Abstract
Though poetic techniques of repetition, circularity, and elision, this text, a lightly-edited script of the lecture delivered for The Comparison Project, is intended to trouble linguistic description and its limits through performative methods while also discussing concepts of linguistic description and its limits, particularly as they relate to poetry and reference. If the word “ineffable” is taken to refer to that which cannot be described, and if we accept that what is considered an adequate description varies based on the discipline asking the question, there is a way in which the determination of adequacy for description is pre-determined by the rules of what is deemed an appropriate mode of description for that inquiry. Even a single word, for some, can be considered a description. Even before Wittgenstein’s famous take on language games became influential among poets for its perspective on this problem, certain poets were exploring—through their use of language (including usage that might be taken to indicate a tenuous or tentative relationship between word and referent) as well as through their comments on the possibilities of language—the limits of language’s ability to describe at all, using words to create a new description while also troubling the concept that words can adequately describe. That is, because the rules of adequate description for poetry offer possibilities that other types of description do not, some poets and poems pose, through certain poetic techniques, a challenge to the notion of description, in spite of each poem’s utter dependence on it.
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Notes
- 1.
Editors’ note: See Proposition 7 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 2007).
- 2.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.v. “literally.”
- 3.
Emily Dickinson’s “I stepped from plank to plank.” Despite the obvious inferior pedigree (and quality) of this posthumously edited version of the poem, as well as the other Dickinson poems here, Dickinson’s questioning of language itself remains. She explicitly (a) asks the reader to substitute one word for another in a way that is not simply metaphorical but calls attention to that linguistic maneuver within the poem (gait/experience), (b) interrogates words with themselves and therefore implicitly questions their referents and their abilities to refer (sign/assign and see/see), and (c) calls into question the relationship of interpretive meaning to physical world—and, in doing so, asks not just about the relationship of syllable to sound but also of both of these to sense. Due to a contract dispute regarding territory and longevity between Harvard University Press, the holder of the copyright of the preferred versions of the Dickinson poems reprinted here, and Springer, the publisher of this book, I am using versions of these poems that have entered the public domain, accessible here: http://www.bartleby.com/br/113.html and originally from The complete poems of Emily Dickinson, with an introduction by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company, Copyright ©1924. While the editing has stripped from the poems some of Dickinson’s challenging of the language (particularly her punctuation and, more importantly, her capitalization), it is striking that, even with the over-reach of the well-intentioned but mis-apprehending posthumous editorial control, Dickinson’s inquiries into language’s relationship to the world remain (Dickinson 1998).
- 4.
Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” See note 3 for more information.
- 5.
Emily Dickinson’s “The brain is wider than the sky.” See note 3 for more information.
- 6.
Why 1953?—In order to show that the uses of language referenced here precede the publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (which was tremendously influential not only in philosophy but also in poetry) and therefore not influenced by it. Although this is not essential to my (oblique) argument that poetic language both refers and troubles fixed reference, it does demonstrate that such use is a practice core to these canonical works rather than the effect of the influence of Wittgenstein’s Investigations (Wittgenstein 2009).
- 7.
The first stanza of William Blake’s “The Tyger,” which was first published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience (and therefore is in the public domain).
- 8.
Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man,” which was first published in 1921 (and therefore is in the public domain).
- 9.
Wallace Stevens’s “Of the Surface of Things,” which was first published in 1919 (and therefore is in the public domain).
- 10.
The seventh stanza of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” which was first published in 1917 (and therefore is in the public domain).
References
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Dickinson, Emily. 1924. The complete poems of Emily Dickinson, with an introduction by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.
———. 1998. In The poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum edition, ed. Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
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———. 1919. Of the surface of things. Poetry 15 (1): 8–9.
———. 1921. The snow man. Poetry 19 (1): 4–5.
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———. (1953) 2009. Philosophical investigations. Trans. G. E. Anscombe, E. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
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Janke, C. (2017). Using a Net to Catch the Air: Poetry, Ineffability, and Small Stones in the Shoe: A Lecturish. In: Knepper, T., Kalmanson, L. (eds) Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion. Comparative Philosophy of Religion, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64165-2_10
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