Language: sense and feeling
Literature can be divided into two general categories: poetry and prose. These forms differ in many ways, but one of the main differences lies in their use of language.
After the invention of writing in ancient Greece, it has been used by writers such as scientists and philosophers to communicate their thoughts and theories. These writers need a simple, rational language— a language that most people can understand (in the way mathematical signs like 4, +,-, and so on are understood by anyone who has mastered the language of mathematics). And the same kind of understanding is needed in the prose of everyday conversation
For example, if a scientific writer uses the term "sea," he is likely to expect it to mean nothing more than "a large expanse of saltwater." This is the word's most basic and familiar meaning. This is simple and familiarizes the sense of the word. Yet words aren't like signs; their interpretations can change. For instance, the reader should give them "extra" meanings. One person might think of the blue Mediterranean while reading the word ' sea;' another may think of the stormy North Atlantic. Similarly, the most familiar terms (such as "house" or "man") for different people may mean different things.
The writer will offer extra definitions of the words as well. That is the way poets use words— not only because of their normal meanings, but because of the different meanings the poet can offer them, and because of the different impact, he can allow them to have on the mind and feelings of the readers. The English poet Alfred of the 19th century, Lord Tennyson, for instance, used the term "sea" in a poem of mourning like this:
Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
The sea is not only an "expanse of saltwater." in these words. The poet has sought to express to his readers the feeling offered by a particular feature of the sea-its dullness and brutality. Then in the following lines from John Masefield's poetry, the poet has managed to express the majesty then wonder of the sea by saying he has heard "the sea's spirit spoken by a bird."
Fishermen are used to views like this one of a storm-tossed sea-usually thought of as their means of livelihood rather than as a subject for poetry. But such a scene might make an emotional impact on another observer. In
the print below , the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) visualizes the waves as clutching hands, thus emphasizing the sea's destructive power.
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| Writers who wish to record facts usually seek precise terms that carry no extra meanings. The Babylonians who recorded factual details of their fields, crops, and commodities on this clay tablets (about 3100 B.C.) used straightforward, unemotional prose. |
The poetic language is especially distinct from the rational expository prose language, where the writer does his best to escape emotional interpretations. Differentiating literary vocabulary from that of "imaginative" prose (like the storyteller's) is often even more complicated. Words of such authors as Marcel Proust of France (1871-1922) or D. H. Lawrence of England (1885-1930) also have a strong "poetic" or emotional influence. For instance:
The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. It is so still and transcendent, the cypress trees poise like flames of forgotten darkness, that should have been blown out at the end of the summer.
That line, from Lawrence's Twilight in Italy, conveys the feeling of winter as vibrant and concise as any poem in descriptive language.
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| A fifth- century illustration to the Georgics by the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 B.c.) In this poem, facts about farming are conveyed in emotional language; the first part, which deals with the cultivation of cereal crops, opens with a description of spring. In this way, Vergil communicates the reverent devotion felt by the ordinary farmers of this day toward the patron of agriculture. |
Yet a writer does not turn his vocabulary into poetry simply by giving emotional meaning to the words. The poetry's overall influence is achieved in forms that would be unlikely in prose-even creative prose. A poet usually can make his point more briefly than a prose writer, for one thing. And the poet makes particular use of rhythm, for another.
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