Four kinds of misunderstanding in reading poetry as discussed by I.A. Richards

Name:- Parmar Milankumar

Batch year:- 2014-15

Class:- M.A. semester2

Enrollment no.:- 14101026

Course name:- criticism2

Topic:- Four kinds of misunderstanding in reading poetry as discussed by I.A.Richards 

Department of English

M.K.Bhavnagar University  

Four kinds of misunderstanding in reading poetry by I A Richards

Introduction-

The essay "Figurative Language" was written by I A Richards. Ivor Armstrong Richards is one of the great critics of the modern age. He was the pioneer in the field of new criticism with the help of T S Eliot, though Eliot has more importance. "I A Richards was the first great critic since Coleridge who has formulated a systematic and complete theory of poetry and his views are highly original and illuminating" Like Coleridge he was a man of wide learning.

Life and works of I A Richards:-

He was born in 1893. He was educated at Cambridge, where in 1912, he was appointed as a professor of English literature. And thus he began a long and distinguished career both as a teacher and critic. His first published work was collaboration with   C K Ogden in 1922. His other works are-

1) The Meaning of Meaning- 1923

2) the Principles of Literary Criticism 1924 It is one of the major works and in which he has put the best of himself.

3) The Practical Criticism (1929) the work by which we can call him an advocate and practitioner of practical criticism. This work illuminates and explains the theories given by him.

His other works are-

1) Science and Poetry

2) Coleridge on Imagination

3) The Philosophy of Rhetoric etc.

His aims for writing practical criticism:-

While writing his book, he had set three aims before him. They are as below-

1)      To introduce a new kind of documentation to those who are interested in contemporary state of culture whether as a critic, philosopher, as a teacher, psychologist or merely as a curious person.

2)      To provide a new kind of technique for those who wish to discover for themselves what they want think and feel about poetry and why they should like or dislike it.

3)      To prepare the way for educational methods are more efficient than those we use now in developing discrimination and power to understand what we hear and read.

                He was a staunch advocate of a close textual and verbal study. His technique or the method is that of pragmatic and empirical. He did an experiment with students. He gave some poems to his students and asked for comments, students commented on the poems without title and author. And then he gave his own comments and suggestions and interpretations and these are incorporated in the third part of the book.

                His practical approach gave new path to literary criticism. Instead of intuitive and impressionistic criticism, it became more factual and scientific. His factual and scientific method of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation has exercised considerable influence on the new critics.

Now we come back to our real question what are the four types of misunderstandings?

1)      Careless, intuitive reading(rhyme or irregular syntax)

2)      Over-literal reading

3)      Defective scholarship

4)      Difference of in meaning of words in poetry and prose. Example- 'Solemn and Gray'

I A Richards begins this essay by pointing out the four kinds of possible sources of misunderstanding as far as poetry is concerned. All types of misunderstandings are internally connected with each other in various subtle ways. It becomes very difficult to find out, with particular mistakes or misunderstandings.

          The diagnosis of the source of misunderstanding in poetry is as difficult as the case of troublesome mind-set or a patient in psychological choirs; simple case do occur but they are rare.

           These kinds of warning are given initially by I A Richards. The learned critic proceed to macerate various sources of misunderstanding in poetry.

Careless, intuitive reading:-

The first possible source of misunderstanding in reading poetry might be misunderstanding may arise from inattention, or sheer carelessness. But carelessness or inattention results from distraction and the meter and verse form of poetry itself may be a powerful source of distraction. To some readers, the meter and verse form of poetry are as powerful as distraction as a barrel organ or a brass band is to one trying to solve difficult mathematical problems.

Meter and rhythm are essential parts of poetry and cannot be dispensed with. Therefore a poem must be read several times before it is fully understood. In each reading, attention may be paid to one particular factor. After several readings, the various factors would fit in together and the full sense would be grasped.

Over literal meaning:-

Another source of misunderstanding of the sense of poetry arises from the fact that often poet themselves live to play all manner of tricks with their sense. "Sometimes a poet may dissolve the coherence of his sense altogether, and may seem chaotic and incoherent".

                In this above statement what he said is that sometimes poet himself lost control over his language, and sometimes it happens that he forget the sense of coherence or togetherness means to put different things together appropriately. And that's why to understand or to read poetry becomes difficult.

              The ordinary laws of syntax and grammar may be thrown to the wind. Such looseness of syntax maybe most undesirable, but a poet is certainly at liberty to indulge in it, it furthers his purpose.

In the field of literature society has given the freedom to poet. So, he uses it very well for its own purpose to make poetry more clear and powerful, and thus it happens that he may not follow grammatical structure of language and this also creates a confusion and leads to misunderstanding and this gives rise to the misunderstanding or wrong notion that syntax is of less importance in poetry than in prose, and that the proper way of understanding poetry is through a kind of guess work, which may even be called intuition. In other way to understand poetry, there is no proper or crystal clear way one has to assume the meaning of the poetry.

           And such notions are dangerous and hard to deal with, more so because they are true to some extent. This element of truth in them makes them most deceptive and misleading. I A Richards warns his reader against this danger and writes

" In most poetry the sense is as important as anything else; it is quite as a subtle and as dependent on the syntax as in prose; it is the poets chief instrument to other aims when it is not itself his aim. His control of our thoughts is ordinary. His chief means to the control of our feelings and in the immense majority or instances, we miss nearly everything or value if we misread his sense".

In the above quotation, what I A Richards wants to tell the reader of poetry is that one has to have a sense of poetry and in poetry, sense is given much importance and by this sense, poet controls our thoughts and our feelings? And if we miss this sense, then we miss nearly everything.

However this does not mean that the sense or a poem can be fully understood apart from the context that a prose paraphrases. However accurate, can fully express is sense. The sense as expressed in prose paraphrase is never the full burden of the poem: it can never express its full significance. Besides, the literal meaning of a poem also conveys through a rendering of its sense. In other words over literal reading is a great source of misunderstanding in poetry as careless or intuitive reading.

Both are equally dangerous and both must be avoided with care and diligence. To quote Richards own words-

"These twin dangers- careless, intuitive reading and prosaic over literal reading- are the simple gaggles- the reading poem between which too many ventures into poetry are attached”

Defective Scholarship:-

It is the third source of misunderstanding in poetry. The reader may fail to understand the sense of poet, because he is ignorant of the sense of many words used by the poem. The words may be new, difficult, unfamiliar to him, or he may lack necessary intellectual context. Words used by poet, besides having a literal meaning, may also have acquired additional richness and value from their having been used by other poets and writers in different contexts and this associate clue and significance would be lost upon a reader unfamiliar with this literary text of words.

Thus we can say defective scholarship is on the part of the reader and reader should be familiar to the contextual use of words otherwise it leads to misunderstanding.

The fourth source:-  of misunderstanding is a far more serious cause of misunderstanding is the failure to realise that the poetic use of words is different from their use in prose. Literal sense of the word can be easily understood with the help of a dictionary "but an inability to seize the poetical sense of word is not so easily remedied".

Here I A Richards present one poem to support and to explain his point.

" Solemn and gray, the immense cloud of even,

pass on their towering unperturbed way,

through the vast whiteness of the rain-swept heaven.

The moving pageant of the waning day;

Heavy with dreams, desire, prognostications,

Broading with sullen and Titanic crests,

They surge, whose mantles wise imaginations,

Trail where Earth's mute and languorous body rests

While below the hawthorns smiles like

milk splashed down

From Noon's blue pitcher over mead and hill

The arressed distance is so dim with flowers

It seems itself same coloured cloud made still

O, how the clouds this dying daylight crown,

with the tremendous triumph of tall towers".

Some critics call it the rubbish and write or give their comments on this.

Ø    A cloud cannot have desires.

Ø    A mantle cannot have imaginations.

Ø    Imagination cannot trail, it has no physical-literal existence.

Ø    Milk does not smile.

Ø    Dim with flower is rather weak, for flowers are bright things.

Ø    Tall towers do not triumph so far as I know anyhow I never saw one doing it! Might be an interesting sight !

These complaints rest upon an assumption about language that would be fatal to poetry. All these things may happen in poem if there is any good reason for their happening or any advantage is gained from their happening.

Not only many metaphors or for the matter of that, much poetry will survive such deadly demands for scientific precision. Poetic use of words is different from their use in prose, and such literalism is the most serious obstacle in the way of a right understanding of such poetic use of words. "How are we to explain" asks Richards "to those who are nothing in poetical language but a tissue of ridiculous exaggerations, childish 'fancies' ignorant conceit and absurd symbols- in what way its sense is to be read? Poetry is different from prose and needs a different attitude for right understanding.

Conclusion:-

Apart from this source of misunderstanding in reading poetry, there are others like figurative language, the poetic figures of speech possess number of difficult and interesting problems. There are metaphors and mixed metaphors, personifications and elaborated personifications create or sometimes itself became the source of misunderstanding in reading poetry.