many movements of the body which we call 'voluntary' and regard as arbitrarily controlled by the individual will. Language, that is to say, may not be poetry in esse, but it is always potential verse. From another point of view, too, the saying of Hamann may be justified if we interpret it with the license that all oracles demand. There is no process of figurative language, no device of grammar or rhetoric, no whim even of pedantic theorizers on eloquence, which does not find its parallel over and over again in the unstudied processes of our ordinary speech. It is profoundly true that all language is poetry.' 1 For further remarks on the origin of language see p. 391. CHAPTER II LANGUAGE IS POETRY WHEN we examine the dictionary of any highly developed language like English, we are impressed not only with the enormous extent of the vocabulary, but with its infinite variety. There are plain words for common things (as bread, stone, house, child, horse) and simple physical acts (as eat, drink, run, climb); there are formal or dignified or poetical words for equally simple conceptions (like residence, progeny, quaff, masticate); there are vague words (like thing, affair, matter, act, do) and scientific terms of rigid exactness (like oxygen, atmosphere, chloride, carbon, inoculate); there are abstract terms for mental and moral qualities (as sagacity, carelessness, probity, honor) and adjectives describing persons who exemplify these qualities (as sagacious, careless, honest, honorable); there are words of a distinctly undignified character (like chum, crank, bamboozle, blubber, bawl, fizzle), others so dignified as to be uncommon in familiar talk (as remunerative, emolument, eleemosynary, recalcitrant) or so high-sounding as hardly to be allowable even in elaborate writing (as exacerbate, cachinnation, adumbrate); there are words which have poetical associations (as golden, roseate, silver-tongued, gambol, soaring, eterne), and others so prosaic that every poet avoids them (as fry, exchequer, discount, cross-question, extra, medium, miscellaneous); there are words so technical as to be understood by specialists only (as elec trolysis, cotyledon, ontology, quaternions), and others so childish as to be confined to the dialect of the nursery (as naughty, mammy, dad, dolly). Frequently, too, we find a number of different words (synonyms, we call them) for what is essentially the same idea:1 ask, request, beseech, pray, beg, petition, supplicate, entreat, implore, solicit, crave, importune; angry, wrathful, incensed, irritated, vexed, resentful, enraged, furious, indignant, exasperated, irate, hot, infuriated; join, unite, associate, unify, link, connect, couple, combine.2 The same marvellous variety shows itself when we study the different meanings of a single word. Thus figure may be equally well applied to a person's form, a polygon, a numerical sign, an elaborate drawing or picture in a book, a metaphor or simile; energy may be used in a general sense or in the technical language of science (the conservation of energy'); property may be a quality, one's possessions, or (in theatrical language) a thing or utensil used in setting the stage; character may refer to one's personal qualities, or it may denote a mark or sign in writing or printing, or it may be colloquially used for an eccentric person. The question is immediately suggested: Whence does a nation provide itself with this enormous mass of words, with their multifarious meanings so aptly differentiated as to express all the aspects of any conception that can occur to the mind of civilized man? In the first place, no people is perfectly homogeneous, 1So-called synonyms almost always differ from each other in some shade of meaning, or in emphasis, or at all events in their connotations. 2 The reader may easily multiply examples by collecting, for instance, the synonyms for awkward, beautiful, healthy, strange, throw, go, law, sin, people, custom. - and this is strikingly true of the English nation, which is Saxon and Norman and Dane,' as Tennyson wrote, and Celtic as well. Each component part of the population contributes its proportion of words, small or large, but always characteristic, and distinct in many particulars from the contributions of all the rest. Then, too, all cultivated languages have borrowed much from outside nations with whom they have come in contact in war or trade or literature. Our own language, as we shall see, has enriched itself in this way from every quarter of the globe. The varied materials thus brought together are constantly subjected to what may be called mechanical processes of growth. Every language has its machinery of prefixes and suffixes and compounds, by means of which a single word may become the centre of a considerable group of related terms: as, true, tru-th, tru-ly, un-true, un-tru-ly, tru-th-ful, tru-th-ful-ness, etc. But these causes are not sufficient to explain the richness and complexity of our speech. Such a result was achieved only when this great mass of variously derived material had been subjected for centuries to the language-making instinct; that is, to the poetic faculty of man. The dictum that all language is poetry,' then, if properly understood, goes far toward answering the question with which we are concerned. The essentially poetical or figurative character of language may easily be seen by comparing a number of passages from the poets with ordinary prosaic expressions. When Wordsworth writes, in Laodamia, The gods approve, The depth, and not the tumult of the soul, 1 These processes will be studied in Chapters XIII, XIV. the imaginative power of his phrasing at once appeals to us. If, however, we compare such common expressions as 'He was deeply moved,' 'profoundly affected,'' from the bottom of my heart,' we recognize the same figure of speech. In other words, the poetical history of Wordsworth's line goes back to that unknown time when some primitive poet, without knowing that he was talking poetry, first applied to the emotions words which in their literal sense were only applicable to the physical conception of depth. As time has passed, the primitive metaphor has grown so familiar that it has ceased to be a metaphor. It has become merely an ordinary meaning of a group of common words. The modern poet, perceiving the imaginative significance of this usage, elaborated the figure it embodied, phrased it anew with conscious literary art, and thus, in an instant, restored it to its full poetic rights. Similarly, we may compare with the tumult of the soul,' such prose expressions as 'his mind was disturbed,' 'his agitation was painful to witness,' 'the violence of his emotion,'-each of which, though no longer felt as figurative, embodies a metaphor precisely similar to Wordsworth's. We are not at this moment concerned with the ethical or philosophical contents of Wordsworth's line, for these might have been stated, with perfect accuracy, in the plainest terms, but merely with the poetical language in which he clothed his thought. 6 When Banquo says to Macbeth that the witches' salutation might yet enkindle him unto the crown,' we perceive 6 1 Disturb is to drive asunder in disorder,' from L. dis-, ' apart,' and turba, disorder,' a riotous crowd.' Agitation comes from L. agito, 'to drive to and fro.' Violence is from vis, force.' Emotion is the ' act of moving (one) away,' disturbance (of mind).' |