Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy

I gave a talk today on “Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy.” In a series called “Tea and Talk” at the Lit House at Washington College. I noted that ‘talk’ is metonymy, or what I called good metonymy: that is, a reference to the fact that the emphasis was on talking through–that “talks” (the noun, the scholarly convention) are based in talk, in talking. And that I was thus taking them up on that occasion, and would follow suit by talking through, not read from a paper.

And as I forewarned, though this might have kept things metonymically lively–talking through the process of my thinking, using only notes–there are complications and implications for understanding. Namely, in all the compression and reduction, I left things out.

What I might have added, perhaps to clarify:

Essay is another good example of scholarly (forgotten, or buried) metonymy–now dead metaphor. Essays begin as verbs, as attempts. Emerson knows this, “essaying to be.” And this means essays are unfinished.

In one of his most beautiful essays, Emerson writes (from which I got the title for the talk, and forgot to give the context): “I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment and this is a fragment of me.”

It is a picture–and a figuring–of metonymy, if not by way of it (one thought after: it is not so much that Emerson writes with metonymy as thinks through it; that often in his very descriptions of writing or thinking as metonymy, he also does so metaphorically). Emerson’s this is key: think linguistic shifter, index–the world of his thought, all its reference, condensed into this writing, this thinking; all in each.

And the problem, so far as I can say it, is that metaphor, conventionally, doesn’t like this. Poems, if we think of conventions of organic or organizing metaphor, founder on “this.”

I also neglected to give two of the examples of metaphor I had collected. One from Emerson, of great importance: nature is the hand of the mind (from Nature). The ‘hand’ is in my view the metonymic figure of figures. And it is one specific way to get from Emerson to Dewey (and reminds me, part of an interest in this project, is to get into Dewey and read ‘metonymy’ in his notions of ‘hand-work’ and doing.)

The other example: Tarrantino describing the end of his most recent film, Inglorious Basterds–the plot device where the cinema is set to flames by burning a nitrate film strip. He says on NPR: it is a ‘juicy metaphor’ but it is also literal–because the film is actually burning the theater. I am intrigued by the fact that he has metaphor, but when he needs it, there is no ‘metonymy’ to access for the conversation (what he is talking about; the appearance of film or photography in film is metonymic). The catch, however, is that the metonymic burning of film isn’t ‘literal.’ It remains figural: its metonymy means it is material and contextual, but not merely literal (if that means the opposite, in some way, of the imaginative).

Mark Nowak asked a good question, noting that metonymy, by definition at least, emphasizes noun–and the naming we associate with nouns. Whereas for Emerson, at least as I was arguing, the focus is on action and process–what we would associate with verb. When does it change, at least for Emerson? It strikes me that this might be a good way to get also at the change I show: when early on Emerson (in Nature) refers by name to the ‘metaphor’ and metaphoricity of all language and nature (metaphor of human mind)–when he really means nature’s metonymy. It is only later, in the 1850s, with “Poetry and Imagination,” that he uses (as I argue) the more fitting name “metonymy.”

I wonder if one way to track that change, historically and contextually, would be to recognize that he is also shifting in the later use to a disucssion of rhetoric; whereas earlier he is thinking more of a poetic. And I wonder if this difference and even tension between the poetic and the rhetorical, which seems to be a version of the tension between metaphor and metonymy, can be mapped onto changes and transitions in American schooling, in shifts from belles lettres as the model, to a rhetoric of composition.

Finally, I forgot to mention–or should I say, in the spirit of the thought, my Emerson (metonymic) attention span didn’t makes it way to–the exploration of metonymy and what it might mean for writing or learning or scholarship that I am haltingly pursuing here. If you google “Emerson and Metonymy,” I might have said, some posts from this blog, this dumping ground (Emerson’s savings bank journal ‘wide world’ digitalized), appear high on the list. Might that now be a good way for a scholar to know that there is room to disseminate his thoughts? Little else is out there. Or a sign that there is no one there to receive the message? [another dynamic relation I might have mentioned: dissemination vs. dialogue, John Durham Peters]

a PMLA article from 1890s discussing metonymy as “necessary relation”

Synecdoche, as Professor Gummere has said, is based upon a relation of space,—what Professor Fruit has termed intra-relativity,—the relation of the whole and its parts; from this figure it is only a short step to Metonymy, which is based upon a relation of thought,—what Professor Fruit has termed extrarelativity, or the intuitions of necessary relation. Metonymy names things at a slight remove; instead of naming the thing itself, it names something associated with it, and trusts to the imagination to supply what is not stated,—both the thing unnamed and the relation which bridges the gulf between the two. If the relations are necessary relations, the gulf is not a very wide one; neither in synecdoche nor in metonymy is a serious demand made upon the imagination, though more is, perhaps, required in the case of metonymy.

books by the foot

Add in The New Yorker (august 24, 2009, page 32)

Booksbythefoot.com

Dozens of styles for Interior Designers and Book Lovers, starting at $6.99 per linear foot.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” –Cicero

I have seen the add before. Only today do I think about it differently, because of my initial discussion of books and “American Scholar” in the Emerson seminar yesterday. That is: the lover of books and the problem of books; the danger of becoming the “bookworm” and the bibliomaniac. The Cicero makes me think of how Emerson views the very problem of reading books: that books are not the soul, but the body (at some level, Emerson like all in his culture of copyright, as Katherine Hayles might suggest, is guilty of immaterialzing the book) that houses but potentially limits the soul: the idea, the genius. Every spirit builds itself a house…

And I also think of this line from American Scholar, of course; about what we readers forget (the line that leads up to the bookworm):

Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm.

So what’s being sold here at booksbythefeet? Who is the audience? On the one hand, book lovers, clearly–readers who probably know the line from Cicero, or at least believe it, and would want to enhance, perhaps transplant, the soul of their living rooms. But at the same time, if not on the other hand, notice how surely this same book lover is also the reader without a soul. The appeal, after all, is to create an effect that you have a room of books, create the style of being a reader: interior designers are this audience. One can think of Gatsby’s book shelves and realize that a great American tradition, perhaps, is here invoked. It makes one wonder about, say, The New Yorker: does one read it for love or for style?

I would like to suggest–at least, begin to speculate, and work on this a bit further–that this is where we find ourselves today in literary education (perhaps in the academy overall). Should our focus be on style (and styles)–but suitable for designers? Those who want to create and produce the style of “books” and yes, the appearances of being well read? Or should our focus be on the book lovers–on creating readers who will fill up their future rooms with books, carried with them (we presume) from their studies? Readers who might (like me) subscribe to The New Yorker but not answer the ad.

The latter is, it seems clear, the method of literary education of the last 100 years, certainly since the emergence of the New Critical classroom. The former, I speculate (allowing me the figurative room to borrow ‘interior design’ into the realm of English; though the word style suggests to me that I don’t need to beg too much in that borrowing) is where English seems to have come from (both classical rhetoric and the rhetoric that emerges with the university in the late 19th century), where practical elements in style is the focus. And perhaps this is also where English could go, or is under pressure to go: driven by student interests in more practical applications of writing, more technical. Writing that is professional, rather than rhetorical or literary.

My final speculation, for now, is that Emersonian pedagogy–the Emerson who is interested in the problem of readers and books, and plays a role, though forgotten, in these educational issues (think of James Berlin’s study)–that Emerson can help highlight these two polarities and perhaps offer us a middle ground.

Books by the foot of the familiar?

Emerson and metaphor

Firkins: Emerson as the stronghold of metaphor. quotes his line from nature: metaphor of the mind. [1915, Ralph Waldo Emerson; Houghton Miflin]

Entire section in chapter “Emerson as Prose writer” on metaphor. No mention of metonymy. Does have a section on ‘condensation’–on how compact his thoughts are–but notes that each sentence is identical.

ken dauber, on not being able to read emerson–asserts metonymy is primary trope.

[grammardog guide to self-reliance]

Is Emerson known more for metaphor or metonymy?