Lucas 8:28 - Una vez más un demonio revela su conocimiento del tormento (basanisas) futuro, y suplica a Cristo: “Te ruego que no me atormentes”

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As I understand it, three models of supranationality are presented to stu­ dents of com parative literature. Here I will only sketch them briefly.

A. The m ost recent model is the study of phenomena and supranational assemblages that im ply intemationality, that is, suggest either genetic con­ tacts o r other relations between authors and processes belonging to distinct national spheres o r com m on cultural premises. Examples of phenomena th a t imply a genetic relation include the picaresque novel and the theme of D on Juan. Alain Rene Lcsage translates M ateo Aleman, Tobias Smollett translates Lesage, Dickens reads Smollett, Kafka (1 am referring to Amer­

ika) reads Dickens, and so on. Examples of a phenomenon involving com­

m on premises— antecedents of the same civilization— include the neo- Ciceronian style of certain prose works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Luis Vêlez de Guevara, John Lyly) and the epic poem of the Ren­ aissance. The conceptual framework that provides useful terms for studies o f these types m ust be historically appropriate, either because the frame­ work calls on the past lexicon of European poetics, on the itinerary of its self-awareness— in which case we will speak of tragedy or of elegy, of mel­ odram a, o r of free verse, of doloras (Campoamor) or of greguerías (Gómez de la Serna). O r perhaps new terms are adopted, terms applicable above all to definite historical phenom ena— such as the concept of anatomy, devel­ oped by N o rth ro p Frye, and applicable to Addison and Steele, to Spanish 69

70 The Emergence of Com parative Literature

costum brism o of the seventeenth century, and so on. Where I say “ Euro­

pean” (European/American) read Chinese or whatever o ther suitable adjec­ tive you prefer, just so long as we always stay within the limits of one single civilization.

B. W hen phenom ena o r processes th at are genetically independent, or belong to different civilizations, are collected and brought together for study, such an exam ination can be justified and carried o u t to the extent that com m on sociohistorical conditions arc implied. One can easily see that investigations of type A, while not excluding an interest th at might involve interactions between social history (or economic o r political history) and literary history, did not arise necessarily from th at interest but were circum­ scribed by exclusively literary categories. N ot so for the second model, which postulates as its basis the existence of processes and common socio­ economic developments that perm it political events pertaining to different peoples and civilizations to be linked and compared. As an example, think of the development of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe and in seventeenth-century Japan (Saikaku Ihara’s rales of Osaka), considered from the point of view of their connections with the new middle classes or “ bourgeoisie” ; o r the oral epic produced by different primitive o r “ feudal" societies (a theme I will return to shortly). The conceptual framework con­ tinues to have a predom inantly historical character, although a certain theo­ retical awareness of the relation between social change and literary change is assumed.

C. Some genetically independent phenom ena make up supranational en­ tities in accordance with principles and purposes derived from the theory o f

literature. This model has the highest grade of theoreticity, since the concep­

tual fram ework, instead of being pragm atic or merely adequate in the face of the observable facts, usually provides a point of departure for the inves­ tigation o r for the problem to be resolved. The theoretical framework sug­ gests the statem ent o f the problem. But as the framework evolves, a con­ trary motion can begin, and new knowledge or some unpublished facts can challenge any theoretical notion. An exam ination of diachronic processes and developments is by no means excluded, such as those provoked by per- iodological studies, by the appearance of modern genres, or by new styles (such as the “zero grade” of style), as long as the conceptual framework is a theory of literary history o r a contribution to it. Obviously, today’s East/ West studies offer especially valuable and promising opportunities for in­ vestigations based on the third model. (But this perspective also encom­ passes works that agree with models A and B). In sum, model C permits the dialogue between unity and diversity that stimulates comparativism to fo-

Three Models o f Supranationality

71

cus on the open confrontation of criticism/history with theory; or, if you prefer, of our knowledge of poetry— supranational poetry— with poetics.

Naturally, there have been a num ber of other useful models, which we will discuss later. But first it is worthwhile to offer an example. Very inter­ esting genres exist whose “universality" is debatable and a matter for in­ vestigation, such as the literary dispute or poem-debate (the medieval débat, the Streitgedicht, the Provençal tensó, the Persian munázarát); but it would be m ore appropriate to consider them later, in the chapter devoted to gen- ology. Instead let us examine a category of a formal type. I repeat that under model C com parative history tests specific theoretical formulations with the intention not of agreeing o r disagreeing, but of harmonizing and enriching such formulations.

Rom an Jak o b so n ’s thesis regarding parallelism is well known. According to him , parallelism is “the fundamental problem of poetry,” 1 the essential di­ m ension th at characterizes the poetic phenomenon. Where does this formal characteristic come from? from the code of the language? from the cultural values of conventions typical of the literary system of a distinct historical epoch? Jakobson, in his “ Poetry of Gram m ar and Grammar of Poetry,” stresses the innate im portance of syntactic forms or associations. The same piece of sem antic material lends itself to distinct ways of connecting its com ponents: “ So dark the sky is,” o r the other way around, “The sky is so d ark .” This is w hat Gerard Manley Hopkins called the figure o f grammar. Well then, if this figure is parallelistic, the possibility of poetry appears im­ mediately, o r to express it more accurately, the possibility of a “poetic func­ tio n ” appears. Over this bridge pass rhyme, morphological and semantic repetitions, prosodic symmetries, which all converge in one single poem. In “ Linguistics and Poetics” and in other writings, Jakobson gives many ex­ am ples of this phenom enon, taken from the popular Russian epic (byliny), the parallelismus m em brorum of the Bible, the popular poetry of the Urgo- Finnish peoples (such as the cheremis studied by Thomas A. Seboek), and o f the Turks and M ongols, the Vedic litanies, and so on. Without doubt the best exam ples come from folklore. “ Folklore offers the most clear-cut and stereotyped forms of poetry, particularly suitable for structural scrutiny.” 2 H ere is the opening stanza of one of the byliny:

A i vsé na pirú da napiválisja A i vsé na pirú da poraskhvástalis, Ulmnyj khvástaet zolotój kaznój, Glypyj khvástaet molodój zenój . . .

72 The Emergence of C om parative Literature Everyone at the feast was drunk,

Everyone at the feast was boasting. The clever one boasts of his golden stock, The stupid one boasts of his young wife.

Clearly, the syntactic reiteration is tied to a series of parallelistic effects, on a semantic, phonic level (the accented vowels and anterior assonances and other forms of hom ophony; o r rather, rhyme in its widest sense)* as well as on a morphological level (zolotój/molodój).

The romancero in Castilian offers many com parable examples,4 such as the “ Romance de doña A lda” :

Todas visten un vestido, todas calzan un calzar, todas comen a una mesa, todas comían de un pan, sino era doña Alda, Las ciento hilaban oro, las ciento tejen cendal, las ciento tañen instrumentos para a doña Alda h o lg ar. . . All are dressed in the same dress, All wear the same shoes,

All eat at the same table, All eat of the same bread, Except for Doña Alda

A hundred were spinning gold, A hundred were weaving fine silk, A hundred were playing instruments for Doña Alda’s pleasure.

The semantic and m orphological iterations (“todas calzan un calzar” ) arc arranged like a nest of boxes, each within another, slightly larger one; in this case, actually within the same syntactic figure. And notice th at Doña Alda stands o u t from the surrounding unanimity, so that the news of the death of Roland at the end of the ballad breaks the harm ony of the first part of the poem: “que su Roldan era m uerto/en la caza de Roncesvalles” (that her Roland had died/in the battle of Roncevaux).

The effect of tension and interior collision appears very clearly in the romance “El prisionero” :

Que por mayo era por mayo, cuando hace la calor.

Three Models o f Supranationality 73

cuando los trigos encañan v están los campos en flor, cuando canta la calandria y responde el ruiseñor, cuando los enamorados van a servir al amor; sino yo, triste, cuitado, que vivo in esta prisión, que ni sé cuándo es de día ni cuándo las noches son, sino por una avecilla que me cantaba el albor. Matómela un ballestro; déle Dios mal galardón.

It was Maytime, it was Maytime when it grows so very hot, when the wheat stalks grow tall and the fields are in flower, when the skylark sings and the nightingale answers, when those in love

go out to serve Love, except for me, sad wretch who live in this prison,

for I do not know when it is day nor when it is night,

except for a little bird

that used to sing me the dawn. A crossbowman killed it.

May God give him what he deserves.1

The grammatical fram ework operates as if it were a mnemonic device, a starter of the verbal m otor, capable of provoking reiterations of distinctly different types that make up a series of variations. The first big success in this case is a marvelous dialogue between birds, with the alliteration of the c ln the song of the skylark and the assonance of the a repeated seven times M e line has eight syllables):

cuando canta la calandria

•n the reply of the nightingale, with the coincidence of the tw o tonic accents with the vowel o, and also the alliteration of the r:

74 The Emergence of Com parative Literature

The second part of the rom ance breaks the initial rhythm — the accents on the third and seventh syllables— beginning with the line in which the abrupt juxtaposition of two successive tonic accents jolts us:

sino yó, triste, cuitado . . .

The form of the rom ance is dynamic, changeable, and even conflictive: it contradicts itself.

After the first rhythm ic design comes another th at upsets and supplants it. Moreover, one might think th at the initial design is there expressly to be overcome; and the parallelism is there to be refuted and dismantled. As we will see, this is w hat Michael Riffaterre calls stylistic context, whose con­ trast with a specific procedure produces the stylistic effect.6 This transcend­ ing of the rhythm and the parallelism of the beginning affects the entire poem. ¡ “Sino yo . . (Except for me!) The protagonist docs not take part in the general felicity. After the folkloric springtime, after the “Song of M ay” (which G aston Paris considers the origin of all medieval lyric po­ etry),7 after the fiesta of pagan origin, the rebirth and celebration of the senses, comes the lyrical-narrative expansion of the inner state of mind and solitude of the prisoner. The springtime, like the parallelism, is nothing more than a backdrop.

Something similar occurs in several Provençal poems, such as the famous one of Bernard de Ventadour, sad lover, alone and disconsolate, w ho sees “ the lark stir her wings for joy/against the sunlight,/and forgetting herself,/

letting herself/fall/w ith the sweetness th at comes into her h e a r t,. . . ” : Can vei la lauzeta move

de joi sas alas contra.1 rai que s’oblid’c.s laissa chazer per la doussor c’al cor li vai . . .*

Parallelism in such cases is nothing more than an opening and a framework for the development of a significant tension between the design of the poem and its single com ponents. We do not have a système clos* but an extremely complex multiplicity of interactions th at make possible the m utual intensi­ fication of the different strata of the message: syntactic, prosodic, semantic, phonic, morphological.

This stratification is fundamental in poetry. Emilio Alarcos Llorach rightly stresses tw o strata that he calls syntactic sequence and rhythm ic se­ quence, which may o r may not coincide. “They will go in concert when the syntactic and the metrical pauses take place at the same point, with the result th at the metrical unity— the line— and the syntactic unity— phrase

Three Models o f Supranationality 75

o r p art of a phrase— correspond.” Clearly, it happens again and again that the syntactic rhythm (H opkins’ figure o f grammar) and the metrical or pro­ sodic rhythm are different. The tem porality of the poem is multiple. Alarcos writes:

So then, in any poem we can discover four types of rhythm, more or less in concert, that constitute the inherent poetic rhythm: (a) a sequence of sounds, of phonetic material; (b) a sequence of grammatical functions ac­ companied by intonation; (c) a sequence, the metrical one, of accented or atonic syllables arranged according to a definite scheme; (d) a sequence of psychic elements (sentiments, images, and so on.11'

T h a t is why it is such a delicate task to read a poem aloud. We have to keep in mind m ore than one rhythm at the same time. If we make the pause at the end of the line too long, we favor the metrical rhythm. If we make it to o short, we favor the syntactic rhythm. An exact equilibrium must be m aintained between tw o contrary forces.

O u r best critics o f poetry have commented in an enlightening way on this plural mechanism of nexuses, oppositions, and superpositions: Osip Brik, on the tension between the rhythmic “series” and the syllabic series in Rus­ sian verse; D ám aso Alonso, on “the fantastic complex of relations within the poem ;” " Francisco Garcia Lorca, on the crisscross of rhythms with accentuations, of syntactic am bits with reiterations whose endless propa­ gation acts even in th e ^ m o st remote areas of sensibility." 12

The poetic effect rests upon the tension, interaction, or contrast between the parallelistic and the antiparallelistic, or, if you prefer, the aparallelistic impulses. (This statem ent is made from Jakobson’s point of view of the problem ; I have no intention of defining a monolithic literary system here.) Later, when discussing morphology (Chapter 13), I will attempt to call at­ tention to everything in a poem that is process, dynamism, transcendence o f the poem by itself. Everybody knows that absolute order is intolerable, in the arts as well as in politics. Parallelism and aparallelism merge, and each needs the other in equal measure. The dialectic of the one and the many can also be found within the poem itself.

The parallelism th at we perceive at one level of the poem is not necessar­ ily found at another. N or has anyone ever demonstrated that the syntactic o rd er exercises any type of preference or priority. From every point of view, a totally com plete em boîtem ent is incompatible with a stylistic effect that depends on phenom ena of differentiation and alteration, according to what Riffaterre has show n.1 ’ In his book on biblical parallelism, James Kugel has analyzed with great elegance the limits of this relatively modern concept

76 The Emergence of Com parative Lirerarure

(from Robert Lowth, De sacra poesi Hebraeorum, 1753). Found most often in the Bible is a phrase composed of two clauses, with a minor pause be* tween them and a m ajor pause at the end of the verse:

____________/ ____________ //

A B

The passage from A to B is nor mere reflection, nor repetition, nor variation, but something like an intensification that confirms and enhances in very different ways w hat was said previously.

The briefness of the brief pause is an expression of B’s connectedness to A; the length of the long pause is an expression of the relative disjunction between B and the next line. What this means is simply: B, by being con­ nected to A— carrying it further, echoing it, defining it, restating it, con­ trasting with it, it does not matter which— has an emphatic, “seconding" character, and it is this, more than any aesthetic of symmetry or parallel­ ing, which is at the heart of biblical parallelism.14

And Wolfgang Stcinitz establishes some very useful distinctions in his fun­ damental presentation of the parallelisms of popular Finnish poetry. He points out that there are formal parallelisms and them atic ones, and the latter include those that can be in turn subdivided into contradiction, enu­ meration, and variation, either by way of synonymy o r by analogy. He thus calls attention to the limitations of the procedure, although his descriptive term (“verses not parallel") is a bit clumsy.15

In view of this problem , the testimony of the mulrisecular poetic tradition of China is undoubtedly extremely valuable. Remember the interaction of the refrain and variations in the ballads of the ancient Shih Ching o r Classic

o f Songs:

Dry leaves, dry leaves, The wind tosses you about. Brothers, oh brothers,

As you sing, so must I follow. Dry leaves, dry leaves,

The wind blows you along. Brothers, oh brothers,

As you sing, so must I also.1*

This scheme is often used in Iberian poetry, from the Portuguese cantigas de

am igo— in which the rhythm ic unity is not a strophe but a pair of

Three M odels o f Supranationality 77

to the later reelaboration of these traditional structures by Gil Vicente, Lope de Vega, and Federico Garcia Lorca.

In China later, the genre called sao and its successor the fu would have in com m on the use of composed binaries and parallel phrases."* The usage became so com m on th a t it helped to blur the line between poetry and prose. “ Balanced prose” (p'ien-w en) is characteristic particularly during the Ch’i and Liang dynasties, (4 7 9 -5 5 6 A .D .) , when the tendency of Chinese prose tow ard tetrasyllabic rhythm developed, according to James Hightower. But H ightow er adds:

When pairs of these are deliberately reduced to a common grammatical pattern the result approaches Parallel Prose. A more subrle kind of rhythm is possible in Chinese, based on the sequence of tones, a phonemic element in the language. Grammatical parallelism, reinforced with stria syllabic correspondence, may be further refined by a similar or contrasting pattern of tones in the parallel phrases.1'*

Obviously the phonem ic function of the tones in Chinese permits a very com plex formal counterpoint, not limited to the parallelistic framework, and also used in the so-called regular verse (lit shih) of the great poets of the T ’ang dynasty.20 Thus it is worthwhile to distinguish between different genres, styles, and historical periods if we do not intend to subordinate the variety of poetry to the unity of one poetics to an exaggerated extent.

From such a point of view, the absence of a distinction between tradi­ tional oral poetry and cultivated poetry is also debatable. What is strik­ ing in this connection is the use of the recourse— mnemonic? rhetorical- persuasive?— in the m ost ancient poetry of Eurasia and America— of what