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umayrh's review
5.0
“Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul,
May know her happiness by eye to hole:
He’s safe; the key’s lost; he knows
Door will not open nor hole close.”
(The Complete Poems of William Empson, 53)
“I claim to know not only the traditional background of Herbert’s poem…but also what was going on in Herbert’s mind when he wrote it, without his knowledge and against his intention; and if she says I cannot know such things, I answer that that is what critics do, and that she too ought to have ‘la clef de cette parade sauvage’” (William Empson, The Strengths of Shakespeare’s Shrew, 124)
Empson’s Intentions, the first chapter in Wood’s book, describes the critic's disdain for the “Wimsatt Law” (“the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art”). It seems perhaps an aspect of Empson's own 'self-contradiction' that the author famous for studying literary ambiguity should seek to resurrect the function of the author. And yet perhaps not (“The time must clearly come, if a man carries through a consistent program about double irony, when he himself does not know the answer.” Empson, Using Biography).
How can one understand the strangeness of the world (“so straddling a commotion, so broad a calm”, ST)? The Seven Types of Ambiguity (ST), Empson’s first book of literary criticism published at the age of 24, categorizes polysemic nuances:
1. Mere richness (a metaphor valid from many point of view).
2. Two different meanings conveying the same point.
3. Two unconnected meanings both wanted but not illuminating each other.
4. Irony: two apparently opposite meanings combined into a judgement.
5. Transition of meaning (a metaphor applying halfway between two comparisons)
6. Tautology or contradiction, allowing of a variety of guesses as to its meaning.
7. Two meanings that are the opposites created by the context.
Empson’s insight here is in complicating traditional tropes - metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - and serves to, as Wood says, 'catch a mood as well as describe a state of affairs.' I have wondered if there’s a key behind this key that Empson invented to dissect texts as diverse as Shakespeare's sonnets and Eliot’s The Wasteland. Here’s one tree of possibilities:
- What kind of polysemy? Two, or more?
- If more than two, then go to type (1)
- If two, are the meanings connected or disconnected?
- If disconnected, then go to (3)
- If connected, are the meanings oppositional or not?
- If non-oppositional, go to (2) or (5)
- If oppositional, are the meaning combined?
- If combined, go to (4)
- Otherwise, if situated in context, go to (7), else go to (6)
Despite Empson’s own caveats about the exactness of these categories, there’s in here a logic of relations that helps him operate at different textual levels (words, stanzas…) with different textual perspectives (the reader, the writer, context) while maintaining a certain degree of consistency despite his inventiveness. This analysis of ambiguity is also something that Michael Wood is always attentive to (“This is what we mean by parataxis: not the absence of syntax but syntax’s invisible twin, a relation of elements that is either implicit or still to be found.")
Wood thinks that irony is the chief figure in Some Versions of Pastoral (SVP), Empson’s second book of criticism. At 100 or so instances, 'irony' trumps 'trick' (56, which Wood thinks he overuses) and even 'plot' (91). Though Wood doesn’t dwell on 'double plot' ("the interaction of the two plots gives a particularly clear setting for, or machine for imposing, the social and metaphysical ideas on which pastoral depends." SVP); it is clear that, together with irony, these figures are used to probe at two different levels - the narrative arc and the character, the society and the individual. Two devices suffice to multiply ambiguity, expressing a covert conflict ("This power of suggestion is the strength of the double plot; once you take the two parts to correspond, any character may take on mana because he seems to cause what he corresponds to or be Logos of what he symbolises." SVP) or brandishing an apparent doubt ("The fundamental impulse of irony is to score off both the arguments that have been puzzling you, both sets of sympathies in your mind, both sorts of fool who will hear you; a plague on both their houses." SVP).
So it comes as a surprise when Wood announces that Empson, with his third book, The Structure of Complex Words (CW), is “doing what he can to resolve matters rather than complicate them." In this beautiful chapter, Sibylline Leaves - which opens with a titillating quote from SVP (“The mind is complex and ill-connected like an audience”) - Wood explores Empson’s puzzle about “how much is 'in' a word and how much in the general purpose of those who use it.” (CW) Of course, Empson believes that there is structure (“logic of … unnoticed propositions”, “an inner grammar of complex words like the overt grammar of sentences.”), and he sets Wood about worrying the meanings of the word 'fool' in King Lear, and 'honest' in Othello.
While Empson’s later critical works get a bit of a short shrift in the last chapter, the chapter on his later poems is dazzling in its selection (Aubade , Autumn on Nan-Yueh):
“But as to risings, I can tell you why.
It is on contradiction that they grow.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
Up was the heartening and strong reply.
The heart of standing is we cannot fly.”
(The Complete Poems of William Empson, 70)
Wood is, again, admirable in his attention to their apparent terseness (“Not the right question perhaps. When and for whom would it be heartening to be told this? And how do we read ‘heart’?")
It is the great strength of Wood’s book that it “combines breadth of sympathy with energy of judgement” (SVP): a sympathy reflected in the biographical details, personal reflections, and literary survey; an energy, in the selection of focus, and the interconnection of themes. This short book is a “simplification that also complicates” (“it would not be good writing unless it was felt to carry a hint of paradox” CW), and its richness multiplies ("there is something like a conflict in the maintenance of a satisfying order”, SVP).
May know her happiness by eye to hole:
He’s safe; the key’s lost; he knows
Door will not open nor hole close.”
(The Complete Poems of William Empson, 53)
“I claim to know not only the traditional background of Herbert’s poem…but also what was going on in Herbert’s mind when he wrote it, without his knowledge and against his intention; and if she says I cannot know such things, I answer that that is what critics do, and that she too ought to have ‘la clef de cette parade sauvage’” (William Empson, The Strengths of Shakespeare’s Shrew, 124)
Empson’s Intentions, the first chapter in Wood’s book, describes the critic's disdain for the “Wimsatt Law” (“the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art”). It seems perhaps an aspect of Empson's own 'self-contradiction' that the author famous for studying literary ambiguity should seek to resurrect the function of the author. And yet perhaps not (“The time must clearly come, if a man carries through a consistent program about double irony, when he himself does not know the answer.” Empson, Using Biography).
How can one understand the strangeness of the world (“so straddling a commotion, so broad a calm”, ST)? The Seven Types of Ambiguity (ST), Empson’s first book of literary criticism published at the age of 24, categorizes polysemic nuances:
1. Mere richness (a metaphor valid from many point of view).
2. Two different meanings conveying the same point.
3. Two unconnected meanings both wanted but not illuminating each other.
4. Irony: two apparently opposite meanings combined into a judgement.
5. Transition of meaning (a metaphor applying halfway between two comparisons)
6. Tautology or contradiction, allowing of a variety of guesses as to its meaning.
7. Two meanings that are the opposites created by the context.
Empson’s insight here is in complicating traditional tropes - metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - and serves to, as Wood says, 'catch a mood as well as describe a state of affairs.' I have wondered if there’s a key behind this key that Empson invented to dissect texts as diverse as Shakespeare's sonnets and Eliot’s The Wasteland. Here’s one tree of possibilities:
- What kind of polysemy? Two, or more?
- If more than two, then go to type (1)
- If two, are the meanings connected or disconnected?
- If disconnected, then go to (3)
- If connected, are the meanings oppositional or not?
- If non-oppositional, go to (2) or (5)
- If oppositional, are the meaning combined?
- If combined, go to (4)
- Otherwise, if situated in context, go to (7), else go to (6)
Despite Empson’s own caveats about the exactness of these categories, there’s in here a logic of relations that helps him operate at different textual levels (words, stanzas…) with different textual perspectives (the reader, the writer, context) while maintaining a certain degree of consistency despite his inventiveness. This analysis of ambiguity is also something that Michael Wood is always attentive to (“This is what we mean by parataxis: not the absence of syntax but syntax’s invisible twin, a relation of elements that is either implicit or still to be found.")
Wood thinks that irony is the chief figure in Some Versions of Pastoral (SVP), Empson’s second book of criticism. At 100 or so instances, 'irony' trumps 'trick' (56, which Wood thinks he overuses) and even 'plot' (91). Though Wood doesn’t dwell on 'double plot' ("the interaction of the two plots gives a particularly clear setting for, or machine for imposing, the social and metaphysical ideas on which pastoral depends." SVP); it is clear that, together with irony, these figures are used to probe at two different levels - the narrative arc and the character, the society and the individual. Two devices suffice to multiply ambiguity, expressing a covert conflict ("This power of suggestion is the strength of the double plot; once you take the two parts to correspond, any character may take on mana because he seems to cause what he corresponds to or be Logos of what he symbolises." SVP) or brandishing an apparent doubt ("The fundamental impulse of irony is to score off both the arguments that have been puzzling you, both sets of sympathies in your mind, both sorts of fool who will hear you; a plague on both their houses." SVP).
So it comes as a surprise when Wood announces that Empson, with his third book, The Structure of Complex Words (CW), is “doing what he can to resolve matters rather than complicate them." In this beautiful chapter, Sibylline Leaves - which opens with a titillating quote from SVP (“The mind is complex and ill-connected like an audience”) - Wood explores Empson’s puzzle about “how much is 'in' a word and how much in the general purpose of those who use it.” (CW) Of course, Empson believes that there is structure (“logic of … unnoticed propositions”, “an inner grammar of complex words like the overt grammar of sentences.”), and he sets Wood about worrying the meanings of the word 'fool' in King Lear, and 'honest' in Othello.
While Empson’s later critical works get a bit of a short shrift in the last chapter, the chapter on his later poems is dazzling in its selection (Aubade , Autumn on Nan-Yueh):
“But as to risings, I can tell you why.
It is on contradiction that they grow.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
Up was the heartening and strong reply.
The heart of standing is we cannot fly.”
(The Complete Poems of William Empson, 70)
Wood is, again, admirable in his attention to their apparent terseness (“Not the right question perhaps. When and for whom would it be heartening to be told this? And how do we read ‘heart’?")
It is the great strength of Wood’s book that it “combines breadth of sympathy with energy of judgement” (SVP): a sympathy reflected in the biographical details, personal reflections, and literary survey; an energy, in the selection of focus, and the interconnection of themes. This short book is a “simplification that also complicates” (“it would not be good writing unless it was felt to carry a hint of paradox” CW), and its richness multiplies ("there is something like a conflict in the maintenance of a satisfying order”, SVP).
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