Writing, Politics, and the Limit: Reading J. H. Prynne’s “The Ideal Star-Fighter”

Abstract

Intertexts, Vol. 4, No. 2,2000 Writing, Politics, and the Limit: Reading J. H. Prynne’s “The Ideal Star-Fighter Lee Spinks U n i v e r s i t y o f E d i n b u r g h The poetry of J. H. Prynne continues to divide critical opinion over thirty years since it first began to appear in aseries of small-press publica¬ tions.Theurgencyofthismetaphorofdivisionperhapsoverstatesthecase whenweconsiderthatonehalfofthedebateaboutPrynne’sworkischar¬ acterized by adeliberate refusal to acknowledge that acorpus so commit¬ tedtorethinkingtherelationshipbetweenexperienceandthelanguages availabletodescribeithasanyplacewithinacontemporaryBritishcultural spherestilldefinedbyromanticandanti-romanticattitudestopoetry.Such criticalresistanceisallthemoreperplexinggivenPeterAcl^oyd’scele¬ brated claim that Prynne is “without doubt the most formidable and ac¬ complished poet in England today, awriter who has single-handedly changed the vocabulary of expression” (Ackroyd 27). It might be expected attheforceofthisassertionwouldhavepropelledPrynne’snameto greaterprommence,buthisworkremainsalmostcompletelyunknowninsieandoutsideBritain ,withtheexceptionofahandfulofsmallandobscurejournalseditedbyPrynne ’sformerstudentsatCambridgeUniver¬ sityiheironythatnowconfrontsusisthatabodyofworkwhichseeksreen css yto expand the boundaries of “poetic” expression and to map the possierelationshipsbetweenpoetryandtheotherdiscoursesthat__ culturalspaceoflatecapitalismhasbeeneithermarginalizedorre¬ absorbed by those institutional sites that enforce the divisions between differeiutypesofwritingPrynneattemptstoovercome . Thepurposeofthisessayistotrytoaccountfortheextraordinarydi¬ vergencebetweenthestrengthoftheclaimsmadeonbehalfofPrynne’s workandthesizeoftheaudienceithasmanagedtoattract.Itbeginsfrom Ptynne’spoetryismarginalizedbecauseitisdifficult,and u consequence of his commitment to reproduce withinthetextureofhisworkthecomplexinterrelationshipbetweenthe vastarrayofdiscoursesthatproduceandregulate“knowledge”incontem¬ poraryWesternsociety.NoonereadingPrynne’spoetryforthefirsttime escapetheinitialfeelingofbewildermentatencounteringatypeof writingthatrangesfreelybetweenthevocabulariesofchemistryandinfor¬ mationtheory,oreconomicsandmolecularscience,withoutenunciatinga discursive position from which the reader can reconstitute these discrete formsofspecializedknowledgeintoacommonrhetoricalorculturalprac¬ tice.Suchdisorientation,andthelossofepistemologicalprivilegethat c o n s t i c a n 1 4 4 1 4 5 Spinks—^Writing, Politics, and the Limit attends it, is unavoidable because this work insists that what we think of in holistic terms as a“cultural” or “political” space is always already divided within itself, as it is produced by anetwork of discursive conjunctures whose effects exceed any singular or unitary determination. The challenge Prynne poses to us is that there is no position “outside” these conjunctures from which we can overcome the divisions and inequities they produce within our experience of modern culture, and yet the interest of political agency appears to demand that we conceive of an Archimedean point of judgment beyond the limits of these discourses from which they can be de¬ scribed and evaluated. His response to this dilemma is to occupy an ideo¬ logical middle ground between the illusion of autonomy that allows us to present ourselves as independent and self-determining political and cul¬ tural subjects and the threat of atotal system whereby the contents of om dreamsofpersonalandcollectiveemancipationaredwaysdetermined advance by the sectional interests of institutionalized relations of power. Thepointofthisstrategyisnottoenvisageafalsereconciliationofauton¬ omyandmediation,asifpoetryofferedautopiancompensationforthe fragmentation of the cultural sphere more generaUy, but to create aprovi¬ sionaltextualspaceinwhichwecanfocusupontheconceptualdivisions that produce the “autonomy” of disciplinary and culmral formations like “politics,” “poetry” and “science” in the first place. The dialectic between autonomy and mediation provides the concep¬ tualmotorformuchofPrynne’spoetry.Butbeforeapproachinghiswork more directly, we should acknowledge that the assertion that Prynne s writingisunusualordistinctivebecauseoftheformofresistanceitoffersto summaryinterpretationmightappearstrangetoanyonefamiliarwithmo^ ernistpoetryandaesthetics.Foritisacommonperceptionthat“difficulty wasakey,perhapshypertrophied,featureofmodernistpoetry.Modermst poetry was preoccupied with difficulty partly because it enabled the poet to makeclaimsabouttheunprecedentedliistoricalsituationthatheorshe confronted:asEliotintonedinhisessayonthemetaphysicalpoets,“[o]ur civilisationcomprehendsgreatvarietyandcomplexity,andthisvarietyand complexity,playinguponarefinedsensibility,mustproducecomplexand variousresults”(Eliot289).Noticeablehere,asVernonShetleypointsout, isEliot’sbeliefthatdifficultyisamatternotofintention,butofhistorical circumstance,andthatcomplexity,farfrombeingaweakness,isinfact^ “index of cultural value” (Shetley 2).To be insufficiently difficult is to rrustake the sacral nature of one’s vocation, which is to “give comprehensive expression to contemporary life.” Here avision of history becomes synony¬ mous with aparticular type of textuality for Eliot, who believed that the quintessence of the “modern” could only be revealed by rhetorical struc¬ tures based upon allusiveness and multiplicity of reference that might be strategically separated from the expressive modes of ordinary discourse. The form of textuality that best expressed the novelty and strangeness of modern history was, of course, poetry, which had the capacity to assimilate i n 1 4 6 I N T E R T E X T S avast range of discursive material while implicitly enforcing an evaluative distinction between different types of cultural attitude and experience. This modernist concern to cultivate modes of organization and forms of rhetoric to express “variety” and “complexity” initially appears to offer a useful provisional context for Prynne’s work, which is notorious for both its discursive range and semantic density. It is to precisely this context that Geoffrey Ward alludes when he states that “Prynne’s poetry includes the widest range of discourse and vocabulary since Pound” (Ward 145). The transition from Eliot to Pound is instructive because it raises questions...