Oberlin Digital Commons at Oberlin Honors Papers Student Work 1984 A Raid on the Inarticulate: The Problem of Language in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin Anthony G. Stocks Oberlin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Repository Citation Stocks, Anthony G., "A Raid on the Inarticulate: The Problem of Language in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin" (1984). Honors Papers. 633. https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors/633 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Digital Commons at Oberlin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at Oberlin. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A RAID ON rl'HE INART ICULATE : THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE IN THE POETRY OP If{. S. MERWIN And so each venture Is a new begiTh.'1.ins, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feelingp T. S. Eliot Four Quartets By Anthony G.. Stocks English nonors Essay Mr .. Friebert Mr. Hobbs 20 April 1984 For W. S. Merwin, even more than for most of the poets of his generation. a fund~~ental concern has been the very possibility of writing poetry in a world which seems inevitably heading toward apoca­ lypse. A long-time political activist, Merwin is painfully aware of the war. genocide, and uncontrolled industrialization which have poised civilization on a point between nuclear annihilation and environmental ruin, and he has often reflected on the problem of writing toward a future which may well be nonexistentc In the poem "It is March, "1 from his 1967 collection The Lice. Merwin states the problem bluntly: When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With your dirty knuckles and the wingless Bird on your shoulder What can you write This poet, contaminated by the poison of the industrial world and sporting a decidedly grounded symbol of inspiration hardly seems in a position to explain the chaos which confronts him. And yet, the speaker refuses to admit defeat, tersely declaring at the end of the poem, "Whatever I have to do has not yet begunc" Doggedly, like one of Beckett's pro- tagonists p he moves on, searching for some song of deliverance, for some affirmation which can illuminate the darkling plain of the twen­ tieth century. The odds against him are impressive, for not only has the cata­ strophic upheaval of the century endangered manos physical existence: it has called into question the full range of his spiritual values as wello Such a crisis, acute enough at a~y rate, has especially crucial implications for Merwin and other poets of his generation, for they stand to lose not only their faith in a transcendent God, or in the efficacy of human reason, but also their trust in the fundamental basis 2 of their art~ human languageo The problem is not simply one of selecting the right word or phrase to describe the seemingly indescribable. That is a question which has always bedeviled poets, and will continue to do so. It is rather a deep and pervasive mistrust of the functions which language has been called upon to discharge in Western society, its ability to "name" things, to absolutely define and distinguish one Object or concept from another; its use, given this capability, to order the world, to provide human beings with categories of experience with which to con­ struct systems of belief, be they ethical, mythic, religious, or scien­ tific; finally. its ability to communicate these names, categories, ~~d systems, both to one's contemporaries and to future generationso It is these functions which many modern poets, inspired by their century's seeming disregard for other absolute human systems, have called into question, ~~d their critiques have led them to ask whether poetry, con­ structed as it is of undependable words, can ever give a true picture of reality. They have come to a point. in the words of Alan Williamson, where language is considered "as much the enemy as the facilitator of essential creativity_"2 Merwin has proven himself especially sensitive to these problems of language and reality. Throughout his poetic career he has been an in­ defatigable translator of non-English poetry. and the experience has not only provided a unique stimUlus to his own poetic imagination, but has also convinced him that "if we take a single word of any language and try to find an exact equivalent in another, even if the second lan­ guage is akin to the first, we have to admit that it cannot be done ... J Merwin has confirmed the suggestion that such an impression could be ex­ tended to the task of translating reality into poetry in a 1981 inter­ view with Richard Jackson: J There's a sense in which language is always inadequete. We don't have to be metaphysical to see this---the cushion here. for instance, can't be named. You can call it a cushion, but that finally is no name; it does not call itself a cushion. There is that aspect of language which is always a gross ap­ proximation to the uniqueness of any perception about any experience. Language is fairly general---the color red has to apply to every red in the world when actually each red is different. The more you use language imaginatively. the more you try to describe what's unique about s~mething. the more you realize the inadequecies of languageo Later in the interview, in fact, Merwin draws a fascinating parallel between the arrogant egocentricity of twentieth century man and the ab- solute use of language: ,'1 Ruman. ari170garlce cextendslintoLl8.Flgui3:g~. ·'as \though we thought the naming of things were actually a SUbstitute for things themselves ••• 5 In Merwin's view, the same self-righteous belief in our own superiority which has caused us to slaughter one another wholesale and despoil the earth of its riches also informs our insistence on nailing down reality with the rigid and inadequete medium of languageo Yet for all his doubts as to the efficacy of language, Merwin, like the intrepid survivor of "It is March," refuses to despair at the pro- spect of creating poetrye In a career distinguished for the variety and tenacity of its poetic efforts, Merwin has striven to discover a viable aesthetic for his apocalyptic era. For over two decades p he has pains­ takingly explored the possibilities of language, searching for a means of expression Which will bridge the gap between the self and the world without diminishing the essential mysteriousness or "otherness" of re- ali ty, the "unnameable aspect" of things which Merwin believes is their "real source.,,6 To capture experience while avoiding the arrogance of rigid definition is Merwin's avowed goal in attempting to redisco'Ter what he has referred to as the "great language." In his polemic "Notes for a Preface," the poet has defined this ideal as' 4 Not a particular mode of poetry, but the great language itself, the vernacular of the imagination, that at one time was common to men. It is a tongue that is loosed in the service of immedi­ ate recognitions, and that in itself would make it foreign in our periodD For it conveys something of the unsoundable quality of experience and the hearing of it is a private matter, in an age in which the person and his senses are being lost in the consumer, who does not know what he sees. hears,:wants, or +s afraid oft until the voice of the institution has told himo Implicit in such a language is a mythic resonance which will not only illuminate the lives of men and women, but will somehow reintegrate hum~~ kind into the natural (and supernatural) world from which its insufferable superiority has separated it. It is an epiphany which is beautifully descri bed at the end of Merwin's short poem ItSpring; II everything in the world has been lost and lost but soon we will find it again 8 ~~d understand what it told us when we loved it In this paper, I hope to examine MerWin's ultimate~y successful quest for such a languagerand such a myth. Beginning with a brief de­ scription of his early work, in which the problem of language becomes a seemingly insuperable barrier to an understanding of the world. I wish to demons;ta'Fe"'" his gradual evolution of a poetic voice which is both contemporary and universal. Of course, a study of this length will inevitably be marred by a certain amount of over-generalization and simplification. Merwin's struggle with language has been a long and arduous one t and he has explored many byways one ;the ·,,;journey which we will simply not be able to investigate. However, I trust that this sum­ mary of the major stages of Merwin's poetic development, with a special concentration on the poems which mark its fruition, will provide a co­ gent introduction to his response to the unique poetic problems of his to time, as well as offer some insights asAthe achievement of his work. 5 The problem of language is already strikingly apparentiin,:}'aeX'Witl ',s first book of verse, A Mask for Janus, selected by Wo He Auden for publi­ cation in the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1952. The theme is imme­ diately broached by the book's epigraph, taken from John Hall Wheelock: Habit is evil.