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Writing in Scale Huidobro's Altazor and Beckett's

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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' <Programme in Comparative Literature) 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..
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