Poet versus Abstract Noun: An Agon

The rejection of abstract nouns in poetry is old and wide-spread; the occurrence of abstract nouns in poems has at times been common, and never completely disappears, probably never could. There seems to be a question here: does poetic practice contradict poetic theory? If so, which should we trust?

We can begin from what must be the most famous of all statements against abstraction:

A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. ¹

The basic paradox of MacLeish’s poem need not worry us. The claim that a poem should be “equal to, not true,” is meant to be true, so that the claim must itself belong to criticism not to poetry, yet MacLeish has written it in a poem. Asserting that poems should not make the assertions that this poem makes gives it the status of a palinode, and like all palinodes it is parasitic on what it rejects (poetry of human love rejecting human for divine love is the most famous but certainly not the only kind of palinode). Like all palinodes, too, it can in theory be written only once (having rejected something how can you go on doing it?) and in practice only a few times. This single act of self-contradiction seems to provide the perfect form for a palinode. ²

The paradox involved in claiming (in words) that a poem should be dumb, should be wordless, is easily explained if we think of “wordless” as the opposite of “wordy.” Certain verbal functions cause us to attach the term “words” to them more than to others: when Marlow reads Kurtz’s report to the Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, and remarks of the peroration that it was “magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know,” that it gave him “the notion of an exotic immensity ruled by an august Benevolence,” he describes it as showing “the unbounded power of eloquence—of words.” ³ That this down-to-earth comment is also in words does not invalidate Conrad’s point, since Marlow is not a victim of the power of words to obscure reality in the way Kurtz clearly was. To be wordless is to describe the flight of birds or a maple leaf instead of talking about love or grief. Instead, that is, of using abstract nouns.

To find the same doctrine in prose I turn to Collingwood’s Principles of Art. The expression theory of art it puts forward rests on a very clear conception of what it means to express emotion: It is contrasted with the betrayal, with the arousing and with the naming of the emotion.

To say “I am angry” is to describe one’s emotion, not to express it. The words in which it is expressed need not contain any reference to anger as such at all. . . .

This is why, as literary critics well know, the use of epithets in poetry, or even in prose where expressiveness is aimed at, is a danger. If you want to express the terror which something causes, you must not give it an epithet like “dreadful.” For that describes the emotion instead of expressing it, and your language becomes frigid, that is inexpressive, at once. . . .

The reason . . . is that description generalizes. To describe a thing is to call it a thing of such and such a kind: to bring it under a conception, to classify it. Expression, on the contrary, individualizes. The anger which I feel here and now, with a certain person, for a certain cause, is no doubt an instance of anger . . . but it is much more than mere anger: it is a peculiar anger, not quite like any anger that I ever felt before. . . . To become fully conscious of it means becoming conscious of it not merely as an instance of anger, but as this quite peculiar anger. ⁴

“For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf”: MacLeish...