB. Kitaj (ReportedSightings 307-308).
In Ashbery’s view, R.B. Kitaj is, like Porter, an artifectually mmded painter rather than an illustrator, one who abjures the “literary” tendencies m ülusionMc pamtmg common during the centuries leading up to modernism. But Kitaj, fer
Ashbery, also mamtams drscemable Imks to the ritualMc history o f art. Kitaj avoids the mordmate abstraction common to the illustrative pamters Ashbery is challengmg, pamters who do not take them medium very seriously. Happily, ICitaj is not a “pamter o f ideas.” Rather, Kitaj “is constantly scrutmÊmg all their [the ideas’] chief mdicators—m an effort to decode the cryptogram ofthe world” (Reported Sightings
307-8). But here the accent is on the term “effort,” smce Ashbery seems to have little feitb that such a cryptogram o f the world could actually be decoded. Ashbery is as fascmated with the cryptogram itself as with the effort to decode it.
Kitaj’s populism might pose a problem fer Ashbery’s apparent antagonism to overtly political pamtmg that tends to fecus more on Dlustratmg something else (an idea or a political event) than on the ways such ideas might be accessible to the viewer. As a result, then, Kftaj’s political commitments must be qualified by the painter’s simultaneoushostili^ to this sort o f illustration; fer in the end Kitaj’s need to speak dmectly to the people is Imked, m Ashbery’s hnagmation, wfth Picasso’s and
Légeris respectwe commitments to the French Communist Par^.
6 0 The will to produce art for the people—even if it fell short o f its goal and produced an art o f extreme sophistication—nevertheless mflected, deflected then: work and made it somethmg very different^ somethmg far better, than if they had ignored social issues and remamed willmgly in the field o f self referential art-for-art's sake. The failure is an honorable one, and for richer and more mvoLving than success would have beeiL {Reported Sightings 304)
Ashbery wants to connect the hostility to illustration with his commitment to surrealist assemblage, two gestures that help to form the foundation for Ashbery’s citationality. In corroboration, FaMeld Porter’s aesthetic foially offers
a little anthology o f ways o f seemg, feelmg and pamtmg, with no suggestion that any one way is better than another. What is better than anythmg is the renewed real^tion that all kinds o f things can and must exist side by side at any gwen moment, and that is what life and creating are all about. {Reported Sightings 244)
Ashbery’s own commitment to surreafem, plamly evident in this passage, corresponds to the diverse rhetorical modes present m his poems. However much Ashbery may be mterested m the curious artifocts o fmass culture, Ashbery is not suspicious of “high bred rhetoric” and rather exhibits a “fondness for a pofyphony o fclashing styles fiom high-bred to demotic, m a given poem, musical composition. . . or a picture”
{Reported Sightings 243).
But however much antipathy Ashbery displays toward illustrative pamtmg, what must be acknowledged B the great extent to which Ashbery reflises to be puritanical about OhistratioiL This crucial, paradoxical feature o f Ashbery’s poetic and aesthetic shows the deepty hybrid nature of his citationali^, a nature that rehabilitates the Ulustratwe side o f chatfon, that is, after havmg stressed the
61 nnportance o f its aesthetic element.^” Ashbety evea challenges the “east coast” bias agamst “literary pamtmg,” the same illustrative sort o f pamtmg that should never be subservient to anythmg other than its material bemg.
[TJhe prejudice agamst ‘literary’ pamtmg is perhaps a typically East Coast one. In any case it is difihcult fer New Yorkers to conceive o f art as somethmg hybridi there k abstraction and there is perhaps somethmg called ‘mfermation art,’ but an art m which equal importance k accorded to a number o f unrelated components is hard fer us to grasp. (Reported Sightings 296)
Ashbery’s postmodernism is evident in the statement but the paradoxical reaffirmation o f the mstrumental side o f citation k also a condftion fer the hybridity o f post-modern artferms.
The heart o f Ashbery’s view of citation, derived from modem art, particularly surrealism, is clear: “[A] little anthology of ways of seeing,. . . with no suggestion that any one way is better than another.” Ashbery thus is a poet fer whom cftation’s double nature may be used m equal measures, much Uke his double commitment to artifice and the unconscious.
^ This move k m apparent opposition to many of the moods ofa Charles Bernstein who, in his drive to stress the ‘Tnaterialit^ of language tends to miss the uses to which the conceptual moment of writmg may be put. This is essentially to say that words are not paint—tbqr do have meanings, meanmgs that are always, to an essential degree; abstract. 6 2 CHAPTERS
Q TA nO N AND PARATACTIC COMPOSITTON IN BERNSTEIN’S ESSAYS
Between John Ashbery and Charles Bemstem, Bemstem appears easily as the more conscious and explicit purveyor of a poetics o f citation. Throughout hk oeuvre,
Bemstem has ànagmed some o f the fullest possibilities of multi-vocal writing m such works asContent's Dream, The Sophist, Artÿîce o fAbsorption and A Poetics,
In the mtervenihg decades between Ashbery’s surrealist appropriations and
Bemstem’s citational writh%, certam hûtorical, economic and technological forces had extended their reach to the point where mherited language could not help but be
ùnagmed as the sine qua non o fany communication. Economic globaiism, mass
societies and electronic media immediately spring to mmd as forces responsible for this
change. Historical trends such as these have made it mqmssible for one speakmg to
unagme that her words are, m any meanmgfhl sense, original.'
Bemstem’s writmgs m Content's Dream offer several uses ofthe actual term
"citation” and manage for the reader a direct pomt o f entry into this issue m his work.
Unlike Ashbery, Bemstem is very forthcommg about the topic o f cftation.
Approachmg Bemstem’s poetics with an eye for Imguistic usage rather than concepts is
63 especially helpful in this sftuatfou, fôr Bemsteih^s poetics attend frequently to the forms taken o f the speakmg subject’s primary encounters with, language. Here, language’s brute sensuality must be emphasKed, two forms o f which, the speakmg subject must ultimately confront. As pure sound, language is, ou the one hand, a physical proper^.
On the other, bnguage is, m Wittgenstem’s fomous description, its use. For all its abstraction when compared with the plastic and dramatic arts, language may be defined, accordmg to Bemstem, as the consequence o f pro visional, contextual utterance rather than vocabulary or abstract grammatical principles.*
Such an anti-metaphysical view o f language deeply conditions Bemstem’s understandmg o f the role a general “citational” ethic plays m his and others’ writmgs.
Bemstem’s foith in these views reaches for, to the extent that he cites as he writes of citation, a consequence of the privilege he extends to the sensual qualities of language.
Withm his mvestigation into the material side of language, usage holds a strategic place and is foially seen as the precondition for any conceptualfom.
Exammed from this perspective, two o f the works mentioned above— Content’s
Dream and The Sophist —are only apparently separate modal projects. Content's
Dream, an ostensible collection o fessays, and The Sophist, an ostensible collection of poems published over several years, both ami to conceptualize citationality as the result of practicmg it. The only difiference between the two m this regard is that The Sophist is concemed less wfth. namftig and theorrzftig this dominant force in his poetics and
' See Perlofl^ “Normaiizmg.” ^ As we shall see^ however, there is considerable tension between Bernstein’s twin commitments to the sensuous qualities of language and Imguistic usage. 64 more with openly dfeplaymg the great reach of cftationality upon his writmg. On the other hand, Bemstem’s earfy serial essays, mcluded in Content’s Dream, help to provide a general understandmg o f his citationality.
The context o f Bernstein’s uses o f the term “citation” m the anthology
frequently mciude references to two terms—“sounding” and “sighting” o f language that
mevitably takes place when one cites or quotes from another. In such references,
Bernstein ùnplicitly argues that the place the sensuality—or, to use his own term, the
“materûlity”—of language holds m his citational poetics is essential. In this respect,
Bemstem is very much m support o f Diepeveen’s remarks on how quotation brings in
unique textural qualities mto the poem. This materiality o f the “word as such” may be
partitioned into three forms: (I) the visual appearance of written letters and words
(which Bernstein terms, punnmgfy, “sightmg”); (2) language’s audible dhnension as
pure sound (which Bemstem terms “soundmg”); and (3) language’s performative
capability as dialogue or physical gesture, as reflected m poetry’s shorthand designation
o f such. (In regard to this last, gestural element of sensuous language, Bernstein
combines the terms “soundmg and sightmg.”) “Sounding” and “sightmg” m this way
are specific glosses on language’s mherent materiality, its non-mstrumental features that
create the very conditions for meaning. When these features o f language are
acknowledged to be prhnary, citationality for Bemstem cannot help but be entangled
with the material features o f poetry, poetry that he defines as the most material mode of
language or literary use.
65 Language’s noa-œstrumental character may be seen as essential not simply to citation but to the nature o f poetry as well. This définition o f poetry may be appropriate aside from the cultural or institutional view of poetry, where poetry is defined as the product o f the discursive practices that surround it/ Drawmg on the
Imagist/Objectivist tradition m poetics, however, critics such as Maqorie Perlofif have defined poetry as that mode o f communication that, more than any other, “denies the instrumentality of language” (“Essaymg” 407). Because Bemstem’s view of citationality b de&ed by the non-mstrumental nature of language, it would then seem that, m Bemstem’s scheme, citationality is essential to poetry as well. Moreover, m conjunction with this accent on the prhnary physicality o f language, language is acquhred, as any parent or child knows, not through abstract explanation o f such apparently basic prhiciples as vocabulary or grammar. Rather, language acquisition occurs through the child’s becommg dhectly acquamted with language m its contextual and provisional use, through repeatmg the words and gestures o f parents and others.
Equating the citationaf both with language’s non-ihstrumental character and its use, helps not only to explahi the fundamental connection Bemstem draws between poetry and citationality, but also the obvious mterdisciplmarity of hfe writmg, which fiæquently seems at once to exist both as philosophy and poetry, theory and practice.
Bemstem’s theoretical refusal to separate thought and expression mdicates how
“poetic” many ofhis apparent “essays” may be, and m turn how conceptual his
^ See generally Michel Foucualt, The Archeology o fKnowledge and Stanley Fish, “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” Is There a Text in This Class? The Avthority o fInterpretive CommuniViês^ (Cambridge: EbrvardUP, 1980). 66 “poetry,” may b e/ So, by emphasÉmg the hnportance o f the citational, Bemstem
necessarily emphasizes both the material nature of language, to which poetry, of all
modes, is theoretically most committed; and the contextual essence of utterance. A
commitment such as this one is deepty at odds with the standard uses o f citation.
Challengmg and compellmg writing thus does not pretend to get outside of
language and representation to describe a reali^ allegedly external to it, the language
used as a mere means for the metaphysical end o frepresentation. Instead such writmg
has, as its startmg point, a repetition and recontextualization o f what always already is,
and what it cannot hope to transcend. For Bemstem, citationality would seem then to
be an immediate reflection o f writmg m general, placmg his value of citation on as high
a plateau as Compagnon’s and Sartiliot's.
Citation and Poetics: Bemstem’s “Tale of Terms”
Bemstem’s first uses o f the term “citational” to describe a poetics appear in his
essays of the late seventies and offer the simplest and most direct way into this problem
m his work. Although the terms are flequently appUed in exammmg the work o f other
writers, Bemstem (like Ashbery) seems to be discussmg his own poetics m the
process—or at least his own understandmg of them—the more precisely Bemstem
■* See generally Jessica Prmz, /Jrr Discourse/Discourse in Art (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 67 delmeates the poetics o f other writers. Uses like these nevertheless reveal both the deep sense m vdiich Bemstem's own poetics may be described as citational and one o f the term’s &st uses as substantive^^ descriptive o f any poetics/
Investigatmg these uses and theif contexts promises to yield, at the very least, the writer’s conscious understanding of a citational poetics. But even as, in his case,
Bemstem views thb question in other like-mmded writers, that question still reflects at once his awareness ofhis own wrhing’s motives and the mevitable implication of critics’ mterests whit their analyses and them objects of study. As we shall see,
Bemstem’s poetics are, at least m theory, so closely tied to his actual poetic practice that the two are difficult to separate. These poetics are configured in this dichotomous way, despite that Bemstem’s poetics arrive to the reader m fragments, which generally give rise to a collage aesthetic that helps to form both hb and Ashbery’s respective citational poetics. Ideally, such a poetic roots itself m particular contexts agamst which it K seen, its objecthood respected as a result/ Consequent^, to know Bemstem’s uses o f the term citation b to know not simply hb citational poetics but also his citational practice, the latter o f which I also turn to discuss regardmg these issues, both m selected “essays” o f Content's Dream and selected “poems” o f The Sophist.
The adj'ectival form o f the term “citation” (“cftationaF’) exhibits by for the term’s most common use m Bemstem’s writmg. This term roughly articulates an unconventional compositional model defooed by the architecture of co llie, “serial
1991) about the mtennmglmg o f art forms and discussion ofart. * See Hugh. Kenner, mtroduction. Prepositions: The Collected Essays o f Louis Zukojsfy, expanded ed.(BerkeI^CJ of California P, 1967) dc (“ poetic ofquotation”).
68 disjunction,” and parataxis (Content's Dream 301). Compositional values such as these help to enact fer Bemstem. the “(haiogic nature of human understandmg,”^ which feeds off of an endless cycle o f repetition and variation (Content's Dream 20).
Opposing such values would be a more one-sided “expositional” or “narrational” mode o f composition devoted prhnarily to wrhing^s smooth, Imear development under the aegis ofacontrollmg purpose.
At the most general level, Bemstem^s use o f the term “citational” or “citation” m his essays implies basic compositional values and distmctions that foretell his special commitment to language’s materiality. In one of Ms early, more conventional essays,
“The Objects of Meanmg: Readmg Cavell Readmg Wittgenstem,” Bemstem notes how
Cavell’s use o f texts relates to the use of colh^e and juxtaposition in more strictly literary writmg, especially to the use o f prior texts, o f pervasively citational language, m Pound, Zukofsky and Olson, up to the present. (Cavell hhnself pomts out that his quotes from Wittgenstem in the last section o f The Claim o f Reason are not mterpretive but citational [p. xii^.) (Content's Dream 166)
Readers o f Cavell must notice that m his work “citations come [to the reader] with dizzying speed and aphoristic brevity” m a “game o f tag through mteHectual h^ory,”
the buzz of name references constitutmg a “fugue of citations” (Content's Dream 168-
69).*
At stake for Bemstem here is less the content of Cavell’s philosophy and more
Cavell’s compositional procedure which, as the longer quotation above indicates, is
^ Note, however, that the objecthood of citatfoa knot so well represented in Bemstein’^s poetry, poetry that all too often seems the mere illustration ofhis essays, however disruptive the citational quality of the poems. ^ See generally Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dfalogic rmaginatfom Four £ssqyy, ed. Michael Hblquüst, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Hblquist (Austin: U of Texas P, 1981). * Bemstem studied under Cavell durmg Bonstem’s undergraduate days (Afy lKy241-42). 69 defîaed by “collage” and “juxtaposition.” This method o f manipulating the parts o f one’s writmg pertams more to “ordermg and arrangement” than to “exposition,” is more the product of “invocative” logic and “bricolage” than “deduction” (Content's
Dream 167). Cavell’s compositional method is o f crucial importance for Bernstein, ultnnately the real test o f the philosopher’s (Wittgenstemian) convictions about language and the world, which will be unportant for how Bemstem ultmiately envisages the same issues. Bemstem’s investment m citation, however, remains prhnarily, and self-consciousty, philosophical. Bemstehi here is implicitly challengmg the stock philosophical attitude about language and writmg as merely mstrumental to consciousness.^
Bemstehi’s readmg o fCavell concludes that Cavell argues (convincingly) that we are paradoxically “split off from a world which we are wholly mside o f’ (Content s
Dream 165). For both Cavell and Bemstem, thk world is frequently likened to the world of language, which k, at once, o f us and not of us: “But we are ‘beside ourselves in a sane way’ for what is beside us is also ourselves. At the same thne m & beside.—The signs o f language... “ (Confônf'y Dream 43). Split subjecthood, as defined by Cavell, will be deeply signffîcant both for Bemstem’s poetics (and, for that matter, his politics) and the poet’s general understandmg of social organization.
Language manages to ensure that consciousness does not create ex nihilo. Rather, these socM and conventional forms generate the possibilities o f consciousness, consciouness that often mistaken^ proclaims its autonomy from them. In his book on
’ O f course, Ashbery engages the same problem (albeit m a different way). See above. 70 Thoreau, Cavell notes that “words come to us fiom a distance; they were there before we were; we are bom mto them” (Semes 64). In this paradox^ we are estranged from words but are nevertheless “present to them” or remam mside and beholden to their uses and meanings (Semes 65). Thb msideness always ensures that, to an frreducible extent, reality itself is compositional.
If this is true of our relation to language and the world, part of our, and
Cavell’s, responsibilities would be to outlme the parameters of how we are mevitably inside language, because this language that we are “bom mto” is “our pomt of origm”
(Semes 64), but it is also an origm that sets defoimg Imitations on what we might do with it and how m tum the world k constituted.
But are we merely the mstruments of language’s mherent forces? Altematwely, another part o f such responsibilities would entail outlmmg how we are mevitably “split oS” from language, whether language is mert and available for our controOmg use, or whether it retams animistic lifo, where its “besideness” makes a profound claim on our subjectivi^. Is language effectively dead, except when we use it, or does it contain our uses as well as our silence? If we are so “split off’ from language, how deeply does that split run? As a result, Cavell’s language and compositional method cannot merely serve as a husk for such convictions; they must also embody them.
Thoughts along these froes are echoed m an essay ofBemstein’s published a year later, “Semblance,” which explicftly connects such a “serialfy disjuncf’ method of composition with the materMty of language. In Barrett Watten’s “mtersententml” collages, we discover that the “seriality o fthe ordermg o fsentences withm a paragraph
71 displaces^] from its habitual surroundiDg[J the projected representational frcation that the sentence conveys” {Content’s Dream 36). In accordance with such a
“representational fixation,” the official view o f composition provides that the sequence o f the discussion must proceed to “narrow down” the possibilities o f representation.
This is done so that what is finally represented comes to the fore, limitmg, as much as possible, the mherent power o f language to do as it will.
On the other hand, Watten’s writing “displaces” such a fixation by granting each sentence more mdependent status. It does this instead ofordermg each sentence so that a sentence fimctions as a piece subservient to a larger “expositional” or
“narrational” composftion plan, which would thereby “direct attention away from the sentence as meaning generating event onto the ‘content’ depicted” (Content’s Dream
36). Altematwefy, this kind o fwritmg that Bemstem admfres m Watten chimes with the value on quotation m poetry that Diepeveen expresses, because it enables the reader to “savor the tangibility o f each sentence before k is lost to the next, determinately other sentence” (Content’s Dream 37: my italics). For Bernstein, such a manner of juxtapositional” arrangement encourages the readmg process to occur “along ectoskeletal” and fiaally “citational” lines.
Collage Composition m Bemstem’s Essays
72 This juxtapositional technique of collage composition that Bemstem admnres, particularly m Cavell, Bemstem had already made use offer his own purposes and taken even further as a dommant archictectural principle in his writmgs. Two o f
Bemstem’s ùnportant serial essays anthologized m Content's Dream—''Stray Straws and Straw Men” and "Three or Four Thmgs I Know About Him”—do not present their compositional prmciples as merely clever ornaments or accessories to the “content” o f the writmg, to camouflage its "meanmg” m some clever way. Rather, such principles are irreducible to the writmg’s overall claùns and goals. Bemstem’s tum to the essay ferm itself^ not m its modem, systematic Anglo-American ferm, but rather m its traditional continental, ramblmg nature (after Montaigne), is revealing m light ofhis commitment to serklity as welL
Each o f these essays is organiæd via numbered passages o f writmg, passages that ftequently exist so much on them own terms as to create a general disjunctive e& ct o f readmg, which fer Bemstem, as we have seen, has a citational character.
Here, the narrative flow o f the writmg is mterrupted and the seams between parts are exposed. The overall composition gams fer its juxtaposmg such dûtmct passages wfth one another, as each in tum comments on each other, so as to produce a whole that is both greater than the sum o f its parts and remams true to its compositional origms.
Also, the passages themselves are ftequently dftect or mdirect citations.
The text o f one ofBemstem’s earliest published wrftmgs, "Stray Straws and
Straw Men” k self-referential in this respect, speciftca% concerning various topics related to conçositfen, both m its “subject matter” and in its “ectoskeletaf’ shape. The
73 essay also includes a relevant dKcussion o f the gap between the writer’s mwardness and writmg’s external appearance.
The work begms with an unattributed quotation discussmg how the source of all writmg comes dhectly &om the heart, then proceeds to reflect on romantic notions of poetry and composition that tend to focus more on the author’s “personality” than on objectwe composition {Content’s Dream 44). Then, Bemstem’s speaker will see opprobrious romantic tendencies m the avant-garde, speciflcaily m surrealism’s value o f
“automatic writmg.”*® Bemstem will further see the same problem m modernist stream-ofconsciousness technique, which also, m hk view, fiaudulently attempts to represent a privileged, occult consciousness directly, without takmg into account the
mediation of writmg, thus “makmg the writmg a recordmg mstrument of
consciousness”(Content's Dream 42).** Finally, Bemstem will re tum to Cavell, whose
work manages a way of mediatmg the apparent opposition between writing and
consciousness. In general, the essay challenges the idea o f a natural, seamless writmg
secondary to a transcendental consciousness that would lend authenticity to the writing.
The essay is ultmiately an attack on any writmg that would occlude hs mevitably non-
mstrumental dhnensfons. It is a challenge to those who would forget the claims of
poetic artifice when writmg.
The essay’s &st sentence, “T look straight mto my heart & write the exact
words that come fiom withm’” is an expression o fthe dommant, romantic
understandn% o f compositional “sincerity” and “authenticity” that will constantly be
10See chapter two above on Ashbery treatment of automatic writmg.
74 questioned m the essay (Content’s Dream 40-41). The unnamed speaker states that his words fesue forth uhnnatefy from the “heart,” “from within,” a source to which he has absolute access, impLymg that writing k rooted m human mwardness. The opposition
Bemstem b: questionmg, between an external writmg and its putatively mtemal source m the human, sounds elsewhere m the essay, especially in the thfrd passage, where an alternative that Bemstem admfres
may discomfort those who want a poetry prhnarily o f personal communication, flowmg freely from the mside with the words o f a natural rhythm o f lifo, lived daily. Perhaps the conviction is that poetry not be made by fitting words mto a pattem but by the act o f actually lettmg it happen, writing, so that that which is “stored withm pours out” without reference to makmg a pomt any more than to makmg a shape. (Content’s Dream 41)
This romantic understandmg o f poetry’s “honesty, its dfrecmess, its authenticity, its artlessness, its sincerity, its spontaneity, its personal expressweness” is “m short, its naturalness,'* the external shape o f which need not be considered. In this view, the artffice of external shape would taint the naturalness o fthe writmg (Content’s Dream
41).
Th6 atthude toward writmg is m sharp opposition to one Bemstem fovorably attributes to Ron SQlmaan m the foregomg passage number two, where SQlnnan
has consistent^ written a poetry ofvisible borders: a poetry of shape.. .. Such poetry em phasis its medium as being constructed, rule govemed, everywhere circumscribed by grammar & syntax, chosen vocabulary: designed, manÿulated, picked, programmed, organized & so an artifice, artifoct—monadic, solipsistic, homemade, manufactured, mechanized, formulaic, willfid. (Content's Dream 40-41)
" This is one way in which. Ashbery is at odds with Bemstehi’s attitude about the mterplay between consciousness and wrttmg. See John Ashbery, Other Traditions (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000)3-4. 75 A poetry that takes mto account its external shape as an mef&ble moment to its purpose wül for Bemstem be the “prerequisite o f authenticity, o f good feith,” barrmg the “deceptive” “natchural[ness] [sic]”o fa “smcere” romantic writmg (Content’s
Dream 49). Further, phrases such as “a poetry o f visible borders” and “a poetry o f shape” dhrectly mvoke the claims Bemstem makes for Watten’s collages as
“ectoskeletal” and foialty citational writmg.
According to Bemstem, when poetry explicitly acknowledges the hnportance o f its external shape, it also respects the mtegrity and context of its materW. Such material is ultmiately seen as commg âom outside the self but which, m circular foshion, nevertheless makes a fundamental claun on the self. In what could be a paraphrase o f Stanley Cavell, Bemstem notes that a writmg has particularity when “it contams itself has established its own place, situates itself next to us” (Content’s
Dream 43). Such a program for writmg is foially a reflection agam o f our bemg split off from a world o f which we are nevertheless mside:
Next to. Fronting the world with a particular constellation of beliefo, values memories, expectations; a culture; a way of seemg, mythography; language. But we are “beside ourselves m a sane way” for what is beside us is also ourselves. At the same time m & beside.—The signs of language, o fa piece o fwritmg, are not artificial constructions, mere structures, mere naming. They do not sit, deanimated, as symbols m a code, dummies for thmgs o f nature they refer to; but are, o f themselves, of ourselves, whatever is such. (Content’s Dream 43)
As a result, languageand writmg constitute us at least as much as we constitute them;
and to a cmdal extent, and both must be recognized as external and objective, or
“citationaL”
76 The topics o f Bemsteûi’^s “Three or Four Things I Know about Him”—a more ambitious^ challengmg and rewardmg serM essay than “Stray Straws and Straw
Men”—expand into areas more diverse than simply the relation between writing and consciousness. At stake here is not only the split between composition and mmd but also other and larger sources o f fragmentation m both the self and society generally.
The title o f the essay ts a gloss on Jean-Luc Godard’s film about a prostitute, “Two or
Three Thmgs 1 Know about Her.”'^ Correspondingly, Bernstein’s title sounds a general theme o f prostitution and exploitation o f the body in such subjects as the modem office worker, the lover, the consumer, the friend and the writer. The key link between the two essays remams writmg and its uses. In “Two or Three,” however,
Bernstein is more careful to outlme the wider consequences both ofhis particular views and the range o f material, bodily uses, establ^hmg a connection between the human body and the “bodiedness” o f language’s material dimension.
Along the way, Bemstem is also carefiil to note that such usage can slip into exploitation, thus chargmg the discussion on writmg in “Stray Straws and Straw Men” with political overtones. When writmg’s non-mstrumental dimensions are finally evacuated via exploitation—rather than being emphasized through a more neutral, anti metaphysical “use”—one can see such exploitation as a symptom plagumg modem society where bodies are prostituted by the needs of forces as diverse as corporate capitalism and self-protective lovers. In this way, “Three or Four Things I Know about
Him” fe both more personal and more public than “Stray Straws and Straw Men.”
Bemstem's move ofcitmg Godard is not accidental with regard to the issue of citation, smce GodartTs work, is a fittmg filmic analogue of the dûjunctive composition Bemsteui achnires. See chapter fivers discussion ofBemsteih^s sûnilar move to cite Bob Dylan. 77 Like the older essay, “Three or Four” fe arranged paratacticaify mto numbered passages, but its structure as such is made even more apparent than “Stray Straws” by lendmg the various passages general^ more autonomy and mtemal consistency. This strengthens more the shaped and coDage-like quality o f the piece. The Grst passage, agam, is a quotation, but this time (and twice later) it k attributed to a specific someone, m tins case to Marx, rooting it more specifically m its own context: “ . . . the task of history, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world.. (Content's Dream 13). This fe somewhat m opposition to
“Stray Straws.” The two serial essays each embody divergent tendencies m Bemstem’s writmg. Context is far more solid m “Three or Four” than m “Stray Straws,” lendmg more credence to Bemstem’s poetics o fembodiment. Although “Three or Four” is more “embodied” m this respect than much ofBemstem’s more poetic writing, one notices these aspects in spite o f (perhaps because of) Bemstem’s need to msist on the material qualities ofhb writmg.
The second passage, though, in fts apparently heightened artffîce, reads more as a modernist, fiee verse poem. The writmg lacks any orthographic Justification m the margins and includes much use o f empty space, the latter o f which connects with the poem’s theme o f vacancy and discontinuity, here specffîcally m the office worker’s dull life:
a lot ofw hati experience is Just a tremendous sense of space and vacant space at that sort o f like a Stanley kubrkk film sort ofa lot ofobjects floatmg separately whichi don’t particularly feel do anything for me (Content's Dream 14)
78 It is thus a “concrete” poem, form following fonction, ironically concrete despite both the speaker’s compromised bodily mtegrity and the obvious degree to which the poem’s language is transparent and referential. Bemstem’s otherwise concrete representation of the speaker’s work redeems the dematerialization implied m his exploitation by the powers that be. Such abstraction extends to the “objects” that
“float separate^,” which make up no grounded or articulated whole. Bemstem’s hnplicit hope is that his own objects or passages will resist the abstractions and exploitation o f modem life.
Other passages m the essay, however, are more radically non-mstrumental, much more so than anythmg m “Stray Straws and Straw Men.” In passage she,
Bemstem tampers with many sentence fiagments and their orthography, to question the uniformity that modem prmtmg methods encourage: “avoidances: movies. I think it’s rather bormg already dAncInG with LaRRy rivers. marKINGS: not done by a machine. hAnDcRaFt” (Content's Dream 21). The passage’s experünents wfth orthography connect with a later quotation o f Clark Coolidge’s that forms the content of passage nme. This quotation discusses the consequences of writmg’s modem standardization m prmt, one result o f which is uniform spellmg: “ . . . that whole sense that spelling things right m English is realty a sort o faristocratic notion.. . “ (Content's Dream 25).
This quotation further connects both with the problem o f writmg’s materiality and of writmg’s bemg used as fodder for exploitation. Such uniform^ m writmg obscures the trae source o f the rules governing wrftmg, which in Bemstem’s view is the domain o f provisional statements or “hAnDcRaFt,” rather than that o fpowerfol mstitutions,
79 amiihg to set unifonn. standards. Bemstem draws the point both m the diction of
‘liAnDcRaFt” and in its unconventional orthography, which deâmOiarûes typical encounters wfth prftit by forcing readers to stutter through reading the word.
The critical narrative just presented, however, does not wholly account for the more challenging moments ofBemsteih^s paratactic composftion m these essays.
Bernstein had already prepared the reader for poetry's troubled connection wfth the natural in a quotation-hagment danglmg within the first passage of “Stray Straws and
Straw Men”: “‘Natural: the very word should be struck from the language’"
(Content's Dream 40), which confuses consciousness with its “syntacticÊation.” In passage four of “Three or Four,” we learn that “personal subject matter & fiowftig syntax. . . are the key to the natural look.” That same &st passage also contains another quotation-fragment that likewise prepares the reader for the humanism presupposed fti such naturalness: but what the devil is the human?’" Such
humanism is agafti echoed later fti defense o f poetic artifice that feiaOy defeies the human: “‘Technical artifice’ they scream, as if poetry doesn’t demand a technical
precision Technicians o f the human” (Content's Dream 42-3 ).
These repetitions, however, are unlike those that are typically found fti the
modem exposftory essay. Instead o f indicatftig to the reader how the topics wifi be
ftitegrated mto the expositional flow o fthe essay—and even what finally the topics
are—Bernstein sftnp^ lends his topics a sense o ftheft^ own rootedness fti particular
contexts and juxtaposes them. Bernstein does this without explicitly subordftiatftig
80 such topics to each other or to a larger^ controllmg purpose. Such is the rationale of the quotatiou-hagment ui passage one, o f “establishing the truth o f this world”
(Content's Dream 13).
“Three or Four”’s begmnmg eveu offers clues that readmg the fragments of writmg that Bemstem presents us with iu thw nou-Iinear, paratactic way is essential to the essay’s ahns and clahns:
“I look straight mto my heart & write the exact words that come from within. The theory o f fragments whereby poetry becomes a grab bag of 6vorite items—packed neatly together with the glue o f self-conscious & selfconsciously epic composftion, or, lately, homogenized into one blend by the machine of programmatic form—a diversion There are structures—edifices—wilder than the charts o f rivers, but they are etched by making a path not designftig a garden.” (Content’s Dream 40)
All writmg consists of fragments, Bemstem seems to argue, sewn together in some way, but the natural mode o f composition glosses over this hard truth, claimftig pretensions for the writing to which it cannot live up.
Connections among topics such as these the reader must establbh, for the
autonomy and particularity^ o f topics withfti a given passage or quotation are made
manifest, not them capacity to subordmate to a general, normative concept. So the
reader must then weigh context agaftist context to draw conclusions about what the
writing is doing, contexts that here seem more to generate multiple possibilities of
meaning thaneither to eliminate meanftig or structure ft uniformly apart from utterance.
The essay’s first passage-fragment has even wider significance for this
paratactic mode o f composftion. I f the essay’s &st sentence seems ftidicatwe o f a
romantic attitude toward con^sition, exhibftmg a fiaudulence about the relation
81 between (external) writing and (mtemal) consciouness^ then the larger context of which
it is a part further complicates the theory o f composition Bemstem is interrogatmg.
Because that &st sentence is part o f a larger quotation, it makes sense to see the rest of the quotation m its terms. But, strikmgly, what the reader receives &om that passage is a Imk between the false authenticity o f romantic composition and the speaker’s implicit
criticfem of Pound’s poetic for his Cantos^ a work that would seem more friendly to
Bemstem’s compositional ethos: ‘“The theory o f fragments whereby poetry becomes a
grab bag o f fevorite items—packed neatly together with the glue o f selTconscious &
self-consciously epic composition (Content's Dream 40).
As architecturally irregular as Pound’s Cantos are, they seem for the speaker to
be linked to “self conscious & selfconsciously epic composition.” Pound would
articulate his fragments so that, first, the fragments are “fovorite items,” and second,
they are placed m a “grab bag,” connected or “glued” together too “selfconsciously,”
too much in the service o f an “epic.” In this way. Pound has, accordmg to Bernstein,
designed a garden mstead o f chartmg a path. In the process. Pound has (in Bemstem’s
view) liquidated some o f the aestheticalfy mnovative potential o f a poetic of
fragmentation into an abstract “epic” blueprints, m effict homogenizmg and
demateriafizmg the pieces, too much m the service o f (Pound’s own) supervfaory
consciousness.
According to Bernstein, the criteria o f Pound seem suspect for several reasons.
That the quotation hself is both unattributed and mtemally mconsistent should also
serve as evidence for the poetic Bemstem is hnplicitly advocatmg here. Pound’s
82 quotations and citations, however dwerse they may be—apart from the supposed^ unifymg consciousness Bemstem ascribes to Pound’s work—can be tracked down with a little efifort (as Bemstem’s own quotation of Marx at the start of “Three or Four”).
Bemstem’s citations, however—and for that matter Ashbery’s—are frequently not traceable to a specffîc source outside the poem, implicitly presenting the reader with a world o f severe citationali^ m which distmctions among sources of quotations are no longer especmlly pertinent. Further, even if these citations and quotations are so traceable, they ofier no easy access to the writing’s overall plan (whether “path” or
“garden” variety).'^ This is so except in the citation’s sunultaneous objecthood and subordmation to the compositional ethos o f the poem, rather than to a governing concept or consciousness. The quotation above, about composition and Pound, likewise confronts the reader with an hnagmation m which its dwerse elements somehow belong together.
It K questionable whether Pound’s Cantos may legitûnately be Suited for being so “selfconsciously epic” or so abstract." But Bemstem’s remarks here account well for the experùnental, poetic excesses that crop up frequently m most ofhis own writings. These excesses show precûely what Bemstem means by “making a path,” where bnguage-derived uncertainti^ or mysteries have more hnportance than they would m a dogmatically rationalized poetics and direct the reader to read more m accordance with a composMooal ethos than a reforential one.
See V ^'orie Perlofif “N orm al^g.” This view ofPound seems maccmate^ more an act o fprojection by Bemstem than description of Pound. Bernstein, it can easily be argued, is susceptible to the charge of excessive self- consciousness and abstraction, even if Bemstem's selfconsciousness and abstraction take different
83 Take, for example, passage s k ui “Three or Four Thmgs I Know about Him”:
6. a fun is what i want to avoid the work of sittmg down & m'um the cheezy. it’s a hundred and forty five miles, you don’t go for now reason, couldn’t stop thmking about it wanted to go to sleep so bad, under, stuf^ thing, whats that gnawing, keeps gnawmg, switch, fiig, cumpf, afi-aid to get down to it, avoidances: movies, i think it’s rather bormg already dAncInG with LaRRy rivers, marKINGs: not done by a machme, hAnDcRaFt, so you get mto a scene and you say to y’rself—this is it, is outi^e it, & y’guys all know whats gomg on, Daddy-0 you a hero, OHH, can’t even get tired, what is it—d e a^ v ery wrinkled anyway, quiet, , , i could hear the very ^utmost of m’heart, E E z^, its fear eats away th e ,,, i’m totally afimd o f what it will sound like, flotsam, a $I transcript, stomach sputters, noke, mterforence, & I can’t work, TeAztHE MeEk, we’re’k ’iz pufiticks? poised: there is no overall plan. (Content's Dream 20-21)
In the midst o f so many indmduated passages m the overall composition—like the fost
(by Marx), the second (concrete poem on the office worker), the fourth (by
H aberm as)etc,—at fixst blush, this passage radical^ and productively destabilizes the compositional strings or “paths” the reader has been constructmg up to this point.
The first sentence, for example, seems under-determmed at ffist glance but could easily be otherwise: “a fun is what i want to avoid the work o f sittmg down & m’um the cheezy” (Content'sDream 20), Superficially the sentence recalls the structure o f passage two’s long concrete poem with its lack of uppercase orthography. Further, the sentence’s diction seems to echo that o f the earlier fiagments about the malaise and
fonns, Ashbery would deem them the “product” of an “idea,” See the discussion of “These Lacustrine Cities” befow, ^ “'Scientism' means science's belief in itself: that k, the conviction that we no longer understand science as one form ofpossible knowledge but rather must identic knowledge with science” (C ontent's Dream 19), 84 exploitation o f the modem office worker and his need to escape such exploitation
(“avoid the w orl^ in “fun.” Here, the reader would pause before “want” and “to” generatmg a fàûrly comprehensible “a fun is what I want [ ...] to avoid the work.”
But foom here matters soon become difficult, as Bemstem does not allow us
such a straightforward readmg; for no orthographical mark—comma, period, even just
empty space—warrants such, a pause. Perhaps the sentence could be broken elsewhere:
“a fim is what I want to avoid.” If so, the statement could be implymg awareness of
the ways m which consumer capitalism seems to rationalûe life supposedly outside of
labor. In that case, what are we to make o f the nommalfeation o f “fim”? Is “a fim” a
capitalist reification of leisure that ofi^rs no authentic release fiom the grips of such
exploitation, transforming an active, non-rationalâed process into an inert object ready
for consumption? If so, such merfia for the object would be an undesfiable
objectification for Bemstem’^s need to lend language an anmiistic objecthood that
makes a serious clami on our subjectndty.
Or, perhaps the “fim” offers an attractive physical alternative to tamted action
and labor, like the (ironic) “work o f sittmg down,” which so abstracts the worker fiom
his action (or inaction) and purposes. And what is “m*um the chee^,” a statement that
is so cryptic as to distort the narratwe flow of the sentence even more? The phrase m
general seems to concem speakmg versus remammg silent. For “m’um” we could read
“mum’s the word” with onfy slight variation—a missing “s” and a misplaced
apostrophe—or even “mumbo jumbo,” a torrent o f words designed to silence others,
effectively by drownmg out them speech.
85 This would tend to agree wfth the term “cheesy,” which may be read as “cheese ft!” or “stop ft!” But if so, to what end? What do the vicissitudes of modem work and leisure have to do wfth silence or speakftig out? To policing authorities? We could construct such a relation, something like “modem alienated labor tends to silence the worker, either through sel5censorship, censorshç perhaps derived distantly &om actual force, or through indirect Imgurstic control (“mumbo jumbo”).” But then what is the purpose o f the apostrophe in “m'um?^ is it a contraction? (What is omitted?) Does
“m’um” evoke reflexivity, as m French where the mdftect object pronoun is often contracted with the verb? What verb is contracted here? A stutter (“um”)? Ahum?
Perhaps both are, smce each o f these would seem to resonate with the problem of silence versus speech, reflecting a nascent yet possibly stifled speech, resembling the dKcontftiuous composition Bemstefti champions.
And what about “cheezy”?” Does it invoke contemporary American usage, as a synonym for “chm t^?’ If so, how would cheap aesthetics relate to the rest o f the sentence, unless perhaps fti some special way to the general market-driven consciousness of the modem citizen? What about cheese cracker brand “Cheezit?’ Is the ftnplication somethftig like “don’t speak out, just (literally) consume”?
Passages such as these fti the midst of Bernstein’s work ftideed guarantee that
“there is no overall plan,” one statement fti the passage that may be read more or less straightforwardly on its own terms. (But even this statement is yoked to the term
“poised” precedftig a colon. What is the relation between these?) Bemstefti’s ftnplicft and explicit aims fti composftig essays such as these is first to confiont the reader wfth
86 the brute materiality of language and dkcourse. Second, he ahns both to collapse the space between object and meanmg and to stall the process by which material 6 ct is made mto a meanmg that might be abstracted fiom it. In addition, such abstraction would suggest unfortunate explohation o f language that may be linked to the exploitation of others.
In citational terms, thk amounts to hnmersmg the readers in the world of language, which is not separate fiom the world as an inert mstrument, but which, as anhnistic object, makes a significant clahn on speakmg subjects, rather than ofifermg the descriptive account of ideas or emotions. This clahn k significant enough to imply that the social bond itself contams compositional values that are fundamental to language and writing.
“Sightmg” and “Soundmg” Language
In most o f the areas where Bemstem mentions the “chational” features of writhig, or even “citationality” hi general, he is notmg the materiality of language m medium specific forms, forms which he names “sightmg” and “soundmg.” So, there is a clear sense m which, accordmg to Bemstem, we encounter words as separate fiom ourselves, seeing them as they arrive to us, as Cavell would note, “fiom a distance,” in writmg or prmL This is so even as much as the claim they make onus hievitabtybrmgs us inside their uses. Likewise, abready exKtmg language is sounded when someone
87 speaks to us, the sound never completely lost to its sense. In either case, language, for all its abstraction in mstrumental use, takes on material characteristics, bounded by both time and space. Such materiality even more specffîcalfy forms the background agamst which Bemstem’s citationality must be seen, form his writing, citationali^ ceases to be the abstract domam of mstrumental use, and mstead is given over to a materWist poetics, remarking the gap between the word and its abstraction m the idea.
As regards “sightmg” languie and its foundational moment for the citationality o f language, Bemstem’s ideas are most accessible and provocative in his essay “Makmg
Words Visible / Hannah Wemer.”'® Here, Bemstem dùrectly connects what he calls a
“pervasive citationality” with Werner’s emphasis on “seemg” words in her “The
Clahvoyant Journal,” a title which itself literally connects “clear seemg” and writing.*’
“To ‘see words’ is to be inside language and lookmg out onto it. For Weiner, thk has involved an actual seemg (dahvoyance), although at the level o f the text it is present as a pervasive citationality (both m the sense o f a sightmg and a quotmg)” (Content's
Dream 266). Werner’s writing attempts to “physicalfee” language and render it
“palpable,” to give the reader “a view o f what is gwen, what has been handed down”
(Content's Dream 269)—in short, to give us a sense o f the citational basis of utterance.
Bemstem’s Werner is able to remark the gap between writmg and metaphysics without
forgetting her pomt of origm “inside” language.
The connection Bemstem establûhes miplichty m his serml essays between
parataxis and citationality attends to fohty general features of discourse m its
“ See Bemstem, Content's Dream 266-70. W eed, the cover photo of the Ctaàncyant Journal has Weiner posturing before the camera with the sentence “I see word^ written on her fordiead m marfcmg pen. 88 compositional structure. But what fe it about this specific connectioa betweea
“sightmg” and “quoting” that seems necessary fi>r Bemstem? His premise m imkmg language’s materiality with, the “pervasive citationality” o f Werner’s writmg, especklly m the second quotation above, is that the reader cannot know citationality outside of two forms that serve as a pomt o f origm. Fust, the essence o f citationality must be made palpable and, second, it must be made so m a way that K consKtent with its medium, one part o f which is writmg, and so here in visual form, m seeing words.
Without such a “physicalization” of language, langu%e’s citational quality, its nature o f havmg been “handed down,” is threatened in a very basic way. It might, then, appear to be less a borrowed thmg than the unmediated product o f abstract consciousness.
Though we are usually unconscious o f it, we also see words m this concrete way both when we speak and when we cite another’s words. As with Wittgenstem’s discussion of the figure-ground relation m the Philosophical Investigations,^^ we peer mto the ground o f gwen language and cuU words that, inasmuch as they differ fiom them ground, constitute a figure that stands out fiom that source. The figure, though, nevertheless derwes its substance fiom that ground, a ground fiom which, accordmg to
Cavell, we derive our own substance ashumans as well, however much, dififermgly, we seem to stand apart fiom langu%e. Cavell’s understandmg o f language bears the same structure ofhis understandmg o f modem^m. Accordmg to Cavell, modernism is characterized by an ambwalent attitude about history. On the one hand, “making it
** See chapter one above. 89 new” implies denying the connection between one’s own work and that of the past. On the other, one k inevitably returned to history, history that serves as the condition of possibility for one’s work.’’
Weiner’s optical metaphor furthermore has the benefit o f encouragmg the reader to acknowledge the sense in which the speakmg subject and the spoken words bear a reciprocal relation. Limited to seen words, we can no longer perpetuate the fantasy of ex nihilo creation, o f the selfiidenticaf mfinite subject. According to
Bemstem, Werner’s emphasis on “seemg words” k salutary because it grants them an eventalismanic objecthood in the face o f so much dematerialization, and thereby challenges the legithnacy o f the Cartesian ego. But m the process the horizons of both human and linguistic possibility are mdicated.
it ism th6 sense o f reciprocity between seer and sighted that we are both mside language and beside it. Before we use words, in seemingly autonomous fashion, thk elementary reciprocity must be established. The speakmg subject &st “sights” the words to be used fiom the language pool and then unplicitly notes their besideness, then: palpability and strangeness, a “sighting” to which our uses o f language are Innited.
“The citational: shards of language, ciphers to be exammed for evidence, yet which we are forever beholden t o . . . which holds our sight withm its views. [ ...] writmg as a specific kmd o f object makmg. . . {Content's Dream 269).
Agam for Bernstein, the CaveUian paradox proper to the social bond obtams, and further so in both philosopher and poet’s implicit equation of the social bond wfth language. In its basis m convention, language is separate fiom us. But while we thmk
See Melville, Modemüsm” 90 we smiply make use o f it for our needs, we are nevertheless also being used by it in its anmiKtic besideness to us. Such besideness makes a claim on our bemg and thus brmgs us inside it where it serves as a pomt of origin. Again, this split articulates the opposition between (subject-centered) mstrumental and (object-centered) non instrumental uses of language. “We all see words; signs o f a languie we live inside of.
& yet these words seem exterior to us—we see them, projections of our desires, and act, often enough, out o f a sense o f their demands" {Content's Dream 266).
One o f the dangers m. this sort o f seemg is for Bernstein the possibility that the material reciprocity o f vision between seer and seen will be elimmated in favor of the subject’s “seeing through” words and terms. Along the way, the palpability o f terms will be lost to metaphysics: “Werner’s writing a chronicle of a mind coming to terms with itself^ quite literally: for the terms are, m feet, made visible. We all see words, but it is our usual practice to seethrough them. Werner has focused her gaze not through, not beyond, but onto” {Content's Dream 270). If we are never disabused of the metaphysics o f language, metaphysics that offer a mere partial understanding of language, we risk losmg the truth o f language’s besideness to us, that its strangeness is nevertheless a pomt o f origm.
In citational terms, this disrespect for language’s objecthood amounts to refiising to grant the cited material any real m tegr^ or status, as is typical m the standard uses to which citation is put: illustration, ornamentation and allusion. In the first case (citation as illustration), the cited material does occupy space m the mam body o f the work, but its objecthood is lost m its subservience to the prmciple.
91 argument or statement that it mere^ describes. In the second case of citation as ornamentation, the cited material is given objecthood but margmalized as epigraph, note or footnote. In the foial situation (citation as allusion), the cited materW is abstracted &om its context to fit the demands o fthe citing text.
Such dematerialization and margmalization o f the cited language dims the vision o f words Di what Bemstem has termed ambliopia, “a medical term for reduction or dnnming of vision in the absence o f apparent pathology” (A Poetics 184), as Tom
Becket put it m a 1987 mterview with Bernstein.’® Bernstein uses the term as an
“ethico-cultural metaphor” m which our relation to languie is rendered problematic by censoring the material basis o f language, the 'bodily rootedness” o f it:
. . . this dimming o f vision (what I’ve called “sight”) fe somethmg like hysterical, magmary, smce a task o f poetry is to make audible {tangible but not necessarily gra^oA/e) those dimensions of the real that cannot be heard as much as to imagme new reals that never before existed. Perhaps this amoimts to the same thing. {A Poetics 184)
Here, Bemstem is at paios both to note the e& ct o f such vMon to dematerialize and/or margmalûe the materiality of language. He shows that “new reals” are not so much created out of nothing, but rather are cited reals, those that are “unearthed.” In
Heideggerian fiishion, Bemstem asks “could it be that language b as much a part of the earth as of the world? And that this is what is censored? That the tools we use to constmct our worlds belong to the earth and so continuously (re)inscribe our material and spnitual communion with. &?” {A Poetics 184)^^ As tonic to this amblyopia,
Bemstem proposes instead an “ambi-opa,” or a “multi-level seeing, which is to say.
^ See Charles Bemstem, “Censers of the Unknown—Miargms, Dissent, and the Poetic Horizon,” 4 Aoefics (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992) 179-192.
92 vision repossessed.” This vision does not dematerialize or marginalize the “bodily rootedness o f language,” but rather envisages both the origin o f and departure horn language simultaneously.
Poetic Amblyopia
One of Bernstein’s longer poems from the Sophist collection fe similarly entitled
“Amblyopk” and k mdeed the source for Becket and Bernstein’s discussion m the interview. This five hundred-odd line poem resonates with the materialist themes about language Bemstem treats m the problem o f “sightmg” and citmg it. The poem generally discusses the split between body and spmt that, m Bemstem’s view, helps to plague language use and social 1&. This split is reflected in such dhnmed vision, where a radical split between subject and object occasions even moral problems. When the two are partitioned from each other absolutely, subjecthood threatens to overwhelm the life o f objects.
The poem’s begmning lines, for example, ofifrr situations m which bodies are divorced from souls or spfrits, narrating an oblique tale o f a “moral dwarf’: “He was a moral dwarf in a body as / solid as ice. Everywhere he looked / he felt fear and I evasion” (The Sophist 112). The body seems strong, but frozen and mflexible, and
See Heidegger, “Origm of the Work o fArt,” Poeay, Language^ Thought,, trans. Albert Hofetadter (New York: Eferper& Row, 1971) 15-88. 93 certamly capable o f meltmg. These lines come off sounding like a nursery rhyme, but here both the nursery rhyme's comic and pomted nature are blunted with Bemstem’s explicitly moralistic tone and paratactic composition.
The next several Imes apparent^ move away Èom the moral dwarf yet the reader k still put m the position o f imagmmg that thecontiguity o f the two moments is no accident:
. . . No notice no location bore any resemblance to the true form o f these cmders: mtransigence, pestering. It was the logic of iosurgence, a stone door openmg onto adnt floor. {JheSophist \\T)
The rhymmg, elemental imagery at the end o f the passage (“stone door,” “dirt floor”) seemmgly connects with the ice o f the forst fow Imes and continues to flame the discussion of troubled bodies.
But what do we make o f “No notice f no location bore any / resemblance to the trueI form ofthese cmders?’ One could argue that the elemental, bodily inagery contmues m the “true / form of these cmders,” inplymg dematermlùation, an
“insurgence” agamst the stone and dirt. Or, the inagery could inply that smaller atomistic elements constitute the buildmgs o f civilization, thereby agam fklsifymg the conceit o f humanfetic, ex nihilo creation. In that sense, then, the “openmg onto a d it / floor” of “a stone door,” a scene that evokes a technological^ backwater age, could evmce an “msurgenf ’ contrast.
94 Such concerns come even more to the foreground several lines later when the speaker states o f the “moral dwarf” m a philosophical tone.
The physical present, he would say to hunself is unrelated to the physical afterthought (The Sophist 112),
Even what the dwarf perceives as physical is divided absolutely between object and subject. Immediately after.
Towns steamed in the light: a glimmer o f the ghosts ofthe people who had lived there (The Sophist 112).
Th6 ethereal scene filled with “steam” and “glimmer/ ofthe ghosts” seems a stark contrast with the solid, elemental forms o f ice, stone and dirt the poem mentions earlier. It further accentuates the disturbed relation between body and soul the poem is articulating, which is further explored just afterward when we fold that a dkembodied
Personality is barbarity so we eat at each other with waxmg sphfts when all the tune we are on the wane. (The Sophist 113)
These Imes present yet another scenario m which body and sphit, concrete and abstract,
are out of harmony or balance. Ironically our “barbarfty” comes as the result o f the
“spirit[‘s]” or “personality's]” superseding physical bemg m a manner radical^ foreign
to it, fay “eat[mgl,” ultimate^ creatmg a situation in which our whole bemg (“we”) is
“on the wane.” Such a problem is even marked by the passage's rhythms, each line
95 understressed and ending unstressed. Sunilarty. the “Heart,” is a kmd o f generic, mauthentic source for emotion, laughabfy^ “a steel brace that men / use to erect them sagging spirits” {The Sophist 113).
Still, Bemstem warns, a split subjecthood defines us, rendering hnpossible any absolute identity of body and spmit: “I am not I because my / sister has stolen a / pear and I have tasted o f / its pit” {The Sophist 113). This Edenic parody not sûnply rejects
(seemmgly) the Christmn doctrine o f origmal sm, but mdicates that positmg an origmary unity of body and spirit is mere 6ntasy. Rather, thb split k deeply formative o f our subjectivity. The unanswered question is thus how do we manage this split
subjecthood. Will spirit overwhelm body? Will the split between body and spirit be
intensified to the point o f Jeclqrll-Hyde schkophrenia? Or, can the two be balanced in
productive tension, the one not lost to the other?
These concerns about the relation between body and spirit are echoed
throughout “Amblyopia” m its treatment of terms related to perception. For Distance,
in a quotation later m the poem, ‘“Perception does not merely serve / to conform
preexistmg assunqptions, but / to provide orgasms with new mformation’“ {The Sophist
125). As do several other passages in the poem, this one sounds like the institutional
writmg o f experts, but o f course with one obvious and important slippage. Where we
would expect the term “organism” that could be “provide[d]” . . . with new /
mformatibn,” instead Bemstem has mserted a near homonym, “orgasms” (a Freudian
slqp ifthere ever was one). This has the e # c t of mtrodncing a stark, if humorous, rifo
m the otherwise seamless theory o fperception articulated here.
96 An mterruptîon of this sort is espectalfy onportant hi this context since the theory of perception presented here is baldfy abstract and K presented (almost) purely hi an histrumentaL form o f discourse. In correspondence with the latter point, the theory articulates the presence o f an infinité subject, for whom all sensory data exist, suggesting the primacy o f the human over language and representation, instead of offering a consciousness based on the physical Perception, in this scheme, gives nothing truly new as it merely “confirm[sl preexisthig assumptions,” offering only “new information” to that same supersedhig consciousness. The interruption of “orgasm,” however, renders ironic thfe abstract depiction of perception, bringihg home its basis in the body rather than hi the generic organisnL
Bemstem's complication o f instrumental writmg is seconded by the very fact that the passage is (presented as) a quotation that doesn't easily serve the end of illustration or ornamentation. Quotations hi contexts like these in themselves undermme the abstract theory and language seemingly contained whhm them. In this way, words and citations are to be sighted (or “cited”) rather than seen through.
Fmally, Bernstein’s treatment o f movies (“Frames o f Reference”) adds another possibQiQf for the problem of language and chationalhy. Over agamst the possibOi^ that words may undeshably be “seen through” rather than “sighted,” is the possibility that media may fiid other ways o f generating Cartesian subjectivity. This is done through the spectacle, in which the viewer is permitted the hnplicit fentasy of consummg hnages, hnages whose explicit fimction is to thrHL Filmic spectacle, in
Bernstein’s estnnation, deep^ af&ms the Cartesian split between self and world that he
97 wOl argue leads to the same problem of müssûig the medium, that is, m faHing to see bow media âshion their hnages: “[F]ilms put me in an ontological position o f a subject, givmg sway to the Cartesian split between my subjectivi^ and the externality o f a world which exists without me” (Content's Dream 98-99). So, if self and world, subject and object, lose either thehr demotion or their fundamental reciprocity, language collapses mto mert objectification disguised as spectacle. As movies
“spectacaKze” the world, they “totalize” it for us, enablmg us to
get a handle on it, on our own munersion m it. Subdumg the truth o f our bemg-m-the-world, and being overcome by the world, k not only exhüaratmg but liberatmg (or shall I say, gives the Qhision o f liberatmg—what else could it do?) fi:om the chams o f msideness. (Content’s Dream 113)
So, while it must be registered that language is necessarily “beside” us, for our uses and departures, conscious or unconscious, we cannot forget that we remain “chained”
“mside” it as well, as it serves as our point of origm.
Sounding and Citation
If Bernstein’s “sightmg” attends to one side ofthe medium-specific, material duplicity o f poetry and writmg, then his “soundmg” attends to the other, recailmg less the spatial organi^tion and graphic nattne of the former and more a temporal
98 succession of sounds. More important, however, is the sense k which “sounding,” mstead o f appealmg to the “besideness” of “sighted” language, rather mfonns us of our embeddedness m language, our bemg “chained” inside it.
As Bemstem establishes a link between “sightmg” and citation, he will likewise form one between “soundmg” and citation. This much fe evident in Bemstem’s early essay on CavelL’s compositional style. Again, Bemstem is at pains here to pomt out that Cavell’s essays are stmctured more along the lines of “ordering and arrangement” than “exposition.”
His style, accordingly, is not really deductive and expository—although it is filled with arguments—as much as invocattve. Whatever answer, what authority, he provides comes not fi:om argument but fiom soundmg the words to see what they tell, to make their resonances tangible, and, specifically, with the realbation that we literally make the world come mto bemg by givmg voice to it, by our (re)caHs. {Content's Dream 167: my italics)
The “mvocative” logic o f Cavell’s composition is connected to the collage ethos
Bemstem attributes to CaveH earlier m the paragraph: “Cavell’s use o f texts relates to
the use of collage and the use o f prior texts, of pervasively citational language.. .”
{Content's Dream 166). According to Bemstem, Language’s “chains o f insideness”
ensure that, m the first mstance, reality will be compositional. And m “soundmg the
words to see what they teU,” Bemstem’s CaveH displays his prunary investigation mto
language use, rather than semantics.
At the very end ofthe paragraph, Bemstem quotes some lines fiom Robert
Creeley (“(wortfr, words / as ^ a ll/ worlds were /Aere—Robert Creeley, ‘AToken’“
{Content's Dream 167).) In another essay, Bemstem shows how Creeley smiilar^
99 exhibits a link betweea sounding language and citation. In “Hearing ‘Here’: Robert
Greeley’s Poetics o f Duration,” Bemstem explicitly draws a connection between the emphasis on sound m Greeley’s work and Greeley’s citationality. First, Bernstein is quick to distmguish Greeley’s citationality &om any superficial commitment a writer might make to reproducing the words o f others. Here—and Bernstein could be thinkmg o f his own writmg as wel^-Greeley “has a Gmny way of makmg it seem like he’s citmg, and m turn literal^ g cliches, when m 6ct he’s manuikcturmg the sensation o f hearmg cliches out of word combinations not otherwise heard that way” (Content's
Dream 302).^ This citational commitment is more extreme than snnply parroting the talk o f others; it penetrates down to “mdmdual words” as well as “sentences and phrases.” “The citational process fe not prnnarfly mtended to call attention to the ‘way’ somethmg is said—say fts dialect or pomt-of-view—but to the sound as physical duration, as sequence o f syllables.” Greeley’s use o f off-rhymes, “marvelously moronic at tunes,. . . brmg to conscious ear the sound o f the words as musical” (Content’s
Dream 303).
Indeed, “soundmg” is one o f Bemstem’s fevorfte terms, not sûnply m its relation to citation, but generally so, much more so than “sightmg” is. Again, the term clearly aids Bemstem ni his tendency to try to recoup the non-mstrumentality of language, m hB on-goihg rejection o fabstraction and metaphysics as they generally indicate an mstrumental view o f language. These rejections o f abstraction and metaphysics play themselves out in precisely the ways Bemstem suggests here for
^ Like Hannah Wemer^s writmg Creeley^s cihUiboaliQr ta this sense is also best demonstrated m hisjoumal-text, m “A. Day Book.”^ This can be connected to the personal wnthigs m Bemstem’s serial essays. 100 Cavell and Creeley. The citationaL m theùr view, brings us mto contact not so much with language's brute strangeness and our departures Èom it (as m the case of
“sighting”) but rather with the mysterious signfficance o f its ordinaryness. In this way, soundmg the language testifies to the possibilities of language, which m turn delimit human possibility. It is to this extent that we remain forever mside language as much as
we do beside its anhuKtic objecthood.
Bemstem uses “soundmg” in certam significant areas to articulate his skepticism
of metaphysics. In a revision of an adage already stressmg the anti-metaphysical
understanding o f language—Williams’ “No ideas but m thmgs”—Bemstem specifies,
“No ideas but in sound” m a provocatwely entitled essay, “Livmg Tfesue / Dead Ideas”
( 1984). With this revision, Bemstem further brings home the medium o f poetry to
concreteness. Likewise, m his cryptic “preface” to Content's Dream, Bemstem revises
an excessively abstract statement, “the gossamer wmgs o f thought,” mto “I would have
said bats’ waves o f sound” (Content's Dream 9-10). In the process, Bemstem does
three things: (1) he lends an actual body to the wmgs (“bats”); (2) he transforms the
disembodied, ethereal “gossamer wmgs” to physical “waves o f sound”; and (3) he
permits the latter term, “sound,” once more to replace an abstraction (“thought”) with
concreteness.
As poetic writmg maximiæs the use o f the anti-metaphysicai effects of
“sounding language,” “soundmg” m this way becomes the form o f tappmg into all
linguistic possibility. Tone and agam, Bemstem will stress the importance ofthe
“possibility” for what language can do when words are sounded, “to see what they
101 reveaL” This attitude is opposed to one in which words are manipulated by a consciousness ailegedfy antecedent to them, which would then function as an excessive and unpoetic departure &om the words themselves. Bemstem notes that when language, the “membrane through which we perceive,” language, “is sounded, the possibilities o f its structure [arej heard” (Content's Dream 123). Elsewhere, to “sound the language” is to “reveal its meanmgs” (Content’s Dream 74).
These linguistic possibilities are derived Êom outside the self^ but such possibilities nevertheless form the basis o f human possibility, the way m which we are
“mside” language. “Sound,” for Bemstem, b very much our home, lackmg so much of the distance and estrangement of “sightmg,” suggestmg a level o f mtunacy to which sightmg cannot lay claim. Such citational soundmg—and the particular non- mstrumental view o f language it presupposes—have profound implications for expression, and communication. In hb mtroduction to the “Language Samplef^ of the
Paris Review ofl982, Bemstem notes that “[tjhere are no termmal pomts (me you) m a soundmg o f language &om the mside, in which the dwellmg is already/always given” (Content's Dream 239). The “givenness of language,” or its general citationality, provides a certam “dwellmg,” an “mside” that serves at once as the frame and pomt o f departure for communication and expression.
Bemstem’s remarks here, concemmg language as both, a soundmg and as a dwellmg place, bear a striking snnilari^ to the later writmgs o f German philosopher
Martm Heidegger. More generally, Heidegger’s own understandmg o f language and poetry deepty resembles Bemstem’s and frnther charges the citationality o fsoundmg
102 and dwellmg m BernstenL First, Heidegger notes “the true relation of dominance between language and man,” m order to reveal the precedence of language to which man must “listen” first in order to speak at all(Poetry 216). “It is [strictly] language that speaks. Man Just speaks when, and only when, he responds to language by iWmnmg to its appeal” (Poetry 216). The relation between maaand language becomes
“mverted” when “man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while m feet language remams the master o f man” (Poetry 215).
Further, this listenmg o f which Heidegger speaks is linked with poetry, “an ever
more paîn^talfing Ifetenmg” than that which commonly occurs when one speaks:
But the responding m which man authentically Ifetens to the appeal of language is that which speaks in the element of poetry. The more poetic a poet fe—the freer (that is, the more open and ready for the unforeseen) hfe saymg—the greater is the purfty with which he submits what he says to an ever more pamstakmg listenmg (Poetry 216)
Such a poet-speaker is diametrically opposed to the speaker who treats language as a
vehicle for “the mere propositional statement that fe dealt with solely in regard to its
correctness or mcorrectness” (Poetry 216).
Heidegger’s remarks on poetry as the medium for thfe authentic speaking occur
in hfe essay on Holderlin, “. . . Poetically Man Dwells. . . , ” where the philosopher also
seeks to establish that poetry is a sort of “dwelhngT that occurs when language is
treated more on its own terms than is commonly done. Regardmg the first issue, the
connection between poetry and dwellmg, Heidegger first disclaims that Holderlm’s
apparently casual Imkage o f “poetry” and “dwellmg,” in the phrase “poetically man
103 dwells,” is not meant mthe forms the two terms are typically understood. Hôlderlm’s
statement
speaks o f man^s dwellmg. It does not describe today’s dwelling conditions. Above all, it does not assert that to dwell means to occupy a house, a dwellmg place. Nor does it say that the poetic exhausts itself in an unreal play o f poetic hnagmation Perhaps the two can bear with each other, TWs is not alL Perhaps one even bears the other m such a way that dwellmg rests on the poetic. If this is mdeed what we suppose, then we are requned to think o f dwelling and poetry in terms o f them essential nature.. . . When Holderlin speaks o f dwellmg, he has before his eyes the basic character of human exKtence. (^Poetry 214- 215)
The “basic character of human existence” for Heidegger is man’s response to
language. Smce poetry vs what “ftst causes dwellmg to be dwellmg,” poetry’s basic
stuff language, must also be at issue.
But where do we humans get our mformation about the nature o f dwellmg and poetry? Where does man generally get the clahn to arrive at the nature o f somethmg? Man can make such a claim only where he receives it. He receives it from the telling o f language. Of course, only when and only as long as he respects language’s own nature. {Poetry 215)
Most modem speech, accordmg to Heidegger, does not respect language’s own nature,
for “there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever taOcmg, writmg, and
broadcastmg o f spoken words” {Poetry 215). Heidegger’s treatment of language as the
basic stuflfofpoetry, which m turn “realty lets us dwell,” supports Bemstem’s
understandmg o f citationality as a soundmg ofgwen language, language which, despite
arrivmg from outside the sel^ fonns the basis for mtmoacy and “dwellmg.”
104 The paradoxical mthnacy o f th s gwenness of language is hirther mtensifîed as
Bemstem links citationality to the body: “It is the touch of others that is the givenness o f language. So writmg could be such 'Gmshing touches/ not tellmg another what she or he does not know but a resonating (articulatmg) o f the space m which both are enwrapped (enraptured)” {Content's Dream 243). That citationality in literature is likened to the body’s havmg been touched by others forms for Bemstem an “erotics of readmg” that calls to mmd Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure o f the Text, In both Barthes and Bemstem, the forces that delay and obstmct fulfillment m writmg play an essential role m producing and mtensitymg fulfillment.^
In the foscmatmg tract-poem. Artifice o f Absorption, Bemstem discourses on two terms that play an onportant role m the work o f the fomous art critic, Michael
Fried—"absorption” and “theatricality.”^^ For Bemstem—who would rather make use o f the term “anti-absorption” for Fried’s “theatricality”—citation functions agam as a paratactic mpture m composition. Anti-absorptwe forces such as citation seemmgly fiustrate our access to the text but paradoxically also serve as the precondition for such access. In Bemstem’s case, citation mtroduces an hnpedunent to our common readmg practices, mevftably causing readers to pause before reaching an end, or constmcting one for themselves.
The sexual analog seems mescapable: aamteiruptweness that mtensifies & prolongs desne, a postponement that folds m delay a more sustammg pleasure &
^ See generally Roland Barthes, The Pleasure o fthe Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: ECU and Wang, 1975). See Michael Fried, '"Art and Objecthood,”’ Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battock (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968) 116-47aaiABsorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age o f Diderot (B erkei^ U of CaUfômîa P, 1980). 105 presence. That is, and [sic] erotics of reading & writing, extending from Barthes’s descr^tion of the pleasures ofthe text (which is m erotics o f absorption) ----- (Artifice 52)
Such erotic delay is found withm the mechanics o fthis quotation itself^ where the Ime breaks and the uses ofthe ampersands manage 6 r the reader an awareness in the poem o f its own semantics and poetics.^ Further, these “connectives”—as well as the curiously placed conjunctioa “and” near the middle ofthe passage (where there should be an “an”)—play on the very paradox o f connective, which separates as it unites.*®
Bemstem’s “absorptive” text o f fulfillment is thus undergirded by its mevitable
“theatricality.”
Shortfy after this passage m Bemstem’s Artifice o fAbsorption, Bemstem discusses French philosopher Georges Bataüle’s erotics of reading, particularly the latter’s theory of transgression, a
[ ...] paradigm case o f usmg anti-absorptwe (socially di^ptive, anticonveniionaO techniques ft>r absorptive (erotic) ends” (Artifice 52).
This would articulate Bemstem’s ultonate strategy m theorômg and practicmg citation, a condition m which language’s duplicitous nature, sound and sense, remams always m productive tension.
^ See the dûcussfon on Plato’^s treatment oferotics chapter five below. ^ This connective paradox k not unlike the paradox both ofcitation and modernism. Citation illustrates as it displaces, concretizes as it abstracts, jiist as modernism turns away fiom and toward history. 106 Per&nnance: Sightmg and Soundmg
In another significant essay, Bemstem discusses both sightmg and soundmg at the same time to define the perfiinnative essence o f poetry and thus the per&rmative essence of chationali^. This discussion chunes with his understandmg ofthe
“theatricality” o f language which makes us, as readers, aware ofthe nature and process o f readmg, precisely to m tens^ the experience, hi an essay on Jackson Nfec Low,
“Jackson at Home”—the title of which echoes the Heideggerian thesis about language as dwellmg place—Bemstem connects Mac Low’s citationaL documentary writmg procedure with performance. A “natural hütorian o f language,” Mac Low
has suggested that his texts are scores whose primary realization comes m performance (art idea mterestmgly related to hb notion ofthe text as documentation). Performance actualkmg the possibilities mherent in the text by grounding it (embodying it) expressively in a sounding or voicmg. So that the text only comes alwe m an active reading o f it (m a performance, or, silentfy, by a reader). (Content "s Dream 255f^
Readmg Mac Low is shnDar to “readmg the proof of a theorem or lookmg at quotations o fodd colIoquialÈms or puzzlmg over unfamiliar pictographic or hieroglyphic writmg forms.” This “soundmg or voicmg’ mvolved in such composition furthermore exhibits a “cftatibnai quality [mj the writmg.”
But the visual side of performance is not, accordmg to Bemstem, lost in Mac
Low’s composition. That Mac Low “wants us to both bear and look at wordness m ways that don’t let the language dissolve mto an. experience just o f its 'content’ is
^ Abo see Charles Bonstem, âatroductîoa. Close Listenmg:Poetry andthe Perfbrmed Word, ed- Charles Bemsteia (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998) 3-25.
107 evident in the strong visual dnnension o fmuch, of his work” (Content's Dream 255-6).
In this way, readers must attend as much to the “graphic look” ofthe text as to its
“verbal meaning” (Content's Dream 256).
Mac Low^s work for Bemstem reaches an ideal that Bemstem will unplicitly clahn as a goal for his own writmg. In this respect, Bemstem’s work can produce m the reader a consciousness simultaneously aware of both the mstrumental and non- mstrumental dhnensions ofthe writmg. Bemstem lauds Mac Low for providing a
“model” by which “the seams” ofthe work are seen “at the same tune as experiencmg their product: [to] watch the spell being created without losmg sight of the machinic principles through which it is engendered” (Content'sDream 256).
Despite their apparent difference o f material, sightmg and soundmg have much m common. They do seem mflected along the CaveUian Imes that Bemstem mdicates, sighting inplymg the “besideness’^ o f language to us, soundmg inplymg our
“msideness” i i language. But sightmg and soundmg both provide the basis for semantic and human possibOi^. Sightmg the physical strangeness of language forces us to repudiate contmuity, but soundmg forces us to acknowledge our mtinacy with language.** But both, to varymg extents, arise out o f Bemstem’s need to brmg to the fore the non-mstrumental features oflai%uage.
“ SeeMelvillev Pftilosophy 3-33. 108 A Few Qualms
It may well be objected that Bernstem’s extreme msistence o f the non- mstrumental side of language, the faith he has m the ‘^lateriality” ofthe signifier common to Language poetry, is defensive and too insistent to be accepted on its fece.
K as his Heideggerian commitments suggest, one of Bemstem’s essential goals in writmg is to re-mvigorate language that has become lifeless through excessive
mstrumental use, one might wonder whether stressmg so much the non-instrumental would solve the basic problem. In other words, is Bemstem’s project m this respect a
reaction formation, a counter phobic strate^ designed to avoid a problem that k taken
too serious^ as the source for a host o f other problems? Even though fenguage use
was no doubt fer dififerent for those first uses o f language than it is for people today,
language was even for such cave dwellers technology, somethmg engmeered by
humans for certam pragmatic purposes. Thb implies that, however enigmatic or rooted
m the body material language use was then, it was still contammated with mstrumental
use. It seems that thK issue must be acknowledged as much as Bemstem’s alternative
observation, accurate and mcBwe as it is, that however much language is employed for
instrumental purposes, it remams thmgly.
Bemstem’s anti-humanismm this respect strikes a particular post-structuralist
chord, despite Bemstem’s move to a hktorically more opportune period of language
use. This is so also despite Bemstem’s “Thought’s Measure,” m which Bemstem
109 embraces V^genstem over Derrida^ because Bemstem’s apparent embrace of
“language as its use” does not seem entnely clear. As mentioned earlier, Bemstem wKbes to embrace the material component o f language and Wittgensteiman language use. But for Wittgenstem, language, when viewed through the lens o f usage, remams mysterious and opaque, despite the great degree to which language is employed mstrumenta%. In this respect Wittgenstem tends to fode &om Bemstem’s poetic purview. Alternatively, Bemstem’s stress on the materklity ofthe signifier is so msistent that, m his poetic practice, it fiequently becomes abstracted into a sign rather than remaining an object.” All too often, Bemstem’s poems may be read as mere illustrations o f h^ essays, which casts in doubt his use o fcitation for the ends of displacement over illustration. This may be one reason Bemstem’s essays, and the essays ofthe Language poets m general, are more widely read than theh poems, however much Bemstem and others wfll deny any essential difference between poetry and prose. Ironical^, Bemstem’s essays are more mtriguihg than hË poems because of his unique blend o f referential, mstrumental language use and more poetic, non- instrumental language use. Frequent^, m Bemstem’s essays, one admhes the works because he need not take his extreme attitude about non-mstrumental writmg completely seriously.
Issues along these Imes surfece m Bemstem’s strange remarks on Pound m
“Three or Four.” For Bemstem, Pound is a difficult figure, one to whom Bemstem is no doubt attracted because ofPound’s earth shattermg mno varions m poetics. On the other hand. Pound is an arch enemy ofBemstein because ofPound’s fescist politics.
' See Erickson,Fate. 110 There could be no deeper split for someone like Bemstem who hnagines his own poetics and politics as remforcmg each other. In corroboration, Bemstem must note that there is nothmg truly fescistic about Pound’s poetics.^® Nevertheless, Bemstem tries to &id hiult with Pound’s poetics, because Bemstem has trouble imagmmg how one person could produce such good and eviL^‘ In Bemstem’s view, Pound’s
“designmg a garden” m the Cantos rather than “makmg a path” bears the earmarks of elitist system building (A Poetics 123). Although Bemstem cannot quite connect such system buildmg whh 6uky mstrumental language use (at least m Pound’s case),
Bemstem’s criticism o f Pound on this ground is mcomplete for the same reasons that his critique o f instrumental language use is mcomplete. Bemstem has trouble hnagihmg a system that is nevertheless at the same time underghded by indetermmacy, since
Pound’s Cantos are hardfy systematic m any normative sense.“ Probably Bemstem’s partKan commitments, push imn severely m one dnrection, o f embracmg the non- mstrumental side o f language, rather than another, one that would, less puritanically, accept the corruption of language and ulthnately o fcitation.
See Charles Bemstem, “Readmg Pound,” online posting, POETICS, 15 June 2001 Bernstein, because doing so would suggest a weakening ofthe political commitments m which Bemstem is mvested. As his statements o f politics constantly stress—and this position seems general to Language poetry*^—makmg use o f the non-mstrumental features of language is politically (not just aesthetically) radical/"* This is ironic given Bemstem’s essentially Heideggerian poetics and is probably the weakest element of Bemslem’s (and Language poetry’s) programme, leading one critic to label the critique o f ideology mherent to Language poetry “self^defeatmg” (Erickson 176-77). It becomes highfy difhcult to hnagme Language writmgs mspirmg any real political solidarity outside of the highly specialized and cerebral coterie o f the Language poets themselves. Even worse, the non-mstrumental use o f language has been most markedly used by electronic media and high tech advertising, the latter of which would form precisely the sort of complicity Bernstein would like to avoid (Erickson 176). Bemstem’s mordmate stress on the non-mstrumental features o f language b seconded by his mordmate need to be or appear progressive or left wing, and Pound remains a problem for him even though Pound’s fasckm was both abstract and efkctively harmless.^^ (Perlofi^ ‘Tound & Fascism”). IfBemstem’s politics seem mcoherent, what does the final analysis o f his poetics reveal? It seems that Bemstem is most effective as a poet and essayist when he either adulterates his puritanical commitments, as aiArt^ice o f Absorption, or acts ^ See George Hartley, Textual Politics and the Language Poets (Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 1989). “ Another element o f Bernstein’s puritanic is that his politicsmust somehow be aligned with his poetics. See Ashbery’s attitude about politics above. 112 somewhat agamst the gram of what he prescribes, as in. the serial essays. This generally means fîndmg some new and productive “tension,” as Jon Erickson puts it, between mutually contradictory ferces like figure and ground, or here between the instrumental and non-mstrumental, the referential and non-referential, and the “material” signifier and abstracted signified (8). Such is the aim of Compagnon's definition o f citation m which contradictory elements mingle, between renoncé répété and renonciation répétant, Bemstem’s citational poetic does manage such productive tension at times, even if it fiequentty tips too often toward displacement rather than illustration. Nevertheless, for our purposes Bemstem surely represents the outer Imiits of citational poetics, a subject to which 1 will retum m this paper’s last chapter. See Vbijorie Perlof^ “Pound and Fascfem,” POETICS (onluie postmg: June 15,2001) CITATION AND ARTIFICE IN ASHBERY’S EARLY POETRY Ashbery’s poetry shows marked signs of his preoccupation with the avant- garde visual arts, particularly his early poetry. Further, these signs condition the way m which citatioa helps to drive his poetics. In an obvious sense, Ashbery’s preoccupation with the visual arts is present when he explicitly, or very nearly so, engages the topic o f pamtmg in hfe poems. Such is the case with poems like “The Painter,” “The Instruction Manual,” “The Skaters,” and femously, “Self-Portrait m a Convex Mirror,” the last o f which a meditation on Parmigianmo’s baroque masterpiece. More onportant, however, is the degree to which Ashbery was driven to expernnent with all manner o f poetic artifice. If the avant-garde visual arts were conditioned by the drive to reduce subject matter to the medium itselfand its (fisciplmary mechanmns,^ then the same could be said o f poetry. Thus, the basis for ‘ See Clement Greenberg “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Collected Essays and Criticisnty vol. I (Chicago; U of Chicago P, 1986) 5-22. 114 Ashbery’s extensive use ofvillanelles., pantounts, sonnets and sestinas iahis first volume.Some Trees (1956), reveals indnrectly Ashbery’s deep-held interest m the avant-garde visual arts. But Asbbery was to be more dnrect m attemptmg to accomplish m poetry the same effects as those accomplished ih the dada and surreal^ art he admhed. The Tennis Court Oath (1962) showed Ashbery making poems from cut-up fiagments of magazmes and children’s books that approximated the avant-garde gaming o f dada and surrealism. However, such experhnentatioa produced a slightness m Ashbery’s writmg, one that he was quick to abandon. Ironically, the more directly and specifically Ashbery’s interest m the avant-garde visual arts made its present felt m bis poems—m treating words much as a modernist pamter might treat pamt—the less likely his writmg was to exude the feith m both competmg sides o f dtatioa that h6 mature work generally exhibits. In the end, Ashbery was to brmg his sense o f poetic artifice and the avant-garde into barmony with one hnportant element mherent to poetry but not so much to visual art—meaning. This meanmg mevitably fellows on the heels of the materml qualities o f language, language o f course that is the basic stuff ofpoetry. As a result, Ashbery returned to meaning m. Rivers and Mountains (1966), to generate the very hybrfdity and successfid corruption fer which be bad lauded surrealism. Surrealism itselfhad commmgled both the abstract tendencies m modem art—which treated the medmmofart as its prmcipal subject matter—and the “literary” 115 qualities common to pre-modem painting.^ Even in Rivers and Mountains, however, meanmg is everywhere shiftmg and unstable. Nevertheless, by this pomt, Ashbery was able to come mto his own both as a poet and as a poet who wanted to realke in poetry somethmg analogous to the powerful changes that had occurred and were occurring in the avant-garde visual arts, but without sacrificing the inherent powers of poetry m the process. It is in the midst o f these transformations that Ashbery’s use of citation is made manifest, for m both experimentmg with poetic artifice and avant-garde gammg, Ashbery also explored the capacity o f citation to displace the citing text. And, m acknowledgmg the capaci^ o f language to make meanmg, Ashbery explored, but m a very new way, the capacity of citations to illustrate and explam. Both o f these tendencies are made especialfy apparent m “The Skaters” from Rivers and Mountains, among the best examples o f Ashbery’s citationality at work. In that poem, all of the relevant dunensions o f Ashbery’s poetic discussed thus fer—poetic artifice, avant- garde pamtmg, citation as both illustration and displacement—are brought to bear. - Greenberg argues that the very same quality shows the madequacty ofsurrealism. See “Surrealist Pamtmg,” The Collected Essays and Criticism, John O’Brian, ed, vol. I (Chicago: U of 116 Tençtations and Trappings: Some Trees Some Trees, Ashbery^s first collection o f poems, especially shows his concern both with the visual arts and with poetic artifice. “The Pamter” is an obvious mstance of each mterest, both because its subject matter involves pamtmg and because the poem is presented m the overdetermmed fi)rm of the sestma. Ashbery’s artifice, however, is already hnplicated m a dmlectic with its opposite, namely nature, that prefigures Ashbery’s commitment to the divided nature of citation. So while Ashbery has included many artificial and elaborate poetic forms m Some Trees such as the sestina, Ashbery has also done so to note how it that nature, or rather the power of nature, oddly becomes stronger when mtermmgled with artifice. In a review o f Stem’s Stanzas in Meditation, what Ashbery had in mmd became apparent: “to do what can’t be done, to create a counterfeit o freality more real than reality” (qtd. m Lehman 330). ThK mterminglmg, too, will prefigure the intermingling in Ashbery o f both contrary sides o f citation. The nascent citationality o f Some Trees is further present m the poems when various voices, usually two, meet and struggle with one another, a struggle that s itself part o f a larger and more general play on dichotomies m the co Dection. Many of the poems m Some Trees setup a relationshÿ between two forces or voices that compete with one another, always failing to sustain a relation of symmetry, even as each is presented as legitimate to the struggle. This much is evident m one o f the earliest poems Ashbery ever wrote, “The Pamter,” with its conflict between the Chicago P, 1986) 226. pamter, who embodies some ptobabfy overshnplified version o f the avant-garde, and the people m the buddmgs, who mock the pamter for trymg to make pamtmg less instrumental and more material. “Eclogue,” for mstance, offers a dialogue between two shepherds who speak at cross purposes. “A Boy,” is a poem about communication and mcludes the voice o f a fother and son talkmg. “Glazunoviana” is a two-stanza poem asymmetrically arranged. The fost half mcludes questions and the second half “answers” that recycle a fow o f the same terms as those m the first stanza (“bear,” “wmdow”) but which provide no actual response or continuity with the first stanza. Many of the poems likewise consist of two stanzas, but with unequal Ime amounts. Ashbery’s 'illustration” is yet another significant poem m the collection with respect to art and citation. As its title suggests, the poem is hnplicated m the problem o f representation that drives “The Pamter.” The poem’s remarks on the dangers of illustration reveal the conventional trappnigs o f citation m which the citation is subordmate absolutely to citing text. The poem also broaches the term “monument,” which itself will likewke serve as an mdication when an undesnable poetic or aesthetic is under attack.^ Both “The Pamter” and ‘Illustration” present cautionary tales about aesthetic representation, each exhibitmg, however, an opposite danger. “The Pamter” exhibits the danger o f abandoning traditional forms o f representation; and “Illustration” exhibits the danger o f embracing too much, such traditional forms. ^ Terms tike these utthnately tead to the prohtems Ashbery has with “expfanatfoa” ia “The Skaters.” See below. 118 One final poem fi:om the collection, “The Portrait of Little JA . in a Prospect of Flowers,” however, stands on its own as a successful early depiction o f crtationality at work. The poem both quotes some obscure words fiom Shakespeare and discusses the problems o f representation that anhnate “The Pamter” and “Illustration.” In this respect, the poem prefigures a trait common m Ashbery’s mature work: a mergmg of art with its discussion/ Such a mhcture reflects the dMded nature of citation, both to stand for itself and to stand for the citmg text. “The Pamter” “The Pamter” may easily be taken as an early statement o f poetics Ashbery is ofiermg his readers. On the one hand, the poem is, like “Poem” and “Pastoral” fi’om Some Trees, a sestma, and so is Imked with Ashbery’s experiments with poetic form that constitute a significant portion o f this first volume o f poetry. On the other, Ashbery’s fetation on pamtmg is of course evident, drawing a connection with the avant-garde concerns that would so preoccupy his hnagmation from the mid fifties to the mid shcties, the decade he spent in Paris. The poem confeonts the reader with a clash o f opposmg theories o f art or representation. There is what one might call the traditional school of representation, located in the poem’s “buHdmgs” and the artBts who people them. And then there is * See generally Jessica Prmz, A t Discourse/Discourse in Art (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991 ) 119 the sea, indicating what one might call the modernist school ia &vor o f presenting to the viewer or reader objects themselves, rather than symbols o f them. Ashbery’s pamter wants to side with the modernist school, and it is important that Ashbery has chosen the sea fer the thing to be presented dhectly as art, fer the sea,^ as the traditional symbol o f the unconscious, Imks the move with Ashbery’s deeply held interest m surrealism. O f course, we might also link Ashbery’s pamter’s need to ofi^r up the sea as art with the move to use citation, directly repeatmg the actual words of others (or of offering up the illusion o f such) rather than resorting to literary allusion, which functions along more representational and symbolic lines.^ But Ashbery’s painter cannot quite have it his way and m feet self-destructs when he attempts to leave the advice of those m the buildings entirely behind. This is to underscore that, however much Ashbery’s courting the French avant-garde takes hrni away from traditional ferms o f representation (and citation), Ashbery was never to abandon absolutely the benefits o f tradition and traditional, illustrative uses of citation. This ambivalence is no doubt reflected in Ashbery’s need to create a poetic that was responsive to the ingenuity o f the French avant-garde. This is the deepest way m which readers may understand what Ashbery means when he prociaûns his poems are hybrid. For Ashbery’s remark does not shnply mean that we encounter, m any given Ashbery poem, a number o f competing rhetorical modes, but also that the competmg rhetorical modes are presented to us partly as things unto themselves and partly as representational ferces. * See generally Leonard Oiepeveen, Changing Voices: The Modem Quoting Poem (Ann Arbor: U of Michigaa P, 1993). 120 Indeed, “The Paihter”’s Srst Ime reveals the painter as existing in an ambivalent state. The pamter is,”[s]ittihg between the sea and the buHdmgs" (my ençhasis). As we shall see with “IIIustration’”s “monuments,” “buildings” m “The Pamter” stand in for some undeshed figurative reaii^ m stark opposition to the present, annnated thing, which in “The Pamter” is deemed “the sea.”^ This stock romantic topos, however, b blunted wheaone discovers that Ashbery has managed a way to assimilate this opposition to the concerns of modernism where Pound’s “direct treatment o f the thing” holds sway. In this way, “monuments” and “buildings” are suspiciously figurative where the sea is direct and luminous. Although “bufldmgs” is one o fthe she words Ashbery repeats in the poem in various ways as part o f the overdetermmed demands of the sestina form, it is also true that Ashbery has overwhelmmgty chosen terms associated whh pamtmg, most of which concern the basic materials o f pamtmg: “portrait,” “subject,” brush” and “canvas.” (The only other term is “prayer.”) Still, however, this pamter struggles with achieving some “dhect treatment o f the thing,” m Poundian words, for the struggle to do so B fiaught with perils o f various kmds. This pamter, as the openmg stanza indicates, is somewhat naïve. He is likened to “children [who] imagine a prayer / Is merely silence” (Some Trees 54) and hopes that the sea, his “subject,” will pamt itself on the canvas, sunpfy^ by virtue o f the pamter’s havmg encountered it directfy. ® The same is true of “nature” itself, especially in the collection's title poem. Nature b given special status over against the monuments o fcivilizations. 121 The “people who lived m the buildmgs^” however, “put him to work” m an effort, presumably, to help this poor painter. . . . “Try usmg the brush As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait Somethmg less angry and large, and more subject To a pamter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.” (Some Trees 54) These hnportant lines describe the opposition quite clearly. Of immediate interest is the sense m which the “people” o f the buddings urge the pamter toward a more traditional, representational aesthetic. In particular, “the brush” is no longer an object unto itself a thmg with alifoofds own. It now becomes its opposite, “a means to an end,” an mdififerent tool. The passage also introduces a speakmg voice into the poem, and m a general way mdicates the roots o fAshbery’s taste for citation. Further, the people in the buddmgs stress the need for the pamter to take a more active and wdlftii role m pamtmg, a suggestion that runs dnectly counter to Ashbery the art critic who is often valuing the “self-abnegation” of the artist, one much Idee the pamter o f the first stanza. Lastly, the people want the pamter to take control of his “subject,” which elimmates the sea as too “large” and “angry.” Better would be a figure” more subject/To a pamter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer” (Some Trees 54). The pamter, however, wants somethmg else for his art: “How could he explam to them his prayer / That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?’ In this statement Ashbery’s problematic romanticism reveals itself because nature here k stressed at the expense o f the representation o f nature. But the pamter also rejects the artist’s personally as a genuine source for creation, fivormg mstead the “self 122 abnegation” o f the artist, resembling Eliot’s artist who has lost his personality m literary tradition.^ The romantic deshe for nature to usurp the canvas thus becomes transformed mto the modemM need to present the thing itself. Ashbery’s “self-abnegation” seems also to be one manifostation of his surrealist need to access his dreams and unconscious as sources for art. If too much of the pamter’s will were involved m manÿuiatn^ and controlling his “subject,” then important unconscious insights might prevent him tiom making the best art possible. This idea k taken to its extreme m “The pamter,” but the basic prmc^le remains clear. Imagme a pamter crucified by his subject! He provoked some artists leanmg fiom the buildings To malicious ninth: “’We haven’t a prayer Now, of puttmg ourselves on canvas. Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”’ {Some Trees 55) The sarcasm o f the people in the bufldmgs is surprismgly well-placed by the poem’s end, because the painter is on a suicide course. Thb move could remark an ambivalence m Ashbery about h6 aesthetic commftments. Or, it could shnply present two very partial sides to an argument that cannot easily be resolved. As the pamter’s canvas is left white, are we still to respect the pamter’s aesthetic? Is the pahiter’s canvas simply an mstance o f the modernist fiat canvas? Surely we cannot see the blank canvas as the direct example of the sort o f art Ashbery is advocatmg here, shnpfy because it carmot exist and leads to a kmd of aesthetic destruction. At the same thne, however, we realize the pamter is trymg out somethmg different, somethmg potentially worth paymg attention to. This attempt of ^ See generally T.S. Eliot, “Tradition, and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred ffbodz Esscq/s on Poetry and Criticism (London; Methuen & Co., 1967) 47-59. 123 the pamter’s would be one o fthe senses m which, we may understand Ashbery’s citational wrftmg, for the painter’s subject m this poem may be understood as the prevailing forms of mherited language mto which Ashbery k fiequentiy tappmg. Such diverse rhetorical modes, located m the unconscious, are hnagmed as things unto themselves. Further, Ashbery is there not to manipulate the dififermg rhetorics as examples to adduce some “message,” but rather to lend greater independence to such elements. “Illustration” “Hlustration’”s first Ime stresses some o f the difficulties latent m Ashbery’s mquhy mto citation. “A novice was sittmg on a comice.” The line introduces a parodie tone to the poem, a tone that will be mamtained throughout a poem that reads as a kind of mock myth. The rhymmg of the terms “novice” and “comice” belies their deep opposition to one another. This “novice” plays matter to the comice’s spirit and so mvokes Ashbery’s theme o f blendmg opposites m hn writmg. But, as we soon dfecover, thfe “novice” is, like the pamter, both a suicide threat and a figure o f ambivalence for Ashbery. Unlike the pamter, however, the novice would like to avoid material reality, to accomplish a purefy^ spMtual existence. A novice was sittmg on a comice High over the city. Angels Combined them prayers with those Of the police, beggmg her to come off ft. (Some Trees 48) 124 These Imes underscore the novice’s excessive commitment to spirit. The line and stanza break after “[ajngeis,” however, defeats the expectation that the novice’s apparent desftes are redeeming, as the “[aJngels” refuse her desires, just as the “police” do. The novice’s desire are finally unmasked near the middle of the poem’s first section where we discover that this novice, after rejectmg the “fiiendship” of one “lady” seems only able to accept symbolic offerings, “[Qor that the scene should be a ceremony / Was what she wanted.” Ashbery would seem to respect that aesthetic operatives inhere m the novice’s desires, but agam, the aesthetic operatives that do so mhere are o f an odesirable sort and seem tacitly Imked to the novice’s excessive spirituality. . . . “I desire monuments,” she said. ‘T want to move Figuratively, as waves caress The thoughtless shore.” {Some Trees Unlike the painter’s sea, the novice’s sea ^ a mere figure, a representative o f spftitual action. The novice’s desire for “monuments” and her need to “move figurativefy” would seem to damn her m Ashbery’s view, and fittmgfy, she reaches a sad end, one that she would not have antic^ated. With that [her last remark], the wmd Unpmned her buDqr robes and naked As a roc’s egg, she (fttfted softly downward Out o f the angels’ tenderness and the mmds of men. {Some Trees 49) 125 The great ûrony is that her suicidal leap exiles her fiom precisely the places m which she wfehed to reside permanently. Her need for “ceremony,” “monuments” and figurativeness corresponds, in the poem, to her refusal to take things on then own terms or, in the words o f Fafifield Porter that Ashbery was fond of quoting, to “respect . . . things be as they are” (Lehman 81). Her ultimate curse fe the one o f illustration, where she desfies all too readily the abstractions ofreali^ than reality itself. This peculiar form of denial becomes the subject o f discussion for the poem's second half. The second section's first Imes reflect Ashbery’s own distrust of monuments, bufldmgs and heroic statements o f any sort that are untempered with a commitment to materml reality. Much that is beautiful must be discarded So that we may resemble a taller Impression o f ourselves. Moths clrnib m the flame, Alas, that wish only to be the flame. (Some Trees 49) Apparently, the woman o f the poem’s &st section wishes for greater stature, a “taller impression” o f herself in her desfies for ceremony and monuments, desfies that m the poem’s second section are debunked. Desfies like these are unmasked as suicidal, like the moths who “clfinb m the flame /... that wisfionfy to be the flame.” Such moths and, by extension, the woman o fsection one, “do not lessen our stature” with thefi self-destructive desfies. Further, these suicidal cases like the ones mentioned m Ashbery’s “Illustration” miss out somehow on “much that is beautifüL” In lettfiig things be as they are, that is, mcitfiig them, beauty is maintained; converse^, m resortfiig to excessive figuration or “illustration,” beauty is lost. 1 2 6 The speaker is not as cettaih about the woman, and her significance as this account suggests, however, fi>r m the second section’s second half the speaker does note as alternative beauty the woman produces rather than embodies. For that night, rockets sighed Elegant^ over the city, and there was feastmg: There is so much in that momentl So many attitudes toward that flame {Some Trees 49) Such mdecisibn, however, is somewhat remedied by the poem’s end, as the woman, “o f course, was only an eflSgy / Of mdifierence, a mnacle / Not meant for us.” The last ime in thb passage remmds one o f one o f Kafka’s fomous aphorisms, “There is hope, but not for us,” and like the Kafka statement, manages to draw a dktinction about two ways o f being and knowing. On the one hand, there is the figurative and monumental mode embodied by the “novice”; on the other, there is the citational attitude that lets things be as they are. The hony o f thk bifurcation is that both sides o f it are not mutually exclusive. Although Ashbery did not seem to realize this truth until Rivers and Mountains, ‘Tllustration” allows the student o fAshbery the chance to glimpse a problem that he will explore further in TTie Tennis Court Oath and resolve in Rivers and Mountains, namely that one cannot obviate the signifymg, metaphorical element o f language ni attemptmg to rehabilitate the long-lost aesthetic component o f citation. Charles Bernstein struggles with this problem m different ways. It is for th6 reason that the two sections o f “Illustration,” despite then seemmg commitment to citation-as- omamentation, nevertheless man%e to illustrate each other, “m the mterests,” as Ashbery has put it, “o f a superior realism” {ReportedSightings 16). 127 “The Picture of Little LA. m a Prospect of Flowers” la the “Picture” poem Ashbery manages to merge, for seemmgly the &st tune, his avant-garde heritage and his need to m k various voices m any given poem without wammg. Indeed the very title o f this poem implies this advance, that underscores that the portrait of the artist m a prospect o f flowers. The poem’s epigraph from Pasternak about some “he” who was “spoilt from childhood by the future, which he mastered early and apparently without great difflculty” {The Picture [my italics] 18) also implies a forward-lookmg aspect o f Ashbery’s poetry, not simply because both title and epigraph emphasize childhood with all its attendant potentiaL The poem’s first section displays quite particularly both the blendmg o f voices important m all of Ashbery’s poetry and a quasi-surrealist Juxtaposition. Darkness foils like a wet sponge And Dick gives Genevieve a sw& punch In the pajamas. “Aroint thee, witck” Her tongue from previous ecstasy Releases thought like little hats. {Some Trees 27) The fost Ime’s comparison o f a wet sponge with how darkness foils is a Jarrmg one that takes some work m the reader before hs apparent sense is felt. This is so mamly because an important connective is withheld. The Ime seems to unply that darkness foils the way a wet sponge foils, that is, heav% and with a thud. But until the reader supplies thk connectée the con^arison is significant more for its lack o f equivalence than any unseen connection between the two. Another Jarrmg Juxtaposition occurs m the next few Imes when “Dick gwes Genevieve a swift punch,” where but “m the pajamas,” and there the enjambment 128 heightens the reader’s sense o fdisjunction. Then, too, a voice is quoted, from Shakespeare’s MacbetK and we never truly know who is domg the quoting, and who is bemg addressed. Then, near the end o f the first stanza, another comparison is introduced, notable more for its strange disjunctweness than for any shnilarity. “Her [whose?] tongue from previous ecstasy / Releases thoughts like little hats.” Again, the question remams, as it does m the poem’s &st strange juxtapositiom, whether thoughts are released as little hats are released or, shnply, just as little hats ore. The polyphony o f the poem contmues m the next stanza with “He clap’d me first durmg the eclipse. Afterwards I noted h6 manner Much altered. But he sending At that thne certam handsome jewels [ durst not seem to take ofifence.” {Some Trees IT) This voice agahi comes out o f the blue but we could attribute it to Genevieve whom Dick had earlier “punched / In the pajamas” and now, perhaps, has “clap’d [her] during the eclipse.” The diction is archaic and laden wfth romance conventions, but here the romance between Dick and Genevieve is unmasked as abusive. Dicks beats her, apparent^ feels guilty about it and then gives Genevieve jewels as apology; Genevieve is terrified with Dick’s violence but notes his gift-apology as an example o f his reformation and hopes thmgs will get better. One notes that the homosexual Ashbery crhiqumg the rituals o f heterosexual romantic love as concealmg brutality. As mentioned earlier, the poem’s explicit orientation B towards the future, toward “prospects” and its title mdicates this sense. This is finther made evident m the poem’s second section, a section, it should be noted, that abandons the multwocal surrealist collage play o f the first section. The prmc^al voice that speaks here 129 addresses some “chfldren” who will ‘pass through” “these lives” “to be blessed.” More promise seems to issue forth “from a whole world” where “music / W3I sparkle at the lips o f many who are / Beloved” (Some Trees 28). Then, others, presumably those less fortunate who are “dfr^ handmaidens / To some transparent witch” nevertheless “will dream/ O f a white hero’s subtle wooing”; and both wül receive “gifts,” from “tune.” The stanza’s end doubles the first stanza’s violence, in its presentation o f romance (“a white hero’s subtle woomg”) as concealmg a violent underbelfy, as the language of the following Ime suggests: “And thne shall force a gift on each.” This evident prospectwe orientation m the poem prepares the reader for the fital stanza that surprismgly reverses such a ftiture-directed poem. The reversal has the effect o f underscormg the citational nature o f Ashbery’s writmg. The poem’s third section mtroduces a first-person speaker that presumably refers to the author exammh% an old photograph of hhnself. Yet 1 cannot escape the picture O f my small self hi that bank of flowers: My head among the bbzmg phlox Seemed a pale and gigantic fimgus. 1 had a hard stare, acceptmg Everythmg, taking nothmg. As though the rolled-up figure might stmk As loud as stood the sick moment The shutter clicked. Though 1 was wrong. Still, as the loveliest feelhigs Must soon fold words, and these, yes, D^pbce them, so I am not wrong In callmg this comic version o fmyself The true one. For as change is horror, Vhtue is really stubbornness 130 And onfy m the light o f lost words Can we nnagme our rewards. {Some Trees 28-29) Ashbery’s speaker is not who he expects to be in some grand future. Rather the present speaker "cannot escape the picture” fiom the past. His hopes and desires are less true than is the “comic version o f [hmlself” which fe the “true one.” The speaker draws a dfiect parallel between this situation and the realm o f expression and communication, as “the loveliest o f fielmgs / Must soon find words, and these, yes, / Displace them.” Not only do words and images have a life in themselves but they also precede thefi meanmgs. In the same way does mherited language precede our own and hold us within its Ihnits. Emptymg Out the Mmd: The Tennis Court Oath lîSome Trees offers the reader a mélange of voices orchestrated so that they may be reconciled with the extremes of poetic artifice, then The Tennis Court Oath offers such voices arranged m the service o f more painterly ends. The sort of pamtmg that mterested Ashbery in poems like “The Pamter” gives way in The Tennis Court Oath to a direct attempt in certam poems like “America” and “Europe” to create with poetry, as dfiectty as possible, the effects that avant-garde European pamth% had generated with dada and su rreaii^ More particularly, Ashbery anned in some o f these poems fer the effects o f action pamtmg m his poetry that fecused on the base materials o fthe aesthetic medium rather than oil using such materials to represent 131 thmgs and ideas/ On the other hand^ these works are anomalies m Ashbety’s corpus^ anomalies, however, that reveal Ashbery to be makmg as much use as possible of the aesthetic component of citation. But Ashbery was to turn aside from this sort o f writing and never return to it.® “America” and “Europe” frustrate the reader’s access to the text almost completely.'® But two o f the poems m the collection, “Thoughts o f a Young Girl” and “’How Much Longer WiU I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher,”’ manage to survive both as strong poems and as strong citational poems. Both poems largely refuse to engage m standard, “frontally” representational poetic writing. In the process, they make use o f citation and quotation in very unconventional ways, but do so, unlike with “Europe,” without completely frustratmg the reader’s access to the text. “Europe” The mucfr maligned “Europe” betrays an obvious commitment o fAshbery’s to come up with a poetic analogue fr>r the pamterly advances he was witnessing and had witnessed in New York in the fifties with the rise o f abstract expressionism. The poem uses language the way a Pollock or de Kooning might use pamt, as a thing with * See generally Harold Rosenberg ’The American Action Painters,” The Tradition o fthe Kew (New York: Hmzon, 1959) 23-39. ® See John Ashbery, “Craft Interview with John Ashbery,” The Craft o fPoetry: baerviem with New York Quarterly, William Packard, ed. (New York: Doubletby, 1974) 116. “ See Maqorie Perlofi^ The Poetics ofBvkterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage (Prmceton: Princeton UP, 1980) 268-69. 132 a life o f rts owrt Much o f the poem’s writing is lifted from a throwaway popular text. Beryl o f the Bi-plane, “an Edwardian book for gfrls” Q!,ehman 160), that makes the work Ashbety’s first citational long poem. As has been noted, the work is unsatrsfying. This is so m the citational sense as well as m the other senses critics have noted.^ ^ However, the work seems a necessary stage m the development of Ashbery’s citational poetics, one that ulthnately made for the success o f Rivers and Mountains, particularly o f its “The Skaters.” Rivers and Mountains manages the right citational balance for which Ashbety is reaching, one where the illustrative and aesthetic dnnensions o f citation and quotation are placed m productwe tension, thus earmarkmg Ashbery’s hybridi^ and also the hybridity o fcitation. “Europe,” unfortunately, suffers from an excessive commitment to the aesthetic side o f citation and seems to forget both that words mean and that words cannot be applied to a work as pamt can be applied to canvas.'^ Further, “Europe” attempts to be too oppositional to modernist forms of citation as Ashbery, unlike Pound and Eliot, chooses not the “greaf’ works o f the western world from which to cite but rather an obscure children’s work. Ashbery seemingly chooses Beryl o f the Bi-plane to undermme m o d ern ^ by breakmg down the apparent barriers between high and low culture and by parodymg the implicit claimto heroism m modero6m (especially Pound’s) by generatmg a long work that makes no grand attempts. Ironicaify, the poem is entitled “Europe,” as if to heighten the rejection of high-bred western culture. (Even more ironic is the poem’s odd " See^ for example, PertofiÇ Poericy268-69. 133 contrast with the two poems from this collection that include the word “^America” in their titles, poems that are much more accessible and straightforward than “Europe.”) The poem is partitioned mto 111 short sections that seem to to constitute only the slightest concession to the sequential nature of readmg and writihg, a quali^ of course largely foreign to the visual arts. But even m a detail such as this, Ashbery seems to bend his writihg back toward pamtmg as so many of these numbered sections are so forshortened and blank that Ashbery merely seems to accomplish the foat of shuttmg the reader out o f the work. For instance, take the following passage horn “Europe”: 101. the doctor, comb Sinn Fern 102. dress 103. streaming sweepmg the surface long-handled twig-brooms starving wall great trees (OathSl) The errors of “Europe”’ parallel closely the errors ofsome of Charles Bemstem’s work. See below. 134 Ashbery was probably aiming the eSects o f erasure de Kootimg had generated with hK own pamtmg.'^ But so little is left behmd, one wonders whether Ashbery had transft)rmed himself mto his naive pamter ftom the poem o f the same name ftom Some Trees. In terms that Michael Fried would use, the work's inevitable portion of theatricality is so high that readers are positioned more to ponder their condition as readers than to bond with the work m an absorptive way. The poem does not attempt to draw in the viewer very much at all, as Ashbery’s successful poems do, like “The Skaters” and “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mkror,” the latter o f which is about this very question. To be sure, Ashbery fe mihdfiil of the «sues about readmg already present m such an opaque work that draws upon an Edwardian book for girls as its prhnary source materiaL Indeed, the poem seems to take even further the problems associated with readmg in another poem from the collection, “’How Much Longer Wül I Be Able to Inhabit the Dmhe Sepulcher.. to defeat openly the sort of reading that cannot help the imprisoned speakers m that poem break free. In Ashbery’s transformation of the Bi-plane book, a text that is presented as emmently readable, the book is deconstructed to generate an undecidable text. Correspondingly, the primary text dates from before the frrst world war and as such is to be located in a pre-modem landscape o f hmocence, especially as the work is about children and for children readers. Ashbery’s appropriation o f it, however, brmgs the text mto the avant-garde See John Ashbety, Other Traditions (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000) 78. See below: 135 vagaries o f the New York art world as words become thmgs. This move is likewise suggested by the poem’s title that gathers up elements o f the old world and alters them to the point that they belong to the new. “Europe” is an hnportant moment m Ashbery’s development as a poet, not shnply a wrong turn. For the idea that motivated “Europe” seems to play an essential role in Ashbery’s poetics. In particular, we see Ashbery’s urge to appropriate the language o f others, however much is lackmg here the tempering move to mix diverse rhetorical speech forms, a move that develops later. We also see Ashbery’s urge to treat words as thmgs, which wQI support the aesthetic side o f chation. But this sort of move makes itself felt without Ashbery’s countervaflmg tendency to allow for the illustrative side of citation to make its presence felt, which is to say that it lacks Ashbery’s trademark rhetorical hybridity. “Thoughts o f a Young Girl” The title of “Thoughts o f a Young Girl” would seem to indicate an mventory or a tram o f associations about the thought processes a “young girl” might exhibit. This short poem sets up the basic problem o f citation as Ashbery explores it m The Tennis Cotart Oath, which K to mtensi^ his mvestigation into representation and reference that begms in Some Trees. The title also enqshasûzes an abstract ferce (“Thoughts”) and how a poem might handle thought m itself if even a “Young Gnl’s” thoughts. 136 Strangely, however, the poem’s &st o f two shc-Ime stanzas a full quotation, and even more oddly, the quotation is ftom a letter written, not by a young girl, but by “The Dwarf” T t is such a beautifhl day [ had to write you a letter From the tower, and to show I’m not mad: I only slipped on the cake o f soap o f the aur And drowned m the bathtub o f the world. You were too good to cry much over me. And now I let you go. Signed, The Dwarf.” {Oath 14) Paradoxically, however, what is written here m the form of a letter does not seem for removed ftom the stereotypical thoughts a young girl might have, because the girl is probably hnprKoned in a “tower,” one o f the many images associated with medieval romance that Ashbery employs for various effects, tied to the ends of parody and pastiche. It is also important that these “thoughts” o f a young girl are written and hence made less abstract through theft documentary quality. But then such documentation removes us yet further ftom the actual thoughts o f a young gftf at the same thne ft paradoxically serves as our only point o f access to such thoughts. And, o f course, Ashbery presents us with such thought markers ht quotation marks, mdicatmg theft status as received, second hand, further removhig the reader ftom those thoughts. Likewise, the thoughts are signed by “the Dwarf” (whoever that may be) rather than the young gftL The dwar^ as does hft or her presence m. a tower, however, gives off the afts o f medieval romance that the “gftl’s” apparent mcarceratfon m the tower and her letter to some unknown ftgure likewise suggest. 137 The problem o f Qlustratibn mherent m the issue o fcitation and quotation is dffectly presented in the curious first stanza where the Dwarf attempts to prove his sanity to his addressee with a letter that offers evidence that‘T only slipped on the cake o f soap o f the aor / And drowned in the bathtub o fthe world,” evidence that proves his madness more than debunks it. The poem's second stanza shfits the fiame yet more as the gap delimitmg the two stanzas becomes highty significant smce this letter is offered almost entirely without context. I passed by m late afternoon And the smile still played about her lips As it has for centuries. She always knows How to be utterly delightful Oh my daughter. My sweetheart, daughter of my late employer, princess May you not be long on the way. (Oath 14) To be sure, there b some common ground between these two stanzas. The second contmues with the use o f language common to medieval romance, as the “daughter” bemg addressed here is also a “prmcess,” although certamly not an actual one. Indeed, because “the smile still played about her lipÿ’ for “centuries,” the voice may not be addressmg anyone alive at all “She” may, for instance, be a pamtmg or a sculpture. Shnilarly, the same clami about the female figure's smile suggests further Brit^h feny tale hnagery. But this view does not lead the reader very fer. What seems most prevalent in the second stanza of the poem, besides its lack of correspondence with the poem's first stanza, and even the poem's overall title, is the lack of determmation about who is speakmg to whom about whom. The addressee could be the young girl mentioned m the poem's title, for the other two %ures incited in thK stanza are unlikely bets—the 138 mysterious “her” with the smfle and the speaker who is presumably a parent of one self or another and thus would be too old to be considered to be a young ghh in particular the mysterious “her.” There is further ambiguity about the addressee of the second stanza, someone who 6 both the speakers daughter and the “daughter of my [the speaker’s] late employer.” In two opposmg ways, one for each stanza, the young girl in the title is displaced. In the first stanza, she is substituted with a figure, the Dwarf; m the second, the “young ghl” is dififiised through one or more of three figures. In thk way, the title tells us that the poem is only its most mdhect illustration, as the poem observes to varying degrees more a logic o f displacement than dhect associatiorL'^ This is so, however, if the title is read m its conventional senses as I suggested earlier. But the title may also be read differently so that the “thoughts” mentioned here may not necessarily be those the gfirl possesses or those that are “hers” but rather those that nevertheless are associated with such a person. This would more accurately account for the highly mdetermmate poem the reader is offered and is even encouraged by two phrases m the poem’s fost stanza: “I only slipped on the cake of soap o fthe a h / And drowned m the bathtub o f the world” (Oath 14). The “o f’ phrases that end both o f these Imes manage to defemflianVeand displace the nnage the line offers until that point. These dhplacmg prepositional phrases mdicate that the title’s similar prepositional phrase is not presented m the sense one might think. Ashbety has correctly sensed the citationaliQr oftitles. His general procedure of placmg titles at the head of poems that either are citations or quotations themselves or refuse to be illustrated by the bocfyofthe poem is yet another way of enacthig his citational poetics. 139 Instead, the thoughts we might thmic to be ones such a girl might “have” are mdfetmguishable from, those “about” her, revealing the deep extent to which one is spoken rather than simply speaks. ‘"How Much Longer WHII Be Able to Inhabit the Dlvme Sepulcher. . The romantic unagery o f “Thoughts of a Young GirL” especially its concerns with “towers” and monuments, has its reverse side shown in “’How Much Longer Wni I Be Able to Inhabit the Dlvme Sepulcher The theme articulated m “Illustration” fromSome Trees, that “Much that is beautlfril must be dkcarded / So that we resemble a taller / Impression o f ourselves” contmues m this important poem (Some Trees 49). The altematwe view reveals a set o f voices imprisoned ii an excesswely figurative exKtence. The poem makes it clear that sacred monuments inprison beau^ and life, that dwme sepulchers are finally not for mhabltmg. The poem fiirther contams a fow instances of citation and quotation, each o f which is situated it the context o f attackmg the garden-varlety illustration that k Ashbery’s nemesis. One o f the poem’s most salient foatures is the great degree to which voices of various kmds ^ e forth at the reader from hidden areas beneath, under and behind other thmgs that supposedly take precedence over the voices themselves. This is an obvious case, for Ashbery, o f the unconscious attençtmg to break its way mto view. In fact, much of the poem seems to be about how forces thought to be secondary 140 attempt to attam primary significance, and the tragedy and loss of beauty and life that occurs when they do not. Citation’s typically secondary status draws an obvious parallel. In thb way it makes sense to consider Ashbery’s use o f citation and quotation and even hfe modernity. For m reversmg the terms in this way, from conscious to unconscious, from allusion to dfrect quotation, from tradition to modernity, Ashbery’s project is made apparent, even though he remams, to a crucial degree, tied to traditional illustration and its reliance on the conscious mmd. What Ashbery really fevors is a new synthèse o f these opposites, one in which the hitherto marginalized or repressed side acqufres more status. The voice that speaks the poem’s opening Imes speaks from a trapped position much as the Dwarf does m “Thought o f a Young Girl,” and agam romantic love plays a role m the discussion. How much longer will I be able to mhabk the dwme sepulcher Of life, my great love? Do dolphms plunge bottomward To find the light? Or b it rock That is searched? Unrelentmgly? Huh. And if someday Men with orange shovels come to break open the rock Which encases me, what about the light that comes in then? What about the smell of the light? What about the moss? {Oath IS) The speaker characterôes his shuation as one of death m life, confinement withm. a sftuation that is nevertheless marked with possibility. The speaker has difficulty communicatingwith his lover, exhibited by the various questions he asks that are not answered and seem tmged with desperation. 141 This speaker is a voice suppressed. Like Eliot’s Prufiock—and, for that matter, so many o f the voices o f “The Waste Land,” a poem that is likewise concerned with, romance and love—this speaker fears redemption. The speaker worries about his neglect and distance &om the “light,” as much, as he foars what he will do if and when he is set free. But unlike Prufrock and so many of the voices m. “The Waste Land,” this speaker is treated ^patheticalfy^ m the body of the poem, as the person “behmd” this voice seems to be unfoirly hnprisoned, suggestmg a social situation m whicii hitherto unheard voices are unjust^ silenced. In the next two stanzas the poem’s forst voice ends his address with nothing like the pathetic demise of a Prufrock, but neither does he succeed m overcoming hk confming situation. As “the light bounces off of mossy rocks down to me / In this glen” a parenthesis forces its way into the d^ourse that takes on a lifo of its own. Light bounces oÊf mossy rocks down to me In this glen (the neat viUal which When he’d had he would not had he of And jests under the smartmg o f privet Which on hot spring nights perfumes the empty rooms With the smell o f sperm flushed down toilets On hot summer afternoons withm the sight o f the sea. If you knew why then professor) reads {Oath 25) Effectively, Ashbery has managed to promote the front ranks discourse that would Qfpical^ possess only secondary status, hiside the parenthesis are further a fow foatures worth noting. Ffrst, there is an mstance o fstuttermg through confiismg verb tenses (“When he’d had he would not had he of’), a line that foretells some o f the 142 expenments with syntax that the Language poets were to undertake two decades later. This line is much more challengmg to the reader than any m the poem up to this pomt, and honically Ashbery delivers it to u sin a Rousselesque parenthesis. Then, there is a jarrmg, surrealist juxtaposition o f the sacred and pro&ne: .. the smartmg of privet / Which on hot sprmg nights perfumes the empty rooms / With the smell o f sperm flushed down toilets." But the redemptive sea, which takes on an elemental rather than ethereal quaii^, remams “within sight.” The imagery of con&iement contmues, but this time it is the sea and a shadow under it that comes to life, stressmg further the great extent to which Ashbery has trusted m the unconscious breaking through the ordmary conscious world and generating truth. The poem's ending Imes display much more openly the citational prom ^ enacted and fulfilled in the ferst seven stanzas. For instance, Ashbery nmces quasi- conventional narration with d i ^ c t and mundane quotation and a parody of a the chorus' femous speech in Sophocles’ Antigone. The boy took out his own ferehead H b ghlfiiend's bead was a green bag O f narcissus stems. “GKyoawm But meet me anyway at Cohen's Drug Store In 22 minutes.” What a marvel is ancient man! Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious anhnal And would be a mathematician. But where m unsuitable heaven Can he get the heat that will make him grow? For he needs somethmg or will ferever remama dwarf Though a perfect one, and possessmg a normal-sized bram But he has got to be released by giants fiom thmgs. And as the plant grows older it realôes it will never be a tree. Will probabty ahvays be haunted by a bee And cuftwates stupid impressions 143 So as not to become part of the dhL The dût Is mountmg like a sea. And we say goodbye.. . . (Oath 25-26) Again, that dwarf Éom “Thoughts o f a Young Girl” appears and empfaaskes the correlation between physical con&ement and divme longmgs, though here such a dwarf is to be opposed to the more legitimate voice at the poem’s openmg who yearns to be tree both horn the confinement and the divinity. The poem fiirther questions the legitimacy o f a kind o f puritanical spirituality needmg to be “released firom things,” however much this need generates a kmd o f anemia, for “as the plant grows older it realÊes it wül never be a tree” and fiialty becommg “part o f the dirt.” As always the shadows o f the unconscious loom large. The poem is aware that readmg is inevitably bound up in deciding whether to embrace the puritanical position or what we might call the animistic or elemental position, the latter o f which that seems to be favored in the poem. Late ii the poem In the yard handled the belt he had made Stars Painted the garage roof crimson and black He is not aman Who can read these signs. . . his bones were stays. . . And even refused to Iwe In a world and refimded the hiss Of all that exists terribty near us Like you, my love, and light. (Oath 26-27) The voice saymg that “He is not a man who can read these signs” k challengmg the puritanical position, fi>r the alternative is to embrace the life o f thmgs “that exist — terribly n ^ u ^ and, particularly, the life o f language as a thmg. Thmgs like these have their own sort of light, a light that the nnprisoned speaker at the begmnmg of the poem wrongty fears. 144 Next, a biblical speaker emerges^ one which is also confined. After which you led me to water And bade me drmk, which I did, owmg to your kindness. You would not let me out for two days and three nights, Bringing me books bound m wfld thyme and scented wild grasses As if readmg had any interest for me, you... Now you are laughmg. Darkness interrupts my story. Turn on the light. {Oath 27) This speaker smoilarly confoied similarly rejects reading for somethmg real as darkness interrupts. This speaker ftoally merges back mto the voice that begins the poem and b put back m confoiement as the need paradoxically re-emerges to "turn on the light.” So while Ashbery wants to offer the unconscious and its attendant valumg o f thmgs m themselves, at the same tune Ashbery is never msistmg on a radical separation between the two.*® In Ashbery’s scheme, one somehow needs the other and neither can be nnagmed in isolation ftom the other. The process o f domg so yields the essential hybtidity o f Ashbery’s writmg and the hybridity o f his attitude toward citation. Who are you, anyway? And ft is the color o f sand. The darkness, as ft sifts through your hand Because what does anythmg mean. The ivy and the sand? That boat Pulled up on the shore? Am I wonder. Strategically, and m the light O fthe long sepulcher that hid death and hides me? {Oath 27) This sort of move will characterùe Chartes Bemsteih‘s overtly ideological stake in the non- instrumental side of language. 145 Citational Triumph inRivers and Mountains Ashbery’s move m The Tennis Court Oath was, m large part, to treat words as thmgs in an attempt “to respect things for what they are,” m the words o f FaMeid porter that Ashbery was fond o f citmg (Lehman 81). [fit can be argued that Ashbery took these ideas too for m The Tennis Court Oath, m Rivers and Mountains Ashbery manages to treat words as things but with an important qualification. Ashbery rather accommodates the mevitable meanmgs o f words, the foct that words do in foct signify, however much they are thmgs as well. This does not make Rivers and Mountains any less o f an mvestigation into artifice, however. The poems of Rivers and Mountains contmue to strive for the benefits of radical artifice and the particular citational quality o f the writmg, while at the same tunemanaging to orchestrate meanmg and theme. In this way, Ashbery returns, m a more authentic way thanever before, to the dadafot and especially the surrealfot interests that had msphed him. for a much longer time than did abstract expressionism. The twin, and contrastmg, concerns with artifice and the unconscious that one finds in Ashbery’s art criticism is engaged, consistently throughout Rivers and Mountains and offors an opposition not unlike the opposition between the contrasting illustrative and ornamentalsides o fcitation. The “diflference m potentfoT between these two poles ofifors a productive tension m Rivers and Mountains that can be seen as a cardmal exançle o f a successfiil chatfonal poetics (Erickson 8). For these reasons. Rivers and Mountains is Ashbery’s first trufy mature work. 146 The collection’s 6mous &st poem, “These Lacustrme Cities,” is one of Ashbery’s trufy great poems and sounds the collection’s basic concerns. The poem is more an explicit criticism of the aesthetics and ethics that Ashbery abjures. By the collection’s end, however, “The Skaters” will manage, at modemM long-poem length, to ofifer the alternative path Ashbery wants to take with, his poetry. In either poem, Ashbery avoids the opacity o fpart o f The Tennis Court Oath, especially m “Europe.” Perhaps this is so because Ashbery was 6idmg ways of brmging criticism into the fôld as one source o f a particular rhetorical mode at his déposât In thm respect, Ashbery attempts to render simultaneously art and criticism o f art, rather than sùnpfy the former, which b so often the case m The Tennis Court Oath. In this way, by embracing the illustrative component o f language and citation, as well as the thingfy quality o f both, Ashbery manages a species o f literary success, as he still manages to see the limitations mherent in each. “These Lacustrme Cities” “These Lacustrme Cities” offers a critique o f the social and aesthetic values with which Ashbery d is^ ee s. In thfe gesture, we see the old problems Ashbery has had with monuments that excessively ftguralize the literal at the expense o f “much that B beautiftil.” The cities are mordmatefy abstract m other respects and such abstraction leads naturally to a kmd o f complacency that b undergnded by anger, all o f which further prevents the city dwellers ftom appreciatmg thmgs m themselves. These lacustrme cfties grew out o f loathmg 147 Into something fôrgetfiil, although angry with, history. They are the product o f au idea: that man is horrible, for mstance. Though thû is only one exau^le. They emerged until a tower Controlled the slqr, and with artifice d%ped back Into the past for swans and tapermg branches, Bummg, until all that hate was transformed mto useless love. (Rivers 9) Of particular note in the first stanza is how prefobricated the cities are. The dkcussion o f origins is at direct odds with the relatively unconscious and self-abnegating ûnprovisatîonal ethos that Ashbery is advocating miplicitty and explicitly throughout his writmgs. That the lacustrine cities “grew out" of anythmg would damn them m Ashbery’s mmd, especially the Ashbery o f 7%e Tennis Court Oath. When we discover that the cities “are the product of an idea,” that they are the product of any idea, the die is cast. The cities are produced fi:om inordinate abstraction and are therefore alienated fiom the animistic life o f things. The problem of illustration and “explanation,” the latter term of which, we shall see is the bugbear of “The Skaters,” is fiirther engaged when we discover that one “idea” that produces the cities could be that “man is horrible.” Ashbery follows this idea with “for mstance,” and then in the next line we fold that the idea is “only one example.” The apparent problem here, if we are to acknowledge Ashbery’s apparent anhnistic commitments, h6 apparent skepticism of “illustration,” and his treatment o f words as thmgs in The Tennis Court Oath, could be that the cities have taken the wrong path because they are closed off to real beauty. They have the rekitîonshÿ between princ^le and example mfiexibly backward. 148 Not surprismgfy, a monument appears m the poem’s second stanza. The monument, a 6m3iar “tower,” halts the development o f the cities. Besides resonating with, the respective towers of “Thoughts of a Young GW” and “’How Much Longer Wni I Be Able to Inhabh the Dwme Sepulcher. . the tower resembles the “monuments” of “Illustratioa” and the “buildings” of “The Pamter”—undesaable architecture that reverses the relation between concrete and abstract to such an extent that the latter is privileged at the expense o f the former. The “tower” encroaches on the beauty o f nature by “controUmg” the “slty.” But Ashbery, in Rivers and Mountains never truly becomes strident m his criticism o f the non-poetic emblems o f culture, because he reserves the possibility of a human construction that accesses the beauty and power o f nature. Ashbery wül demonstrate thk in other sections of Rivers and Mountains, but an hnmediate contrast with his criticism o f monuments m “These Lacustrme Cities” can be found m “Sonnet” from Some Trees, In this poem Ashbery remarks that the “result” of “A buüdmg... agamst the sky.../... is more sky”{Some Trees 68). Thfe buüdmg certainly does not “control” the sky as does the tower o f “These Lacustrme Cities,” and it remams, as a buüdmg, a human construction, an mstance o f artifice that does not belie its origms m the concrete. The “resulf ’ is that, whfle this buüdmg would no doubt offer itself as figurative, it does not do so to such an extent that the ground of the figure is lost as a mere üiustration or “product o f an idea.” But the artffîce surroundmg the tower m “These Lacustrme Cities” is secondary to the controOmg tower and becomes merety another “mstance” or “example” o f its mappropriateness. The “swans” and “tapermg branches” that 149 demonstrate this weak artifice are cfichés ftom hfetory that lull the citizens of these cities mto a fi>rm o f 6lse consciousness. Whfle such 6Ise consciousness does promote a kmd o f peace—^‘transformmg” ‘all that hate”—it nevertheless anesthetizes those citizens mto a state o f “useless love.” The general hedging and difiference-splittmg o f “These Lacustrine Cities” represents a well-tempered citational poetic, most notably m a poem such as this one where only one or two speakers seem to be present. Ashbery notices that a single speaker, or “monument” for that matter, is a betrayal both, o f the multiplicity of experience and the animation o f things. The failure o f the speaker’s portrait to be sufficiently unified and monolflhic B analogous to what Ashbery evidently considered earlier as a competmg concern, that o f appropriatmg various rhetorical modes into a given poem. Ashbery’s willmgness to embrace both the monument and the multiplicity, the figure and the ground, whfle acknowledgmg the limitation mherent in each, demonstrates his skill at achievmg a productive tension of the two poles of citation, not smiply the aesthetic component. Much o f Ashbery’s most celebrated poetry exhibits h6 fascination not smiply with artifice but with referential prose o f varying kmds, particularly o f art criticism. Such temperance or “fence-sittmg,” as Ashbery was to call it, is fiirther accomplished m some o f the prevailmg themes o f Rivers and Mountains. Themes that concern the tensioa between another signffîcant opposition for Ashbery, that between the conscious and unconscious minds, form a balance that I have already suggested is significant for Ashbery’s citatmnality. 150 “The Skaters” “The Skaters” is the &st poem of Ashbery’s displaymg the successful citational poetics toward which he was progressmg ou a grand scale. “Europe” had &iled because the poem was merely a one-dhnensional foray into the erasures and reconstitution o f a smgle, throwaway text. “The Skaters,” however, while nevertheless makmg use o f a sim ilar text—another children’s book {One Hundred Things a Bright Boy Can Do )—blends several other dwerse elements. As he put it to Richard Kostelanetz m the mid 1970s, Ashbery wanted to write a poem by “put[ting] everythtmg m, rather than, as in ‘Europe,’ leavmg thmgs out” (24). “The Skaters” compr^es several essential elements, only one of which consists o f passages foom the children’s book. In keeping with some o f the dommant themes from Rivers and Mountains— m. poems such as the title poem, “Chnlization and Its Discontents,” and “These Lacustrme Cities”—the poem exudes a sense of loss and tragedy that never quite becomes pmned down. At the same tone, however, the poem gives off signs o f hope, particularly in its promment voyage and travel themes. Both o f these opposmg themes, o f human lônitation and hope for better thmgs m the future, balance one another, much as Ashbery learned to balance the twin and competmg dimensions o f citation, “[t]his contmual changmg back and forth,” as he put it m the body of “The Skaters” {Rivers 44). While this general thematic material tends to frame the discussion o f more particular phenomena, Ashbery’s preoccupation with the visual arts shines through m a likewise divided foshion. Much o f the poem details the act o f seemg, but does so m 151 accordance with further dichotomÊmg. Ashbery^s speaker is at the same time mterested in seemg the skaters’ smooth movement over the ice as they fede mto the horizon, or the “distance,” as the poem often puts it. On the other hand, one recognizes the modernist flat canvas and the surrealist empfiasis on juxtaposing disparate elements. Significantly, the same ambwalent principle holds true for the poem’s use of citation as well. While Ashbery does cite fiom a children’s book m “The Skaters,” as he does so in “Europe,!’ Ashbery’s use o fthe children’s text m “The Skaters” is markedly different than that o î Beryl o f the Bi-plane hi “Europe.” Instead o f fiagmentmg the text to nearly unrecognûable proportions, Ashbery m “The Skaters” drops m, here and there, a quotation m full. The quotations, on the sur6ce at least, would thus appear to be more illustrative, especially because they are o f the how-to variety, detailing how to draw pictures with Imear perspective, for mstance, or how to combme household chemicals to write invisible messages. To be sure, Ashbery is not m “The Skaters” shymg away fiom such a practice. Indeed, such quotations tend to deliver, albeit m a very skewed way, the sort o f explanation that is often a source for anxiety m the poem. But such quotations, because o f their context, because o f the surroundmg citmg text, appear as mysterious object m then own right. And, by contrast, the flood of diverse inages and discourses, that do not tend to illustrate b^ond themselves, often appear all too real and mundane. The poem is fiequentfy at pains to convey to the reader some sense o f how it is tbat tlie awesome diversi^ o f dncourses and representations, not to mention life m hself consthutes a bewQdermg awakening to the limitations of human bemgs. 152 The answer is that it is novelty That guides these swift blades o’er the ice Projects mto a & er expression (but at the expense O f energy) the profile I cannot remember. Colors slip away fiom and chide us. The human mmd Cannot retain anythmg except perhaps the dismal two-note theme Ofsome sodden “dump” or lament. (Rivers 24) Lmked to such Ihnitations on the human mmd are the diverse phenomena tbat people try to contam with the urge to collect similar hems. But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives? The articles we’d collect—stamps o f the colonies Whh greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate. Or fünny-lookmg dogs we’d seem the street, or bright remarks. One collects bullets. An Indianapolis, Indiana man collects slingshots of all epochs, and so on. (Rivers 34) At the same tone, however, there is hope, because soon “the water surfice ripples, the whole light changes” (Rivers 34). Further, “melodious tolling does go on m that awful pandemonium, / Certain resonances are not utterly displeasmg to the terrified eardrum” (Rivers 35). By presenting two contrary atthudes about the diversity of contemporary life, and the struggles o f human beings who must Ihre in the midst of it, Ashbery is seemmgly argumg m fevor o f a certam mental or emotional flexibility as the appropriate way to live m the post-war period. Agam, surrealism k the embodhnent o f such an attitude, both witti its practice o f assemblage and with its blendmg o f figuration and abstractioiL Fittmgly, Ashbery’s interest m art makes its appearance throughout the poem m like feshion. On the one hand, Ashbery stresses the significance o f linear perspectwe m seemg. The poem’s fest few pages mtroduce the issue o fseemg and 153 How strange it is that... narrow perspective Imes Always seem to meet, although parallel, and that an insane ghost could do this. Could make the house seem so much 6rther m the distance, as It seemed to the horse, draggmg the sledge of a perspective line. {Rivers 36) Soon afterward, however, such perspective lines are linked with the note o f human limitation and tragedy struck earlier m the poem And so much snow, but it is to be littered with waste and ashes So that the cathedrals may grow. Out o f this sprmg builds a tolerable Afianr of brushwood, the sea is felt behmd oak wands, no^lessly pourmg. Sprmg with As promise o fwmter, and the black wy once agam On the porch, its yellow perspective bands m place And the horse nears them and weeps. {Rivers 36) The ftagfle hold o f the perspectwe Imes on visual reali^ easily dissolves, it appears, as A great wind lifted these cardboard panels Horizontal m the am. At once the perspective with the horse DBappearedm a 6/gamme o f squiggly Imes. The mage with the crocodile in it became no longer apparent. {Rivers 36) Indeed, later in the poem, Ashbery explicitly Imks the theme o f perspective Imes with that of the “comfort” o f contammg the diversity o f life, a comfort that is both to be challenged and to be acknowledged as a sign o f human Imitation. Only one thmg exists: the fear o f death. As widows are a prey to loan sharks And Cape Hatteras to hurricanes, so man to the fear o f dying, to the Certainty o f fellmg. And just so it permits him to escape ftom tm e to tm e Amid fields o f boarded-up posters: “Objects, as they recede, appear to become smaller And all horûontal receding Imes have them vanishmg pomt upon the line o fsight,” Which K some comfort after aH, for our volition to see must needs 154 condition these phenomena to a certain degree. But it would be rash to derive too much confidence fiom a situation which, m the last analyst, scarcely warrants it. What I said &st goes: sleep, death and hollyhocks And a new twilight stamed, perhaps, a slightly uneaithlier perwinkle blue. But no dramatic arguments fi>r survival, and please no magic Justification o f results. (Rivers 52-53) But the poem also sharply criticizes the need for such contamment, m part as the search fi>r “meanmg” and “explanation,” two o f the more significant terms m the poem. At one point early m the poem, the voice o f a literary critic emerges. It is tone now for a general understanding of The meanmg o f all this. The meaning of Helga, hnportance o f the settmg, etc. A description o f the blues. Labels on bottles And all kmds o f discarded objects that ought to be described. (Rivers 38) The poem quickly mocks such discourse, even as much as the poem is wQlmg elsewhere to acknowledge such discourse as perhaps mevitable. Isn’t this a death-trap, wanting to put too much m So the floor sags, as under the weight o f a piano, or a piano-legged gfil And the whole house o f cards comes dmnmg own around one’s ears! But this is an hnportant aspect o f the question Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to (Rivers 38- 39) In place o f what the poem shortly thereafter calls “this madness to explam,” Ashbery mstead ofifirs a brief but nuanced portrait o f his poetics, poetics that indicate the citational dimensions o f such poetics. Thfe leavmg-out busmess. On it hmges the very importance o f what’s novel Or autocratic, or dense or silfy: It is as well to call attention To it by exagération, perhaps. But caHmg attention Isn’t the same thmg as explammg, and as I said I am not ready To line phrases witb. the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not, 155 wni not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous Way of these Imes is to devour them own nature, leaving Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves presence, but stOL Nevertheless these are fondamental absences, struggling to get up and be off themselves. (Rivers 39) The “leavmg-out busmess” remmds one o fAshbery’s remarks about “Europe,” and there is an bnportant sense in which Ashbery retams here m “The Skaters” the view that citations cannot merely illustrate. Inevitably, absences and gaps will occur, and “lm[mg] phrases with the costly stuff of explanation” will not solve the fondamental dilemma that citations never completely displace, never completely illustrate. It is for this reason, that Ashbery is much less foarfol o f usmg citations m “The Skaters” m an ostensibly illustrative way, because the absences growing out o f the use o f such citations may be cultivated, for the same reason that the illustrative aspects of otherwise fiagmentary citations may be cultivated. Thus, Ashbery’s citations to the childrens book do not necessarily oflfer the comfort o f contamment the Ashbery otThe Tennis Court Oath would have thought. Significantly, the fost two quotations firom One Hundred Things a Bright Boy Can Do mvolve the perspectwe lines that had been presented earlier m the poem as an mstance o f such contamment. The Imes that draw nearer together are said to “vanish.” The pomt where they meet is them vanishmg pomt. Spaces, as they recede, become smaller. (Rivers 48) By this point m the poem, such shnple truisms have become loaded with significance. Their appearance m the poem at thm stage fimctfons m paradoxical ways. Is the reader to accept the comfort of contammg the “motley spectacle” Imear perspectwe 156 promises? Or, K the reader to see such, a quotation as a “phony explanation,” that keeps one &om the truth o f thmgs? This straightforward mformation the children’s book delivers offers no easify illustration. Likewise, the “motley spectacle” the poem offers, m more complicated and diverse discourse, seems recognizable enough as an illustration o f the speed and diversity o f contemporary life. StOl, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to mention. Not that I am not afiaid, but there is very little time left. You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling. Suddenly, one mommg, the little tram arrives in the station, but oh, so big. ft is! Much bigger and faster than anyone told you. A bewbiskered student m an old baggy overcoat is waitmg to take it. “Why do you want to go there” they all say. “It is better m the other direction.” And so it is. There people are ftee, at any rate. But where you are gomg no one is. (Rivers 43) In the end, the Ashbery’s quotations from the children’s books serve as another ambivalent portion o f the “motley spectacle” of d^ourse and communication. The to-and-fro rhythm o f the differmg rhetorical forms m the poem, “the kmd o f rhythm substitutmg for ‘meanmg’” (Rivers 47), holds the key to Ashbery’s divided poetics of citation, a phenomenon that K itself dmded. The paradoxical nature of such citational poetics is revealed in a particular passage tfiat combmes Ashbery’s preoccupation with the visual arts, with citational discourse and with the themes o f Innitation and diversi^ that drwe the poem. The figure 8 is a perfect symbol O fthe freedom to be gamed m this kmd o f activity The perspective lines o fthe bam are another and different kmd of example (Viz. “Rigg’s Farm, near Aysgarth, Wensleydale,” or the “Sketch at 157 Norton") In which we escape ourselves—putrefying mass of prevarications, etc.— In remammg close to the Ihnitations mçosed. {Rivers 47) In this passage, Ashbery displays the citational ethos that drives his poetics. Infinity is symbolized, to be represented and thus to be cited, ofi^rmg a “fieedom” that is not as undivided as would appear. On the other hand, "perspective lines” that contain fieedom, however limited they may be, offer up fieedom as well, fieedom fiom the self and its narcissism. 158 CHAPTERS BERNSTEIN’S THE SOPHIST: CITATION AND PHILOSOPHY In one section o f his essay “Thought’s Measure,” Bernstein articulates the convergence o f sightmg and soundmg, which as we have seen, forms much o f the basB o f Bemstem’s citationality. Nevertheless, this essay briefly displays, as well as discusses, citationality m a sense snnilar to the one m which Bemstem’s serial essays do. Just before Bemstem mentions this coupling o f sighting and sounding, which lies at the heart of his self^proclahned materialist poetics, Bemstem notes I certainly am not, however, advocating gesturalizmg the ways language can make meanmg: as if to dramatize the capacities of language were enough, as if poetry wasn’t just as much as ever the revelation of meanmg, an active process with language as the medium, requiring an acknowledgment that language always occurs m forms and stmctures. (Content's Dream 72-73) This passage has the function o f definmg Bemstem’s mterdisciplmarity, the sense m which his poetics engage prose as well as poetry. But more important, Bemstem sets the stage here for establishmg that the citational nature of h^ poetics is not limited to what would conventionally be de&ied as poetry. Citation, as it turns out, is an essential part o f Bemstem’s poetics, con^lementmg both Compagnon’s and Sartiliot’s respectwe 159 citationality, where the citational forms the ground for all utterance. As a result, it would seem usefol to examme how this mterdtsdplmary citationality occurs in what on the surfoce seem to be separate modes o fwritmg. Bemstem’s mterdisciplmarity runs even deeper, however, broaching the ancient debate between philosophy and poetry that engaged the ancient Greeks. In this respect, Bemstem embraces both the sophist and sophistry as means both o f joming this debate and o f ofiëring up an old metaphor to explam a citational figure and practice. In Plato’s classic formulation, the sophist is one who, unlike the philosopher, derives knowledge and wisdom, not hom transcendent geometric forms, but rather fiom language (logos), opmion and second hand mformation (doxa). In this way, the sophM is like the poet, one who creates with words. Plato’s condemnation o f both is based on similar grounds. Citation, it seems, must be associated more with the sophist than with the philosopher, and the move mtensifies Bemstem’s Imkmg citation with poetry, poetry defined as that mode o f writmg that “denies the mstrumentality of language” (Perlofif “Essaying” 407). As we have seen, Bemstem’s positions about issues such as these are mcons^ent, so the final significance o f Bemstem’s inquiry into sophistry and citation remams unclear. But there are two possibilities: I) either Bemstem simply embraces the sophist over agamst Plato’s philosopher, or 2) Bemstem maintams a divided attitude about the two disciplmes. The second position, 1 wOI argue, is the more appropriate one for citation, but the foct that the first is withm Bemstem’s poetic purview mdicates a certam citational rfok, that o f efimmatmg the tension between illustration and displacement m aa attempt to valoriœ the latter at the expense of the former. 160 Before dîscussmg the mterdîscçlmaiy and citatibnal issues mvolved m. Bemstem^s mterest in the sophist, however, I present first a discussion o f two poems from The Sophist and further discussion of Bemstein^s serial essay, “Three or Four Things I Know about Him.” I do this to show, m a straightforward way, the mterdiscipiinarity of Bemsteni’s project, the sense m which poetry can theorize, like phflosophy, and prose can be poetic. In the end, the split between philosophy and poetry is evocative o f the split between illustration and displacement that defoies citation. Two Case Studies Just after Bemstem makes the remark quoted above from “Thought’s Measure,” he attempts to display or “reveaT his poetic commitments, rather than simply summarce or “dramatize” them. This is the sense m which the hnmediate truth o f citation wins out over the secondary, ihdfrect nature o f the paraphrase or the allusion. Not surprûmgly, the next sentence is a direct quotation: “Form is never more than the extension o f content”—no bodiless souls or soulless bodies. It is by and through structurmgs that the world gets revealed; they cannot, any more than the body can, be avoided. But there is no given (set oQ structure(s) for all cases; they must always be generated [(re)dfecovered] anew. {Content'sDream 73) The quotation perhaps belies and, at mmtmum, displaces Bemstem’s hnmediately foregoing remarks. In typical foshion, one would have thought such a quotation would support or illustrate the writer’s statements about the prhnacy of structure and, hence, o f form, the “ectoskeletal” nature o f Watten’s sentence collages, for mstance. But that 1 6 1 what comes afterward does not dftectly support Bernstein’s precedmg statements drives home the dkruptive, rather than illustrative, nature of citation. The rest o f the passage manages to repeat the themes about citation we have already discussed: the physicality or bodiedness o f citation and given language, the givenness o f structures that must be discovered (perhaps again) for different cftcumstances to be seen. Bemstem’s remark—”‘Fonn is never more than the extension o f content’^—is itself a quotation ftom Robert Creeley, the same one that Charles Olson made use o f m his femous essay “Projective Verse.” (Olson 614). Bemstem’s statement seems double sided in the sense that it both challenges his own foregomg statements about language and form but may also harmonize with those statements m a backhanded way. On the one hand, the quotation privileges content over form; on the other, content and form are presented as inseparable. This may simply be Bernstein’s way of approachmg hfe topic through a d ir e n t perspective. But that the displacement occurs in the form of a quotation brmgs it mto a paradoxical correspondence with earlier remarks. “Dysraphfem” Also, this quotation, despite its apparent status as literary or artistic bromide, is a selftcftation o f sorts. Bemstem had reversed Greeley’s remark m a semmal poem— ’Dysraphism,” ftom The Sophist —albeit m an ftonicalfy reconstmcted state: “Extension 162 is never more than the form o f content.” Bemstem fiirther displaces the semantic hnportance o f form ia the statement but paradoxical^ emphasizes it by rearrangmg the status o f the prhnary terms, and without altermg the basic syntax of the statement. The poem “Dysraphism” presents a vivid case o f a citational poem of Bernstein’s, which also has the fimction o f articulatmg a poetics. So, just as Bemstem’s essays manage both to dkcuss straightforwardly a citational poetics and to display his faith hi the basic chationali^ of expression, h6 poems likewise manage both to display citationali^ and to theorize h. “Dysraphism” is a poem drenched hi quotation fiagments, many o f which are proverbhd or exhortational m tone. Because of this particular chational basis to the poem, the themes runnmg throughout concern power relations between the classes and genders, and the status o f prose versus poetry. Many of these power relations are in turn grafted onto a psychoanalytic backdrop in which unconscious, repressed and dreamlike forms challenge the standard forms the conscious mmd privileges, making the poem mto a quasi-surrealist document. Bemstem d^usses the relation of form versus content m both “Thought’s Measure” and “Dysraphism” In the latter, Bemstem engages in syntactical play that fiequently munies the architecture o f a given proverb (or a proverb form) for psychoanafytic effect. Immediately after remarkmg, contra “Thought’s Measure,” that “Extension is never more than a form o fcontent” (Jhe Sophist 47), Bernstein likewise quotes another statement and then reconstmcts it. “‘I/know how you feel, Joe. Nobody likes to admit / his gùl k that smart.’ I feel how you know, / Joe, like nobody to smart that girl is his admit” (The Sophist 47). 163 The revision is hardly elegant, especially near the end (‘“to smart that girl is his admit’"), but it nevertheless comments on the fôregomg statement in such a way as to unearth, so to speak, what might be termed its largely hidden assumptions and motivations. The first statement seems lifted fiom youthfiil datmg cficumstances (“‘his gfir‘3 and designed to console the male figure (‘“Joe’") for acknowledgmg publicly, that “‘his gffl’“ is smarter than he. Implied m this is a sense that ‘“Joe’“ may be defensive about this truth and especialfy its public disclosure. Bemstem’s syntactically altered statement heightens this sense by conveying a hidden stram o f violence m the first (“‘like nobody to smart that girl’“). The altered statement also inverts the know/feel relation, hnplymg not simply the speaker’s empathy for ‘“Joe’“ but also sympathy, “‘I feel how you know, Joe,’" collapsing the distance between the two. This psychoanalytic focus on the unconscious occurs in the title ofBemstein’s collection o f essays. Content's Dream, which is actually cited m the poem and juxtaposed with a mundane remark about how to serve drmks to others. ...F ill the water glasses—ask each person if they would like more coffee, etc.” Content’s dream, (The Sophist 45) Bemstem’s commitment to the dream, or to the psychoanalytic logic o f challengmg the everyday m favor of the altematwe troths it conceals, links him, as with Ashbery, to the surrealist tradition mart, but agam with reservations about the underfymg psychologism o f the symbolic or “deep” images concealed. When asked by Tom Becket in an mterview about the title o f Bemstem’s essay antholo^, Bemstem had this mventive reply. 164 Dream in the sense o faspiration, to breathe m, to pronounce with a full breathmg: “the legitnnate aspirations o f the heart. “I have a dream ” I have an exposition o f sleep come upon me [ . . . ] Or what is a dream, a reverie that displaces the real or a hum that supersedes the repressed, whose logic is o f deshe not deduction, wherein we wake to dream not from it? Or, say, the dream o f Content: what content would dream, if allo(u)wed, to state its discontent, anticipate its asphation. (A Poetics 190) Like Ashbery, Bersntem à more mterested in displacmg the real than in rejectmg it outright, for Bemstem. here emphasizes the importance o f poetic form by presendhg the dream-unage o f its opposite. Bernstein also likens the dream with citation, smce both are presented m opposmg deductive logic. Such syntactically altered revisions o f given discourse are to be found elsewhere m “Dysraphism” The gnomic “‘Life is what / you fold, existence is what you repudiate'" (The Sophist 44) is another such example. But when one investigates the diction o f the lines, the phrase makes a sort of backhanded sense, very much compatible with the revision o f “‘I know how you feel, Joe ” As 1 have already remarked, the poem’s treatments o f given discourse, frequently in the form o f proverbs and pithy exhortations, are presented under the aegis o f psychoanalysis, such that what appears phenomenally often masks other possibilities for meaning and significance. “‘L& is what / you find, exKtence is what you repudiate’" may sound as though its coeval structural balance is belied by its semantic content, odc% setting up life and existence as opposftfons, ulthnately fovormg the former over the latter. But there is more than shnple wit here, for Bemstem’s “existence” reads etymologically as one’s “standmg out” (of “life”) that is to be “repudiated” or rejected. On the one hand, Bemstem demonstrates a skepticism about abstraction m the semantics ofhis maxhn, 165 fkvormg mstead “life” which, is to be “found.” A statement like this resembles Cavell’s approach to the paradox o f modernism, a play between a repudiation o f history and o f an acknowledgement o f its presence. It also inçlies Bernstein’s citationality, since “found” materials involve citation, and a standmg out (“existence”) implies the god-like quthoi% o f one who uses citation for the ends o f illustration.' The poem uses the same methods to articulate a poetics derived &om a shnOar ambivalent attitude about givenness and appearances. Appearances and stock proverbs seem divorced or “repudiated” &om us m them essence as mere appearance, but on the other hand, they are also presented as one’s only recourse to living and ulthnately to understandmg language and poetry. Bemstem toys with Marxian termmology m “Dysraphâm” in the quotation about “the truth o f the world” (quoted in “Three or Four”) and explicitly relates it to a Heideggerian poetics. “A wash / o f worry / the wordhood of / the whirl” {The Sophist 47). Marx’s statement, which mvolves elmomatmg comfortmg illusions about the world in fevor o f seemg it on its own terms, is revfeed to encompass poetics. “[Tjhe worldhood o f / the whml” hnmediately recalls Pound’s vortex “mto which ideas are constantly rushing,” Pound’s program for a highly charged poetic writmg of which Bemstem is an heir o f sorts. The “worldhood o f the whml” could then easify nnply the efficacy o f Bemstem’s materialist poetics, which are emphasiæd explicitly m later Imes. “That is, m prose you start with the world / and fiid the words to match; m poetry you start / with the words and find the world m them” {The Sophist 49). ^ The aphorisni also opts for the vulgate “life" m place of the Latmate “existence," reveaimg Bemstem’s suspicion ofbureaucratic writmg and the language of experts. 166 Indeed Bernstein pomts out that the very title o f the poem is “a prosodic device” (The Sophist 44), definmg the term at the bottom o f the poem’s first page. “Dysraphism’ is a word used by specialists m congenital disease to mean a dysfunctional fusion o f embryonic parts—a both defect. Actually, the word is not in Borland’s, the standard U.S. medical dictionary: but I feund it “in use” by a Toronto physicmn, so it may be a commoner British medical usage or just somethmg he came up with. Raph literally means “seam,” so dysraphism is mis-seaming—a prosodic devicel But it has the punch of bemg the same root as rhapsody (rhaph )—or in Skeat’s—’’one who strmgs (lit. stitches) songs together, a reciter o f epic poetry,” c f “ode” etc. In any case, to be simple, Borland’s does define “dysraphia” (if not dysraphism) as “mcomplete closure o f the primary neural tube; status dysraphicus”; this is just below “dysprosody” [sic]: “disturbance of stress, pitch, and rhythm o f speech.”) (The Sophist 44) The m^-seammg o f which Bemstem speaks seems particularly appropriate fer describmg the citationality of “Bysraphâm” and its ambivalence about given speech. Important here is the way Bemstem manages words, fbcusmg on etymology and usages before semantics. The fiagmented nature ofBemstem’s composftional procedure and hK citationality is also made clear by stressmg the asymmetrical relations between heterogeneous parts m a gwen piece o f wrftmg. “Three or Four” Revmted As a result, Bemstem’s poetry is often pointmg dftectly toward an explicit poetics. And, as we have seen m Bemstem’s serial essays, the reverse is tme as well: hfe poetics are pomtmg toward a poetic practice. One section of “Three or Four Thmgs I Know About Him,” engages explicit^ m a citational rhetoric. Another offers a case m 167 which a specific text is called upon, to add to the essay’s general serialify. The essay’s eighth section^ contains (along with section seven) probabfy Bemstehi’s most conventionally personal writing, but the passage, for all its confossionaUsm, is connected with Bob Dylan’s popular 1975 LP “Blood on the Tracks.” Unlike “Dysraphism,” thfe writmg o f Bernstein’s emphasizes chationality’s capacity to condense and mtensifythe meaning makmg process, without forcmg its citations mto becommg mere illustrations. Nevertheless, the passage does displace confossionalism by altermg the bare confossionaUsm of the essay’s seventh section. As I have argued above, the use o f language m section she m “Three or Four” is radical^ non-mstrumental. In the hnmecUately foUowmg section, however, Bemstem’s first person address to the reader includes an mthnatety personal discussion o f the speaker’s social and emotional coldness. The passage begms by presentmg the speaker’s adolescence and adulthood as a long exercise in “seemmg detached, cynical, cold, mtellectuaUy cool” (Content's Dream 21). ThK, it turns out, fe a “tool for social power by manÿulatîon” and estabUshes the speaker’s sad over-reUance on himself and his need for “control” (Content’s Dream 22). He does not gwe people comfort that much—that is, seem to them warm, nurturmg, supportwe (He} ha[sj a technique o f bathing people in that cold, a puritan conviction that people should know the world is hard, and that they should foce it strong and stem” (Content’s Dream 22). He acknowledges that “people should know that” but upbraids hhnself for sensmg he is unable to “go beyond it, [to] show that one sharesthat hardness with others, who care. 1 6 8 That [he] is one o f them. One o f us” (Content "s Dream 23). The purpose of the passage seeming]^ conq)lements passage two’s concrete poem about the alienated ofiSce worker by discussing another, more personal Arm o f alienation and exploitation. Near the end o f the passage, however, Bemstem mcludes a (slightly erroneous) reference to the Dylan song, “Shelter from the Storm.” He doesn’t, “|Tie] sometimes feel[s], give people a feeling o f getting ‘shelter from the storm/cold’ but rather can be the cold that people seek the shelter from” (Content's Dream 22). This notation fereshadows passage eight, which is equally personal and emotional but instead relies on the technique o f citation to reach its ends. One mterruption in a largely seamless, Imear, expository flow in passage seven becomes mstead a deeply “dysraphic” display of citationality that rather gams m ks emotional power fer havmg done so. Passage eight also contmues the theme, built mto the very ferm o f the essay, of fragmentation, alienation and exploitation. Such is how the passage roughly begms, but not befere another quotation, especial^ well-chosen fer its articulating personal ^ e s by way o f an economic metaphor. There are those who worshÿ lonelmess, of bemg alone, as a way o f bemg whole m the world that demands personal fragmentation as the price fer frttmg into society—the cult o f Thoreau, Kierkegaard, etc., m the best and worst sense” (Content's Dream 23). Such isobtion can be usefril. It is to be “out o f debf’ emotionalfy, “to owe no one anything,the self-made man, on your own and m control—the delusion o f security m isolation” (Content's Dream 23). 169 Bemstem repeats the Dylan citatfoa in the passage shorty after these remarks and m the process mflects the theme o f explohation along the lines o f gender: “‘Come m she said. I’ll give you shelter from the storm. She she she, waitmg: ready to comfort, to nurture, to support our shipwrecked egos. And so we take the comfort, but without transformmg ourselves.. (Content's Dream 23). Here women are exploited by a probab^ male “we” who use the emotional tenderness o f women to shore up a male sense o f isolation. Hence, again, the title o f the overall piece, “Three or Four Thmgs I Know about Hnn.” From here the passage is awash m Dylan quotations and uses the “Blood on the Tracks” recordmg as a likemmded mme o f repentant voices, driven by loss. In this respect, Bemstem’s choice o f recordmg is apropos. Bemstem draws an obvious connection between hhnself and Dylan whose song lyrics o f the 1960s were deepfy conditioned by a disjunct, surrealht diction, and even many citations. At the same time, however, “Blood on the Tracks” fe atypical as a Dylan recordmg; its lyrics are far more linear than Dylan is frequently noted for. Even more strikmgly, these song lyrics are confessional; the entire recordmg resounds with the loss (to divorce) of Dylan’s wife. So, Bemstem, hi an uncharacterisric mood, efifrctively doubles his thematic and poetic commitments by chmg a likemmded, yet uncharacterMc Dylan. Drawmg upon so much of “Blood on the Tracks,” the passage continues to discuss the theme o fexploharion and personal illatio n among those who, lacking social power, might unfortunately compensate for it by controlling others, damnmg everyone m the process: 170 >.. she shnply comforts, of^rs shelter, but we cemam m the world o f “steel eyed death” (a steefy idea that)—exchange no words “between us”. There is “little risk uivolved” because we have held fost to our kolation, simpty allowmg it to be warmed. “Come m she said I’ll give you shelter horn the storm” but there can be no shelter until we ourselves provide it each for the other together. Without that there wül always be “a wall between us”; then the steely idea triumphs: “Nothing really matters, it’s doom alone that counts.” [Content's Dream 23-24) Especm% o f note here is the (doubly) self-conscious citational moment m the passage where the speaker quotes Dylan quotmg an unnamed source: “'Love is so shnple, to quote a phrase, you’ve known it all the tune I’m learning it these days’" (Content's Dream 24). The passage generally manages citations m order to collapse themes with structure, form wfth content. Further, Bemstem’ citmg Dylan’s song fyrics plays a fundamental role in establishmg the passage’s thenKS, as his Bemstem’s general programme of citation m the article is meant to do for the general essay. In this sense, the passage k rather unlike Bemstem’s typical writing. What makes the passage atypical, however, is not Just its explicit^ emotional and psychological orientation, a focus that K often challenged elsewhere m the essay, but its particular citational strategy of condensmg, rather than dkplacmg thematic threads. Here, Bemstem comes closest to usmg citation and quotation m a conventional way, and such use exposes the twm, competmg sides of citation and the mterdisc^imarity at the heart ofBemstem’s project, suspended between illustration and displacement, between philosophy and poetry. 171 SopbKt and Citation The chief consequence ofthK general interdependence or identity oftheory and practice for Bemstehi’s citationality reflects his strong faith in the circular mstruroentality o f poetic writhig and hs material base, language. One mdelible feature o f poetry’s essence â its accent on the non-instrumental character o f language. This feitii m what has become femiltar in language poetry as the “materiality o f the signifier” stresses for poetry the purely technological features of language, both to create the possibilities o f meanmg and, in turn, to embody meaning. But despite poetry’s unique capacity to awaken readers and auditors to the physical and formal components o f language—orthographic black marks on the page, pure sound—poetry cannot obviate meanmg or content. Rather, meaning and content are mextricabty bound up with language’s technology and are impossible without it; and as a result, poetry evmces the special ability to manifest both language’s non- mstrumental character as well as the mevitable, and rec^rocal, connection between it and language’s mstrumental character. The instrumental nature of language pertams to the capacity o f physical signs to signify, and taken with language’s non-mstrumental character, the hnplied relation is circular. Because of this rationale, Bemstem’s poetics ann at bemg no mere abstraction from poetry but rather at servmg as a praxis in themselves; likewise, the poetry is mevitably committed to theorizmg its conditions of appearance. 172 This breakmg down o f the traditional opposition between theory and practice, concept and letter, philosophy and poetry, broaches the problem of Bernstein’s odd, non- poetic title for his 1987 collection o f poems. The Sophist. The title sounds a classic philosophical theme and hnmediately recalls Plato’s dWogue o f the same name. For millennia, philosophy and poetry have been adversaries and sometunes hronic bedfellows. The particular self conscious, modernist quality o f Bernstein’s writmg, which philosophizes and theories as it practices, and practices as it philosophizes and theorizes, marks an mtervention m what Plato termed the “ancient debate” between the two. If Bemstem’s writings are taken seriously m this respect, theory and practice need new criteria to distinguish them from each other, smce both Content’s Dream and The Sophist blur the conventional boundaries between poetry and expository modes like philosophic writing and the essay. The former work, a collection of “essays,” anthologies writings that challenge the conventional notion of the genre, especially as mstitutionalized in the modem university. An ostensibly more “poetic” venture. The Sophist nevertheless contains some, always very atypical, prose-like selections. The question remams, however, whether Bemstem affirms the dichotomy or whether he is onpfymg that there is im diffirence between poetry and philosophy. Such mterdiscÿlîaarity, among these modes m particular, will have strikmg consequences for any citational writing, because when the technical component o f language and citation is accentuated over agamst them conceptual moment, the reader’s experience ofthe text necessarity chaises, no matter what the apparent Ifterary mode. Bemstem’s blendmg the philosophical and poetic modes is figured along these Imes and 173 establishes writmg he has claimed as “anti-absorptive” elsewhere, relymg upon termmology from art critic Michael FriecL^ Such writmg attempts to de6miliarize the reader’s rote experience with language that works m an. “absorptive” way. The “absorptive” technique leads the reader away from the thmgly character of the expression. Absorptive writing dommates the world’s writing in such familiar forms as the newspaper, the memorandum and the textbook and occurs when readers ignore the technology of language and attends to its conceptual content to such an extent that they forget the materml side of language. The near-identity between the title ofBemstem’s collection o f poems and Plato’s atypical dialogue is also significant for what the dialogue foialty reveals about the nature of language and truth, which has remarkable resonance for both Bemstem’s general project and his chationality. Bemstem’s work manages to challenge its apparent generic boundaries in its hnplicit engagement with Platonic forms of representation and metaphysics. Bemstem bardty (if at alQ acknowledges one of Plato’s most uncharacter^c dialogue in The Sophist poems, which one might well argue is a rather haphazard collection o f poems and “writmgs” from the early to mid 1980s. But the poet’s collection nevertheless exhibits a marked and challengmg mtervention in the history and theory o f poetry and représentation. Given Bemstem’s radically materialist poetics, the issue with this gesture of usmg a philosophic title for a book o f poems would seem to concern language use. If this is so, Bemstem would seem yet agamto be prepared to debunk the claims o f instrumental prose, as they have traditionally been articulated m formal philosophy. The ^ See generally NGchael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age o f 174 argument would run that phflosophy, as with all forms o f mstrumental writmg, particularly the post-war bureaucratic writmg against which Bemstem k so antagonistic, makes use o f language so that language's mevitably material component is obscured in 6vor o f its capaciQr to communicate concepts. As with mstitutional prose, philosophy in this sense idealizes language through and through, in the process strippmg philosophic discourse o f its material groundmg m language. Bernstein's title, then, would seem to be honic or wry, for through the eyes of a philosopher m the officially platonic mode, Bemstem's work could well be termed sophistry. More specifically, Bemstem’s writmg would, m the eyes of such a philosopher, represent the pale outcome of a flawed attempt to accomp&h tmtfi, something for which philosophy, allegedly the highest human activity, is best suited. But the term “sophist,” o fcourse, goes much further, implymg more than shnply “philosophy,” if even philosophy’s feeble imitation. The term also connotes several other meanmgs: the ancient Greek civfl^tion; Plato’s dialogues, especially the late dialogue entitled Sophist; the view that truth is phenomenal rather than metaphysical; the idea o f philosophic fiauduience; and the origmal status o f philosophy and poetry, mcludmg the “ancient quarrel” between them to which Plato tumed in the Republic and m so many other works. The Duplications Bemstem’s ironic title have for the problem o f citationality flow both fi’om the language-use concerns m his work and the general tension between philosophy and poetry as it app^rs throughout hûtory. On thfe latter issue, especially nnportant is the ancient Greek situation, where Plato attempted to codify the Ime Diderot (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980). 175 between phflosophy and poetry. As a result^ taknig a close look at the origms o f so- called sophistry, which m turn reveals much about the origms o f phflosophy and poetry, helps even to clarify the general m ateria l language-use theme m Bemstem’s writmg, Bemstem’s 6vormg the materialist nature o f language over agamst its conceptual dnnensions will form the basfe for his Sequent jabs at (platonic) idealism in The Sophist. In particular, two poems from Bernstein’s Sbp/wsr—”'The Order of.. and “The Shnply”—seem focused on philosophic themes that are traceable to platonic idealism. In the former poem, Bernstein’s task engages platonic ideas at the conceptual and formalistic levels to counter idealism by enacting meanmg m the concrete being of poetry itself In “The Shnply,” however, Bemstehi’s look at idealism is less dhect, more situated hi the flux and confusion o f social and hi^orical life. In both cases, the writmg wrestles with the dream o f absolute truth, whether such tmth is sensible and the possibility that real truth would merge object and concept. “The Shnply” “The Shnply” k the &st poem m Bemstehi’s The Sophist and it does serve as an mtroduction o f sorts to the platonic and counter-platonic themes m the overall work. The citationality o f the poem is also hnmediately made apparent, as what Bernstein seems to o # r here is a heterogeneous collection of various fragments of discourse. But at first the poem seems to be preoccupied mstead whh MarxKt issues ofjustice. Thus the focus on society-page writmg: 176 .. .On July 3 Fred Tmimons, Bayne and Hattie Smith, Mary Sutherland, Margaret Hartford and Lizzie Daniels enjoyed a treat of strawberries and cream at the home o f Grace Kendziora.” {The Sophist 9) In the same vem, another fragment offers an examination o fpower relations among the colonizer and the colonized, a quasi-chation from Josepii Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness (‘“For all that / we have not up to the present noticed any more / Religion among these poor savages than among brutes” [The Sophist 10]). The poet seems to be attemptmg to link a citational and fragmented compositional style o f writmg to a radical politics. Elements such as these, however, are positioned withm the problems o f appearance versus reality that dominate Plato’s concern with the sophât. The prunary thematic element in the poem concerns truth and falsehood and particularly the problem o f perspectives and them inevitable partiality. This theme k explicitly platonic because it concerns the forms o f being and knowing that run counter the realm o f the Forms, which, m Plato’s scheme constitute a kmd ofabsolute truth. Early m the poem the term “fraudulence” makes its appearance, specifically in the context of those seekmg “salvation”: “They thmk they’ll get salvation, but / this is fraudulent”{The Sophist 7). The theme o fappearance versus reality is made manifest here, intensifying m later Imes, with a particular MarxKt (Althussermn) mfiection: . . m despafr / seemg ‘lived experience’ as onfy possible under the hegemony o f an ideology, an ‘imaginary”’ {The Sophist 7). Represented with a somber tone, Bemstem seems to be showing us that life is everywhere rife with illusion and that truth m 177 something beyond one’s grasp. There is the need to demystify appearances, m hopes o f reachmg truth; but one, it appears, cannot escape what Heidegger has called the “circuit of appearances” to reach that truth (Plato's Sophist 234). Bernstein engages directly the question o f a more enabled truth-seekmg, as an alternative to Plato’s realm ofthe forms. To bare it, make it palpable—but not so it can be transcended, rather circulated, exposed to ah, plowed, worked until fertile for mhabitation. (The Sophist 8) Bernstein rather offers a dymstification o f illusion that does not elhnmate the need for illusion. Walter Benjamin makes an appearance.’ Over and over plagued by the dialectic o f such Messianism—tied as it h to a conviction in a pruneval totality of word and object, each echoing the truth o f the other and the very contours of the cosmic. (The Sophist 8) Bernstein would seem to reject the “primeval totality o f word and object” as some undesirable “dialectic o f .. . Messianism.” Later, in this poem, Bemstem is likewhe mterested m the problem of idealism, particularly in communication. This would be th e‘now time’ ofthe communicatwe moment, reducmg as it does to an idealization o f nonhhtorical, nonspatial—which is to say—antimaterialist possibHify. (The Sophist 9) thh “‘now tnne’” seems out o f reach if one looks at communication objectively, marked as it is with absence. Bernstein’s apparent position on communication would seem to challenge Plato’s notion o f speech as sel5presence ia^ the Phaedrus and elsewhere. 178 Then, m the context ofMiarxisni In the current debate, idealisin is greatty endangered by the common claim among “Marxists” that mdeed /it, as the cultural the social is the material base; surely the task must be to salvage idealism âom such ravages. (The Sophist \Q) The Marxist commitment to historical materialism is mocked here by a voice yearning for a higher truth. Later, Bernstein worries about the platonic “cannibal[km] o f “search[ing] for material” (The Sophist 11). “The Simply,” as its title shows, never offers a nommaL abstract truth; rather, k ^ the material (and adverbial) process that dommates Bemstem’s poetics. “’The Order o f . . . ’” “‘The Order of.. at &st blush, appears as a meditation on architecture that Bernstein exhibits dkectly, by makmg the graphic look of the page into a deconstructed blueprmt or, even more provocatively, mto a rums in print. The theme o f rums m this (punnmg) concrete poem calls to mind the ancient Greek resonance o f the title ofthe poem-collection. The most dkect mdications that Bemstem is exammmg Plato and ancient Greek philosophy are found m a fow nnportant areas. At the most general level K the overwhelming presence o f terms with saliently Greek etymologies— ”hypostatization,” “autotelic,” “geometric,” “aperion,” “synchronic,” “logos,” and ^ See Walter Benjamm, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of Efetoty,” HlimmationSy Hannah Arendt, ed., Harry Zone, trans. (New York; B&rcourt, Brace & \ihrld, h a ) 253-64. 179 “archai.” Then, too, is the satiric mciusion o f a “string; cite,” common in legal citation, but from ancient Greek authors like Herodotus, Thucydides, Clearchus, Aeschylus, etc.: HdL 1.65; Hdt. 139; Thuc. 4.76; Clearchus 2; Aesth. Per. 400; Eur. Tro. 801; Arist. Nub. 914; Xen Cyr. 6.4.3; Soph. 726D;Aesth. Ag. 521; H. 10.472; ffes. Op. 76; Thuc. 3.108; Phys. 24.13; Od. 8.179. (The Sophist 85) It is as though Bemstem is suggesting this plethora o f passages m classical works amounts to authority smiilar to that o f case law. This strmg cite passage k also relevant for the basic problem o f citation, as this study has outlmed it. Curiously, nothing ofthe content o f these citations seems especially relevant to the poem’s apparent aims, and several of the citations are simply foaudulent, particularly the one referring to Plato’s Sophist (“’Soph. 726D”), a passage that does not exist m the dialogue. It seems here that Bernstein is also mocking the high modernist use o f citations m poetic contexts. Where Eliot provided readers o f “The Waste Land” with actual footnotes that mcluded citations, Bemstem here promotes citations like Eliot’s by placing them squarely m the flow o f the actual poem and even foreshortens the citations so that they appear even more like they belong m footnotes than Eliot’s citations. This move in particular adds further irony to the issue of philosophic Sraudulence that Bemstem m at tines wHImg to associate with poetry. The cluster is placed it the poem, seemmgly, to confront the reader with the non-mstrumental quality o f the citations that refer to passages m, for example, Xenophon’s CyruSy and that also seem to 180 have little relevance to the poem’s explicit theme o f archftecture and metaphysics. Many of them pomtedty refer, as wfth Herodotus and Thucydides, to femous battles, and many sftnply have no textual referent whatsoever. Bemstefti’s game with his readers ftitensifîes his comment on modernist citation. In the tradition of Pound or Eliot’s citations, one might seek fti these citations the key to his modemût collage text. But Bernstein’s niordinate commitment to the non- ftistrumental side of language renders these citations fendamentally opaque. In this way, Bemstefti ftnplicitly critiques the aesthetics o f a Pound or Eliot, particularly hi thehr use o f citation, as he crftiques the metaphysics of a Plato. But the poem ei^ages pfetonic metaphysics hi ferther ways. In the poem’s Gfth line, among a litany o f various “orders”—here Bemstem seems engaged in a Wfttgenstenimn context play about a single word—is a “geometric order” recallnig the lintel o f the Lyceum: “Let no one ignorant o f geometry enter here.” Later, fti noticeably smaller type, Bemstefti dangles a feagment: “Idea o f explaftmig the vûible world by a postulated hivisible world” {The Sophist 84). In the same grafti, a report, suitably bn indftect discourse (even m iambic pentameter), is offered, where a mysterious “He” says that ft is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other aperion nature, feom which come ftito being all the heavens and the worlds hi them. {The Sophist %5) The mysterious “He” sounds like Plato or an abstract summary ofPbto, and thâ summary would be ftonic, smce Plato’s mftial move is to abstract essences feom experience. 1 8 1 On the second and final two pages, however, the term “geometry” is repeated but in a more radically altered context: GEOmEtry REgArdEd As ImmAnEnt (The Sophist 86) Here, the word “geometry” itself is delàmiliarËed m its uncbaracterKtic capitalization of certam individual letters that constitutes the word. The “immanence” o f “geometry” furthers the cause of questionmg the validity ofthe mathematics. It suggests that the idealization o f space m math is impossible outside o fmath’s bemg situated in actual time and space. Moreover, separating the consonants fiom the vowels also challenges the idealization o f Imguistics, separating sounds m which the fiow o f ah is staggered from sounds in which the ah flows naturally. Here, however, Bemstem’s “linguistics” remam rooted in actual statements, much as Whtgenstem would have had it. “Mathematics” suffers a sunOar fate m the poem’s feial page, reduced to being a “Peculiar function,” the flmctionalhm of mathematics seen as a decidedly non-ideal signifier o f an mtellectual condition. The typography ofthe statement, all m broken, asymmetrical prmt, \s honically juxtaposed with a statement m italics —"The Fabric o f the Heavens,"—that honizes metaphysics, accentuatmg theh (metaphorical “febric.” The “peculiar fimction” is also placed near a witticism fragment on cosmetics, “A perspicuity o f blushesse,” and an interrupted quotation fragment (“‘. . . as though’”), the metaphysical essence of which marks a decided challenge to platonic metaphysics m which appearance and essences are sundered and the latter privileged over the fr)rmer. 182 The most sustamed mediatiba on these themes occurs m the mdented block of prmt occupymg the middle ofthe poem’s âiai page. Disappearance ofthe ------; the world no longer conceived o f as united by its hnmanent structure, a unwerse m which change is reduced to relations amongyiux and logos —there are some who call it indifférence—components strammg to adapt to one another, fîghtmg each other, coming apart, a periodichy in phenomena alone msufScient to generate a visual differentiation ofthe various archai as well as then ulthnate collection mto a smgle layered structure. (The Sophist 87) The passage begms by invokmg fellow language poet Ron SHIiman’s famous L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E anthology essay, “Disappearance ofthe Word, Appearance of the World.” The line also rhymes with Marx’s statement about the truth o f the world (from “Three or Four”) or Heidegger’s “worldmg of the world.” In the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E essay, Sillhnan discusses language-use functions m the midst of a capitalist economy, and his remarks resonate well with Bemstem’s theory of the amb^opia o f language users who mi% the brute feet o f language when speakmg, writing, reading or listening. Bemstem dramatizes such amblyopia by blockmg out the word “word” in the Sillhnan fermulation. Just afterward, however, Bemstem seemmg^ takes it back by debunkmg a “world. . . / conceived o f as united by its hnmanent structure.” In the process, Bemstem offers a portrait ofthe world as Pfeto might have seen it, a vision ‘^indiffèrenf' to the material fects o f reality. Accordmg to Bemstem, temporalify and change would fer Plato prove threatenmg, as “components strammg to adapt to / one another, fighting each 183 other” make it impossible for one p a r ofeyes to take m. the whole/ This state o f aflàirs would be “msufficient to generate a visual differentiation o f the various / archai” Agam. for Bernstein, the solution to the problem o f tune and difference is not to construct any ideal world behmd or above the phenomenally present, but rather to reconcile oneself to such flux by achieving ambi-opia, or “multi-level seemg ” Plato and Bernstein When taken together, thm approach to Plato, on the one hand, and Bernstein*s title for hk collection o f poems, on the other, would seem to pamt the poet as a self^ proclaimed sophist. The logic would run that because Plato offers a perspectwe on reality and language that is hostile to poetry and poets, why not line up opposite of Plato on other, perhaps more fundamental and well-established issues? If Plato deems sophistry and poetry to constitute different forms o f flaudulence, then why not embrace sophûtry as a yet more extreme statement o f protest? Plato's shnultaneous need to define and exalt the philosopher above all others could be challenged more direct^ by aligning oneself with sophistry, since poets make no actual claim to be philosophers or to challenge them. * This is one ofthe fimckimental arguments of sophmn, that, m the words of Protagoras, "%an is the measure o f all things.” If the standard Rarjudging reality lay m man's apprehension ofthe world, thmi Plato’s valori^on of geometry and mathematics k misplaced. 184 But there are many more reasons to be found m the history o f sophistry for recommendmg connectmg Bemsteih^s stake m poetry with sophistry. George Kerferd notes, m his Sophistic Movement, that the tem i“sophia,”—the root of “sophist,” “sophistry,” etc.—”was m foot associated with the poet,” among others (24). Moreover, at least one o f the more important sophists (Protagoras), emphasized the importance of Ifterature m understandmg reality (40). And, W XC. Guthrie, m the third volume ofhis History o f Greek Philosophy, connects the term “sophistes” not shnply to teachers, as was standard (44), but to poets as well (29). According to Guthrie, this was a principle reason Plato must have been troubled about poets as well as these dangerous teachers. Poetry was thus linked with moral histruction and advice, and the deceptive mhnetic play of poetry and the arts could only produce appealmg half-truths that would lead the youths o f Athens astray. The sophist was a deviser or contriver, one who gave off the airs of behig a skilled technicmn, especially m. the arts of rhetoric, but was hnally a charlatan (30-31). But the more one pursues an hütorical and philosophical understanding o f sophistry and sophùts, the more they would seem to recommend themselves to Bemstem’s understanding of language and poetry. This is especially so considermg that Bemstem, while an undergraduate at Harvard m the late 1960s, had the rare opportuni^ to study with four o f the premier English-speakmg philosophers of the time: W.V. Qume, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls, and (above aH) Stanley Cavell (Atfy Way 241-42). Benstem actually majored m philosophy and his poetics derive horn a particular commitment to the materialist, rather than idealist, trends m the history o f philosophy. The sophists, m particular, seem to have populari^d the materialist outlook. 185 As a result, further and more significant details o fthe sophist programme are relevant to Bernstein's apparent engagement with this philosophicai theme m his own book o f poems. The SophisL At the most general level, the sophists were concerned, as any philosopher ofthe tune would be, with "the nature o f truth and above all the relation between what appears and what is real or true, the relation between language, thought and reality” (Ker&rd 2). This was so because both Plato and the sophists were labormg to solve some o f the various conundrums raised by a significant forerunner, Parmenides, whose statement, "non-being does not exist,” abruptly “sundered the world of appearance fi'om the world o f bemg” (Kerferd 71). This statement seems to lie at the source o f the ontological and phenomenological disputes that Plato and sophists argued about. Indeed, Plato’s own Sophist dialogue ahns to establish the existence of the sophist, as "fiaudulent philosopher,” while the platonic “voice,” the Vfeitor fi’om Elea, uses Parmenides statement as his logical point o f departure. In fact, Parmenides’ maxhn was to become vhtually unsolvable, even as Plato m Sophist pursued the problem to such an extent that it would appear that Plato’s own idealism, or at least the traditional portrait ofhis idealism, had been compromised. The issue that plagued everyone, it seemed to be, was that if non-being does not exist, then fiauduience does not exist, and consequent^ there is no difference between Plato’s philosophy and that o f the sophists, because everything, or to be more specific, every statement, must be true. Ifone wanted to establ^h a criterion for truth, Plato reasoned, it had to be elsewhere, and this inevitably had the effect o f shnultaneously idealizmg this 1 8 6 cnterion and denigrataig phenomenal reality: It seemed one could not have it both ways, that B, grant equal respect to appearance and reality. As a result, the split between idealism and materialisni was engendered. As is well known, Plato took the idealist route, constructing the realm ofthe forms, a region of absolute truth precedmg the truths o f speakmg m particular and the phenomenal world in general (Kerford 76). The sophists were also m a difficult position, since they could not, any more than other pretenders to serious thought, brush aside the Eleatic dQemma, which forced a choice between bemg and becommg, stability and flux, realfty and appearance. Smce it was no longer possible to have both, the S o p h ^ abwdoned the idea o f a permanent reality behmd appearance m fovor o f an extreme phenomenalBm, relativism and subjectivism. (Guthrie 47) Bemstem’s decidedly anti-metaphysical views o f language and his commitment to the basic citationality both o f poetry and o f all speakmg, would align the poet with the sophists m them own embrace o f appearance and phenomenal reality. But there are yet more correspondences smce the sophists were also engaged m language play as orators and masters of rhetoric. In corroboration, one of Plato’s ways of attackmg the sophists is to character^ them as “^antUogikor or as experts m the arts o f antilogic, which was a technique o f earning victory in an argument without concern for the actual truth (Kerford 62). In his Plato's Sophist, (yfortin Heidegger deffiies the term antilogikoi tellingly as “semblant artists” (xvi), a term well-befittmg Bemstem. The sophist is one who ffiialty possesses a know-how o f opmions, appearances and phantasms (xxiii). These sophBts, m essence, were actors—yet another category o fopprobrium ofPlato’s—for they 187 donned arguments like masks, juxtaposmg one argument with another. Such a practice resonates well withBemstem^s own technique o f juxtaposmg speech and ways of speakmg in a smgle poem or essay. Further, some sophists, like Hippias and Gorgias, occasional^ “adopted the princçle roles ofthe rhapsode,” a figure who would recite the Imes of Homer in a public performance for a priæ. Th^ move to take on the role o f the rhapsode had the e # c t o f “emphasrrmg them contmuation ofthe fimctfons o f poets m earlier days” (Kerferd 29). In conjunction, Bemstem’s writmgs are driven by the use of muk^le voices and personae, a use that has hs roots m the practices o f sophists. But perhaps the most significant parallel between Bernstein’s poetics and the practices and values o f the sophists revolves around the issue o f referentiality m speakmg. Th6 issue, as it turns out, is also central to Plato’s concerns mSophist. The problem for Plato was that the sophists were felse philosophers because, m them zeal to wm arguments with skillfiil rhetoric, they would address thmgs in speech that either were not present or did not exist. Plato, on the other hand, wanted to ensure that speakmg was m feet referential and that when the spectre o f non-bemg enters the folds o f speakmg, that is, when one addresses something as somethmg it is not, fiauduience rears its ugly head. Countermg expectation, Plato’s dialogue, however, does not feially make this claim, as much as it seems to want to. In the end, Plato’s argument is much more complicated and necessitates a closer look at his text that ultimately seems to quali^ the idealism particular to the stock portrait ofPlato. This mvestigarion has the ef^ct of 188 revkmg the way Bernsteui’s citationality and mterdisciplmarity must be understood. This split between idealism and phenomenalism* between Plato and sophism* is &ially too snnpUstic to describe accurately the issues at stake in Bemstem’s writmgs. As already remarked* the dialogue’s basic purpose is to establ^h the existence of the sophM construed as a &lse philosopher. This involves thinking the conditions of appearance for haudulence m speakmg. To do so. one, accordmg to Plato, must take as a basic assumption Parmenides assertion that non-bemg does not exist, else how could we speak of it? Accordmg to Martm Heidegger* Plato’s (and Arfetotle’s) view is that “truth* unconcealedness, is not at home m logos” {Plato's Sophist 127), and Plato must show where it is m fact at home. Heidegger further discloses Plato’s stumblmg block: “But if not in logos, the positive question arises: where then? From this pomt we acquire agam an orientation toward the central question ofthe Sophist, the question ofthe bemg of deception, whether there is such a thmg as non-being, whether non-being is” {Plato's Sophist 127). The great hony is that, m setting up the dialogue in these ways, Plato forces bhnself to the conclusion, overtummg Parmenides, that not only does non-bemg, m foct, exist but that non-bemg is equW ent to the concept ofdifiference. As the Visitor of Elea remarks, “it seems that when we say that which is not, we don’t say somethmg contrary to that which is, but only somethmg different fiom it” (Plato 51). Heidegger’s gloss on this passage is instructwe: “Thus we do not have here radical opposmg of non-bemg and Bemg or an entwmmg of both. . . , but mstead being 6 not, yet not m the sense of the non-bemg, but differently; and non bemg is* yet not m the sense o f bemg, but 189 dififerently** {Plato's Sophist 299). This conclusioa has the effect o f forcing Plato to look more closed at the phenomenal world thaa the traditional portrait o f Plato, emphasizing above all his world-withermg idealism, would allow. Second, Plato concludes that being and noa-being feequently mix, especially m language. This point leads Plato to suggest that a relational and differentml system of bemg establishes the conditions o f possibility for any statement. The Visitor from Elea at one pomt argues to Theaetetus that “it’s mept to try to separate everythrag from everythmg else. It’s the sign of a complete^ unmusical and unphHosophical person” (Plato 54). Further, “to dissociate each thing from everythmg else is to destroy totally everythmg there is to say. The weavmg together o f forms is what makes speech possible for us” (Plato 54). In Heidegger’s formulation Plato dùcovers thk eteron [“other’] precisely m the sophist, m a certain sense for the &st tune as a particular kmd o f non-bemg and prec^ly as the kind that does not express a total difference from the other, or from the one m relation to which it is the other, but mstead expresses the foct that every bemg, msofor as it is, is itself and somethmg other. {Plato's Sophist 329). Fraudulence is thus possible, because “if [bemg] doesn’t blend with [non-bemg] then everythmg has to be true. But if it does then there will be false belief and folse speech, since folsity m thinkmg and speakmg amount to believmg and saying [non- bemg]” (Plato 55). In this way Plato’s well-known attack on mmesis is compromised. All speech is “speech about somethmg (Plato 58) and if speech addresses a bemg as a bemg it produces truth m the form o f likenesses or icons rather than m. the form of deceiving appearances or simulacra (Plato 64). This opposition ofPlato’s has great significance 190 both for Bernstein’s investigation of the sophfet and for the citatfonality of his writing. The consequences flowing horn Bemstem’s donning the mask o f the sophût are only superficially antagonistic to Plato, as the move has the foial effect o f awakenmg one to important nuances m Plato, poetry and citation that have largely been misunderstood. Likewise, Plato rejects the system of reforentiality that is fiequentty attributed to him. Because h becomes possible to address something as somethmg else, fiaudulence is possible. In Heidegger’s readmg of the fesue, all speech “signifies,” “means somethmg,” is “understandable. But to mean somethmg m this way and at the same tune to let the thmg meant show itself in this meanmg—that does not occur m all speech” (124). Because logos, or speech, enables a seemg o fsomethmg onfy as somethmg m terms o f something else, it creates the possibility of d^ortion. “That is, because this logos is a showmg which lets that about which it speaks be seen as something, there remains the possibility that the thmg might get dMorted through the ’as’ and that deception would arise. Somethmg can be d^torted only if it is grasped m terms of somethmg else” (Heidegger 125). ^ oathe other hand, the “as” is well-tempered, a truthfiil unage emerges.^ A close look at Plato’sSophist and Heidegger’s readmg of the dmlogue offers a very different Plato fiomthe traditional one. This has ônportant implications, as we shall see, for the status of Bemstem’s critiques of idealism and mstrumental writh%. But the complications even manage to reach deeper levels. Stanley Rosen’s account o f ^ This is a problem similar to the one of seeing with which Wittgenstein struggles, as outlined in chapter one. 191 Plato, m hK Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry (1988) oflfers an even more unconventional portrait of Plato. Rosen’s work settles the issues for Plato between philosophy and poetry that so preoccupy Bernstein. Rosen’s account ofl^rs a for more nuanced understandmg both o f Plato o f the key Ksues mvolved here, than any other advanced m this context The crucial ^ e , for Rosen, revolves around a troublmg paradox. One ofPlato’s purposes m sidmg with philosophy, in the conflict between philosophy and poetry, is to argue the inferiority of art and poetry, because art and poetry ultünatety ofifor a weak mimesis or “falsehoods masquerading as truths” (Rosen 1). B ut of course, to do so Plato also resorts to art and poetry o f a sort to make this pomt. Rosen argues convmcmgly that because Plato indulged m poetry himself despite h6 apparent ideas, thfo obvious problem in his corpus 6 no mere superflcial problem, for it rather touches on the foially dualistic core ofPlato’s project. This is so even as Plato’s condemnation o f mimesis depends, as Compagnon puts i t on an “effet de mûnésis” (110). When Socrates, m the Republic nnplies that the “philosopher who, like Socrates, constructs the city m his d6course, engages in prosodic mimesis of the political Tdea,’ whether one calls this mhnesis poetry or not is irrelevant to its productive or demiurgic, as well as to its mhnetic character (Rosen 5). Consequently, there B no “noetic apprehension” or “pure seemg” o f the Platonic forms; rather, Plato’s idealism is “saturated with mimesis” (Rosen 5). Rosen pursues the apparent conflict between philosophy and poetry through aU its twists and turns m Plato and the conclusion he draws fo strikmg. Plato’s move to banish the poets feom the Republic is usually presented as a consequence ofPlato’s 192 apparent distrust o f mimesis. If the artisan^s production oÇ for instance, beds are somewhat removed fiomthe ideal form o f a bed, then the pamter^s pamtmg o f a bed must therefore be even further removed fiom that ideal bed, so long as the artist imitates the artisan’s work. As a result, the grounds for Plato’s condemnation o f poets would appear to be ontological and phenomenologicaL But, as Rosen will argue, this is only apparently so. As one reads the Republic closely, it becomes clear that two other fiameworks control Plato’s condemnation ofmimesB. Even more significant than the apparent ontological condemnation k the political and moral condemnation. The trouble with aesthetic representation b that such representation presents the possibility of deceiving others with its misleadmg, sunulacral resemblance to the truth. In the Republic, however, this occasions for Plato moral and political problems. The defect o f mimetic art is political or moral, not ontological or phenomenological. Its danger lies, not m an abstract misrepresentation of the eidetic hierarchy, but m the concrete misrepresentation o f the moral character o f the gods, m a fevorable representation o f unmoral human beings, and m general, m the misuse o f mimesis by which the same man is led to unitate many things, rather than the one thmg he imitates best. (Rosen 9-10). Rosen further makes it clear, along the way, that the ontological or phenomenological dimension o f mimesis 6secondary to the political and moral dnnensions when he points out that Socrates advocates the “noble lie” as a medicinal way of keepmg order among the citizens ofthe perfect state. The philosophers are permitted this indiscretion because they are aware o fwhat they are domg, are not themselves deceived as tot he felse appearances they are manipulating. In feet, even the philosopbers never actualfy accomplish pure knowledge o f the forms, mamly because 193 Socrates (and Plato) never make it entnrefy^ clear what that knowledge would look like. In any case, “fiill knowledge o f the nature o f philosophy is politically unnecessary and (smce [m the Republic] it is suppressed) undesirable” (Rosen 12). So, it cannot be, especialfy when considermg the other nuances ofPlato’s rejection of poets, that mhnesis as such is deeply offensive to Plato. Thus the hnplications ofPlato’s rejection o f mimesis must be understood hi a moral or political framework. But even the framework withers before one final context that states the matter most clearly. Ulthnately, the prmc^le problem Plato has with poetry and mhnetic arts is erotic, as mhnesis m this respect mvolves both deshe and production. The mimetic arts, it seems, provoke too much untempered desfre hi the citizens o f Athens. But mhneis really is not at issue hi this formulation, since Plato’s fear derwes from the problems mherent hi poiesb, hi “makmg.” The prmciple fear is the fear o f narcissism, that where Plato, hi the Republic (and m the Ion) emphasizes the erotic and hitoxicatmg effects o f artistic production, both on the maker and the audience, hK real fear is honicaUy that the maker will elide the difference between hhnself and his product. This seems a crucial portion ofPlato’s anxiety about Protagoras’ maxhn, “Man is the measure of all thmgs.” It would, hi the worst-case scenario accordmg to Plato, produce such extreme mfrror play that only the self would be produced, and that this would felsely stand hi for more than the producer or shnpty encourage others to mdulge themselves hi then own vices. If the problem o f poetry is at base the problem of other minds—and one might also describe the problem o f citation hi the same way—then poetry needs philosophy to help it escape the prison of selfhood. So, hnages as such are not the problem; it is 194 simply misleading, narcissistic images that threaten the Republic. The desired alternative, in Plato’s scheme, are mages that do not merely reflect the producer but, as Stanley Cavell might have put it, situate themselves next to us and hold our being within then own. Plato’s critique of inaage-makmg, Rosen notes, fe ulthnately tied to an argument about what constitutes the good life, especMy as demonstrated hi the Philebus. Poets and philosophers hi their conventional identities are quarreling about the best human life, and so, not about eternity, but rather about the artifects that render eternity accessible. Poetry, like philosophy, when each B taken apart flom the other, runs the risk o f replacmg the whole by the part, or hi other words o f replacmg the origmal with the image. (Rosen 26) So, m the end, there b no actual quarrel between philosophy and poetry, but rather each is necessary to temper the other. Stanley Cavell’s remarks about the opposition between philosophy and poetry are also on point here. In an essay on Whtgenstem, Cavell shows that while Whtgenstem cannot be read as conventional philosophy, his work pushes the bounds of philosophy to approach literature, even as his work b nonetheless not poetry. The “rigor” o f “selMescriptions” m Wittgenstem’s text meant as evidently philosophical; but it is a rigor that—puzzlmg as this may at first sound—essentially and explicitly dam s somethmg like beauty for certain of its characteristic passages” {Reader 373). Cavell argues that Wittgenstem’s wrftihg certamly has the effect of “challenging any gwen distmction between supposed genres o f philosophy and literature” {Reader 373). Still, “it does not foQovr that the distmction between philosophy and literature is thereby meant to be levelled.. . . ” Instead, “the genres occur smultaneously and 195 perhaps work to deepen then differences, even to brmg them to a crisis.” So, Wittgenstem’s writing (and I would mclude Bemstem’s writing in this formulation) may just as easily rehabilitate the distinction on different grounds. If m Wittgenstein’s philosophical mquny mto language, the Austrian philosopher notices how poetic philosophy can be, then in Bemstem’s poetic mquky mto language, the poet flhts with, philosophy. Cavell further manages to state the ksues with Bernstein’s interest m the soph^ bsue clearly, and Cavell’s remarks also explain the basic issue with citation. The problem with the sophist necessarily mvolves the basic question of haudulence. Accordmg to Cavell, Wittgensetem’s philosophic project seems to open itself up to what would seem not to be a philosophical ways o f investigatmg. “Wittgenstein’s origmality [is] to have intem al^d the issue o f philosophy’s enmity toward a kmd o f charlantry (a test o f its seriousness) by concludmg forced or focated or otherwise inauthentic responses to philosophical perplexfty as an essential part o f the mvestigation o f those perplexities” (373). In Cavell’s understandmg, this same problem o f fraudulence occurs m the author for the fost thne and with particular msistence m modemÈm. Assessmg Bernstein This conclusion might disconcert the Bemstem who stresses so relentless^ the non-mstrumental qualities o f language as central to the poetic enterprise spec@ca% and all expression m general. Certamly; Bemstem would hardly object to the possibili^ that 196 his own severe commitment to the material nature o f art ends up producing ideas. This is indeed what he aimmg for; the trouble would occur where this commitment ironically (or paradoxically) leads to dematerializmg the medium. Jon Erickson has noticed th6 trend m postmodern art that turns aside &om the principle o f “expressive labor” common to modernist art m fevor o f a very d ir e n t alternative, which had its origins in Ouchamps’s ready-mades: “conceptual mvestment” (7). The appropriative, specifically chational nature of Bernstein’s work would align hmi witli Duchamps. This is the same mood m which Bemstem’s stress on the material qualities of language may be taken. So, a kind o f negative idealism slips in through the back door of Bemstem’s project, one might well argue, hi this sense, Bemstem would be seen as simply an inverted form of Plato, one who wishes so much to counter Plato’s idealism that he ends by creatmg a difierent species of the same idealism. Plato might then (correctly) see Bemstem’s hnages as sunulacral and misleadmg. ThK argument makes a good deal o f sense but it does not account very well for the refoiements in Bemstem’s work m recent years, not to mention other more salutary moods, like those found m “Artifice o f Absorption” and “DysrapbÈm.” To account for such refoiements, we will note that Bemstem has recofled a bit fi’om the inordinate emphasis he has placed on the material aspects o f language. Bemstem has tempered his approach to knguage by embracmg the mstrumental, more signifymg element o f writmg and poetry, and thK may be why his essaj^ are often considered to be more important writings than his ostensible poems. 197 Ifni Bemsteih^s apparent need to let the principles o f difiference, materiality and chance rule his poetry, he runs the risk o f presummg that he actualty retains access to such prmciples absolutely and that this engenders a kmd o f negative idealism despite his best efforts. The antidote to th6 paradox, it seems, would be to follow the advice o f a Stanley Rosen and, oddly, a Plato, both o f whom tend to stress the dualistic nature of expression and representation, for m Rosen’s terms, “dualûm k the king o f ail men” (26). Tempermg a commitment to makmg extensive use o f the material features o f language m writmg poetry, would be to acknowledge the ways m which identity is nevertheless created, despite that difference precedes it. Bemstem has managed to do this in two o f his recent publications Afy Way (1999) and Close Listening (1999). In the latter, an anthology of essays that Bemstem edits on the auditory element o f contemporary poetry, Bemstem makes an apparently uncharacteristic move by embracmg what he terms as “iconicity.” Iconici^ refers to associations with tünbre or mtonation or pattemmg. Iconic!^ refers to the abOi^ of language to present^ rather than represent or designate, its meanmg. Here meaning is not something that acconq}anies the word but is to foreground the various iconic features o f language—to perform the verbalness o f language. The poetry readmg, as much as the page, is the site for such performance. (Close Listening 17) Ironically, Bemstem has come to the same conclusion about poetry and mhnesis that Rosen’s Plato does, that the quarrel between poetry and philosophy is uhnnatety a question o fwhich representations and images succeed, not an issue of whether truth lay outside o f hnage makmg. This position seems to brmg Bernstein’s poetic to a kmd o f 198 fruition, where the writer no longer seeks the mverted form of purity based ou the materiality o f language. Or, th s positioa is moderated with an acknowledgment o f its mevitable contamination witli abstraction As we have seen, Bemstem’s understanding o f a citational poetics necessarily mvolves a strong commitment to the non-mstrumental side o f language. This is a brilliant first move, smce it helps to enhance the traditional understandmg of citation by noting the formalistic elements o f citation, forms that Compagnon has noticed as welL It becomes necessary, however, for one to acknowledge the conceptual and traditional element o f citation, that citations do illustrate. They do so despite however much the standard understandmg o fcitation may be demystified to show the mevitable gap between cited text and proper text, not to mention all o f the language and representational play that occurs when one attempts to let one expression stand m for or support another. Such is m the mevitable hybridity and the essentkl dichotomy o f citation. 199 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION If there is one lesson hi the foregonig critical narrative, it is that, for poetry to make productive use o f citation, the use made of citation must be faithful to the essence of citation. Such a proposition simple enough, except that citation’s nature is profoundly hybrid and at war with itself^ as it both illustrates and displaces the citing text. As Leonard Diepeveen has presented it, Eliot, Pound and others found the mtrusion o f the words and texts o f others to be a refreshing way o f communicating and intensifying poetic themes. Pound’s Cantos, however, more than any other modernist text, has pohited the way to the citational poets of the present who wish to make use of mherited language for different ends, ends that accommodate to a greater and greater extent, the capacity o f citations to displace the surroundmg text. At the same time, however, a certam risk follows on the heels o f such a way of using citation, just as it follows oa the heels o f any citational poetics. The r6k \s that displacement and citational rupture become ends m themselves. If thK risk is realized, the consequence is that the motive ofusmg citation m poetry m order to render the text more concrete oddly turns back upon itself and produces a writmg that is highly abstract. Although Eliot and Pound did not have to foce such a risk head on, the 200 danger o f undiscçlined dîspersaf o f merely reflecting the anmiistic life of language itselfwithout any hmt o f a consciousness organi^g the language, is the postmodern heritage o f Ashbety and Bernstein. Signiflcantfy, both Ashbery and Bemstem run this risk m different ways and m doing so both of them imagme an mterdisciplmarity foretold by citation’s hybrid nature. Once citation becomes important, even necessary, as a prosodic device, the poet makmg use of the citation becomes aware of citation’s double nature, makmg it hnpossible for a poet to stay within the bounds o f what traditionally passes for poetry. Thus, both Ashbery and Bemstem have latched on to another disciplme as a symptom o f them extreme citatfonality. In an age when poetry is mevitably corrupted by the multiferious discourses surroundmg it—from fresh advertising copy to worn-out proverbial expressions—writers like Ashbery and Bemstem somehow requme a sfeter disciplme to tell the divided tale o f citation. But both Ashbery and Bemstem are nevertheless from separate generations, however much they are both contemporaries and united by citational preoccupations and moods such as these. As Maqorie Perloff has put it m one essay, there have been generally two phases of postmodernism.^ On the one hand, was the early utopian phase o f postmodernism m the 1970s, which found its voice among post-minimalist artists who were managmg the contammatfon o f art with other elements. Conceptual art and performance art were two examples o f such utopkm postmodernism. On the other hand, was (fo?) the postmodern phase that Imked itself with continental See generally Maqorie Perlofi^ “Postmodemisni/Fih de siecle: The Prospects for Openness na a DecadeofCIosure^^C/TftcBjft 35.2 (1993): 161-92. Reprinted in. Home Pag& llJune200I. In this scheme, Ashbery, preoccupied by the visual arts to a great extent, and likewise making hhnself more mto an mterdisciplmary writer than a poet, belongs to the utopian phase o f postmodernism. Bemstem, a Language poet hhnself and probably the most famous member o f this “group,” belongs to postmodernism’s second phase, which found contmental philosophy to be extremely important, particularly those writings from both the left-MarxKt tradition (Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser) and those from the French post-structuralism (Derrida, BeaudrOlard, Deleuze and Guattari). The distinct mterests of Ashbery and Bemstem would probably appear odd to each other. Ashbery’s tenqierament would likely distrust philosophy as “the costly stuff of explanation,” and Bemstem would likely see Ashbery’s commitments as both unmtellectual and apolhicaL^ To be sure, surrealism mterests both Ashbery and Bemstem, but even within this context can one see stark dif^rences between the two writers, differences that also have much to say about each writer’s respective citatfonality. Surrealism is an ’ See generally George Hartley, Textual Politics and the Language Poets (Bloommgtonr U of Indiana P, 1989). ^ Bemstein^s only publûhed remarks on Ashbery are included in the colloquy “Characterization” (with Tom Mandel, Ron SilUman, Michael Palmer, Barrett Watten, Bob Perelman, Larry Eigner, Carla Bbrryman, Robert Grenier, Stephen Rode&r, Lyn Hejmian, and Susan Bee) reprinted in Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (ixts Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1986) 433-35. Not surprismgly, Bemstem deems Ashbery^s Ihe Tènnis Court Oath as Ashbery’s “best book” (433), a remark that k part of a larger, and partially correct, challenge to the widespread critical acclaim Ashbery received in the seventies. Bemstem argued that Ashbery’s more challengrng wmk was ignored by critics who celebrated Ashbery’s “tamer” writmg of the seventies. But more challenging does not necessarily mean better. 202 attractwe art movement for both, because it shows the prmciples o f assemblage. But surrealism is a problem for both because o f its psychologism and its preoccupation with the unconscious. The is problem was to be greater for Bemstem than it was for Ashbery, however, and the ways m which each writer responds to this dimension o f surrealism foretells how it is that each makes use of citation. Ashbery mvested more time and effort than did Bemstem to understand the nature of surrealism. Where Bemstem simply rejected the essentialrzmg aspects o f surrealism—those that posited the unconscious as a special repository o f truth—Ashbery found greater complexity in the issue. Ashbery’s ultimate conclusion about surrealism both noted and accepted the mevitable cormption of surrealism, its mergmg o f opposites—of high and low, for instance, or o f abstraction and figuration. And Ashbery’s acceptance o f the cormption of surrealism conditions m a profound way Ms citatfonality that tends to respect and make use of for aesthetic purposes, both capacities o fcitation, that to illustrate and that to d%lace. Bemstem, however, onty seems mtermittently capable o f acknowledgmg such cormption, wishmg mstead to acMeve some sort of citational purity m wMch the non- instrumental power o f citation, that is, citation’s capachy to displace the surroimdmg text, overwhelms absolutely the capacity o f citation to illustrate. It seems generally tme that in Language poetry such extremities have found them advocates, and it is for this reason that the Ihnhs o f citational poetics have already been forged. Employing the Kant of the Critique ofludgment to discuss the art o f modernism and postmodernism, Stephen Melville offers a useful paradigm for understandmg this 203 citational dynamic. Bemstem, developing as a writer durmg the 1980s, has exemplified the postmodern concern with blockmg the reader^s access to the writmg. In Kantian terms, this experience o f readmg mvolves an experience o f the sublhne, in part a painfid experience that rather underscores the mability of human bemgs to comprehend the overwhelmh^ nature o f language itself (Kw/on 14). In contrast, Ashbery is more to be associated with Kant’s experience o f the beautifid, a more pleasurable experience in which the reader or viewer, by vntue of encountermg the art work, feels a sense o f attunement with the world and other human beings {Vision 13). In the end, two thmgs seem certam. One is that long gone are the days when the msertion o f a quotation m a poem was a revolutionary act as to poetry or aesthetics. Now, quotations are Just one citational device fer poets who have noticed the mcreasihgty citational nature ofall utterance. Another point of certainty is that Ashbery, and particularly Bemstem, mark the outer Ihnit of citational poetics, one in which writers explore, as much as possible, the capaci^ o f citations to displace the citmg text, as such châtions are equated with the non-mstrumentality o f language. 204 BmUOGRAPHY Allen, Donald M., ed. The New American Poetry, New York: Grove Press, I960. Aitieri, Charles. 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