Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955. Kenneth Burke
the tyrant. The form thus aims not only to infuse the many with a principle of oneness, but to specify conditions that correspond to different stages of remoteness from the one (absolute being).
“Myths [. . .] introduced as illustrations” are merely “rational” aids to vivid exposition, like anecdotes. “Myths [. . .] as the basis of a new motive that will pervade the disparate matter and infuse it with a common spirit” are of a different sort. They serve to introduce an ironic image that lifts the dialogue into a higher dimension—and thereafter, things in the lower dimensions are seen in the light of this new vision. We might add here: The vision is wondrous, and designed to evoke by wonder the assent of reverence. (In the Theaetetus, several new starts are contrived, not by the introduction of a full-fledged myth, but by a new metaphor or analogy, that sets up a new perspective, or angle of vision, a series of veerings, with an effect of high comedy inasmuch as Socrates gets complete assent at each stage, before professing himself dissatisfied, stirring things up again, and dragging us away to a new search.)
“A kind of catharsis is got, by refutation of error, and by transcendence.” They are not quite the same. The constant refuting of errors (and its corresponding method: the clarifying of ambiguities) provides the same formal satisfaction as one might get by removing rubbish or by putting scattered papers in order. But the “transcendence” is more positive, involving a kind of “Kierkegaardian leap,” as with the new motive introduced by a mythic image, and the subsequent perceiving of this motive, however faintly, in all things that were, prior to its introduction, viewed without reference to it. (In its way the form fulfills the Gide-Stein ideal of a form that reveals the stages of its development into a form.)
Perhaps we should distinguish introduction, transitions, epilogue and “stages.” Perhaps these would correspond to the “quantitative parts” of tragedy, discussed in Chapter XII of the Poetics. By the “stages” we mean the successive levels of the dialogue, treated as stations of a journey, or as steps in an initiation. On that, more later.
III. The Joyce Portrait
Definition:
A serious prose narrative, imitating an agent’s spiritual, adventures, in the development of a new attitude, with its corresponding doctrine; it employs an intense, elevated, or otherwise exceptional diction (involving a principle of selectivity that makes it representative in the culminative sense rather than as tested by statistical averages); the unity of action centers in the unity of the main character, whose transformations coincide with the stages of the plot; like the lyric proper, it places great reliance upon sensory images, not merely for purposes of vividness (enargeia) but to serve structural ends (the images thus taking on “mythic” dimensions that transcend their specifically sensory significance); the seriousness of the agent and the magnitude of his trials serve to dignify the development towards which the work is directed.
Comments:
“A serious prose narrative.” Some readers have shown an inclination to overrate the possibility that Joyce would have us “discount” Stephen. The work as a whole is complexly motivated; for instance, Lynch’s “sulphuryellow” remarks to Stephen, while Stephen is explaining his ars poetica, should be taken as an integral part of the motivation, not merely as an irrelevant heckling. But we would not thereby conclude that the reader similarly is to “heckle” Stephen. Stephen is naive and excessive, but his trials are to be viewed sympathetically. Even though we are not intended to take the hell-fire sermon as seriously as he did, we are intended to feel that Stephen’s agitation was quite “proper” to his condition. Even though we may partly smile, we take each stage of his development “seriously.”
“Imitating an agent’s spiritual adventures.” Not the adventures of a Jason or an Odysseus—but in the order of meditation, scruples, “change of heart.” (Nor is Joyce’s Ulysses the adventures of an Odysseus.)
“In the development of a new attitude.” Perhaps most would prefer “vision” to “attitude.” (Should we also seek to include here the fact that the work as a whole gains unity in terms of the central agent’s sensibility and development?)
“With its corresponding doctrine.” It is surprising how many analysts, even when asked to discuss the over-all stages in the development of this work, will omit the “catechism,” the doctrinal equivalent of Stephen’s shift from religious to aesthetic vocation. (Here is the respect in which this “lyric novel” overlaps upon another species, an Erziehungsroman like Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. Ironically, though Joyce became a symbol of pure aestheticism, his novel is a plea for certain artistic policies.)
“Involving a principle of selectivity that makes it ‘representative’ in the culminative sense rather than as tested by statistical averages.” Stephen is not “representative” in the “statistical” sense. He is a rarity. But many modern writers have in one way or another adapted religious coordinates to aesthetic ends. And Joyce imagines such a course “to perfection.” This is what we mean by its “culminative” nature.
“The images may accordingly take on ‘mythic’ dimensions that transcend their specifically sensory significance.” We have in mind here the development that Joyce called an “epiphany.” Our remarks on the Platonic dialogue would indicate respects in which the Joycean form paralleled Plato’s use of the “mythic image” for the figuring of a new motivational dimension. Insofar as the bathing girl stands for Stephen’s new vocation, she is a “mythic” image, as distinct from a purely “sensory” image. She is “enigmatic,” or “emblematic” of the motives that transcend her meaning as a “natural object.”
“The seriousness of the agent and the magnitude of his trials serve to dignify the development towards which the work is directed.” Elsewhere we have offered four ways of subdividing the idea of tragedy: (1) Tragedy as a species (as with Aristotle’s definition of one particular kind of tragedy; a different kind of definition would be needed for, say, Cornelian tragedy); (2) the “tragic rhythm” (the progression from action, through passion, to learning); (3) the “tragic spirit” (the general cult of “mortification” or “resignation”; an ultimate or “cumulative” expression of social repressions voluntarily enacted by the self upon the self, in response to problems of private property in the social order); (4) “tragedy as a rhetorical device, as a means of dignification” (arguing for a cause by depicting a serious person who is willing to sacrifice himself in its behalf; the device has somewhat Satanistic aspects here, as with the heroics of Stephen’s willingness to consider the possibility that eternal damnation might result from his aesthetic “pride”).
IV “Stages”
Consider Chapter XII in the Poetics, the listing of a tragedy’s “quantitative” parts (Prologue, Episode, Exode, Parode, Stasimon, Commos). Here we touch upon the dialectic of “stages.” But Aristotle was so eager to disassociate himself from the Platonist dialectic in general, and to establish a purely secular analysis of tragic “pleasure” (despite its vestiges of ritual “cure”) his treatment here is quite perfunctory. The feeling for the “stages” of a development is slighted.
Our biggest loss here is unquestionably in Aristotle’s unconcern with the trilogy as a form. His analysis of tragedy centers about individual works considered as separate units. Yet what of trilogies like Aeschylus’s Oresteia, where each play carries the over-all development one step farther? (And, of course, if we had the material, we might further extend our theories of form until we also treated the contrasted fourth drama, the final burlesque or “satyr-play,” as an integral part of the playwright’s statement in its entirety.)
Modern anthropologists have supplied information and speculations that enable us to bring Chapter XII to life. (See George Thomson’s Aeschylus and Athens, p. 192, for a chart suggesting how the “quantitative parts” of tragedy developed from patterns of religious ritual. Similarly, this Marxist-tempered variant of the Hegelian dialectic serves well for throwing light upon the trilogy as a form. Such considerations are directed two ways. First, the three stages of the only surviving trilogy are analyzed; next, a similar logic of the parts is assumed, in reasoned guesses as to the likely developments in the Prometheus trilogy, of which only the first play survives, though fragments