Limits of Orality and Textuality in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry

238 Pages·2014·9.433 MB·English

by  Grzegorz Czemiel

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in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry G Limits of Orality
Following the evolution of Ciaran Carson’s “With his pioneering, up-to-date study,
work, this book aims to trace the tension founded in a variety of theoretical sources, y and Textuality in
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between orality and textuality, which can Grzegorz Czemiel establishes himself t
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be discerned in the poetry of the North- as an acute literary scholar, displaying o
ern-Irish writer. Assuming these forces to creative temperament and intellectual P Ciaran Carson’s Poetry
be the two major sources of all literature, inquisitiveness, well-versed in the most s
’
the author delineates, using deconstruc- important currents of today’s humani- n
tion, how they inform and structure ties, and offering us often ingenious and o
s
Carson’s poetic œuvre. Further thematic thoughtful interpretations of modern r
analyses focus on three major themes: literary texts.” a
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memory, city and history, adopting vari- Jerzy Jarniewicz
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ous critical approaches, among them New (University of Łódz´)
a
Historicism and psychoanalysis. Finally, r
taking cue from Carson’s later work, an a
i
epistemological and metaphysical dimen- The Author C
sion of his poetry is revealed. This serves Grzegorz Czemiel received his PhD at the n
as the final vantage point from which the University of Warsaw and teaches at Maria i
author offers a potential glimpse beyond Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin y
t
the said dialectic, unveiling Carson’s (Poland). Specializing in contemporary i
l
broadly ethical project. Northern-Irish poetry, he also explores a
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such topics as cartography, translation and
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“I consider this study to be an erudite, urban studies, psychoanalysis and specu- x
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sensitive and insightful reading of Ciaran lative realism in philosophy. T
Carson’s poetry.” d
Małgorzata Grzegorzewska n
(University of Warsaw) a
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ISBN 978-3-631-64745-5
Mediated Fictions 3 3 Mediated Fictions 3
l
e
i
m
e
z
C
Grzegorz Czemiel z
r Grzegorz Czemiel
o
g
Limits of Orality and Textuality e
z
r
in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry G Limits of Orality
Following the evolution of Ciaran Carson’s “With his pioneering, up-to-date study,
work, this book aims to trace the tension founded in a variety of theoretical sources, y and Textuality in
r
between orality and textuality, which can Grzegorz Czemiel establishes himself t
e
be discerned in the poetry of the North- as an acute literary scholar, displaying o
ern-Irish writer. Assuming these forces to creative temperament and intellectual P Ciaran Carson’s Poetry
be the two major sources of all literature, inquisitiveness, well-versed in the most s
’
the author delineates, using deconstruc- important currents of today’s humani- n
tion, how they inform and structure ties, and offering us often ingenious and o
s
Carson’s poetic œuvre. Further thematic thoughtful interpretations of modern r
analyses focus on three major themes: literary texts.” a
C
memory, city and history, adopting vari- Jerzy Jarniewicz
n
ous critical approaches, among them New (University of Łódz´)
a
Historicism and psychoanalysis. Finally, r
taking cue from Carson’s later work, an a
i
epistemological and metaphysical dimen- The Author C
sion of his poetry is revealed. This serves Grzegorz Czemiel received his PhD at the n
as the final vantage point from which the University of Warsaw and teaches at Maria i
author offers a potential glimpse beyond Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin y
t
the said dialectic, unveiling Carson’s (Poland). Specializing in contemporary i
l
broadly ethical project. Northern-Irish poetry, he also explores a
u
such topics as cartography, translation and
t
“I consider this study to be an erudite, urban studies, psychoanalysis and specu- x
e
sensitive and insightful reading of Ciaran lative realism in philosophy. T
Carson’s poetry.” d
Małgorzata Grzegorzewska n
(University of Warsaw) a
y
t
i
l
a
r
O
f
o
s
t
i
m
i
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Limits of Orality and Textuality in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry
MEDIATED FICTIONS
STUDIES IN VERBAL AND VISUAL NARRATIVES
Series Editors: Artur Blaim and Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim

Editorial Board
Antonis Balasopoulos
Joanna Durczak
David Malcolm
Fátima Vieira

VOLUME 3
Grzegorz Czemiel

Limits of Orality and Textuality
in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

This publication was financially supported
by Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin.

Reviewers:
Małgorzata Grzegorzewska
Jerzy Jarniewicz

Cover illustration printed with kind permission of Jerzy Durczak.

ISSN 2194-5918
ISBN 978-3-631-64745-5 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-04404-1 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-04404-1
© Peter Lang GmbH
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Frankfurt am Main 2014
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Table of contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................7
Chapter One – The dialectics of orality and textuality .........................................19
I Aspects of orality in The Irish For No ......................................................21
The turn.......................................................................................................21
The revival of the oral tradition ...............................................................22
The dialectic ...............................................................................................24
The Irish For No .........................................................................................25
The ends of discourse ................................................................................30
Locality and the reservoir .........................................................................33
The image of speech ..................................................................................35
Ying-yang, I-Ching and politics ...............................................................37
II Aspects of textuality in The Irish For No .................................................43
The scene of writing ..................................................................................43
The human spoor and the typing machine ............................................47
The webs of discourse ...............................................................................51
The Smithfield labyrinth ...........................................................................55
III Reversed dialectics in First Language ......................................................61
The tower of Babel .....................................................................................61
The Second Language? ..............................................................................66
Carson’s archi-writing ................................................................................68
Tak – yes ......................................................................................................72
The Rhizomatic Underground .................................................................75
The answers and the contract ...................................................................80
Chapter Two – The three mazes: city, memory and history ................................87
I City ...............................................................................................................89
The Belfast flâneur .....................................................................................89
The transient city .......................................................................................91
Mapping out ...............................................................................................94
The rhizomatic map...................................................................................97
The urban neurosis ....................................................................................98
Playing with the panopticon – Carson as psychogeographer ............100
The mouth of the poem ..........................................................................105
The poetics of loss and junk ...................................................................106
The Belfast Ballad ....................................................................................109
5
II Memory .....................................................................................................113
Obsession ...................................................................................................114
Proust’s souvenir involontaire .................................................................116
Bergson’s expansions ...............................................................................120
Deleuze’s boxes .........................................................................................124
Phenomenological memory ...................................................................125
The aura and its geology .........................................................................127
The textile garden of memory ................................................................129
III History .......................................................................................................133
The breakdown of History ......................................................................136
Storyteller’s dissemi(nation) ...................................................................145
The War Correspondent from Belfast ...................................................149
Chapter Three – The limits of knowledge and the space of the poem .............155
I Revision of epistemology in For All We Know .....................................157
The subject of the book ...........................................................................157
The architecture of the book ..................................................................159
Strangers, doppelgangers and identity ..................................................161
Linguistic mediation ...............................................................................165
Time...........................................................................................................167
The Art of Fugue ......................................................................................169
Signs and the limits of language ............................................................171
Love ...........................................................................................................172
Causality ...................................................................................................174
II Approaching the subject of death in On The Night
Watch and Until Before After ..................................................................177
The great shortening of the line .............................................................177
From in Behind ........................................................................................181
The language of Being .............................................................................187
The death-poem .......................................................................................191
Poetic dwelling .........................................................................................198
Homecoming ............................................................................................204
Radical alterity – Emmanuel Levinas ...................................................207
Until Before After – the coda ..................................................................210
Conclusions ..............................................................................................................219
Bibliography .............................................................................................................225
6
Introduction
In the beginning was the Word.
John 1:1
The trace must be thought before the entity.
The (pure) trace is différance.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
How things are named by any other name except themselves,
thereof I meant to speak.
Ciaran Carson, “Whisky”
Literary scholarship, as any other field of research, looks into its subject matter
from two perspectives: that of present day issues and themes, and the historical
point of view which regards the development of literature itself and theoretical
reflection on it. Any literary theory whose ambition is to grasp the phenomenon
of literacy in general cannot allow itself to reduce any of the two perspectives to
another, but faces the difficult task of combining them into a dynamic paradigm.
Thus, it can be argued that no reflection on literature and literary theory can be
deemed complete without verifying how its tools function when applied both to
contemporary problems and their historical evolution, i.e. proving the potential
to shed light on its subject both in synchronic and diachronic terms. These two
dimensions and corresponding approaches are central to the organization of this
book and I shall return to them later in this introduction. At this point, however,
I would like to address the question regarding the roots and origins of both lit-
erature and literary studies.
This book does not attempt to establish a firm basis of the phenomenon of
literacy. Moreover, at some point it might even be necessary to entirely drop
the very idea of a positively defined source or mythical spring from which the
art of crafting words stems. What this work is in fact trying to prove is that we
cannot speak of a definite centre or core that contains in itself a self-enclosed set
of essential features that characterise literature. What I would like to propose is
to consider the process of evolution in literature as a dynamic, self-propelling
dialectic of two features, which have been at various points in history used to des-
ignate as the founding principles of literature: orality and textuality. These two
models, I would argue, are specific boundaries and oppositions that can serve as
signposts delimiting the field in which the phenomenon of literature emerges.
7
For that purpose, however, the two terms need to be redefined and reassessed –
released from their traditional, commonsensical meaning. Thus, it becomes cru-
cial to inspect the ideas that lie behind writing and speaking, so that they can be
reconfigured in such a way as to describe a functional model for the production
of literary texts.
It seems appropriate to present now the working definitions of orality and
textuality. With regard to orality, it is not understood here as a historical stage
in the development of literature, but rather its constitutive element, which links
“literariness” back to an oral tradition – a cultural institution responsible for
upholding the continuity of civilization.1 As Przemysław Czapliński argues, the
distinguishing features of this type of literature are:
– anonymity – it is the whole tradition that actually stands for the “author,”
while individual works are produced in a processual manner by way of a set
of operations comprising the rules of oral composition,2
– the fact that it establishes (and operates within) an ontological paradigm of
communication, which shapes individual consciousness,3
– the belief that the spoken word is also a means of action, or gesture, which
emphasizes its performative, physical aspect and liberates words from being
mere “thought-representatives.”4
Importantly, this book does not attempt to engage in an anthropologically-
inflected discussion regarding the so-called great divide, i.e. the relationship
of orality and textuality on the historical plane of the development of cultures.
Thus, I shall limit my scope of interest to what has been set out by the most influ-
ential scholars in this field as the general directions for conceiving orality, which
Czapliński sums up as: a holistic approach to the “work,” its processual organiza-
tion and interactive performance, its modes of actualizing memory, the powerful
effect of live speech, as well as the articulation (and dependence on) a particular
paradigm of communication.5 In short – orality is a mode of producing literature,
1 I take cue here from Przemysław Czapliński’s introduction to the anthology of essays
devoted to oral literature: Przemysław Czapliński, “Słowo i głos”, in: Literatura ustna,
ed. P. Czapliński, słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk 2011, p. 9 ff.
2 Ibid., pp. 12–13. Key figures in this approach are Milman Parry and Albert Lord.
3 Ibid., pp. 21–23. One needs to mention in this context Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan
and Eric Havelock.
4 Ibid., pp. 19–20. A complete “performative” theory of orality was developed by Richard
Bauman.
5 Ibid., p. 30.
8