Knowing and Poetry

Abstract

s from experience manipulates form-al sense qualities of experience, so forth. The attraction of such views stems from the fact that a poet's concern is neither with the connection between images things, nor with a phenomenological description of images; rather, it is with the impact of images upon affective life. The attitudinal or dispositional structure of states of consciousness, as shaped or changed by images, is the subject matter as well as the effect of poetry. The poetic language of paradox ambiguity, fusing images in logically unacceptable but psychologically acceptable ways (something which cannot be done with concepts), articulates the frequently ambivalent complex character of affective life. The nature of the real world described by the concepts of the primary language becomes of secondary concern when we are faced with the immediacy of the images of our affective life. The imagistic language of poetry co-opts the words modifies the grammar of primary language in order to chart the extra-ordinary intrusion of affective states into a world that could conceivably exist without them. The causal connections classification of images are of concern to a psychologist using the primary language (enhanced by technical terms) but are of no concern to the poet who is interested in the image (as evoked by him through imagistic words devices) as an articulating tool. His question is: What does the image say or show us about our affective life? His answer is a poem. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:02:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms KNOWING AND POETRY 43 HEIGHTENED LANGUAGETHE LANGUAGE OF INTENSITY States of consciousness have varying degrees of intensity. One can feel mildly or strongly, be disposed toward an attitude to a greater or lesser extent or believe something to be more or less the case. Degrees of belief, at least in the case of analytic truths, can be specified as certain or probable, with some degree of probability often statable in precise mathematical terms. The degree scale in the case of belief, however, is a way of measuring believability, not of articulating the subjective intensity associated with affective states of consciousness. We may wish very much to believe p, but p has a (coolly statable) degree of believability apart from our wishing. The wish has intensity, as do other affective states of consciousness. Thus intense belief is a metaphor deriving from intense feeling. While degrees of intensity can theoretically in some cases actually practicably -be correlated with measured physiological states, it is not always the latter we seek to articulate communicate. We may wish to articulate, contemplate, communicate the felt intensity of affective states of consciousness. But a number on a scale, a word with fixed denotation, or a literally descriptive sentence cannot accomplish the articulation. Works of literary art, on the other hand, can, for they attempt the articulation of that part of the world which consists of affective states of consciousness specifically of the felt degrees of intensity complexity of those states. The language of everyday practical communication is usually transparent. It calls attention not to itself, but to whatever it refers to or is intended to effect. When A urges B to do x, he normally indicates his wish through ordinary language; when he wishes to indicate the intensity of his urging, he uses extra-ordinary or heightened language. This occurs in everyday communication in the figurative speech (and often the expletives) born of the need to express intensity--in the creative colorful language acts we tend to call poetic. In poetic language, heightening is not an occasional extra-ordinary occurrence but rather a characteristic mode of linguistic usage. The superficially ordinary and's the's other words with literal uses acquire a poetic function in the poem. The and that ordinarily serves simply a conjunctive purpose in literal communication, becomes in poetry the stuff of some poetic device such as rhythmic patterning or emphatic repetition forms of heightened language appropriate to the affective states of consciousness. If affective states of consciousness call for the heightened linguistic This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:02:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms