CHAPTER 6 Language in Operation Then the bird said "Nevermore." Edgar Allan Foe Recently, aboard a train, I overheard a scrap of conversation. A man said to a young lady, "They were playing 'The Raven' on the radio. An old record of a London actor dead for years. I wish you had heard his Nevermore.''^ Although I was not the addressee of the stran ger's oral message, I received it nevertheless and later transposed this utterance first into handwritten and then into printed symbols; now it has become a part of a new framework—my message to the prospec tive reader of these pages. The stranger had resorted to a literary quotation, which apparently alluded to an emotional experience shared with his female interlocutor. He referred to a performance allegedly transmitted by broadcast. A dead British actor was the original sender of a message addressed "to whom it may concern." He, in turn, had merely reproduced Edgar Allan Poe's literary message of 1845. Furthermore, the American poet himself was ostensibly only transmitting the confession of a "lover la menting his deceased mistress" ^—perhaps the poet himself, perhaps some other man, real or imaginary. Within this monologue, the word nevermore is attributed to a talking bird, with the further implication 50 Language in Operation that that one word uttered by the Raven had been caught from some unhappy master, as the melancholy burden of his customary laments. Thus the same single word was successively set in motion by the h\'pothetical "master," the Raven, the lover, the poet, the actor, the radio station, the stranger on the train, and finally by the present au­ thor. The "master" repeatedly exteriorized the elliptic one-word sen­ tence of his inner speech, nevermore; the bird mimicked its sound se­ quence; the lover retained it in his memory and reported the Raven's part with reference to its probable provenience; the poet wrote and published the lover's story, actually inventing the lover's, Raven's, and master's roles; the actor read and recited for a recording the piece as­ signed by the poet to the lover with its nevermore attributed by the lover to the Raven; the radio station selected the record and put it on the air; the stranger listened, remembered, and quoted this message with reference to its sources, and the linguist noted his quotation, re­ constituting the whole sequence of transmitters and perhaps even mak­ ing up the roles of the stranger, the broadcaster, and the actor. This is a chain of actual and fictitious senders and receivers, most of whom merely relay and to a large extent intentionally quote one and the same message, which, at least to a few of them, was familiar be­ forehand. Some of the participants in this one-way communication are widelv separated from each other in time and/or space, and these gaps are bridged through various means of recording and transmission. The whole sequence offers a typical example of an intricate process of com­ munication. It is very different from the trivial pattern of the speech circuit graphically presented in textbooks: A and В talk face to face so that an imaginary thread goes from A's brain through his mouth to the ear and brain of В and through his mouth back to A's ear and brain. "The Raven" is a poem written for mass consumption or, to use Poe's own phrase, a poem created "for the express purpose of run­ ning"; and it did indeed have a great "run."-2 In this mass-oriented poetic utterance, as the author well understood, the reported speech of the avian tide-hero is the "pivot upon which the whole structure might turn" (p. 37). Actually, this message within a message "produced a sen­ sation," and readers were reportedly "haunted by the Nevermore.'" The kev, afterwards revealed by the writer himself, lies in his bold experi­ mentation with the procedures of communication and with its imder- hing duality: "the great element of unexpectedness" combined with its 51 QUESTIONS OF LITERARY THEORY very opposite. "As evil cannot exist without good, so unexpectedness must arise from expectedness."^ When the unusual visitor first entered his chamber, the host did not know what the intruder would say, if anything. He had no expecta tions whatever: thus he put his question "in jest and without looking for a reply" (p. 45). He was therefore startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken. The bird's "continuous use of the one word 'Nev ermore'" (p. 38) indicates, however, that what it utters is its only stock and store. This, once known, inverts the situation from one of total uncertainty to one of complete predictability. Similarly, there is no freedom of choice when an officer of the Fourth Hussars is commis sioned to perform a task: "Sir" is the only admissible answer. However, as Churchill notes in his memoirs,* this reply can carry a wide range of emotional modulations; whereas the "non-reasoning creature capable of speech" (p. 38), having presumably learned its word by rote, mo notonously repeats it without any variation. Thus its utterance lacks both cognitive and emotive information. The automatic speech of the ungainly fowl and the speaker itself are intentionally deprived of any individuality: it even appears sexless. To show this is the purpose of the formulas Sir or Madam and with mien of lord or lady, which some critics call mere padding. On the other hand, each time the nevermore is ascribed not to the indifferent pronouncements of the Raven but to the passionate ravings of the lover, an exclamation mark, symbolizing an emotive intonation, is substituted for the customary period. The word itself "should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair" (p. 40), yet the sensory sameness of the message dispatched by both creatures, man and bird, arouses a peculiar satisfac tion of relieved, "broken" loneliness. The pleasure increases, inasmuch as this equalization ties together the most dissimilar of all imaginable interlocutors—two talking bipeds, one featherless and the other feath ered. As the author relates, "a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven . . . infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone''' (pp. 38-39). The surprise that an ex change should occur at all is counteracted by the likeness of the grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous character of the utterer to its ob sessive utterance. With each repetition of the bird's stereotyped rejoinder, the be reaved lover more surely anticipates it, so that he adapts his questions to what Poe defines as "the expected 'Nevermore.'" In an amazing grasp 52 Language in Operation of the multiple fimctions performed simultaneously by verbal com- monkation, Poe says that these queries are propounded "half in super- sition and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torture" ip. 40). For talking birds, however, as their student Mowrer noted,^ localization is primarily a means of getting their human partner Ю continue communication with them and to give in fact no sign of farting. In this peculiar variety of interlocution, here carried to its extreme imit. each question is predetermined by the answer that follows: the \ jcswrr is the stimulus and the question, the response. Incidentally, âïcsc echoing queries are inversely analogous to the interpretation of aSK echo as a reply to the questioner, and Poe, who was most sensitive ao rxmctuation in verse, persistently inserted the question mark in the ™oct" sheet of this stanza: -•\nd the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lcnore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"* ~'-<i -nNerted answer and question game is typical of inner speech, *-cre the subject knows beforehand the reply to the question he will himself. Poe leaves an opening for this optional interpretation •" rîe quasi-dialogue with the Raven: toward the end of the poem "the jExrr.non of making him emblematical of Mournful and Never-ending I-jmanbrance is permitted distincdy to be seen" (p. 46). Perhaps the Ttrd and its replies are only imagined by the lover. A vaciMation be- •r*ccn the factual and the metaphorical levels is facilitated by a recur- :ir-.r illusion to dozing {While I nodded, nearly napping . . . dreaming mrzjuns) and by "transferring the point itself into the realm of Manory"'' (Ah, distinctly I remember). .Ml the traits typical of verbal hallucination—as listed, for example, n Lagache's monograph*—appear in the confession of Poe's lover: лгг:пипоп of vigilance, anguish, alienation of one's own speech and JE itrribution to an alter, accompanied by "a close circumscription of вокг' ( p. 42). Poe's skill in suggesting the empirical plausibility of an irrurural event was admired and praised by Dostoevski],^ who recap- ijrtd It in Ivan Karamazov's nightmare. Here the dehrious hero alter- •ыггл' lnteфrets his experience as a hallucinatory monologue of his •a- or as an intrusion by an "unexpected visitor." The stranger is ad- 53 QUESTIONS OF LITERARY THEORY dressed as "devil" by Ivan, as bird or devil by Poe's hero; both men are uncertain whether they are asleep or awake. "No, you are not someone apart, you are myself," Ivan insists; "it's I, I myself speaking, not you"; and the intruder agrees: "I am only your hallucination." The intermit tent use of the first- and second-person pronouns by both "speakers" reveals, however, the ambiguity of the theme. In Poe's view, without such a tension between the "upper" and the "under current" of mean ing, "there is always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye" (pp. 45-46). The two cardinal and complementary traits of verbal behavior are brought out here: that inner speech is in essence a dialogue and that any reported speech is appropriated and remolded by the quoter, whether it is a quotation from an alter or from an earlier phase of the ego {said I). Poe is right: it is the tension between these two aspects of verbal behavior which imparts to "The Raven"—and, let us add, to the climax of The Brothers Karamazov—so much of its poetic richness. This antinomy reinforces another, analogous tension— the tension between the poet's ego and the I of the fictitious story teller: I betook myself to linking fancy unto fancy. If in a sequence a prior moment depends upon a later one, linguists speak about a re£iressive action. For instance, when Spanish and English changed the first /1/ of the word colonel into /r/ in anticipation of the final /1/, this change exhibits a regressive dissimilation. R. G. Kent re ports a typical slip by a radio announcer, in which "the convention was in session" became "the confession was in session": the final word had exerted a regressive assimilative influence upon the proper "conven tion." ^^ Likewise, in "The Raven" the question is dependent on the reply. Moreover, the imaginary respondent is retrospectively deduced from its response Nevermore. The utterance is inhuman, both in its persistent cruelty and in its automatic, repetitive monotony. Hence an articulate but subhuman creature is suggested as speaker, and in partic ular a corvine bird, not only because of its gloomy appearance and "ominous reputation" (p. 40) but also because in most of its phonemes the noun raven is simply an inversion of the sinister never. Poe signals this connection by adjoining the two words: Quoth the Raven ^''Never more.'''' The juxtaposition becomes particularly telling in the final stanza: And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting; still is sitting On the pallid bust of PaUas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 54 Language in Operation And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore! Here the pair Raven, never is enhanced by a series of other mutuaHy corresponding sound sequences, matched to create an affinity between certain key words and to underscore their semantic association. The mtroductory clause, concluded with the series still—sit—still—sit, is linked with the final clause by the chain flit—float—floor—lift, and both pivots are manifestly juxtaposed: never flitting, still is sitting. The play upon the words pallid and Pallas is reinforced by the whimsical rhyme pallid bust—Pallas just. The initial dentals /s,d/ of the corresponding vequences seeming and demon (trochaic feet with the same vocaUc seg ment followed by an /m/ and in both cases with a final nasal) are with a shght variation blended in the groups is dreaming ITAI and streaming St'. In the prefatory note to the first publication of this poem, written bv the poet himself or at his instigation, "the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places" ^^ is singled out as its chief device. Against the background of equidistant and regularly recurring rhymes, Poe de liberately introduces rhymes displaced to achieve the "whole effect of unexpectedness ."^^ Regularly repeated sound sequences in such cus- tomar\' rhymes as remember—December—ember or morrow—borrow— sorrow are supplemented by "reversals" (to use Edmund Wilson's term): lonely /lounli/—only /ounli/—soul in /sôulin/. The regressive as- тса of the speech-sequence is under focus, and this variation serves to mterlock the "never = ending" theme of the Raven, sitting lonely, with die opposite theme of the lost Lenore /linor/. Not only the questions propounded by the desperate lover but in act the whole poem are predetermined by the final rejoinder nevermore md are composed in distinct anticipation of the denouement, as the ijthor disclosed in "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), his own commentary to "The Raven": "the poem may be said to have its begin- Tsnz—at the end" (p. 40). It is indeed difficult to understand now the continuous repudiations of Poe's piece of self-analysis, called a mis- jrading mystification, a premeditated farce, unparalleled effrontery, iT.d one of his mischievous caprices to catch the critics. Although Poe's jcrrer of August 9, 1846, to his friend Cooke recommended this com- л'гаг псэгas the "best specimen of analysis," ^^ an alleged oral statement 'Г. the writer was quoted posthumously: a supposed confession that 55 QUESTIONS OF LITERARY THEORY he had never intended this article to be received seriously. French poets, however, admiring both Poe's poetry and his essays on poetr\', have wondered in which instance he was jesting: whether in writing this marvelous commentary or in disavowing it to soothe a sentimental female interviewer. In point of fact, the author of "The Raven" formulated perfectly the relationship between poetic language and its translation into what now would be called the metalanguage of scientific analysis. In his Margi nalia, Poe recognized that the two aspects stand in complementar}' relation to each other: he said that we are able "to see distinctly the machinery" of any work of art and at the same time to enjoy this abil ity, but "only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist." Moreover, in order to counter past and future objections to his analysis of "The Raven," he added that "to reflect analytically upon Art, is to reflect after the fashion of the mirrors in the temple of Smyrna, which represent the fairest images as deformed" (1849).^* Truth, in Poe's opinion, demands a precision absolutely an tagonistic to the predominant aim of poetic fiction; but when he trans lated the language of art into the language of precision, the critics ap prehended his attempt as a mere fiction defying truth. The author's account of the poem's composition, which critics of the past pronounced a juggling trick or grand hoax upon its readers, has recendy been described by Denis Marion as an act of self- deception. ^^ Yet with equal justice it might be set against the intimate story of Poe's own life with Virginia Clemm in "hourly anticipation of her loss." The alternation between the illusory glimmer of hope in the lover's queries and the finality of the "anticipated answer" Nevermore is uti lized to "bring him . . . the most of the luxury of sorrow," until the Raven's inevitable reply to "the lover's final demand" proclaims the irrevocability of his loss and provides him with the "indulgence ... of this self-torture" (p. 45). A few months after Virginia's death Poe wrote to George Eveleth: Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before [in "The Raven" we read of terrors never felt before], ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recov ered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again—I went through precisely the same scene. Again in 56 Language in Operation about a year afterward. Then again—again—again and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity ... I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity ... I had indeed nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I round one in the Aeath of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man—it was the horrible, never-ending oscillation be­ tween hope and despair which I could not longer have endured widiout the total loss of reason.'* "a both cases, in "The Raven" and in the epistolary confession, the anrcipated denouement is everlasting bereavement: Virginia's death acrr \ears of protracted agony and the lover's despair of meeting Le- зссг e\en in another world. "The Raven" appeared on January 29, ïi+5; "The Philosophy of Composition" was published in April 1846; ïtoc's \4ife died on January 30, 1847. Thus "the expected 'Nevermore,'" icscalcd in the essay as the central motif of the poem, is in tune with rx biographical background as well. Poe's critical essay, however, dismisses the circumstances which stHnulate the poet as irrelevant to a consideration of the poem itself The theme of the 'bereaved lover" (p. 39) antedates Virginia's illness aod in faa haunts all Poe's poetry and prose. In "The Raven" this dianc displays a particular "force of contrasf (p. 43), expressed in a poimedlv romantic oxymoron: the colloquy between the lover and the bird is an anomalous commvmication about the severance of all com munication. This pseudo-dialogue is tragically one-sided: there is no teal interchange of any kind. To his desperate queries and appeals the boo receives only seeming answers—from the bird, from the echo, jod fix)m the volumes oï forgotten lore; his own Hps are "best suited" P- _;91 for vain soUloquy. Here a fiirther oxymoron, a new contradic- •aoa, is advanced by the poet: he assigns to this soUtary speech the widest radius of overt communication, but reaUzes at once that this ohibitionistic widening of the appeal may "endanger the psychologi- cà rcalin- of the image of the enlarged self confronting the notself," as - A-as later to be formulated by Edward Sapir.''' it mav be recalled once more that the supreme effect of "The Raven" its in its daring experimentation with intricate problems of commu- •laiion. The dominant motif of the poem is the lover's irrevocable '-f,5 oi contact with the rare and radiant maiden; henceforth no com- lâkjC context with her is conceivable, either on this earth or within the 57 QUESTIONS OF LITEIIARY THEORY distant Aidenn (the fanciful spelling is needed as an echo for maiden). In Poe's poetic creed, it is a mere "array of incident," irrelevant to the "machinery" of his work, whether the lover's loss is due to the maid­ en's death or to a more homely and prosaic, but nonetheless inexor­ able, message of the variety I will not see you again, transmitted to that gloomy room in upper New York which was allegedly depicted in "The Raven." Nothing about the heroine except her absence and her namelessness forevermore is of any significance for the poet's purpose: his poem "will be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion." ^^ But to suit the "popular taste" (p. 34) and perhaps to allay repressed fears and desires of his own, the poet chose to have the maiden dead—death was "the most melancholy of topics" (p. 39)—and to borrow for her the sonorous name Lenore from the famous ballad about the living bride of the dead. Poe's insight into "the wheels and pinions" (p. 33) of verbal art and of verbal structure in general, the insight of an artist and analyst com­ bined, is startling indeed. His skilled employment in verse and his lin­ guistic examination of the refrain Nevermore are especially pertinent, for it is here that "the sense of identity" (p. 37) is direcdy challenged, both as to sound and to meaning. The inevitable Nevermore is always the same and always different: on the one hand, expressive modula­ tions diversify the sound and, on the other, "the variation of application''' (p. 39), that is, the multiformity of contexts, imparts a different con­ notation to the meaning of the word on its every recurrence. A word out of context allows an indeterminate number of solutions, and the listener is engaged in guessing what is meant by the isolated Nevermore. But within the context of the dialogue it signifies by turns: nevermore will you forget her; nevermore will you take comfort; nev­ ermore will you embrace her; nevermore will I leave you. Moreover, the same word can function as a proper name, an emblematic noun which the lover attributes to his nocturnal visitor: a bird above his cham­ ber door . . . with such name as "Nevermore" Poe rendered this variation of usage particularly effective "by adhering, in general, to the mono­ tone of sound"—that is to say, by favoring a deliberate suppression of emotive modulations. On the other hand, however great the variety of contextual mean­ ings, the word nevermore, like any other word, retains the same general meaning through аД its varied applications. The tension between this intrinsic unity and the diversity of contextual or situational meanings 58 Language in Operation * asr CTvotaJ problem of the linguistic discipline labeled semantics, .тис гк discipline termed phonemics is primarily concerned with the звюс bet\\een identity and variation on the sound level of language. ~'ж oxnpound nevermore denotes a negation, a denial forever in the 2S opposed to the past. Even the transposition of this temporal mto a proper name retains a metaphorical tie with this general sc value. rvcriasting disavowal seems inconceivable, and popular wisdom • to charm it away by such witty contradictions as "a neverday . ÛK owl bares its rump," and 'Svhen Hell freezes over," or other • locutions studied by Archer Taylor, i^ Curiously enough, in the авс -«Tcar "The Raven" was written, a scholarly interest in locutions -ccr" and "nevermore" was manifested for the first time, by the .m-cjn poet Uhland. More than anyone, Baudelaire, in his notes to **гЧ poem, vividly conceived the particular conceptual and emotive аист ot this "profound and mysterious" word.^° It fuses end with It contrasts the prospective with the foregone, the eternal die transient, negation with assertion, and in itself it contrasts with the animal nature of the utterer, who is inescapably to the tangible present of time and space. Poe's challenging became a cliché, and in a popular hit of prerevolutionary I "^a parrot cries jamais, jamais, aïways jamais." -^cipate the final refrain and to enhance its import, Poe em- • :^cies of etymological figure. Semantically, the author pre- " jr the unlimited negation nevermore by repeating the restric- _ -:;on merely this and nothing more; the negation of balm in the : 3 rbreshadowed by the negation of comparable fantastic terrors : rist; and the negated assertion will be . . . nevermore is preceded '-c Jcspair of the asserted negation nameless here for evermore. Ex- jsnafc- Ae poem breaks up the unit nevermore into its grammatical by separating more, ever, and no (with its alternant n-, the •âguring before a vowel: n-ever, n-aught, n-ay, n-either, n-or), and : them in new contexts, most of which correspond in meter and Only this and nothing more; Nameless here for evermore; terrors ^éit before; ever dared to dream Ьфге; and the stillness gave no token. . tbe unit more is susceptible of dissociation into root and suffix, is confronted with most and with the degrees of comparison : ocbcr adjectives, as in somewhat louder than before. components we obtain by dissecting all these units into smaller 59