Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
The first half of this poem seems to be about words themselves -- that is "the writing," explained metaphorically with the snake. Williams is expressing his desire to see a new sort of language emerge in poetry, a language that is just as accurate and effective ("sharp to strike"), as well as determined ("quiet to wait, / sleepless") as a serpent hunting its prey.
But furthermore, especially in the second stanza, Williams seems to be referring to a sort of lingual existentialism. "No ideas but in things" is the most famous line from this poem for a reason. With this simple phrase, Williams beautifully reiterates the entire basis of existentialism: there is no essence without there first being existence (that is, there are no ideas of things without the things themselves existing first). This is why "the people and the stones" must be "reconciled" -- not humans reconciled with stones, but humans reconciled with humans, stones reconciled with stones, selves reconciled with selves. Not only the philosophy, but the language of our times as well, has apparently been corrupted by the illusion of an essence. According to Williams, a person can never be just "a person" -- instead, he will always be himself, a singularity, an existence who will always prove more beautiful than the idea of "a person" (that is, any person). Interestingly, Williams understands literature as a way of expressing singularity, a way of illustrating existence itself (by no means a simple "individuality," which always expresses itself in the form of lonely predicates, or in other words the very "ideas" to which Williams refers*), hence his poems' frequent use of detailed of imagery.
The final line is a metaphor that concludes the poem perfectly: his vibrant saxifrage, that is his gorgeous imagery, will subvert and "split" all of the supposed concreteness and coldness of modern language.
*Everything in these parentheses is extremely unclear, but I can clear this up eventually
Cool analysis -- you are way better at reading poetry than I am. You have a solid interpretation, and so I guess there are just a couple things I want to mention:
ReplyDeleteYour interpretation is just that -- YOUR interpretation. The ideas that you are getting out of this poem are things that I didn't necessarily see (although again, I'm really and at reading poetry), but more to the point the conclusions you think the poem comes to are the same conclusions that you like to champion yourself. Of course, you may have just picked the poem because the inner message really resonates with you, but at the same time it seems to me that different people could likely find different inner messages that resonate with them for different reasons. Again, not saying your interpretation is wrong, but with poems by this dude it seems like there is so much vagueness left up to interpretation (which is okay, just something I'm noting).
Also, on a more philosophical point, do you really mean that "there are no ideas of things without the things themselves existing first"? I know that I have an idea of a unicorn, despite them not actually existing. I have an idea of the future, as well. Are our thoughts really limited to things that exist in the present (or maybe have existed in the past)? Doesn't seem like it to me...
That's a really interesting point. What William Carlos Williams meant in the most literal sense (probably not the only sense) was that literature should not talk about ideas, but instead portray ideas through concrete images without directly making a commentary. So instead of infusing your poem with obscure references to socialist ideology, you might instead exploit the image of an impoverished individual in order to get your message across (WCW literally does this in his poem "Proletarian Portrait"). By the way, this isn't to say that the main focus, or even one of the main focuses, of his poetry was politics. This was just an example I chose to use.
ReplyDeleteI also feel like he meant it in a more general existential sense though. "No ideas but in things" doesn't imply that I can't imagine an entity that does not exist (although I am not sure about that topic anyway). Instead, it implies that there is no way of creating a class of, say, dogs without there first existing dogs. In other words, there is no class of dogs, no idea of dogs, without dogs first existing. If they don't exist, then what criterion could we use to make a class of dogs?
I suppose we could make up something entirely hypothetical, like a series of predicates, that, once combined, form of class of something. But this class would be the first of its kind, and would furthermore only exist to prove a point. It wouldn't exist in any real sense, that is, in any useful, meaningful, or, especially, historical way. Can you imagine inventing an entirely new entity in your head, and then naming it, apparently waiting for its existence to become a reality? By the way, this is not the same as thinking about a unicorn, but I will get to that in the next couple of paragraphs.
In other words, the predicates that define the class "dog" were, in reality, and historically, compiled not from some objective source like our mind's creation of a hypothetical class, but from observing dogs themselves and finding similarities between them -- and then retroactively defining them by those similarities. The whole idea of classification is completely arbitrary in this sense (not because of the particular words we choose, but because of the trust we put in those words).
ReplyDeleteTo contend that the idea of the thing precedes the thing itself seems to imply that there is an objective standard that each supposed element of a class must match -- as opposed to the class itself being continuously and infinitely transformed by the elements within it. This seems absurd in a mathematical sense, but that is only because our world is not entirely mathematical. Humans did not see the first dog and say "Oh we found a dog!" Instead, they were first confused by this new creature, which they never imagined could exist. Over time, they saw more dogs and eventually classified them as dogs, only in relation to each other and in contrast with us as humans. My point is not that we chose the word "dog" instead of "red" or "bucket" etc. etc. and that the word chosen is arbitrary. It is instead that we assume that our classification came from an objective idea that somehow precedes the thing itself. Since it does not, our classification can therefore never be a fully comprehensive one.
Even if we did make a class, and then an element of that class suddenly popped into existence, our class would not have attained meaning beforehand. We would suddenly understand what the combination of predicates really implies in an existing thing, but only once that existing thing pops into existence. Imagine this: you understand the combination of predicates that make up what defines a dog (before ever having any type of interaction with dogs), but could you ever imagine what that would mean in existence? This is different from a unicorn, because the unicorn example is in reality just a combination of two already known classes into a then somehow "unknown" class. In reality, a combination of two classes (the class of horses and the class of horns) is not a new class at all. Or perhaps it is simply the combination of predicates that make up the class of "horse" with the added predicate of "having a horn." Either way, there was nothing new created. Now, let us try to create an entirely new class from scratch. This new class can never fully enter our minds until we see an element of that class in existence. This is why, for example, when I ask a friend "what did she look like?", my friend's response will inevitably prove inadequate. No matter how many predicates he names, I probably will not be able to spot the girl from his description, in a normal situation at least. Only her existence can allow the idea of her to suddenly rush forth into my mind. Another example: could any of us have imagined Disney Land in a concrete way before visiting? Could we have imagined a preying mantis or a hippopotamus? Only by reference to other classes could we ever come to have some idea of a previously unknown class (a zebra would be unimaginable, but not with the class of horses known in advance: "a zebra looks like a white horse with black stripes" -- this is like the unicorn example). The only idea of a thing that could exist before the thing itself is an extremely shallow idea, a purely mathematical and empty notion of it.
At the very least, even if "no ideas but in things" does not imply that there cannot exist the idea of something without the thing existing first, maybe it just states that it is the natural and universal trend for existence of the thing to precede the idea of the thing.
ReplyDeleteLet me know if I can clear this up. I feel like I might be going a step too far. In particular, is a sufficiently detailed combination of predicates which defines a class actually able to create a legitimate idea of an element of that class? At this point, we can abandon WCW and talk purely about philosophy if you'd prefer.