Table Of ContentSUGGESTION AND
STATEMENT IN
POETRY
Krishna Rayan
Patricia M. Ball
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC COLLECTIONS
English Literary Criticism - General Theory and History
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First published in 1972
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© Krishna Rayan, 2013
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ISBN: 9781472536129 (Bloomsbury Academic Collections:
English Literary Criticism - General Theory and History)
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English Literary Criticism)
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CONTENTS
1 Suggestion Today i
2 Suggestion: From Poe to the Present 17
3 Suggestion through the Objective Correlative 31
4 The Lamp and the Jar: Stated and Suggested
Meaning 52
5 Suggestion through Metaphor 67
6 Stating and Suggesting by Turns 86
7 Statement Poetry 97
8 Suggestion as a Classical Method 121
9 Suggestion or Statement? The Case of
Wordsworth 134
10 Suggestors of Emotion 144
11 Notes on Suggested Meaning 154
Notes 172
Index 179
PREFACE
In this study of suggestion, in relation to statement, in
English poetry, I have started by examining * Suggestion'—
the term and the concept: sketching its origin and develop
ment and indicating its present status. I have proceeded, in
the third, fourth and fifth chapters, to consider the two kinds
into which suggestion can be divided: the suggestion of
emotion, and suggestion through metaphor. The sixth and
seventh chapters, to be read with the fourth, analyse sug
gestion and statement in relation to each other. Two case
studies follow: T. S. Eliot and Wordsworth. We next revert
to character and plot as objective correlatives. The con
cluding chapter touches upon certain problems of suggested
meaning, such as: Should it be evaluated? When is it para-
phrasable? What happens when it is defined or explicated?
I have constantly brought in concepts from Sanskrit
poetics, but invariably as points of departure for discussion
of poetic practice and critical ideas in English. If at certain
points the book sounds like special pleading for Sanskrit
theory, I can only say that that, at any rate, was not my
intention. This essay is not an exposition of Sanskrit poetics,
nor is it a comparative study of Sanskrit and English critical
theory—anything in that line will have to await the advent
of the super-scholar who matches a knowledge of what the
ninth-to-eleventh-century Indian theorists of poetry meant
with a specifically modern sensibility and equipment which
can enable him to work at a deeper level than that of seem
ing affinities and to speak a language which will not distort
VI PREFACE
what those masters said and yet will be comprehensible to
present-day English-speaking readers.
In citing the work of other critics I suspect that I may be
charged with having drawn upon too small a company and
then on too few of their writings—Abercrombie, Tillyard,
Richards, Empson, Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, Wimsatt, and
John Bayley. Here is a selection at least part of which will
be felt to be either old-fashioned or eccentric. But if certain
critical works seemed to offer more ideas than others,
serving as useful points of departure, I saw no reason why
I should not make use of them freely.
There are other and more considerable debts owed to
those whose support and advice made this book possible:
F. W. Bateson, Bruce Pattison, Harold Osborne, Robin
Skelton and Krishna Arjunwadkar.
K. R.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the editors and publishers of the following
journals for permission to reprint material originally pub
lished in them (date of numbers is shown in brackets):
Essays in Criticism for Chapter 8 (July 1969) and part of
Chapter 9 (October 1967); British Journal of Aesthetics for
part of Chapter 2 (January 1969) and Chapter 3 (July 1965);
Malahat Review for Chapter 5 (April 1967), Chapter 6 (April
1970) and part of Chapter 11 (July 1968).
Acknowledgement is also made to the following for use
of copyright material as specified in detail in the relevant
notes: Faber and Faber Ltd for extracts from poems by
Thorn Gunn and Robert Lowell; Granada Publishing Ltd
for extracts from poems by R. S. Thomas; the Longman
Group Ltd for a poem by Patricia Beer; Macmillan and Co.
Ltd for a poem by W. B. Yeats; Routledge and Kegan Paul
Ltd for a poem by John Hollo way.
K. R.
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1
Suggestion Today
Finding that the fallen trees obstruct the view, you leave the
main path and advance to the open cliff edge where a close-
up of the Victoria Falls must be easy to have. As you
approach the coign, however, you see a giant cloud of spray
climbing out of the gorge, and the next moment you are
blinking at a grey impenetrable wall that has obliterated
everything. Nevertheless, the Falls are a commanding
presence, for through the barrier of spray you can hear a
muffled roar, and you know that the massed waters are
tumbling into the gorge at your feet. The evidence of your
ears affirms that the Victoria Falls are there before you, but
their identity is indeterminate, ambiguous and obliquely ap
prehended—you are aware that behind the spray it can
either be an angry torrent gushing through a constriction,
or a stately wall of water; it can either be a row of shrunken
streams, or a single undiminished expanse. The first man to
be able to define this apprehension of the Zambesi's veiled
descent was a local Lozi whose nomenclatory imagina
tion called the Falls Musi-o-tunya, 'the Smoke that
Thunders'.
Here in this sightless instant—you tell yourself as you
retreat before the drenching spray back to the main path—
is held an experience that uniquely projects the whole
process of poetic suggestion. Like the Falls, the suggested
meaning waits beyond the frontiers of the overt and the
i
