With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare.
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air;
Let then say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell
(Sonnet XXI)
It is remarkable how Shakespeare though avoiding poetic words proper uses highly elevated vocabulary in the first part of the sonnet (the octave), such as `heaven's air', `rehearse', `complement', `compare' (noun), `rondure', `hems', in contrast to the very common vocabulary of the second part (the sestette).
The very secret of a truly poetic quality of a word does not lie in conventionality of usage. On the contrary, a poeticism through constant repetition gradually becomes hackeyed. Like anything that lacks freshness it fails to evoke a genuinely aesthetic effect and eventually call forth protest on the part of those who are sensitive to real beauty.
As far back as in 1800 Word worth raised the question of the conventional use of words and phrases, which to his mind should be avoided. There was (and still persists) a notion called «poetic diction» which still means the collection of epithet, periphrases archaisms, etc., which were common property to most poets of the 18th century.
However, the term has now acquired a broader meaning.
Thus Owen Barfield says:
«When words are selected and arranged in such a way that their meaning either arouses or is obviously intended to arouse aesthetic imagination, the result may be described as poetic diction. Barfield, Owen. Poetic Diction.. Ldn. 1952, 2d ed. (Cit. from Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, p628
Poetic diction in the former meaning has had a long lineage. Aristotle in his «Poetics» writes the following:
«The perfection of Diction is for it to be at once clear and not mean. The clearest indeed is that made up of the ordinary words for things, but it is mean… the diction becomes distinguished and non-prosaic by the use of unfamiliar terms, i.e. strange words, metaphors, lengthened forms and everything that deviates from the ordinary modes of speech… A certain admixture, accordingly, of unfamiliar terms is necessary. These, the strange words, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc. will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite dearness.» Aristotle Poetics (cit. from Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and poets.) Princeton, 1969, p628
A good illustration of the use of poetic words the bulk of which are archaic is the following stanza from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
Whilome (at some past time) in Albion's isle (the oldest name of the island of Britain) there dwelt (lived) a youth,
Who ne (not) in virtu's ways did take delight:
But spend his days in riot (wasteful living) most uncouth (unusual, strange).
And vex'd (disturbed) with mirth (fun) the drowsy ear of Night.
Ah me! (interjection expressing regret, sorrow) in sooth (truly he was a shameless wight (a human being).
Sore (severely, harshly) given to revel (noisy festivity) and ungodly (wicked) glee (entertainment);
Few earthly things found favor in his sight.
Save concubines (prostitutes) and carnal (not spiritual) company,
And flaunting (impudent) wassailers (drunkards; revelers) of high and low degree.
The use of poetic words does not as a rule create the atmosphere of poetry in the true sense; it is a substitute for real art.
Poetic words are not freely built in contrast to neutral, colloquial and common literary words, or terms. The commonest means is by compounding, e.g. `young-eyed', `rosy-fingered'.
Some writers make abundant use of this word-building means. Thus Arthur Hailey in his novel «In High Places» has `serious-faced', `high ceilinged', `beige-carpeted', `tall backed', `horn-rimmed' in almost close proximity.
There is, however, one means of creating new poetic words still recognized as productive even in present-day English, viz. the use of a contracted form of a word instead of the full one, e.g. `dear' instead of dreary, `scant' (=scanty).
Sometimes the reverse process leads to the birth of a poeticism, e.g. `vasty' (=vast. `The vasty deep', i.e. the ocean); `steepy' (=steep), `paly' (=pale).
These two conventional devices are called forth by the requirements of the metre of the poem, to add or remove a syllable, and are generally avoided by modern English poets.
Poetical words and set expressions make the utterance understandable only to a limited member of readers. It is mainly due to poeticisms that poetical language is sometimes called poetical jargon.
In modern English poetry there is a strong tendency to use words in strange combinations. It manifests itself in the coinage of new words and, most of all, in combining old and familiar words in a way that hinders understanding and forces the reader to stoop and try to decipher the message so encoded.
The following may serve as examples;
`The sound of shape', `night-long ages', `to utter ponds of dream', `wings of because', `to reap one's same', `goldenly whole, prodigiously' keen star whom she-and he-, - like its of am perceive… (E.E. Cummings).
All these combinations are considered ungrammatical inasmuch as they violate the rules of encoding a message. But in search of new modes of expression modern poets, particularly those who may be called «modernists», have a strong bias for all kinds of innovation. They experiment with language means and are ready to approve of any deviation from the normal. So also are literary critics belonging to what is called the avant-garde movement in art, the essence of which is the use of unorthodox and experimental methods? There usually lead both the poet and the critic to extremes, examples of which are given above.
2.4 Archaic, Obsolescent and Obsolete Words
The word-stock of a language is in an increasing state of change. Words change their meaning and sometimes drop out of the language altogether. New words sprig up and replace the old ones. Some words stay in the language a vey long time and do not lose their faculty of gaining new meanings and becoming richer and richer polysemantically. Other words live but a short time are like bubbles on the surface of water they disappear leaving no trace of their existence.
In registering these processes the role of dictionaries can hardly be over-estimated. Dictionaries serve to retain this or that word in a language either as a relic of ancient times, where it lived and circulated, or as a still living unit of the system, though it may have lost some of its meaning. They may also preserve certain nonce-creations which were never intended for general use.
In every period in the development of a literary language one can find words which will show more or less apparent changes in their meaning or usage, from full vigour, though a moribund state to death, i.e. complete disappearance of the unite from the language.
We shall distinguish three stages in the aging process of words:
The beginning of the aging process when the word becomes rarely used. Such words are called obsolescent, i.e. they are in the stage of gradually passing out of general use. To this category first of all belong morphological forms belonging to the earlier stages in the development of the language. In the English language these are the pronouns thou and its forms thee, thy and thine: the corresponding verbal ending - est and the verb-forms art, wilt (thou makest, thou wilt); the ending - (e) th instead of - (e) s (he maketh) and the pronoun ye.
To the category of obsolescent words belong many French borrowings which have been kept in the literary language as a means of preserving the spirit of earlier periods, e.g. a pallet (a straw mattress), a palfrey (a small horse); garniture (furniture); to emplume (to adorn with feathers of plumes).
The second group of archaic words are those that have already gone completely out of use but are still recognized by the English speaking community: e.g. methinks (it seems to me); nay (no). These words are called obsolete.
The third group, which may be called archaic proper, are words which are no longer recognizable in modern English, words that were in use in Old English and which have either dropped out of the language entirely or have changed in their appearance so much that they have become unrecognizable, e.g. troth (faith); a losel (a worthless, lazy fellow).
It will be noted that on the diagram the small circles denoting archaic and poetic words overlap and both extend beyond the large circle «special literary vocabulary». This indicates that some of the words in these layers do not belong to the present day English vocabulary.
The border lines between the groups are not distinct. In fact they interpenetrate. It is specially difficult to distinguish between obsolete and obsolescent words. But the difference is important when we come to deal with the stylistic aspect of an utterance in which the given word serves a certain stylistic purpose. Obsolete and obsolescent words have separate functions, as we shall point out later.
There is still another class of words which is erroneously classed as archaic, viz. historical words. By gone periods in the life of any society are marked by historical events, and by institutions, customs, material objects, etc. which are no longer in use, for example.: Thane, yeoman, goblet, baldric, mace. Words of this type never disappear from the language. They are historical terms and remain as terms referring to definite stages in the development of society and cannot therefore be dispensed with, though the things and phenomena to which they refer have long passed into oblivion. Historical words have no synonyms, where as archaic words have been replaced by modern synonyms.
Archaic words are primarily and predominantly used in the creation of a realistic background to historical novels. It must be pointed out, however, that the use of historical words(terms) in a passage written in scientific style, say, in an essay on the history of the Danish invasion, will bear no stylistic function at all. But the same terms when used in historical novels assume a different stylistic value. They carry, as it were, a special volume of information adding to the logical aspect of the communication.
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