According to Aldous Huxley, the life of any epoch can only be synthesised by poets: “Encyclopaedias and guides to knowledge cannot do it, for the good reason that they affect only the intellectual surface of a man’s life. The lower layers, the core of his being, they leave untouched.”1 I like this, particularly the idea of the ‘intellectual surface’ - a mere surface, with much beyond it - and combined with Jacobson’s aforementioned theory, I take this as my starting point: the idea that poetic language is important, that it is there for more than just prettiness, and that Toni Morrison’s use of it in her prose is highly effective.

But what exactly is ‘poeticalness’? Jan Mukarovsky has much to say on the matter:

The function of poetic language consists in the maximum of foregrounding of the utterance. Foregrounding is the opposite of automatization, that is the more an act is automatized, the less it is consciously executed, the more it is foregrounded, the more completely conscious does it become.2

Mukarovsky’s concept of ‘foregrounding’ simply means that one of the main functions of poetic language is to draw attention to itself, thus engaging our true concentration, rather than allowing us to glide over the words without thinking. Mukarovsky appears to be a Czech formalist, and this idea echoes his Russian counterparts who spoke more generally about the purpose of art. With a quotation from Leo Tolstoy’s Diary, Victor Shklovsky sums it up: “if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.”3 Art must therefore strive to prevent people from living unconsciously. In doing this, the most important weapons a poet uses are “unusualness, unexpectedness, and uniqueness”.4 Morrison duly uses these weapons on us: her prose is frequently idiosyncratic and unexpected, and indeed, she perhaps best describes the essence of poetry herself when she refers to Sula enabling Nel to “see old things with new eyes” (p. 36).

The events of this passage can be summarised roughly thus: Eva enters her son’s bedroom while he is high on heroin (I presume this because of her discovery of the bent spoon on the previous page - p. 45), she embraces him, and resolves to burn him alive. There is a sense of the words in this passage trying to reflect Plum’s heroin reverie - the sensations he feels are intense and mysterious to us, and Morrison writes more sensuously at this moment to make us feel some of what Plum feels. In particular, the “rocking, rocking” of Plum in his mother’s arms has a mildly hypnotic effect, partly because of the repetition of the word (six times in this extract), and partly because of the word itself, which implies rhythm and calm, and also emphasises Plum’s baby-like qualities. It is particularly poetic when “Rocking, rocking” is an entire, unembellished sentence; as if right now rocking is all there is. There is a sense of Eva losing herself in the rocking, purely because of the constant repetition. Eva’s feelings - her “mother-love and mother-pain”5 - are communicated eloquently by the rocking.

There are frequent appeals to taste: “strawberry crush”, for instance: a relaxed, homely detail, which obviously invokes the pleasantness of strawberries. It is also, perhaps significantly, a childish-sounding drink. But why not just call it ‘the drink’? In Sula, Morrison frequently does this; she includes these tiny pieces of description, knowing surely that they all combine and build particular atmospheres, and intensify and deepen the image of the moment - which in this moment is of a visit to Plum’s room. ‘Image’ is probably an inaccurate word here anyway, as it implies the purely visual, and right now the drink and the cherry pie and the “balled-up candy wrappers” soften the atmosphere, making it warm and inviting. Small details are thus used for a clear purpose by Morrison, as they are by poets who often rely on such details to generate atmosphere in few words. The narrator inventories the room in list form, as an economical way of establishing the atmosphere I speak of; this listing is also a common poetic technique. Plum’s room is almost a happy all-American glimpse of prosperity, with even a Liberty magazine on the floor. (Liberty magazine might well be referring to the “monthly libertarian (classical liberal, or individualist) review of thought, culture and politics” which is still going today; but I think it is the word ‘liberty’ itself that is more important, with its pleasant suggestions of freedom and joy.) 6 Of course, because of this very softness in the air, the moment of realisation - when we know that the “wet light” brings death rather than divinity - explodes from the page wholly unexpectedly, and is really quite shocking.

“The reader is almost always refused interpretive access” to the novel’s major events the first time they are narrated”.7 Thus it is with Sula hacking off her fingertip, and thus it is, as Madhu Dubey says, with Plum’s execution. The sheer incomprehensibility of it all lends it a particular tragic beauty and the language, though seductive, does not permit us that automatization of perception that Mukarovsky spoke of. We later get more of a reason for Eva’s actions, as she tells Hannah of his overt desire to return to the womb (p. 71), and apparently she “has such projections of sleeping with her son that she sets him on fire”.8 But as we read this passage we aren’t to know that, and vagueness, or even impenetrableness, is key to poetic impact.

Huxley, with reference to a Wordsworth poem, says: “Lines like these can only have been written in the fullest consciousness, laboriously. The thought is exceedingly depressing.”9 I agree with him, not necessarily about William Wordsworth, but about the idea that carefully and laboriously-crafted writing is depressing, and not at all in a pleasurable way. However, in Sula there is always a sense of effortlessness about the writing, and it makes for aesthetically magnificent reading. Here, Plum’s childhood words to his mother as she bathes him: “Mamma, you so purty. You so purty, Mamma.” Such a cutesy little phrase, repeated like a mantra, captures all we need to know about Plum’s guileless love for his mother, evoking the past in order to soak the present with its distance and loss. The words flow with all the innocence of childhood - and I think the word ‘purty’ as a colloquial version of ‘pretty’ is wonderfully exaggerated and distinctively American, if not African-American - and quite simply I cannot imagine Toni Morrison having spent ages in thinking them up. As far as I can tell, it just came to her, and she wrote it. Also, there is the sentence: “He felt twilight.” This is a wonderful phrase, maybe because twilight is not normally something that is felt - and in this way the phrase draws attention to itself; by not immediately making much sense. But having said that, it only confuses our ‘intellectual surface’, and I would argue that Mukarovsky is right in saying of poetic language that while “sometimes intonation will be governed by meaning, sometimes the meaning structure will be determined by intonation.”10 The words “He felt twilight” sound so peaceful, and that, and nothing more, is the meaning. The peace and serenity of those three words, together with the rocking and the wet light, make this moment so pure and crystalline. The words don’t have to make any kind of logical sense; indeed, I would probably be as depressed by Morrison as Huxley was by Wordsworth if it were to all make logical sense. There is maybe a touch of irony in that phrase, in that unbeknown to him Plum has suddenly reached the twilight of his life; twilight being the time just before the arrival of total darkness. Ultimately, our perception of the story is denied the comfort of unconscious thinking by peculiar phrases like that: we have to settle for the more difficult, but far more rewarding, practice of actively considering the words. This technique is by no means unrepresentative of the novel as a whole - for instance, Morrison later describes the summer afternoons in Medallion as “lemon-yellow” and “bright with iced drinks”. How can the summer be bright with iced drinks? But it doesn’t matter; it works. It is the way the words are intoned that governs their meaning in these instances, and this is a most poetical technique.

Plum’s brain haze is disturbed softly by a “wet light travelling over his legs”. It feels like the description of the drug-induced reverie is being expanded upon. There is nothing sinister in it (unless the reader has read into the reference to Eva making “grating noises” - presumably in getting the kerosene with which to burn him - in the previous paragraph), only joy, and brightness. “Wet light” is yet another brilliantly evocative phrase, again attacking multiple senses, and again showing how Morrison uses her background of standard language to allow such poetic phrases to really shine. The scene takes on an altogether more elevated, even religious, atmosphere when Plum observes “the great wing of an eagle” looming over him, and bethinking the whole mysterious wet light to be “some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing”. A baptism is traditionally a time of spiritual welcome and acceptance, and thus it is here (with Plum perhaps being welcomed first into Heaven, then fiery Hell). The reference to the eagle continues the bird motif which runs throughout the novel (the plague of Robins (p. 89) for instance) and probably draws on associations of freedom and grace (linking up nicely with the deceptively sublime description of the kerosene soaking Plum’s body, and the aforementioned Liberty magazine lying on the floor). There is also a suggestion of birds in Eva allowing her memory to “spin, loop and fall” - as if she can repress her painful memories no longer, and sets them free to fall with the grace of a bird. The words are absorbing, and we are invited to join Plum in his lonely, all-consuming trance. Here the language draws attention to itself partly through the personification of the mysterious wet light - “wound itself - this wet light - all about him”, which suggests that the light is an actual being. What is startling is the calmness in the description of what is effectively an act of infanticide. We may well be used to extraordinary events being recounted (from vampire or detective novels, for instance), but what makes this passage extraordinarily good is the calmness of the language at a frantic time. This, the encapsulation of strong feelings in very few words, is Morrison’s profoundest poetical achievement.

Notes

1. Huxley, Aldous, Texts and Contexts (Flamingo Modern Classics, 1994), p. xx
2. Mukarovsky, Jan, ‘Standard Language and Poetic Language’ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 43
3. Shklovsky, Victor, ‘Art as Technique’ (Arnold, 1996), p. 18
4. Mukarovsky, Jan, ‘Standard Language and Poetic Language’ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 52
5. Peach, Linden, Toni Morrison (Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 123
6. http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/index.html, (print-out provided)
7. Dubey, Madhu, ‘No Bottom and No Top: Oppositions in Sula’, (Macmillan press, 1998), p. 84
8. Peach, Linden, Toni Morrison (Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 14
9. Huxley, Aldous, Texts and Contexts (Flamingo Modern Classics, 1994), p. xxiv
10. Mukarovsky, Jan, ‘Standard Language and Poetic Language’ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 45

Bibliography

• Morrison, Toni, Sula (Vintage, 1973)
• Huxley, Aldous, Texts and Pretexts, (Flamingo Modern Classics, 1994)
• Linguistics and Literary Style, ed. Donald C. Freeman (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)
• Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, Third Edition, ed. Philip Rice and Patrician Waugh (Arnold, 1996)
• Peach, Linden, Toni Morrison (Macmillan Press, 2000)
• Toni Morrison, ed. Linden Peach (Macmillan Press, 1998)