KINETIC AND POTENTIAL SPEECH
Definitions,like mythologies, wear out. It is then important to replace them. Aladdin’s wife had a choice, but we have none. We must change our old lamps for new, or sit in the dark. A natural philosopher who retained the mythological definition of thunder could not speak of lightning to young men who had learnt of electricity without an air of irrelevance of which he might be quite unconscious. Not so his listeners, who would brush his explanations impatiently aside as soon as they knew the beliefs on which he based them. Whenever historians or critics seem irrelevant, we are safe in assuming a difference between their definitions and our own. When they seem irrelevant to many people beside ourselves, we can go further and assume that their definitions are either worn out or not yet accepted.Sometimes, of course, they are without definitions either old or new, but then they need not trouble us, for they disappear like cuttle-fishes in the darkness of their own ink. There is at the present day a widespread dissatisfaction with historians of literature. It is impossible not to feel that their dicta do not matter, that their sense of perspective is wrong or uncertain, that their books are of no use to us except as bibliographies. A new definition of literature is needed, that shall give them some scale, some standard to which they can refer. For without such standard or scale, they can do no more than gossip, or judge poetry by its passion, by its sense, by its smoothness, or by any other half-remembered scrap from a definition that is no longer adequate.
If we would get rid of these irrelevancies, and write histories of literature that shall deal with the matter of which they propose to treat, we must find a new standard of values, and to find that we must make a new definition. We must have a statement of the nature of literature applicable not to the books of one nation of one time only, but to those of all nations and of all times.It must supply us with terms in which we can state the aims of widely different schools and writers, with regard to their medium and not to any accidental quality. If it is to do that we must escape from the prejudices of our own time (which may be invisible to us) by seeking our formula in a definition of the medium common to all writers, a statement of the function of words in combination.
To make such a statement I have borrowed two epithets from the terminology of physical science. Energy is described by physicists as kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy is force actually exerted. Potential energy is force that a body is in a position to exert. Applying these terms to language, without attempting too strict an analogy, I wish to define literature, or rather the medium of literature, as a combination of kinetic with potential speech. In this combination the two are coincident. There is no such thing in literature as speech purely kinetic or purely potential. Purely kinetic speech is prose, not good prose, not literature, but colourless prose, prose without atmosphere, the sort of prose that M. Jourdain discoveredhe had been speaking all his life. It says things. An example of purely potential speech may be found in music. I do not think it can be made with words, though we can give our minds a taste of it in listening to a meaningless but narcotic incantation, or a poem in a language that we do not understand. The proportion between kinetic and potential speech and the energy of the combination varies with different works and the literature of different ages. There is no literature to which it is impossible to apply the formula. Let us try to clarify it by example and particularisation.
It may be asked, what of ballad poetry in which there is much so stated as to approach purely kinetic speech? Does not the admitted power of a sea-song, a song whose words are utterly trivial, disprove our assertion? It does not; for to such songs or chanties the music to which they are sung has given a quality of potential speech, without which they would be worthless and speedily forgotten. In that case the words and the melody respectively represent kinetic and potential speech. It has been very truly said that a prima-donna can turn thealphabet to poetry by the emotional power of her voice.
It may further be asked by any one who has not clearly apprehended my meaning (and this would be more than excusable), Do I mean to suggest that literature is not literature unless it contains a double meaning? and, if so, do I not find in allegory the most perfect example of the simultaneous existence of kinetic and potential speech? This would indeed be areductio ad absurdum. I must answer, that allegory (though it may represent the result of an early guess at the nature of art) is not necessarily poetry. There is, indeed, a gross and obvious duality of meaning in such a work asThe Faërie Queene. The tale written on the paper enables us to reconstruct another. But that other might have been written with no greater difficulty. It does not aid, and may clog with external preoccupations, the tale that we sit down to read. It is an impertinent shadow, a dog that keeps too closely at our heels. Hazlitt rebukes those who think that the allegory ofThe Faërie Queenewill bite them. We are more afraid that it will lick our hands, and all we ask is, thatit will allow itself to be forgotten. An acrostic sonnet may be a good sonnet, but we are not likely to perceive its excellence if we are intent upon the initial letters of the lines. No; allegory may be a rude attempt to copy in things said the duality of poetic speech. The old delight in conscious allegory may be comparable to the modern delight in conscious symbolism. But we must not forget for a moment that the resemblance is only one of analogy. When Spenser writes of Mammon’s cave:
“Both roof, and floor, and walls were all of goldBut overgrown with rust and old decay,And hid in darkness that none could beholdThe hue thereof; for view of cheerful dayDid never in that house itself display,But a faint shadow of uncertain light;Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;Or as the moon clothéd with cloudy night,Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”
“Both roof, and floor, and walls were all of goldBut overgrown with rust and old decay,And hid in darkness that none could beholdThe hue thereof; for view of cheerful dayDid never in that house itself display,But a faint shadow of uncertain light;Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;Or as the moon clothéd with cloudy night,Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”
“Both roof, and floor, and walls were all of goldBut overgrown with rust and old decay,And hid in darkness that none could beholdThe hue thereof; for view of cheerful dayDid never in that house itself display,But a faint shadow of uncertain light;Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;Or as the moon clothéd with cloudy night,Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”
“Both roof, and floor, and walls were all of gold
But overgrown with rust and old decay,
And hid in darkness that none could behold
The hue thereof; for view of cheerful day
Did never in that house itself display,
But a faint shadow of uncertain light;
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;
Or as the moon clothéd with cloudy night,
Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”
When he writes thus, we do not, in our search for potential speech, have to remember that he is writing of the love of money. Away with such tedious recollections. The stanza is like a picture by Rembrandt of an alchemist’s laboratory, where dusty alembicand smouldering fire mean far more than themselves. The lines say something, but we hear much for which they have not words. “The moon clothéd with cloudy night,” is not richer in suggestion than that same description. Not in the allegory but in the words themselves, their order and their melody, must we find, if they are to be literature, that combination of kinetic and potential speech.
Let me take another example of fine poetry, and show that it does perform in itself this dual function of language. Let us examine the first stanza of Blake’s “The Tiger”:
“Tiger! Tiger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?”
“Tiger! Tiger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?”
“Tiger! Tiger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?”
“Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
It is impossible to deny the power of suggestion wielded by those four lines, a power utterly disproportionate to what is actually said. The kinetic base of that stanza is only the proposition to a supposed tiger of a difficult problem in metaphysics. But above, below, and on either side of that question, completely enveloping it, is the phosphorescenceof another speech, that we cannot so easily overhear. And who shall speak in fit terms of its potentiality? That glowing image, that surprised address; not in the enumeration of such things shall we come upon its secret.
The test of a formula is, that it shall fit. It must enable us to co-ordinate scattered knowledge, and throw into a clear perspective the jumble of loose statements and scraps of information whose value we cannot but recognise, although they have remained outside previous schemes and done little more than disturb the equilibrium of once-established theories. It is a comfort and a joy to a thinker when he can say that a formula of his has almost been proposed by minds that have approached his problem along roads other than his own. When he can find statements, true in themselves but inadequate, pegging out, as it were, the ground from which his formula has been dug, he can feel that it is no mere chance that has given it a momentary appearance of usefulness. He can speak of it with the solid confidence that it has behind it the collaboration of his predecessors.
We can bring such confidence to the use of this formula of kinetic and potential speech, for to whatever problem of literary theory or phenomenon of the history of literature we apply it, we find that it has been almost stated by those who have separately considered that problem or phenomenon. It smelts the ore that they have dug, and forges a weapon for the attack not of one problem, but of all.
For example; though kinetic speech may be translated without loss from one language to another, potential speech would not be potential but kinetic if we were able to express it otherwise than by itself. This is what Shelley means when he denies the possibility of the translation of poetry, though he does not perceive the full reason, but only that the poetic quality of a poem is partly dependent on a succession of inimitable sounds. His statement, incomplete though it is, is a recognition of the duality of poetic speech. He does not for a moment contend that we cannot render the meaning; he sees that the meaning is not all. The body is one thing and the soul is another. If we leave the soul behind we have nothingbut dead matter, fit for manure or food. Life, or poetry, delicate-footed, mysterious, gracious with knowledge of her mystery, is passed away and we cannot recapture her.
Sometimes, indeed, she goes without our interference, and disappears only because of our neglect. There are poems that many men cannot perceive to be poetry. There are others, once poetry, now no longer so. Let us apply our formula to these phenomena, and first to the varying popularity of poetry, since our solution of this question will help us in solving the other. We shall find that the nearer poetry approaches to kinetic speech, the more easily is it apprehended by the multitude. Kinetic speech secures its effects by the presentation of facts, situations and stories, which are stuff not so fine as to slip through the coarse meshes of the general understanding. This explains the immediate and wide popularity of such poets as Longfellow, Scott, and Macaulay. Because prose, as a rule, depends more nearly on its kinetic than on its potential utterance, it is, as a rule, the more widely read. When, as in the hands of some nineteenth century writers, it emphasizes the potential element of speech itcorrespondingly narrows its public. Whenever poetry of high potentiality is read by a large public it will be found that its potential speech is condoned for them or hidden from them by more than usually vigorous kinetic speech. For potential speech secures its effects by suggestion. There is a bloom on its wings that a callous retina does not perceive. It is like a butterfly that has visited flowers and scatters their scent in its flight. The scent and the fluttering of its bloom-laden wings are more important than the direction or speed of its flying. It is always easier for the public to say, how fast, or where it is going than to notice these delicate things. The kinetic speech of a poem is understood by all; the potential depends for its apprehension upon the taste and knowledge of the reader. Words must have for us the associations that they had for the poet. We must be able to see them with his eyes, hear them with his ears, and taste their scents with nostrils not dissimilar to his. In time these things change. Unpopular poetry becomes quite popular, and indeed, no longer poetry, as it loses, through usage or forgetfulness, its proximity to the conditionof potential speech. Accents are shifted from one to another syllable, and we should be deaf to the melody if we were unable to replace them. New meanings gather round the words, and they come back from later travels disguised in strange perfumes. The kinetic speech may be disturbed, but the potential has disappeared in a jargon of new sounds, a quarrel of new memories, and a chaos of new odours. Sometimes indeed, it is as if it had never existed.
In this light it is easy to understand the curious business of criticism, and to formulate an account of what occurs when poetry dies, or falls asleep like the princess in the wood, to be awakened after two centuries by a critic’s kiss. The Elizabethan dramatists lost their potential and were judged only by their kinetic speech during the eighteenth century. They were considered coarse and bloody-minded, because there is rapine and murder in their plays. Lamb restored to them the potentiality they had lost and turned bleak rock to flowering country. Spenser had become a mere monger of allegory, until Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt reconstituted him poet by discovering for themselves and othersthe attitude that restores to his kinetic its lost potential speech. Writers of Wordsworth’s generation realised, at least subconsciously, that a poem is not independent of knowledge. They tried to help us by printing at the head of a poem information about the circumstances of its conception. When a poet tells us that a sonnet was composed “on Westminster Bridge” or “suggested by Mr. Westell’s views of the caves, &c. in Yorkshire,” he is trying to ease for us the task of aesthetic reproduction to which his poem is a stimulus. He is trying to ensure that we shall approach it as he did, and hear as well as the kinetic the potential speech that he values. There is a crudity about such obvious assistance, and it would be quite insufficient without the wider knowledge on which we draw unconsciously as we read. But the crudity of those pitiable scraps of proffered information is not so remarkable as the dulness of perception that can allow a man to demand of a poem that it shall itself compel him accurately to enjoy it. It is possible that much of the old poetry that now seems to us no more than direct speech was once wrapped in a veil of suggestion. Itis the critic’s business to rediscover those forgotten veils and to restore to the kinetic the magic of potential speech.
The formula of kinetic and potential speech illumines not only the critic’s business but also that of the historian. It enables him to link together in a single scheme the prose of Goldsmith with that of Pater and the poetry of the eighteenth century with poetry, like that of the Symbolists of the nineteenth, so different as to seem completely unrelated. It enables him to explain a phenomenon that he has usually alluded to as a mere curious accident, the fact that there have been ages when poetry has been popular and others in which it has been the possession of a few. It will, I think, be found that this periodicity coincides with a general variation between kinetic and potential speech. In the eighteenth century, when poetry was often rhymed prose, when the common standard of poetry was good sense, when she gave advice and said things, and did not seem to realise that there were things she could not say, when, in short, the kinetic almost overwhelmed the potential, then poetry was a popular form of literature. In other ages, when poetryhas approached the condition of potential speech and so has needed for its appreciation such knowledge as that lately discussed, it has not swelled the publisher’s purse so swiftly as forms of literature that happened to be more nearly kinetic and so more easily enjoyed.
The eighteenth century poets and the Symbolists alike come under our definition and can be classed by the formula that depends upon it. I have suggested that the eighteenth century poets cared mostly for kinetic speech, and, indeed, carried their appreciation of it so high as sometimes to forget that poetry could do anything but speak wisely and well. Few schools have suffered a greater variety of imperfect and bungling definitions than that of Symbolism. The Symbolist aims have been described as “an escape from the thought of death,” and “intimacy with spiritual things.” Nowhere has there been a definition that has shown their relation to the aims of poetry in general. But, when Mallarmé says: “Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu; le suggérer, voilà le rêve,” he issaying, in other words, that poetry depends on potential speech. The Symbolists sought to write poetry that should be purely potential, and in the revision of certain of his poems Mallarmé tried to eliminate bit by bit the whole structure of kinetic speech that had been in them. The eighteenth century aims carried to their extreme would have meant bad prose; the Symbolist aims carried to their extreme would have meant (as they sometimes did) unintelligibility. Poetry is made by a combination of kinetic with potential speech. Eliminate either and the result is no longer poetry.
I do not propose the words kinetic and potential as terms of abuse or praise, though in different ages there have been artists who would have used them so. The eighteenth century poets would have used kinetic as a term of praise; the Symbolists would have used it as a term of abuse. The fact that different schools would have set different values on the words is itself a proof that they may be serviceable to historians and critics. Literature does indeed vary between these extremes, its kinetic quality preserving it from nonsense, its potential quality separatingit from bad prose. Some sort of relevancy would be discoverable in any history that set itself to trace these variations. Some sort of relevancy is obvious in all criticism that attempts (as all good criticism does) the enhancement of the potential and the clarification of the kinetic element in such literature as happens to be its subject. In any case, an adoption of the definition of literature that this essay upholds would make ridiculous the classification of books by their subjects and of writers by their opinions, on which so many intellects have wasted time and vitality worthy of a more profitable employment.
1911.
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