experiments nor do they show much originality. There are also issues of ethics and copyright to be considered. This kind of literary narcissism is not much different from what the Augustan period practiced to an extreme, and which made several critics of the day cry out, ‘foul’!
Experiments in language are necessary and useful but not in the form of witticisms. What it does is to introduce a cultural decadence similar to what ‘the age of Martial’ initiated into 18th century thought. One way in which witticisms in poetry introduce cultural decadence is that it impacts the language in which it is written in a negative way; more on that shortly. According to Bretts, and as it is common knowledge, Shakespeare influenced the English language by introducing new words into it through his poetic utterances – one thousand and seven hundred new words exactly, one of which is ‘excellence’ or ‘majestic’. In the same way contemporary poets, depending on their originality – and ‘wit’ in the proper sense or witticisms, as the case might be – may influence any language by introducing not only new words but turns of expressions, which then flow into the general current of a living language. Since language is the medium for expressing cultural thought, subjective reality can be influenced by writers in general and poets particularly. Politics is one area of culture where the accretions from writers and poets, especially poets, may be used or abused by power to shape subjective reality for ill or even for good; but most times for ill. We can now begin to closely look at the specific ways in which the contemporary avant-garde (with its perverse witticisms) or the poetaster and the lazy poet, may, like Martial in previous centuries, initiate cultural decay, shape and mis-shape subjectivities. The linguistic gestures of the poet in any language, once they flow into the mainstream, are likely to find unconscious replication in the users of that language. This is an age of war, religious belligerence and bigotism; these two areas of cultural life are then very sensitive to such influences from poets or writers generally. The war in Iraq was initiated through the agency of language, first, that is the language of propaganda or perverse rhetoric. When a powerful leader of the world uses the expression, “the axis of evil” – whether borrowed from a speech writer or not – he is following one of the rhetorical strategies (metonymy in this case) of the poet.
The expression is witty in a negative 18th century epigrammatic fashion. It takes hold of the naïve subject with the force of the slogan, though based on untruth; it is short, witty and therefore memorable. The metonymy, ‘axis of evil’, neatly cuts the world into two different opposed parts with the certitude of a samurai sword. There are several binaries at work there, good and evil being just one of them. The listener can then go on, depending on their political sway, and imaginatively multiply such binaries: Muslim=bad and Christian =good and so on. Binaries are dangerous because it leaves the mind in a stupor and closes all doors to mediating discourses. In this way the war was first fought (and won for propaganda) on the level of language before its physical manifestation. And when a bellicose leader taunts the other and promised him ‘the mother of all battles’, again the rhetorical gesture consolidated by countless poets in ages past is put into a negative use.
Of course it is easy to argue that the metonymy and the prepositional construction exemplified are a standard in any language, are parts of our linguistic unconscious already and available to anyone who would abuse it. Very true, and this is precisely why the poet should not further deploy expressions – heavy on false wit or witticisms, illogic and untruth – which may become mainstream in the future of any language; rather have truth and reason at the writing elbow, such that there would be no rhetorical precedence for misappropriation; or that if false wit should occur in utterance, the very structure and character of a language would make it obvious at once.
Contemporary avant-garde’s witticisms – and here one should include not only the verbal but also ‘representational witticisms’ such as drawings, irrational textual form or mixed media – as they are deployed lead to cultural decay by impoverishing what could otherwise be examples of great poetry for tradition and by pushing language inexorably into a dead-end; even if the avant-garde thinks it is doing the exact opposite. Due to false wit there is plenty room for a political misappropriation of rhetoric. |
Sentinel Poetry (Online) #44 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY & GRAPHICS…since 2002 ISSN 1479-425X Editor: Amatoritsero Ede
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