Abstraction done well

[Scavella]

From T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton":

V.

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

================

Yes, it's abstract. Hell, it hurts my head to read it. But it's poetry, and Eliot did this well into his poetic career. And it's abstraction well done.

Comments?

Scavella

[gecian]

Every line of Four Quartets sounds good; and good sound can forgive everything including abstraction. Also, the abstraction is essential here, because Eliot's writing about something that is beyond concrete description: he's at the edge of the describable.

Eliot's not writing "from the heart" in the pffa sense, so one objection to the abstraction -- that it's subjective and not communicative -- doesn't hold. He is communicating, through his abstractions as well as things like the jar -- which is, I believe, an allusion to Stevens's Tennesseean object, as well as Oriental ones, the violin (negated) etc; and only one part of it, the last line

The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

is really impossible to "understand".

Much of The Four Quartets is abstract, and some of it is concrete. All of it is beautiful.

Consider the entirely abstract but comprehensible:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

Or the concrete/abstract & strange:

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

Or, again:

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

(the last one's from Little Gidding)

There's a pretty accurate text at http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/index.html

***Incidentally: in the "Garlic" passage, Eliot's used identity-rhymes very effectively.

[This message has been edited by gecian (edited 12-01-2001).]

[Scavella]

And the rare passage of imagery in BN IV:


Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

[This message has been edited by Scavella1 (edited 12-01-2001).]

[JohnBoddie]

Re:
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable"

This was described as "entirely abstract but comprehensible".

What is it that makes this abstract?

Time, while in some sense an abstraction by its nature, is broadly understood and the understanding is consistent (unlike, say, faith). This rumination on the nature of time is, I contend, not abstract but concrete - making the passage comprehendable in a consistent manner by a wide range of readers.

JB

[gecian]

concrete, a. denoting thing as opposed to quality, state or action.
abstract, a. separated from matter, practice or particular examples; not concrete.
time, n. duration, indefinitely continued existence.
existence, n. being.

As you see, "time" is defined in very vague terms -- vaguer, perhaps, than faith.

Besides, turning to the definition of abstract, time is a quality of the universe, and is therefore abstract. It is also abstract in the more common pffa sense: intangible, not sensuous. (There's a relativistic argument, I suppose, that Time's abstract only in the sense that space is, but I'd say space is abstract too: a quality of the universe, which we don't really feel.)

Where is "abstract" defined as "causing different responses in different people"?

Something concrete can be shown (not told), without the use of metaphor. You can show people an orange without making it a winged chariot. Can time be shown without metaphor?

And what about abstract nouns like "knighthood"? Today, the term has a pretty clear meaning: it means, the state of having been knocked over the back or head by a particular person with a particular instrument. Ditto priesthood. Neither term is ambiguous. Yet both are abstract.

"But at my back I always hear
Time's/love's/faith's/wheat's chariots hurrying near."

Which one stands out?

[Urizen]

JB, I think your post has shown, though I don't think you meant it that way, why the casual flagging of words as abstractions (and therefore bad for poetry) is not good criticism. I do agree with gecian that the passage in question is abstract, but it's still good poetry. Far too often critters are picking nits with poets for using "abstractions", because they think it's good form, without taking the trouble to explain what it was about the abstractions that set them off. But words like "darkness", for instance, which for some reason is strongly disliked, is more easily understood than "Time", which is one of the broadest and most quibbled about concepts ever. Read _The Human Experience Of Time_ , edited by Charles M. Sherover, and see what kind of a philosophical war has been waged over that word, for almost three thousand years.

I think in general, warning about the careless use of abstractions is good advice for a beginner, but over-all, much too fine a point has been put on it.


------------------
Bill

[JohnBoddie]

I think we're drifting into sophistry here.

Although time doesn't directly affect the five senses, there can be little doubt that when you and I speak of time, we're speaking the same language.

Although there are many aspects of time that drift into the sea of unanchored abstractions - "forever" is a reasonable example, many are not, for example, "two minutes later."

It might be worthwhile to consider "time" as we consider "gravity." We feel the pull of gravity, we see change occur over time.

An abstraction gves rise to the question - "How am I to understand what the writer means by this?" In pointing out that the quote from Eliot is "comprehensble", you immediately remove it from the class of abstractions.

JB

[Urizen]

I see a problem with definitions. Nowhere have I seen that "abstract" means "incomprehensible".
JB, are you saying that as long as something is comprehensible it is not abstract?

------------------
Bill

[This message has been edited by Urizen (edited 12-01-2001).]

[David Mascellani]

Good topic Scavella1
http://classes.csumb.edu/CST/CST328-01/world/Abstraction.htm
<A HREF="http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/modernist.html" TARGET=_blank>
http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/modernist.html (http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/modernist.html</A>)[/url]

http://www.poets.org/exh/Exhibit.cfm?prmID=3
http://www.mum.edu/msvs/9199terryEast.html



[This message has been edited by David Mascellani (edited 12-01-2001).]

[JohnBoddie]

Urizen makes an excellent point regarding abstractions, critique and poetry.

If we want to get picky, we can recognize that all words are abstractions and when I say "an orange", the characteristics that make the image generated by the reader "concrete" are, in fact, generalities as there are many differences in oranges (size, shape, taste, and hue). Although oranges share common genetic characteristics, it is the readily accessible physical characteristics of the orange that we use to create the image from the word.

What should we say about gravity? The physical characteristics of gravity are evident to all although we never see "gravity" - we only see its effects. Mankind still gropes toward an understanding of what gravity is and why it works, but I think few of us would consider "gravity" an abstraction if used in a poem. As with the orange, there is a commonality of experience with gravity that makes the author's meaning clear.

And now, what about time?

Urizen's point, and it's quite valid, is that critique often focuses in on the fact that an abstraction (in the sense of something that is not a tangible entity in the world) exists in a poem and point the presence of the abstraction out as a defect.

In fact, abstractions create problems in poems when they appear in a way that provides no context for their interpretation by the reader.

I claim that abstractions that are present and intelligible within the context of a poem (as in the example provided by gecian) cease to behave as abstractions and, instead, take on the characteristics of our aforementioned orange.

JB

[rikroots]

Much of this doesn't strike me as "abstract". Surreal, perhaps, but
not abstract.

Originally posted by Scavella1:
From T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton":

V.

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

This, to me, is setting the parameters for the rest of the piece - in
particular that words, as labels, have a life outside the reference of
the act of utterance and that they, like us, can change, adapt, and
die over the course of time.

Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.

Resonance. Atoms within the porcelain resonating, decaying,
interacting with the air and the shelf it stands on. And yet it
appears immobile when we see it with our eyes.

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.

This, to me, is reportage. Someone stumbling around with a big idea,
and failing to bring it into focus.

And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert

But this is very real, to me. I can see the words as objects in their
own right, evolving over time in reaction to the differing
requirements of each generation of users. Slippery little things, like
the catherder's flock.

Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

Here I hit the gates of surrealville, the idea of words lamenting the
discontinuance of their companions (did "trollop" weep for "doxy"?
Does "gay" grieve for "ganymede"?). But I adore "loud lament of the
disconsolate chimera".

================

Yes, it's abstract. Hell, it hurts my head to read it. But it's poetry, and Eliot did this well into his poetic career. And it's abstraction well done.

Comments?

Scavella

It (mostly) works for me because I am willing to buy into a set of
parameters which help me translate the theme into concrete images. But
then, I expect that this is a very minority view on how to handle the
piece.

Maybe I'm just wierd.

Rik

[gecian]

As I said before, I don't like the equation of "abstraction" with "inability to communicate" or "incomprehensibility".

I agree that time is a comprehensible AND communicable notion. However, I disagree that it is concrete, on the grounds that "concrete" is not a synonym for "communicable". I agree that time may be treated like gravity; as I said above, time is a quality of the universe, so is gravity, but neither is a THING: they are both properties of a thing, and therefore abstract.

"Greenness" is an abstract noun, just as light and darkness are. These belong to the class of precise abstractions -- the notion of greenness is commonly understood. So are "light" and "darkness" and "death". And "gravity".

What is the difference between time and an orange?

When time is anchored to a concrete situation, it communicates quite well. However, suppose we have only the idea of "time" or of "light". These are different from "orange" or "wheat" because they cannot be shown in themselves, unconnected to concrete objects.

That concrete nouns can be SHOWN makes them immensely useful in poetry: a chariot or other THING can be a metaphor for time, time cannot be a metaphor for anything.

I am not trying to say that Eliot's use of the abstract notion of time detracts from the poem. I am merely calling it what it is.

A bit of fairly simple sophistry:

The case for time's being abstract goes further than that for light. Light can be explained very precisely by physics: it is a phenomenon. On the other hand, the non-psychological notion of Time is an intellectual construct: a quantity bred out of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which we knew before we had stated it, to help us make sense of the Law.

[Urizen]

I don't like to beat a dead horse, but I think we've lost sight of the purpose of Scavella's post, which was to cite a passage of poetry that demonstrates the use of abstractions in a way that works.
The fact that an abstraction is comprehensible doesn't make it non-abstract or concrete. What is and what is not abstract isn't a matter of opinion or taste or interpretation. Gecian is correct, it is wrong to equate the abstract with the incomprehensible.
The very word "abstraction" has taken on a patently negative connotation for a great many members of this forum, and I would venture to say that quite a few people here are under the impression that abstractions are bad for poetry regardless of whether or not they communicate effectively. Since the word is so often linked with "cliche", a lot of people are failing to recognize that the two terms mean distinctly different things. Let's also not forget that while abstractions, if used without any supporting context, as JB says, are bad for poetry, it is also true that an image, if not constructed well, can fail also, in much the same way: by not serving to adequately convey the poet's meaning. In looking over the crits posted here, you'll notice that reviewers will often explain how and why a certain image failed for them, but very rarely will they explain why an abstraction failed, except to call it by name and have done with it.

Eliot's work isn't that unusual in it's use of broad abstractions. Some of the most celebrated poetry ever written, especially over the last hundred years, strikes a balance between the concrete and the abstract in a way that is effective and thought-provoking. In my opinion, we need to stop treating abstractions as the ememy, at least in the higher forums, where it should be assumed that a poet is at the stage where s/he is able to use them in a positive and engaging fashion.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever". This line, which has an almost universal appeal to poetry lovers everywhere, wouldn't survive for a minute in the critical forums at pffa.

------------------
Bill

[This message has been edited by Urizen (edited 12-02-2001).]