Dialogism and the Addressee in Lyric Poetry

MARIANNE AND MICHAEL SHAPIRO Dialogism and the Addressee in Lyric Poetry Dialogism in contemporary discussions of literary theory is a term associated with the writings of the Russian critic M.M. Bakhtin, and almost exclusively with prose fiction. The concentration on prose to the exclusion of poetry follows from Bakhtin's own identification of 'pure' poetry with the extreme opposite of dialogism, monologism. 'The poet is a poet insofar as he accepts the idea of a unitary, monologically sealedoff utterance,' writes Bakhtin.1 In Bakhtin's view, the poet achieves his aim partly by transcending the inherently dialogic nature of language; the lyric poet privileges a single voice - his own - and strives to situate his discourse in a 'utopian' realm purged of all external historical and social forces.2 In this essay we wish to show, on the contrary, how poetry remains importantly 'dialogistic' despite Bakhtin's own prejudices, derived, perhaps, from the residual Romanticism that tinges all Russian scholarly writing of the first half of the twentieth century. We will illustrate this point with a survey of several kinds of poetic texts that are to be analysed by examining the role of the (sometimes implied) addressee, the unheard 'other voice' that provides part of the poetic context. We argue further that there is a productive way of looking at Bakhtin by comparing dialogism with Charles Peirce's concept of semiosis, the production and interpretation of signs. Lyric poetry is a sign system in the same sense that any literary work is. To the extent that dialogism informs semiosis (as Peirce himself argued), the analysis of lyric - as well as lyric itself - will be simultaneously 'dialogistic' and semiotic. We begin in an appropriately Bakhtinian mode with a subliterary genre - book inscriptions. Two former high school friends meet after a hiatus of thirty years. One is a child psychiatrist, the other a professor of linguistics, and both have published books in their respective fields. Shortly after their reunion they give each other inscribed copies of their most recent books, and here are the inscriptions: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 61, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1992 1392 DIALOGISM AND THE ADDRESSEE IN LYRIC POETRY 393 Aug 14,1986 Dear Mike Some things in nature, Like a seed, or a spore, or a friendship, May appear to be dead But everything is there, in place. All that is required is A change of scene, of circumstances. Lee [child psychiatrist] For Lee, whose kindness and forthrightness are well-remembered from boyhood and mirrored in the man. Mike [linguistics professor] 23.VII.86. These two inscriptions fit within the definition of a 'primary genre' as sketched by Bakhtin in his seminal essay 'The Problem of Speech Genres.'3 Bakhtin's main point is that any form of ordinary linguistic communication, whether oral or written, falls into generic categories - for instance, salutations, everyday exchanges between people in close social contact, etc - and that these bits and pieces of primary generic material are the building blocks of the more complex ('secondary') genres that are involved in the literary use of language. Another of Bakhtin's characterizations of utterances, in terms of their 'addressivity' (adresovannost'), also extends throughout the entire spectrum of literary and nonliterary uses of language. Yet Bakhtin himself approaches an articulated typology of verbal art chiefly (if not only) in his considerations of the novel. The usefulness of his perspective to the literary scholar, we believe, extends to poetry as well, although it is relatively neglected by his critique of the univocal text. According to Bakhtin, addressivity is a constitutive factor of every utterance. In addition, 'the various typical forms this addressivity assumes and the various concepts of the addressee are constitutive, definitive features of the various speech genres' (SG, 98). Thus dialogism is simultaneously the condition of all language and a means of categorizing discrete types of discourse. All utterances presuppose potential responses; however, the different ways in which utterances elicit responses vary according to subject matter, context, and the situation, social position, and personal interrelations of the participants. Every concrete utterance, for Bakhtin, is linked to others within a similar sphere or horizon of communication governed by addressivity. Specific examples of verbal art are...