EL ANHELO DE PERTENECER

As I expand my view of literary reuse, beyond relatively recent textual activities like de/composition and the Oulipo, I find historical precedents in both literary studies and composition, incorporating many versions of the same underlying techniques. Recasting, rewriting, condensing, and expanding literary texts into new derivatives are common, durable, and reliable methods of teaching and learning writing and reading. The dense network of such practices suggests again that reuse and its underlying procedures are not eccentric but fundamental modes of production, generative of new text and/or interpretation of old text.

For instance, although I have provided several recent examples of homolinguistic translation, it may nonetheless seem obscure, associated with unusual projects like the Oulipo and Paul Legault’s amazingly exhaustive paraphrase of Emily Dickinson’s collected works. Yet the larger archive positions such translation work, particularly poetry-to-prose translation, as a widespread, traditional approach to teaching reading and writing, even both at the same time. Here I trace a range of instructional practices relying upon similar translational procedures even while going by different names and pursuing different objectives. At one end of this range are practices that convert poetry to prose while retaining much of the source language. For them key procedures are combination, rearrangement, and repackaging. At the other end of this range are divergent practices that, though known as translation, actually insert and substitute more language than they repeat. I begin with James Buchanan’s 1773 prose version of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Since this text shows strikingly well that textual reuse is a procedural practice, I examine it at some length here.

Buchanan’s work claims on its title page to have “rendered into grammatical construction” Milton’s original poem, retaining all words while merely rearranging them to reflect “natural” rather than “artificial” word order, a prose version to supplement Milton’s poetry. Milton’s original text appears above Buchanan’s reconstruction of it, in a slightly larger font too, so that Buchanan’s contribution models a gloss on the original. As with Snodgrass’s project, however, this “gloss” offers more than occasional explanation: it mixes explanation with reconstruction, reconstituting Milton’s original in a fully-elaborated prose style beneath it. A key move, then, is combining source with translation, just as Snodgrass pairs each de/composition with its source poem. Buchanan’s work is necessary, according to the advertisement, because “Milton’s stile is more violently inverted than that of any other English poet” (2), making it difficult for youth and others untrained in reading verse to comprehend his epic poem, a classic that they should be reading. Buchanan’s endeavor performs a pedagogical service, offering a guide to Paradise Lost that anticipates those that Dennis Danielson and Joseph Lanzara have recently published.32

Buchanan’s chief method is transposition: converting inverted or artificial arrangement into natural arrangement, the order Buchanan claims one’s mind instinctively follows. This distinction, while tenuous, demystifies the literary work, suggesting that it deviates from ordinary constructions in an easily translatable manner, merely because it is poetic and not because its content is anything readers cannot understand. Thus, Buchanan shows readers how to translate or adapt inverted syntax into natural syntax, rather than just performing the service

32 _{Whether called updating, translating, imitating, or paraphrasing, reworking Paradise Lost is a particularly durable}

project. See also, for example, John Hopkins’s Milton’s Paradise Lost Imitated in Rhyme (1699); Andrew Jackson’s

Paradise Lost: A Poem. Attempted in Rhime (1740); George Smith Green’s A New Version of the Paradise Lost: Or, Milton Paraphrased (1756); and The Fall of Man, or, Milton’s Paradise Lost. In Prose, attributed to Nicolas-

Francois Dupre de Saint-Maur and published around 1765. As I showed above, each of these examples, as well as the modern-day ones by Danielson and Lanzara, justify their appearance and reappearance on the value yet perennial

himself. In fact, he claims to have included only the first six books of Paradise Lost because he imagines that by the time they conclude six books, readers will have gained the knowledge and ability to continue the work of rearrangement on their own. Buchanan’s edition is a pedagogical text helping readers to understand Milton and to learn syntactical principles, such as ellipsis and transposition (or inversion), that they may later apply to other difficult verse. It teaches techniques of reading and writing simultaneously.33 “[B]y the time they have read all the six [books],” Buchanan suggests, readers will “be able to read not only the whole poem, but every English classic, whether in prose or verse, with taste and judgment” (15). He goes on to enumerate advantages beyond mere application to additional literary works: “And what immense advantages must accrue to young gentlemen from their being capable of construing and resolving every sentence they read in any English classic? How will this fix their attention and improve their judgment, with respect to a masterly knowledge of the subject, as well as the propriety of the stile? Nay, in time, what judicious critics will they not become?” (15). I see in this suggestion much commonality with Boyd’s pronouncement in Chapter 1, on the benefits that can accrue from carefully copying and setting type: becoming a “judicious” reader and composer, someone with a sharp understanding of style, syntax, and other details thanks to fastidious attention to the intricacies of sentence-level arrangement. Buchanan’s work imagines producing readers and writers: readers with the ability not only to read and comprehend but also to tinker.

These benefits emerge out of an explicitly procedural approach to writing, one that looks like an algorithm or mathematical formula, a well-defined, step-by-step procedure that can be applied methodically to a source text. It is a method that explicates how one might approach the

33 _{The ambiguity in this sentence is intentional. I mean to suggest that Buchanan’s text teaches techniques for}

exercises in arrangement and rearrangement that I highlighted in Chapter 1. Transposition entails rearranging words just as exercises in rearrangement do (including analogous exercises in Buchanan’s earlier text A Regular English Syntax, which, having been published in 1767, predates all of the materials in Chapter 1 by at least sixty years). And supplying ellipsis (the other component of Buchanan’s approach) is just the opposite of sentence-combining: rather than eliminating redundancy or repetition by eliding or contracting two or more sentences, Buchanan re-inserts what the poetry has elided. Thus, Buchanan’s primary syntactical moves are rearrangement and insertion, with combination and repackaging essential to putting the book and its pages together.

Here’s how Buchanan summarizes his approach to rearranging an inverted sentence: Let a sentence be ever so much inverted, read it to the end first, then look for the introductory or inciting word, if any; if none, take the vocative; if no vocative, go directly to the nominative or nominatives, if there be more than one connected by a conjunction; next, to the verb or verbs, if there be more than one, connected by a conjunction; next, to the word governed by the verb in the accusative, with the words connected with it in the same case, if any; take next the genitive case or cases, if there be any, connected by a conjunction; take last, the under parts, being words related to the whole, and governed by prepositions, to the end, supplying the ellipsis throughout, where needful. (10)

These instructions evoke procedure through their presentation alone, with the very long sentence punctuated into numerous clauses by one semi-colon after another, one comma after another. The original format even draws my attention to the punctuation because an extra space separates one semi-colon from another, one clause and one directive from another. The language too

bespeaks a logical, mathematical approach, beginning with “Let,” as in a mathematical proof, and continuing with several clauses exhibiting the “If . . . then” structure associated with logic.

To see Buchanan’s procedure in action, consider Table 3:

Table 3: Example of Transposition in Buchanan's Rendering of Paradise Lost

Milton His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand, He walk’d with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle . . .

Buchanan He walked with his spear, (to equal which, the tallest pine hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast of some great ammiral, were but a wand,) to support uneasy steps over the burning marle . . . (44)

Note that as it originally stands, this line delays the combination of an object (“his spear”) with the verb to which it refers (“walk’d”) by inverting syntax and inserting after “his spear” a long mix of phrases and clauses that modify it. Buchanan clarifies the action of this sentence by transposing “his spear” and “he walk’d with” and by enclosing all the modifying elements in newly inserted parentheses. Both moves (rearrangement of words and insertion of parentheses) have the effect of deemphasizing the mighty spear heading Milton’s sentence. Parentheses mark the modifying elements as a self-contained unit applying altogether to the spear, but at the same time relegate such modification, and thus the further detail and characterization they supply, to a subordinate position. This is a necessary consequence of using parentheses, which by definition subordinate rather than foreground.

Even as Buchanan’s approach appears so ordered and mathematical, an algorithm for writing before the computer age, it leaves room for invention. Buchanan admits to having intervened in the operation of his procedure from time to time. Occasionally he avoids supplying an ellipsis when the meaning behind a sentence is clear without it. He explains, “Therefore, whenever the sense appeared plain after putting the sentence into natural order, I omitted the

ellipsis, that the natural order might not read more flat than needful” (6). Buchanan avoids thoughtlessly applying his procedure without stopping to pause and consider its output. A mechanical procedure need not suggest thoughtlessness or carelessness, an automatic “plug-and- chug” model of composition, for even such an ordered operation does not preclude some degree of open-endedness through deviation and customization. Again, then, while textual and procedural agencies govern textual reuse, they necessarily intermingle with some personal evaluation as well, creating the recursive feedback loop characteristic of invention.

Buchanan’s investment in transposition is not an isolated quirk: it appears in other early works on English grammar, syntax, and composition, such as Noah Webster’s widely circulating contemporaneous text Grammatical Institute of the English Language (126-131). Webster treats transposition much like Buchanan does, stressing the importance of proper arrangement in sentences to achieve perspicuity, whether in verse or prose. Like Buchanan, Webster equates transposition with inversion and claims that transposed or inverted sentences diverge from “natural” to “artificial” order, with natural order reflecting the sequence that ideas supposedly follow in the mind and artificial order “render[ing] the sentence harmonious and agreeable to the ear” (126). After explaining the principles of ellipsis and transposition, Webster, like Buchanan in his Regular English Syntax,34 _{dissects and corrects examples of faulty syntax from periodicals} and literary texts, offering none for readers to try themselves (in keeping with the style of grammatical texts since Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar, of 1762,

34 _{Webster and Buchanan share some examples, such as this line from Swift: “It is likewise urged that there are, by}

computation, in this kingdom, above 10,000 parsons, whose revenues, &c.” (Webster 129; Buchanan 174). See also this line from Spectator No. 85: “It is the custom of the Mahometans, if they see any printed or written paper upon the ground, to take it up and lay it aside carefully, as not knowing but it may contain some piece of their Alcoran” (Webster 130; Buchanan 173-174). This overlap suggests that Webster and Buchanan relied upon a common source when compiling their textbooks or that Webster, whose text postdates Buchanan’s, reused portions from Buchanan. Either way, this pairing provides just one example of the heavy exchange among similar instructional texts at this

which Webster also cites). I affiliate this reading and correcting of examples with de/composition because Webster and Buchanan, like Snodgrass, intervene in the original sentences, evaluate them (specifically their arrangement), and make changes to them (i.e., improvements). Though Snodgrass pursues the opposite goal—deforming rather than improving—he approaches source texts like these early grammarians: each engages directly with the texts in question, tinkering with them rather than just pondering them.

Buchanan’s attention to sentence manipulation for reading comprehension also appears in interesting variations in Francis A. March’s nineteenth-century instructional text Method of Philological Study of the English Language, which like Buchanan’s Paradise Lost, combines study of language with study of literature. March reproduces several short excerpts from literary texts like Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress and pairs each one with questions that require students to analyze and parse the sample text grammatically, syntactically, and metrically. With Paradise Lost, March asks students not only to dissect and comment on Milton’s language but also to experience it and experiment with it. In the spirit of Buchanan, students must intervene and rewrite: first, to translate a verse (32) and later, to apply the meter of Paradise Lost to a different text by Milton (33). The latter exercise encourages playing with poetry through metrical variation, just as Snodgrass frequently does in de/composing and re/de/composing from one meter to another. Particularly in such interventions on a syntactical level, we see the fusion of instruction in literature and language, reading and writing, that tinkering makes possible.

Such fusion is evident as well in M. E. Lilienthal and Robert Allyn’s 1862 composition textbook Object Lessons. Things Taught: Systematic Instruction in Composition,35 which like

35 _{This text encourages students to begin writing by studying their material surroundings, including the everyday}

many others, features exercises in “Transformation of Poetry into Prose.” The compilers acknowledge both reading comprehension and writing skill when describing their objectives: “This Section embraces matter for a large variety of very useful exercises. It will aid the pupil in learning to read, and in remembering what is read, and will give him a more copious vocabulary of words, and a more graceful style” (37). Directions emphasize repetition and substitution: students must recognize figurative language and provide synonyms appropriate for a prose variation, while also learning via repetition and imitation of the model transformations that their teachers provide. This exercise presents translation as something akin to works by Snodgrass and Mullen that stay close to the source material, diverging from it in easily discernible ways.

Other exercises, though similarly described as translation or transformation of poetry into prose, involve more significant deviation from the source text. These are rooted in an ordered procedure like Buchanan’s yet are more open-ended, encouraging substantial customization, rather than just slight syntactical deviations. For example, Parker offers an exercise called “Transposition” but interprets this term more loosely and less methodically than Buchanan does. Instructions state, “The ideas contained in the following poetical extracts may be written in the pupil’s own language in prose” (30). In a sense, this exercise is indeed one of translation: reading to understand the extract, then presenting that understanding by recasting it in new language— whatever language is readily accessible to the student (“the pupil’s own language”). A model demonstrates that more than transposing or rearranging syntax, then, the exercise demands the kind of wholesale substitution that Lilienthal and Allyn recommend: replacing figurative with explanatory language. The model reads as follows:

practice than previous, more theoretical texts did. A related text is Elizabeth Mayo’s Lessons on Objects, originally published in London and then evidently arranged anew (by Edward Austin Sheldon) for an American edition in

Table 4: Parker's Model of Transposition

Model What is the blooming tincture of the skin, To peace of mind and harmony within?

Same transposed Of what value is beauty, in comparison with a tranquil mind, and a quiet conscience. [sic]

Note that this “transposition” does not actually transpose in the sense that Buchanan’s does. It maintains the basic syntax of the original, instead substituting the figurative “blooming tincture of the skin” with the more generic “beauty”; “peace of mind” with “a tranquil mind”; and “harmony within” with “a quiet conscience.” Interestingly, however, the entry for transpose in the Oxford English Dictionary indicates a range of broader definitions (now obscure) that deviate from Buchanan’s sense that transposition means inversion. It could mean “To change (one thing) to or into another; to transform, transmute, convert” and “To change (a writing or book) into another language, style of composition, or mode of expression; to translate; to transfer; to adapt.” (There is a related term, transprose, cited for “chiefly humorous” use in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries to mean to turn, translate, or render verse into prose [the opposite of transverse].) Resurrecting transposition according to this broad definition could reduce some of the difficulty and clunkiness inherent to the label “English-to-English translation.” Some may argue that translation requires movement from one language into another, such as Spanish to English, so introducing transposition as an alternative to translation might better accommodate the range and quirkiness of projects that feature substantial rewriting in one language.

Even as Parker’s sample maintains its original syntax, it nonetheless transforms poetry into prose by eliminating rhyme, a stricture at work in similar exercises, such as that in Simon Kerl’s textbook of the same period. Kerl directs readers to “[d]estroy the rhymes and measure by change of words and syntax” (88). The model transformation is extensive, rewriting a six-stanza poem into a three-paragraph story via considerable rearrangement, substitution, and insertion. It

incorporates some embellishment, blurring the already indistinct boundaries between translation and amplification. Snodgrass, in contrast, follows the same general directions (eliminating rhyme and adapting meter) without amplifying—that is, while still remaining close to the original text. For example, his de/composition of Louis MacNeice’s poem “The Sunlight on the Garden” into unrhymed iambic trimeter mimics the original by relying predominantly on word-for-word substitutions (142-143).

There is thus overlap between translation or transformation and what Parker calls “Paraphrase, or Explanation.” Note the similarity in his instructions here and Lilienthal and Allyn’s exercise above: “Paraphrase means an explanation, or interpretation. Maxims and proverbs frequently occur, which have something of the nature of figurative language. Many of them are included in a figure which by some writers is called Allusion. The object of this lesson is, to accustom the pupil to the use of such expressions, and enable him to explain them” (64). Meanwhile, Lilienthal and Allyn specify that students should “define the figurative words, and give the synonyms for those most important” (37). In both instances, then, we see a concern with substituting explanatory or plain language for figurative and allusive language. Where some translation work stays close to the source, as in Parker’s example above, the related technique paraphrase opens outward, encouraging elaboration. For paraphrase Parker provides a model that