Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies
Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2014
ISSN: 2321-8819 (Online)
2348-7186 (Print)
Impact Factor: 0.923
Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's
"To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
Raheleh Bahador1 and Anita Lashkarian2
Department of English Literature, faculty of humanities, Vali-e-Asr University.
Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Main Administrative building, 22 Bahman Square, Rafsanjan,
Kerman, Iran.
2
Department of English, Meybod branch, Islamic Azad University, Yazd, Iran.
1
Abstract: Language of poetry is different from language of prose and their reading and structure
is different consequently. From semiotic aspect, poetry functions according to devices and
components specific to its own. In Michael Riffaterre's term heuristic reading based on the
linguistic competence of the reader hides the true understanding of a poem. On the other hand,
retroactive reading which is based on the literary competence of the reader and semiotics,
reinforce the aesthetic understanding of poetry and enjoyment of the reader. Semiotics of poetry
by Michael Riffaterre (1978) provides new reading of poetry based on linguistics. The present
paper will analyze John Keats' "Bright Star" (1819) and Sohrab Sepehri's "To the Garden of CoTravelers" (1961) according to Michael Riffaterre's semiotics of poetry. This paper aims to
highlight the relationship between reading poetry in semiotics field and the difference that it
makes in clarification of true meaning of a poem. Reading the poems based on Riffaterre's theory
will help readers to discover the aesthetics of the poems. It is justified that John Keats and Sohrab
Sepehri walk in the same poetic line and in their poetic achievement in these poems desire
towards unification with love and immortality. In the heuristic reading, the poets seem to desire
towards an earthly beloved and physical love. Rejecting this reading, retroactive-semiotic reading
will prove that the poets tend to immortality and unification with love itself .
Key Words: semiotics of poetry, Michael Riffaterre, John Keats, Bright Star, Sohrab Sepehri, To the Garden
of Co-Travelers.
Introduction
"During the late eighteenth century, a revolutionary
uprising occurred and forced England to enter a
new and innovative era known as the Romantic
Period" (Masiello, 2010, p.2). Romantic period
began at the end of the 19th century (1790s) and
lasted until 1830 or else 1832, the year in which Sir
Walter Scott died and the passage of the Reform
Bill signaled political changes in the Victorian era.
The transition in Europe from Enlightenment
Classicism to Romanticism has frequently been
described in dichotomous terms – opposing, for
example, Enlightenment or classical preference for
rational order and symmetry with Romantic
preference for spontaneity, fragmentation, and
organisms."(Ferber, 2005, p.10). It was deeply
connected with the politics of the time, echoing
people's fears, hopes, and aspirations. Politically,
Romanticism was inspired by the outbreak of the
French Revolution. William Hazlitt in the
collection of his essays "The Spirit of the Age"
(1846) described the French Revolution as seemed
"the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been
given to men's minds" (Abrams, et.al. 2010, p.
1297(. The most important qualities of the
movement are imagination and individuation. They
valued feelings to the extent that the German
painter Casper David Freidrich remarked "the
artist's feeling is his law" (Friedenthal, 1963, p.32).
Individualism in the poetry was the reflection of
the personal feelings of the poet. It situates the
poet's feelings at the center of the poem. The most
prominent source of inspiration for the Romantic
poet was nature and Romantic poetry is called
"poetry of nature". According to Encyclopedia of
religion
and
Nature
(2005)
"European
Romanticism's complex understanding of the word
"nature" must be seen against the background of
the eighteenth century and the growth of industrial
city" (Taylor, 2005, p.1422). Individuation reflects
the personal feelings and passions of the poet in the
vessel of words. Such feelings like love and hate
are so strong expressions that one cannot define
Romantic poetry without counting for them.
Romantic qualities are more or less the same in the
literature of the world and the poets are the very
exponents of Romanticism if they count for the
qualities which are mentioned so far.
John Keats (1795-1821) is one of the
outstanding poets of the Romantic Movement.
"John Keats grew to be a poet in the atmosphere of
romanticism dominated by Wordsworth and
Coleridge. The traditions of the great romantic
poets were carried forward by Keats." (Kumar,
2012, p.1) His works published posthumously;
about four years after his death. Although his
works were not well received by the critics of his
age but his reputation grew after his death.
Available online at www.ajms.co.in
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
Consequently "for half a century the appreciation
of Keats’s poems remained an affair of passionate
cultivation by small groups of individuals."
(Matthews, 2000, p.2) The poetic consciousness
"asserting as a sense of presence, slides gently in
non-commitment…as a startling development in
the practice of ode in western literature, achieved
naturally and logically by Keats." (Kappel, 1978,
p.12) Among Keats' poetic themes is "the
impersonal tone, skeptical attitude towards things,
uncertainty and indeterminacy". (Mishra, 2009,
p.2) Keats poetry is obsessed with love qualities.
His poetry is engaged with the descriptions of the
lover's feelings towards beloved, whether
anonymous women or his beloved Fanny Brown.
Among most well-known examples of Keats' love
poetry are "Lamia" (1884), "La Belle dame sans
Merci" (1884), "Isabella" (1884) and "Bright Star"
(1819). Love reflects Keats' emotional feelings in
the form of poetry. Love acts both as a kind of
relief for the poet and suffering.
Among the contemporary Iranian poets, Sohrab
Sepehri (1928-1980) is well known as a Romantic
poet of blank verse. He stands unique among his
contemporaries because of his strong feelings and
desire for individualism and love for God, mankind
and nature. Born in Kashan, Sepehri grew up in an
atmosphere full of color, heat and rural pictures.
Nature in the poems of Sepehri is sacred and the
poet accepts it easily and simply. As in his real life,
he is the painter of nature in his poetry. To indicate
the presence of nature we read that "there are some
characteristics in Sepehri's poetry that does not
exist in his contemporaries. Sepehri loves nature
and is satisfied to speak of nature in the meanwhile
of his poetry… Sepehri believes that nature does
not belong to human alone."(Emmad, 1998, p.9)
"Familiar with and interested in Eastern mysticism
and Western literature and literary schools, gives
his poetry a unique color and odor" (Mirali, 2013,
p.1). Sepehri's poetry is full of love, equilibrium
and peace towards universe and man.
Individualism is among the prominent qualities of
Iranian contemporary poetry and love makes it
outstanding whether in its relation to an earthly
beloved or in its social aspect to human kind in
general. In fact in Sepehri, the earthly love is not an
end in itself but it paves the way to get close to the
eternal love who is God. Although there are some
poems in Sepehri' collections of poems which are
filled with the portrait of a woman's love but in a
more keen outlook they reflect the beauty of God.
Among Sepehri's poems, "To the Garden of CoTravelers" and "The Wandering Hell" are the
poems in which "the speaking voice is towards an
earthly beloved or woman" (Behfar, 2001, p.5).
The beloved's love is a way to God's love in these
poems too. Poet searches union with love.
Semiotics has been used as an interdisciplinary
field in the study of literary works. Semiotics
derived from linguistics, sociology, psychology and
literary criticism studies sign as the base of the
system of language. "Semiotics is the study of the
signifier
and
signified
to
find
their
relation"(Farhangi & Yousefpoor, 2010, p.1). On
the one hand "Signs are studied with the focus on
their potential communicative function. "The
relationship which exists between signs and sign
systems can be called a functional one, because this
relationship
always
intends
to
express
meaning"(Ntsonda, 2009, p.10). On the other hand
"semiotics is a part of linguistic" (Koupal, 2005,
p.7). Michael Riffaterre, the French semiotician in
Semiotics of Poetry (1978) distinguishes between
poetic language and prose language. As Geoffrey
N. Leech in A Linguistic to English Poetry (1991)
asserts: " Poetic language may violate or deviate
from the generally observed rules of the language
in many different ways, some obvious, some
subtle" (p.5). Riffaterre assigns a semiotic specific
to poetry based on literary competence and
retroactive reading of the reader. He believes that a
poem does not signify in the same way as the prose
text. Poetic language is also set apart from prose by
the special status of its neologisms. Riffaterre
towards poetry states that: "words are judged in
relation to things and the text is judged in
comparison to reality"(Riffaterre, 1983, p.26). A
poem establishes a system of significance,
generated by processes such as accumulation and
the use of descriptive systems. By accumulation
Riffaterre means a group of words in a family of
meaning. Each word is made up of one or more
semes. A descriptive system is a collection of
words associated with a concept or nucleus word.
Riffaterre believes that in order to go beyond the
surface meaning of the poem, the reader needs
literary competence "to deal with frequent
ungrammaticalities encountered in reading a poem"
(Selden, 2005, p.57).
Much critical works has been done on John
Keats' and Sohrab Sepehri's poems. Review of
some critical studies has been mentioned here.
Andrew .J. Kappel in "The Immortality of the
Natural: Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' " (1978) has
discussed about the significance of the immortality
of nightingale in the seventh stanza of the ode,
thematically. The critic has discussed that whether
the immortality of the nightingale refers to a
specific bird or a species or it has a symbolic
signification. Kappel writes: "If the nightingale's
song is a symbol of lyric poetry, the words
"immortal Bird" must refer to the Poet." (p.2) In a
comparative study entitled "Defamiliarization in
John Keats' and Sohrab Sepehri's Poems" (2007) N.
Maleki and M. Navidi study poems of two
mentioned poets. The writers of the paper study the
poetic quality of negative capability and
Defamiliarization as the common poetic
characteristic in Keats and Sepehri. They conclude
that what Keats has achieved as "negative
capability" in his poems is the very concept that
Sepehri achieves as "Defamiliarization" in his
poetry. Accordingly, two poets walk in the same
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2(9) September, 2014
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
line. In "Objective Correlative in Some Poems of
Keats and Sepehri" (2009) N. Maleki and M.
Navidi study what has been defined as "indirect
way of expressing feeling and passions" (2009, p.1)
in poems of the poets. In "A Deconstructive
Stylistic Reading of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn"
(2010) Prashant Mishra has studied Keats' ode from
deconstructive aspect. Deconstructive criticism
becomes an attempt to read a text in order to
approximate the intended meaning of the write.
According to Mishra "Keats’ odes are the finest
examples of entertaining mysteries, doubts and
uncertainties surrounding the questions pertaining
to human existence through imagination rather than
a rational outlook." (2010, p.1). The scholar
concludes that Keats has employed formal stylistic
means and grammatical devices to escape any
finality, determinacy and absoluteness. A. Mirali
and M. Abdi in "A Glance at the Surrealistic
Qualities in Eight Books" (2013) discuss that
Sepehri' poems is full of attention to natural
elements and their attribution to metaphysics and
non-natural phenomena. Influenced by Eastern
mysticism and Hindu-Buddhism, Sepehri makes
his poetry to sparkle among that of his
contemporaries.
"Bright Star" (1819) is one of the most wellknown love sonnets of John Keats. The poet in an
apostrophe addresses a star and describes that how
he is eager to attain her love. Sepehri's "To the
Garden of Co-Travelers" addresses an unknown
woman or an earthly beloved. But in fact, the poet
begs union with love itself. M.Shalooei in I am a
Muslim (2012) writes: "embodying profound
percepts, Sepehri's poetry seems to require careful
considerations from both form and structure
standpoint" (p.8). This comparative study will
analyze the poems according to Michael
Riffaterre's semiotics of poetry. The objective of
the article is to show that how two poems go
further than the surface meaning to point to a
deeper meaning. It will show that how reading the
poems based on semiotics of poetry help the reader
to get a better understanding of meaning of a poem.
The semiotics of poetry is a way to discover the
aesthetics of poems. The questions presented in the
article are: How do signs work in Keats' and
Sepehri's poems based on Riffaterre's semiotics?
To what extent the play of signs affect two
different readings of the poems? The article will try
to answer these questions.
"Bright Star" and "To the Garden of CoTravelers": Unification with Love and
Immortality
As one of the most well-known sonnets of John
Keats, "Bright Star" was officially published in
1838 in The Plymouth and Devonport Weekly
Journal, 17 years after Keats's death. The core idea
of the sonnet is love and the desire of the lover to
win his beloved. It is interesting to say that "Bright
Star" is among those sonnets of Keats which in
content and language is in maturity and aesthetic
growth.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death. (Gittings,
2008, p.143)
Michael Riffaterre rejected the meaning of a
poem according to the intention of the poet. He
believes that the reader will go astray in reading a
poem if he/she searches realities outside the poem
itself. He believes that the kind of meaning reader
finds in a poem or his/her response to the poem is
influenced by the semiotic mechanism in the text
itself. Riffaterre agrees with the Russian Formalists
in regarding poetry as a special use of language. As
we read in A Reader's Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory "Ordinary language is practical
and is used to refer to some sort of ‘reality’, while
poetic language focuses on the message as an end
in itself."(Selden, 2005, p.57). The language of
poetry is an indirect language used by the poet to
convey what he/she means. Riffaterre's critical
views derive from structural background continues
into the reader-response and leads to semiotics.
Riffaterre distinguishes between two groups of
readers. The first group read the poem in nonanalytical terms who read a poem as a system of
information with reference to outside realities. The
first group of readers content with the shallow
meaning of the poem. The second group of readers
in analytical terms tries to discover the relation and
action of signs in a poem and reach to a deeper
meaning. To have the meaning of the sonnet
according to the poetic theory of Riffaterre is that
the reader must engage into two processes of
reading in that the first reading which Riffaterre
calls "heuristic" points to a reality outside the
poem. The first reading points to the meaning of
poem and it needs only the linguistic competence
of the reader. To read the poem in heuristic reading
is to read it in grammatical aspect. It does not read
a poem according to the play of signs and their
relation. Consequently the investigation of the
grammatical elements of the poem reduces it to a
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2(9) September, 2014
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
string of unrelated bits. Reading the sonnet in this
way, it is addressed to a star and expresses the
poet's wish to be as constant as the star while he
presses against his sleeping love. He prefers to die
rather than remains alone. Lover loves beloved's
breasts and praises her breaths. The poet mourns
the distance between him and his beloved and he
does not like to be alone like star. He prefers to die
if not going to have his beloved's breast.
Accordingly, the poet expresses his physical desire
towards the beloved and praises her for her
physical characteristics like her breath or her
breasts.
In order to go through the interpretation of a
poem, Riffaterre bounds the reader into the second
reading. Respectively, Riffaterre coined "literary
competence" to able the reader to deal with
frequent "ungrammaticalities" in reading a poem.
In the second reading which Riffaterre calls
"retroactive reading", the reader goes through the
ungrammatical aspects of the poem because the
poem conveys its meaning indirectly. In the
second reading, finally emerges a structural matrix
which is based on the signs in the poem. This
matrix can be a single sentence or even a single
word. The poet never mentions this sentence or
word directly in the poem. The matrix acts as a
kind of message for the poem. It is the essence of
what poet has tried to convey to the reader by the
use of literary language. The poem is connected to
its matrix by actual versions of the matrix in the
form of familiar statements, clichés, quotations, or
conventional associations. The matrix ultimately
gives a poem unity. Applying this theory to the
sonnet,
there
emerges
these
hypograms
(commonplaces). 1) Lover looks at the sky and
desires star's steadfast position. 2) He would rather
be "Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast"
(10). 3) The poet explains that if forced to choose,
he would choose the breast and die as opposed to
being steadfast and immortal. Reading the sonnet
in semiotics of poetry, the matrixes or semantic
nucleus of these hypograms are: desire for
immortality, purity of love, limitation of choice.
Keats never mentions these words directly in the
sonnet but the sonnet depicts this matrix by the use
of signifiers in the poem. According to the theory
the narrator envoys bright star's steadfastness
signifies lover's desire for immortality. The poem
deals with the love and appreciation of things that
are unchanging. Newly fallen snow and pure
ablution represents purity and contains a
connotation of sexual purity. (10). Lover seeks
immortality in love (14). The poet realizes he
cannot have it both ways. Humans cannot be
steadfast and immortal and love is an essential part
of being human. The matrix of "Bright Star" has
been developed from a single word into a sonnet by
the use of "overdetermination", "conversion" and
"expansion". In Riffaterre's semiotic expression
overdetermination means that the signifiers used in
a poem do not refer to realities outside the text but
they return to other signs in the poem and therefore
makes a poem a system of signifiers and signified.
In result of "overdetemination" signs like
"priestlike" (5), "pure ablution" (6) and "snow" (8)
do not point to outside realities but signify their
own signifiers in the sonnet. They are signifying as
follows: "priestlike": moving waters (5), "pure
ablution": love splendor (2), unchangeable (9),
"snow": ripening breast (10), respectively. When
reading the poem, the reader determines the
hypograms and develops them in his/her mind. In
conversion process a part or the whole of a
common phrase or cliché changes. In this way the
altered meaning of that phrase or cliché make a
new expression. By the use of conversion the poet
is able to develop the scope of meaning for the
conversed phrase or cliché conveys both its
primary meaning and make a new one which is the
result of poetic manipulation. In the sonnet
"conversion" (changing clichés and saying them in
a new way) takes place in "pillow'd upon my fair
love's ripening breast" (10). The poet has changed
"rest" to "pillow'd" and young, beautiful breast to
"ripening breast". The poet has used metaphors
instead of direct words. In another case the poet
compares the lover to "Nature's patient" (4) and
"sleepless Eremite" (4). Both "patient" and
"sleepless" are the common characteristics of lover
but the poet has changed a part of them and has
added "nature" and "Eremite" to make a new
literary composition. . Using the third principle in
Riffaterre's definition, the poet has used expansion
to develop "love" as the central idea of the poem.
Not directly, the poet has used signs in the poem to
indicate this core concept. In line 13 "her" returns
to a female and beloved. Then the poet goes
through the characteristics of the beloved and lover
to develop the central idea of love in the poem.
According to what has been discussed in the two
previous paragraphs, Sepehri's "To the Garden of
Co-Travelers" will be analyzed. Influenced by the
atmosphere of World War II and the chaos and fear
associated with the modern age, the poem reflects
the loneliness of human kind. The poet searches
peace and equilibrium in love:
Call me.
Your voice is sweet.
Your voice is the chloroform of that odd plant
That grows in the end of the intimate grief.
*
In the dimensions of this still age
I'm lonelier than the taste of a tune in the context of
a lane
Come so I tell you how great is my loneliness.
And my solitude never predicted the night-slaught
of your bulk.
And that's the property of love.
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2(9) September, 2014
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
No one's here
Let's steal life, and then
Share it between two meanings.
…
Come melt like a word in the line of my silence.
Come melt in my palm the luminous mass of love.
…
Warm me up
In these lanes of gloom
I dread the multiplication of doubt and match.
I dread the cement surface of the century.
Come so I fear not cities whose black soil is
pasture for cranes.
Open me like a door to the descent of the pear
In this age of the ascent of steel.
Lull me under a bow far from the night of metal's
frictions.
Should the explorer of the morning mine come, call
me up.
…
And I shall wake in the dawn of a lilac behind your
fingers and then
…
And then I, warm like a faith by the equator's glow,
Shall seat you in the preface of a garden.
(Saeedpoor, 2011, p.68)
In the heuristic reading which analyzes a poem
according to its grammatical components the poet
addresses a woman who is his beloved and begs her
to put an end to his loneliness with her presence.
Beloved's voice is so sweet and in an "intimate"(4)
way which reminds of sexual and physical
intimacy, tantalizes the poet to the bosom of the
beloved. He is afraid of "lanes of gloom" (15) and
cities and he wants to be near his beloved. Words
like "voice" (2), "your bulk" (body) (8) and
"finger" (24) indicate the physical importance of
beloved and consequently the sexual desire of the
poet. On the other hand, "finger" evokes "being
stroke" and reinforces the idea of physical love. In
this reading which is based on the linguistic
competence of the reader, the poem has been read
according to the signifiers and their arrangement in
the poem. But in the second, retroactive reading
which is based on the literary competence of the
reader, the meaning of the poem will change
completely. The retroactive reading makes possible
a deeper meaning by the use of following structural
elements. To discover the matrix of the poem, it is
needed to identify its hypograms which are as
follows: 1) Lover wants to share his loneliness with
his beloved. 2) He begs the beloved to warm him
up in her bosom. 3) Lover wants the physical
unification with beloved. But reading the poem in
semiotics of poetry which is based on the signs in
the poem not on the base of some realities outside
it, the matrixes or semantic nucleuses of these
hypograms are: desire for unification with love and
achieve equilibrium and peace in love. Not
mentioned directly in the poem, these matrixes are
the fruit of the retroactive reading. The poem
expresses the desire of the lover for unification not
with the beloved but with the essence of love that is
peace and tranquility. In lines 12 and 13, we read
"Come melt like a word in the line of my silence /
Come melt in my palm the luminous mass of love."
The repetition of the word "melt" shows that to
what extent the lover want to achieve unity with
love, to melt with it means to gain unity with love
and immortality. Unification with love and
immortality could be read in term of Divine love.
The poet indicates this idea in line 23 "should the
explorer of the morning mine come, call me up".
One who is the explorer of the morning mine,
opens the gate of sun to the man is God. He is the
source of real immortality and love.
Riffaterre believes that "in order to understand
the structure of a poem…the reader ought to
analyze "overdetermination", "conversion" and
"expansion" in a poem" (Payandeh, 2009, p.7). The
matrix of "To the Garden of Co-Travelers" –
unification with and immortality of love- has
expanded from a phrase into a blank verse by the
use of "overdetermination". In this way the central
ideas and meanings in the poem are: "loneliness":
taste of a tune (6), solitude (8), and my silence (13).
"death/fear": lanes of gloom (16), multiplication of
doubt and match (17), cement surface of the
century (18), black soil (19), age of assent of steel
(21), still age (5) and night of metal's friction (21).
"Love/beloved": night-slaught bulk (8), luminous
mass (14), intimate grief (4), dawn of a lilac (23),
warm up (15), faith (24), garden (25), lull me (21).
The second element Riffaterre has introduced as
the influential factor in developing the central
meaning of a poem is "conversion". Accordingly,
the conversions used in the poem are: "love's
splendor": night-slaught of your bulk (8), intimate
grief (4), and luminous mass (14). "Beloved's
voice": the chloroform of that odd plant (3), sweet
(2). The third element, influential in the process of
emerging the matrix of this poem is "expansion".
The poet has expanded "loneliness", "love" and
"fear of modernity" into a blank verse. Using the
words that indicate these concepts, the poet has
developed the ideas into a poem. It is useful to
point out that each of these elements could overlap
each other. But it can be said that the poet uses two
factors of overdetermination and conversion in the
favor of expansion. The structural core of
expansion is overdetermination and conversion in
order to develop the matrix-central idea- into a
poem.
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
According to Rifftterre there are two processes
that make the poetry possible. The first one is
accumulation. Each word is made up of one or
more semes (minimal units of meaning).
Accumulation is a chain of words that have a
common idea. What's more, the words that is part
of the accumulation "become synonyms of one
another irrespective of their original meaning in
ordinary language" (Riffaterre, 1983, p.39). The
significance of accumulation is that this process
gives a synonymous quality to the words. Riffaterre
believes that the process of accumulation occurs
when the reader reads a series of words that are
related through a core of meaning that links them
together. Riffaterre calls this a "shared seme". The
poet never mentions this core meaning or central
word directly in the poem. As the reader
progresses, accumulation "filters through the
semantic features of its words, thereby
overdetermining the occurrence of the most widely
represented seme and cancelling out the semes that
appear less frequently" (Riffaterre, 1983, p.39). In
the sonnet of Keats there are three constellations of
accumulations. The words: steadfast (1), patient
(4), sleepless (4), lone splendor (2) and
unchangeable (9) signify an accumulation that their
meaning is connected through the shared seme
"characteristics of a lover". The second
accumulation consists of the words: fair's love (10),
breast (10), soft swell and fall (11), sweet unrest
(12)
tender-taken
breath
(13)
signify
"characteristics
of
beloved".
The
third
accumulation links these two accumulations and
signifies the quality of love between lovers.
Accordingly, the words: priest-like task (5), pure
ablution (6) and snow (8) are connected with
"purity and immortality of love" as shared seme.
The shared semes that derive from these
accumulations is "love". If we add words "lone
splendor", "eternal lids" and "steadfast" the
overdetermined seme will be "immortality". This
kind of semiotics needs a retroactive reading which
emphasizes the literary competence of the reader.
"To the garden of Co-Travelers" could be read
from the very perspectives. In the poem there are at
least three constellations of accumulation. The first
and main shared seme is loneliness. It could be
defined also as the qualities the lover could be
defined by. The accumulation words of solitude
(8), silence (13), still age (5), lanes of gloom (16),
and taste of a tune (6) provide the scope for
loneliness.
The
second
constellation
of
accumulation is intimate grief (4), night-slaught
bulk (8) and luminous mass (14) with "love/lover"
as its shared seme. The third accumulation with the
shared seme of "hope" consists of dawn of a lilac
(23), warm up (15), faith (24), garden (25) and lull
me (21). These shared semes in the form of
accumulation make the central ideas in Sepehri's
poem.
Michael Riffaterre determines "descriptive
system" as the second element in making a poem.
In other words, a descriptive system is a group of
words, expressions and ideas that are used in the
text to designate the parts of the whole that the
author wants to represent. With accumulation, the
relationship between the terms is synonymous,
whereas in the case of a descriptive system, "each
component of the system functions as a metonym
of the nucleus" (Riffaterre, 1983, p.39). This
metonymic relationship subordinates all of the
words in the descriptive system to the nuclear
word.
The descriptive system is a set of
stereotypes and conventional ideas about the word
with which it is associated. In "Bright Star" we can
determine three descriptive systems: 1) lover:
steadfast (1), lone splendor (2), patient and
sleepless (4). 2) Love: snow (8), pure ablution (6),
priestlike (5) and unchangeable (9). 3) Beloved:
breast (10), fair (10), sweet (12) and tender-taken
breath (13). When the reader reads anyone of these
words in the poem, the same semantic nucleus will
form in his/her mind. In Sepehri's "To the Garden
of Co-Travelers" the same descriptive system could
be analyzed. 1) Lover: silence (13), solitude (8),
intimate grief (4) and a door to the descent of the
pear. 2) Beloved: voice (2), finger (24), nightslaught bulk (8), the chloroform of that odd plant
(3) and sweet (2). 3) Fear and hopelessness: black
soil (19), gloom (16), cement surface (18) and still
age (5). 4) Hope: dawn (23), warm (24), garden
(25), equator's glow (24) and faith (24). As it is
clear, accumulation and descriptive system could
overlap like what had been studied in three
structural
elements
of
overdetermination,
conversion and expansion. The constituent words
could overlap and make common compositions.
The poets never have mentioned these matrixes
directly in their poems. But in a retroactive reading
and by the use of poetic devices in semiotics of
poetry, the reader could go through the deeper
meaning and understanding of these poems.
Conclusion
Michael Riffaterre's semiotics of poetry provides
the reader to achieve a meaning of the poem which
is based on the close reading and semiotics
investigation. Riffaterre's critical theory in poetry
consists of two processes of reading. In this
comparative study, John Keats' "Bright Star"
(1819) and Sohrab Sepehri's "To the Garden of CoTravelers" had been studied based on Riffaterre's
semiotics of poetry. The heuristic reading of the
poems shows that the poems point to outside
realities. They depict the physical desire of the poet
towards beloved and the poet mourns the loneliness
and distance between him and his beloved and he
does not like to be alone like the star in "Bright
Star" or in a still age in "To the garden of CoTravelers". Not providing a deep understanding,
heuristic reading is based on grammatical analysis.
In retroactive reading which is based on the literary
competence of the reader, in "Bright Star" the
narrator envoys bright star's steadfastness that
signifies lover's desire for immortality. The poem
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2(9) September, 2014
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Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry in Re- Reading John Keats' "Bright Star" and Sepehri's "To the Garden of Co-Travelers"
deals with love and appreciation of things that are
unchanging. "To The Garden of Co-Travelers"
recounts the fear and loneliness of the poet as same
as "Bright Star". The poet wants to cross the helllike world of modern age and take shelter in the
peace of love. The sonnet has developed this
matrix by the use of "overdetermination",
"expansion" and "conversion". Each one shows the
poem as "an end in itself" in which the meaning
can be detected by the play of signifier and
signified. The retroactive reading accounts for the
"ungrammaticalities" in the poem and highlights its
aesthetic qualities. Identifying hypograms of two
poems result in matrixes or semantic nucleuses as
follows: desire for and unification with immortality
and love. The matrix of two poems has been
developed from a single word and phrase into
poems by the use of three poetic structural
principles: overdetermination, conversion and
expansion. The poets never have mentioned these
matrixes directly in their poems. But in a
retroactive reading and by the use of poetic devices
in semiotics of poetry, the reader could go through
the deeper meaning and understanding of these
poems. According to Rifftterre there are two
processes that make the poetry possible. The first
one is accumulation. The significance of
accumulation is that process gives a synonymous
quality to the words and forms "shared seme". In
the sonnet of Keats there are three constellations of
accumulations: love, lover and beloved. In
Sepehri's poem also emerge three constellations of
accumulations: loneliness, love/lover and hope.
Michael Riffaterre determines "descriptive system"
as the second element in making a poem. In
descriptive system the relationship of the signs is
based on metonym. In "Bright Star" we can
determine three descriptive systems: love, lover
and beloved. In Sepehri's "To the Garden of CoTravelers" the same descriptive system could be
analyzed .
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