Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955. Kenneth Burke
the motives in the social situation itself, but was an “idealization” of them? There would, of course, be certain superficial signs about, to give the character plausibility. But the main function of the character would derive not from a corresponding “documentary” reality, but rather from the ingratiating triviality of the distortion.
In the Poetics there are several passing references to the appeal of “wonder” in the imitations of tragedy, and we shall revert to the theme when we come to that term. Meanwhile, we should note this “complicating factor”: Once the resources of imitation have been systematically exploited by a priesthood, imitations can be endowed with a magical power not present in the things imitated. Hofmannsthal tells of a tribe that fears neither man nor tiger, but the tribesmen are paralyzed with terror when a priest dances before them wearing a tiger pelt. And we know of a child who awoke in the night, shrieking, from the dream of a snake. Yet the next day he placidly bathed in a pool while a water snake lay on a branch nearby. His mother asked him: “Why aren’t you worried about this snake, when you were so afraid of the snake you dreamed about last night?” And he answered: “This one is real.” There is a magic in imitations, that probably draws in part upon the magic of dreams (which a priesthood can interweave with the magic of class). Such considerations lead us to the “hierarchal” motives that lurk in the entelechy (touching upon it as “enigmatic,” containing the mystery and magic, the “wonder,” of class relationships).
From our point of view, however, the Poetics, beneath its essayistic facade, would in this regard be itself a kind of “dramatic analysis,” with the terms of a single tension being so broken apart that they can curatively or cathartically operate upon one another like characters in a play. Thus the wonder in entelechial imitation is not explicitly said to be a part of it, but is broken off, treated as an independent term, existing in its own right, its secret relation to its partner-term being revealed not by explicit tracing of the relationship between them, but by the fact that they appear in the same context (apparently related only by “and”: there is imitation and there is wonder).
But, just as previously our doubts about the “scientist” grounding of a character led us into rhetoric in the superficial sense, here we touch upon rhetoric in the profoundest sense. Or rather, we come upon the centre, where rhetoric and poetic coalesce, where the intrinsic radiance of an aesthetic object has social implications in its very essence. And as we have said before, we are unable to maintain our vision steadily, where this moment is concerned. Here is the point where the divinity of the ultimate ground merges deceptively with the pseudo-divinity of class relationships. We have claimed that “naturalism” but reproduces, more self-protectively (from the standpoint of “scientist” norms), the deceptions of “supernaturalism” (insofar as “supernaturalism” can be a disguise for temporal interests in terms of the eternal, a shift that Hobbes would call “making men see double”). If we are right, then Aristotle’s stress upon “nature” as the grounding for men’s delight in imitation should secretly contain such a “drama” as we have here caught glimpses of.
Conversely, we can catch glimpses of an entelechial grammar behind the pathos of John, XIX, 30: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished”; consummatum est; es ist vollbracht; the Greek text has Tetelestai, a verb perfect passive in form, that contains the telos of “entelechy,” to designate an “end,” not just as a dying or desisting, but rather as a purpose, now at last fulfilled.
Accent 12.4 (August 1952): 229–41. © The Kenneth Burke Literary Trust. Used by permission.
Both of these citations are from Dramatic Essays of the Neoclassic Age, edited by Henry Hitch Adams and Baxter Hathaway.
2 Three Definitions 4
The first of the definitions to be offered here is the broadest. It concerns “the lyric” in general. The second will deal with “the Platonic dialogue,” considered as a literary species. It is built around the examination of Plato’s dialogues alone: but because the form has been so often followed to varying degrees by other writers, the definition bears upon a field much wider than the works of Plato on which it was based. The third will be the narrowest. It was designed solely to provide a formula for Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This single work was considered somewhat “angelically,” as a kind all by itself. (We say “angelically,” thinking of Aquinas’s doctrine that each individual angel is a distinct species, and the only member of its kind.) But though we treat the work as sui generis, we necessarily define it in terms of some classification. Tentatively, we propose “lyric novel” as the generic name for this work, considered as a species. The prototype of such definition is Aristotle’s formula for tragedy, in the Poetics (Bywater translation).
A tragedy, then is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Here by “language with pleasurable accessories” I mean that with rhythm and harmony or song superadded; and by “the kinds separately” I mean that some portions are worked out with verse only, and others in turn with song.
I. The “Lyric”
Definition:
A short complete poem, elevated or intense in thought and sentiment, expressing and evoking a unified attitude towards a momentous situation more or less explicitly implied—in diction harmonious and rhythmical, often but not necessarily rhymed—the structure lending itself readily to a musical accompaniment strongly repetitive in quality; the gratification of the whole residing in the nature of the work as an ordered summation of emotional experience otherwise fragmentary, inarticulate, and unsimplified.
Comments:
“A short, complete poem.” Insofar as a fragment of a larger work can be excerpted and offered as a lyric, it must meet these tests of brevity and completeness, to be a perfect lyric. Lyrics can, however, have a function over and above their completeness. Thus, recall Aristotle’s observation that the earlier writers of tragedy used choral songs as integral parts of the action, whereas later these became merely intercalary pieces, having no more to do with the plot of one play than of another.
“Elevated or intense.” “Intense” because even a mood of sullenness or vindictiveness would be a fit subject for a lyric. Sometimes maybe even “dense” would be the word, or “condensed.” Maybe “dense” would serve to cover both “elevated” and “intense.”
“Thought and sentiment.” The contemporary stress upon the purely sensory nature of the lyric image makes this part of the formula look a bit quaint? But let’s recover the whole process here by disclosing the “sentiments” implicit in the “sensations,” and the “thoughts” implicit in the “sentiments.” True, in one poet’s poem of a few lines, such a search may be tenuous, or the findings hard to establish beyond question. But if the critic can gauge the particular poet’s language by the study of other poems by the same poet using the same terms, an entire “philosophy” can be evolved.
“Expressing and evoking.” We might bring the two steps together in the one word “communicating.” But the lyric, at least the subjective lyric, in contrast with the drama, tends to be first an outcry, and second a persuasion. Hence, our preference for splitting into two aspects the single use of a communicative medium.
“A unified attitude.” The “lyric attitude,” as vs. the “dramatic act.” Attitude as gesture, as posture. Think of it in the most plastic sense. As with the statue of a man on horseback, being heroic, in a public park (the scene integral to the gesture and posture not being there at all). Strictly speaking, an attitude is by its very nature “unified.” Even an attitude of hesitancy or internal division is “unified” in the formal sense, if the work in its entirety rounds out precisely that.
Attitude “towards a momentous situation.” Are we being too tricky