GIVEN that who was a modernist artist and what constituted a modernist work is these days unhelpfully vague, it is not an easy subject to talk about. In music and the plastic arts it might prove easier to distinguish ‘modernist’ art from what else was being produced at the time, but literature presents an additional problem: it deals with words, whether in prose or poetry.
Music — essentially a noise or, if you like, pure sound — and pigment — essentially a medium refracting light — are in themselves abstract and wholly without meaning. Whatever cultural, ritual, social, personal or emotional ‘meanings’ we attribute, for example, to a certain colour, that colour — that is the ‘light refracted through it at a certain wavelength’ — is in itself ‘meaningless’. The same is true of a note or a combination of notes — a noise or a combination of noises. It is nothing but ‘noise’ (or more genteelly ‘sound’). But words are a little different.
Words do have meaning (and leave aside, for a moment, the possibility that what you understand by a certain word is not quite what I understand by it, though often we might not know that). We use certain words because they have a certain meaning, and that makes communication, verbal and written, possible. But words have other attributes: they have a sound and they also have — well, it’s difficult to find just one word to describe it. All of the following carry elements of that somewhat elusive attribute: ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’.
For example, take the verb ‘to shrive’ or one of its various derivatives. I first came across it as a young boy reading Roger Lancelyn Green’s King Arthur And His Knights of The Round Table and I have rarely, if ever, heard it used since, though a familiar derivation is ‘Shrove Tuesday’, the day before Ash Wednesday when in less heathen times (or better, from my point of view, the heathenism was of Roman Catholic and later Anglo Catholic variety) when believers souls were ‘shriven’ to be pure for Lent.
Were I to use the words ‘shrive’ or ‘shriven’ in everyday conversation or writing here in this blog, it would convey information quite apart from the sound of the word (whether heard or read) and its meaning.
Some of that information would be about me: the word is old-fashioned, not to say archaic, so why am I using it? Do I believe that in the context in which I am using it that it is the only possible word that could be used? Am I by using it simply some pretentious git trying to persuade you (the listener or reader) that I am ‘deep’, ‘well-read’ or ‘intellectual’?
Some of that information would be ‘external’: why is ‘shrive’ being used when a more modern alternative might be available? With its archaic overtones, it might also subtly influence the sentence in which it appears in some way or another. There are many possibilities, all of consequence over and above the sound of the word and its meaning.
Apart from what using the word might convey about the speaker or writer, there are the ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ the word itself has: and these are, in fact, harder to define, so perhaps I should offer two other examples to try to elucidate those vaguer ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’.
How about ‘fealty’ and ‘loyalty’? Fealty might itself sound archaic, but it is in more common use these days than ‘to shrive’ (and using it would not necessarily make you sound like a pretentious git) but more to the point using it instead of loyalty might convey subtleties because of the varied ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ of both words. I suggest that ‘fealty’, in a sense, goes over and above plain ‘loyalty’.
Loyalty might imply that under most circumstances I would offer my support to whoever or whatever I am ‘loyal’ but might, as moral being, hold back from doing something illegal or immoral. With ‘fealty’ there might be no such scruples and I would be fully prepared to demonstrate my ‘fealty’ if needs be. That’s the background, and to
put it in context, I suggest that the ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ of both words help to convey more than they seem to in the following two, very similar, sentences:
His loyalty to the Conservative Party / Republicans was unquestionable
and
His fealty to the Conservative Party / Republicans was unquestionable.
Writing this, of course, I have no way of knowing whether or not those two words convey the same to you as to me (and thus whether my point stands or is pretty much nonsense).
But whether you do or not, it boils down to this: the fact that I might chose to use ‘fealty’ where ‘loyalty’ would seem to work perfectly well, implies that I don’t think ‘loyalty’ would work perfectly well and that ‘fealty’ carries ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ which convey better what I want to convey.
It is this facet or dimension of words, a facet or dimension over and above and apart from their ‘sound’ and ‘meaning’, which is another tool for writers (and one, I have to add, many writers don’t seem much to care for in that many seem simply to ignore it).
I feel ‘closer’ to music than the plastic arts, but I don’t believe ‘sound’ and ‘pigment’ (or whatever material an artist working in the plastic arts is using) has that facet or dimension. We often hear that a certain musical key or mode has a certain ‘quality’ (and artists might make similar claims about different colours, for example, that blue ‘is cold’), but I suggest that the ‘quality’ is not part of the essence of the sound we are hearing but simply our human perception of it.
That is not the case with words, though I have to admit that the use of ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ might fail if a listener or reader is not familiar with a word I am chosing to use
specifically because of what I believe to be its ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’, Oh, well. You can’t win them all.
. . .
The above began as part of what I am at the moment writing about Hemingway and his alleged ‘modernism’, but I switched it to this blog as it is something I wanted to write anyway. It occurred to me some time ago when I was wondering, for the umpteenth time, whether ’abstract writing’ is possible.
We have ‘abstract music’ and ‘abstract art’ and, on the face of it ‘abstract writing’ should also be possible. I have to admit that of course it is possible, but — well, I think it less likely than not to succeed, in the sense of ‘being interesting’, ‘being engaging’ or by whatever yardstick you want to judge ‘success’.
Oh, and you might also object, and not without reason or cause, that ‘achieving success’ or ‘succeeding’ is not the an appropriate measure for ‘art’. As usual, it comes down — very boringly, it has to be said — to definitions: surely simply achieving what you want to achieve when you create ‘art’ can be regarded as ‘a success’? But that aside, just what might a piece of ‘abstract writing’ consist of?
I suggest that the shorter the piece — in verse form or a short piece of prose — the greater chance it has of holder a reader or listener’s interest — that is, engaging them. But as the piece gets longer, I suspect that the prospects that readers or listeners are happy to sit through a ‘performance’ decline very fast.
The sound of words — as in ‘the music’ they might create — would be very helpful in ‘engaging’ listeners. This is most probably why verse is so attractive (when it is attractive): it is the ‘musicality’ of the piece of verse which might carry it even though we have no idea what it ‘means’ or what the writer is hoping to express (and it’s ‘musicality’ might well be one of the elements he hopes will engage a reader or listener).
Equally helpful in ‘engaging’ listeners would be the ‘import’, ‘overtones’ and ‘undertones’, and ‘echoes’ of different words and their juxtaposition. I suppose in theory the ‘meanings’ of the words read or spoken might also be useful if their juxtaposition created some sort of pattern, though I’ll tell you now, I’m busking here, trying to give the idea of ‘abstract writing’ a sporting chance to exist.
And to be frank I can’t even persuade myself: I rather think readers and listeners would, despite themselves and their conscious expectations, be suckered into expecting eventually to have ‘an overall meaning’ to the piece revealed. But there is none — it’s abstract.
At this point I, who loves music of all kinds, must confess that I am forever unconvinced when some young Baltic or Persian or Scottish or Peruvian composer has a piece she or he has written performed and insists something along the lines of ‘it’s about the courtship by the ancient stone god of one of the water nymphs’ or ‘I’m examining the frugality of love and respect in a post-modern environment in which desire has become redundant’. Or some such (there’s a lot of it about).
Doesn’t do it for me. I’m firmly a man described by Sir Thomas Beecham who said ‘The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes’. That’s me, except that I do like music, and I really don’t care who knows. I can listen to what I’ve been told classical orchestra players often refer to as ‘squeaky gate music’ for hours and hours: I just love the sound and — for me at least — it is totally without meaning. Oh, and until I looked up the exact wording of the Beecham quote, I thought it began ‘The English don’t understand music . . .’ which would have suited me and my argument better. But there you go, you can’t have everything.
I think because for all of us words are so closely wedded to meaning of some kind, ‘abstract writing’ or rather attempting to create it faces an additional hurdle. I mean would you really want to read or listen to 80,000 words of gobbledegook however nice they sounded?
Right, that’s me shriven. And here are two pieces of music along the lines of the above, the first by Stockhausen more abstract than the other, the second by Schoenberg and finally a piece by Anton Webern. I have no idea what any of these pieces ‘mean’(as some might argue — me, I don’t think the ‘mean’ anything), but I do know I enjoy listening to them and others like them a great deal.
NB I was told a great anecdote about Stockhausen which might be apocryphal or it might be true. He was once rehearsing an orchestra in a new piece and informed one player he did not want him (or her) to come in with his/her part until he/she felt she was in communion with the music of the the universe.
‘But, Herr Stockhausen,’ the player asked, ‘how will I know when I'm in communion with the music of the the universe?’
‘I shall tell you,’ said Stockhausen.
Here is a Stockhausen piece:
The Schoenberg
:
PS And just because I like this style of drawing
