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DISTANCING ENGLISH D ISTANCING ENGLISH A Chapter in the History of the Inexpressible PAG E RIC H A R DS T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S | CO L U MB U S Copyright © 2009 by The Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Richards, Page. Distancing English : a chapter in the history of the inexpressible / Page Richards. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-0741-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-0741-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. English language—United States—History. 2. American literature—Foreign influ- ences. 3. Literature and society—United States—History. I. Title. PE2809.R53 2009 427'.973—dc22 2008039125 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-0741-3) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9187-0) Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Type set in Adobe Granjon Text design by Juliet Williams Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 C ONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 A Tale of Two Languages and Whitman’s Preface 9 CHAPTER 2 The Inexpressible 32 CHAPTER 3 Framing 49 CHAPTER 4 Translating English into English and “Damned Serious Humour” 72 CHAPTER 5 The Inexpressible and the Thing Itself 103 Notes 121 Selected Bibliography 153 Index 169 A CKNOWLEDGMENTS A book on the inexpressible is the work of many. To think and talk with scholars, teachers, students, friends and family for years on something both quiet and vivid has been a gift for me, a privilege, and a way of life. I thank my parents especially. My father gave wonder, his precision, and tireless care. He inhabits every sentence of Distancing English. My mother’s open- ness, principles, and insights are close and present everywhere. In these years I have traveled distances and in place with my kind husband. My sister has kept her home open to us all, as has her family, Steve and Bon- nie. Alice L. Wolper, Michaele Whelan, Christine Gross-Loh, Rita Mall, Giah Rosenthal, Suhlle Ahn, and my parents-in-law have stayed with me through the course. I am in spirit and days indebted to them. I am grateful for the generous support and assistance that I have received in many ways. I hope this work may in some measure live up to the company of those who have made it possible. I owe special appreciation and debt for this book to Barbara Johnson, Helen Vendler, and Rosanna Warren. I thank the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for early support, and in particular Robert F. Goheen of the Andrew W. vii viii A CKN O WL ED GM E NTS Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, who encouraged and supported early phases of research. Grants and fellowships from Harvard University and The University of Hong Kong made research and travel to libraries possible at crucial points. Scholars and librarians helped locally and over- seas at many institutions, including the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at The University of Pennsylvania; Widener Library and Houghton Library of Harvard University; The University of Hong Kong Libraries; and The Poetry Collection at the University of Buffalo. Work in progress has also appeared earlier: I am thankful to the editors of Wascana Review, The Dalhousie Review, ARIEL: A Review of International English Litera- ture and “After Thirty Falls”: New Essays on John Berryman. My ideas and research on a subject so vast and specific grew only with the spirit and suggestions of those who took time in the midst of enormous demands: Margreta de Grazia, James Engell, David Ferry, Marjorie Garber, Mark Halliday, Anthony Kubiak, David McWhirter, Derek Pearsall, Robert Pinsky, and Derek Walcott. I am fortunate to work with generous and welcoming colleagues in the School of English: Wendy Gan, Otto Heim, Elaine Ho, Christopher Hutton, Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong, and all in the School who have given me support and encouragement in research, teach- ing, and projects. Shirley Geok-lin Lim offered attentive and continuous guidance in research and plans from my first day on campus, and I am sincerely thankful. I also thank the Officers of The University of Hong Kong and the many contributing members of the university for their con- tinuing and strong support of research and scholarship. For years, research assistants and coordinators, locally and overseas, including Sonal Sriv- astava and Mônica Zionede Hall, have given their energy, patience, and expertise to growing proposals and plans, and I am grateful to them. To Marina Ma and Fiona Chung, longstanding companions in research, proj- ects, and poetry, I am each day grateful for continuing conversations and their remarkable visions. I warmly thank Senior Editor Sandy Crooms of The Ohio State University Press for her sustained support, fellowship, and guidance. I also sincerely thank Managing Editor Eugene O’Connor, as well as everyone at the press. I NTRODUCTION This book is a chapter in the history of the inexpressible. My interest in the subject emerged in poetics. As a poetic topos, the inexpressible comes up, for the most part, in the context of forces considered to be at the very edge of representation, such as God, transcendence, suffering, evil. I found myself drawn in its long history to one node in particular: an exaggerated and overstated conundrum in nineteenth-century America, a perceived overlapping English language. Walter Channing is known for his blunt statement in 1815 about a perceived inadequacy in expression and writ- ing: “If then we are now asked, why is this country deficient in literature? I would answer, in the first place, because it possesses the same language with a nation, totally unlike it in almost every relation.”1 In postrevolutionary America, and peaking after the War of 1812, this node of language, bound in its articulation to the people and nation of England, found itself at the edge of its own seat of representation. The perceived impasse of speaking and writing in a language inextricably joined to itself with each utterance was a new chapter in the inexpressible. For me, there was a great deal to learn and ask. How does this perception 1 2 I NTR ODU CTI O N of English overlapping English come about? Who is most concerned with the perceived impasse? How does the rhetoric of the inexpressible intersect the already fervent political and social discourse of the period? How does it intersect the history of rhetoric and the inexpressible? How does it gain footing? Where does it not gain footing? How is it perceived to matter or to resolve itself? I did learn, early, its scope. The rhetoric of the inexpressible in the nine- teenth century regarding a “doubled” language had a long reach in which to take root. Inexpressibility, as I will show, is traditionally founded in a combination of perfection and inadequacy: the human speaker falls forever short of meeting expectations demanded by the perfection of his or her chosen subject, whether God or a saint or inexplicable beauty. The pivot for the rhetoric of the inexpressible, therefore, is not human inadequacy. It is first a determination of the subject of praise or perfection. From discov- ery to settlement, the colonies were concerned, as researchers have shown, with expectations of perfection, whether of a New Golden Age, the trope of Eden, or a City upon a Hill. Of course, expectations of explorers and emigrants fell short. Where imperfection or inadequacy of land or natural commodities was detected, hyperbole of self-persuasion, poetic encomium, not to mention propaganda of investors, were at hand. Though the com- bined currents of expectations and disappointment competed, the rhetoric of promotion, as David Cressy explains, by far outweighed, and frequently suppressed, the “negative impressions.”2 Spreading the word of perfec- tion by commercial entrepreneurs practically snowballed. “According to the favoured interpretation, New England promised wholesome air and brimming larders for the settlers, and enormous profits for the merchants and investors,” Cressy writes. “Doubts about the barrenness of the soil or the harshness of the winters were overshadowed by the general confidence and enthusiasm” (9). The degree to which this practically formed the earli- est tall tales of inexpressible and miraculous occurrences can be heard in the occasional rebuttals. Mixed in with Chistopher Levett’s observations of bounty in 1624, as Cressy points to, are these concerns: “Upon these Ilands, I neither could see one good timber tree, nor so much good ground as to make a garden,”3 he begins. He later adds, And to say something of the Countrey: I will not doe therein as some have done, to my knowledge speake more then is true: I will not tell you that you may smell the corne fields before you see the Land . nor will the Deare come when they are called . nor the fish leape into the kettle, nor on the drie land, neither are they so plentifull, that you may dipp them up in baskets. But certainly their is fowle, Deare, and Fish enough for the I NTR ODU CTI O N 3 taking if men be diligent, there be also Vines, Plume trees, Cherey trees, Strawberies, Goosberies, and Raspes, Walnutts, chestnut, and small nuts, of each great plenty. (22) The propensity for hyperbole of discovery, as well as the fertile land with which to ground and commercialize it, offered rich soil for inex- pressibility in a continuing discourse of high expectation (along with its undercurrent of apology).