The history of lyric hurts

Among the many, many gems in Stewart's book, looking at it again I'm blown away most perhaps by her initial presentation of the function/innovation of lyric, which is just overflowing with amazing formulations. Commenting on Wordsworth's famous (but still always shocking) statement about the intrinsic connection between meter and the alleviation of pain ("There can be little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose"), Stewart says the following:

In theories of lyric from Vico forward, the enunciation of pain at the origin of lyric must appear before the emergence of a self-conscious sense of one's own subjectivity [...]. To equate pain with subjectivity is to equate the body with subjectivity and so to confuse the most collective with the most individual. Pain has no memory; its expression depends on the intersubjective invention of association and metaphor. The situation of the person resides in the genesis of the memory of action and experience in intersubjective terms--that is, in the articulation and mastery of the originating pain. Coleridge [in Biographia Literaria] explains that in the "frequency of forms and figures of speech," we find "offsprings of passion" who are as well "adopted children of power." Yet the mastery of pain through measures and figures is not merely repressive; it is as well a matter of coming to knowledge and expression. Coleridge's explanation shows a subject coming into activity out of a passive relation to sense experience, memory, and expectation. Here the figures and forms created are those of a subjectivity enunciating itself.

Divergence in lyric is thus not between language and music but between a subject transforming him-or herself from the somatic both toward and against the social. The history of lyric is thereby the history of a relation between pronouns, the genesis of ego-tu and ego-vos in the reciprocity of an imagination posing and composing itself and its audience via the work of time. Lyric conventions of addresser and addressee are the working through on the level of literary genre of the function of linguistic shifters.


[...] First person expression in lyric is related existentially to the context of the poem as a whole; it is the poem that makes first-person expression emerge in its individuality as it engages the reader in the eidetic task of the appearance of the "you." The doubled "I" (authorial intention the expression of first person voice in the text) encounters a doubled "you" (the reader's intention towards reception, the implied addressee in the text).
-Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, 46-7.

For what it's worth, I can only agree with everything here, and not just the importance of "intersubjective inventions," over the fashionably oversimple equation of pain with the body, as she nicely puts it, but the unbelievable displacement of the conflict within lyric from a tired opposition (which Wordsworth himself often uses, lacking--unlike Coleridge--a sophisticated critical language to express the deeper things his poetry is indeed up to) to one that is not only more problematic and fresh but, as you can see from where the discussion goes, much more (again, to echo my last post) intuitive. The line on the lyric genre that summarizes this is just unbelievable.

The body of poetic forms

The following is an excellent bit at the end of an unbelievably rich book, a book that does nothing less than overthrow some of the most tired assumptions that we have when approaching poetry, making the latter seem fresh (a sort of addictive feeling, the feeling one always gets when returning and really significantly reinterpreting a poem, seeing something wholly new about it, or experiencing it from a completely different angle). Or, rather, it is a book that, despite its density and depth, gives us back something entirely simple: something of a sense of poetry (and especially poetic form's) fundamental intuitiveness (or, perhaps more fundamentally, sensuousness). This prompts us to cut through the nostalgia and even the irony and simply take it up again:

Marx had hoped that over time new human senses would develop; he never seemed to have imagined that entire spheres of sense experience might be lost for many first-world people: a tacit knowledge of tools and forms of dancing or of carrying infants, the disappearance of ways of living with animals or cultivating plant life, along with the smell and feel and sounds and even tastes that accompanied such practices; the sound of wind in uninhabited spaces; the weight of ripe things not yet harvested. These experiences are gone, and even their names will soon be gone. The historical body of poetic forms is more and more an archive of lost sensual experiences; by now an aura of nostalgia accrues around the notion of the poetic itself. It was a mistake of humanism to assume that nature exists for us. But it has been just as serious a mistake to have forgotten that the made world, the world of culture, is made by and for us. [...] The entire enduring accomplishment of the history of poetic forms awaits as a vast repertoire for anyone who hopes to enter again into an engagement with the senses.
-Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, 332-3

Austen's Juvenilia

...is simply masterful, if that isn't too paradoxical. And I indeed think it isn't. My hesitation comes only from the fact that while we often speak of prodigies in music or painting, we don't really do so when it comes to literature. And maybe we should start. Regardless, this stuff is amazing, and while I've known this for a while (having even written on The Beautiful Cassandra before), I am feeling so fortunate to have finally got the time read it all through recently. Just think of the level of skill required not only to compose such unbelievably precise, balanced sentences at that age (14ish), to dare to make out of them a whole novel, and to include and parody every one of the essential devices--but also to do so in three pages! And hilariously! It is just unbelievable:

AMELIA WEBSTER
an interesting and well written Tale
is dedicated by Permission
to
Mrs Austen
by
Her humble Servant
THE AUTHOR

Letter the first
TO MISS WEBSTER
My dear Amelia, You will rejoice to hear of the return of my amiable Brother from abroad. He arrived on thursday, & never did I see a finer form, save that of your sincere freind
MATILDA HERVEY

Letter the 2d.
TO H. BEVERLEY ESQre.
Dear Beverly, I arrived here last thursday & met with a hearty reception from my Father, Mother, & Sisters. The latter are both fine Girls -- particularly Maud, who I think would suit you as a Wife well enough. What say you to this? She will have two thousand Pounds & as much more as you can get. If you don't marry her you will mortally offend
GEORGE HERVEY

Letter the 3d.
TO MISS HERVEY
Dear Maud, Beleive me, I'm happy to hear of your Brother's arrival. I have a thousand things to tell you, but my paper will only permit me to add that I am yr. affect. Freind
AMELIA WEBSTER

Letter the 4th.
TO MISS S. HERVEY
Dear Sally, I have found a very convenient old hollow oak to put our Letters in; for you know we have long maintained a private Correspondence. It is about a mile from my House & seven from yours. You may perhaps imagine that I might have made choice of a tree which would have divided the Distance more equally -- I was sensible of this at the time, but as I considered that the walk would be of benefit to you in your weak & uncertain state of Health, I preferred it to one nearer your House, & am yr. faithfull
BENJAMIN BAR

Letter the 5th.
TO MISS HERVEY
Dear Maud, I write now to inform you that I did not stop at your house in my way to Bath last Monday. -- I have many things to inform you of besides; but my Paper reminds me of concluding; & beleive me yrs. ever &c.
AMELIA WEBSTER

Letter the 6th.
TO MISS WEBSTER
Saturday
Madam, An humble Admirer now addresses you -- I saw you, lovely Fair one, as you passed on Monday last, before our House in your way to Bath. I saw you thro' a telescope, & was so struck by your Charms that from that time to this I have not tasted human food.
GEORGE HERVEY

Letter the 7th.
TO JACK
As I was this morning at Breakfast the Newspaper was brought me, & in the list of Marriages I read the following.
"George Hervey Esqre. to Miss Amelia Webster"
"Henry Beverley Esqre. to Miss Hervey"
&
"Benjamin Bar Esqre. to Miss Sarah Hervey".
yours, TOM

FINIS