Гальперин И. Р. Стилистика английского языка

A relational image is one that shows the relation between objects through another kind of relation, and the two kinds of relation will secure a more exact realization of the inner connections between things or phenomena.
Thus in:
"Men of England, Heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story.
Nurslings of one mighty mother,
Hopes of her, and one another." (Shelley)
such notions as 'heirs of glory', 'heroes of unwritten story', 'nurslings of ... mother', 'hopes of her...' all create relational images, inasmuch as they aim at showing the relations between the constituents of the metaphors but not the actual (visual) images of, in this case, 'heir', 'hero', 'nursling', 'hope'.
A striking instance of building up an image by means other than metaphor, metonymy and simile is to be seen in the following passage of emotive prose from "The Man of Property." Galsworthy has created
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in this particular case an atmosphere of extreme tension at a dinner table. This is only part of the passage:

"Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men.
In silence the soup was finished – excellent, if a little thick; and fish was brought. In silence it was handed.
Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
Irene echoed softly: "Yes – the first spring day."
"Spring!" said June: "There isn't a breath of air!" No one replied.
The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover. And Bilson brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with white.
Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs. They were refused by June, and silence fell."
The first thing that strikes the close observer is the insistent repetition of words, constructions, phrases. The word 'silence' is repeated four times in a short stretch of text. The idea of silence is conveyed by means of synonymous expressions: 'There was a lengthy pause', 'no one replied' ('answered'), 'Long silence followed!' Then the passive constructions ('fish was brought', 'it was handed', 'the fish was taken away', 'cutlets were handed', 'They were refused', 'they were borne away', 'chicken was removed', 'sugar was handed her', 'the charlotte was removed', 'olives... caviare were placed', 'the olives were removed', 'a silver tray was brought', and so on) together with parallel construction and asyndeton depict the slow progress of the dinner, thus revealing the strained atmosphere of which all those present were aware.
This example illustrates the means by which an image can be created by syntactical media and repetition. Actually we do not find any transferred meanings in the words used here, i.e. all the words are used in their literal meanings. And yet so strong is the power of syntactical arrangement and repetition that the reader cannot fail to experience himself the tension surrounding the dinner table.
In this connection it is worth mentioning one of the ways of building up images which Archibald A. Hill, an American scholar of linguistics, has called an iсоп. The icon is a direct representation, not necessarily a picture, of a thing or an event.
"Icons," he writes, "have not generally been included among the enumerations of figures of speech, and in discussions of imagery, have usually been called simply descriptions." ^l
The excerpt from "The Man of Property" may serve as a good example of an icon. This device might justly be included in the system of stylistic devices and be given its due as one of the most frequent ways of image-building. However, an icon must always rest on some specific, concretizing use of words, and their forms (e.g. tenses of verbs), and/or the arrangement of sentences, which secure the desired image. These language units
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¹ Hill, Archibald A. Analogues, icons and images in relation to semantic content of discourse. – "Style", vol. 2, 1968, No. 3, p. 212.
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may be likened to the colours in a painting which only in an adequate arrangement will reproduce the image. "An image," writes A. E. Derbyshire, evidently having in mind the process of iconizing, "is merely a way of using words in certain syntagmatic relationships." ¹
It was necessary to dwell so lengthily on the problem of icons because, to hazard a guess, icons seem to be a powerful means of creating images in the belles-lettres style. The simplicity and ease in decoding the icon outweighs the effect of other image-building media, the latter being more complicated because of their multi-dimensional nature. These properties of icons make it advisable to single the device out as one among other means of image-building. Icons may justly be promoted to canons in the belles-lettres style.
Another feature of the poetical substyle is its volume of emotional colouring. Here again the problem of quantity comes up. The emotional element is characteristic of the belles-lettres style in general. But poetry has it in full measure. This is, to some extent, due to the rhythmic foundation of verse, but more particularly to the great number of emotionally coloured words. True, the degree of emotiveness in works of belles-lettres depends also on the idiosyncrasy of the writer, on the content, and on the purport. But emotiveness remains an essential property of the style in general and it becomes more compressed and substantial in the poetic substyle. This feature of the poetic substyle has won formal expression in poetic words which have been regarded as conventional symbols of poetic language.
In the history of poetic language there are several important stages of development. At every stage the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement, which is the most characteristic feature of the substyle, remains its essence. As regards the vocabulary, it can be described as noticeably literary. The colloquial elements, though they have elbowed their way into poetry at some stages in its development, still remain essentially unimportant and, at certain periods, were quite alien to the style. But even common literary words become conspicuous because of the new significance they acquire in a line of poetry.
"Words completely colourless in a purely intellectual setting," writes S. Ullmann, "may suddenly disclose unexpected resources of expressiveness in emotive or poetic discourse. Poets may rejuvenate and revitilize faded images by tracing them back to their etymological roots. When T. S. Eliot says 'a thousand visions and revisions', 'revision' is suddenly illuminated and becomes transparent." ²
Poetry has long been regarded as "the domain of the few" and the choice of vocabulary has always been in accord with this principle. The words, their forms, and also certain syntactical patterns were usually chosen to meet the refined tastes of admirers of poetry.
In the chapter on poetic words, we have pointed out the character of these words and the role they have played in preserving the so-called "purity" of poetic language. The struggle against the conventionalities
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¹ Op. cit., p. 165.
² Ullmann, S. Words and their Use. Ldn, 1951, p. 37.
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of the poetic language found its expression in the famous "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" written by Wordsworth and Coleridge which undoubtedly bore some fruitful results in liberalizing poetic language. They tried to institute a reform in poetic diction which would employ "a selection of language really used by men" as they put it in their Preface. However, their protest against poetical words and phrases was doomed to failure. The transition from refined poetical language, select and polished, to a language of colloquial plainness with even ludicrous images and associations was too violent to be successful. Shelley and Byron saw the reactionary retrograde aspect of the "reform" and criticized the poetic language of the Lake poets, regarding many of the words they used as new "poeticisms."

However, the protest raised by Wordsworth and Coleridge reflected the growing dissatisfaction with the conventionalities of poetic diction. Some of the morphological categories of the English language, as, for instance, the Present Continuous tense, the use of nouns as adjectives and other kinds of conversion had long been banned from poetical language. The Quarterly Review, a literary journal of the 19th century, blamed Keats for using new words coined by means of conversion. After the manifesto of Wordsworth and Coleridge the "democratization" of poetic language was accelerated, however. In Byron's "Beppo" and "Don Juan" we already find a great number of colloquial expressions and even slang and cant. But whenever Byron uses non-poetic words or expressions, he shows that he is well aware of their stylistic value. He does this either by foot-notes or by making a comment in the text itself, as, for example, such phrases as:
"He was 'free to confess' – (whence comes this phrase?
Is't English? No – 'tis only parliamentary)"
or:
". . . . . . . . . . . to use a phrase
By which such things are settled nowadays."
But poetical language remains and will always remain a specific mode of communication differing from prose. This specific mode of communication uses specific means. The poetic words and phrases, peculiar syntactical arrangement, orderly phonetic and rhythmical patterns have long been the signals of poetic language. But the most important of all is the power of the words used in poetry to express more than they usually signify in ordinary language.
A. A. Potebnya expresses this idea in the following words:
"What is called 'common' language can at best be only a technical language, because it presupposes a ready-made thought, but does not serve as a means of shaping the thought. It (the common) is essentially a prose language." ¹
The sequence of words in an utterance is hardly, if at all, predictable in poetry.
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¹ Op. cit., p. 31.
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Semantic entropy is, therefore, an inherent property of poetic language. But sometimes this entropy grows so large that it stuns and stupefies the reader, preventing him from decoding the message, or it makes him exert his mental powers to the utmost in order to discover the significance given by the poet to ordinary words. This is the case with some of the modern English and American poetry. Significant in this respect is the confession of Kenneth Allot, compiler of "The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse," who in his introductory note on William Empson's poetry writes: "I have chosen poems I understand, or think I understand, and therefore can admire... There are some poems I cannot understand at all." ¹
Poetry of this kind will always remain "the domain of the few." Instead of poetic precision we find a deliberate plunge into semantic entropy which renders the message incomprehensible. The increase of entropy in poetic language is mainly achieved by queer word combinations, fragmentary syntax – almost without logical connections.
We have already pointed out that in the history of the development of the literary language, a prominent role was played by men-of-letters. There was a constant struggle between those who were dissatisfied with the established laws which regulated the functioning of literary English and those who tried to restrain its progressive march.
The same struggle is evident in the development of poetic language. In ascertaining the norms of 19th century poetic language, a most significant part was played by Byron and Shelley. Byron mocked at the efforts of Wordsworth and the other Lake poets to reform poetical language. In his critical remarks in the polemic poem "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" and in his other works, he showed that the true progress of poetic language lies not in the denial of the previous stylistic norms, but in the creative reshaping and recasting of the values of the past, their adaptation to the requirements of the present and a healthy continuity of long-established tradition. Language by its very nature will not tolerate sudden unexpected and quick changes. It is evolutionary in essence. Poetry, likewise, will revolt against forcible impositions of strange forms and will either reject them or mould them in the furnace of recognized traditional patterns. Shelley in his preface to "The. Chenchi" writes:
"I have written more carelessly; that is, without an over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong."
In Shelley's works we find the materialization of these principles. Revolutionary content and the progress of science laid new demands on poetic diction and, as a result, scientific and political terms and im
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¹ The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse. Ldn, 1960, p. 157.
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agery based on new scientific data, together with lively colloquial words, poured into poetic language. Syntax also underwent noticeable changes, but hardly ever to the extent of making the utterance unintelligible. The liberalization of poetic language reflects the general struggle for a freer development of the literary language, in contrast to the rigorous restrictions imposed on it by the language lawgivers of the 18th century. In poetry words become more conspicuous, as if they were attired in some mysterious manner, and mean more than they mean in ordinary neutral communications. Words in poetic language live a longer life than ordinary words. They are intended to last. This is, of course, achieved mainly by the connections the words have with one another and, to some extent, by the rhythmical design which makes the words stand out in a more isolated manner so that they seem to possess a greater degree of independence and significance.