Poetry and Private Language

This paper discusses three thesis in relation to poetry: (1) the Inadequacy Thesis: language is inadequate to capture, portray, do justice to, the quality and intensity of the inner life; (2) the Empathy Thesis: descriptions of certain kinds of experiences can only be (adequately) understood by a person who has had similar experiences; (3) the Poetic Thesis, which has two parts: (a) only through poetry can we hope to overcome the problem of the Inadequacy Thesis and (b) the difficulty of (some) poetry is at least partly explained by the Empathy Thesis. The paper argues that there are important truths underlying each thesis but that it would be wrong to connect this kernel of truth with a Lockean view of language, and in particular with a view of language as 'private', in the sense implied by Locke and criticized by Wittgenstein. The romantic conception of poetry, to which the theses are related, neither relies on the Lockean view nor does it succumb to the Wittgensteinian view.

Let me begin by introducing two familiar, controversial, but to my mind not implausible, views about language, each of which has a long history.

The first is a complaint, often heard, that language is somehow inadequate to capture, or do justice to, our inner life, our private experiences. How can we capture in words our true feelings? Descriptions seem so wooden, so remote, so cold in relation to the vividness of a sensation or an emotion. The inadequacy of language is a common lament even of poets. There is a sonnet by Mallarmé about a swan, in which the poet is symbolized by a swan trapped in a freezing lake. The lake is the swan's element yet at the same time it is the lake itself that traps and freezes him, pins him down. (1) Humans need language...

... middle of paper ...

... is not incompatible with the core of the three romantic theses which give so privileged a status to the language of poetry.

Notes

(1) See Winifred Nowottny, The Language Poets Use, The Athlone Press, 1965, p. 104.

(2) Nowottny, op cit, p. 106-107.

(3) Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, '"Form" and "Content" in the Aesthetics of German Classicism', quoted in Nowottny, op cit, p. 107.

(4) Bertrand Russell, 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', in Logic and Knowledge, ed. R. Marsh, London 1956, p. 195.

(5) Russell, op cit, p. 195.

(6) Kenneth Allott, 'Offering': quoted in John Press, The Chequer'd Shade: Reflections on Obscurity in Poetry, Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 156.

(7) Louis MacNiece, 'Hidden Ice', from Modern Poetry: quoted in Press, op. cit., p. 158.

(8) Press, Obscurity in Poetry, p. 158.

(9) Dylan Thomas, last lines of 'Fern Hill'.