Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax
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Perrine writes: Literature, then, exists to communicate significant experience--significant because it is concentrated and organized. Its function is not to tell us about experience but to allow us imaginatively to participate in it. It is a means of allowing us, through the imagination, to live more fully, more deeply, more richly, and with greater awareness.3
account for the kalogenetic synaesthesia of poetry from the perspective of recent physiological studies of the brain. The ability of poetry to activate the right hemisphere of the brain via its metrical variations, musical patterns and pictorial imagery is one way to explain its alluring power. Thus, poetry allows the mind to function wholistically, which is one reason why poetry ____________________
1953), pp. xi-xii. Cf. John D. Hemmingsen, "An Introduction to Hebrew Poetic Structure and Stylistic Techniques" (Th.M. thesis, Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1979), pp. 1-2.
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980), p. 7, quoting from As You Like It 3.3.20.
World, Inc., 1969), p. 5. is able to trigger the emotive and memory processes.1 This may explain why poetry is didactically employed in so many cultures. From a linguistic perspective, poetry is described by Jakobson as projecting "the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection [a paradigmatic axis] into the axis of combination [a syntagmatic axis]."2 O'Connor develops the potentiality of this statement. He notes that the abstractness of this approach--rather than demeaning meaning in favor of a reductionistic, phonetic analysis--allows for an inclusion of syntactic, semantic, as well as phonetic (meter, rhyme, and alliteration inter alia) equivalences.3 Poetry differs from prose in its symmetry, its regularity, and its repeated patterns. The equivalent [paradigmatic] units, from any linguistic ____________________ 1Frederick Turner and Ernst Poppel, "The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, The Brain, and Time," Poetry 142 (1983):289-306.
Levin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 303. Cf. P. Kiparsky, "The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry," in Language as a Human Problem, ed. E. Haugen and M. Bloomfield (New York: Norton, 1974), p. 235 and S. R. Levin, Linguistic Structures in Poetry (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1964), p. 30.
The Linguistic Study of Verse," in Exceptional Language and Linguistics, ed. L. Obler and L. Menn, (New York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 146-48, 151-52. Cf. Olga Akhmanova, Linguostylistics: Theory and Method (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), pp. 11-17. plane, may be mapped syntagmatically onto the line.1 Thus there are recurring elements of poetic sameness2 which produce expectancy and the feeling of isomorphic symmetry, while at the same time there are variational features which, by their very non-conformity, heighten delight. If one will attempt to come to grips with the poetic mode of expression, there must be a careful monitoring of the elements of sameness and the variational techniques which the poet employs. Form and meaning are inextricably bound together in poetry. Alonso-Schokel observes that "The literary work is a revealing of meaning, and not a concealing of meaning, through the artifice of form."3 Further, he ____________________ 1Interestingly enough, T. H. Robinson (The Poetry of the Old Testament [London: Duckworth, 1947], p. 20) observes this pattern, but develops it only on the semantic level. He notes how this patterning causes a sense of "expectancy," which is satisfied by the repetition or recurrence of conceptual units. Vid. his "Basic Principles of Hebrew Poetic Form," in Festschrift Alfred Bertholet zum 80. Gerburtstag, ed. W. Baumgartner et al. (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1950), p. 439. 2R. Jakobson, "Grammatical Parallelism and its Russian Facet," Language 42 (1966):399. Here Jakobson notes the root meanings of oratio prosa as "speech turned straightforward" and versus as "return." Cf. J. Lotz, "Elements of Versification," in Versification: Major
Language Association, 1972), pp. 1, 6. 3A. Alonso-Schokel, "Hermeneutical Problems of a Literary Study of the Bible," VTSup 28 (1975), p. 10. This writer views the work being done in rhetorical criticism as a delightful movement beyond destructive literary criticism, and even beyond form criticism, which has been so helpful in Psalmic studies. Cf. Alonso-Schokel, poignantly points out that the religious nature of the Old Testament text does not negate the fact that it is literature.1 What is sought after here is neither a dead formalism after sacrificing the literary beauty of Hebrew poetics on the altar of scientific, linguistic empiricism, nor a degeneration into sloppy "aestheticism." Rather the goal is to scrutinize the linguistic phenomena and the aesthetic ornamentation, both of which are fundamental in establishing the meaning of a text. It is only through form that one can attain meaning. Thus, to observe the ____________________
J. Muilenburg, "Form Criticism and Beyond," JBL 89 (1969):1-18; J. J. Jackson and M. Kessler, Rhetorical
Pittsburgh theological monograph series, 1 (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1974); M. Kessler, "A Methodological Setting for Rhetorical Crirticism," Semitics 4 (1974):22-36; M. Kessler, "Rhetoric in Jeremiah 50 and 51," Semitics 3 (1973):18-35 (who develops anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis and consonantal and vocalic patterns in Jer 50 and 51). M. Kessler, "A Methodological Setting for Rhetorical Criticism," in Art and Meaning: Rhetoric
Supplement, Series 19, 1982), pp. 1-19; and David Greenwood, "Rhetorical Criticism and Formgeschichte: Some Methodological Considerations," JBL 89 (1970):418-26. O'Connor (Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 10) properly objects to Alonso-Schokel's suggestion that analysis may begin on a "styleme" level. Rather, O'Connor desires to seat stylistics and rhetorical criticism on a grammatical foundation.
Literary Study of the Bible," pp. 8, 13. Stek with more acerbity, finds fault in the training of many, which focuses on language, history, and theology, with little time for the aesthetic aspect of Old Testament literature (J. H. Stek, "The Stylistics of Hebrew Poetry: A (Re)New(ed) Focus of Study," Calvin Theological Journal 9 [1974]:15). form more carefully leads to a more perceptive understanding of the meaning. That forms are not irrelevant is demonstrated by the fact that the inspired prophets and poets took the care to communicate God's words in poetic Gestalten and God Himself addresses His people in well-composed verse.1 In Ecclesiastes, the sage also described his attentiveness to such matters when he wrote:
knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true (Eccl 12:9-10). Gevirtz cites an interesting example, from Amarna, of Jerusalem's IR-Hepa, who requested that the scribe "tell it to the king [Pharaoh] in good (i.e., eloquent) words."2 Poetic form, as language in general, is hierarchical. The hierarchies may be seen on three planes: phonological, syntactic, and semantic. Each of these planes also has a hierarchy of its own.3 In ____________________ 1H. Kosmala puts it very well in "Form and Structure in Ancient Hebrew Poetry: (A New Approach)," VT 14 (1964):423.
of the Amarna Letters from Trye," Or 42 (1973):164. Cf. also Ezek 33:31-33.
itself, as Turner and Poppel point out ("The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time," pp. 281, 303) and has been one of the tenets of structuralist linguistics (K. Pike, Grammatical Analysis [Arlington, TX: The Summer
pitch, and juncture) which may aid in metrical analysis. One may examine phonetic patterns which activate the devices of alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme. It may be asked if the phonetic patterns of a dirge are different than that of a prayer or a hymn of praise.1 Likewise on the semantic plane the hierarchies proceed from lexical selection (word pairs, stereotyped phrases, merismus, semantic parallelism of words, repetition, catch words) to proposition (with an ____________________ Institute of Linguistics, 1982], pp. 3-4; or H. A. Gleason, Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961]), although as linguists they both are hesitant about development of the semantic hierarchy. David G. Lockwood (Introduction to Stratificational Linguistics [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972], p. 25) develops a helpful model. This writer is well aware of the developing field of pragmatics, which may also provide another very fundamental approach to language.
46-47; also his "Linguistics and Literature: Suprasegmentals and the Performance of Poetry," in The
Zitner (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1966), pp. 344-45; Raymond Chapman, Linguistics and Literature:
Arnold Pub. Ltd., 1973), p. 86; W. K. Wimsatt, "Introduction," in Versification: Major Language Types, p. xix; Percy G. Adams, "The Historical Importance of Assonance to Poets," Publications of the Modern Language
University Press, 1965), p. 25. Donald C. Freeman (Linguistics and Literary Style [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970]) gives a helpful treatment of pertinent materials (vid. p. 16f. et al. where further bibliography in this field may be located). infinite variety of, and repetitions between, semantically parallel lines) to concept and discourse (strophic patterns of theme and semantic structure, repetition).1 Finally, there is a morphological or syntactic hierarchy, which has not received proper attention until recently. The syntactic hierarchy may deal with morphological features of the word (morphological parallelism, e.g.,
variations), word order (inclusio, chiasmus, deletion-compensation techniques, and double-duty features), phrase and clause level syntax (repetition, parallelism); line level syntactic correspondences (matching [repetition]; parallelism; transformations), and discourse grammatical features.2 Collins is only partially correct when he faults biblical poetics as ____________________
the Lowth-Gray-Robinson semantic parallelism approach to Hebrew poetry, little has been done employing recent semantic theory. Stephen A. Geller's fine dissertation (Parallelism In Early Biblical Poetry, Harvard Semitic Monograph Series, vol. 20, ed. F. M. Cross [Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979]) has inchoated studies in that direction. The very term "semantics" (often referred to with disdain) is presently being given new life as some of the best linguistic minds are now turning to this last linguistic horizon, viz., the study of meaning itself. Recent advances in semantics are slowly making their way into biblical studies (vid. Moises Silva, Biblical Words
[Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983). 2The clarion call for an analysis of poetic grammar was given by R. Jakobson, in Grammatical Parallelism and its Russian Facet," pp. 399-429 and "Linguistics and Poetics," pp. 296-322. Cf. Victor Erlich, "Roman Jakobson: focusing on the semantic layer (parallelism) and the phonological patterns (meter) while ignoring the syntactic relationships.1 Rather, the semantic layer has also suffered neglect under the semantic reductionism of the Lowth-Gray-Robinson standard description approach. The study of poetics must not limit itself to merely one plane, but must isolate and examine each facet as extensively as possible and then heuristically interface and integrate each plane with the others, in attempting to view the poem as a complex whole. While such an approach may be written off as mere idealism, the tools and techniques for such a program are being refined presently by linguists, grammarians, and semanticists. ____________________ Grammar of Poetry and Poetry of Grammar," in Approaches to
Press, 1973), pp. 1-27. Jakobson was followed by Paul Kiparsky ("The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry,"
cited above have been implemented in biblical studies via four superb dissertations (O'Connor, Hebrew Verse
Approach" [Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1976]; Terence Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry: A
Institute Press, 1978]; Geller, Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry and a few articles (of particular interest are Adele Berlin, "Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism," HUCA 50 [1979]:17-43; E. L. Greenstein, "How Does Parallelism Mean?" in A Sense of Text ed. A. Berlin, S. Geller, and E. Greenstein [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983], pp. 41-70; and his "Two Variations of Grammatical Parallelism in Canaanite Poetry and Their Psycholinguistic Background," JANES 6 [1974]:87-105) which represent a syntactic approach to Hebrew poetry.
Hebrew poetry composes over one-third of the canon of the Old Testament. Nevertheless it has not been well appreciated or described. Perhaps it is because of the difficulties of translating poetic features into a receptor language which employs devices other than those of the original language1 or because of the difficulty of isolating the features of Hebrew prosody in general. Kugel attacks the very notion of Hebrew poetry by noting that Hebrew did not even have a term with which to designate "poetry." He also points out scansion problems which arise in the switching of prose and poetry stichometric arrangements followed in many recent versions (Jer 30:6-11, especially v. 10). He attempts to show the folly of such lineations by a risible example in which he scans the legal text of Numbers 5:12-15, semantic parallelism and all.2 Cooper, on the other hand, studies ____________________ 1Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1982), p. 9. Demonstrating a rather poor understanding of biblical poetry, but sensitive to translation problems of poetry, is William Smalley, "Translating the Poetry of the Old Testament," The Bible
bibliography on translating poetry, p. 211. 2James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 64, 69, 78. The fusion of word and concept cannot be semantically demonstrated. Thus, just because one does not possess a term for a concept does not mean that the concept itself does not exist. His example from Jeremiah, however, is unconvincing and his "parallelisms" in Numbers demonstrate the need to define the features of semantic parallelism more carefully rather sir, mizmor, masal, etc. as terms used to describe the poetic mode of expression.1 Part of the problem of describing Hebrew poetry has been resolved with O'Connor's determination of the constraints of a poetic line. In light of the foregoing discussion, the highly patterned structure of poetry should provide a key for distinguishing between prose and poetry. Even Kugel observes elliptical terseness and rhetorical heightening as poetic markers.2 The "Standard Description," as O'Connor has labeled it, portrays Hebrew poetry as being composed of two essential features: parallelism and meter.3 This chapter will begin on the phonological level by briefly considering the rationale for and against metrical systems. The discussion will then move to semantic parallelism and other devices which are employed on ____________________ than to dismiss the concept's nexus with poetry. Indeed, O'Connor's suggestion that semantic parallelism is a trope would free it from exclusively poetic use. Therefore, it is not odd that such a trope would be utilized in a prose legal text. 1Cooper, "Biblical Poetics: A Linguistic Approach," pp. 3-5. Cf. also Robinson, The Poetry of the Old Testament, pp. 49-66. 2Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp. 87, 89. He cites an English example: "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." The lack of the definite article and subordinating conjunctions and various types of gapping all contribute to this concise, piquant style. Cf. IDBSup, s. v. "Hebrew Poetry," by M. Dahood, p. 671. 3O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 29. various semantic levels. An examination the of Lowth-Gray-Robinson system will reiterate Pardee's call for a more careful examination of the trope parallelism.1 Finally, the more recent syntactically based models will be eclectically harmonized and O'Connor's substitution of a syntactic constraint system in place of a metrical element will be adopted.2
That is the Question A brief survey of metrical approaches will ____________________ 1Dennis Pardee, "Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism," a paper received in correspondence with Dr. Pardee, prepared for the First International Symposium on Antiquities of Palestine, delivered in Aleppo, September 1981.
O'Connor for the production of his poetic encyclopedic Hebrew Verse Structure, which, from what could be understood of that tome, has so influenced this writer's conception of Hebrew poetics. As the flaws and immaturity reflected in this chapter are the responsibility of this writer, so too any of the springs of insight manifested in this work have already surfaced in O'Connor's Hebrew Verse Structure which Edwin Good of Standford has correctly lauded as "the most important [work on poetry] since Robert Lowth (1762)." Edwin Good, review of Hebrew Verse
writer is also grateful for the three hours Michael O'Connor spent explaining his approach and in giving this plebian a glimpse at how poetry should be read.] Geller evinces his lack of care in reading O'Connor, when he states that O'Connor "explicitly denies one of the theoretical bases of the 'standard description': that matters of perception, effect, and meaning play a vital role on the study of literature" in "Theory and Method in the Study of Biblical Poetry," JQR 73.1 (1982):68-70. He describe the way in which many have phonologically quantified Hebrew poetry. Such a discussion will serve to heighten the sensitivity toward metrical concerns, to point to the magnitude of O'Connor's proposal, and to compensate for the deficient work done on meter by evangelicals who have perceived phonology (metrics, in particular) as something of a bete noire either because it appears to have no effect on meaning or because it prompts Yüklə 6,58 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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