7
THE REDEEMING LANGUAGE:
A SUMMARY
Sing me a song to make death tolerable, a song
of a man and a woman:
the riddle of a man
and a woman.
What language could allay our thirsts,
what winds lift us, what floods bear us
past defeats
but song but deathless song
?
—Pat er son, p. 1 3 1
to the economic motif makes it clear that
the search for a new measure, the dominant theme in the poem,
is not only an attempt to discover a fresh language and newfoot out of which poems can be constructed. It is also a quest
for a new way of measuring value, of assigning priorities, that
will be commensurate with the present world. T h e past was
adequately measured by a kind of verse that is now outmoded:
lives were measured in ways that are no longer applicable. Only
through the discovery of a new measure for the poem can there
be any meaningful expression of contemporary life. For the
poet, as Williams saw his role, is more than a maker of memorable songs. He is also a social regenerator. It is his vital function
to help recreate society in times of stress, "in a new mode,
fresh in every part, and so set the world working or dancing or
murdering each other again, as it may be" ( E , 1 0 3 ) . T h e poet
generates, in his craft, some order on the continuous confusion
and barrenness of existence. If one breaks through old customs
in verse he appreciably alters the structure of man's life all
along the line. Thus, in saying that Noah Paterson seeks a lanW I L L I A M S ' APPROACH
J 32
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
guage by which man's prematuie death might be prevented,
W i l l i a m s is stressing that it is through words that our lives are
ordered. Also, only by the discovery of a measure consonant
with our times can our times be ordered (and recorded) intelli
gently. There must be measure in poetry and in life, and these
measures must borrow from each other.
T h e search for this measure involves, among other things, a
process of recovery through invention. T h e poetic line must be
recovered " f r o m stodginess" in much the way "that one recovers a salt from solution by chemical action" (A, 1 4 8 ) . Stodginess, in Williams' view, is invariably equated with the academic
failure to recognize (and exploit) the new. It is symbolized by
a form such as the sonnet, by a strained device like poetic inversion, and by any other worn-out approach to language. Since
a poem focuses the world, it must be the product of an un
fettered imagination; the sonnet and other conventional-forms
are the products of imaginations trained by rote, written
taught)
(and
by "pimps to tradition." These forms are no longer
pertinent to the economic and social fabric of today. It is only
by a new language that new currency can be given to the world
that exists now: " A work of art is important only as evidence,
in its structure, of a new world which it has been created to
affirm" ( E , 1 9 6 ) . T o fall back on the old world—on "poetic"
inversion, or on the sonnet, or rhyme, or the iambic
foot,
thereby perpetuating tradition—is to confess that one has not
come to grips with things as they exist. Before one can discover
the new he must break away
from the domination
of
the
outmoded.
Whitman
went far in recovering poetry
from
stodginess,
Williams felt, but he was unable to recognize the significance
of his structural innovations, and so fell back on a looseness
that actually demonstrated not true freedom but a complete
absence
of
measure.
His
poetry
lacked
structural
selection.
" F r e e " verse, Williams said over and over, does not exist, because
poetry requires measure of some sort. By "freeing" the verse the
THE REDEEMING LANGUAGE
133
poet makes the poem formally non-existent. Verse must be governed by measure, but it must avoid the old measure: " W e have
to return to some measure but a measure consonant with our
time and not a mode so rotten that it stinks" (Ε, 339). Whitman helped "recover" the poem by breaking the dominance of
the iambic pentameter, but it is now the poet's task to continue
this process "by a new construction upon the syllables"
(A,
392). " A f t e r him there has been for us no line. There will be
none until we invent it" ( L , 2 8 7 ) .
And so destruction and creation are related and continuous
—the phoenix rising while the nest is consumed—and in the
process of recovery it is invention
that brings about the new
modes to replace those that are rejected: " W i t h o u t invention
nothing is well spaced." Invention gives birth to art. Lacking
this birth, or rebirth, the old will keep repeating itself with
recurring
deadliness.
The
word
"invention"
is
crucial
Williams because it stresses that the artist's job is not to
to
copy,
but to find and to imitate, actions that involve the active play
of the imagination. This is expressed early in " T h e
Desert
Music":
How shall we get said what must be said?
Only the poem.
Only the counted poem, to an exact measure:
to imitate, not to copy nature, not
to copy nature
N O T , prostrate, to copy nature
but a dance! to dance
two and two with him—
(Pictures from Brueghel and other poems, 108-109)
It is through invention—through the mind's power of mutation
—that one is able to discover a measure and hence recover the
truth. Only the poet holds the key to the rescue of those who,
134
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
like M r s . C u m m i n g , are carried t o w a r d t h e sea of b l o o d ,
only through i n v e n t i o n — t h r o u g h
recover)' a n d
and
rediscoverv—can
t h e key b e used.
T h e k e y , t h e n , is a n e w - m e a s u r e d l a n g u a g e . T h i s c o n c e p t of
" m e a s u r e , " as it a p p e a r s in W i l l i a m s ' w r i t i n g , is elusive, s i n c e
the
measure
is literally
beyond
definition,
rendering
measure-
m e n t , or a n y sort of r e s t r i c t i o n , a c o n t r a d i c t i o n in t e r m s .
The
idea of m e a s u r e d verse c a n best b e u n d e r s t o o d in terms of t h e
"relatively
tivity,"
stable
Williams
foot,"
which
wrote, "gives
derives
from
us t h e c u e .
Einstein.
"Rela-
. . . Measure,
an
a n c i e n t w o r d in p o e t r y , s o m e t h i n g w e h a v e a l m o s t f o r g o t t e n in
its literal s i g n i f i c a n c e as s o m e t h i n g m e a s u r e d , b e c o m e s
related
again w i t h t h e p o e t i c . W e h a v e t o d a y t o d o w i t h t h e p o e t i c , as
a l w a y s , b u t a relatively
s t a b l e f o o t , n o t a rigid o n e . T h a t is all
t h e d i f f e r e n c e . It is t h a t w h i c h m u s t b e c o m e t h e o b j e c t of our
search . . ." ( E , 3 4 0 ) . W i l l i a m s has r e c o v e r e d t h e
relationship
b e t w e e n p o e t r y a n d t h e m e a s u r e d d a n c e , f r o m w h i c h it d e r i v e d ,
b u t h e leaves u n a n s w e r e d
many
questions about the
of this relatively s t a b l e f o o t . H e p r o v i d e d a f u l l e r
in a l e t t e r t o R i c h a r d
meaning
explanation
Eberhart:
I have never been one to write by rule, even by my own rules.
Let's begin with the rule of counted syllables, in which all poems
have been written hitherto. T h a t has b e c o m e tiresome to my ear.
Finally, the stated syllables, as in the best of present-day free
verse, h a v e b e c o m e e n t i r e l y d i v o r c e d f r o m t h e b e a t , t h a t is t h e
measure. T h e musical pace proceeds without t h e m .
T h e r e f o r e the measure, that is to say, the count, having got rid
of the words, which held it down, is returned to the
music.
T h e words, having been freed, have been allowed to run all over
the map, " f r e e , " as we have mistakenly thought. T h i s has amounted
to no more (in W h i t m a n and others) than no discipline at all.
B u t if we keep in mind the tune w h i c h the lines (not necessarily
the words) make in our ears, w e are ready to proceed.
B y measure I mean musical pace. N o w , with music in our ears
the words need only be taught to keep as distinguished an order, as
THE REDEEMING LANGUAGE
1 35
chosen a character, as regular, according to the music, as in the best
of prose.
By its music shall the best of modern verse be known and the
resources of the music. The refinement of the poem, its subtlety, is
not to be known by the elevation of the words but—the words don't
so much matter — by the resources of the music.
To give you an example from my own work — not that I know
anything about what I have myself written:
(count): — not that I ever count when writing but, at best,
the lines must be capable of being counted, that is to say,
measured — (believe it or not). — At that I may, half
consciously, even count the measure under my breath as I
write. —
(approximate example)
( 1 ) The smell of the heat is boxwood
(2) when rousing us
(3) a movement of the air
(4) stirs our thoughts
(5) that had no life in them
(6) to a life, a life in which
(or)
( 1 ) Mother of God! Our Lady!
(2) the heart
(3) is an unruly master:
(4) Forgive us our sins
(5) as we
(6) forgive
(7) those who have sinned against
Count a single beat to each numeral. You may not agree with
my ear, but that is the way I count the line. Over the whole poem
it gives a pattern to the meter that can be felt as a new measure.
It gives resources to the ear which result in a language which we
hear spoken about us every day. 1
This explanation is helpful, particularly in its assertion that
each of the lines, in the staggered tercet, diverse as they are,
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
should b e given equal stress. Nevertheless, as John
Malcolm
Brinnin has pointed out, W i l l i a m s actually provides little more
than a statement of intention here. W h a t is authentic music in
his ear may give evidence of a completely
different
measure,
and consequently will register a different music, in the ear of
another. " I f
it is to work for a n y o n e else, its pretensions as
theory and m e t h o d must b e put aside in favor of the unique
pragmatic
ingenuity
which
gives
his
poetry
its
character."2
W i l l i a m s ' line, literally, is inimitable.
M u c h more explicit, in regard to this concept of measure,
are W i l l i a m s ' ideas on the way language is to be used, and on
the kind of language the poet is to use, on the individual notes
that comprise the music. C o n v e n t i o n a l language, like traditional
prosody, is static and worn out, no longer capable of c o m m u n i cating the fresh perception. A n y a t t e m p t at precision of t h o u g h t
is b l o c k e d by calcified g r a m m a t i c a l constructions and by
subtle
brainlessness :
"the
of our meter a n d favorite prose rhythms.
A n d since in searching for the measure the poet must return
to the syllable, so in recovering the language he must focus on
the individual word, the individual note in the w h o l e
"tune,"
since it is through words that w e are able to smell, hear, and
see afresh. W o r d s h a v e b e c o m e soiled, he felt, and must
w i p e d clean. T h e y
must b e m a i m e d , as Joyce maims
" m e a n i n g s have b e e n dulled, then lost, then perverted by
connotations
( w h i c h have g r o w n over t h e m )
be
them:
the
until their effect
on the m i n d is no longer w h a t it was w h e n they were fresh, but
grows rotten as poi . . ." ( E , 89-90). T h e words must be freed
to b e understood in their original, fresh sense. T h e y must b e
new-minted b e f o r e there can b e p o w e r of t h o u g h t . A n d this is
not merely a technical question, but a moral one as well. It
involves the w h o l e realm of man's activities, since the names by
w h i c h w e call things defines our attitudes toward t h e m .
A means toward this artistic regeneration of words is to b e
f o u n d in the use of the A m e r i c a n
language as it is actually
spoken. Such a language, spontaneous, strong, and free of those
THE R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
2 3"
deformations of speech perpetuated by tradition, will embody
the colors and movements of the day. Where else, Williams
asks, can what we are seeking arise but from speech? "From
speech, from American speech as distinct from English speecli
. . . from what we hear in America. . . . A language full of those
hints toward newness of which I have been speaking" (E, 289290). Only by listening to the language can one hope to discover its resources. For the language as spoken is full of hints
toward the newness the poet seeks. As J. Hillis Miller puts it,
" T h e poet's job is to find examples of the American measure,
newborn in all their purity, and put them in his poems for all
to hear" (Poets of Reality, p. 294). It is his task to find in this
language that which will enable him to give it new currency.
He must find in speech the speech. There can be no meaningful spoken language until there is a line, a measure, until a poet
has come.
At this point a troublesome, and possibly unanswerable
question presents itself: How is one to know when he is confronted with an example of true invention, or a new measure in
language actually appropriate to contemporary America? W h a t
is Williams' test of validity? One answer seems to be that for
the poet, as for the reader, it is largely a matter of discovering
in the great morass of experience and language that which is
truly authentic—which is the product of a particular place, and
expresses the nature of the life of that place in fresh and vigorous terms. This authentic language is always present, in the
same way that the pearl is present in the mussel or the language
present in the chaos of the Falls, and it is the poet's (and
reader's) task to separate it from the dross. This involves a constant process of discrimination, of acceptance and rejection.
And it presupposes a capacity for immersion, a willingness to
break open the rock, to leap into the Falls, to rescue the
authentic from its state of potentiality and make it actual.
This is why the poet must explore, discover, and invent.
Like Columbus he must find the "Beautiful thing," like Freud
W I L L I A M CARLOS WILLIAMS' PATERSON
he must search and unlock, like Mine Curie he must crack the
rock that releases an energy which, before the words have been
joined to each other (a kind of marriage), has been only po
tential. T h e reader, in distinguishing the authentic from the
artificial or conventional, becomes himself a kind of discoverer,
participating in a process by which the craft of writing
(and
hence language generally) is both enriched and purified. This
obviously requires a sharp eye, a subtle ear, and a willingness
and ability to discriminate. And, of course, there are bound to
be substantial differences of opinion from reader to
reader.
Since measure cannot be legislated, the source of one man's
epiphany
is
destined
to
cause
another
man's
depression.
Williams, though, makes his own position clear. In his use of
the local language, at once natural and resonant, he provides
the touchstones by which to separate the gold from the dross.
This is a service that only the poet can perform, but that clearly
requires
the
collaboration
of
an
active
(even
aggressive)
audience.
"No
poet has come!" chant the trees in the park, and
throughout Paterson
self)
as Williams seeks (through the quest it
to discover this language appropriate
to
contemporary
culture he demonstrates, with hammering repetition, the decay
of language, the failure of communication, and the urgent need
for a new language. There are over one hundred passages in the
poem that deal directly with communication, and most of these
concern a failure of speech. These are generally related to those
aspects of the United States Williams referred to in one of his
essays: the unmitigated stupidity, the drab tediousness of the
democracy, the overwhelming number of the offensively igno
rant, the dull nerve (E, 1 1 9 ) . But these passages also relate to
the inoffensively, unavoidably ignorant—those who "walk
communicado"
(18)
and who
"die also /
in
incommunicado"
(20) because the language fails them and they have no words:
Mrs. C u m m i n g , married with empty words, who
"misunder
stood" the pouring language; Patch, whom speech failed; the
THE REDEEMING LANGUAGE
139
two girls for whom the fact of Easter so far outdistances the
available language, who are capable only of "ain't they beautiful!" (29); the widow with a vile tongue but laborious ways
(49); the minister, whose harangue is featureless; the child
burned, lacking language ( 1 2 0 ) ; the children drowned, wordless ( 1 2 0 ) ; Phyllis, whose letters demonstrate the failure of
language—and the many others. It is to save these, to find the
words by which their premature deaths might be prevented,
that is, by which they might be alive, that the poet, attempting
to unlock the mind, seeks the redeeming language.
T h e poem, thus, begins with an assertion of the quest—the
need to unlock the mind—and ends with the recognition that
the measured dance (and hence, measured verse) offers a pos
sible solution to the quest. In moving from the question to this
answer, Paterson constantly agonizes over the gulf that separates facts from the speech needed to describe them, over the
worn-out language, and over the failure of any ear to hear what
is said. There is a sense of urgency about everything he does,
and about his constant movement as he searches, listens, observes. This importunity is fused with an underlying despair
that alternately goads and paralyzes him. In his "prayer" he
ends with the words, "in your / composition and decomposition
/ I find my . . . / despair!" (93). 3 This final word, placed
where one would expect either "hope" or "meaning," emerges
from a deep-rooted sense of the inability of language to
express this composition and decomposition. For the language,
worn-out, has become "words without style!" Invention is lacking, and hence the words are lacking. And the talk of language
that does take place is useless, because "there are no / ears"
(129).
There is some hope, however, and this is what sustains Noah
Paterson in his exhaustive search. Following the description of
the flood and the wiping out of the slums, the poet returns to
the problem of language with the phrase, "The words will have
to be rebricked up" ( 1 7 0 ) . This is followed by a prose passage
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
140
PATERSON
on the death of an African warrior (which leads to the section
on the nine wives of the chief). It describes the married women
waving young branches over his genital organs to extract the
spirit of fertility into the leaves. (In the short lyric "A Note,"
Williams also describes "old women with their rites of green
twigs / Bending over the remains.") This description of the
perpetuation of life in a primitive society is followed by poetry
suggesting the perpetuation of language, and the possibility
of
extracting the spirit of the language from its now-dead corpse:
—in a hundred years, perhaps—
the syllables
(with genius)
or perhaps
two lifetimes
Sometimes it takes longer
(Ρ· Ϊ 7 1 )
T h e emphasis here is on "the syllables," for it is by using syl
lables as notes in the musical pattern that the language can be
recovered from the crust that has grown around it. T h e "per
haps" qualifies the hope, but the potentiality is there, and it is
this possibility, the world unsuspected, that beckons to new
places.
Since everything in the poem is related, either directly or
obliquely, to the quest for a redeeming language, there are a
great many symbols and image patterns that contribute to the
total presentation of this theme. T h e single most
important
symbol, however, as I pointed out in the chapter on the river,
is the Falls, representing the tangled rush of language, which
the poet must comb out much as the man combed out the
tangled hair of his collie, if he is to discover the secret of the
roar.
"What
common
language
to
unravel?"
Paterson
asks
after the first description of the Falls, and this image, the ur-
T H E R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
ljl
gency of its solution obsessing his mind, recurs over and over.
For the Falls, in addition to objectifying the confused torrent
of an imprecise language, also graph the rush of
Paterson's
thoughts as they strain forward, coalesce, leap to a conclusion,
and split apart, dazed with "the catastrophe of the descent"
( 1 6 ) . It is the poet's task to order the flow of his thoughts, and
thus to find order in the chaos of the pouring language. T h e
girls from decayed families look at the torrent in their minds,
" a n d it is foreign to t h e m " ( 2 1 ) . Paterson can save them only
by making the torrent intelligible. Mrs. C u m m i n g was unable
to decipher the "false language pouring,"
"crashing upon a
stone ear" ( 2 4 ) , and perished in its confused rush. And Patch
drowned in the stream when speech failed him. T h e scholars—
" ( t h e r e are n o n e ) " — p r o v i d e no aid in the quest, since they are
encased in the strands of water, lodged, impotent, under the
flow
of language. T h e
evangelist, too, offers no clue as he
shouts with his "useless voice"
(76)
to the birds and trees.
" T h e falls of his harangue hung featureless / upon the ear"
( 8 7 ) . T h e poet, unaided by the University and the church,
must seek alone, and as a result the roar of the Falls, the torrent
of language, is never out of his thought. T h e water "does not
cease, falling / and refalling with a roar" ( 1 1 9 ) , drowning the
sense with its reiteration. T h e chaos is unrelenting.
This confused sound
Paterson
emphasizes in the
pivotal
passage of Book I I I , " t h e roar of the present, a speech — / is,
of necessity, my sole concern." T h e roar is further related to
the present in the next passage, which evokes those doomed by
their failure to communicate:
They plunged, they fell in a swoon
or by intention, to make an end—the
roar, unrelenting, witnessing
Neither the past nor the future
Neither to stare, amnesic—forgetting.
The language cascades into the
1-f2
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
invisible, beyond and above : the falls
of which it is t h e visible part —
J
(P·
Paterson
then
focuses sharply on
his o w n
72)
task, relating
the
r e d e m p t i o n desired n o t only to o t h e r s , b u t t o himself as well:
N o t until I have made of it a replica
will my sins be forgiven and my
disease cured—in wax: la capella di S. Rocco
on the sandstone crest above the old
copper mines. . .
(P· *7 2 )
T h e poet m u s t save a n d cure himself t h r o u g h a k i n d of martyrd o m , like t h a t of St. R o q u e w h o w o r k e d miracles with
the
plague-stricken while h e himself was suffering f r o m t h e disease.
H e m u s t heal himself by finding t h e m i r a c u l o u s m e d i c i n e — t h e
redemptive
language—that
will
cure
those
who
"fell
in
a
s w o o n . " H a v i n g achieved this insight, h e repeats t h e task t h a t
has b e e n set for h i m :
I must
find my meaning and lay it, white
beside the sliding water: myself —
comb out the language—or succumb
—whatever the complexion.
(P·
1
73)
C o m b or s u c c u m b : in t h e s e words lie t h e h o p e a n d t h e danger
of t h e q u e s t . F o r only by r i d d i n g t h e l a n g u a g e of its knots, by
laying it w h i t e beside t h e sliding waters, can r e d e m p t i o n
be
found.
T h e r e are, in a d d i t i o n t o t h e cluster of m o t i f s s u r r o u n d i n g
t h e Falls, t w o i m a g e p a t t e r n s related t o t h e d o m i n a n t language
t h e m e t h a t are of i m p o r t a n c e in d o c u m e n t i n g b o t h t h e failure
T H E R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
143
of language and the need for a new one. The first of these is
what might be called the "marriage syndrome," encompassing
passages relating to marriage, divorce, birth, rebirth, and miscarriage or abortion. From the beginning of the poem (see
Chapter I) to the end, Williams works in images of cyclical
movement, of decay and rebirth, of fusion generating new life,
and of divorce generating impotence. These images carry a
heavy load in documenting the chaos induced by failure of
communication. Everything in the poem strains toward marriage—between park and city, man and woman, language and
deed. But the deed is always far in advance of the language
available to record it, and hence divorce is the controlling
theme of the time. Hence also the "perverse confusions," such
as the Corydon-Phyllis relationship, which result from a "failure
to untangle the language and make it our own." 4 The language
of love is missing.
This marriage theme is introduced and expanded in Book I
in the variations on the idea of "Marriage come to have a
shuddering / implication" (20). T h e tongue of the bee misses
the flower, and instead of marriage the girls, divorced from
language, take a lesser satisfaction. W h a t marriage does exist,
in contrast to that of the primitive chief and his nine women,
is "Forced," as in the case of the Irish women sent to the Bar
badoes (22), or short-lived and unsuccessful, as with Mrs.
Cumming, or terrifying, as in the woman who cries out " I / am
afraid!" (38). There is no marriage because there is no language
by which it could acquire meaning. There is no communication
between man and woman. Instead, divorce is "the sign of
knowledge in our time, / divorce! divorce!" (28).
It is clear that in the frequent references to divorce
Williams is referring not only to the dissolution of marriage,
but to any significant turning away or separation of one thing
from another that would fruitfully complement it. The reference to knowledge and divorce is preceded by the image of the
bud forever green, "perfect / in juice and substance but di-
144
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
vorced, divorced / from its fellows, fallen low — "
(28). The
next mention of this bud relates it explicitly to the university,
which is out of touch with life, cloistered and narcissistic, and
hence ultimately useless, "a green bud fallen upon the pavement
its
/
sweet
breath
suppressed:
Divorce
(the
/
language
stutters)" ( 3 2 ) . T h e r e is an echo of Keats in this image: After
reaching the altar, the poet, in " T h e Fall of Hyperion," is told
that the height is achieved only by those in whom an awareness
of the suffering of man precludes any complacency. T h e others
find a haven in the world, and if they do attempt to reach the
altar, " R o t on the pavement where thou rotted'st h a l f . " 5 T h e
fact that the true nature of the poet involves unselfish dedica
tion relates by contrast to the university, which lacks this humanity and self-knowledge.
T h e academic failure is once again referred to in Book I
(and here the image becomes more severe) in the words "clerks
/ got out of hand forgetting for the most part / to w h o m they
are beholden" ( 4 4 ) . This theme, of the university as anathema
to true knowledge, runs through the poem—and, predictably,
throughout W i l l i a m s ' writing. M e n who occupy teaching positions, he wrote, "attempt to criticize new work, work created
by conditions with which they do not have an opportunity to
come inexorably into contact" ( L , 1 2 7 ) . Again, poetry is " t h e
very antithesis of the a c a d e m y " ( L , 1 9 4 ) .
As mentioned earlier, Robert Lowell has described Book II
in terms of a movement toward a marriage that never takes
place, a movement that further expands the theme of divorce
in modern life. T h e section is filled with male and female sym
bols—park, flowers, city, tower, grove, trees, roots—but though
there is a constant possibility of union, it never occurs. Instead
the separation—between man and woman, man and man, lan
guage and event, art and nature, life and literature—is widened.
Miss Cress sets the tone with her repeated laments about feel
ing separated
from life and split within herself. T h e
lovers
under the bush "seem to talk," and "their pitiful thoughts do
THE R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
145
meet / in the flesh" (67), but she is distraught and he, "flagrantly bored," sleeps, "a beer bottle still grasped spear-like / in
his hand" ( 7 5 ) . In the comic letter to " B , " the writer explains
that " M u s t v " is pregnant, even though "I took sticks and stones
after the dog . . . I started praying that I had frightened the
other dog so much that nothing had happened" (69). The dogs
in the poem, like the Africans, are fertile and healthy. They
contrast sharply with the majority of the inhabitants of the
"city" for whom a satisfactory consummation is virtually
unattainable.
A different view is expressed by Walter Scott Peterson who
suggests that Paterson is actually a celebration of the power of
love, and that the poem can best be understood in terms of the
tension existing between two American attitudes defined in In
the American Grain—the "Puritan," and the anti-Puritan. In
Paterson these attitudes are given the corresponding terms
"divorce" and "marriage": "But however he may describe them,
the two contrasting states of mind defined in In the American
Grain loom behind both Paterson as a whole and the individual
details of which it is composed. And the poem's argument . . .
is that man's loving and imaginative 'marriage' to the particulars
of his local world can ultimately save him from the death-in-life
of 'Puritan divorce'" ( 1 0 - 1 1 ) . This general idea, if not used as
a catch-all, often provides insight. T h e section on the cry of the
stream (100-105), for example, points out that marriage is no
answer unless it is the product of a language whose words are
not empty, that is, are capable of communicating sensory experience and rooted in the local ground. If they are empty,
then divorce cannot be avoided. Thus while Paterson escapes
the insistent plea for marriage and regains his equilibrium
through song, " S h e " has the last word, and the book ends with
the eight-page letter, painfully turned in on itself, documenting
a woman's loneliness, anger, and feeling of exile; in short, with
the triumph of divorce.
Book III introduces the "marriage riddle," which relates
1^6
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S * PATERSON
both to language and to the union of the sexes. It is first presented as " S o much talk of the language — when there are no
/ ears" ( 1 2 9 ) . T h e answer to the riddle, thus, is not only a
new language, but the new men who will actually understand
it. T h e focus then shifts to " t h e riddle of a man and a w o m a n , "
and on the possibility of victory over death through love, a
logical
continuation
of
the
immortality
achieved
through
language:
—and marry only to destroy, in private, in
their privacy only to destroy, to hide
(in marriage)
that they may destroy and not be perceived
in it — the destroying
Death will be too late to bring us aid
What end but love, that stares death in the eye?
A city, a marriage — that stares death
in the eye
The riddle of a man and a woman
For what is there but love, that stares death
in the eye, love, begetting marriage —
not infamy, not death
(p. 130)
T h e marriage riddle is answered, and the themes of birth
and language given a new dimension, in the passages describing
the discovery by M a d a m e
Curie of the radiant gist.
Unlike
Corydon, who is permanently divorced from any life with man,
and Phyllis, who is unable to give herself to her lover, the
French nurse, always described in images of pregnancy, works
with her husband to find that which stands against all that
T H E R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
147
slights our lives. Madame Curie's triumph, like that of Columbus in discovering the Beautiful Thing (America), stands
as a powerful force against divorce—against all that divides
man from his fellow, language from deed, against all that is
anti-life. It is just such a triumphant discover)·, to learn to
measure well, "to find one phrase that will lie married beside
another for delight," that the poet seeks.
This imagery of marriage, divorce, rebirth, and miscarriage
is closely related to images of stasis and flow, which also recur
throughout the poem. Both of these image patterns, on their
most significant level, are related to language and to the freeing
of the imagination. T h e quest is for a key that will unlock the
mind, and this image of being locked, or blocked, characterizing
modern society, is worked into the fabric of the poem in a
variety of ways. Each time it emphasizes the stasis that clogs
any free flow of language or thought. "Blocked," says Paterson
as he walks through the park, and the word relates to a multitude of details: to knowledge undispersed ( 1 2 ) ; to the body
found "frozen in an ice-cake" ( 3 1 ) ; to the "special interests /
that perpetuate the stasis" and "block the release" (46); to the
drained lake (46); to Miss Cress, who feels "dammed up,"
"congealed," "blocked" (59), and unable to break through the
crust (93); to the Senate, "trying to block Lilienthal" (78); to
the scholars "lodged under" the flow of the language ( 1 0 0 ) ; to
the dead writers "battering against glass / at the high windows"
( 1 2 3 ) ; to the dry waters ( 1 3 0 ) ; and other details as well. All of
these references to blockage, though not on the surface related
to one another, work cumulatively to create an atmosphere of
frustration, a feeling of being balked, appropriate to the plight
of the poet.
Especially in Book III, in the description of the clogged
landscape following the flood, the imagery of stasis serves as a
commentary on the poet's mind and on the state of society in
general. Mud covers everything—
1^8
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
. . . a sort of muck, a detritus,
in this case—a pustular scum, a decay, a choking
lifelessness—that leaves the soil clogged after it,
that glues the sand}· bottom and blackens stones—so that
they have to be scoured three times when, because of
an attractive brokenness, we take them up for garden uses.
An acrid, a revolting stench comes out of them, almost one
might say a granular stench—fouls the mind
(p. 167)
This description of choking lifelessness documents not only the
landscape and the utter impossibility of new birth, but
the
language, as well. T h e words are soiled and decayed. T h e y must
be wiped clean; like the blackened stones, "they have to be
scoured three times. . . ." T h e fossil conch, described shortly
after this passage, is a symbol of the past, of a language calcined
and quaint, but ultimately useless:
Here's a fossil conch (a paper weight
of sufficient quaintness) mud
and shells baked by a near eternity
into a melange, hard as stone, full of
tiny shells
—baked by endless desiccations into
a shelly rime—-turned up
in an old pasture whose history—
even whose partial history, is
death itself
(p. 170)
O n e does not need to know that Williams spelled " r i m e " as
" r h y m e " in his early drafts to relate this melange to poetry that
finds
its raison
d'etre
in
the
resurrection
of
the past.
For
Williams, the past is dead. " W h o is it spoke of April?" he asks.
And the answer: " S o m e / insane engineer. T h e r e is no recur
renee"
( 1 6 9 ) . There
is nothing to be gained by rescuing a
calcined reticulum of the past and filling it with hone). " T h e
seepage has / rotted out the curtain," and the netlike structure
THE R E D E E M I N G LANGUAGE
149
can serve as no structure at all. The mesh is decayed. Rather,
011c must "Let the words / fall any way at all — that they may
hit love aslant" ( 1 6 9 ) .
T h e insane engineer who spoke of April irresistibly suggests
Eliot who is, for Williams, the archenemy of invention, a man
content with the connotations of his masters, "a subtle conformist." As such, he gets the brunt of an attack on those who
have "run off." Eliot, Williams wrote to Horace Gregory,
"should be branded for the worst possible influence in American
letters — simplv because he more than anyone I know has
blocked the interchange of fertilizing ideas between American
and English letters" (L, 2 2 1 ) . "In conjunction with the universities," he wrote in his Autobiography, "Eliot returned us to
the classroom just at the moment when I felt that we were on
the point of an escape to matters much closer to the essence of
a new art form itself — rooted in the locality which should
give it fruit" (A, 1 7 4 ) . Williams asserted that Eliot (like
Pound) was not so much running toward the ready-made con
tinental culture as away from the "deeper implications intellectually which our nascent culture accented" (L, 2 2 7 ) ® He
refused to differentiate between two prosodies, and so turned
unhesitatingly to the past.7
The thrust at Eliot in Paterson is made up of oblique refer
ences, echoes, and some outright parody. Corydon, who has
poetic pretensions, recites verse that provides comment on what
Williams sees as a pompous, sexless, and world-weary stance,
distorting in the process such Eliot lines as "At the violet hour,"
" H U R R Y U P P L E A S E I T S T I M E " and "This is the way the
world ends":
At the
sanitary lunch hour packed woman to
woman (or man to woman, what's the difference?)
the flesh of their faces gone
to fat or gristle, without recognizable
outline, fixed in rigors, adipose or sclerosis
150
W I L L I A M CARLOS W I L L I A M S '
PATERSON
expressionless, facing one another, a mould
for all faces (canned fish) this .
Move toward the back, please, and face the door!
is how the money's made,
money's made
pressed together
talking excitedly . of the next sandwich
(p. 196)
This kind of work, depressing, restricting, and lacking any sort
of imaginative validity, provides no clues to the regeneration
either of man or of his language. The parody, of course, is
heavily weighted, focusing attention on the trivial and pretentious. Eliot is a magnificent poet who cannot be reduced to
patter of this sort. And yet the points are made that in spite of
his disinguished craft and mind, his substance often looks resolutely to the past, and that man will not be saved through an
attenuated intellectuality. The redemption, rather is to be
found in the vernacular language and in a new measure by
which both our poems and our lives may be measured. The
clues do not lie in a resurrected past. " T h e past is for those
that lived in the past" (277). T h e crucial clue lies in the dis
cover\, in the present, of a language commensurate with the
present world. This is the burden, and the triumph, of Paterson.