meaning through non-meaning
Reading Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf recently they both did something exciting and rare. It's meaning through non-meaning. Imagery that seems initially nonsensical, that might in fact turn out to be nonsensical. Imagery that doesn't take as its starting point similarity, but which deliberately erects a barrier. Either a barrier in how it's expressed or a barrier in understanding the image.
It's hard to explain. Here's an example from Djuna Barnes' Nightwood:
"'So love, when it has gone, taking time with it, leaves a memory of its weight.'
She said: 'She is myself. What am I to do?'
'Make birds' nests with your teeth, that would be better,' he said angrily,"
Love taking time with it, and the memory of love's weight are both complex and unforgiving images. 'She is myself' is a densely packed statement about intense relationships. But the really striking image is 'Make bird's nests with your teeth'. The character who's speaking goes on to provide an extended concrete picture of someone making bird's nests by hand - or rather, by mouth. Of course his point is the futility of agonising over lost love, of reliving pain to no purpose. And Djuna Barnes is careful not explain this. In fact she goes out of her way to obscure it with her choice of words. She doesn't write 'making nests for birds' or 'making nests by hand' or 'by mouth', she creates an image that can be misread. She writes 'Make birds' nests with your teeth', so for a fraction of a second a birds' nest of teeth passes through your mind. The image draws attention to itself and in doing so allows you to unpick it.
Here is an image far more complex from Virginia Woolf's The Waves:
"'I will continue to make my survey of the purlieus of the house in the late afternoon, in the sunset, when the sun makes oleaginous spots on the linoleum, and a crack of light kneels on the wall, making the chair legs look broken.'"
It's that 'crack of light kneel[ing] on the wall, making the chair legs look broken.' that's interesting and difficult here. The light is given a solidity here that's somehow appropriate for late afternoon, sunset light. It's there in the weight of something that needs to kneel, and in the physical act that describes. But the kneeling is also echoed in the 'broken' chair legs - let's set aside for the moment that sunset and kneeling and chairs suggest tiredness. There are two images: the way the light appears kneeling on the wall, and the way the light makes the chair legs appear. They're allowed to bleed into one another, despite the fact that neither is absolutely clear. It may be that their bleeding strengthens each image.
Let's look at them in turn. First, 'a crack of light kneels on the wall'. Is the crack of light straight, or is it bent? If it's bent how is it bent? Does it run across the floor and up the wall? Does it run up the wall and onto the ceiling? Is it horizontal, across a corner of the room, bent where two walls join? Or is it a crack of light that's projected on the flat wall like a bent line? The most likely is a light that strikes both floor and wall. We're given hints by the prior mention of 'oleaginous spots on the linoleum', by the word 'kneels', and by the subsequent mention of the chair. You can't definitively say that that is how the light kneels. Even so, it's a clear image next to what follows.
'The chair legs look broken.' This is really difficult. Are the chair legs that look broken the actual chair legs, their shadows, their reflections, or some combination of these? And why do they look broken? Let us suppose that the shadows of the chair legs look broken. Are they broken where the shadow on the floor hits the wall? Are they broken on the wall by the skirting board, or furniture, or a framed picture? Or is it that the angle of the sun and the elongation of the shadow makes the legs seem not right? It's hard to say, though a shadow along the floor meeting the wall seems reasonable, and chimes with the kneeling light. But wait, if the chair stands on linoleum, might it not reflect in this sunset light? Might not the break be the joint between the real legs and their reflections? It could be the uneven wavering of the reflected legs. Perhaps it could be both of these - both of these AND the shadow across the floor that breaks at the wall. Which leaves the actual chair legs. Perhaps again the seeming break could be where shadows of other legs (or the crosspieces between them) cast across the back legs interrupt their straight lines. Or maybe the lower half of the chair legs are in shadow, the upper half brought forward by the orange light? Or once more, one or both of these could be true in combination with any or all of the other explanations.
Even though Woolf certainly will have had a clear image in mind it's unlikely that she would have expected readers to see exactly what she saw. Apart from anything else readers pass through images very quickly and they will most likely form a fleeting impression of the salient points here before moving on. What you pick up, what I picked up, was something like 'Sunset... oleaginous spots... linoleum... crack of light kneels on the wall... chair legs look broken.' Light and shadow, reflections, bend, broken. It's a set of impressions conjuring up a visual image even as it says something about the character's state of mind.
It's probably apparent that there's something a little experimental about this discussion. The two writers seem to have in common occasional imagery that doesn't quite behave in the way that imagery normally does. Like some largely extemporised uses of language - some rock lyrics or replies to interview questions for instance, especially situations where someone is trying to articulate viscerally abstract ideas - they seem as was previously mentioned to deliberately erect obstacles. Or it may be that this is an attempt to draw an utterly false distinction.
One possibility is that these images are simply a version of the Metaphysical 'conceit'. Except that here unlike in metaphysical poetry the apparently perverse or contradictory or meaningless image isn't systematically unpicked and expanded in a compressed time-frame. Rather it may be returned to later, it may be given some sort of context immediately, it may simply be left, and in any of these cases it may have no relation to the overarching theme or imagery of the book. They are also, it has to be said, a lot less irritating than the contemporary novel's version of the conceit - the attention grabbing title and first line. Irrespective of their qualities as books titles like The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, A History of Tractors in Ukranian etc actually make you want to tell the author to fuck off.
And yet perhaps the conceit is closest to what these images achieve. Especially the metaphysical conceit, with its breathtaking sense sometimes that the author has thrown herself from a mountain with no harness, parachute or glider, trusting only to luck and a belief in her own invincibility to save her. This is not the conceit of marketing or for book group discussion, this is not a conceit learned in creative writing classes. This is a conceit raised in belief of the writer's own ability. This is a conceit of recognition that to jump high you have keep running up and falling on your ass until you get somewhere. As someone once said about soul music 'It's not in hitting the notes, it's in trying to reach the notes.'
"'God,' she cried, 'what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that?'" Djuna Barnes, Nightwood.
Aspiration. Ambition, desire, drawing of breath. Toes clutching the path edge even as you weigh your body against the air and leave the mountain side. Who needs the top of the mountain when it's crowded with The Dangerous Book for Boys taking smug photos, the support team clapping? Why not commit to something you haven't seen online, in encyclopedias, in adverts? The author makes things difficult for herself and her reader. The more precise the attempts to define this idea the more nebulous the structure becomes. Let's leave it for now and come back later when it makes a bit more sense.
It's hard to explain. Here's an example from Djuna Barnes' Nightwood:
"'So love, when it has gone, taking time with it, leaves a memory of its weight.'
She said: 'She is myself. What am I to do?'
'Make birds' nests with your teeth, that would be better,' he said angrily,"
Love taking time with it, and the memory of love's weight are both complex and unforgiving images. 'She is myself' is a densely packed statement about intense relationships. But the really striking image is 'Make bird's nests with your teeth'. The character who's speaking goes on to provide an extended concrete picture of someone making bird's nests by hand - or rather, by mouth. Of course his point is the futility of agonising over lost love, of reliving pain to no purpose. And Djuna Barnes is careful not explain this. In fact she goes out of her way to obscure it with her choice of words. She doesn't write 'making nests for birds' or 'making nests by hand' or 'by mouth', she creates an image that can be misread. She writes 'Make birds' nests with your teeth', so for a fraction of a second a birds' nest of teeth passes through your mind. The image draws attention to itself and in doing so allows you to unpick it.
Here is an image far more complex from Virginia Woolf's The Waves:
"'I will continue to make my survey of the purlieus of the house in the late afternoon, in the sunset, when the sun makes oleaginous spots on the linoleum, and a crack of light kneels on the wall, making the chair legs look broken.'"
It's that 'crack of light kneel[ing] on the wall, making the chair legs look broken.' that's interesting and difficult here. The light is given a solidity here that's somehow appropriate for late afternoon, sunset light. It's there in the weight of something that needs to kneel, and in the physical act that describes. But the kneeling is also echoed in the 'broken' chair legs - let's set aside for the moment that sunset and kneeling and chairs suggest tiredness. There are two images: the way the light appears kneeling on the wall, and the way the light makes the chair legs appear. They're allowed to bleed into one another, despite the fact that neither is absolutely clear. It may be that their bleeding strengthens each image.
Let's look at them in turn. First, 'a crack of light kneels on the wall'. Is the crack of light straight, or is it bent? If it's bent how is it bent? Does it run across the floor and up the wall? Does it run up the wall and onto the ceiling? Is it horizontal, across a corner of the room, bent where two walls join? Or is it a crack of light that's projected on the flat wall like a bent line? The most likely is a light that strikes both floor and wall. We're given hints by the prior mention of 'oleaginous spots on the linoleum', by the word 'kneels', and by the subsequent mention of the chair. You can't definitively say that that is how the light kneels. Even so, it's a clear image next to what follows.
'The chair legs look broken.' This is really difficult. Are the chair legs that look broken the actual chair legs, their shadows, their reflections, or some combination of these? And why do they look broken? Let us suppose that the shadows of the chair legs look broken. Are they broken where the shadow on the floor hits the wall? Are they broken on the wall by the skirting board, or furniture, or a framed picture? Or is it that the angle of the sun and the elongation of the shadow makes the legs seem not right? It's hard to say, though a shadow along the floor meeting the wall seems reasonable, and chimes with the kneeling light. But wait, if the chair stands on linoleum, might it not reflect in this sunset light? Might not the break be the joint between the real legs and their reflections? It could be the uneven wavering of the reflected legs. Perhaps it could be both of these - both of these AND the shadow across the floor that breaks at the wall. Which leaves the actual chair legs. Perhaps again the seeming break could be where shadows of other legs (or the crosspieces between them) cast across the back legs interrupt their straight lines. Or maybe the lower half of the chair legs are in shadow, the upper half brought forward by the orange light? Or once more, one or both of these could be true in combination with any or all of the other explanations.
Even though Woolf certainly will have had a clear image in mind it's unlikely that she would have expected readers to see exactly what she saw. Apart from anything else readers pass through images very quickly and they will most likely form a fleeting impression of the salient points here before moving on. What you pick up, what I picked up, was something like 'Sunset... oleaginous spots... linoleum... crack of light kneels on the wall... chair legs look broken.' Light and shadow, reflections, bend, broken. It's a set of impressions conjuring up a visual image even as it says something about the character's state of mind.
It's probably apparent that there's something a little experimental about this discussion. The two writers seem to have in common occasional imagery that doesn't quite behave in the way that imagery normally does. Like some largely extemporised uses of language - some rock lyrics or replies to interview questions for instance, especially situations where someone is trying to articulate viscerally abstract ideas - they seem as was previously mentioned to deliberately erect obstacles. Or it may be that this is an attempt to draw an utterly false distinction.
One possibility is that these images are simply a version of the Metaphysical 'conceit'. Except that here unlike in metaphysical poetry the apparently perverse or contradictory or meaningless image isn't systematically unpicked and expanded in a compressed time-frame. Rather it may be returned to later, it may be given some sort of context immediately, it may simply be left, and in any of these cases it may have no relation to the overarching theme or imagery of the book. They are also, it has to be said, a lot less irritating than the contemporary novel's version of the conceit - the attention grabbing title and first line. Irrespective of their qualities as books titles like The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, A History of Tractors in Ukranian etc actually make you want to tell the author to fuck off.
And yet perhaps the conceit is closest to what these images achieve. Especially the metaphysical conceit, with its breathtaking sense sometimes that the author has thrown herself from a mountain with no harness, parachute or glider, trusting only to luck and a belief in her own invincibility to save her. This is not the conceit of marketing or for book group discussion, this is not a conceit learned in creative writing classes. This is a conceit raised in belief of the writer's own ability. This is a conceit of recognition that to jump high you have keep running up and falling on your ass until you get somewhere. As someone once said about soul music 'It's not in hitting the notes, it's in trying to reach the notes.'
"'God,' she cried, 'what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that?'" Djuna Barnes, Nightwood.
Aspiration. Ambition, desire, drawing of breath. Toes clutching the path edge even as you weigh your body against the air and leave the mountain side. Who needs the top of the mountain when it's crowded with The Dangerous Book for Boys taking smug photos, the support team clapping? Why not commit to something you haven't seen online, in encyclopedias, in adverts? The author makes things difficult for herself and her reader. The more precise the attempts to define this idea the more nebulous the structure becomes. Let's leave it for now and come back later when it makes a bit more sense.
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