Picture Poetry, Mannerism, and Sign Relationships
Reuven Tsur
Hebrew Literature, Tel Aviv University
This article explores some cognitive and aesthetic principles about picture
poems. It regards language as a hierarchy of signs: the graphemic string signifies a
phonological string, which signifies units of meaning, which signify referents in extralinguistic reality. Our linguistic competence urges us to reach the final referents as
fast as possible. Poetic language draws attention to itself, that is, to the hierarchy of
signifiers. In manneristic styles there is a greater awareness of the separateness of signifiers than in nonmanneristic styles; hence their witty or disorienting effect.Whereas
rhyme, meter, and alliteration impose additional patterning on the phonological signifiers, picture poems, acrostics, and some other manneristic devices impose additional patterning upon the graphemic signifiers. When alliterations are turned into
puns, they become manneristic patterning of the phonological signifier. It is argued,
by analogy with synesthesia, that stable characteristic visual shapes obstruct smooth
perceptual fusion, and, on the basis of speech perception, that speech sounds are special in our cognitive economy, and visual patterning cannot achieve the naturalness
of their patterning. That is why visual patterning is not admitted in nonmanneristic
styles. Cognitive poetics suggests that in the response to poetry, adaptive devices are
turned to an aesthetic end. In a universe in which ‘‘the center cannot hold,’’ readers of
poetry find pleasure not so much in the emotional disorientation caused by manneristic devices, but rather in the reassertion that their adaptive devices, when disrupted,
function properly. This is one reason manneristic styles recur in cultural and social
periods in which more than one scale of values prevails.
Abstract
This article offers a cognitive-semiotic discussion, on a generic level, of picture poetry (sometimes called pattern poetry, visual poetry, concrete poetry, calliThis research was partly supported by the Israel Science Foundation.
Poetics Today : (Winter ). Copyright ©  by the Porter Institute for Poetics and
Semiotics.
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grammes, or carmina figurata).1 It offers no close reading of any specific poem,
and no overview of the history of the genre or its research. It examines two
observations prevalent among critics and theoreticians of picture poetry:
first, that it is ‘‘artificial,’’ ‘‘eccentric,’’ ‘‘extravagant,’’ ‘‘manneristic’’;2 and
second, that its appearance in the history of literature is discontinuous: it
tends to occur in certain historical-social-cultural contexts and is absent
from others. I will explain these two issues through a homogeneous set
of principles based on certain sign relationships, arguing that alliteration,
metaphysical pun, and picture poetry are a sequence of increasingly marked
poetic devices, and explore picture poetry as the highest item on this scale of
markedness. Such a model suggests that these devices reflect similar poetic
principles and can account, at the same time, for the perceived stylistic differences between them. I contend that mannerist styles are more prone to
resort to the more marked devices than nonmannerist styles.
I will not view the visual element as something added to poetry, imported
from the visual arts, but as a logical extension of the linguistic and aesthetic
principles of poetic language. This article focuses on some arbitrary sign relationships involving a hierarchy of signs: grapheme → phoneme → wordmeaning (each later item being the signified of the preceding one). More
specifically, I will argue that both picture poetry and certain sound effects in
John Donne and Wallace Stevens result from assigning two sign functions
to one signifier—on the graphemic and the phonemic levels, respectively.
By contrast, nonmanneristic styles, such as Classicist and romantic poetry,
typically resort to only one sign function and involve the nonreferential patterning of the phonological signifier.
The string of phonological signifiers, I will suggest, is just as arbitrary in
reference to the semantic signifieds as the string of graphemic signifiers is in
reference to the phonological signifieds. As we shall see, this is not always
taken for granted. The focus on this kind of sign relation conspicuously differs from the one emphasized by such writers as Georges Longrée (),
who also uses semiotic terminology. The calligramme, Longrée says, ‘‘con. This is a thoroughly revised version of my paper ‘‘Picture Poetry’’ published in Psyart—A
Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. Available on-line at web.clas.ufl.
edu/ipsa/journal/index.htm.
. Even scholars who devoted serious research to this kind of poetry may have recourse to
these adjectives. In his article ‘‘Carmina Figurata in Pre-Modern Hebrew Poetry’’ (in Hebrew
‘‘Hebrew picture poems and other artificial forms’’) the great Hebrew poet and scholar Dan
Pagis summarizes a prevalent view: ‘‘Apparently, epigones of those schools, unable to continue the great traditions of their predecessors or produce an essentially new style, tried to
capture their readers by a display of sheer virtuosity of form’’ and raises the question ‘‘When
does a common and generally accepted formal device become eccentric and manneristic?’’ (Pagis
, quoted from the English summary). This article will suggest a principled answer to that
question.
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sists of two messages: the iconic message is perceived all at once, whereas
the linguistic message requires a more deliberate and analytical reading. . . .
It is the relationship between the two messages—their modes of interdependence—which we would like to study in the course of this paper’’ (ibid.: ).
In Longrée’s view, ‘‘The signifieds (signifiés) are shaped by the real objects,
the signifiers (signifiants) by those objects which are schematically produced
by the pen’’ (ibid.). That is, Longrée focuses on an iconic relationship between a visual image generated in the text and ‘‘the real objects.’’ He seems
undisturbed by the ‘‘artificiality’’ of picture poems; instead, he works out in
detail the multiple relationships between the visual and the verbal images.
Sabine Gross (: ) focuses on ‘‘the parallel signification’’ of the two
messages, but also acknowledges occasional differences between the harmonious and amusing quality of their fusion. She writes, ‘‘The traditional
approach to pattern poems has been to emphasize their unity, which derives
from the parallel signification, and to consider this double signification of
the shaped poem—as image and word—either in terms of the two modes
complementing each other harmoniously to the point of merging, or as an
amusing but largely redundant overdetermination.’’ 3
Exploring a hierarchy of arbitrary sign series in this article allows me to
make certain crucial stylistic distinctions in terms of relationships between
signifiers and signifieds: a variety of mannerist devices are perceived as
being more artificial, less natural than their nonmanneristic counterparts.
For this I will attempt to account in a systematic, principled manner. These
distinctions are both relational and qualitative: they rely on the devices’
relative place in the hierarchy of signs and on our different response to phonemic and graphemic signifiers.4
In art history and criticism mannerism has three different but related
meanings, which all refer to artistic and literary phenomena that focus the
reader’s (or the audience’s) attention on the individual figures rather than
on the composition of the whole. First, many critics use the term pejoratively to refer to a style that is characterized by an excess of ornaments
and frequent repetition of a limited number of stylistic devices, especially
when not required. This is what Willie van Peer means when he says that
a seventeenth-century text of ‘‘wing poems’’ is ‘‘to a modern reader . . .
little more than a manneristic game.’’ Second, at least one theoretician uses
mannerism positively to refer to the cultural period between the Renaissance
. I wish I were the author of Gross’s article. But to do justice to it from the cognitive and
semiotic point of view would require another full-length article.
. The foregoing is not a criticism of Longrée. In another article I too might be engaged in
exactly the same kinds of activity. I just wanted to indicate the place of this article in the study
of picture poems.
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and the Baroque: ‘‘Thus, mannerism has two modes, technical and psychological. Behind the technical ingenuities of mannerist style there usually
is a personal unrest, a complex psychology that agitates the form and the
phrase’’ (Sypher : ).Wylie Sypher’s use links the term mannerism with
metaphysical.
The third meaning of the term refers to other styles or cultural periods
that in some way resemble the second meaning of mannerism, including
some trends of modernism. Giorgio Melchiori () uses the term in the
third meaning, when he calls Henry James and Gerard Manley Hopkins
‘‘two mannerists.’’ This article addresses all three meanings of mannerism: it
considers a ‘‘mannerist’’ device that is condemned by many critics as being
excessively mannered or artificial, that tends to recur in periods that are
‘‘manneristic’’ in the second or the third sense of the term. This article examines the implication of such ‘‘mannerist’’ devices and periods that evoke
‘‘a personal unrest’’ or require ‘‘a complex psychology’’ to cope with.
Van Peer on Typographic Foregrounding
This article was written in response to Willie van Peer’s  essay ‘‘Typographic Foregrounding.’’ It explores some cognitive and aesthetic principles
concerning picture poems and suggests that some of these principles, pace
the apparent extravagance of these poems, are logical extensions of principles that exist in poetry of a more conservative type. It will also try to do
justice to their extravagance. Van Peer’s abstract says
This article investigates the way in which devices of foregrounding play a role at
the typographical level of a text’s organisation. In poetry, such devices are very
old and are regularly used in a bold way, thereby creating specific effects. However, a historical overview reveals that such bold typographic experiments are
not distributed evenly over time. It also emerges that some of these texts survive
in the literary canon, while others are forgotten. On the basis of an analysis of
some test cases in literary history, hypotheses are proposed which may explain
this uneven distribution.
Van Peer’s essay focuses on George Herbert’s ‘‘Easter Wings,’’ which is,
according to Gross (: ), ‘‘arguably the most famous example in the
history of English literature.’’ My discussion deals with only some characteristics of the genre and refers to the poem only through van Peer’s analysis.
Writing about ‘‘Easter Wings,’’ van Peer says:
This is an unmistakably religious poem, one of the best-known texts from Herbert’s The Temple, and one of the most authentic expressions of devotion in the
Anglican church. . . . The title explicitly refers to a subject matter correspond-
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(Hutchinson : )
ing to the typographical form. The wings symbolize man’s elevation resulting
from his belief in Revelation: note also the reference to the divine wings (‘‘imp
my wing on Thine’’) and to the lark, yet another explicit topicalisation of the
motif of the wing (‘‘With Thee/ O let me rise/ As larks’’). More important still
is the fact that each stanza displays a typographical form which closely mirrors
the development of the theme. This can be seen quite clearly from the verbs
and their distribution across verse lines. Each time the length of the line shrinks,
verbs occur which refer to a process of diminution: ‘‘lost’’ (line ), ‘‘decaying’’
(line ), ‘‘became poore’’ (lines –), ‘‘became . . . thinne’’ (lines –). When the
width of the verse line increases, verbs belonging to a semantic field indicating
increase and growth are used: ‘‘rise’’ (line ), ‘‘further’’ (line ), ‘‘combine’’ (line
), ‘‘imp’’ (line ), ‘‘advance’’ (line ). This pattern is reinforced by the change
of tense occurring in each stanza: past tense in the first half of each stanza, when
the lines start to grow shorter: ‘‘createdst’’ (line ), ‘‘lost’’ (line ), ‘‘became’’ (line
), ‘‘did’’ (line ), ‘‘didst’’ (line ), ‘‘became’’ (line ); via present tense when
the lines begin to increase in length: ‘‘let’’ (line ), ‘‘sing’’ (line ), ‘‘let’’ (line ),
‘‘feel’’ (line ), ‘‘imp’’ (line ); to the future in the final line of each stanza: ‘‘shall
further’’ (line ), ‘‘shall advance’’ (line ). (–)
Although van Peer’s essay is illuminating, there are some significant gaps
in his argument, which I propose to fill. In the first place, I believe the term
‘‘foregrounding’’ as a wholesale key-term is insufficient for his purpose. One
should distinguish degrees of unnaturalness in foregrounding. In poetry,
language is foregrounded relative to its nonpoetic use, and in some poetic
styles, it is more foregrounded than in others.
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In the second place, his explanation based on the arbitrariness of the graphemic sign is unsatisfactory. The string of phonological signifiers is no less
arbitrary with reference to the semantic signifieds than the string of graphemic signifiers is in reference to the phonological signifieds. So we have
a whole hierarchy of sign relationships, characterized throughout by arbitrariness. But the arbitrariness of the graphemic sign is somehow different
from the arbitrariness of, for example, the phonological sign. Consequently,
one should be careful with the argument that ‘‘The founding principle of
alphabetic writing is the arbitrary character of the signs used, as a result of
which they are more or less void of mimetic meaning, unlike the partial or
rudimentary mimesis of ideographic and logographic script’’ ().
In Western poetry we deem the patterning of graphemic signifiers (e.g.,
picture poetry, acrostic) as being more artificial than the patterning of phonological signifiers (e.g., alliteration, rhyme) because we intuitively compare the effects of ‘‘typographic foregrounding’’ in alphabetic script not
to its effects in ‘‘ideographic and logographic script’’ but to the effects of
phonetic or syntactic or semantic foregrounding. Thus, the explanation becomes the explicandum: we must explain why ‘‘typographic foregrounding’’ displays a more arbitrary character of the signs used than phonetic or
syntactic or semantic foregrounding does.
In the third place, when van Peer says that ‘‘such ‘concrete’ poems become popular in periods of great social, political and ideological upheaval’’
(), we must remember that such ‘‘typographic foregrounding’’ of poems
is typically part of poetic styles usually called ‘‘manneristic’’ or ‘‘metaphysical,’’ and it has been frequently suggested that such styles tend to occur in
periods of great social, political, and ideological upheaval (Sypher ;
Isaacs ). Similar suggestions have been made about the sociocultural
background of the grotesque: ‘‘It is no accident that the grotesque mode
in art and literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by
strife, radical change or disorientation’’ (Thomson : ). By this I don’t
wish to suggest that van Peer’s suggestion is wrong, but that other issues are
involved. In the relation between signifiers and signifieds, many mannerist devices are perceived as being more artificial than their nonmanneristic
counterparts, and in this respect ‘‘typographic foregrounding’’ appears to
be only one instance of a larger manneristic principle. In other words, we
should look for reasons for the uneven distribution of picture poetry in reasons related to the appearance of mannerism, not in radical innovations in
writing and printing techniques.
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Poetic Language and Communicative Competence
My three above points may best be accounted for by a set of homogeneous
principles derived from the assumption that man is a sign-using animal.
Human culture consists of hierarchies and long series of signifiers and signifieds. Humans seem programmed to reach the last link of this chain as fast
as possible. Such programming has considerable survival value. If a certain
noise is ‘‘a sign of ’’ some predator, knowledge of the predator has greater
survival value than knowledge of the noise. However, in a complex cultural
situation of human society in which the automatic identification of signifiers with their signifieds may be the source of maladaptive behavior, the
signifiers and signifieds must be kept apart. Here is where poetry comes in.
‘‘The function of poetry’’ wrote Roman Jakobson in , ‘‘is to point out
that sign is not identical with its referent.’’ Why do we need this reminder?
‘‘Because along with the awareness of the identity of the sign and the referent (A is A1), we need the consciousness of the inadequacy of this identity
(A is not A1).’’ And Victor Erlich () says, ‘‘This antinomy is essential
since without it the connection between the sign and the object becomes
automatical and perception of reality withers away’’ ().
In nonpoetic use of language we tend to attend away from the signifier to
the signified. In poetic language we tend to attend to the signifiers more than
in ordinary, nonpoetic language, where sometimes we remember the information but not the exact words that conveyed it. Poetic language compels
us ‘‘to attend back’’ to the signifier or to ever higher signifiers in a hierarchy
of signs. Attention shifts from the extralinguistic referent to the verbal (semantic) signifier, from the semantic unit to the string of phonological signifiers—and eventually, perhaps, to the graphic signifier of the phonological
unit. The phonetic patterning of poetry (rhyme, meter, alliteration) typically directs some of the attention away from the semantic to the phonological component of language, whereas figurative language (and many other
semantic devices) directs attention from the extralinguistic referent to the
verbal sign. In this perspective, we might expect to find some patterning of
the typographic signifier as well, but it is relatively rare in poetry.
This process can be appreciated when it breaks down, as in a riddle.
Consider the following riddle, common among children: ‘‘Which cheese is
made backward?’’—‘‘Edam.’’ Our linguistic competence requires us to run
through the hierarchy of signifiers, from the string of graphemes, through
the string of phonemes, the semantic units, down to extralinguistic reality,
and look for some odd production processes in the dairy. But the riddle is
a riddle, precisely, because, to figure it out, the understander must leave
this chain of signifiers—and at some theoretically unspecifiable point, at
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that. In this instance, the exit occurs at the grapheme level: ‘‘edam’’ spelled
backward is ‘‘made.’’ If we contrive an admittedly less elegant riddle, ‘‘What
matronly woman is made backward?’’, the exit will be at the phonological level of the same chain, the solution being ‘‘dame.’’ We know all about
the word ‘‘made’’: we know its spelling, its sound structure, its grammatical form, its meanings, its possible referents in a variety of extralinguistic
contexts. We automatically look for an answer in the world of referents. But
when we can’t find the answer there, we become aware that this is a riddle,
and look for possibilities suggested by other elements of this complex, such
as the spelling, even if the riddle is presented orally. In poetic language no
exit is forced on the understander: the whole chain of signifiers is realized,
but the understander must linger at some of the earlier stages.
So far there should be little disagreement between Willie van Peer and
myself. But here a further step seems to be required. Because poetic language draws attention to itself more than nonpoetic language, one must
make a distinction between its conspicuousness in poetic styles. In nonmanneristic styles such as classic or romantic, the transition from the signifier to the signified is relatively smooth. The phonetic patterns in these
styles are perceived as some pleasant fusion of sounds at the back of one’s
mind. In manneristic styles such as metaphysical or modernistic, language
tends to direct attention back to the signifiers more conspicuously. So in
poetic language the duality of signs is more prevalent than it is in nonpoetic
language, and within poetic language, we are more aware of their duality
in mannerist than in, for example, romantic poetry.
In classic or romantic poetry, the incongruity of the sign vehicle and
what it signifies is eventually resolved smoothly. However, this is not the
case in metaphysical or modernistic poetry. Sypher (: –) speaks of
‘‘Donne’s false and verbal (perhaps false? perhaps verbal?) resolutions—his
incapacity to commit himself wholly to any one world or view. The resolution is gained, if at all, only rhetorically, not [through] reason.’’ In a metaphysical pun or conceit there is one sign in which the tenor and the vehicle
are both so consistently developed that one is compelled to be aware of both
their identity and incongruity. Sometimes this is achieved by assigning an
additional sign function to the same signifier. In such an instance, the two
meanings are resolved on the verbal level only, whereas the two worlds denoted by them are kept apart, and the reader must commit to the worlds
indicated by the two sign functions.
The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, of the lines that transmit their
message by a string of phonemes, and the visual design of a pair of wings,
or an altar, or a wounded dove and a fountain: all are so consistently developed that one is compelled to be aware of both their identity and incon-
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gruity. But such rival organizations of typography need not involve some
visual design. Much manneristic poetry is distinguished by alternative patterning that became a solid convention: acrostic. In the ‘‘envoi’’ section in
some of Villon’s ballades, for example, you may read from left to right for
the poetic message or read the first letter of each line from top to bottom to
receive the word ‘‘Villon.’’ The word exists only as part of the typographic
design of the poem, not in the usual left-to-right direction of the words. It
does not contribute to the statements that constitute the poetic message; it
tells who wrote it.
Vous portastes, digne Vierge, princesse,
Iesus regnant qui n’a ne fin ne cesse,
Le Tout Puissant, prenant nostre foiblesse,
Laissa les cieulx et nous vint secourir,
Offrit a mort sa tres chiere jeunesse;
Nostre Seigneur tel est, tel le confesse:
En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.
‘‘Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame’’
(Villon : )
In writing about poetic devices and stylistic effects, neoclassical theoretician Joseph Addison exhibits a taste that is hostile to mannerism but from
which a quantifiable concept can be abstracted, such as the following passage from Joseph Addison’s ‘‘Spectator Papers’’ No. :
As true Wit generally consists in this Resemblance and Congruity of Ideas, false
Wit chiefly consists in the Resemblance and Congruity of single Letters, as in
Anagrams, Chronograms, Lipograms, and Acrosticks: Sometimes of Syllable,
as in Ecchos and Doggerel Rhymes: Sometimes of Words, as in Punns and
Quibbles; and sometimes of whole Sentences or Poems, cast into Figures of Eggs,
Axes or Altars . . . As true Wit consists in the Resemblance of Ideas, and false Wit in
the Resemblance of Words, according to the foregoing Instances; there is another
kind of Wit which consists Partly in the resemblance of Ideas, and partly in the
Resemblance of Words; which for Distinction Sake I shall call mixt Wit. This
Kind of Wit abounds in Cowley, more than in any Author that ever wrote.
Mixt Wit is therefore a Composition of Punn and true Wit, and is more or less
perfect as the Resemblance lies in the Ideas or in the Words. (Addison 
[–])
Neoclassical poetic theory detested mannerism but was well aware of a
qualitative difference between poetic devices that consist in the patterning of signifiers and those that consist in the patterning of signifieds. From
Joseph Addison’s ( [–]) account a hierarchy of signs can be abstracted: letters (graphemic signifiers); syllables (phonological signifiers);
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ideas conveyed by words. Various poetic devices consist in the patterning of
signs at various levels of this hierarchy. The placement of some patterning
in this hierarchy of signs determines its stylistic nature: false wit consists
in the patterning of graphemic and phonological signifiers (‘‘letters’’ and
‘‘syllables,’’ respectively), true wit consists in the patterning of ‘‘ideas’’ signified by them. Mixed wit is placed in the middle: it partly consists in the
resemblance of ideas and partly in the resemblance of words. Thus, neoclassical poetic theory derived a normative principle from this hierarchy
of signs, which can be translated into quantitative terms: the greater the
share of the signified in the poetic device’s structure, the more perfect it
is; the smaller, the more objectionable. The device is more or less perfect
as the resemblance lies in the ideas or in the words. Thus, picture poems
were probably worst of all. In terms of this model one cannot distinguish
between, for example, legitimate rhymes or alliterations on the one hand
and ‘‘doggerel rhymes’’ on the other; but the principles are quite clear.5
I believe that bad classicism can make excellent mannerism and that
these evaluative terms can be translated into descriptive ones. For example,
‘‘and is more or less perfect’’ could read ‘‘and its focus is more or less integrated’’ or ‘‘conforms with neoclassical or mannerist taste as the Resemblance lies in the Ideas or in the Words,’’ so as to make the above quote
fit perfectly into our scheme. In this way, illuminating generalizations can
be made on mannerism at its best, based on the theoretical writings of the
classicists.6
Sound Clusters and Sign Functions
Jakobson () distinguishes two different types of speech sounds in child
language, which sound misleadingly similar, but are different in nature:
babbling and the arbitrary referential, linguistic sign. A developmental
model based on this distinction yields insight into the nature of regression,
too. In a discussion of phonological regression turned to aesthetic ends, I
. Such a distinction can be made within Addison’s framework. In ‘‘doggerel rhyme,’’ a
variety of phonological and metrical manipulations increases the salience of speech sounds
(phonological signifiers) in the resemblance, relative to ordinary rhymes.
. The usefulness of the above quotes from Addison will be seen if we compare them to
another formulation of Addison’s disapproval of mannerist devices, quoted by David J. Rothman () in a publication on visual poetry: ‘‘In Spectator  (May , ), Addison remarks
that ‘the Acrostick was probably invented about the same Time with the Anagram, tho’ it
is impossible to decide whether the Inventor of the one or the other were the greater Blockhead.’ ’’ The word ‘‘blockhead’’ renders the dictum amusing but suggests no subtle distinctions
between or within texts. The phrase ‘‘and is more or less perfect as the Resemblance lies in
the Ideas or in the Words,’’ by contrast has considerable descriptive content in terms of which
the structures of poetic texts can fruitfully be compared, graded, and evaluated.
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make the following suggestion: According to psychoanalytic theory, one
possible source of pleasure is regression to a level of functioning characteristic of an earlier age. Ernst Kris and E. H. Gombrich () contend that
the scribbling style of caricature involves regression to the infantile pleasure of exploring articulate motor activities, just as punning and nonsense
talk involve regression to prelanguage babbling. It is plausible that the phonetic aspects of poetry afford such pleasure in the exploration of meaningless sounds in a publicly respectable medium. Similarly, Anton Ehrenzweig
() asserts that in painting and music there are articulate gestalts appealing to our ‘‘surface mind,’’ and inarticulate, thing-free scribblings and
sounds appealing to our ‘‘depth mind.’’ Jakobson says that in child language
there are two distinct uses of sound: referential, which is nonemotional, and
expressive, which makes use of sounds that are not yet used for ‘‘arbitrary
linguistic signs.’’ In poetic language they are mounted one on top of the
other. Sounds are combined into words by a ‘‘syntagmatic’’ relationship,
‘‘forming entities of linguistic value’’ ( Jakobson : , ). At the same
time there is a nonreferential combination of sounds, based on repetition,
forming reference-free—thing-free, so to speak—qualities, exploiting not so
much differentiated contrasting features as similarities (Tsur b: ).
In poetry sound patterns range from rhyme and alliteration through
metaphysical puns to some complex combination of alliteration and pun.
Rhyme and alliteration are acceptable, even highly desirable, in most poetic
styles; the rest would be offensive to the neoclassic and, to some extent,
to the romantic taste, although some romantic poets occasionally do use
metaphysical puns. Alliteration is sequences of referential sounds, on which
some nonreferential sound pattern(s) are mounted. In pun, by contrast, a
sign function is assigned to the second sound pattern as well.
Consider the following line from Wallace Stevens’s: ‘‘You are that white
Eulalia of the name’’ (my emphasis). Here the sound cluster /yu/ is repeated
in the words You and Eulalia. It is part of two sound patterns: the syntagmatic pattern of the arbitrary linguistic referential sign and the paradigmatic pattern of nonreferential speech sounds. The syntagmatic arbitrary
linguistic referential pattern is in the focus of attention, whereas the nonreferential pattern is relegated to the background as a pleasurable texture
of euphonic sound patterns.
In their article on ‘‘folk etymology,’’ Samuel J. Keyser and Alan Prince
() treat this verse line differently. They suggest that the sound sequence
/yu/ confers the referent ‘‘you’’ on ‘‘Eulalia.’’ In the present terminology,
this assigns a second sign function to /yu/ in ‘‘Eulalia’’—turning the musical effect into a pun. I question the legitimacy of this construal, but it is a
convenient means to demonstrate the difference and relationship between
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pun and alliteration. In pun, each of the two sign functions is ‘‘striving’’
to reassert itself in the reader’s perception, to preserve, as it were, the two
functions’ ‘‘warring identity.’’ The result is a perceptual quality of wit. In
alliteration, the alternative sound patterns do not vie for the reader’s attention; they are arranged so that the arbitrary referential sign is in the
foreground with the nonreferential expressive sound clusters constituting
a ‘‘thick’’ musical background texture. Psychologically, then, the two conceptions of sound repetition are incompatible.
A less controversial example would be Donne’s ‘‘To Christ’’: ‘‘When thou
hast done, thou hast not done, / for I have more.’’ Here the sign vehicle
‘‘done’’ has two undisputed signifieds: the past participle of the verb ‘‘do’’
and the proper noun ‘‘Donne.’’ The first meaning of ‘‘done’’ can be paraphrased as ‘‘When thou hast finished, thou hast not finished’’ but that loses
its other meaning, forcing the reader to attend to the phonological sequence
rather than to one of its signifieds. ‘‘Hast’’ also can be construed as being
both an auxiliary and a main verb.
In the next example, from Stevens’s ‘‘Ordinary Evening in New Haven,’’
the psychological incompatibility of the referential and nonreferential
sound patterns is exploited for arousing a sense of confusion and emotional
disorientation, not unlike the grotesque.
When the mariners came to the land of the lemon trees,
At last, in the blond atmosphere, bronzed hard,
They said, ‘‘We are back once more in the land of the elm trees,
But folded over, turned around.’’ It was the same,
Except for the adjectives, an alteration
Of words that was a change of nature, more
Than the difference that clouds make over a town.
The countrymen were changed and each constant thing.
Their dark-colored words had redescribed the citrons.
(Stevens : )
Keyser and Prince (: ) comment: ‘‘The shift of letters in the first
syllable of lemon, lem, produces elm, and, as Stevens says, this change of language, in itself, produces a change of nature.’’ Notice, however, that this
repeated sound cluster is actually embedded here in a rich texture of alliteration, about which Keyser and Prince say nothing.Thus, the phonological
sequence /blond/ is repeated in the same order (with the liquid replaced by
another liquid) in the sequence /bronzd/. Both phoneme sequences, /l-nd/ and /r-n-d/, are repeated in the same order: in land (twice) and in turned
around. (For more on the thick texture of semantic features and phonological clusters in this passage, see Tsur a: ). Prima facie, the repeated
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cluster /lem/—/elm/ is just one more thread in this network of sound texture, which appears to be nonreferential, superimposed upon the sequence
of arbitrary linguistic signs.
In the second tercet of the quotation, however, the tables are turned on
the reader. ‘‘It was the same, / Except for the adjectives, an alteration /
Of words that was a change of nature.’’ One wonders which more specific
verbs, such as ‘‘produced’’ or ‘‘reflected,’’ could be substituted for ‘‘was’’ in
the last clause. Keyser and Prince paraphrase ‘‘was’’ as ‘‘produced’’ without
any reservation. From the context of the poem, ‘‘reflected’’ might be no less
appropriate. What the poem says is quite sophisticated and could possibly
be paraphrased as follows: ‘‘When they came to the land, they found there
was a change of nature: elm trees were replaced by lemon trees; in the language of the poem that describes this change of nature, the shift is rather
slight: only the word lemon has been replaced by elm (the letters of which
are already contained in the replaced word). The reader who has access to
this real-world state of affairs only through the language of the poem (verbal description first, extralinguistic landscape last), may think that it is the
slight change of language that produced the change of nature.’’ That is why
the copula was is so much more appropriate here than either ‘‘reflected’’ or
‘‘produced’’; it fits into both orders of presentation.
The reader is shocked out of complacent indulgence in alliteration in
three ways. First, there is a shift in the chain of causation: the thing experienced first (language) produces, as it were, the thing experienced later
(landscape), regardless of the logical sequence of events. Second, there is
a shift from language to metalanguage (‘‘adjectives’’). Third, if Keyser and
Prince are right, a referential sign function is assigned to a nonreferential
pattern of potential sign vehicles (the ‘‘shift of letters’’ signifies a ‘‘change
of nature’’). Thus, the sound sequence is turned into a pun after being experienced as an alliteration. The nonreferential sound pattern becomes the
sign vehicle of a sign function, emerges from the background texture, and
‘‘strives’’ to establish its ‘‘warring identity’’ in the reader’s perception. In
other words, both the sign vehicle and the signified are so literally developed
that they both assume independent existences of their own.
Visual Perception and Shape Perception
Considering the instances of typographic foregrounding in picture poems
discussed by van Peer and others, it is clear that these instances are in the
focus of our attention, as in puns, rather than constitute some harmonious
fusion at the back of our mind, as in alliteration. There is probably no instance where the typography and theme of a poem blend smoothly. Some
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critics suggest that such picture poems are rare; therefore, they appear to
be strange (this is a conditioned reflex conception of artistic taste). I propose an opposite cognitive conception: such picture poems are strange and
therefore rare.
Recall some of the central claims of this article:
• that the relative naturalness or unnaturalness of poetic devices can be
given systematic structural descriptions;
• that the relative naturalness or unnaturalness of a poetic device is influenced by the reader’s focus of attention: whether the discordance of
elements or their reconcilement is emphasized; the greater the emphasis on the discordance, the less natural or the wittier is the device; the
greater the emphasis on the reconcilement, the more natural it is;
• that visual shapes tend to obstruct the reconcilement of discordant elements;
• that poetry involves the patterning of signs: visual poetry consists in
the patterning of graphemic signifiers just as rhyme and alliteration
consist in the patterning of the phonological signifier;
• that the former is perceived as less natural than the latter;
• that mannerist styles are more prone to have recourse to less natural
options than nonmannerist styles.
Willard Bohn (: ) quotes Guillaume Apollinaire’s remark that
‘‘the relations between the juxtaposed figures in one of my poems are just
as expressive as the words that compose it.’’ This concept underlies many
of the close readings of picture poems. Longrée (), for instance, calls
his illuminating article ‘‘The Rhetoric of a Picture-Poem’’ and meticulously
works out the interactions between the semantic information presented verbally and the visual design formed by the words—just as if he were working
out the interactions between two verbal images. I would suggest that the
kinds of interaction between words and visual designs are similar to the
interaction between words; nevertheless, there is a difference in the perceived effects: the text is perceived as more unnatural when visual designs
are involved.
To substantiate these claims I will consider in some detail the respective
distinctive natures of the visual mode (as opposed to the verbal mode on the
one hand, and to the other sensory modes on the other), and of the speech
mode (as opposed to the nonspeech mode in aural perception).
If you add the same detail to two situations (e.g., glasses to two schematic
faces or a feature to verbal lists of features that characterize two persons),
they will be judged more similar; if you add a detail only to one of two
situations, they will be judged less similar. In judging the discordance or
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reconcilement of elements, an important issue is whether or not distinctive
features are judged to be more effective than common features. There is
convincing experimental evidence that this is affected by the mode of presentation: when presented visually, the distinctive features are relatively
more effective than when presented verbally (Gati and Tversky ). This
would suggest that visually presented images tend to emphasize the discordance of juxtaposed elements relative to verbally presented ones. This difference becomes even more significant when we consider its reasons. Ilana
Ritov, I. Gati, and Amos Tversky () tested three possible reasons: simultaneous versus serial presentations, cohesiveness of stimulus, and mode of
presentation (visual or verbal).7 In a series of well-controlled experiments,
they unambiguously demonstrated that it is the relative cohesiveness of
visual objects that makes the main difference. This cohesiveness, I claim,
has far-reaching consequences for literary style in both picture poems and
literary synesthesia.
The visual sense has a special status in the sensorium. As von Hornbostel
says, ‘‘the eye alone puts before us objects which stare at us, which are outside us as much as we are outside them, and which remain where they are
when we go away and are still there unchanged when we return’’ (Ellis :
). Stephen Ullmann, in his studies on synesthesia, speaks of a hierarchy
of senses in which the visual sense is the most differentiated and most rational. At the same time, strong shapes and good form realization (as opposed
to colors or thing-free and gestalt-free qualities) suggest some conspicuous
intellectual control or emotional stability, both according to gestalt theory
(Arnheim : ) and the Rorschach inkblot test (Rorschach : ).
Only the visual sense can present us with shapes that are stable over space
and time. ‘‘Because the pictorial stimuli represent three-dimensional objects and scenes, their components must satisfy certain mutual constraints
regarding position, relative size, continuity, and so on, which render them
more cohesive’’ (Ritov et al. : ).These mutual constraints cause stable
objects to resist sudden changes and to react to a disturbing force by maintaining their form, not only as physical objects, but also as visual designs.
Whereas masses fuse smoothly, stable objects preserve their identity. Perhaps this is why the attempted fusion of verbal features with features of
visual shapes in picture poems is perceived as less natural than the fusion
of verbal features with other verbal features.
This resistance of visual shapes is carried over to verbally presented
visual shapes as well. The objects to which concrete count nouns refer are
. I am indebted to Moti Benari for these references and the suggestion that these findings
are relevant to naturalness judgments concerning figurative language.
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necessarily cohesive. Imaging techniques in recent brain research reveal a
convergence of what we see and what we think. ‘‘The psychologist Stephen
Kosslyn has shown that imagining what a telephone looks like can activate
the primary visual cortex, just as though the same telephone were actually observed. Imagining a movement can activate premotor cortex that is
active when the movement is actually carried out’’ (Bownds : chap. ).
Ritov et al. (: ) found that there is no difference in the relative weight
of common components in similarity judgments between visual shapes and
their verbal descriptions. So we should not be surprised to find in literary synesthesia that—unlike the gestalt-free or thing-free entities denoted
by mass nouns and abstract nouns—verbally presented objects that have
a stable visual shape resist fusion with entities derived from other sensory
domains (cf. Tsur : chap. ; a: chap. ).
This can explain one of Ullmann’s baffling findings in synesthesia. He examined the intersense transfers in the poetry of twelve nineteenth-century
poets in English, French, and Hungarian and checked the direction of the
transfers. According to his findings, ‘‘transfers tend to mount from the lower
to the higher reaches of the sensorium, from the less differentiated sensations to the more differentiated ones, and not vice versa’’ (Ullmann :
). It is in strict conformity with the first tendency that touch, the lowest
level of the sensorium, should be the main purveyor of transfers. Although
it is only one of six possible sources, it looms large in all twelve poets analyzed (ibid.: ). Surprisingly, the predominant destination turned out to
be not the sense of sight, but the sense of sound, the second highest in the
hierarchy. I have translated these statistical findings into analytical tools.
Speaking of the higher in terms of a lower sense may generate an intense
emotional atmosphere, some lowly differentiated, ‘‘vague, dreamy, or uncanny hallucinatory moods’’ (ibid.: ). Transfer in the opposite direction
would generate a witty quality.8 At some variance with Ullmann’s explanation, I suggested that the predominant destination turned out to be not the
sense of sight, but the sense of sound, because stable characteristic visual
shapes preserve their identity in changing circumstances, and thus tend to
disrupt the smooth fusion of the senses. Indeed, Erzsébet Dombi (),
who applied Ullmann’s methods to Hungarian symbolist poetry, found that
in this corpus the predominant destination was sight, but only colors, not
shapes.
If the foregoing claims concerning visual perception and shape perception are well founded, we should expect to find unnaturalness judgments
. I would mention here Donne’s notorious ‘‘loud perfume’’ with its witty effect. Indeed,
W. B. Stanford (: –) calls it ‘‘a concoction, not a description of an experience.’’
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concerning stable visual shape in literary synesthesia that are similar to
though more moderate than the unnaturalness judgments concerning picture poetry. This, indeed, appears to be the case. When we find in romantic poetry synesthetic metaphors containing nouns that denote objects with
stable visual shapes, they are frequently judged ‘‘strange, ingenuous, modernistic,’’ as a ‘‘witty conceit’’—unaccountably for the critics themselves.
Consider some examples by Keats:
And taste the music of that vision pale.
(Isabella )
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep
(Endymion, Book :)
Some evasive mood, some uncanny atmosphere, is suggested in the line
from Isabella. It is generated with the help of the double intersense transfer, always in the expected direction, upward: it speaks of vision in terms
of music, and of music, in turn, in terms of taste. It should be noticed that
though vision belongs to the visual vocabulary, it is a thing-free quality,
detached from any stable, characteristic visual shape. Music connotes a
pleasant fusion of sounds, expanding toward the perceiving self; the transfer
from a lower sense, taste, enhances the indistinctness of the fused sensations. The powerful fusion of the discordant senses heightens the discharge
of emotions, eliminating the contradictory sensuous ingredients, leaving
the reader with the feel of a supersensuous, mysterious atmosphere.
By contrast, Ullmann (:) finds the line from Endymion to be a
strange phrase. My explanation is that intersense transfer can better split
the focus of perception than can ordinary metaphor. To elicit an emotional
rather than a witty response requires fusion of the sensory information into
a ‘‘soft focus.’’ Well-defined shapes tend to resist this fusion, whereas thingfree qualities promote it. In the foregoing examples, ‘‘The same bright face
I tasted’’ and ‘‘And taste the music of that vision pale,’’ there is an ‘‘upward’’
transfer, from tasting to seeing, and as such both ought to be perceived
as ‘‘smooth’’ and ‘‘natural.’’ The characteristic shape of face, however, appears to be an obstacle to fusion with tasting. That seems the source of the
‘‘strangeness’’ of the expression.
A similar judgment can be found in Richard H. Fogle’s ‘‘Synaesthetic
Imagery in Keats.’’ Fogle has compiled an impressive collection of quotations. Although he is unaware of Ullmann’s ‘‘panchronistic tendencies,’’
most of his examples, naturally, conform with them, and he finds nothing
extraordinary about them. He is, however, arrested by the following ‘‘startling synaesthetic image from Endymion’’:
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. . . lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hands.
(Book : –; my emphasis)
Fogle (:) aptly remarks: ‘‘There is a trace of ‘wit’ of conscious ingenuity which lends to the image a certain flavor of modernity.’’ He devotes
sixteen lines and a footnote to the explication of this metaphor, restating
that ‘‘the image in question is on the surface a witty conceit’’ (ibid.: –)
without saying anything that might account for its wit and ‘‘flavor of modernity.’’ Two principles can account for this impression. First, there is a sight,
touch transfer, which runs contrary to panchronistic tendencies; second,
the synesthetic transfer involves two solid ‘‘objects,’’ lips and hands.
For our purpose, synesthesia is a type of metaphor in which the logical
contradiction is stronger than usual. A strong emotional effect is achieved
when the conflicting terms are perceived as smoothly fused, and a strong
witty effect when attention is attracted to the contradiction. (See Tsur :
chap. ; a: chaps.  and ; b.) The various kinds of mannerism have recourse to the latter kind of synesthetic metaphor more frequently than other poetic styles. In some mystic poetry, romantic poetry,
and nineteenth-century symbolism, literary synesthesia typically contributes to an emotional quality, some ‘‘vague, dreamy, or uncanny hallucinatory moods,’’ or a strange, magical experience or heightened mystery. In
mannerist poetry such as modernist and seventeenth-century metaphysical
poetry, this typically generates a witty quality.Visual shapes make a strange,
ingenuous, unnatural impression both in picture poetry and in literary synesthesia, but in the latter this strangeness is muted because the visual shapes
are only verbally presented.
Speech Perception and Phonetic Patterning
Let us now compare phonological and typographic patterning. The phonological signifier is derived from the auditory domain. Its patterning into
alliteration and rhyme mounts a nonreferential sound pattern on a linguistic, referential string of speech sounds and can achieve a fusion of an emotional or musical character, if there is nothing to resist it. So far we have
examined one such resisting factor: the assignment of a referent to the additional, reference-free sound pattern. Typographic patterning of the verse
lines appeals to the visual sense.What is more, a pair of wings, or an altar, or
a wounded dove and a fountain, involve stable characteristic visual shapes
and, as such, they resist fusion, and generate a witty effect. That is why such
patterning would typically occur in poetry of mannerist character.
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Frequency in Cycles per Second (CPS)
Tsur
Time in Milliseconds (MSEC)
Figure 1
and [du].
Simplified spectrographic patterns sufficient to produce the syllables [di]
Another obvious path would be to argue that while the system of phonological signifiers is inborn in human beings, the system of graphemic signifiers is man-made, and acquired at a relatively late age. Hence the difference
of naturalness in their patterning. This, I believe, is very true; but in a very
special sense.There is not only a difference between our responses to speech
sounds and graphemes, but also between responses to speech sounds, on
the one hand, and tones or natural noises, on the other. Al Liberman and
his colleagues at Haskins Laboratories (see, e.g., Liberman et al. ) distinguish between a speech-mode and a nonspeech-mode in aural perception. In the latter, the shape of the perceived sound is similar to that of the
sound wave; in the former, it is not. Consider the hand-painted spectrograms in Figure . An electronic device called ‘‘pattern playback’’ can reproduce from them the syllables [di] and [du]. The perceived abstract category
[d] is similar in the two syllables, but the shape of the sound waves that carry
them is not. We perceive only the abstract category, not the different sound
shapes. This characteristic of speech is called categorical perception. Another
aspect of the phenomenon we have observed in Figure  can be described as
follows: The sound waves that convey the consonant [d] in the two syllables
are dissimilar, because they give, at the same time, information about the
ensuing vowels as well. This is called parallel transmission. Speech researchers
speak of various degrees of encodedness. In less encoded speech sounds, the
sound information is accessible to introspection to some extent. In more encoded speech sounds, the information is inaccessible. Consider the speech
sounds [s] and [I ]. Careful introspection reveals that the former is acoustically higher than the latter as shown by the sonograms of natural speech in
Figure . In Figure  one cannot tell through introspection that the conso-
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Sonograms of I and s, indicating why s is somehow ‘‘higher.’’
nant [d] is conveyed in the two syllables by sound waves of different shapes
and frequencies.
Bruno H. Repp (: ) found that the ability to tell the relative pitch
of the two fricatives lies in the cognitive strategy of isolating them from
their vocalic context. Conversely, Brad Rakerd () found that ‘‘vowels
in consonantal context are more linguistically perceived than are isolated
vowels.’’ This means that the perception of vowels in consonantal context is more categorial, and in isolated vowels one can perceive more precategorial information; alternatively, the underlying sensory information,
by which a vowel is typically associated with certain perceptual qualities,
varies from one consonantal context to another, owing to ‘‘parallel transmission,’’ whereby ‘‘a talker often co-articulates the neighboring segments
of an utterance (that is, overlaps their respective productions) such that the
acoustic signal is jointly influenced by those segments’’ (). In my work on
speech sounds in poetry I argue that there is a third poetic mode of aural
perception in which some of the rich, precategorial sensory information
becomes accessible ‘‘behind’’ the phonetic categories and subtly interplays
with certain semantic components (Tsur a: chap. ; b).
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In recent articles, Al Liberman tells us dramatic details about the breakthrough in speech research that occurred in the late forties. He and his
colleagues were developing a reading machine for the blind. The idea was
simple: just as there is an alphabetic correspondence between speech sounds
and letters, a similar correspondence might be established between the letters of the alphabet and a series of musical tones. Speech sounds are produced and perceived at a rate of  bits per second.When nonspeech sounds
were played at a much lower rate, they exceeded the resolving power of the
human ear and were perceived as one fused tone. Research revealed that
speech sounds at that rate do not exceed the resolving power of the human
ear because one piece of acoustic information gives information about several phonemes at once.
Liberman’s articles emphasize the biologically ingrained difference between speech sounds and ‘‘letters of the alphabet.’’ He most vigorously reiterates that ‘‘the units of speech are defined as gestures, not as the sounds
those gestures produce. . . . Language is neither auditory nor visual. . . .
Optical stimuli will, under some conditions, evoke equally convincing phonetic percepts, provided . . . they specify the same articulatory movements
. . . that the sounds of speech evoke. This so-called ‘MacGurk’ effect works
powerfully when the stimuli are the natural movements of the articulatory apparatus, but not when they are the arbitrary letters of the alphabet’’ (b: –). Speech is normally transmitted by a stream of inconstant, rapidly, and continuously changing sounds, which specify the
articulatory gestures that produced them, resulting in invariant and discrete speech categories. This process, says Liberman, is biological, ‘‘precognitive.’’ He contrasts this conception with the ‘‘received view,’’ in which
perceived speech categories ‘‘are the end products of a cognitive translation that converts auditory percepts into a form appropriate to language.
Getting from speech signal to the primary level of language is, therefore,
a two-stage process: evocation of an auditory percept in the first stage, followed by conversion to a phonetic representation in the second’’ (Liberman
a: ). In this important respect, the rival view ‘‘implausibly makes
perceiving speech no different in principle from perceiving Morse code or,
for that matter, the letters of the alphabet. . . . Unlike a Morse code operator
or writer, a speaker is directly using motor representations that are inherently linguistic. There is no need to connect a nonlinguistic act (pressing a
key or writing an alphabetic character) to some linguistic unit of a cognitive
sort’’ (ibid.: –). This may explain why the semantic elements of poetry
fuse more easily with phonetic categories than with either musical tones or
letters on the page.
Early attempts at creating reading machines failed because even when
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played at a much lower rate than normal speech, they fused into unique
chunks of sounds characteristic of each word. Furthermore, Liberman and
his colleagues found little transfer of training across rates. Letters and words
learned at one rate could not be recognized at other rates. ‘‘Words tended
not only to become hard-to-analyze wholes, but the phenomenal nature
of the whole changed quite drastically from one rate to another’’ (Liberman a: ). The keys to the difference between the speech mode and
nonspeech mode of hearing are coarticulation, parallel transmission, and
categorial perception.
Compared to the naturalness of phonetic patterning prevalent in all
kinds of poetry, the graphemic patterning of picture poems is considered to
be artificial, and no one seems to know why this is so. However, Liberman’s
conception is tailor-made for explaining this relative unnaturalness. At the
same time, the consensus as to the relative unnaturalness of graphemic patterning serves as evidence in favor of his conception of speech perception,
as opposed to the ‘‘received view.’’
Language, speech, and reading require complex processing of linguistic
stretches during a short time. During this period, these stretches are available for processing in ‘‘immediate memory,’’ which functions in the acoustic
mode. Phonetic patterning enhances the memory traces of speech sounds;
consequently, they improve the availability of stretches of speech for processing; and, some of the rich precategorial sensory information becomes
accessible ‘‘behind’’ the phonetic categories and subtly interplays with certain semantic components. No such precategorial information or interplay
has ever been suggested for the letters of the alphabet, hence the relative
naturalness of phonetic patterning. I shall argue that graphemic patterning
does exactly the opposite: it renders the linguistic units less available to the
processing consciousness.
What conclusion can we draw from this excursus on speech perception with reference to the perceived difference between phonetic and typographic patterning in poetry? A substantial difference exists between the
phonetic signifiers in the auditory mode, which are inborn, and the graphemic signifiers in the visual mode, which are acquired at a relatively late
age. This difference is also affected by the peculiarities of visual shapes.
But there is also an enormous difference within the auditory mode itself,
between the speech mode and the nonspeech mode, both inborn, or acquired at a very early age. The former appears to be of a far higher psychic
economy than the latter, handled by a specialized inborn mechanism. The
nature of this psychic economy can be understood with reference to two of
its characteristics: parallel transmission and a distinction between acoustic
and phonetic information. We listen to a stream of abstract phonetic cate-
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773
gories, made amenable to the resolving power of the human ear by parallel
transmission. At the same time, at a lower level, and subliminally, we may
attend to the rich, precategorial acoustic information, which may affect the
perceived quality of poetic language in a variety of ways. For our present
business, one thing is important: there is a subtle interplay in the background, on a very minute scale, between this rich, precategorial acoustic
information and the fine-grained semantic components. Obviously, owing
to the differences propounded above, such interplay cannot take place between the visual design superimposed upon the line arrangement and the
patterns of signs at the phonetic, semantic, syntactic, and thematic levels.
Van Peer claims that the manipulation of line length on the page, that
is, ‘‘typographic foregrounding,’’ is ubiquitous in Western poetry, whether
classic, romantic, or manneristic.
The existence of verse lines and stanzas illustrates this. Neither of these can
be understood without an appeal to typographical deviations and parallelisms,
which have themselves been turned into literary custom. This means that these
forms must belong to readers’ stock expectations concerning poetry. ()
The earlier auditory device thus becomes transformed into a visual game, in
which the delineation of the white space on the page around verse lines and stanzas fulfils a signalling function (‘‘This is poetry!’’) and gives cause to forms of
semiotic play. ()
Though I consider this account to be adequate,9 such a conception has
been a source of misunderstandings. For instance, some contemporary critics believe, following Dr. Johnson, that blank verse and vers libres are ‘‘often
only verse for the eye’’ (e.g., Fraser : ).This is a misconception. Just as
the graphic arrangement on the page presents the lines as perceptual units
to the eye, the intonation contours heard in the reading of poetry present the
lines as perceptual units to the ear. Such contours are the result of the interaction of the intonation contours required by prose rhythm with those that
articulate the line. In fact, the main function of graphic arrangement on the
page is to give the reader instructions concerning the intonation contours
appropriate to the lines. In this respect, the verse lines with the white space
around become rather transparent graphic signs of phonological entities:
just as the letters on the page signal phonemes, the verse lines surrounded
by white space signal intonation contours (cf. Tsur : ; a: –
; ). They begin to compete for the reader’s attention and reassert
. This appears to be the accepted view as testified by Eleanor Berry (: ), but she
goes one step further toward the conception propounded here: ‘‘All printed poetry is visual
poetry in a broad sense, in that when we read the poem the visual form affects how we read
it and so contributes to our experience of its sound, movement, and meaning.’’
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their warring identity, when they conflict with some other elements, as in
enjambment, or when they are foregrounded by some ‘‘mannerist’’ device:
acrostic or some mimetic arrangement.
Orthographic Form and Linguistic Awareness: The Case of Chinese
According to van Peer, ‘‘The founding principle of alphabetic writing is
the arbitrary character of the signs used, as a result of which they are more
or less void of mimetic meaning, unlike the partial or rudimentary mimesis of ideographic and logographic script.’’ I offer evidence that even ideographic and logographic script presuppose some phonological awareness
of the kind indicated above.
Ignatius Mattingly () (a close associate of Liberman’s) reviews all
major orthographic systems from ancient times to the present in Europe,
Western and Eastern Asia, North Africa, and the Mayan culture. He shows
that no purely logogrammatic system has ever been discovered, and that in
all systems we find phonograms with or without logograms. Consequently,
reading is possible only for people who are aware of smaller linguistic units
and can identify the correspondence between orthographic units and linguistic units. Curiously enough, no culture has ever developed a purely
phonetic transcription system. The reason for this must be that shapes of
words in such a transcription are context-sensitive and thus difficult to
recognize.
Notice what happens to /hænd/, hand, in [hæntuwlz] hand tools, [hæŋgrənejd], hand granade, [hæmpıkt], hand picked, etc. ‘‘It is suggested that this is
a minimal constraint that all writing systems must meet, so that words can
serve as units of transcription’’ (Mattingly : ).
All orthographic systems seem to require linguistic awareness at two
levels: the word, which serves as a ‘‘frame’’ for interpretation, and some
lower level, the syllable or the phoneme. In Western orthographic systems,
words are visually isolated by blank space, facilitating the perception of the
‘‘frame’’ units. In Chinese, no such visual isolation occurs, and the characters (or pairs of characters) on the page signify syllables. Nonetheless,
Mattingly quotes an experiment by Xu and himself which strongly suggests
that, psychologically, in Chinese the word is also the transcription unit.
In this experiment, respondents had to answer ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no,’’ according to
whether two genuine characters can or cannot occur together in one Chinese syllable. They had to make their judgments in the context of pseudowords and of genuine words. The judgments were considerably faster in the
latter.
This short excursus on orthographic form may suggest the following:
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775
The difference between phonetic and graphemic processing of language
does not consist only in that the former relies on an inborn mechanism,
whereas the latter reflects a man-made artifice. Language and speech are,
indeed, primary in humans, whereas reading and writing are secondary.
But reading and writing are possible only if the orthographic units have
a good fit to the linguistic units, at two different levels at least. We have
seen that phonetic patterning of speech and language enhances the acoustic traces of speech sounds in immediate memory and, consequently, increases the availability of stretches of speech and language to the processing consciousness. Hence its relative naturalness. By contrast, graphemic
patterning directs attention away from the correspondence of orthographic
units to linguistic units; consequently, they render reading more difficult,
less natural.
A Problem of Evaluation
Some picture poems (such as Herbert’s ‘‘Easter Wings’’) are generally
treated in criticism as ‘‘major poems,’’ and others as justly forgotten minor
poems. Van Peer quotes an occasional wing poem by Mellin de SainctGelais, ‘‘On the Recovery of Our Lady, Mother of François the st.’’ This
poem, he says,
had it not been composed in the form of two wings, would presumably lose little
of its effect. In the case of George Herbert, however, typography and theme form
a symbiotic whole, the aesthetic value of which would be affected if the wingpattern were disrupted. In this sense, typographic forms of foregrounding may
contribute in a specific way to the quality of poems. (Van Peer )
In relation to such more traditional poetic devices as metaphor, Monroe C. Beardsley () speaks of ‘‘multiple relationship,’’ Philip Wheelwright () of ‘‘multivalence.’’ What van Peer suggests is precisely such a
multiple relationship between the visual arrangement of the lines and the
verbal structure of the verse. He shows that the wing-shape of the stanza
is analogous to several thematic features of the poem, as well as to the semantic patterns of the verbs on the one hand, and their syntactic patterns
on the other (cf. quote immediately after Herbert’s poem). In this respect,
his analysis supports my assumption that Herbert’s use of the picture poem
is in a sense a logical extension of more conservative aesthetic principles.
When there is no such multiple relationship between the wing-arrangement
of lines and the verbal structure, the two can be contemplated in isolation, with no attempt to integrate them, and no emotional shock arises.The
emotional shock would arise only when the multiple relationship serves as
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an incentive for the integration of the hard-to-integrate dimensions of the
poem.
Let us consider now Figure , a Hebrew poem (copied in ) called
‘‘Palm Tree’’ [Ilan Tamar] by Rabbi Mordechai Tama, quoted by Pagis (:
).
In this poem, the motto is taken from Proverbs :: ‘‘She is a tree of life
to those who lay hold of her’’ (the Hebrew word for palm [tamar] is an anagram of the author’s initials).The poem offers a variety of routes of reading,
which yield different poems, with different meters and rhyme patterns; the
manuscript also provides the outcomes of the various readings. The existence of this undisputedly minor poem poses a serious problem to the foregoing conception, since here too ‘‘typography and theme form a symbiotic
whole.’’ Nevertheless, in this case too, ‘‘to a modern reader, the text is little
more than a manneristic game,’’ to use Willie van Peer’s words.10
Perhaps, two compatible solutions can be offered to this riddle. First,
when there is no multiple relationship between the graphic arrangement
of lines and the verbal structure, the two can be contemplated in isolation, with no attempt to integrate them, and no emotional shock arises.
In Rabbi Mordechai Tama’s tree poem, on the other hand, there seems to
be too much multiple relationship, exceeding the reader’s ability to integrate it: the same words can be related to each other in at least four ways.
Consequently, the resulting texts must be contemplated in isolation. The
emotional shock would arise only when the multiple relationship serves
as an incentive for the integration of the hard-to-integrate dimensions of
the poem; so, again, no emotional shock arises. Thus, the criterion for
poetic excellence would not necessarily be the ‘‘symbiotic whole’’ formed
by ‘‘typography and theme’’ but rather a graspable balance between complexity and simplicity. Second, picture poems may have, after all, inherent
poetic values prior to the graphic patterning. Herbert’s wing-poem, for instance, occurs in the manuscripts in the ordinary line-below-line arrangement, and only in the first () edition of The Temple are the lines printed
vertically. Thus, Herbert’s poem may have some inherent poetic value that
Mordechai Tama’s poem may lack.11
. On the other hand, to a modern reader such a ‘‘multiroute’’ poem might be familiar from
contemporary interactive, ‘‘mobile’’ art.
. In his anthology The Meditative Poem, Louis Martz (: –) provides facsimile reproductions of ‘‘Easter Wings’’ as printed on facing pages in the first edition of Herbert’s
Temple (), but in the text () he prints the verse lines horizontally and comments: ‘‘The
manuscripts present these emblematic verses horizontally, but the vertical form of , here
reproduced, seems more effective visually’’ ().
Tsur
Figure 3
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777
‘‘Ilan Tamar’’
Literary-Historical and Sociocultural Perspectives
Finally, there are the literary-historical and sociocultural perspectives on
the discontinuity of these manneristic devices. Two issues must be considered: the sequence of nonmanneristic and manneristic periods, and their
correspondence to certain types of sociocultural background. Van Peer
(: ) aptly observes: ‘‘It is hard to see how a theory along the lines of
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Tynjanov, i.e., a constant relief of new devices, would be able to provide a
clarification of this discontinuity. Yet the observation that the distribution
of typographic forms of foregrounding over different historical eras is not
random requires an explanation.’’
I offer a model alternative to Tynjanov’s, drawn from Sypher (: ),
who speaks of four stages of Renaissance style. The first two are relevant
to our present business: a provisional formulation (Renaissance) and a disintegration (mannerism). In the first stage, that of the ‘‘provisional formulation,’’ the art-consumer (reader, listener, spectator) tends to attend away
from the individual devices to the architecture of the whole, whereas in
the second stage the art-consumer is forced to attend back to the isolated
devices, with possible serious damage to the architectural structure of the
whole. In Melchiori’s words, ‘‘the total effect is frequently lost sight of, or is
reached through accumulation rather than through a harmonious disposition of structural parts,’’ whereas ‘‘details are worked out with a goldsmith’s
care’’ (: ). A similar disintegration has been observed by Curtius
toward the end of the Latin Middle Ages: ‘‘A danger of the system lies in
the fact that, in manneristic epochs, the ornatus is piled on indiscriminately
and meaninglessly. In rhetoric itself, then, lies concealed one of the seeds
of mannerism. It produces a luxuriant growth in Latin Middle Ages’’ (:
). A similar story can be told, mutatis mutandis, about the disintegration
of romanticism, after a provisional formulation, into the ensuing various
types of mannerism. (Melchiori speaks of James and Hopkins as of mannerists.)
The discontinuity of manneristic devices in general, and of picture poems
in particular, throughout the history of literature, can be accounted for,
then, by a model suggesting an internal dynamics of alternating periods of
provisional formulation and of disintegration, in which ‘‘the center cannot
hold.’’
Why does mannerism tend to occur during the later periods? I discuss
at considerable length (e.g., Tsur : chap. ; a: chap. ) the adaptive functions fulfilled by such typical metaphysical devices as the pun and
conceit, and how they explain the effects of those devices on the readers.
The metaphysical pun and conceit are adaptive devices turned to an aesthetic end. In a sociocultural situation in which disintegration exceeds the
degree that could be handled by cognitive integrating devices deployed by,
for example, romanticism, one must cope with emotional disorientation by
resorting to some more effective adaptive devices. As a first orientation device, the reader might check whether his or her adaptation mechanisms
are properly tuned. When one is shocked out of tune with the environment
by the clashing emotional tendencies of the grotesque, of the metaphysical
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pun or conceit, then, as suggested by Sypher (), one tries to readjust so
as to regain aesthetic distance. In the course of this, our own coping with
the environment, and especially the linguistic mechanisms involved in the
process, become perceptible to ourselves. Some similar process of disorientation and readjustment may be at work when the reader attempts to integrate the visual design superimposed upon the verse lines with the rest of
the poem—at least in the most extreme instances.
It has been suggested that mannerism in general, and picture poems as a
part of it, tend to recur in ‘‘periods of great social, political and ideological
upheaval, when more than one scale of values prevail.’’ Today, many poets’
experiencing of the world is epitomized by Yeats’s famous lines, ‘‘Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’’ In
the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church tried to reestablish its hegemony through Counter-Reformation. In his ‘‘An Anatomie of the World’’
Donne wrote, ‘‘And new Philosophy calls all in doubt . . . / The Sun is lost,
and th’earth, and no man’s wit / Can well direct him where to looke for
it. . . . / ’Tis all in peeces, all cohaerance gone,’’ and in his ‘‘Holy Sonnet ,’’ ‘‘You which beyond that heaven which was most high/ Have found
new spheres, and of new lands can write,’’ whereas in Paradise Lost: Book ,
Milton gave in one passage a Ptolemaic and a Copernican account of the
universe, insisting that only the Great Architect knows the truth. At such
times, people have to cope with disorientation in a world in which more
than one scale of values prevails. In such a universe, readers of poetry find
pleasure not so much in the emotional disorientation that arises from the
mannerist devices, but in the reassertion that their adaptive devices function
properly in the face of disruptions. This is one thing that cognitive poetics means by suggesting that in the response to poetry, adaptive devices are
turned to an aesthetic end. And this is one reason for mannerist styles to
recur in cultural and social periods in which more than one scale of values
prevails.
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