The
idea of language of Paradox. supported by Podmeswar
Cleanth Brooks says that the language of poetry is the language
of paradox. Paradox in poetry means that tension of the surface of a verse can
lead to contradiction and hypocrisies. His essay, ‘The language of paradox’
points out Brooks’s argument for the centrality of paradox in such a way that
paradox is the language and inevitable to poetry. The argument is based on the
contention that referential language in too vague for the specific message that
a poet expresses that is, the poet must makes up his language as he goes on. That
is why, as Brooks says, poetical words are mutable and meaning shifts when words
are placed in relation to one another.
Paradox is a term which seems untrue but proves to be on
close inspection. For example, ‘I do believe her though I know she lies.’ Paradox
is peculiar to 20th century criticism. Brooks says in ‘the language of
paradox’ that paradox is a form of indirection and indirection is a general
characteristic of poetic language and structure. Brooks brings a good deal of
evidence to support his thesis showing example of paradox in poet like Wordsworth.
Brooks is something accused of reducing poetry to serving paradoxes.
He says, “Some poems are written excellently from insights
which we call paradoxical.”
Brooks says if paradox are the basis of romanticism, it was
ample used by the neo classicists in their poetry. The romantics used it to
arouse wonder and to awaken the mind to the new beauties. However paradoxes
which arouse both wonder and irony are more clearly mixed in the poetry of
Blake, Coleridge and Gray. Paradox is a fusion or the union of the opposites
and the discordant. This fusion is brought about by the imagination of the
poet.
The language of paradox shows Brook’s argument for the
centrality of paradox by demonstrating that paradox is ‘the language
appropriate and inevitable to poetry’. Finally Brooks writes about John Donne’s
poem ‘Canonization’ which uses a paradox as its
underlying metaphor. Brooks points to secondary paradoxes of the poem, the
simultaneous duality and singleness of love, and the double and contradictory
meaning of die in metaphysical poetry.
In Brook’s use of the paradox is as a tool for analysis.
However, he develops a logical case as a literary technique with strong
emotional affect.
God blessing you............