WRITING IN SCALE
HUIDOBRO'S ALTAZOR AND BECKETT'S IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE
By
MARGARET LEES McTAGUE
B.A., The University of Toronto, 1976
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
i n
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES'
We accept this thesis as conforming to t he X)eQ4 ired jfty&ndard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA June 1985 (c) Margaret Lees McTague, 1985 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. ^-M"a rgaret Lees McT a^Ii/e^ Department of Program In Comparative Literat u r e The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 Date June 3rd, ) 985 ABSTRACT In this thesis Vicente Huidobro's French "Fragment d'Altazor" (1930) and Spanish Altazor (1931) are compared with Samuel Beckett's English Imagination Dead Imagine (19B5) and French "Imagination morte imaginez" (1967) in terms of the concepts of musical and architectural scale which are common to all of these texts. While the Huidobro works maintain a primarily musical notion of scale, the Beckett texts employ a chiefly architectural one. In Huidobro, the vestigial presence of the diatonic scale in the seven Canto divisions of Altazor together with the chromatic structuring of Canto IV with its dodecaphonic repetition of "No hay tiempo que perder," foreshadow the fully realized tonic scale of the nightingale passage's (IV 193-9) emblematic acrosticism. In Beckett, scale involves measurement with respect to a radix or basic, conventional unit and is used in the precise description of the rotunda, the two figures within, and the flux of light and heat. The Beckettian scale is undercut, however, by the replacement of radices with retrograde and inverted variants. A semiotic approach has been used in the discussion of these texts since it not only foregrounds the importance of pattern as meaningful in itself, but also allows for comparison of two works according to the functioning of their meaning-systems, while permitting analysis at the local, medial, and global levels of the texts. However, in contrast to the theory of a 'semiotician like Michael Riffaterre, the view taken in — i i i — this- thesis is that form is an extension of content. Thus the figure/ ground relationship is discussed both in terms of the scales studied and of its value as a theoretical device. Imagination Dead Imaoine/"Imaoination morte imaginez" subverts rational cross-reference by injecting multiple instabilities into the figure/ground relation. By creating a figure, the rotunda, against the backdrop of "anywhere" ("ailleurs") and then removing the figure, the Beckett text effects a realization of "Nulle part." Huidobro's texts, in contrast, employ alternation (e.g., in the tonic-chromatic-tonic scales) to arrive at a non-referential purity of language ("La pura palabra y nada mcis" --III 145). As different as these two texts are in terms of, for instance, genre, length, and diegetical features, they are similar in their refusal, commonly articulated in their use of the multidimensional patterns of scale, to delimit any one particular meaning. -iv- TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ii List of Tables ^. • v Acknowledgement vi 1. A Question of Scale 1 2. Local Scale: Altazor 15 3. Polyvalence in Scale: Imagination Dead Imaaine 41 4. Medial and Global Scales; Al tazor S6 5. Scales in Balance 97 List of Works' Cited 102 -v- LIST OF TABLES I Cross-linguistic Comparison of Scalar "Nightingale" Variants in Aitazor 17 II Rhyme Scheme v. Line Lengths of "Rosiftol" Passage of Al tazor 34 III Contrepeter ie in Al tazor 71 IU Two Types of Word-Pairs in the "Golondrina" Section of Aitazor 72 V Pattern/Non-pattern Lines in the "Golondrina" Section of Aitazor 80 VI Cross-linguistic Comparison of Compound Variants on v "Golondrina" 84 VII Endings of Compound Variants on "Golondrina" 8S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgement is due to Professor Patrick O'Neill, Chair of thi thesis committee, for his patient, kind assistance and helpful suggestions as well as to the other two committee members, Professors Peter Quartermain and Maria Tomsich. Bvchku i koren'ku ... tect my tileries (0 tribes! 0 gentes!), keep my keep, the peace of my four great ways -1- 1: A QUESTION OF SCALE There are many ways in which the thine I am trying in vain to say may be tried in vain to be said. —Beckett, "Dante... Uico. Bruno.. Joyce." La pura palabra y nada mas. —Huidobro, Altazor "Radix," according to the 0.E.D.. is a mathematical term which refers to a basic module or "number or quantity... which is made the basis of a scale of numeration." Repeated, these units or radices comprise a pattern known as a "scale." Among the many meanings of this last term, two figure prominently in our common understanding of the notion. The first relates to measurement by comparison (as in, for example, the scales of justice) by which a quality is quantitatively determined by its relation to the radix (or a compound of the same) which forms the prime unit of measurement (or, put another way, enumeration) for that quality. Thus we have length determined with reference to meters (or inches, feet, and miles), weight according to grams, and so forth. The second common meaning of scale involves more than the simple repetition of units in that it takes into account a -2- sense of harmony and is expressed in terms of repeating intervallic patterns. This is the "sense of scale" referred to by critics of sculpture and architecture, and it may also refer to the diatonic and chromatic scales of musicology. A common feature of the two works which are examined in this thesis (each in its two versions and languages) is their use of scalar codes of semiosis. Both Vicente Huidobro's French "Fragment d'Altazor" (1930) and the later, lengthy Spanish Altazor (1931 HI (Footnote numbers so designated)} use the patterns of musical scale to create a sustained but, ultimately, illusory effect of determined meaning in each work. Samuel Beckett's English Imaainat ion Dead Imaoine (19G5 ) and French "..Imagination morte imaginez" (19B?) employ standards of measurement, including the diachronic, to create an effect of indeterminacy. Designating different radices within each work (but common, generally speaking, to both versions), the systems of the Huidobro and Beckett texts effect repetition of their scalar elements to quite distinct and separate ends.-C2> The sense of musical scale employed in Aitazor is of the type defined by Slonimsky in his Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns: The term scale... means a progression, either diatonic or chromatic, that proceeds uniformly in one direction, ascending or descending, un• til the terminal point is reached. (i) Complete and systematic in a way that a melodic pattern is not,<3> the -3- scales of Altazor are diatonic and ascending. The pattern of the scale is replicated throughout the Spanish version of Huidobro's work and the three levels on which it occurs most obviously are analyzed here.<4> The first level is composed of the actual sol-fa designations (occurring in two variations) which are incorporated in an acrostic encountered at the approximate centre (i.e., about the middle of the fourth of seven Cantos). Secondly, "Canto IV" is raised upon the armature of twelve repetitions of a single line, corresponding to the twelve tones which structure the chromatic scale. Thirdly, when the poem is viewed globally the seven Cantos can be seen as a rendition of the tonic scale ascending to its penultimate note; the poem ends, then, on the threshold not only of the scale's resolution but also on the brink of the initiation of the next cycle of the pattern.<5> A notable feature of this last canto, its basis in sound patterns which do not rely on the unit "word", should be introduced here. The vocalics which are interpolated in, for instance, Canto IV ("Aia ai ai aaia i i" —33S), become the sustained mode of the seventh canto: Ai aia aia ia ia ia aia ui Tralali Lali lala Aruaru urulario (11-6) -4- and the poem ends in the sonant (vowel) mode. Lalalf io ia i i io Aiaiaiaiiiioia (I 63-B ) The local (i.e., first) level, which is termed the "nightingale section" of the work, is the subject of Chapter 2. Chapter 3, in order to establish the contrasting Beckettian use of architectural scale, deals with Imagination Dead Imaoine. The more global replications of the patterns of musical scale are considered in the return to our study of Altazor in Chapter 4. Measurement of size, temperature, and duration in Imagination Dead Imagine (on which Chapter 3 is focussed) roughly follows the principles of architectural scale. These are briefly set out in the entry on "scale" in "Everyman's" Concise Encyclopaedia of Architecture: (from Lat. and Ital. scala. a ladder). (1) In architectural drawing, a graduated instrument. Hence (2) the representation in a plan or model, by means of using such an instrument, of some building in its proper proportions but in a •convenient smaller size.... (3) In architectural design, 'scale' means the visually satisfactory relation of the various parts of a building to the whole, to each other, to the surroundings, -5- and to the human figure... (292) In A Dictionary of Architecture and Building the entry on "scale" offers an elaboration on the third variant meaning of the term: In architectural design, the proportions of a building or its parts, with reference to a definite Module or unit of measurement. (412) What becomes evident upon consideration of these as well as the musicological definitions of scale is that there is in the usage of the term a conflation of 'figure' and 'ground.' In the design arts, 'figure' is traditionally understood positively as the aspect of graphic representation on which the focus rests and 'ground' negatively as that which is not figure. In the example of a cameo brooch, for instance, the silhouetted head would be considered 'figure' (or focus of representation) in bas-relief, while the unraised monochrome remainder would constitute the 'ground.' The notion of scale, taken in its widest terms, can attend to both at once and is thus "recursive" in the sense in which Douglas R. Hofstadter uses the term in Godel. Escher. Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: A cursivelv drawable figure is one whose ground is merely an accidental by-product of the drawing act. A recursive figure is one whose ground can be seen as a figure in its own right.... The "re" in "recursive" represents the fact that both fore• ground and background are cursively drawable -- -6- the figure is "twice-cursive." (E7, Hofstadter's emphasis) Mapped onto music, this distinction translates into that of note versus interval or sonant versus rest. Applied to architecture, the notion of the interplay of positive and negative spaces conveys the figure-ground relat ion. In the multiple, internal/external inspections of the rotunda figure in Imagination Dead Imagine as well as in the triple reformu• lation of the figure per se. relativity is made apparent through description, repeated with variations on the parameters of size, temperature, and duration. By the use of modulated enumerations of scaled qualities, then, recursivity is achieved. The effect of this is to undermine the sense that measurement is absolute, to challenge the view that the standard against which the comparison is made is immutable, and to force recognition of the fact that the standard exists only as a matter of convention. In so far as it concentrates, for the most part, on the figure (sonant notes) of the tonic scale, Aitazor affirms traditional notions of order. However, the final Canto — an agglomeration of sonants (that is, vowels only) — draws attention to the turning of the cycle. Repeated intervallic patterns, whether linguistic, mathematical, or musical, are characterized by the identity of the first and last terms. Hence to end the work at the seventh Canto on an analogue of the penultimate note ( " t_i_" in English, "si" in Spanish and French) is to -7- act against the strong tendency toward repetition of the established intervallic pattern which, building from the first "do," is at its height at the seventh note; it is to refuse either to resolve or initiate again a pattern which the poem affirms as endlessly rei terat ive. The scalar pattern in Altazor. whether considered at the level of syllable or word, individual canto (Canto IV) or poem as a whole, implies infinite sequentiality. The implicitly repeated gyration is determined according to the principles of the scales whose motive force resides in the turning and overlap (in "do") of each cycle. In Imagination Dead Imagine, on the other hand, the undermining and eventual dissolution of the conventional units which determine each scale leads, by a process of elimination of scale per se. to arrival at an empty set specified as "nulle" (51).<7> The^Beckettian void, as delineated in the work we consider here, is the non-ness at the centre of the system of determinacy (in which all qualities are quantified) achieved through the primacy of indeterminacy (since no absolute standard of comparison remains constant). In Imagination Dead Imagine the indeterminate becomes the rule or figure against the ground of the determined. The vantage-point from which scales, whether musical or architec• tural, may be studied are many. Parallel features of local patterns may be compared, the medial level of combined local patterns, and the global effect of the hierarchy of scale (as in nltazor ) may be compared -8- using the local level as a kind of radix for the study of the other two. Similarly, in architecture, the relation between a detail (for instance, the entrance to a building) is often analyzed in terms of a medial register (say, for instance, the facade of the building) and also in terms of a more global consideration (in our example, for instance, the placement of the building in the context of a plaza, square, or neighbourhood). There is a semiotic parallel to the aspect of "scaled" analysis, one which constitutes a major conceptual and metho- dological concern of this thesis and which I have termed the metonymies of semiotic analysis.<8> The position that the semiotic analysis of a fragment of a text is a valid critical enterprise is supported by, for example, Roland Posner. This theorist, in his Rational Discourse and Poetic Communication, posits that when a small text occurs as part of a larger text, its grammatical structure appears as a microstruc- ture of the text as a whole, and its communicative function contributes to the communicative function of the complete text. The basic questions of the theory of texts -- how does the communicative func• tion of the partial texts determine the communica• tive function of the text as a whole; and how does the communicative function of the complete text affect the interpretation of its parts?-- can thus only be answered by investigating small texts. (87) -9- It is the interaction of the various planes or levels within and be• tween the micro- and macrostructures of texts which continues to be a focus for this field of endeavour. In his discussion of "The Description of Signification," the semanticist A.-J. Greimas introduces the notion of "semantic microuniverses" (Structural Semantics 143-4) and posits a typology of them (145). Accepting the processual nature of reading, which limits apprehension both in terms of the mechanical requisites of reading (i.e., word by word, line by line, and page by page — in a specified direction) and also in terms of the limits of reception and signification, he founds his notion of microuniverse on that of synchronic percept ion.<9> Greimas distinguishes between two models, the "immanent universe," "which accounts for the manifestation of content" and the "manifested universe," which accounts for "the organization of manifested content" (143). The result is the disruption of the processual linearity of the reading in favour of a "hierarchy of mode Is." Discourse, the linear character of which would let us, at first sight, anticipate an algebraic formu• lation, instead calls up, once it has been described, •a geometrical and pluridimensional visualization. (159 ) Fundamental to semiotics is the premise that all pattern (for example, codes and systems of significations) is, in itself, meaningful. The -10- interpretation of what a particular pattern nay signify at the semantic level within a given sign system is subsidiary to this initial premise. Al tazor and Imagination Dead Imagine may thus, like any other text, be seen as complex patterns or configurations of their constituent elements and sub-patterns. This approach does, however, beg the question of the relation between form and content. In his Semiotics of Poetry. Michael Riffaterre re-asserts a fundamental distinction between the two, maintaining that "what [a poem] means" may be considered in contrast to the "detour or circuitous path... interpreted as an artifact, with visible joints and props... around what it means" (1E4>. His distinction here is between that to which the semiotics of a particular text, in this case a 'poetic text,' refers and the mechanics of referral. Greimas' distinction between micro- and macro-levels of organization indicates, in contrast, that immanence and manifestation (or content and its organization) are two levels, hierarchically arranged, of content. Thus the value of the re-assertion of a form/content distinction by theoreticians such as Riffaterre is bracketed in this thesis. In the visual arts, such thinkers as Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller have inquired into the nature of form as an extension of con• tent. In Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, that the 'medium is the message,' and in the notion guiding the Bauhaus School that 'form follows function,' the possibility of looking at the so-called formal -11- elements of a written text as not only indistinguishable from its content but also indicative of its function is demonstrated. Working, then, from the position that medium and message comprise one indivis• ible whole, this examination of Altazor and Imagination Dead Imagine will attempt to establish some of the connections encountered across these texts. In this thesis, which takes for its common term the notion of scale, some of the concepts, methods, and terminology of semiotic theory are both useful and in harmony with the texts under discussion. Thus the description, systematic examination, and comparison of these two texts is undertaken here in terms of their status as meaning- systems whose functioning is comparable. NOTES <1> Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948), a Chilean writer of poems, prose, and theory, has been credited with and continues to be judged in terms of, for the most part, the advent of "creacionismo." An excellent starting-point for the reader who wishes to learn more about Huidobro's work is Rene de Costa's Vicente Huidobro: The Careers of a Poet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984). The best introduction to Altazor (and the critical treatments of it) is Merlin H. Forster's article, "Vicente Huidobro's Altazor: A Re-evaluation" (Kentucky Romance Quarter1v 17.4 (1970 ):297-307. Forster reviews both those who have panned Huidobro's work (including Arturo Torres Rloseco and Raul Silva Castro), those who have celebrated it (Antonio de Undurraga) and those whose opinions lie between (including Forster himself, Guillermo de Torre, David Bary, and Cedomil Goic). For its part, as Forster points out, Altazor. o viaie en paracaldas has been accorded the singular distinction of being acclaimed as the apogee and the nadir of creationist poetry (by Goic and Bary, respectively). The two bibliographies provided by Nicolas Hey ("Biografla de y sobre Vicente Huidobro" and "Adenda a la bibliografla de y sobre Vicente Huidobro" Revista Iberoamericana 41 (1975) and 45 (1979) are an invaluable tool in Huidobro research. <2> The effect or result of the repetitions involves consideration of the role of the reader. However, since the approach -13- taken here is specifically semiotic and since semiotics (in its focus on the sign system without necessary recourse to reception) is incompatible with analysis of readerly considerations, this aspect has not been made a focus of study for this thesis. Thus, for instance, Michael Riffaterre's work is cited only with respect to its semiotic concentration (as in his Semiotics of Poetry) and no consideration is given to any other theoretical modes he may adopt elsewhere. <3> Slonimsky, "Introduction," Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Pat terns. i: "A melodic pattern ... may be formed by any group of notes that has melodic plausibility. There are scales of 4 notes only.... As to melodic patterns, there is virtually no limit to the number of such tones." <4> The "Fragment d'Altazor," since it parallels only the nightingale/swallow passages of Altazor. is discussed at the first level of analysis of the larger work. <5> See Chapter 4, pp. G0-1 below, for a detailed discussion of the ways in which the medial and macro levels of chromatic and diatonic scale are necessarily connected to the scalar pattern of the micro level, diatonic scale of the "nightingale" passage. See Chapter 2, pp. 15-6 below for an analysis of the overlap of the tonic scales which occur at the level of syllable and word in the "nightingale" passage and the effect of this on the analogy with the Canto structure of Altazor considered as a whole. <7> The definition of the term "empty" or "null set," according -14- to the Mathematics Dictionary (4th ed., James and James, eds.), involves, in a set of real numbers, one which has no elements in it and assigned the number "0." However, since many other sets are also assigned the number "0" (such as the set of any singleton or collection of singletons), a set of measure "0" is not necessarily a "null set." <8> This term is drawn from, for instance, an assertion of Umberto Eco's in his book, ft Theory of Semiotics, in which he maintains that the relation among levels of systems of signification involves "metonvmical transference, being understood as part of a semiotic whole with which it shares some properties" (38, Eco's emphasis). <9> For a fuller discussion of synchrony and the categories to which it belongs, see Structural Semantics. 155-E ("VII.3.b: The implicit and the explicit"). -15- 2: LOCAL SCALE: ALTAZOR "For sleeking beauties I spinned their nightenvei1s, to slumbred beast I tunned the thief air." — Joyce, Finnegans Make One of the most notable features of Altazor. the long poem by the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893 - 1948), is its languaging process, which includes the use of word-games such as acrostics and chiasmic riddle-structures. The latter will be discussed in terms of the medial structuring in which they are most prevalent (see Chapter 4 below). The former are readily accessible in what we will refer to as the "nightingale section" of the poem: Pero el cielo prefiere el rodoftol Su nifto querido el rorreftol Su flor de alegrla el romiflol Su piel de lagrima el rofafiol Su garganta nocturna el rosolPiol El rolaftol El rosifiol (IV 193-9) -IB- Mais le ciel prefere le rodognol Son enfant gate le roregnol Sa fleur de joie le romignol Sa peau de larme le rofagnol 5a gorge de nuit le rossolgnol Le rolagnol Le rossignol (trans i t ion 19-20, 195) But the sky prefers the nighdongale Its favorite son the nighrengale Its flower of joy the nighmingale Its skin of tears the nighfangale Its nocturnal throat the nighsolngale The nighlangale The nightingale (Guss 107-9) For instance, in both the French version, "Fragment D'Altazor" (which appeared in trans i t i on in June, 1930) and the Spanish fragment from Al tazor (published in 1931 by the CompaPila Iberoamer icana de Publicaciones, S.A., in Madrid) as well as in the English translation made by Eliot Weinberger for the 197B bilingual edition of Huidobro's works, The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro (Ed. David M. Guss, 107-9),<1> the second syllable of each of the seven variants on "rosiftol,""rossignol," and "nightingale," when read vertically in the -17- manner of a list, produces a partial musical scale. TABLE I CROSS-LINGUISTIC COMPARISON OF SCALAR "NIGHTINGALE" VARIANTS B French variant Spanish variant English variant ("Fragment") (Altazor ) ("Altazor ( 1919-31>" ) Hui dobro Hu i dobro Weinberger 1 ro do ftol ro do gnol (193 ) nigh do ngale 2 ro rre hoi ro re gnol (194 ) nigh re ngale 3 ro mi flol ro mi gnol (195 ) nigh mi ngale 4 ro fa flol ro fa gnol (19B ) nigh fa ngale 5 ro sol ffol ro ssol gnol (197 ) nigh sol nglae B ro la ftol ro la gnol (198) nigh la ngale 7 ro si ftol ro ssi gnol (199 ) nigh ti ngale a be a be In both the earlier French version (A, above )<2> and the later Spanish one (B) as well as in the relatively recent Weinberger translation (C), the first and third ('a' and 'c') portions of the lists remain constant and thereby form a repetitive ground against which the scale (or 'b') portion, through the agency of what Riffaterre calls "retroactive -18- reading" (5),<3> is perceived. On first reading, termed by Riffaterre the "heuristic reading" (5), the progression as such may not be apparent to the reader. However, in the interest of sense-making and once the question of the significance of the first and third syllables is resolved in terms of the seventh, "rosiffol"/"rossignol"/ "nightingale" variant, the reader may (and, arguably, the skilled reader will) then read the middle terms of the first six previously unrecognized forms of the word as scalar. The scalar elements are foregrounded, then, by the very fact that they remain anomalous within a conventional (left to right, top to bottom) heuristic reading. The tonic pattern, as encountered in the "nightingale passage," is an alphabetic code which functions polyvalently and, to some extent, polyphonically. In the sol-fa syllables the 'tonic' note, do, is the point of origin (and anticipated completion) of the scale. In contrast, the "rosiftol" word variants progress to a culmination in the 'tonic' key-name (equivalent to .do), "rosiffol." These two patterns are systematically parallel (and thus isomorphic) while being musically independent of one another (since, of course, no sonant values are actually assigned the 'tonic' elements in either case).<4> Curiously, the effect of the foregoing on Canto VII (considered, parallelling the word-based scale, as 'tonic' (d_g) or merely, parallelling the syllable- based scale, as penultimate element (s_i) in the diatonic scale) is to reinforce the sense of openness which is thus viewed as an effect of the overlaying of the two diatonic modes. In the case of the -19- arrangement of the cantos, viewed as analogous to the syllabic progression, endless reiteration is produced by the anticipation of completion, in perfect octave mode, in do. The case of the word progression, mapped onto the seventh canto, results in the recognition of the 'tonicity' (in this final Canto, one not couched in words) of the "pure word" of sonants. Reading per se is at issue in the passage referred to in Table I. In the nightingale section the heuristic reading requires that the reader recognize, in at least the final variation if not before, the key to the layering of signs. The passage is palimpsestic, containing an acrostic in which both matrices (i.e., the vertical scales of syllable and word variant progressions and the lines read conventionally --e.g., left to right and top to botton) are related. In this it is not unlike a Coptic emblem: without the vertical matrix the lateral word-signs would remain only partially 'read.' In his essay "Towards an Index Emblematicus," Peter Daly argues for a holistic approach to emblem study, classifying emblematic writing as a division of what he terms "ut pictura poesis literature" because of its "mutually dependent picture and texts" (29). Although in the instance of the nightingale section of Aitazor the mutual dependence is between the sound system (tonic scale) and written text it is a structural analogue to the "complex word-emblem" as this is detailed by Daly in his Literature in the Liaht of the Emblem. An elaboration of a variant of the "extended word-emblem," defined as a passage "in which a series -20- of images passes in swift succession to illustrate a concept" (97), the complex word-emblem is described as "the richly extended emblem, which contains a number of individual motifs related in different ways to the thought or concept at the basis of the poem" (99). The nightingale is a common emblem in traditional emblem books. In her book Enqlish Emblem Books Rosemary Freeman notes its use as a vehicle to convey the attributes of the Virgin in Hawkins's Partheneia Sacra of 1B33 (183-4 and Plate 28). And in "The Emblems of Henry Peacham; Implications for the Index Emblematicus, " Alan Young cites an instance which more closely parallels that of Altazor in so far as it establishes a connection between poet and nightingale. Addressed to Peacham'5 friend, John Dowland, the verse begins; "Heere Philomel, in silence sits alone..." (105). In Altazor. however, the identification of song and bird may be a testimony to the blindness of the singer/poet but certainly not to his silence. As Daly notes ("Towards an Index Emblematicus," 29-30), the two registers of the visible (i.e., the pictorial and the alphabetical) encountered in many emblems are inseparable. Independent study of either element without the other will result in the deformation of the sense of the emblem. In the nightingale passage of the Huidobro poem the same holds true. The two registers (again of the visible), though rendered differently, are also interdependent. Just as in the pictorial aspect of the emblem a narrative element is common, so one of the aspects of the nightingale passage is also narrative and, ultimately, -21- visual since rendered in words. The second element found in the case of the Huidobro passage is the alphabetic, but in this case it is the alphabet of music, the "do, re, mi" of the tonic scale. Solmization, used primarily as an aid to sight-singing and musical notation, is defined in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music as the [slystem of designating notes by the sol-fa syl• lables in any of the various methods used since Guido d'Arezzo in the 11th cent., as in the It. do. re, mi, .fa, etc. and Tonic sol-fa doh. ray, me, £ah, etc. (607X4> The effect of the extended series of minimal or contrastive pairs which progresses by means of the seven variants on "rosifiol" ("rossignol" and "nightingale") is to highlight a solmic progression in the middle syl lables. This vertical progression (generically termed "abecedarian" in the OED), viewed in terms of its "rosifiol" culmination, has the effect of overlaying the nightingale image with a suggestion of (its) song. This suggestion is not made through mimesis, but through the ambivalent (literally 'doubly valent') reading demanded of the reader. The process of establishing this double valency accords with Riffaterre's semiotic paradigm (2-3) such that the "mimetic 'meaning'" of the text (in this example, the solmic bird-song) requires the "formal and semantic unity" of the acrostic (that is, the determination and interpretation of -22- sol-fa ) for the apprehension of meaning by the reader. Double valency, which we encountered in the dual tonic scales of the "nightingale passage," sometimes takes the form of conic substitution in A1tazor. <5> a substitution which results from the connection of what a thing does (e.g... its performance or function) with what it is (e.g., its identity or essence) and in the overlayering of the two. A brief examination of another passage, from Canto V, will also serve to illustrate this point. La cascada que cabe11 era sobre la noche Mientras la noche se cama a descansar Con su luna que almohada al cielo Yo o io el paisaje cansado Que se ruta hacia el horizonte A la sombra de un arbol naufragando (V 497-502, emphases mine) The cascade that lonahairs over the night While the night beds to lie down With its moon that pillows the sky I eye the tired countryside That routes toward heaven At the shade of a stranding tree (Cuss 141, emphases mine) -23- In all but the last line of this passage verbs are replaced by nouns functioning as if they were verbs. This mapping of nouns onto verb functions is enhanced by the identical inflections required of the nominal and verbal forms used. In the case of "cabellera," for instance, the ending in 'a' is indicative of the feminine singular noun -- which it is —and is identical to the ending, required in the conjugation of the non-existent verb it grammatically implies ('cabel lerar': to longhair>,<7> for the third person singular indicative (to agree with "cascada" as subject). As Hugh Kenner says of Provencal poetry performing analogous feats, "intricate patterning within the explicit pattern offertsl a way of holding short poems together without recourse to fulfillment of a metrical contract" (84). The sol-fa progression is not the only example of serialization in Aitazor. Viewed in terms of what are known as 'counting out' rhymes of the sort studied by Iona and Peter Opie (in their book The Lore and Language of School Children), among others, the sol-fa is paralleled by three other, similarly functioning progressions. First, Yo til el nosotros vosotros ellos Ayer hoy maffana (I 219-20) I you he we you they Yesterday today tomorrow Second, -24- Un dos tres cuatro lagrima mi lampara y molusco (VI 9-13) One two three four lament my lamp and mollusk (Guss 149) And finally, Una dos y cuatro muerte Para el ojo y entre mares (VI B7-7) One two and four death For the eye and among seas (Guss 151) In the first example above, the grammatical progression of persons listed in the conjugation of verbs is followed by the three gross divisions in time which, of course, also comprise the three major tense categories. The latter two instances of progression more closely approximate a literal form of counting out. In each, a number series is given and then followed'by a rhyming parallel in a mnemonic, antiphonal paradigm not unlike that of the mnemonics found in religious liturgy or -25- in the rote learning jingles, games and songs of school children (all of which are classified as oral transmissions, 'song' in its widest sense ).<8> And, as Iona and Peter Opie remark generally of this genre, ...through these quaint ready-made formulas the ridiculousness of life is underlined, the absurdity of the adult world and their [the school children's] teachers proclaimed, danger and death mocked, and the curiosity of language itself is savoured. (18) In Altazor one major aspect of that curiosity is the device of seriality in itself. Progressive word series become meaningful patterns. They establish the paradigmatic theme of ordered sequential progression, evolution, or development per se in the poem, of which the tonic scale of the nightingale section remains the prime exemplar. And they balance something of the exuberance which the Opies remark on with an ironic tone commonly associated with the absurd. The Aitazor figure is not only ironically rendered as yet another in a series of prophets and Christ-figures sent from on high to redeem creation but also as an isolated individual whose coming is uniquely the creation of a common and insistent need for the salvation he is intended to bring.<9> Turning to the end of Huidobro's "Prefacio" we find the relevant progression: Abre la puerta de tu alma y sal a respirar al lado afuera. Puedes abrir con un suspiro la -26- puerta que haya cerrado el huracan. Hombre, he ahi tu paracaldas maravilloso como el vertigo. Poeta, he ahi tu paracaldas, rnaravilloso como el iman del abismo. Mago, he ahi tu paracaldas que una palabra tuya puede convertir en un parasubidas rnaravilloso como el relampago que quisiera cegar al creador. iQue esperas? Mas he ahi el secreto del Tenebroso que olvidd sonreir. Y el paracaldas aguarda amarrado a la puerta como el caballo de la fuga interminable. (60 ) Open the door of your soul and come out and breathe. With a sigh you can open the door the hurricane closed. Man, here's your parachute, marvelous as vertigo. Poet, here's your parachute, marvelous as the pull of the void. Magician, here's your parachute, which just a word from you can change into a paralifter marvelous as the lightning that would like to blind God. -27- What are you waiting for? Here too is the secret of Darkness which forgot to smile. And the parachute sits tied to the gate like the horse of the endless flight. (Guss 87) This progression, which ends on the doubly valent "fuga".(meaning either "flight" or "fugue") furthers the absurd aspect of the poem. Just as the permutations on a musical series include inversion (in which the direction but not the interval between notes varies) and retrograde variants (i.e., back to front) variants of its radix, so too common assumptions regarding spatial categories and a nature/God reversal effect a permutation on the basic tonic and progressive scale pattern of the poem. In the interplay of "Mant'sl... vertigo" with the "PoetC'sl... pull of the void," identification of man and poet is counterpointed by the inversive parallel of "vertigo" (man falling in the void) and the pull (attraction) of that same void for the poet who is also the man. The retrograde element is found in the backward relation of God and the lightning (as metonym for nature) such that the latter "would like to blind" the former. If, as with the nightingale, blinding is a strategy to promote song, then lightning seeks to make God sing (speak thunder). The basic series is in evidence here also. An associative and perhaps progressive (in the context of the poem as a whole) series of -28- minimal pairs is established. Starting with the implied "you" <"Open.. . your soul") of the first statement, the second through fourth add "Man," "Poet," and "Magician," and the result is what becomes (throughout the Cantos) the litany of names and titles of the Aitazor figure. A parallel to the variants of this list is the repetition of parachute ("paracaidas" ) with its one variant, "paralifter" ("parasubidas" ), introduced in conjunction with the magician statement. The notion of the power of the word ("parachute, which just a word from you can change into a paralifter") adjoins the introduction of the poem's first neologue (excluding that of the title figure, Aitazor). <10> Fundamental to the neologue's invention, then, is the focussing of attention on the sign (word) itself and its context. Returning to the nightingale section, our focus may now move to its context, the background (that is, non-progressive) elements. At the semantic level the "rosiffol" ("rossignol," nightingale) progression increases the range of influence exerted by the one verb, "prefiere" ("prefere," prefers), such that either the object completion expands to include the list of the seven variants on "rosiftol" (with four of them further qualified by nominal phrases), or an incatenation of the five nouns — "cielo" ("ciel," sky), "nifto" ("enfant," child),<11> "flor" ("fleur," flower), "piel" ("peau," skin), and "garganta" ("gorge," throat) — is effected. The passage is read throughout according to the original "cielo prefiere el rodoftol" ("ciel prefere le rodognol," sky prefers the nighdongale) pattern and thus "prefiere" ("prefere," -29- prefers ) is understood to precede each item of the "rosiftol" ("rossignol," nightingale) progression. The four possessive pronouns found at the outset of the second through fifth lines of this passage seem initially to approximate the sort of semantic relation of entailment<12> one finds in, for example, the children's song and game "The Farmer in the Dell" in which the farmer takes a wife, the wife takes a child, the child a dog, and so on. Given that the pronoun referent in all four instances of "Su" is ambiguous in the Spanish (meaning,"his" or "its"X13} one reading of the passage is as follows: "el cielo" (the sky), "Su niflo [del cielo]" (its [the sky's] child), "Su flor [del niflo]" (its [the child's] flower), "Su piel [del flor]" (its [the flower's] skin), and "Su garganta Cde la piel]" (its [the skin's] throat). Alternately, "flor," "piel," and "garganta" may all be understood to refer to "el nifto ... [d]el cielo" (the sky's child). And again, "piel" and "garganta" may both attach to "Su flor ... [del] nifto ... [d]el cielo" (the sky's child's flower, literally 'his, its flower of the child of the sky'). Finally, the passage may also be read in terms which refer to each of the variants on nightingale: that is, the child of the nighdongale, flower of the nighrengale, skin of the nighmingale, and throat of the nighfangale. Although neither of these chains of ambiguity would necessarily occur to a native speaker (and reader) of Spanish at the moment of heuristic reading, both are grammatically admissible (in not only the Spanish but also the French and English versions of the -30- passage). n result of these options is that the "rosiftoi" progression has as its partial counterpart — or, to continue in terms of musical analogues, counterpoint — a list comprised either of the nominal phrases which qualify it, the "cielo"-to-"garganta," or the "niflo"-to- "garganta" list. Here too there is a question of scale, but in this case it is not musical in kind. One variant reading views the progression from sky to throat as one of diminution which involves a change in scale of spatial rather than musical register with the child as pivotal axis. The movement is from the macro level, sky, in relation to which the child is micro, to the child as macro level, in relation to which the throat is micro. The transition from the first register to the second occurs in the third and fourth lines of the passage. Su flor de alegia el romin'ol Su piel de lagrima el rofafiol The pairing of "flor" with "piel" parallels the "alegrla"/"lagrima" conjunction (discussed below) of the same couplet. The " f lor"/"pie1" pair plays off the phrase "a flor de piel" meaning literally, "on the surface of the skin" (as in, "traer la emocion a flor de piel," — to carry one's feelings on the surface of the skin, conveying a meaning which is roughly analogous to the English 'to wear one's heart on one's sleeve'). The emotional register, represented in the conjunction of a polar opposition in tears and joy, is thus idiomatically mapped -31- onto the physical registers. At the turn of the suppressed phrase "a flor de piel" the transition of the child from micro to macro level is effected. This flipping of spatial registers is paralleled, in Imagination Dead Imagine, by the reference at the end to a "rotunda" (definitely specified as to dimension at the outset) as a "speck." In contrast to the child in the nightingale passage, in relation to whom things are micro or macro (but stable), the implied interlocutor of the Beckett work is the variable, either changing in terms of relative distance from the rotunda or enlarging to the point at which the rotunda is, perceptually, merely a speck. Subsidiary (in terms of the number of elements and lines of the passage involved) to, for instance, the "cielo"-to-"garganta" is yet another list, again diminished. This one is composed of the qualifiers "querido,"<14> "de alegrla" (of joy), and "de lagrima," (of tears) and "nocturna" (nocturnal). Together they create a kind of semantic ABBA pattern-' the two middle terms are formally alike in their ' de + noun' construction and are also conceptually paired as opposites, as we have noted. The first and fourth, "querido" and "nocturna," remain ambiguous within the list configuration we are discussing here. However, they do become coherent on the level of the bird paradigm, discussed later in the thesis, which functions within the larger context of the entire poem. In terms of the web of references attaching to the "rosiflol" image the nightingale's throat (as origin of its song) becomes a metonym for the beloved bird/poet of the nocturnal setting. -32- "Su nifto querido... [del] cielo" ("Son enfant g3te [ du ] ciel," The sky's dear child), moreover, reverberates with the sense of a chosen one, echoing the religious and creation-myth structure of the "Prefacio" to Aitazor: Nacl a los treinta y tres aflos, el dia de la muerte de Cristo; ... Mi padre era ciego y sus manos eran mas admirables que la noche. (55) I was born at thirty-three, the day Christ died.... My father was blind and his hands were more wonderful than the night. (Buss 84) While a full account of the narrative elements of Aitazor is beyond the scope of this thesis, the story is an ancient and familiar one, and its outline, with which we are concerned here, tropes a basic creation-myth model of the Christian tradition among others. First, Aitazor. Set out in the "Prefacio," the story of Aitazor (as figure) essentially parallels the Christ story of which it posits itself as continuation (or sequel). In relation to the "Prefacio" the rest of the poem, the seven Cantos, stands as elaboration and fulfillment. We understand, then, that this Christ/Altazor is the beloved son who, in this version of the Christ-story, descends to earth by means of "el via.je en paracaldas" (the parachute voyage). Further, since in Al tazor -33- the death of Christ marks the autochthonous generation of the Altazor figure, we anticipate that, on the one hand, Altazor too will succumb to mortality and, on. the other, that another in this open series of Christ-cum-Altazor figures will be brought forth by the demise of its predecessor. A further and even more diminished sub-set of the "rosiffol" progression is to be found in the consonantal rhyming scheme of "de alegrla" (of joy) with "de lagrima" (of tears). Although they are conceptually opposed, the two are metrically equivalent except for a shift in stress. Further, both consonantal and assonantal rhymes are strongly maintained, with variation of the former in the first foot and of the latter in the fourth. In both instances the variant results from the addition of a term to the basic structure; the elision of "e-a" in "de alegrla" and the presence of the "m" in "de lagrima." Beyond the range of Spanish versification, pluridimensional rhymes of this sort are known as cvnahanedd in the Welsh, as Gwyn Williams's "Appendix A" on "Welsh Versificat ion," in his Introduction to Welsh Poetry from the BeQinninas to the Sixteenth Century amply demonstrates. In keeping with our expectation of Altazor's end, the lists themselves form a pattern of progressive diminution. The "rosifiol" progression, occurring in each of the seven lines of the fragment, is partially paralleled by the "cielo"-to-"garganta" list of its first five lines, which in its turn is paired both with the series of four qualifiers and with the ambiguous, quadruple repetition of "Su" in the -34- second through fifth lines of the passage. Finally, the middle two qualifiers are paired by their rhyme scheme, as we have seen. Conforming to no particular and consistent verse type, the "rosiftol" passage achieves pattern through equivalence. Allowing for the line ends, all of which fall in the "aguda" (literally, 'sharp,' having an accented final syllable) accentual category, the line-lengths are counted: 11 f 10, I0f 10, nt 5, 5.{15} Thus, the pattern of diminution, remarked upon in other aspects of this highly restricted passage of a lengthy work, is again in evidence in the shortened line lengths of the last two lines of the passage. The nightingale section's rhyme scheme is set out in Table II below. TABLE II RHYME SCHEME v. LINE LENGTHS OF "RQSINOL" PASSAGE OF 'ALTAZOR' AE a] A[bl ACb] A[b] A[a] ACl/2b] AEl/2b] 11.t 1 2 3 4 5 B 7 Key: A = rhyme scheme, identical in all cases (scalar variants on "rosifiol" ) a,b = pattern of line lengths, such that 'a' = 11 syllables, •'b' = 10 syllables, and 'l/2b' = 5 syllables (since, being "aguda" lines, the syllable count is increased, according to conventional Spanish versification rules, by one.) -35- The rhyme scheme is based upon the near identity of the members of the "rosifiol" word list which conveys it, since only the sol-fa term is variable within each word in the progression. Internal rhyme exists in the inclusion of the repeated article "el" preceding the "rosifiol" variant in each line. On a more detailed and purely sound-based level, the quadruple repetition of "Su" also acts to create an initial identical rhyme in these lines, further emphasized by the fact that, save for its appearance in "nocturna," the /u/ is found nowhere else in the passage. For the semiotician, the effect is not only to create a minimal pair ( "Su"/"-tu-" ), but also to imply a possessive pronominal progression from the more impersonal third person singular, "su" (applied, we recall, to child, flower, skin, and throat) to the more intimate second person singular "tu" (found within "nocturnal" the temporal, or at least diurnal element, for which the nightingale if not the "rosifiol" is named). Leaving the sound-based rhyme to the side for the moment and extending the association in terms of the personal pronominal connection, a further (grammatical) rhyme may be posited between "su, " "tu," and the "mi" which occurs in "romiffol . " At this level of analysis several further rhymes are noticeable. For instance, the "r_e" in "prefiere" and the "do" in "querido not only rhyme their tonic counterparts but also provide a chiasmus with "rodofiol" and "rorrefiol'. " Other pairs include the rj_" in "alearla" and the "re" in "rorreffol;" the "ma" in "lagrima" and the "mi" in -36- "romiftol;" the "le" in "aj_egrla" and the "I£" in "iigrima;" the "aa"/"aa" in "garganta" and the "no"/"na" of "nocturna." Like the profusion of liquids (/r/'s and /l/'s> and the strong rhyme of "piel" with "cielo." the closely woven tensile strength of the multiplicity of rhyme leads (as a function of both the number and variety of rhymes which include eye-rhymes, ear-rhymes, and the conceptual rhyme implied by the pun of "rosiftol" with diatonic scale doubly rendered at the levels of word and sy1 lableK16> to a celebration of sound, of 'tonicity' per se. of the 'Huidobrian' "pure palabra y nada mas." -37- NOTES <1> Translations will be taken primarily from the Guss edition. Where unspecified, they are my own. <2> For a comparison of the Spanish and French versions, see Magdalena Garcia Pinto's article, "El bi1inguismo como factor creativo en nltazor," Revista Iberoamericana 45 (1979): 117-27. <3> Riffaterre's term, derived from Saussure. See Jean Starobinski' s Les mots sous les mots-' les anaorammes de Ferdinand de Saussure. Maria Corti traces "heuristic" to Paul Ricoeur's work and associates the term with Gerard Genette's distinction between "readings of a text -- as subject or as object" (43). To this distinction she adds a third mode, derived from Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva, "reading as re-wri t inq" (43, Corti's emphasis). However deficient they may be as adequate theoretical constructs within the context of the issues Corti addresses in her Introduction to Literary Semiotics, the terms heuristic and retroactive are accepted here (in the spirit of Riffaterre's use of them) for the sake of expediency, with the proviso that they remain convenient fictions by which we may describe that still mysterious process, reading. <4> For a complete treatment of the subject of the medieval introduction of solmization see Bernarr Rainbow's "Introduction" to his translation of Loys Bourgeois's The Direct Road to Music (Le Droict Chemin de Musioue [15503). pp. 5-25. -38- <5> The question of why in Altazor some substitutions are necessarily comic while others are not involves issues (such as a consideration of theories of comedy, orality, .and intertextuality) which, unfortunately, lie beyond the scope of this thesis. Accordingly, these issues are not considered in their own right here, and the comic is thus mentioned only tangentially as an offshoot of the main discussion. {6> Guss's line originally read "With its moon that pillows at the sky." However, since the preposition is unnecessary and somewhat awkward, I have deleted it from the passage. <7> Or, rather, "tress," a term which Weinberger discards in favour of "longhair." <8> In his article "Seriality in Modern Literature" Frederic Jameson comments on what he terms "the jingle syndrome... •• word-play, rhymes, obsessive catch-phrases, autistic verbal phenomena, and automatisms of all kinds" in Joyce's Ulysses. but his observations are equally applicable to Aitazor. <9> This double relation of the individual to the class or set of which s/he is a member, according to which membership may alternately obliterate or confirm the sense of isolated (discrete) entity accorded the individual, is (as Frederic Jameson remarks in "Seriality in Modern Literature," E76-7]) articulated by Sartre in his Critique de la raison. For a discussion of the biblical and christological aspects of Altazor see Cecil G. Wood's book The Creacionismo of Vicente Huidobro. -39- {10} Taking the compound word "paracaldas," the components of which are suppressed in favour of the recognition of the referent for which it is the sign, the neologue inverts the sense of the second part which, in turn, both highlights the composite nature of the word and, through comic substitution (as with the nightingale passage), creates a neologue (which conveys a literal meaning, "falling up device,") to parallel the "falling [down] device" implied by "paracaldas." {11} Weinberger has translated "nifio" as "son." However, since (like the French, "enfant") it is actually a non-specific term for "child" I have preferred the latter in my consideration of the passage. {12} As used by John T. Kearns in his book Usino Lanouaae. 81-2. {13} Weinberger prefers "its" throughout his translation (Guss 107-9) and thus, in the interest of consistency, I have followed suit. <14> The usual sense of "querido" is that of "beloved" or "dear," not "favorite" as Weinberger has it. The former options are used here. {15} To scan the passage, with its frequent instances of elision and the addition of the extra count on all (since all are "aguda" ) lines, the following break-down by syllable count should prove useful: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 Pe- ro el cie- lo pre- fie- re el ro- do- hoi (+1) =11 2 Su ni- Wo que- ri- do el ro- rre- hoi (+1) =10 3 Su flor de a- le- grl- a el ro- mi- hoi (+1) =10 4 Su piel de la- ' gri- ma el ro- fa- hoi (+1) =10 5 Su gar— gan- ta noc- tur- na el ro- fa- hoi (+1) =11 6 El ro- la- hoi (+1) =5 7 El ro- si- hoi (+1) =5 -40- {16} There is also a pattern, which functions across the "rosifiol" variants and the nouns which are found apposite to then, which presents a code of '(musical) scalar entailment' and may be represented as follows: 1 rodoflol 2 Queri do rorefiol 3 alegrja romifiol 4 lagrima rof aPiol 5 gargant a rosolfiol rolaftol ros iflol The elements in the right-hand column entail those of the line which follows (in the left-hand column) to produce the pairs: dWdo, re/rl. r^i/ma, f_a/pia Qa, sol oJ./r_o ol. The entailment ends, then, in the unpaired "rosifiol" term, which, as we have noted, is the 'tonic' element of the diachronic scale occurring at the level of the word. -41- 3. POLYVALENCE IN SCALE •• IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE Du reste, qu'il s'agisse de 1'amp 1itude , de la forme, ou de la situation plus ou moins excen- trique, les variations sont probablement inces- santes a l'interieur de i'essaim. II faudrait, pour les suivre, pouvoir differencier les in- dividus. Comme c'esi impossible, une certaine permanence d'ensemble s'etablit, au sein de la- quelle les crises locales, les arrivees, les de• parts, les permutations, n'entrent plus en ligne de compte. --Robbe-Gri1 let , La Jalousie Paralleling the word-play aspect of Huidobro's "Fragment" and A1tazor, one of the most remarkable aspects of Imagination Dead Imagine and "Imagination morte imaginez" is their use of verbal moods in creating their strange, quasi-pedagogical and pseudo-scientific effects. Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine (19G5) was published two years before "imagination morte imaginez" appeared as the third of four sections of a collection entitled Tetes-Mortes (1967).<1> Preceded by "d'un ouvrage abandonnee" and "assez" and followed by "bing," the French-language version of the work is, for the most part, a quite precise and literal parallel to the English. -42- In each version the forty-six sentences form one lengthy paragraph notable, among others things, for the predominance of the imperative mood. This verb form occurs seventeen times in the English and eighteen in the French (which includes "fixez" as well as "taisez" in its second sentence as opposed, in the English, to the one verb, "omit"). What might have seemed, at first glance, a use of the imperative to convey the force of an exclamatory remark (as in, "imagination dead, imagine!" in tone either an expression of wonder or disbelief) becomes, upon the accretion of so many other instances of its kind, a litany of directions, commands, <2> or a kind of reader's instructional manual. Thus the final word of the title is understood (perhaps not at the heuristic reading but probably retroactively) as exhortation and command. In contrast to Altazor. which begins, as noted in the previous chapter, with the account -- fully attributable to the narrative or lyric persona (since there is a range established between the narrative element, written in prose, of the "Prefacio" and the lyric, in verse, of the cantos) -- of the coming to be of the Aitazor figure and the provision of a context for the events of the poem, Imagination Dead Imagine implies an interlocutor from the outset (that is, from the title on, given the implied 'you' of the command, "imagine"). Again, it is the verbs which provide the keys. However, what they unlock is not a solution or resolution; rather they reveal multiple dimensions of puzzlement. -43- No trace anywhere of life, you say, pah, no difficulty there, imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine. (7 ) Nulle part trace de vie, dites-vous, pah, la belle affaire, imagination pas morte, si, bon, imagination morte imaginez. (51) To begin with and as we have learned as readers of many modernist texts, we are to read this work in the sense in which Beckett instructs us in "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce." "ETlhis stuff [Joyce's Work in Proaress 3... is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. He [Joyce] is not writing about something: he is writing something" (248). In the same vein, the opening phrase of Jorge Luis Borges's "Las ruinas circulares" ("The Circular Ruins") permits and even demands the alternate readings which are grammatically possible. "Nadie le vid desembarcar en la unanime noche..." (59; "No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night" —72) is first read as if the event occurred in the absence of any witness(es), and then as if "Nadie" were the positive designation for a character (regardless of name) in the text rather than for the non-entity of the first variant, and finally, as if by negative implication "Alguien" (Someone) did not see him. So in "Imagination morte imaginez" "[nlulle part" becomes the setting for -44- this "trace de vie" which the narrator takes as challenge ("pah"). But this is to jump ahead; let us return to the analysis of this first difficult sentence. Who is addressing whom at the cutset of Imagination Dead Imagine? Does it, like Albert Camus's La Chu'.e. mime the transcribed record of one half of a conversation? Arguably, yes. The suppressed voice, having made a statement which must have ended in something roughly equivalent to 'There's no trace of life anywhere,' the interlocutor/narrator replies with the first sentence of the text we have before us. According to this line of reasoning what follows, "pah, no difficulty there," indicates that the narrator is rising to a challenge. Something in the order of a dare, perhaps, initially to imagine (a world with?) "no trace of life anywhere," and subsequently (since "imagination [would! not [be] dead yet") escalating the challenge and requiring the imagination of imagination dead. Another variant, one in keeping with the insistence of the imperative mood, would have the interlocutor/narrator as guide or master and the implied "you" as exercitant, novice, or player. In this model the task, indicated by the title, is performed as a test, challenge, or game by the "you" who is following the procedures outlined by the master. This construction of the model would accord the text a status analogous to the exercises performed in religious, mystical, or magical rites of passage. Alternately, the first sentence may also be read as monologue: the -45- narrator, speaking out of whatever situation has inspired the text (e.g., overheard conversation, something read or remembered) sets him- or herself the tasks conveyed in the numerous instances of the use of imperative. Whether one accepts the monologue or dialogue as contextual setting for the text, it is evident that this work posits itself as response to something external to it. The response begins in earnest with the first of the imperatives, the importance of which is emphasized by its incorporation into the title of the work. What comes after the last imperative in the body of the text may reasonably be expected to relate to the external stimulus which we have just established. And the ending may also serve to elucidate the first sentence of the piece: ...there is better elsewhere. No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness,' to see if they still lie in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing. (14) • ...il y a mieux ailleurs. Mais non, la vie s'acheve et non, il n'y a rien ailleurs, et plus question de retrouver ce point blanc perdu dans la blancheur, voir s'ils sont restes tranquilles au fort de cet -46- orage, ou d'un orage pire, ou dans le noir feme pour de bon, ou la grande blancheur immuable, et sinon ce qu'ils font. (57) First, some cross-linguisitc comparisons. The sense in which "life ends" is that of "achever," which, according to Le Pet i t Robert. conveys the sense of "finir (generalement d'une facon satisfaisante, en menant a bonne fin)", a sense similar to that of its English cognate and antonymous with "commencer" and "epargner." "[E]1sewhere" implies with more force in the French, "ailleurs," the sense of "Cdlans un autre lieu (que celui ou l'on est ou dont on parle)." Also, the English is more emphatically negative than the French in the assertion "no question now of ever finding again" as compared with the weaker "plus question de retrouver." Finally, the English "in the black dark for good" does not convey the sense of the French adverbial locution "pour de bon" which means, "reellement, veritab1ement" and is synonymous with the more literary "tout de bon." To mention these differences between the author's French and English versions of the work is not, in the context of this thesis, to imply that Beckett doesn't know how to translate his own work from one language to the other. Rather, the position taken here is that "Imagination morte imaginez" is a system which is the semiotic analogue of Imagination Dead Imaoine. Further, it may be argued that the same holds true for Huidobro's "Fragment d'Altazor" in relation to Altazor. -47- Thus where questions of semantics arise, they may be examined in terms of a notion, of the variable treatment accorded analogous systems. Having noted the 'play' in these two expression systems, we are now free to proceed to what is common in both versions, noting the variable interpretations, as these arise, which the 'translations' accord the reader of both. The paradox contained in the phrase "imagination morte imaginez" is paralleled, at the end of the work, by that of "there is no better elsewhere.... there is nothing elsewhere." In the case of the former we are commanded to use the very mode which is announced as "dead" in the apprehension of that apparent fact. The latter command has quite a different effect. If "there is better elsewhere" and if also "there is nothing elsewhere" then, logically speaking, what is elsewhere, namely nothing, must be better (presumably than 'here,' which, we have argued, may refer to "[nlulle part," read literally. In addition, the question of the implications of the French, "ailleurs," comes into play).{3> The final paradox (or, at least, conundrum) of this work is only half-stated in the text (much as the context is only partially indicated at the outset): "[there is] no question now of ever finding again,...." But the determination of this final paradox will be postponed until later in our analysis so that the forty-four sentences which lie between the first and last (which will again be considered in the light of that discussion) may first be explored. -48- Mediating between the semantic and grammatical constructs of the outset and the more straightforward and quasi-diagrammatic consideration of the "rotunda" encountered in the third sentence, the second begins with an enumeration of what might be termed an 'imaginative' (since associative rather than strictly bound by logic) list ("Islands, waters, azure, verdure,..." —"lies, eaux, azur, verdure,..."). From "islands" then, in a kind of figure-ground perceptual reversal, we move to "waters"<4> and thence, by way of colour association, to "azure." Finally, via indirect colour association and end-rhyme, we arrive at "verdure" which, reminiscent of land in its etymological connection to 'green,' refers back again, indirectly, to the land image of "islands." Each associative link is an act of the imagination, less an abstraction than a metaphor in the sense in which Beckett uses these terms in his discussion of Vico's notion of poetry in "Dante... Bruno. Vice. Joyce." (24B). In the relevant passage, Beckett is discussing Vico's notion of "poetry" as it relates to primitive epi5temo1ogy= Poetry was the first operation of the human mind, and without it thought could not exist. Barbarians, incapable of analysis and abstraction, must use • their fantasy to explain what their reason cannot comprehend. Before articulation comes song; before abstract terms, metaphors. (246) The opposition, then, is of analysis and abstraction against -49- imagination and metaphor. The distinction between the two lies in the types of links between elements, hence in the associative rather than causal connections between the items in the list the metaphorical order is upheld. As Beckett advises, "Literary criticism is not book-keeping" (242 ). The final portion of the second sentence of the Beckett work, ("...one glimpse and vanished, endlessly, omit" —"fixez, pff, muscade, une eternite, taisez"), differs markedly across the two versions, recalling the complexities of the sentence which precedes it. In the English, the question is one of omitted pronouns and suppressed referents: "one glimpse Cof the members of the list, the islands and waters, azure and verdure] and [then they are] vanished, endlessly [vanished], omit [endlessly]." The French, with its extra verb and interjection, "pff," creates quite another effect. "[FHxez," with its attendant idiomatic associations with memory and writing, indicates much more clearly than the English "one glimpse" that it is the list which is to be retained and permanently arranged (in imagination and memory). With the figurative use of "muscade" (literally, musk, and here, from "[p]assez muscade," which "se dit [as of the odour] d'une chose que passe rapidement ou que 1'on fait disparaltre avec adresse, . aisance ou desinvolture") the suddenness of the disappearance is emphasized. "[U]ne eternite" functions not only in a manner parallel to "endlessly" but also adds to that the possibility of an assertion which verges on the status of stage direction or the insertion of an aside, -50- which would in its turn imply a suppression of the completion, "passes." The force of "taisez," which translates into the English colloquialism, "shut up," is distinct from the force of "omit." In the case of the French version, "taisez" is completed by "Jusqu'a toute blanche dans la blancheur la rotonde" creating a cause-effect relation while in the English "omit" refers back to the eradication of the list elements and does not have the same forward, causal attachment (i.e., "omit. . .mill" ). . As was the case with the polyvalent readings' accorded the nightingale section of Altazor and the "Fragment," the point here is less to determine which particular meaning or interpretation attaches 'best' to the sentence, but rather to recognize the text as one whose patterns of scale are open. This openness is achieved differently in the two works. In the nightingale section it is the acrosticism with its attendant interplay of vertical and horizontal reading which militates against closure (which is possible, as has already been noted with reference to "Dante... Uico. Bruno.. Joyce.," in the interpretation of "writing [which is] about something -- 24B, emphasis mine). In Imagination Dead Imagine the lack of determination is the result of an ambiguous context and multiple valences in the proleptic and analeptic grammatical cross-referencing. Stated differently, the feature which is common to both the Beckett and Huidobro works in this connection is an instability in the figure-ground relation. In the case of Altazor this translates into the -51- recursive parity of the vertical and horizontal readings of tonic scale and "rosihol" variants. That is, neither matrix can be privileged over the other in terms of which of them makes more sense or more thoroughly decodes the passage, since each is dependent upon the other. Imagination Dead Imagine remains indeterminate through the uncertainty of the definition of the interlocutor/narrator, the status of the addressee, the repeated imperative to paradox, and the heightening of relativity which results from the multiple measures — making it impossible for the reader to opt for any single pole of the paradoxes or absolute term of comparison as having achieved the status of 'truth.' The figure-ground relation is also the vehicle for the introduction of the "rotunda" in the third sentence of Imagination Dead Imaaine. Either as a result of or merely following on our silence ("taisez") or omission we arrive at length Suprematist, Kasimir Malevich's White Square on a White Ground<5> as well as in the classic exercise of drawing an egg against a white ground (with its minimal visual distraction and perspective-inducing adornments) with the aim of achieving a pictorial rendition of not only -52- the two dimensional distinction of object from field but also the three dimensional effect of solidity, 'roundness.' Taken further, the problem may be stated in terms of a question: if there is no (or minimal) perceptible difference between figure and ground, how can they be distinguished from each other? The "rotunda" is a minimal verbal image in so far as, other than the three dimensional shape referred to by the label 'rotunda,' there are no other distinguishing features in this whiteness. Further, since there is no indication yet of relative size or vantage point, the image is at first both indeterminate and perceptually though not imaginatively impossible without making the necessary assumptions regarding its orientation. The question of how what is perceptually impossible may yet be imaginatively viable revolves around the concept of abstraction. The description of the rotunda has the implicit force of yet another imperative to paradox in so far as it demands of the reader the creation of an image while refusing information which, if tendered, would permit the reader to 'make sense' of the image. This, then, is the site of imagination, the abstract "nulle part" to which we are referred at the outset of the work. Interestingly, as the rotunda is further specified the problems of conceptualization, rather than being reduced, compound. Empirically described, the rotunda nevertheless remains indeterminate on the one hand and variable on the other. "No way in, go in, measure" (7; "Pas d'entree, entrez, mesurez" —51), with its -53- paradox introducing the fourth of the commands, initiates the detailed description of "le petit edifice." With diagrammatic precision (in both the Imperial and metric scales, English and French versions) the architectural specifications are set out. In the five sentences which follow "mesurez," this command is carried out inrespect of the physical properties of the domed structure and those of the human figures it contains. So exact are.the specifications that the approximate height and weight of the bodies can be determined (by the limitation of the size of the semicircle in which each is "inscribed" —12). The maximum height allowed in the English "rotunda" (with a diameter of three feet) is about five and one-half feet and, if the body is flexible at -the hips and knees, the weight could be as much as one hundred . forty pounds, given the limits of the space into which it must fit. -C E > The French "rotonde" (in which the diameter is specified at eighty centimeters) is designed on a slightly smaller scale than the English and the figure's height and weight varies accordingly. The rotunda is of uniform, solid construction (though fabricated from unknown, since unstated, material) without decoration or ornament. Its two-stage construction involves a low, circular wall (eighteen inches or forty centimeters respectively) on top of which a dome (referred to, in architectural mode, as the "vault" —"voQte" ) rests. Within and across the French and English versions of the Beckett work the determined (measured and specified) descriptions of the data -54- provided by the narrator give uay to modification, to gradation, to the range of variants established by the conventions of scale (i.e., pattern imposed on flux, measurement). The rotunda, originally so precisely specified in sentences five through nine, and not inconsistently referred to as "le petit edifice" (sentence 29, p. 57), becomes ultimately a "white speck... lost" ("point blanc perdu"). In logical terms, the apparent inconsistency of this last reference may be reduced either by an extreme change in the relative distance between the interlocutor(s ) and the rotunda/speck or by the assumption, reminiscent of, for instance, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, that the "you" implied in the text is of such monumental scale that a three foot (eighty centimeter) dome equals, perceptually and proportionally, a "speck." The question of scale compounds here, then, in terms of the vantage point of the measurer, the "you" implied by the imperative mood which is sustained throughout the work. Initially stable, the references to colour become part of the pulsing flux which is paired with heat, a flux replacing the stasis of the first descriptive cycle (sentences five through nine) which constitute the first, direct response to "mesurez." From the brief foray into polychromatics afforded in the associative list (ending, we remember, with azure and verdure) colour moves to its monochrome substructuring range with the lone exception of the eyes of the figures which are identified, toward the end of the work, as "[pliercing pale -55- blue" (13; "[blleu pale aigu" —57). The maximal extreme of plenitude of light which emanates from "nulle source apparent" is established and emphasized by repetition ("toute blanche dans la blancheur," "le sol blanc," "deux corps blancs," "une rotunde... toute blanche dans la blancheur," etc. ). The third time inside the rotunda "la lumiere basse" (52), but not completely. First, a range described as "tous les gris," following .' which "la lumiere s'eteint, tout disparatt" and "le noir se fait." The process, next reverses with grey (again, "tous les gris") which gradually whitens ("blanchissent" ). The pattern of alternation is established and the colour/light factor is braided together with the quality of heat. Blackness is emphasized in "until... pitch black is reached" (10; "jusqu'au noir ferme... atteint" —54) and between the extremes lie pauses in "these feverish greys" (11). Thus the scales of colour are identified with those of light in "the black dark or the great whiteness" (rendered less emphatically by the French, "le noir ou la grande blancheur" —55) and, as we recall, in "the black dark for good" (14) whose durative connotation is replaced by that of even greater extreme in the French, "le noir ferme pour de bon" (57). The rediscovered rotunda, with its more fully articulated figures, is again white on white, the fabric of the entrance covering described as "whiteness merging in the surrounding whiteness" (11; "sa blancheur se fondant dans 1 ' environnante" —55, with the allusion to the -5G- figure/ground relation maintained by the French verb). The female figure is distinguishable because her "white body" would "mergtel in the white ground were it not for the long hair of strangely imperfect whiteness" (12; "la longue chevelure d'une blancheur incertaine" --55). The French here implies that the hair is assigned an indeterminate gradation on ascale of whiteness while the English implication is more along the lines of off-white versus white on a scale quite differently modulated. Because of the greys, — "this agitated light" (12).— "inspection is not easy" (12; "malaisee" --57, being in the French a kind of cross-linguistic pun with 'uneasy' rather than a synonym for 'difficult'). Finally, the "white speck lost in whiteness" remains constant in terms of colour. In this context, the maximal pole recalls the perceptual context of the rotunda as first encountered (or, rather, imagined) and identifies it with its later image, the speck, reduced in scale and never more to be 'found.' The range established with respect to heat, which is originally paired with whiteness, parallels the disintegration of the latter into indeterminacy. Both are connected; they are said to "remain linked as though supplied by the same source of which still no trace" (11; "demeurent liees comme si fournies par une seule et meme source dont nulle trace toujours" —55).<7> Introduced after whiteness, the heat begins (as did the light) in plenitude; Strong heat, surfaces hot but not burning to the touch, bodies sweating. (8) -57- Forte chaleur, surfaces chaudes au toucher, sans etre brOlantes, corps en sueur. (52) The top end of the range is established, then, both in terms of the sense of touch and in terms of the (primarily) visual cue, sweat on the bodies. The cue is also used later to determine that the bodies are not "inanimate" (12; "inanimes" —56). The low point on the scale is fixed at "its minimum, say freezing-point" (8; "son minimum, zero environ" —52). This approximate nadir is repeated once (10; —54) and not referred to directly again, being mentioned only one other time in the context of leaving the bodies which are described as "sweating and icy" (14; "en sueur et glaces" --57). The other major scale referred to throughout Imagination Dead Imaoine is the temporal .one. Duration is at issue not only on the level of the description of the observed cycles of the rotunda but also on that of the process of imagining (on command) undertaken by the implied, undetermined interlocutor (of the narrator) in response to the imperatives of the text. If we are to understand the polyvalent durations of the work and their effects we must now add a third sentence to the framework provided by the first and last. Rediscovered miraculously after what absence in -58- perfect voids it is no longer quite the sane, from this point of view, but there is no other. ( 11 ) Retrouve par miracle apres quelle absence dans des deserts parfaits il n'est deja plus tout a fait le meme, a ce point de vue, mais il n'en est pas d'autre. (55) With this sentence the skeletal structure of the work, taken as a whole, becomes apparent. Composed of five parts, the structure is subdividable into the two lengthy rotunda sections bounded at the outset by the first two sentences of the work, from each other by the sentence quoted above and at the end by the final sentence. Working first with the quality of duration in the two sections on either side of the one above, we will than return to re-evaluate the first, last, and middle sentences taken as a unit. The beginning of the second section (sentences three to twenty-six) uses the starting configuration — i.e.,. the maximal lull of heat and light -- as a basis for measurement while the fourth section (sentences twenty-eight to forty-four) refers back to the norm established in the second and continues to measure from its original starting configuration. Accordingly, the "pauseCsl" (9, 10, 11 ), "markEedl pointtsl" (9), "duration[s]" (10), and "instant[s]" (8, 10) -59- of section two are said to be longer than those of section four: "But go in and now briefer lulls" (11). This assertion is seen to be utterly relative, however, since even the exact temporal measures of the second section — "twenty seconds" (8, S), "the fraction of a second" (9), "some twenty seconds" (10), and, "the same instant" (10) -- are predicated upon the foundation that these fluctuations are "combining in countless rhythms" (10) as "experience shows" (9, 10). In both sections two and four, experience dictates effect to a degree. What "may seen strange, in the beginning" (9, section two) with its suppressed completion, "will not seem so after a while," is paralleled in the fourth section by both "the effect Cof the piercing pale blue eyes] is striking, in the beginning" (13) and also "the contrast [between absolute stillness and convulsive light] is striking, in the beginning" (13). The last is followed immediately by an elaboration which, in raising the issue of memory, accents the processual nature of the text: "for one who still remembers having been struck by the contrary" (13). This elaboration also serves to confuse, since the 'contrary' of contrast is sameness and the 'contrary' of "between stilless and convulsive light" is 'between convulsive light and stillness' — resulting not in a simple reversal but rather, due to the indefinite referent, in a conundrum or, at the least, a confusion. What is postulated as certain, namely the extremes of alternation, is revealed ultimately to be indeterminate, variable and only apparently "assured, for the moment, in [extremis]... world still proof • -60- against tumult" (11). Two concepts underly the creation of this effect. The first, to which we alluded in the first chapter, is that standards (rules, and scales).of measure exist simply by convention. Hence, once the radix is agreed upon, absolute measure is logically possible (within, of course, a statistical margin for error) but only relatively so (that is, relative to the conventionally accepted unit). The other concept which is fundamental to the understanding of order as such is described by David Bohm in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order as giving "attention to similar differences and different similarities" (115-6, Bohm's emphasis). Not only does Beckett's text undercut the notion of the absolute when applied to scales of measurement by demonstrating that one cannot rely on the fixity of either term of comparison, but it also disorders order to the extent that the text focusses on 'different differences' and 'similar similarities.' For example: [the initial level is] More or less long, for there may intervene, experience shows, between end of fall and beginning of rise, pauses of varying length, from the fraction of the second to what would have seemed, in other times, other places, an eternity. (9) If pauses are considered to be the basic unit of measurement on this scale, then the relation between any two pauses ought to be stable when it is considered as a ratio (the first pause is to the second as -El- the second is to the third). However, since time (both in terms of intervals between pauses and in terms of the durations of the pauses themselves) is not calculable, given the minimal end of the scale at "the fraction of the second" and the maximal at "what would have seemed in other times, other places, an eternity" and since no unit of measurement can be determined for "pause," then what is being compared (i.e., the pauses at the extremes with those of the stages in between) is neither similar enough in the aspects which differ nor different enough in the aspects which are similar to meet the criterion of order set by Bohm. Further, since neither bottom nor top of the scale is assigned a fixed value, and since there is no stable unit or radix for the scale, neither the fluctuation between the two poles (when indeed these are reached) nor the duration of pause at whatever stage it occurs is measurable against any standard. The same end -- that is, the undermining of notions of accepted convention and of order -- is achieved by quite different means in the three "frame" sentences we have discussed. The vectors for the creation of the effect in this context include location, duration and the shift in implications regarding "you" implied by the text. The exercitant may be assumed to be constant throughout, there being no indication to the contrary. But the duration of the "experience" undergone and the constancy of the physical proportion of the exercitant relative to the rotunda are brought into question in the second and last of the framing statements. The second discovery of the -62- rotunda is, we are told, of aleatory order (the English "chance" being rendered in the French not as "hazard" but rather "aleatoire" — 55). The time elapsed is noted but not quantified ("after what absence" 11; "apres quelle absence" 55) and the time not spent at or in the rotunda is spent "in perfect voids" (11; "dans des deserts parfaits" —55). Why, on the return, the rotunda is "not quite the same" (11; "il n'est deja plus tout a fait le meme" --55) is connected with the vantage point of the exercitant ("from this point of view" --11; "a ce point de vue" —55). The point, then, being that of the exercitant — changing within him- or herself as a .function of time and what "experience shows" -- is bound to the present stage within and perceives differently across the various moments of experience. This would account for why, although the pauses are observed to be shorter in the rediscovered rotunda, they are not objectively quantified, since the current exercitant is without a measure of experience compared across temporal intervals. The incomplete paradox of the final sentence, taken in this light, begins to become clear. If experience is arbitrary ("no question now of ever finding again" —14) and if memory is reliable only "in the beginning" (13) as we have seen, then the paradox is multivalent. No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if... (14) -63- If we set aside for the moment the question of the narrative voice's mastery over the exercise, and if we assume that aleatory order reigns, then "finding [the rotunda/speck] again" is randomly possible though not predictable.<8> Second, if "there is nothing elsewhere" and if the "white speck [is] lost in whiteness," then we (that is, the master, exercitant and, vicariously at least, the reader) must now have fully arrived at the point of departure, "nulle part" (51) or, rather "perfect voids" (11; "deserts parfaits" —55). From this now "empty set" (in both theatrical and mathematical terms) the initial statement of the work forms a conceptual identity with the final assertion in the manner in which, musically, "do" functions as beginning and end of the diatonic scale. In the first two sentences not only is the empty set proposed — "No trace anywhere of life" (7, "nulle part" —51) — and imagination called forth (in the associative list discussed elsewhere), but also the perfect void is asserted ("[life and imagination] vanished, endlessly, omit" —7; "taissez" --51). The work resolves itself then, across the two versions, as a self-consuming system, on omission and silence.<9> -64- NOTES <1> However, a limited edition of "Imagination morte imaginez" was published in 1965 according to the dust jacket of Tetes-Mortes. and so the two versions are here considered to have been published simultaneously. The jacket of Imagination Dead Imagine further informs us that the English is a translation from the French by Beckett. <2> Not unlike those connected with games of the master/opponent type associated, for instance, with "Simon Says" and "Blind Man's Bluff." <3> This is discussed in detail at the close of this chapter, in connection with a fuller explication of "EnDulle part" (51). iA} Interesting permutations of this phenomenon are found in so-called 'silhouette' alphabets, an example of which is provided by Hofstadter, 67 (Fig. 15). <5> Kasimir Malevich, "Uhite Square on a White Ground," c. 1918. This painting (which consists of precisely what its title specifies) is an extreme example of the Russian Suprematist celebration of geometrical form as beautiful per se. hence all other considerations (such as colour and referentiality or representation in the painterly sense) are deleted from this composition. <6> As Susan Brienza points out in "'Imagination Dead Imagine'; the microcosm of the mind" (Journal of Beckett Studies 8 [19823: 59-74), readerly attempts at calculation are, at the least, encouraged by the text. "Finally, in order to get a clear picture ... -65- the reader must ... actually draw a circle, with properly labelled diameter, and draw the bodies inside" (62). She continues with the observation that the manuscript itself includes such calculations as marginalia. My own approximations are the result of a practical attempt to fit a body into the structure as empirically described. <7> Like "nulle part" at the outset (51), the source of light is also assigned value "nulle." In the case of its connection to light, the passage quoted here is the second of two. The first is quite similar, though less elaborate than the second: "A la lumiere qui rend si blanc nu 11e source apparente" (51-2, emphasis mine). <8> For further discussion of the notion of disorder as a function of predictability, see Bohm, 115-9. <9> See Hofstadter on "self-swallowing sets" (20-1) and on "self-negating messages (in the light of Magritte's work)" (701-3). See also Stanley Fish's book Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth Century Literature (Berkeley: U California P, 1972). -66- 4 = MEDIAL AND GLOBAL SCALES: ALTAZOR A bent way that is a way to declare that the best is all together, a bent way shows no result, it shows a slight restraint, it shows a necessity for retract ion. --Stein, Tender Buttons Where in Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine the repetitions and changes of scale serve to emphasize the perfection of the void, in Huidobro's Altazor the change in pitch and replication of the basic pattern on various levels of the poem serve to reinforce the scale's force and to assert its capacity for endless reiteration. In Chapter 1 we considered the "rosihol" passage of Canto IV (193-9) as an example of (musical) scale functioning within the poem on the local or micro level. In order to highlight the differences between the Huidobro and Beckett pieces, Chapter 2 addressed the (architectural) scale of the Beckett work at both the local and global levels. We are now ready to proceed to an exploration of the medial and global or macro levels of Altazor. A basic question which arises is whether the relations among the three levels on which this thesis asserts that the patterns of scale function are necessary. Its answer requires a brief excursus into -67- semiotic theory. First, as Umberto Eco argues in A Theory of Semiotics, "signification" (which he defines as occurring "[w]hen -- on the basis of an underlying rule -- something actually presented... stands for something else" C8, Eco's emphasis]) does not require recognition. EI]t is enough that the code should foresee an established correspondence between that which 'stands for' and its correlate, valid for every possible addressee even if no addressee exists or ever will exist. (8, Eco's emphasis) Secondly, given that Eco's definition of signification implies the pairing of signifier with signified, Greimas's conclusions regarding semiotic comparisons and correlations (although offered in a different context) are pertinent here. His comments relate to criteria of necessity as applied to polysemic manifestations of codes (in the present context, scale patterns occurring on the three levels set out above). Assuming that the relations between the parts of such a lengthy text as Altazor are arrived at in separate attempts at analysis (as was the case with the work for this thesis), the basis for comparison of a seven-line fragment with a canto and, finally, with the whole poem, is what is challenged by criteria of necessity. In his discussion of just such independent analyses and the correlations and comparisons to be derived from them, Greimas notes that the bases for these comparisons, are in the first place, of an inductive character... -68- because the... analyses have been conducted separately and because they have resulted, un• expectedly, in comparable models that we thought the comparison to be possible and valid. It is obvious that this kind of criterion is not logically compel 1ing. (283, emphasis mine) To challenges regarding the necessity of establishing such inductively reasoned relationships the semiotician replies, then, not only that the relations do not depend on reception but also that they are a (mathematical) function of inductively arrived at similarities (e.g., homologies, isotopes, and isomorphs) discerned with varying intensity across the various levels of the text. In terms of this thesis, this translates into a ready admission that the scalar pattern is not in any way exclusive. For instance, the twelve-part structure of Canto IV may very well derive from the religious (twelve apostles, etc.) or temporal (diurnal or annual divisions perhaps) codes as they operate in the text. The argument here is simply that, regardless of any other parallels which might be drawn, the scalar code may be posited (due to the homologies and isomorphic relations which can be distinguished) as operant on the various levels studied here. Ultimately, then, the criterion is not necessity but consistency, and the final authority is the text. Within the context of "Canto IV" of Al tazor the nightingale -69- section, the subject of our second chapter, along with the four lines which precede it, forms one of twelve intervals each of which is demarcated by the framing line, "No hay tiempo que perder" (IV 1, 22, 69, 89, 115, 134, 136, 158, 200, 225, 262; There's no time to lose — Guss 105, 107, 109, 111). This statement, if the double negative of "no" and "lose" is reversed, attains the implied force of "There's all time to gain." The eighth cycle within this larger series, which includes the nightingale section, we will term the swallow/nightingale (" golondrina"/" ros ifiol" ) fragment. If the repeated frame line, the ninth citation of which occurs immediately after the nightingale section, is considered in terms of that progression, the result is the coincidence of the larger and smaller cycles in the fulfillment of the sol-fa scale. The culmination of the progression -- "rossignol" in Huidobro's first, French-language version, "rosifiol" in the Spanish Aitazor rendition, and, "nightingale" in Eliot Weinberger's English translation -- supplies the seventh note of the tonic scale which, in the case of the Spanish and French scales is "si" while in the English it is "ti." Along these lines, then, the "No" which follows in the Spanish rendition (omitted in Weinberger's translation and beyond the scope of Huidobro's French "Fragment") provides the vowel component of the resolution and re-initiation of the scale and a variant of the middle term of the scale's starting point in "rodofiol" (emphasis mine). Further, since in the Spanish of Altazor the culmination of the scale -70- in "si" doubles as a cognate for the affirmative (i.e., 'yes'), then the completion in "No" has the effect of pairing conceptual opposites. The "golondrina" (swallow) portion comprises thirty-one of the thirty-eight lines of the total swallow/nightingale fragment, more than four times the length of the nightingale portion. As with the latter, the former begins with a word-game and another, associated languaging pattern emerges. Al horitaria de la montazonte La violondrina y el goloncelo (IV 1E2-3) At the horitain of the mountizon The violondelle and the hironcello (Guss 107) This initial couplet involves a type of linguistic inversion found in, for example, "Rotundo como el unipacio y el espaverso" (IV 33E; Round as the unimos and the cosverse -- Guss 115); "La farandolina en la le.jantaffa de la montanla / El horimento bajo el firmazonte" (V 477-8; The farandolina in the distain of the mountance / The horiment under the firmazon — Guss 139); and, "Mandodrina y golonlina / Mandolera y ventolina" (VI 156-7; Mandolow and swalin / mandoness and windilin — Guss 155). Examined at the level of the word, the inversive pairs in all these examples are isolated (in both the Spanish and English versions) in Table III below. Identifiable as nonsense, spoonerism, contrepeterie. or contrastive inversive compound composite, this pairing is significant -71- not only in terms of the humorous and folkloric aspects of Altazor but also in terms of the more serious philosophical and aesthetic concerns evident in the work. TABLE III CONTREPETERIE IN 'ALTAZOR' Span!sh Engli sh hori tafia montazonte horitain mountizon violondrina goloncelo violondelle...hironcello unipacio espaverso unimos cosverse lejantafia montanla distain mountance horimento firmazonte horiment f irmazon mandodrina golonlina mandolow suialin mandolera ventolina mandoness windilin The category 'word-pairs' produces two sub-categories in the Spanish of Aitazor with respect to the mechanics of the combinations and interpretive re-combinations of the pairs (see Table IU below). The Weinberger translation does not parallel the pairing structures of the Spanish, relying almost entirely on the pairing designated as Type A in the Table below, with the exception of the first pair ("hori tain"/ "mount_izon" > which approximates the Type A' pairing but, due both to the inversion of the shared term ("/it/," "/ti/") and to its presence in both 'recombined' words, does not fully match it. -72- TABLE Iv TUIQ TYPES OF UORD-PAIRS IN THE "6QL0NDRINA" SECTION OF 'ALTAZOR' TYPE A: hori ta ha + mon ta zonte = horizonte + montafta uni D_a cio + es p_a verso universo + esoacio le.ja nta na + no' nta nla lejanla + montarla TYPE B: violon drina + golon celo violoncelo + golondrina hori mento + firma zonte horizonte + firmamento mando drina + golon lina mandolina + golondrina mando lera + vento lina mandolina + ventolera Note: The Type A pairs not only exhibit overlap but also combine words of unequal length (the second 'recombined' words having only three syllables). Viewed in these terms, the Type A pairs are a possible variation on the Type B pairs. The Type A word-pairs exhibit overlap in "ta," "pa," and "nta" (which is transferred in each case to the second of the 'unscrambled' pairs within this type). The Type B pairs show no overlapping duplication of letters when reconstituted but do exhibit symmetries of the type found in "de alegrla" and "de lagrima" (noted in Chapter 2). The final Type B pair, "mandolera"/"ventolina," is noteworthy for two reasons. First, "ventolina" is the only word in the Table which is -73- recognizable as a word (meaning: "[mar.] light, fresh wind, cat's paw) before being unscrambled. Second, the undoing of this chiasmic struc• ture might better be termed a doing, as the meanings of "ventolera" demonstrate. "Ventolera:" 1) short gust of wind; 2) pinwheel (toy); 3) [Coll.] vanity, pride; and 4) [Coll.] mad, rash or wild idea; whim, sudden fancy. Hence, "ventolina" rhymes "ventolera" not only in terms of sound but also in terms of their common association with wind. "Ventolera" further recalls the long "molino" (windmill) sequence in that each represents the same thing (windmill = pinwheel) but the latter is replicated here on a smaller scale. This device, although parallel to the rotunda/speck pairing of Imagination Dead Imagine, is another occasion of comic substitution, while the Beckettian substitution is fundamentally disturbing.<2> The colloquial meanings of "ventolina" and "ventolera" pair the section with the Aitazor figure and his quest in their suggestion of proud madness. In Aitazor, the proud madness is that of a victim whose destruction is meant as the salvation of cosmos (Christ/Altazor as grist, then, for a greater mill). Akin to the Type A pairs, the neologue of the title of the poem, "Aitazor," also exhibits overlap ("alta," — high, deep — plus "azor" -- goshawk, hawk) combining to produce "aitazor." In this case, however, the two words become one and the overlap in "a" is the point of union of the constituent words. Although rather similar to the device of spoonerism, the word- -74- pairs of Table IV demonstrate inversion in the terminal positions and involve two syllables of the word rather than the consonantal transposition which is the norm (as in the English example, "At one swell foop" instead of the' idiomatic "At one fell swoop" ). This device, "contrepeterie, " is dated by Le Petit Robert from the late 16th century and defined as an "[inversion des lettres ou des syllabes d'un ensemble de mots specialement choisis, afin d'en obtenir d'autres dont 1'assemblage ait egalement un sens, de preference burlesque ou grivois" (384).<3> In its inclusion of the humorous effect of the hybrid sense of the inversions,{4} contrepeterie is clearly a more useful term in the present context than spoonerism. However, both terms may be subsumed by the larger category, inversion, which in its turn is located under the rubric of the still larger category, nonsense. In Nicholas Hey's article "'Nonsense' in Altazor" this key concept is equated with portmanteau words (such as are found, for instance, in Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" ) and distinguished by its capital letter from the more generic "nonsense" (meaning, in the context of Hey's article, 'no sense,' which is parallel in tone to the absence of sense implied by Beckett's "Nulle part" in Imagination Dead Imagine. Hey's "Nonsense" subsumes much more than just the contrepeterie examples we have listed. Hence, the postulated hierarchy of semantic and structural relations within Altazor may at this point in our discussion be deli neated. All semantic and syntactic inversion serves to create a conceptual -75- gap5 the effects of which range from the philosophical through the comic, from the tragic through the burlesque and beyond. Its two main mechanisms are substitution (such as the acrostic of Huidobro's nightingale passage and Beckett's rotunda/speck substitution in Imagination Dead Imagine) and inversion. By means of this conceptual gap process dominates stasis. The tension between these two is one endemic in narrative, and inversion is one of the ways in which, as Kenner notes in The Pound Era, "static constructs" are repulsed. "The fragments, the moments, shattering that block [of conceptual stasis], recover time: through each of them rushes process" (32). Opposing "static enigma" to "static insight," Kenner arranges the work of Gaudier, Lewis, Pound and Joyce under the latter heading. Huidobro, in his use of contrep&terie. and Beckett, in his treatment of perception, belong there as well. In Altazor and Imagination Dead Imagine the point is extended to include the exploitation of gaps per se. including those which occur within static enigmas of the nightingale or rotunda/speck sort. In the overdetermination of such images, a processual commerce is established: to trope the trope is to create multivalence which necessarily displaces stasis. From the point of view of semiotics, concerned as it is with pattern and meaning (or at least, the mechanics of meaning), Altazor establishes a hierarchy of signification by means of the entailed repetition of patterns. And patterns, as Pound points out, merely "mean something with a 'repeat' in [them]."{5> From the compound neologisms -76- of the "Prefacio" of Altazor (for example, "parasubidas" — 60) to the inversive nonsense of "Al horitafia de la montazonte" (IV 162; -- At the horitain of the mountazon -- Guss 107) to the "jingle" nonsense of "Canto VII" ("Tralali / Lali lala" —VII 3-4, for instance) a range is established which emphasizes, challenges, and undercuts the very notion of 'making sense.' Further, in the case of the third example the nonsense, though undecipherable in terms of words, is a meaningful pattern of tonic singing found in Spanish folk songs and their refrains as well as in the songs and games of children. This last type of connection is noted by Tanya Reinhart who, in "Patterns, Intuitions, and the Sense of Nonsense," establishes the Chomskian requirement of "deviation from grammatica1ity" as the prerequisite to definitions of nonsense generally.<6> However, in addition to semiotic notions of meaningful repetition (i.e., pattern) and opposition or contrast, the 'play' found in ambivalence (as in, for example, the triple entendre of "paloma en paloma" meaning, literally, 'dove in dove,' 'wing in wing,' and 'wave in wave' — a linguistic rhyming of similar forms) and in ambiguity (as in the "Aitazor" figure itself) needs to be accounted for in any final and comprehensive description of the semiotic process which functions across the poem. The "golondrina" portion, then. Al horitafia de la montazonte La violondrina y el goloncelo -77- Descolgada esta mafiana de la lunala Se acerca a todo galope Ya viene viene la golondrina Ya viene viene la golonfina Ya viene la golontrina Ya viene la goloncina Uiene la golonchina Uiene la golonclima Ya viene la golonrima Ya viene la golonrisa La golonnifla La golongira La golonlira La golonbrisa La golonchilla Ya viene la golondla Y la noche encoge sus uffas como el leopardo Ya viene la golontrina Que tiene un nido en cada uno de dos calores Como yo lo tengo en los cuatro horizontes Uiene la golonrisa Y las olas se levantan en la punta de los pies Uiene la golonniPia Y siente un vahldo la cabeza de la montafta Uiene la golongira -78- Y el viento se hace parabola de sllfides en orgla Se llenan de notas los hilos telef6nicos Se duerme el ocaso con la cabeza escondida Y el arbol con el pulso afiebrado Pero el cielo prefiere el rodoffol, etc. Considered as a unit, the first four lines in this portion of the swallow/nightingale passage serve as a kind of platform for the remainder. The vocabulary of the initial couplet has already been addressed at some length in terms of the word-game elements in the poem; however, "lunala" deserves similar consideration. Unlike "horitafta" and "montazonte," "lunala" is an example of a neologue, similar in formation to "altazor," which is composed in accordance with the rules governing synthetic compound words as set out in the Glossary of American Technical Linguistic Usaoe (24). While the "horitafia"/ "montazonte" pairs require the reader to 'undo' a chiasmic structure and recombine the crossed elements, "lunala" demands the conflation of disparate elements to produce a new entity. The former would have as a parallel English example, for instance, "impedation"/"operiment," the decoding of which presents a simple mechanical puzzle. An English example, similar to the "lunala" construction, is found in Joyce's Finnegans Wake: -- "a proudseye view" (711) — in which "proudseye," as a fusion of "proud" and "eye" joined at "s," comes to mean something both more and other than the sum of its constituent parts (including, but certainly not limited to: 'bird's eye,' 'proud's I,' and 'proud -79- sigh' -- playing off the suppressed context provided by the idiom, 'bird's eye view'). Suggesting 'moonwing,' then, "lunala" clearly transcends the limitations of meanings attributed to 'moon' and 'wing' or any arithmetical combination of the two. The effect of the next couplet, Ya viene viene la golondrina Ya viene viene la golonfina (IV 1SB-7 ) Here alights alights the hirondelle Here alights alights the clearondelle (Guss 107) is to establish the approach of the swallow. The couplet is metrically associated with the line which precedes it ("Se acerca a todo galope [la golondrina!," which is literally 'The swallow approaches at full gallop' and which Weinberger, borrowing from the Latinate form of 'swallow' used by Huidobro in the "Fragment," translates, 'It [the swallow] hurries near — Guss, 107) in connecting the information -- "a todo galope" with the imitative, equine beat of "viene viene" (which Weinberger weakens in choosing not a parallel to the original, such as 'Here coming, coming,' but rather an iambic variation, 'alights, alights' ) in both lines. The equivalence of the metrical structure and the regularity of the intervals thus maintained among the stressed syllables enhances a sense of the imminence of the advent of the swallow and heightens the contrast of horse-beat to bird-image. The approaching motion (of "viene") is sustained throughout the passage without resolution in any clear point of arrival. -80- In the next six lines an extremely high degree of equivalence is maintained. Given the absence of the initial "Ya" in the middle couplet, the only other freely variable term is the "golondrina" ("hirondelle," swallow) variant series with which every line in this subsection concludes. This refrain is also maintained in the several lines of the remainder of the swallow portion which continues the pattern As with the backgrounding effect achieved in the repetition of the identical first and third syllables of the nightingale section — which emphasized the serial, scalar reading of the second syllables -- here the lines which repeat the paradigm ("[Ya] viene la golondia etc.) serve to emphasize by contrast the lines which deviate from the pattern. The device which was used at the level of the line's constituent elements is thus transposed here to the level of the arrangements of the lines relative to one another. Further, in this instance, the non-paradigmatic lines are then linked together serially by the reader, who suppresses or even dismisses (that is, 'reads out' ) the predictable lines. Hence the passage is decoded, interpreted, and read in terms of the 'pattern / non-pattern' rule as follows: TABLE V PATTERN/NON-PATTERN LINES IN THE "GOLONDRINA" PORTION OF 'ALTAZOR' Ya viene la golondia Y la noche encoge sus urias como el leopardo Ya viene la golontrina Que tiene un nido en cada uno de los dos -81- calores Como yo lo tengo en los cuatro horizontes Ya viene la golonrisa Y las olas se levantan en la punta de los pies Ya viene la golonniPia Y siente un vahldo la cabeza de la montaffa Viene la golongira Y el viento se hace parabola de sllfides en orgla Se llenan de notas los hilos telef6nicos Se duerne el ocaso con la cabeza escondida Y el arbol con el pulso afiebrado (IV 179-92) (Here alights the hironday/And the night withdraws its claws like a leopard/Here alights the t r i 11 onde 1 le/UI i t h a nest in each torrid zone /As I have them on the four horizons/A1ights the cheerondelle/And waves rise on tiptoe/A1ights the girlondelle/And the mountain's head feels dizzy/Alights the whirlondelle/And the wind's a parabola of orgiastic sylphs/The telephone wires fill with notes/The sunset sleeps with hidden head/And the tree with fevered pulse —Guss, 107). The resulting two lists of paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic lines are grouped on each side of the Table above. The left-hand column produces a final five-line extension of the swallow portion with the -82- initial "Ya" present in the first two lines. There is no deviation from the paradigm as established in the thirteen lines which precede this extension of that passage. A by-product of the separation of the lines is that the optional alternate reading of the non-paradigmatic lines becomes evident. In the case of the heuristic reading of the conjunctions with which the first of each block of right-hand lines begin, these may be interpreted as coordinating what follows with the "golondrina" variant which immediately precedes it. According to this first reading, then, the "que" (literally, 'which') connects "tiene un nido" (has a nest) to the "leopardo" with which the first right-hand column line ends (IV 180). A vertical reading of the left-hand side of the Table produces a tympanic effect in the beginnings of those lines ( "Ya viene" repeated four times and followed by "Viene"), as we noted earlier. This reading emphasizes both the rhythmical musicality of the passage (paired t hemat ica-1 ly with "Se llenan de notas los hilos telefdnicos" ) and the openness of the ending on "viene" with no indication of the swallow's arrival. Of greatest significance to the semiotic analysis of Altazor is not whether one or the other interpretation is somehow 'correct,' but rather that the poem admits of both and deliberately, structurally allows for their overlayering as coexistent. The effect of the "golondrina" list of variants, although similar in some important aspects to the "rosiftol" progression, differs markedly from the latter. The mechanical puzzle of the acrostic which -83- becomes apparent on retroactive reading in the case of the "rosiftol" variants does not function in this instance. TABLE VI CROSS-LINGUISTIC COMPARISON OF COMPOUND VARIANTS ON "6QL0NDRINA" 1) G0L0N+ DRIN A = golondrina (hirondelle) 2) GOLON + F IN A= golonfina 3) GOLON + TRIN A= golontrina {a} (tri1londelle ) 4) GOLON + C IM A= goloncima (hi 1londelle) 5) G 0 L 0 N + CH* IN A = golonchina (chippondelle> B> GOLON + CLIM A= golonclima (whiffonde11e> 7) GOLON + R IM A = golonrima (chirpondelle ) 8) GOLON + R IS A= golonrisa (cheerondelle> 9) GOLON + N I fil A= golonnifta 10) GOLON + G IR A= golongira 11>G0L0N+ L IR A = golonlira (lyrondelle) 12) 6 0 L 0 N + BR I S A = golonbrisa 13) G 0 L 0 N + CH* I LL* A = golonchilla (shri1londelle ) 14) G0L0N+ D I A= golondia (hironday) 15) G 0 L 0 N + TR I N A = golondtrina (tri1londelle) IB) GOLON + R IS A= golonrisa (cheeronde11e ) 17) GOLON + N IN A= golonnifla 18) GOLON + G IR A= golongira id} Note = Although orthographically 'ch' t/c/1 and '11' [/I/] take up two character positions their phonemic values, indicated by their International Phonetic Alphabet designations (as given in Navarro Tomas), are unitary as opposed to the examples of consonant blends which also occur in the sample.<7> The English translations given on the right-hand side of the Table are drawn from Guss 107. With the exception of "goloncelo," which we considered earlier in the context of its pairing with "vio1ondrina" (IV 1S3), Table VI lists all the "golondrina" variants to be found in the fragment. Several patterns, or at least partial patterns, are suggested by this Table. First, the variants indicated as of line 15 of the Table is a repeat of that of line 3, that of line IS of 8, that of line 17 of 9, and that of line 18 of 10). Secondly, unlike the "rosifiol" series, in which only the middle syllable varies, this series exhibits variation in both the penultimate and final syllables. The effect here is to create a division of the word-paradigm into two equal parts, the first of which remains unchanging in all cases (i.e., "golon-"), and the second of which maintains assonantal equivalence in the "1-a" pattern (reminiscent, retroactively, of the pronounced "i-a" emphasis of the vocalics of Canto VII). Since no vertical reading is possible, though tried by the reader who has learned the decoding key of the "rosifiol" portion, we may proceed, then, on the hypothesis that the second part of the word paradigm is -85- emphasized as a unit rather than as a vehicle for an acrostic and the following sub-list emerges: TABLE VII ENDINGS OF COMPOUND VARIANTS ON "GOLONDRINA" -fina -trina (tri1londelle ) vn (mus. ) to trill -cima (hi 1londelle ) nf. summit, completion -china -clima (whiffondel1e ) nm climate -rima (chirpondelle ) nf rhyme; assonance; heap, pile -risa (cheerondelle> nf laugh, laughter; smile -niffa (girlondelle ) nf young girl, child -gira (whirlondelle ) vn to revolve, rotate -lira (lyrondelle) nf lira (It. money); (arch.) lyre, lyric -brisa (chi1londelle ) nf breeze; residue of pressed grapes -chilla (shri1londelle ) nf screech; call for foxes, hares -dia (hironday ) nm. day -drina (hirondelle) Note: The resonances between the Spanish and English variants are clearly represented here. The cross-1inguistic puns of, for instance, "-trina" and "trill," or the doubly (that is, twice in the English) punning aural and cross-1inguistic rhyme of " hi 11onde11e" with "-cima," -SB- indicate Weinberger'5 attention to the intricacies of the Huidobrian text s. With the exception of "-drina," which requires the completed environment of the word "golondrina" to produce meaning, the Table clearly demonstrates that the word-completions are in themselves meaningful. They differ significantly from the scalar progression of the nightingale section in so far as the vertical reading of them produces an associative cluster or web of reference rather than a series, A retroactive reading, then, both parallels and contrasts the "rosifiol" passage's use of ordered, serial progression and the "golondrina" section's use of the associative cluster. The swallow/nightingale pattern derives from the more general bird category in Altazor. A brief investigation of its contest within that category will not only allow us to examine Canto I\J in light of one of the major, global patterns running through the poem as a whole but will also introduce our discussion of the Aitazor figure as central to the hierarchies of pattern (whether scalar or ornithological) functioning at the global level. References to birds in general and to various particular species of birds abound throughout Al tazor . The " go 1 ondr i na" / " ros i flol" (swallow/nightingale) paradigm exists, then, both within the context of a more general "pajaro" (bird) pattern within the work and also within -87- a literary historical tradition of allusion. The image of the nightingale illustrates the extent of the tradition in its range, scope and variety of applications. From the time of Aristophanes to Huidobro, imitations of the song of the nightingale have recurred in Western literature while in the Orient, "the bulbul... is thought to be a nightingale."<8> In addition to the Ovidian and Biblical sources (which we will be discussing below), a full list of nightingale references would have to include (and this indicates merely a beginning) Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Callimachus, Hans Christian Andersen, Shakespeare, Keats, Swinburne and Verlaine, Eliot, Pound, and Joyce among many others.{9} Of the seventy-six direct references to birds in Aitazor. there are nine "golondrina" (swallow) references, four references to either "rosifiol" or "ruisefior" (both of which stem from the Latin "Luscinia" and have one and three references each respectivelyX10> and thirty-five "pajaro" (bird) references. In addition to these there are nine mentions of "paloma" (dove, pigeon; wave; wing): three of "gaviota" (seagull); two references to each of "aguila" (eagle), "alondra" (skylark), "gallo" (cock) and "pinguino" (penguin); and one citation each of "azor" (goshawk, hawk — which is also, of course, present in the many repetitions of the 'aitazor' figure), "cisne" (swan), "cuervo" (crow), "gorrion" (sparrow), "pichdn" (small pigeon), "tortula" (turtledove), and "verdondila" (greenfinch). Within the bird references, sub-categories may be established, -88- including bird-based descriptive phrases, overt bird comparisons, and metonymic bird references. Of the first two (on which we will focus our discussion) the least problematic are the "pajaro"-qua 1ified descriptive phrases: "escalofrlo de pajaro" (I 654; bird chill), "enjaular... / como pajaros" (III 70-1; to cage / like birds), "ojo pajaro (IV 59; birdt'sl eye), "globos de pajaros" (V 108; bird spheres), "lenguaje de pajaro" (IV 226; bird language, tongue), "sus frases pajaro" (III 114; their bird sentences), and "modos de pajaro" (V 544; bird ways ). Similar to but distinct from the first list by virtue of the fact that they occur always in the context of an implied comparison are references to common, quasi-idiomatic associations with birds, such as: "como un pajaro [pegado] al cielo" (I 385; as a bird stuck to the sky), "como la pluma que se cae de un pajaro" (II 18; as the feather which falls from a bird), and "el pajaro tralall canta" (IV 334; the bird tralali sings). From the contrast of "Los veleros... / convertidos en pajaros" (I 617-8; the sloops... / changed into birds) and "El arco-iris se hara pajaro" (III 29; the rainbow will become bird) with "las abejas ... / Aunque no son pajaros" (IV 149-52; the bees... / Although they are not birds) a trans formative/non-transformative bird equivalence emerges according to which "veleros" (sloops, fast light sailing ships) and "arco-iris" (rainbow) are remarkable because they metamorphose into birds while the bees are noteworthy simply because although they sing and fly they are not, in fact, birds. -89- The replication of the underlying formal category of diminution, previously discussed in the context of the nightingale section, has a semantic parallel within the bird category as is evidenced in the following examples: "dos pa.jaros se pierden" (V 509; two birds are lost), "pa.jaros sin coraz6n" ("Prefacio" 55; heartless Cor, heart-less, since the compound is analogous to the English with the same scope for ambiguity] birds), "pajaros grabados... no cantan" (I 630; etched birds do not sing), "pajaros an&nimos" (IV 143; anonymous birds), "pajaro desconocido" ("Prefacio" 55; unknown bird), "pajaro incognito" (V 127; unknown bird [or, bird 'incognito']), "pajaro cegado" (I 579; blinded bird), "pajaro puede olvidar que es pajaro" (V 115; [the! bird can forget that it is [a] bird), and "ojos del pajaro quemado" The victim bird is an image which is carried forward from the initial narrative proposition that Aitazor is a continuation of Christ. Like Christ, then, Aitazor as Saviour must suffer. Altazor's torments are to be variously lost, heartless, songless, anonymous, unknown, unrecognizable, blinded, burned, and without identity through loss of memory (amnesia). In contrast to the Christian view of Christ's suffering and crucifixion, Altazor's diminutions are presented in an ambivalent manner in so far as they are attributed both to the bird itself — as in, for example, "cegado" (blinded) -- and also to the force of our increasing limitation in perceiving the bird figure — as in "desconocido" (unknown). -90- Although the Biblical connections in Altazor have been established and explored in such works as Wood's The Creacionismo of Vicente Hu i dobro. they prove unhelpful in explaining the nightingale/swallow progressions of Canto IV, Neither the Hayden Bible Dictionary nor Eadie's New and Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures on the Basis of Cruden makes any entry under the heading "nightingale" and although both attend to "swallow" this is effected in terms either of its pairing with "crane" (Eadie 470) or in terms which lack signifi• cance in the present context (Bible Dictionary 599-600 ). Classical sources produce a better reading. The swallow/ nightingale paradigm is found in the story of Procne and Philomela. The prime source for the tale is Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VI) in which we learn that Procne and Philomela are Athenian princesses and sisters. Tereus marries the former and rapes the latter, cutting out her tongue so that she cannot tell of the circumstances of the rape. However, Philomela weaves a message which details the event into some cloth which she sends to her sister, Procne. In vengeance the two sisters kill Itys, the infant son of Procne (or, in the Roman versions of the tale, of Philomela), and serve the flesh of the son, Itys, to his father, Tereus. When Tereus then pursues the sisters he is changed by the gods into a hop vine and the sisters are changed into swallow and nightingale (in Spanish, "golondrina" and "rosiflol" or "ruiseftor" respectively). Interestingly, both combinations — that is, Procne and Philomela as either swallow or nightingale — are available in the -91- various versions of the story extant.{11} In the context of transmutative shape-changing or metamorphosis, as outlined in relation to the bird/poet/magician/Christ figure Aitazor, the swallow/nightingale progressions of Canto IV of Altazor are significant less in terms of source-influence study than as a kind of intertextuality. The intertext here, which is best examined in terms of the elaboration on the mythic level of the patterns (or, in other words, the mechanics of semiosis which occur at the level of the word), is composed of scalar modulation (in the sol-fa of the "rosifiol" passage) and word-splicing (in the associative cluster of the "golondrina" passage). Thus theme or content is paralleled in these two formal constructs, both of which admit of description in terms of shape-changing, metamorphosis. The key formulation of the bird paradigm (whether considered at the intra- or extradiegetic level) and of the poem as a whole is found in the figure Aitazor itself. "[Sloy pajaro... / el unico cantor" (V 432-40; I am [the] bird... / the only [one, sole] singer), we read. In this figure the author ("Vicente"), poet (as lyric persona), magician (whose power derives, as we have seen, from the word — "Prefacio," B0>, and changeling bird (among other animal forms) all intersect through the intercession of "La pura palabra y nada mas" (III 145; the pure word and nothing more). The figure of Aitazor, then, is what Lotman terms the "archiseme" of the poem,{12} a concept more useful here than Riffaterre's -92- "hypogram" (although similar to it) because the concentration in archiseme is on the structural primacy of the figure rather than on the interpreted message of the whole. In the case of Huidobro's poem, message must always encompass an extremely high degree of ambivalence and ambiguity, factors with which Riffaterre deals in his Semiotics of Poetry only in so far as he is able to reduce and resolve them. Subsuming the other generative hierarchies (for example, the bird paradigm), the Altazor figure is the apogee of hierarchy itself in the poem as a whole. Through hierarchies of equivalences, oppositions, ambivalences, and ambiguities Altazor becomes the central figure of an emblematic pattern which signifies as much in the global patterning per se as in any local instance of its expression. -93- NOTES <1> The interpretation here is given in terns of the 'vertical' reading of the scalar elements. Another reading (which reinforces the strength of the emblematic construction of the passage) is possible1 if we take the position of reading conventionally, then the "o" pervades the whole sequence (e.g., "rodohol" — with the first and third "o's" creating a ground or kind of sustained note against which the scale plays. Thus it is only in the distinctly vertical, scalar reading that the search for the ".do" needs to be conducted beyond the range of the passage. •C2) For a discussion of black humour (which, although beyond the scope of the present endeavour, is very much a facet of the Beckett and Huidobro texts discussed) see Patrick O'Neill, "The Comedy of Entropy: The Contexts of Black Humour," Canadian Review of Comparative Li terature 10.2 (1983 ) =145-B6. {3} See also Susan Stewart, Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextualitv in Folklore and Literature, who cites "contrepetterie" [sic] as a 19th century French term applied to a "form of phonemic and morphemic invers ion" (B9 ). <4> See also John Huizinga, Homo Ludens. in particular the seventh chapter, "Play and Poetry," in which the relation between mythic structures and meanings and how they contribute to the ludic element in poetry is discussed. -94- {5} Quoted in Welsh, Roots of Lyric. 14. {6} In PTL= A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (197G ):85-103 . <7> The consonant blends, although they do not support the particular patterns with which we are dealing at this point, form a strong presence. For instance, the force of the combination of f 1 occlusive and liquid in "dr.," " tr.," "br.," and "cj_" and the repetition of assonant (and identical) combinations adds to this passage a weaker version of the cohesion noted in our discussion of the "rosifiol" passage. <8> See the entry under "Nightingale" in Coiliers's Encyclopedia. <9> The references abound. The nightingale image, since it crosses so many linguistic and historical boundaries, could clearly provide the basis for a wealth of comparative study. •C10} The information for this section was drawn from Keith Whinnom's A Glossary of Spanish Bird Names. Etymologically, "ruisefior" and "rosifiol" both derive from the French "rossignol" — the "rosifiol" form is clearly a Spanish borrowing from the French, while the "ruisefior" form developed historically from the earlier (and also French) "rossinhol." {11} -For a convenient summary of the various versions of the tale, see also Welsh's translation of Van Aken's Elseviers Mvthoioqische Encvclopedie (titled, in English, The Encyclopedia of Classical Mythology ). -95- {12} Ann Shukman, in her book Literature and Semiotics: A Study of the Writings of Yu. M• Lotman describes the term as analogous to "Trubetskoy's 'archiphoneme , ' " and defines it in terms of "units that include all common elements of a lexical semantic opposition" (59). See Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry. 23, for a definition of "hypogram" and also see Starobinski, Les mots sous les mots. 46, for a discussion of "hypogramme" at its Saussurean source. -9E- 5: SCALES IN BALANCE It is just as deadly for the mind to have a system as to have none at all. So one has to make up one's mind to have both. —Friedrich Schlegel The final Canto of Huidobro's Aitazor is a patterning of vocables without the referential status of words. When it is "read" in terms of the basic scale of the poem, as demonstrated here, considered as a unit it is seen to be the culmination of a journey of the central figure, paradoxically, at a point of departure. From the fully realized tonic scale of the nightingale passage, with its emblematic integrity of signification (discussed in Chapter 2) to its chromatic counterpoint in the structuring of the fourth Canto (observed in Chapter 4), with its dodecaphonic repetition of "No hay tiempo que perder" (There's, no time to lose -- which, by undoing the double negative, has the force of "There's all time to gain") to the vestigial presence of the diatonic scale in the seven Canto divisions of the poem (also discussed in Chapter 4) — semiotic encoding in terms of musical scale is ma i nt a i ned. In contrast, Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine (the subject of the third chapter) does not repeat its scalar references to achieve a positive reinforcement of progression. Rather, it establishes -97- connections with habits of scaled or measured reference only to undercut the comparative basis on which they rest. In the Beckett work, then, the assertion of progressivity, of infinite reiteration of cyclic scale (as conveyed by Altazor ) is replaced by retrograde and inverted variants on the basic units of measurement. The differences between the use of scale in the two works are fully documented in the thesis. But what of the similarities? The key to them lies in a quality of openness common to the two works. The analysis of that quality is the work of this final chapter. Imagination Dead Imagine partakes, as we saw in Chapter 3, of the open character of the "perfect void" (11; "deserts parfaits" —55). This is initially proposed as the state of non-being when the implied interlocutor is neither at nor in the rotunda. At the end of the work, with the realization of the change in register from rotunda to speck, the empty set is achieved. Not simply achieved, however, the empty set becomes an imperative or rule of scale in an otherwise indeterminate state. What begins as a strategy to undermine closure and determination by means of various demonstrations of the perceptual relativity of whatever radix is employed, ends in the determination of a nexus of indeterminacy -- the non-ness or "Nulle part" (51) into which the implied interlocutor has been commanded. Leave them there, sweating and icy, there is -98- better elsewhere. No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere... (14) Laissez-les la, en sueur et glaces, il y a mieux ailleurs. Mais non, la vie s'acheve et non, il n'y a r-ien ailleurs... (57) With these assertions, "ailleurs," "deserts parfaits," and "Nulle part" coalesce and the identity among the three is inescapable for the "you" (exercitant, interlocutor and, at one remove, reader) who has followed the process of scale or, in other words, who has relied on a common unit as an absolute standard of measurement and manipulated that standard according to the conventions of what Beckett refers to elsewhere as "all the subtleties of rational cross-reference" ("Proust , " 81 ). The basic assumption which underlies Beckett's subversion of rational cross-reference is that a given figure remains stable in relation to a given ground.<1> By creating a figure, rotunda, against a ground, elsewhere, and then removing the figure a conceptual solution to the artistic challenge of white-on-white is attained. In his baroque way Huidobro achieves a similar end. Altazor establishes the tonic scale as the central figure of an extended complex word emblem (as defined by Daly and discussed in Chapter 2). The scale is a metonym for nightingale which, in turn, is a metonym for the man/poet/magician/Altazor. The tonic scale is set -99- against the ground of the chromatic and the chromatic against a structural echo of the tonic, producing, not an inversion or retrograde variant, but rather an alternation of the two. Alternation, together with repeating intervallic patterns, is the site of openness in Altazor. In the nightingale passage, this is observed in the pairing of opposites at the turning-point of the scale (in the vertical reading of the acrostic, the solmic "si" of "rosifiol" paired with the "no" — rather than the "do" which is anticipated — of "No hay tiempo que perder"). This same pattern is transposed to the level of the Cantos through the mediation of the key phrase, "La pura palabra y nada mas" (III 145; The pure word and nothing more). Emblematically, the word nightingale is paired with song in its widest sense, that of oral transmission. In turn, the abecedarian aspect of the solmic sign system is identified with the enumerative progressions of the counting out rhymes. These progressive, unidirectional, reiterative series are set against no ground and thus do not parallel Imagination Dead Imaqine's achievement of openness through simple figure/ground reversal. However, in Altazor a radix common to all of the interdependent sign systems is established: the units themselves and their arrangement on the scale. What the gap between "si" and "no" in the case of the solmic progression of the nightingale passage demonstrates is that between the elements in the series there are gaps and that these interstices are open sets/sites within a cycle which is otherwise -100- determined. The significance of the last Canto is that it moves beyond the habits of scale, whether in terms of the alphabet, numbers, or solmic assignations, to the "pure word" of direct oral transmission. In so doing it opens the tonic progression of the work, considered globally, at the locus of its culmination, resists the overwhelming motive force exerted by the prospect of resolution and re-initiation (leaving the system open at the penultimate element) and refuses closure. -101- NOTES {1} As Pepicello and Green have pointed out (in The Lanouaoe of Riddles: New Perspectives. 1-19 and 143-4), the relation between habit (convention) and innovation is determined by "semiotic constraints, those of some primary code (graphic, aural)." In effect, then, the problem of figure and ground occurs at the theoretical level as well as being a feature of the works we have considered. That the Huidobro and Beckett works are unconventional is a commonplace which becomes theoretically meaningful in terms of, for instance, Uspensky's notion (quoted by Pepicello and Green) that "Every work of art is conventional, for it always presupposes some norm as the background against which it is perceived." 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