Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955. Kenneth Burke
of the scene in which Heyst has his first fatal meeting with Lena:
The Zangiacomo hand was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvellous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger or fear.
Particularly we note such a moment because it characterizes a “first,” the time when Heyst and Lena first meet. And we later see that it “astrologically” foretold the quality of the action that would eventuate from this meeting. Such “foreshadowing” is standard. But when we extend the same principle for subtler inquiry, we are admonished to make a special noting of all first appearances (if only noting no more than the page number, on the possibility that a later survey of all these moments might reveal internal terministic consistencies not originally perceived).
In particular, one should note expressions marking secrecy, privacy, mystery, marvel, power, silence, guilt. Such terms are likely to point in the direction of central concerns in all cultures. Here also we might include terms for order, since the pyramidal nature of order brings us close to relations of “superiority” and “inferiority,” with the many kinds of tension “natural” to social inequality. Such observations lead us in turn to watch for the particular devices whereby the given work “states a policy” with regard to a society’s typical “problems.” Here we seek hints for characterizing the work as a “strategy.”
In general, we proceed by having in mind four “pyramids” or “hierarchies”: (1) the pyramid of language, which allows for a Platonist climb from particulars toward “higher orders of generalization”; (2) the social pyramid, with its more or less clearly defined ladder of classes and distinctions; (3) the “natural” or “physical” pyramid (headed in such perspectives as the Darwinian genealogy); (4) the “spiritual” pyramid (“celestial” or “supernatural”). The social and linguistic pyramids are “naturally” interwoven, we take it, as language is a social product. And since the empirically linguistic is properly our center of reference when analyzing secular literary texts, we watch for ways whereby the “natural” and “supernatural” pyramids more or less clearly reflect the structure of the sociolinguistic pair.
In so doing, we do not necessarily deny that there are “natural” or “supernatural” orders, existing in their own right. We merely note that both, the one “beneath” ideas, the other “above” ideas, will necessarily be expressed in terms that reflect the ideological structures indigenous to the social and linguistic orders. In this sense, both “natural” and “supernatural” may be analyzable as sociolinguistic “pageantry” (by which we refer to the communicative ways, the cults of parade, exhibition, or appeal, that typify man as the typically symbol-using animal).
As all this adds up to what we might call the “hierarchal psychosis,” we ask how such a psychosis might be undergoing a “cure,” or “purge,” within the terms of the given work, considered as a terminology. We can expect many variants of such symbolic cure; for man, as the typically symbol-using species, is naturally rich in such resources. So our thoughts about hierarchal tension lead us to watch for modes of catharsis, or of transcendence, that may offer a symbolic solution within the given symbol-system of the particular work we are analyzing.
We are even willing to look for ways whereby the artistic strategy that is a “solution” may serve to reestablish the very tension it is resolving. Or, if that way of stating the case seems too ironic, let us watch at least for cathartic devices whereby a rising (as seen from one angle) is a fall (as seen from another), whereby, lo! a “fall” can be a “rise.” The possibility is of great importance in the case of the Portrait, the “factual” analysis of which explicitly depicts a fall in terms of a soaring above. Note, in particular, this passage (p. 125):
He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard; and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen, still unfallen, but about to fall.
Recall that this passage marks, almost “sloganistically,” the step intermediate between Stephen’s rejection of the religious vocation and his ecstatic vision of the bird-girl who stands imaginally for his artistic vocation.
We could here add other such rules of thumb, involving questions that require us to write over again, in this one essay, the Motivorum books on which we have been for some time engaged. But we finally hit upon one basic principle that might cut across all such a gatherum omnium, and might be argued for even if the reader did not agree with anything we have said up to this point. It is based upon an “entelechial” mode of thought. And we consider it in our next section.
4
By the “entelechial” test, we have in mind this principle: look for moments at which, in your opinion, the work comes to fruition. Imbue yourself with the terminology of these moments. And spin from them. Thus, at the very least, you would have the “epiphany” near the end of Chapter IV to guide you:
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