Poetry and Ritual

POETRY AND RITUAL By J. M. LEIGHTON B.A. (RAND), D. LITT ET PHIL. (UNISA), T.H.E.D. Inaugural lecture delivered on 4 March, 1970 on appointment to the Chair in the Department of English at the Rand Afrikaans University Publication series of the Rand Afrikaans University A 28 JOHANNESBURG 1970 The Publications of the Rand Afrikaans University are published in the following series: A: INAUGURAL ADDRESSES AND LECTURES, B: RESEARCH BY LECTURERS AND STUDENTS. Mr Rector and Vice-Chancellor . .. Ladies and gentlemen members of the Council . .. Ladies and gentlemen colleagues . The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily Ladies and gentlemen students . those of the University Ladies and gentlemen who honour this occasion with your presence, I see it as my duty, in the Department of English at this university, not only to teach the English language, but also to try and indicate something of the culture that is, so to speak, built into both language and literature. A language is not only a medium of referential communication, but also a medium of cultural communication. In order to reveal this culture to my students, I use the technique of literary criticism of texts selected from the three major genres of poetry, drama, and the novel. I hope that by this means they will discover that although ideas and responses might vary from national group to national group, all humanity forms a whole greater than anyone of its parts; that although emphases might differ the same basic range of emotions, ideas, and moral values are common to all mankind; that no nation has a monopoly of truth and virtue, and in any nation will be found those whose unnecessary, false, hard-headed © RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY, 1970 prejudices prevent a free interplay of serious minds. - 73961 - In order to accomplish this aim, it is necessary to try and define, with precision, the fundamental features of the literary 3 writer, it is surely the duty of the reader to adjust his response discipline. Indeed, one might say that definition is one of the to that required by the particular form. essential disciplines of the academic process. Not that know The distinction I propose between prose and poetry, then, ledge changes, though it does that too, but each age brings into is not a distinction of technique or outer form, but an inherent, relationship new combinations of thought and feeling that need or aesthetic, distinction. The proposition I must defend is that to be described. It is my aim tonight to try and describe one great poetry is essentially the communication of experience in of the essential features of literary art - the place of ritual in which religious ritual is used to enhance symbolism, or interpret poetry. I hope also to show incidentally that ritual in poetry the significance of rites, whereas prose is the medium of commu is one of the remaining features that makes poetry uniquely nication of those matters that concern man in a terrestrial, non different from prose. religious, social context. Prose is the language of everyday In their standard work on the theory of literature, Wellek communication, of discourse and discussion, of reference and and Warren state that 'most modern literary theory would be controversy; poetry is the language of man in search of his inclined to scrap the prose-poetry distinction, and then to divide relationship not only with society, but also with the unknown, imaginative literature (Dichtung) into fiction (novel, short story, or imperfectly known, God; the language of vision and of ecstasy. epic), drama (whether in prose or verse), and poetry (centring It is on ritual in poetic expression that I shall now concentrate. on what corresponds to the ancient "lyric poetry").'l) That it * * * might or might not be advisable to scrap the distinction between Before I attempt a demonstration of this view of poetry, prose and poetry is, unfortunately, a matter that the two authors several questions, interrelated questions, must be answered. decline to discuss. Moreover, the fact that no comment is forth Most important, what is ritual; and then, how far are vision coming suggests at least a tacit acceptance that modern literary and ecstacy an essential ingredient of ritual; what is the signifi theory is justified, and it is precisely this tacit acceptance that cance of Christianity; and finally, in what way is the use of requires questioning. ritual an inherent element in the inner form of a poem - i.e. With the development of numerous variations of literary how does it influence poetic structure? styles, the older distinctions between prose and poetry have First then a definition of ritual - and this is given in the become increasingly unacceptable. The well-known controversy full knowledge that definitions please only the makers of the between Coleridge and Wordsworth in this respect was based definitions. Nevertheless it must be done, if only because those on structural or technical differences that were already clouded who remain in their shells are apt to see less than those who at the end of the eighteenth century. So many prose writers, endanger their necks by sticking them out: for example, deliberately use semi-regular rhythms for rhetorical Religious ritual is a prescribed ceremony, in which some effect, and so many poets reject all but the loosest rhythmic belief of central importance to man's consciousness of the structures, that distinction solely on these grounds is clearly relationship existing between himself and God is dramatically impossible. Metaphor, image, symbol, inversion, satire, irony, symbolized, with a view to establishing or confirming belief comedy, tragedy - name what technique or form you will, it by repetition. will be found to be common to both kinds of writing. Hence, in discussing Sir James Frazer's interpretation of the Yet there is a distinction, else why should one medium be golden bough episode in Virgil's Aeneid, Maud Bodkin says: be deliberately chosen for a particular purpose, and not another? . the blossoming branch offered to the dead as part of The distinction, I firmly believe, must be made, for the integration the ritual of interment, brings in symbol the power that of structure and content in a particular form is such that it re-awakens forest and garden, to keep watch beside the 2 requires a particular kind of reading and a particular kind of corpse or accompany the freed spirit. ) response. If the choice is deliberate, there must be a reader's And Jessie Weston, considering the same episode, further com response in view. And if a particular response is aimed at by a 2) Maud Bodkin. ArchetypalPatterns in Poetry, Vintage Books, New York, 1) Rene Wellek and Austin Warren. Theory ofLiterature, Peregrine Y 28, 1958, p. 126. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1966, p. 227. 5 4 ~~------._- ---- ments on the religious significance, in saying: As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out But in view of the use made of these (nature) cults as the In a wall'd prison packs and sects of great ones medium of imparting high spiritual teaching, a use which ... 5 That ebb and flow by the moon. ) can no longer be ignored or evaded, are we not ... justified precis~ly in asking if the true importance of the rites has as yet been The ecstatic happiness revealed in this poetic speech is recognized. 3 ) the result of the 'Dionysian union with a larger whole' of which Maud Bodkin speaks. A dramatic version of the ritual of co~ Now clearly is it impossible for mankind to know God perfectly. trition, forgiveness, and reconciliation has bee!! ce!e?rated m This understanding, first-hand understanding that is, can only Lear's earlier meeting with his daughter, and hiS spmt has ac come through vision, or, to use the terms of my definition, cordingly been freed from the dema~ds of court l?omp, and 'consciousness of the cosmic relationship existing between (man) self-indulgence, so that he can now take upon (himself) the and God'. Maud Bodkin, with her psychological interest, mystery of things', and he and Cordelia can look back on the would say that such vision is an archetype of human experience, world of ambition and petty climbing that constitutes 'court and when it forces its way into the conscious mind it leads to news', as though they 'were God's spies'. ecstacy. His freedom moreover, is not only freedom from emotional Such ecstacy has a number of different effects: in the first and intellectual involvement in the petty affairs of terrestrial place, by means of the visionary awareness of a cosmic relation life but also freedom from the confines of the temporal and ship, the visionist is drawn away from the demands of the personal sp;tial. Time and space have no meaning in an infinite and will, and is able to see life and its patterns with something like eternal world, so that, despite their 'wall'd prison', they will objectivity. No longer are the private aspirations, desires, hopes outlast 'packs end sects of great ones/That ebb aI?-d flow. by of the individual of paramount importance, but he can, like the moon'. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to see m the tidal Troilus in his seventh sphere, look down on the toil and sweat 'ebb and flow' of human affairs a subjection to physical forces of life, and laugh with the laughter of the gods. 'This felt release,' from which Lear at least, has been released, and this release says Maud Bodkin, 'and Dionysian union with a larger whole, has excited both 'ecstacy and the serene clarity of Appollonian would seem to constitute that element of religious mystery _ vision and meaning.

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