The 20th century was an important period for the development of poetic experiments. These are not found just in poetry, but in everything that has to do with the poesis =artistic creation, production, creativity and culture.
In poetry, poetic experiments are great in number and they are used by many poets. One example of poets is T.S.Eliot. Of all his techniques, it is important to mention:
-intertextuality: “Waste land”: the epigraph in the beginning refers to Cumaean Sybil, the prophetess who was granted immortality by Apollo, but she disliked it and when she was asked what she wants, her answer was “I want to die”, which sends us to the idea of death > WWII, Waste Land.
Reference to the Myth of the Fisher King: if the king was sick so was the land(mystical connection and symbolic relationship with the land he governs)
There is a bible reference in “The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock” to Lazarus and John the Baptist (impossibility to be like them).
-fragmentation: “The fire sermon” incomplete phrases followed by an obscure expression of nonsense chorus ” Weilala leia/ Wallala leilala”
-untranslated quotations: raise the issue of language barriers and literary proficiency (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, French, German); could hide a failure to communicate caused by the lack of a common language.
-use of comic: references to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” “you may think I am as mad as a hatter”;
“The Naming of Cats”-; “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”: invention of words and putting them together: “ineffable,” effable”, “effanineffable”
Ritualistic repetition of words: “of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name”
YEATS: was an Irish writer and a mystical-minded person who is enthralled with mystical philosophy. He is obsessed with gnostic philosophy and esoteric thought. Gnostic philosophy talks about the duality of divine forces -> the universe are the result of this duality: God+Godess (can’t go without each other)/ God+Satan (for Blake he is not the evil character). Satan empowers man with creativity, also sexual initiation: ancient rituals that employ in the celebration of power of God, sexual and orgiastic rituals. Because joining yourself to another human being means to create another human being=> re-establishing the sexual body of human being as a spiritual one. The Cathars said that the body and the sexual erotic love have to complete the picture of love that was denied by the church=brotherly Christian love. The orgiastic rituals – question of transcending any kind of limitation. “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom”-BLAKE. Wisdom does not mean abstention; it means to exceed the limit and go beyond your limited state and experience the world outside your shell.
The esoteric philosophy: that of secret societies. They were secret because of the punishments of the church. The knowledge that the Secret Societies possessed was too powerful to allow any initiated to get in contact with. The individual was danger. Their language was obscure, encoded. The codes were used to suggest that you have to dignify the erotic love just like the spiritual love.
“The Song of Wandering Angus” by YEATS: Angus is a celtic God, a pagan God. It looks like a romantic poem, but it is not simply a love story. A man is obsessed with the image of a girl but they belong to different worlds: union of different world (natural and supernatural). Symbols:
-wood: nature, fertility, fertile Earth
-maze: the road to initiation, symbol of mystery, obscure puzzle to the mind
-fire: passion, obsession, symbol associated with forging fire, maybe of creativity
-water: stream
-air: becoming immaterial, impalpable
Yeats uses repetition of “moths” = small/inferior/micro universe; big/superior/macro universe => the correspondence between two worlds – principle of the esoteric philosophy.
Name: the old science of name giving, mystical sacred power of naming things (God named all animals), the belief that evoking a name gives power => makes that think come to life).
Apples: symbol of knowledge by shape – round, sign of perfection. The shape created with the line with no beginning and no end (infinity); divine knowledge, knowledge of perfection
Yeats talks about the transgressive, orgiastic, forbidden love. The notion of transgressive combines the spiritual aspiration to completeness to reunite things that were separated. He uses symbols that come from the esoteric philosophy.
