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Spatial Form in Modern Literature: A ReconsiderationAuthor(s): William HoltzSource: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 271-283Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342963.
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Spatial
Form
in
Modern
Literature:
A Reconsideration
William
Holtz
The
analogy
with
painting
is
persistent
and
long
honored
in
the
history
of
criticism,
and
in
aesthetics and
literary theory
the issue has been
extensively
studied
in its
many
ramifications.'
The
twin
problems
have
always
been to
identify
the
common
elements that the
analogy
draws
together
and to
distinguish
the essential differences that the
analogy
tends
to
blur;
and
in
confronting
these
problems
later writers must
acknowledge
both
the
primacy
of
Lessing's
Laocoiin
1766)
and the neces-
sary
dependency
of
their
own
body
of
commentary
on
that
paradigmatic
work. The
present
essay
is
no
exception
and
stands,
in
fact,
in
the em-
barrassingposition
of
a
commentary
upon
a
commentaryupon Lessing's
work.
What
I
would
attempt
here is to
reconsider
and,
perhaps,
to some
extent to rehabilitatethe
concept
of
spatial
orm
in
literary
criticism.
The term so used derivesfrom an
essay by
Joseph
Frank
which,
in
1945,
was accorded the
singular
distinction
of
serial
publication
n
the
Sewanee
Review.
Later,
condensed versions
were included
in
several
widely
used
anthologies
of
modern
criticism;
and more
recently
a
presumably
final
version
received the author's second
scrutiny
as
part
of
a
book-length
study
of modern
literature.2
The
original
publication
provoked
several
1.
For basic
accounts,
see Renssalaer
H.
Lee,
Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic
Theory
of
Painting,
Art
Bulletin
22
(December
1940):
197-269;
W. K.
Wimsatt and
Cleanth
Brooks,
Literary
Criticism:
A
Short
History
(New
York,
1957),
chap.
13;
Brewster
Rogerson, The Art of Painting the Passions, Journal of the Historyof Ideas 14 (January
1953):
68-94;
and
Jean
H.
Hagstrum,
The Sister
Arts
(Chicago,
1958).
2.
Spatial
Form in
Modern
Literature,
Sewanee Review
53
(Spring,
Summer,
Au-
tumn
1945).
Reprinted
in
Critiques
and
Essays
in
Modern
Fiction:
1920-1951,
ed.
J.
W.
Aldridge
(New
York,
1952);
A
Grammar
of Literary
Criticism,
ed. Lawrence Hall
(New
York,
1965);
Criticism:The Foundations
of
Modern
Literary
udgment,
ed.
Mark
Schorer et al.
(New
271
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3/14
272
William Holtz
A
Reconsideration
of
Spatial
Form
closely
reasoned
attempts
at
refutation;
and
although
the
problem
would
seem to have died
in
the time
since,
we find
it
surfacing
again
in
an honorific reference to Frank's celebrated essay in a recent survey of
contemporary
criticism that
postulates spatial
form
as one
of
the most
interesting
issues. 3
Thus
if
Frank's
study
has not
quite
assumed
the
status
of a modern
classic,
it is at least established
among
the modern
canon of critical
essays
that deal with
the fundamental nature of litera-
ture. Yet
even
this most
recent
survey
of critical
issues
merely
nods to
Frank
without
examining
his
ideas,
so we
are
left
confronting
an
essay
of
major importance
that
has
elicited
serious
attention
only
from those who
disagree
with its
findings.
1
A
brief
summary
will
remind most readers of Frank's essential
points;
those who
here
encounter
the
concept
of
spatial
form for
the
first time
may
want
to
refer to
the
original
essay
in
which
copious
illustra-
tions
make
clear
the ideas that
underlie the
following
discussion.
Essentially,
Frank's
argument
is an extension of a
concept
fundamental
to general aesthetics that received its classical treatment in Lessing's Lao-
co6n.
Lessing,
disturbed
by
a
tendency
of
poetry
to become too
descrip-
tive
and
painting
too
narrational,
sought
to
rectify
centuries of
uncritical
acceptance
of
the
Horatian
ut
picturapoesis
by insisting
on the absolute
distinction between time and
space-and, consequently,
between
litera-
ture,
which
consists of verbal
symbols
(language)
occupying
a
sequence
of
time,
and
painting,
or visual art
generally,
which consists of visual
symbols
occupying
an area of
space.
From
this distinction
Lessing
con-
cludes that the
legitimate
province
of
literature is
narrative-things
in
action-while the legitimate province of painting is the visual form-an
arrangement
of
contemporaneous figures
in
a moment of
rest.
Frank
acknowledges
Lessing
as his model and draws
upon
the
temporal-spatial
distinction
to
describe a
quality
of
modern
literature that he
terms
spa-
tial
form.
Spatial
form is
not,
as we
might
guess,
necessarily
descrip-
tive
writing
aimed at
the
mind's
eye
but
rather
a form that
grows
out
of
the writer's
attempt
to
negate
the
temporal principle
inherent
in
lan-
York,
1948);
Critiques
and
Essays
in
Criticism:
1920-1948,
ed. R. W.
Stallman
(New
York,
1949). In Frank's The Widening Gyre(New Brunswick, N. J., 1963).
3.
Gregory
T.
Polletta,
ed.,Issues
in
Contemporary iterary
Criticism
Boston,
1973),
p.
24.
William
Holtz,
professor
of
English
at the
University
of Missouri-
Columbia,
is
currently
preparing
an
edition of an
unpublished
juvenile
manuscript
by
Charlotte
Brontie.
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4/14
Critical
Inquiry
Winter 1977
273
guage
and
to force
apprehension
of his work as a total
thing
in
a
moment
of
time rather than as
a
sequence
of
things.
The
guiding
princi-
ple
here
is
Ezra Pound's
definition of
the
image
as that which
presents
an intellectual and emotional
complex
in
an instant of
time.
Thus
in
modern
literature we
find,
on
one
level,
the
disruption
(or
dis-
appearance)
of
the
sequential
principle
of action or
plot,
and on
other levels the
corresponding
distortion
of
sequential principles
of
syn-
tax
and
expository
discourse. The
sequential
or
temporal principle
is
replaced
by
the
principle
of
reflexive
reference :
that
is,
suspension
of
meaningful
reference
until
the whole
pattern
is
perceived.
To illustrate
this
concept,
Frank
ranges
over a
wide
variety
of
works.
In
Ulysses,
for
example,
the
narrative is so
fragmented,
the
key
allusions
and
symbols
so
scattered,
that the
reader
must
continually
suspend
ref-
erence
until
he
imperceptibly gains
a sense of Dublin
in
its
entirety:
Joyce
demands that the reader achieve the same
instinctive
knowledge
of
Dublin
life,
the
same sense of
Dublin
as a
huge, surrounding
or-
ganism,
that the Dubliner
possesses
as
a
birthright.
It is
this
birthright
that,
at
any
one
moment
of
time,
gives
the
native a
knowledge
of
Dub-
lin's
past
and
present
as a
whole;
and
it
is
only
such
knowledge
that
would enable the reader
.
.
to
place
all
the references
in
their
proper
context....
Joyce
...
proceeded
on the
assumption
that a
unified
spatial
apprehension
of
his
work would
ultimately
be
possible. 4
T.
S. Eliot's The
WasteLand and Ezra Pound's Cantos
provide
similar
illustrations;
and
the
works
of Flaubert
and
Proust,
although
more
conventional
in
structure,
demand
in
certain
passages
this
same
spatial apprehension.
A
major
part
of
Frank's
essay
is
devoted to an
analysis
of
Djuna
Barnes'
Nightwood
in
which he
demonstrates
that
the novel's
meaning
depends upon
allusions and
cross-references
independent
of
the
temporal
progress
of
the narrative: the reader must connect
passages reflexively
to
achieve a
unified,
whole
impression.
In
the final
part
of his
study,
Frank
attempts
to
interpret spatial
form
as
a cultural
phenomenon.
He turns
again
to a
German aestheti-
cian,
Wilhelm
Worringer,
whose
study
of the
history
of art
styles
pro-
vides
an
analogue
to
Frank's
capsule
history
of
literary
form.
Worringer
describes
the
history
of art
styles
from
primitive
to modern times
as an
alternation between
abstract,
non-representational styles
and
naturalis-
tic,
representational styles:
his basic
contention
is that the
former
pre-
vails
in
periods
when man
feels intimidated or
alienated
in
relation
to
his
universe,
the second
in
those
periods
when man
feels
confident
and
secure
in
his
world. The relevant contrast
is
between the
great
achieve-
ments
in
verisimilitude
made
possible by
Renaissance
discoveries
in
the
handling
of
perspective
and the
modern abandonment of three-
dimensional
form and
representational
values
generally:
the shift
in
4.
Frank,
The
Widening
Gyre,
p.
19.
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274
William Holtz
A
Reconsideration
of Spatial
Form
Zeitgeist
can be
read
in
the
change
of
style.
The
connection
with
literary
form is made
by way
of the
relationship
between
temporal
values
and
three-dimensional perspective: although all visual art is inherently spa-
tial,
three-dimensional
art
is less
spatial
than
abstract,
two-dimensional
art,
for
depth
...
gives
objects
a
time-value because
it
places
them
in
the
real
world
in
which
events
occur.
Thus
modern
art
moves toward a
purer spatiality,
and
the abolishment of
representational
three-
dimensional
perspective
has its
exact
complement
in
the time-
transcending
devices
by
which modern literature
achieves
its
own
spa-
tial form. 5
The academic
response
to Frank's
essay
is
best
represented
by
Pro-
fessor G. Giovannini, whose essentially deprecatory essay is based on a
clear-sighted
analysis
of
the
problems
of
comparisons
between
the arts.
One of
his
basic contentions
is that the
common
element
upon
which
such
comparisons
rest
proves
generally
to be
an element
actually
given
(i.e.,
perceptible
to
sense)
in
one
object
and
objectively
analyzable
in
it,
and not
given
in
the other
but
merely
suggested
in
the affective
response
and
applicable
to the
object only by way
of
metaphor. 6
Frank,
it
may
be
said,
has
allowed
himself
to be
misled
by
the
pictorial metaphor
which,
although
useful
in
a
limited
way
for
suggesting
the
concept
he
struggles
with, introduces irrelevancies when used as an analogy to argue from
painting
to
literature.
For the
spatiality
he
finds
in
literary
form
is
not
the
spatiality
objectively
present
in
a
painting
or
a
sculpture (except
for
shaped poems
and other
such
typographical
devices);
rather,
this liter-
ary
spatiality
seems to be an
operation
of
the
mind
synthesizing
data
which
may
(in
some
instances Frank
cites)
form a
visualizable
image
with
communicable
spatial
dimension
but which
(in
most
of his
examples)
do
not
necessarily
cohere
in
any
demonstrably
spatial
way.
Moreover,
Frank's
argument
neglects
the unavoidable
problem
of
temporal
order
in data so synthesized: this order is objectively a feature of the work, and
must be dealt
with,
whether the data come
in
a normal
sequence
or no.
Thus the
spatial
order
of a
painting
and the
spatiality
of The Waste
Land
are of different
ontological
orders,
and the
critic should not
con-
fuse
them.
Such an
analysis
considerably
diminishes
the
authority
of Frank's
argument.
But
it
remains
to
be
determined
what
is
salvageable; despite
manifest
inadequacies,
the
theory
does seem
to touch
something
sig-
nificant
in
modern
literature,
and
if
the
pictorial
analogy
is
misleading
in
certain of its metaphorical extensions, there is yet an area of important
5.
Ibid.,
pp.
56-57.
6.
Method
in
the
Study
of
Literature
in Its Relation to
the
Other
Fine
Arts, Journal
of
Aestheticsand
Art
Criticism 8
(March
1950):
185-95,
quote
from
p.
190. See
also Walter
Sutton,
The
Literary
Image
and the Reader:
A
Consideration
of the
Theory
of
Spatial
Form, Journal
of
Aesthetics nd
Art
Criticism
16
(1957):
112-23;
Jan
Miel,
Temporal
Form
in
the
Novel, Modern
Language
Notes
84
(December
1969):
916-30.
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6/14
Critical
Inquiry
Winter 1977 275
relevance.
For
metaphor
has heuristic
value,
giving
a local
body
and
a
name
to
conceptions
not
yet
established in the communal mental
econ-
omy
nor,
at
times,
nameable in
any
other
way
in the mind of
the
individual.
Frank's critics
may
have
in
fact identified
merely
what he has
not said without
perceiving
what real
import
his
figure
carries. We are
here
concerned,
it
would
seem,
with
the
essential
nature of
our
literary
perceptions,
with
the
phenomenology,
some
might
say,
of
literature.
Frank
and
his critics
with
equal
honesty attempt
to
define
their
percep-
tions,
and
my
own
concern
stems
from
my
initial
.impression
that both
are
equally right.
What
follows
is
my
attempt
to establish a
ground
within
which both
may legitimately
be
right.
2
One
measure
of
the
validity
of Frank's
insight
is
the
extent
to which
other versions of
his
ideas
appear
in
other contexts: for
if
spatial
form
refers to
something
real,
it
cannot
have
escaped
notice
by
other readers.
One
thinks,
for
example,
of
Northrop
Frye's
description
of the critic
viewing
all the
elements
of the
poem
as a
simultaneous
array
before
him;
or
of Gaston
Bachelard's evocative
descriptions
of
The
Poetics
of Space.
Or
Pound's interest
in
ideographic
script;
or
the
frequent
critical
association
of
modern literature
with
impressionist
painting.
Or
Eliot's
poet
synthe-
sizing
Spinoza,
the sound of the
typewriter,
and
the smell of
cookery
into
a unified whole. Or-at
the root of
it
all,
perhaps-Poe's
insistence
on
the unified effect of the
story
or
poem.'
All
of these
instances reflect
a
more or less casual
assumption
of the basic
premise
of
Frank's
essay.
More
recently
another
critic,
Frank
Kermode,
has
offered
an
alternative
description
of
this
general problem.
In
The
Romantic
Image8
he assesses
symbolist poetic theory;
here the verbal
image (or symbol),
autonomous
and
autotelic,
presumably
unites
meaning
and
feeling
without interven-
ing
reflection or discourse: the
image
so
hypostatized
seems
very
close
to
a
spatial
form,
and
certainly
the
suppression
of
discourse,
of reflec-
tion
generally,
follows
from the
disruption
of
syntax
and narrative that
results from the
impulse
toward
spatial
effects.
Provisionally,
we
might
say
that
Joseph
Frank's
essay
is
grounded
in
an
essentially
formalist
conception
of
the
literary
work as
artifact,
and
that
the
striking
features
7.
Northrop Frye, Literary Criticism,
in
The
Aims
and
Methods
of Scholarship
n
Modern
Languages
and
Literature,
ed.
James
Thorpe
(New
York,
1963),
p.
65.
See also Fables
of
Identity:
Studies in Poetic
Mythology
New
York,
1963),
p.
21.
Gaston
Bachelard,
The
Poetics
of
Space,
trans. Maria
Jolas
(New
York,
1964).
Ernest
Fenollosa,
The
Chinese Written
Character
as a Medium
for
Poetry,
ed. Ezra
Pound
(San
Francisco,
1969).
T.
S.
Eliot,
The
Metaphysical
Poets,
Selected
Essays
(New
York,
1950),
p.
247.
Edgar
Allan
Poe,
review
of
Twice-Told
Tales,
in
Works,
17
vols.,
ed.
James
A.
Harrison
(New
York,
1902),
11:
104-13.
8. Frank
Kermode,
The Romantic
Image
(London, 1957).
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7/14
276
William Holtz
A
Reconsideration
of
Spatial
Form
of his
argument
result from
an
attempt
to
assimilate extended
works
(poetry
as
well as
fiction)
to a
theory
basically lyric
in
its
orientation: as
corollary,
we must
assume
that
the
modern
writers he
cites had them-
selves
operationally
defined the
concept
in
the course of
their
writing.
But
once
we
begin
to think
in
the terms
Frank offers
us,
larger
analogues
to
spatial
form
come
to
our
attention.
Both
T.
S.
Eliot
and
Northrop
Frye,
for
instance,
conceive of the
whole
of
literature
not as
history
but
as a
simultaneous
order
in
which
the discrete
work
partici-
pates.
Psychoanalytic
and
myth
criticism reveal
how
individual and cul-
tural
history
constitute an
order
simultaneous
with
the
present,
pressing
in
on
each
moment
(as
Bergson suggests)
like
a
huge
inverted
pyramid
of
past
time.
To
know
anything
at all about
evolutionary theory
is to
realize how
aeons of cumulative
experience presumably
are
lodged
im-
mediately
in
our
very
cells;
and,
as
Kenneth
Boulding
has
described
for
us,
the
cognitive development
of our
minds
can be understood
by
means
of the
model of
an
image
which,
although always assimilating
new ex-
perience, always
maintains
itself
as an
integrated
whole.9
Boulding's
theory
suggests
that the mode of
perception
that
Frank
invokes
for
understanding
early
twentieth-century
works
in
particular
seems to be
complemented
by
an
analogous
mode
for
larger
contexts across
a
wide
range
of intellectual
disciplines.
To shift the
tenor
of
the
metaphor
thus
from
the discrete
phenomenon
to
the
larger
order
beyond
it is to
shift
from a formalist to a structuralist
perspective;
and
perhaps
the most
comprehensive paradigm
for
contemplating
this
interiorized
spatiality
is
the
hypothetical linguistic
order described
in
1916
by
Ferdinand
de
Saussure.
Out
of his
discontent
with
historical
philology,
Saussure
devel-
oped
the
distinction
between the
synchronic
and
the
diachronic
study
of
language.
This
distinction itself
was
grounded
in
a
deeper
distinction
between
langue
(the
total
language-system
each
speaker
carries
with
him,
wholly present
in
every moment)
and
parole (the
individual
speech-act,
temporally
successive,
largely
constrained
by
the
langue
but
ultimately
modifying
it).
And
nothing
is clearer than Saussure's
attribution of
prime reality
to
langue:
to the
degree
that
something
is
meaningful,
it
will
be found to be
synchronic. 10
Thus Frank's
account
of
spatial
form
can be seen
as a
partial
de-
scription
of what has been a
general
shift
(since
about
1914)
in
our
ways
of
inquiring
about
our
experience;
his
choice of
terms from
Lessing,
moreover,
may
in
fact
be
a sound intuition rather than
an
arbitrary
anachronism. For this shift
is
itself
perceivable
in the
science
of
physics
as
well;
and
to choose for
modern literature the term that
Lessing
would
9.
Eliot,
Tradition
and
the
Individual
Talent,
Selected
Essays,
p.
5.
Frye,
Anatomy
of
Criticism:
Four
Essays
(Princeton,
1957),
p.
17. Kenneth
Boulding,
The
Image
(Ann
Arbor,
1956).
10.
Reported
by
Fredric
Jameson
in his The
Prison-House
of
Language
(Princeton,
1972),
p.
5.
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Critical
Inquiry
Winter 1977
277
proscribe
for literature
is not so much
perverse
as
symptomatic.
Those
who
insist
on the
essentially
time-bound nature of
literature,
in
terms
of
both
the
duration
of our
reading
and
the
progressive
nature of
the
constructs,
are
the heirs of
Lessing,
whose
analysis
rests
upon
an abso-
lute
disjunction
of time
and
space.
That
this
disjunction
is a
convenient
assumption
appropriate
only
to
certain areas
of our
experience
is
now
apparent
to
anyone
conversant
with
the
course of
modern
physics.
The
classical
physics
of
Lessing's day
could
tolerate the
dichotomy
(although
the essential
inadequacy
of this
mode of
thought
would soon
be noted
prophetically
by
Coleridge);
but
just
as for Saussure
problems
in
philol-
ogy
and
syntax
led
to
a
recasting
of
language
in
synchronic
terms
(of
a
dialectic between langue and parole), so have problems in physical
phenomena
led
to a
recasting
of
physical reality
in
terms of a
unified
spatial-temporal
field
within
which
the
substantial
entities
of
everyday
temporal
experience
have
only
a
contingent
status in
a
larger
structure
whose
simultaneity
is a
function of
the
speed
of
light.11
Thus,
for
litera-
ture,
although
both
the
spatial quality
that Frank
finds
and the
temporal-
ity
his critics
insist
upon
can
be
converted
into
each
other
by
posing
the
appropriate questions,
the
emphasis
that
Frank
seeks and
the
terms he
chooses can be said
to mark a
transitional
moment
between formalist and
structuralist conceptions. That is, the problems posed by large narrative
works for an
aesthetic
grounded
in
lyric
forms
seem
to
have moved
Frank
to
go
beyond
a
merely
substantialist
metaphor
(the
well-wrought
urn),
beyond
even a
psychological
metaphor
(the
image),
to an
essentially
scientific
metaphor
that
assimilates both
the
objective syn-
chronicity
of
substantial forms and
the relational
synchronicity
of mod-
ern
structuralist
conceptions.
We
find
ourselves
contemplating
these
problems:
(1)
that of
part
to
whole
(e.g.,
individual
image
to
whole
poem,
and of
poem
to
poetry)
as
well as (2) that of the synchronic to diachronic (e.g., syntax to image, plot
movement to
structure),
and
(3)
that of
language
to
reality,
of
word
to
thing,
of
parole
to
concrete
experience,
of
langue
to
culture
generally-all
of
these
under
the
comprehensive
distinction
between the media of
space
and
time
introduced
to
literary
theory by
Lessing
and
invoked
for
our
own
time
by
Joseph
Frank.
We must
speculate
that
these
problems
are forced on us
by
the
inherent
limitations of our
perceptual
and con-
ceptual
endowment.
For
the
problems
of
physics
lead
to
problems
in
epistemology:
the
strictly
empirical
scientist
may
be content
to
observe
that
light seems to act at some times as though it were composed of
discrete
particles,
at other
times
as
though
it
were
continuous
waves;
but
the
equal validity
of each
account
suggests
that
the
difference
is
a
matter
11.
For
a
lucid,
nontechnical account
of the
problems
of
modern
physics,
see Niels
Bohr,
Atomic
Physics
and
Human
Knowledge
(New
York,
1958).
For
the
impact
of
these
problems
on
the
artist,
see
Douglas
Angus, Quantum
Physics
and the
Creative
Mind,
The
American Scholar 30
(Spring
1961):
212-20.
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278
William Holtz
A
Reconsideration
of Spatial
Form
of
having
to
adopt
mutually
exclusive
perspectives
to
perceive
different
features
of
the same
phenomenon. Complementarity
is
the term
in-
voked here to identify the dizzying vision of a reality intuited as whole
but
describable
only
as the
hypothetical
sum
of
partial perspectives.
At
most,
we
can
hope
that the
sum of our
perspectives
is
the sum
of
reality;
more
humbly,
we
must
recognize
that
this
may
not
be
so;
but
in
either
case,
the scientific
discipline
that we
trust most
implicitly
for
an
account
of
the
ultimate
nature
of
things suggests
that to
the
extent that
our
knowledge
is
empirical
it is
also
modal.
The
paradox
has
been formalized
by
one school
of
modern
linguis-
tics which
bases
its
investigations upon
a
theory
of
knowledge
derived
from physical
theory.12
According to this theory, we perceive the world
in
three
modes,
each of which
has
its
linguistic
counterpart:
as
particle
(a
discrete
unit,
such as
a
single
word),
as
wave
(a
flowing
continuum,
such
as
the sound
patterns
of
speech),
and as
field
(a
self-contained network
of
relationships,
such as
the
grammar
of
a
language).
Each mode
can
account for
the world
in
a certain
way;
presumably,
we
adopt
each
mode
as
we need
it;
and all we know
of
our world
is
a
function
of
the
com-
plementary relationships
of
these modes each to
the
others.
What
seems
clear,
whether we
contemplate language
or
the
physical
world,
is
that
particle and field are phenomenologically (and metaphorically) spa-
tial
conceptions
(simple
and
compound),
whereas
the wave
phenome-
non
operates
in
a
temporal
dimension
and is
named
by
a
temporal
metaphor.
To
embrace this
severely
qualified
theory
of
human knowl-
edge
is
not
merely
to
ease some
difficult
either-or
dilemmas;
it
also
is
to
recognize
that
any single
modal
account
of a
phenomenon
is
necessarily
both
incomplete
and
the result
of
highly specific
needs
or
interests.
Perhaps
the
greatest
value
in
such
a
theory
is
heuristic,
as
it
forces
us to
attend
to
aspects
of
experience
that
we
might
otherwise
overlook.
Thus, poem as field, a self-contained area of our experience in
which
particular
words
and
images
vibrate
in
a
dynamic,
charged,
mutually-supportive
relationship.
Thus
poem
as
wave,
a
sonorous,
or
syntactical,
or
rhetorical,
or
narrative continuum
in
time.
Thus
poem
as
particle,
a unit within
some
larger
field,
such
as
the
body
of an author's
work or the literature of
a
distinct tradition or
period.
Within
this
tri-modal
scheme we
can
place
not
only
Frank
and his critics
but such
structuralist
conceptions
as Eliot's
and
Frye's.
Clearly
the formalist
(or
aesthetic,
or
symbolist)
criticism of our time has focused
on the self-
12. Kenneth
L.
Pike,
Language
as
Particle, Wave,
and
Field,
Texas
Quarterly
2
(Summer 1954):
37-54.
Pike
apparently
derived
his theories from
analogies
with
physics,
but the
similarity
of his
field
to Saussure's
langue
is close. I
have
tried
to
suggest
exten-
sions
of Pike's
field
theory
to
literary study
in Field
Theory
and
Literature,
Centennial
Review
2
(Fall
1967)
532-48.
Recent
neurological experiments
indicate
that our verbal and
spatial
activities are functions of different halves of our brain:
see
Newsweek,
6
August
1973,
p.
61.
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Critical
Inquiry
Winter 1977
279
contained
field of the
poem-in-itself,
often
under the
metaphor
of
ar-
tifact
(the
wrought
urn or
jeweled
bird),
while the
emerging
structuralist
criticism
tends
to efface the
individuality
of the artifact
for the sake
of
clarifying
the
larger
field of which it is a
part.13
In either
case,
syn-
chronicity
is
a condition
of
knowledge,
and the
spatial
metaphor
Frank
applies
to the first
is
equally applicable
to the
second;
and each
can
be
read as
symptomatic
of
a modern discontent
with
(1)
the substantialist
implications
of
metaphors
of
organism
or
artifact,
(2)
the
temporal
di-
mension
of
meaning
as manifest
in
syntax,
rhetoric,
or
narrative
(these
implicitly
identified
with
philosophy
and
science),
and
(3)
the
temporal
sequences
of
history
and
evolution as connections
between
individual
works. This
impulse
toward relational
concepts may
in fact be the
in-
tellectual
version
of the abstractionist
tendencies Frank connects
with the
general
malaise
of our
culture; or,
as another writer has
put
it,
a world
in
which the natural
order has been
largely
supplanted
by
a
vast
network of
communication
systems may very
well
be
thought
of
in terms
of the
structure of
language
itself.14
3
If we take
seriously
the
hypothesis
that
knowledge
resides
in com-
plementary
modes,
then,
in the
broadest
sense,
both Frank and his critics
are
correct. Considerable
advantage
accrues
from
this
point
of view. We
can
say,
for
example,
that
both
Ulysses
and
Great
Expectations
have
a
spatial
dimension as we
contemplate
their
achieved
orders.
But if we
imagine
Great
Expectations
n
the
narrative manner
of
Ulysses,
it becomes
apparent
that however the
story
might
remain the
same,
the
temporal
component
of our total
experience
would be
radically
different.
And
although we can say that Joyce's technique is
to the end of
enforcing
one
mode
of
perception
over
another
(this
constituting,
in
part,
its moder-
nity),15
the
technique
does
not
obliterate the
temporal
sequence
but
rather moves
along
unfamiliar tracks. This is
to
pose
again
Frank Ker-
mode's commonsense
observation:
that our
continuing
discourse
about
modern literature
apparently depends upon temporal
connections
within the works other
than the
narrative, rhetorical,
and
syntactical
sequences
that
have
been abandoned.16 What these
poetic
sinews
are
remains to be accounted
for,
but to
the
extent that
they
apparently
depend heavily upon
covert contributions
by
the
reader
to the
continuity
13. The
point
is made
clearly by
Polletta,
pp.
18-19.
His
survey
of criticism
contains
a
good
bibliography
on structuralism:
see
n.
30,
pp.
175-76.
14.
Jameson,
p.
ix.
15.
This
emphasis
is
perhaps
best understood
in terms of
the
concept
of de-
familiarization
suggested
by
the Russian
Formalists. See
Jameson, pp.
54-59.
16.
Kermode,
p.
155.
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8/9/2019 Holtz, William - Spatial Form in Modern Literature, A Reconsideration
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Critical
Inquiry
Winter
1977 281
time,
suggests
that this
pole
is
somehow
less real than
time
itself,
which
we
may identify
as the
necessary
condition of our
participation
in
the
natural
order;
whereas
that
which
we call
space
is of a
different
order,
emerging
as
other
as consciousness
separates
itself from the flux of
time and constructs its
symbolic
orders
in
language,
art,
and
science.
To this
extent,
picture
may
necessarily always
occupy
a
privileged
relationship
to
language
as
it
manifests the timelessness that culture
strives for
in
its contention
with
the
perpetual
novelty
of
mere
chronic-
ity.
To
say
this
is not
to
reduce literature
to
description
but
merely
to
recognize
description
as a
highly
formalized
version
of this
relationship.
Lessing's
contention
in
the
eighteenth
century
was with
certain abuses
of
this formal
relationship
deriving
ultimately
from both
the
conquest
of
the
European
imagination
by
the
glories
of Renaissance and
baroque
painting
and
the
academic codification
of casual remarks
from
classical
antiquity
that did
in
fact
recognize
a basic
complementarity.18
Lessing's
account
itself,
despite
its clear-cut
theoretical
distinction
between
the
arts,
teeters
on the
edge
of
paradox:
the vaunted
example
of
the shield of
Achilles can
be
said
to
reduce his distinction
to one
between
still and
moving
pictures,'9
while a later consideration
of
the
problem
renders
the whole matter
very
problematical,
as he
is
unable to exorcise a re-
sidual
pictorialism
at
the
heart of
his
conception
of
language:
Poetry
must
try
to raise its
arbitrary
signs
to natural
signs:
that
is
how it differs
from
prose
and
becomes
poetry.
The means
by
which
this is
accomplished
are the tone of
words,
the
position
of
words,
measure,
figures
and
tropes,
similes,
etc.
All
these make
arbitrary
signs
more
like
natural
signs,
but
they
don't
actually change
them
into natural
signs; consequently
all
genres
that use
only
these
means
must be looked on as lower kinds of
poetry;
and the
highest
kind
of
poetry
will be
that
which
transforms
the
arbitrary
signs completely
into natural signs. That is dramatic poetry ..
.20
Here
we
might say
that
Lessing
reaches the
limit
of
his verbal-
temporal
theory
at
just
about the
point
where
Joseph
Frank
begins
his
pictorial-spatial
one-that
is,
at
the
point
of the verbal
image.
And
although
a bias toward the
drama,
with
its inherent
temporal
spectacle,
saves
Lessing's theory,
there remain other
genres
in
which the described
effect
can
only
be a
subjective
image, projected upon
the mind's
eye
with
all
the
illusionary
effect of
painting
itself.
Joseph
Frank,
we
might guess,
beginning
with a
commitment to
modern
literature,
found
in
Pound's
doctrine of the
poetic
image
a
key
to its
essential nature
and
in
Lessing's
18.
Not
only
Horace's misconstrued
ut
pictura
poesis
but also
Simonides'
painting
is
mute
poetry,
and
poetry
a
speaking picture.
See also Wimsatt
and
Brooks,
pp.
271-75.
19.
Wimsatt
and
Brooks,
pp.
269-70.
20. Cited
from
Rene
Wellek,
A
History of
Modern
Criticism,
1750-1950,
4 vols.
(New
Haven,
1955),
1: 164-65.
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282
William Holtz
A
Reconsideration
of
Spatial
Form
basic
theory
a
rationale-by-inversion
that
described modern
literature
in
terms of
a
break with the
past.
And
just
to the
extent
that
Lessing
could
not
deal
with
wholly
legitimate
scenic or
lyric
effects,
Frank
cannot
deal
with
whatever
sequential ligatures
run
through
the modern
works
that
his extension of
Pound's
insight
allows
him
to
bring
together.
But
perhaps
the
most
significant
contrast is that
although Lessing's
un-
exorcised
pictorial
residuum is an
image
of man
acting,
Frank's
abstracted
spatial
order
is
offered
as
a
displacement
of
sequences
of
human
action
by
an
image
of
man
perceiving.
So
long
as the
sense
of this
spatiality
is
that of
the
specifically
human
percept,
we remain with Less-
ing
in
the
realm of individuals
and
individual
works
of
art. When
we
pursue
the
spatial principle beyond
the individual
percept,
we
find our-
selves
verging
on those
structuralist
synchronic
orders that
achieve
their
persuasive
power
at the
expense
of
individual men
and individual
works.
To
move
in
this latter
direction
is,
of
course,
to
move
away
from the
study
of
literature
toward
general
aesthetics
and
ultimately
toward
semiotics,
a
progress implicit
in
Frank's own assimilation of modern
literature
to abstract
art and both to a cultural
angst
that
presumably
manifests itself
in
other
ways.
Useful
as such
thinking may
be,
and how-
ever
consonant
it
is with the modern devaluation of
all that is
uniquely
human,
it
is also
a
flight
from
a
responsible scrutiny
of
a
directly
intuited
relationship
with the
work
itself.
Better,
to the extent that our
study
is
a
humanistic
discipline,
to
follow
Lessing's example
and
push
our
descrip-
tion of this
relationship
to whatever
suggestive
impasse
our
language
may
lead.
And,
I
must hasten to
add,
Frank
does this himself
in
reaching
for his
spatial
metaphor
as
a
most
honest account of his
perceptions:
it
is
the
tempting
transformation
in
realms
beyond
the individual instance
that
seems
dangerous
here.
It is the
specific spatiality
of our
involve-
ment
with individual
works,
traditional as well
as
modern,
that we would
do
well
to
scrutinize
rather than a
hypostatized spatial principle.
For the
spatial
aspects
of this
involvement,
however
objectively
trivial,
constitute
a
rich and
complex
body
of
data
adhering
to,
inextricably
bound
up
with,
the more
easily analyzable
time-flow of lexical
statement
and narra-
tive
progression.
Gaston Bachelard
has
imaginatively
illuminated certain
areas
of
this
experience;
presumably
an
equally
imaginative
and
spe-
cifically
pictorial
treatment awaits each of
what Helmut
Hatzfeld enu-
merates
as the seven
constant
cases of
problems
in
the relations between
literature
and
art,21
problems
which
by
and
large
have been
the
province
of
historical scholars rather
than
critics.
There
remain
to
be
written,
for
instance,
basic studies in some measure
complementary
to A. A. Men-
dilow's
Time in
the
Novel,
Frank
Kermode's
The Sense
of
an
Ending,
and
Hans
Meyerhoff
's Time in
Literature
in
which the
genesis
of
the
spatial
metaphor
would be
fully explored
and
its
validity
demonstrated
in
21. Helmut
Hatzfeld,
Literature
through
Art
(New
York,
1952),
chap.
6.
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14/14
Critical
Inquiry
Winter 1977
283
specific analyses
of the
configurations
of our involvement
with
discrete
works.22
Studies which move in this direction will move (metaphorically)
from
space
toward
picture,
as
did
Lessing's,
although
what we
find in
them
will be no
more conventional
description
than are
Lessing's
covert
images
conventional drama.
Rather,
these
studies will uncover
figures
created
by
the
demand of
the works
upon
us and
define the
space
in
which
those
figures
endure as we
engage
them. This
space,
neither
within
ourselves nor
in
the
empirical
order,
we
might
well
term verbal
space,
for
it
problematically
mediates
between other
spatial
realms as
language
mediates
between
the world
and
our
thought
about
it.
Other
dramas than Lessing could conceive of take shape in this space that
modern
literature so
emphatically
thrusts us into
and that
Joseph
Frank
has
named.
It
remains
for an
adequate
criticism
to
explore
the
di-
mensions
of
this
space
and
to
define its relation
to the
inner
and
outer
realms
of
which it is
so
problematically
a
simulacrum.23
22. Bachelard
gives
us
an
inventory,
as it
were,
of
spatial
motifs.
Georges
Poulet
has
treated both
literary
time and
space
in
terms of
specific
writers but
typically
dissolves
individual
works into a
description
of
the
quality
of the
writer's
consciousness:
see
Studies n
Human
Time
(Baltimore,
1956)
and The
Interior
Distance
(Baltimore, 1959),
both
trans.
Elliot
Coleman.
23.
The term
verbal
space
I
take
from
Cary
Nelson,
The
Incarnate Word:
Literatureas
Verbal
Space
(Urbana,
Ill.,
1973).
This book
is
the most
recent of
the few
efforts
to
consider
the
spatial
metaphor
seriously,
in
this
instance under the
aspect
of
body.
For
another
approach,
see
Sharon
Spencer,
Space,
Time
and
Structure n the
Modern
Novel
(New
York,
1971);
here,
space
is
manifest as
architecture.
See also
Hugh
Kenner,
Flaubert,
Joyce
and
Beckett: The
Stoic
Comedians
(Boston, 1962),
for a
discussion of
the book
as
typographic
object;
and
William
Holtz,
Thermodynamics
and the
Comic and
Tragic
Modes,
Western
Humanities
Review
25
(Summer
1971):
203-16,
for
an
extension of
spatial
form
to a
theory
of
comedy.