[lit-ideas] Deliberate Ambiguities of the Poets (Was: Nowell-Smith, Austin, Grice
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:03:09 EDT
Thanks to R. Paul for his comments.
We are discussing the sonnet by Donne:
(1) At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels.
which Grice quotes Nowell-Smith as quoting it "from the round earth's
imagined corners.Angels your trumpets blow" -- and which, at one of those
"puritanical" as I call them -- for who wants to be in Oxford on a Saturday
morning
when "Life begins at Oxford Circus"? --, 'Saturday mornings' when the "Play
Group" was discussing, "understandable" versus "non-understandable" English.
I agree with R. Paul that Donne's "numberless infinities" "prefigures"
Cantor, or foreshadows him, being an 'imagined redundancy' that Cantor solved
for
us all -- by noting that infinites, for the ignoramus, can be 'numberless' and
'numberful' (aleph and non aleph).
Now, Austin, who did care for a rhyme, so I'm happy R. Paul pointed out the
real verse sequence for me -- "Rhyme or reason?" --, rephrased Donne's
sentence so to render it _unambiguous_ or 'understandable' as:
(2) At what persons less cautions than I would describe as the round earth's
four corners blow your trumpets, angels.
-- I grant Austin's paraphrasis is more idiomatic, but it _does_ involve
some syntactical trick or another.
I don't find Donne particularly _cautious_ (if a poet can be said to claim
to be so)...
The thing reminds me of one of the other few examples from Literature cited
by Grice. It's this time William Blake:
(3) I sought to tell my love, love that never told can be
(Studies in the Way of Words, p. 35).
This, Grice says, flouts the 'rule', 'avoid ambiguity' (as perhaps Donne's
line flouts, 'be perspicuous', avoid obscurity of expression, but I think
Donne's case is more serious)
So he proposes the rephrase in syntactic terms that make sense. (3) may be
read either as
(4) I sought to tell my love, love that _told_ can never _exist_.
or
(5) I sought to tell my love, love that can never exist if told.
Grice is not sure which 'interpretant' is more obvious, and he thinks this
is a good point about poetry (and literature in general).
"Partly because of the sophistication [sophisticallisation?] of the poet and
partly because of internal evidence [I'm never happy with that phrase.
Inside the pages? JLS] (that the ambiguity is kept up), there seems to be no
alternative to supposing that the ambiguities are deliberate and that the poet
is
conveying both what he would be saying if one interpretation were intended
rather than the other, and vice versa" (p. 35).
I love his 'vice versa'.
In any case, back to Donne:
(1) At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels.
or in its more 'understandable' rewrite ("It is perfectly clear what it
means")
(2) At what persons less cautions than I would describe as the round earth's
four corners blow your trumpets, angels.
I would argue there is a similar intended ambiguity by Donne. He is saying
that people are usually not cautious, that they assume that if I say 'corner'
it means _four_ -- but surely Austin should know the ditty, "My heart has got
_three_ corners --, and that the Glory of God is always to be celebrated.
There's a further complication with 'imagine' in what Grice discovered under
Wittgenstein's hasty judgment that we don't say things like "A horse looks
like a horse".
While the 'implication' (or 'implicature') of 'imagine' and 'imagined' as in
'imagined corners' is that they are _falsely_ imagined, this is surely
something that one, to use again Grice's parlance, can _disimplicate_ on
occasion.
However, one may claim that one _cannot_ disimplicate that, since while it
is possible for a hat to have _three_ corners (and be, granted, 'funny') it is
more difficult to 'imagine' the ROUND earth as having corners, let alone
three or four.
So while Grice can safely say about Blake, "the poet is conveying both what
he would be saying if one interpretation were intended rather than the other,
and vice versa; though no doubt the poet is NOT EXPLICITLY saying any of
these things but only conveying or suggesting them (cf. 'Since she [Nature]
pricked thee out for women's pleasure, mine be thy love, and thy love's use
their
treasure" (p. 36), it's less safe to ascribe anything like that to Donne.
Geary, who translated the Donne sonnets to Mediaeval Latin, may be of help
here -- or maybe not.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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