Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Concrete Poetry
Author(s): Mary Ellen Solt
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Summer, 1970), pp. 421-425
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40124559
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 RITUAL, OPIATE OF THE THEATER 421

archetypes than of rituals, but his best-known audiences more directly in their rituals, differ-
disciple, Eugenio Barba, wrote of him:ing "Gro-
from the Europeans in attempting to inter-
towski wished to create a modern secular ject improvisation into ritual. During some of
ritual, knowing that primitive rituals arethe theaction of Dionysius 69, the Performing
first form of drama. . . .The rituals were repe-
Group members circulate among the audience
- often nude - but their birth and death rituals
titions of archetypal acts, a collective confession
which sealed the solidarity of the tribe." are Var- choreographed in a definitely demarcated
ious descriptions of Grotowski's productions playing area. The Living Theatre Mysteries
bear out Barba's comment. Thus, two Polish uses Artaud's famous plague image, and some-
romantic dramas, The Ancestors by Mickie- times the audience is induced to share in
wicz and Kordian by Slovacki, become a
healing rituals, which Artaud only envisioned
dialectic of apocalypse and derision - often for the theater, but which the Living Theatre
conveyed through Christian ritual. In Wys- tries to enact, through Yoga and Kathakali
pianski's Acropolis, which was televised exercises.
in Closer to Western tradition, the Open
this country, the acropolis becomes a concen- Theater's Serpent begins wtih the Kennedy-
tration camp, the cemetery of our civilization;King murders (more Kennedy than King) and
various scenes of Biblical and classical tradition
reverts to the archetypal Cain-Abel murder.
are enacted against an archetypal action - thatBut though The Serpent is called "a cere-
of moving materials to destroy space; in order mony," the attempt at ritual repetition - a
to survive, each member of the concentration prescribed order of devotional exercises - is
camp has to usurp another's space, and that singularly unceremonious, miming sexual in-
becomes a ritual of collective murder. Con- tercourse during the so-called begatting
versely, Grotowski's production of Marlowe's sequence, and kneeling or crawling during
the prayer sequence.
Faustus is a miracle play, the making of a saint,
which uses such ritual elements as baptism,Richard Schechner, director of the Perform-
making a pact with the devil, sufferinging
a Group and ex-editor of Tulane Drama
passion, resting in a Pieta. In all these plays, Review, wrote of some of these theaters: "Each
the actors confront their score and locate an one has sought to define 'ritual' for our time
archetypal pattern which they ritualize. and find uses for ritual in the theater." The
Similarly, Grotowski's disciple Barba, who statement is a tribute to theatrical dedication,
now has his own theater in Denmark, findsbut it is a fundamental misunderstanding of
an archetype within his scenario. One has onlyritual, which is neither definable nor findable.
to compare accounts of his Hauseriana withRitual rests on faith, and the only common
Peter Handke's recent drama Kaspar (see BAfaith of these various theater groups is that
44:2, p. 299), to recognize the results ofof each group in its own form of theater. And
dedication to archetype. Both plays depart that's a good deal in this time of entertainment-
from the biography of Kaspar Hauser, whooriented theater or mass media. But the illusion
appeared mysteriously in Nuremberg in 1828,of theater as a new faith seems to me as great
ignorant of all the amenities of our civilization,an illusion as the old illusionistic theater. Gide
including speech. Provoking mistrust, he be-said, "Toute croyance est une incroyance sur-
came a remarkably apt if erratic pupil; he was montee." But what we have in today's theater
mysteriously stabbed at the age of twenty-one,is absence of faith overwhelming faith, and
and died of the wounds. A legend in his ownyet a terrible nostalgia for the words and
lifetime, Hauser embodies a myth of naturalgestures of the abjured faith. Artaud was
man confronting civilization, and he has in-attracted to unfamiliar ritual for its nonrealism,
spired a spate of literary works. Barba usedmystery, musicality, and solemnity. Today,
a scenario by Ole Sarvig, into which he inter-when realism is dead in serious theater, mys-
polated various initiation rites for the Kaspartery and musicality are solemnly sought in
of his company - social birth, culture via homo-repetitive, incantatory rhythms which are
sexuality, marriage, and war. One accountindiscriminately called ritual, and often
describes these rituals in Jungian terms, though indiscriminately performed. Longing for com-
the article concludes "An atheist mass." As themunity, today's most enterprising theater
Cambridge school of anthropologists felt thatpeople are burying Today in these vestigial
ritual preceded myth, Grotowski and Barbaor neorituals.
use ritual to suggest myth. University of California, Santa Cruz
Three American theater companies - the
Living Theatre, the Open Theater, and the Concrete Poetry
more recent Performing Group - inspired by By Mary Ellen Solt
Artaud and Grotowski, have sought to involve In 1955 a Brazilian designer, Decio Pignatari,

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422 BOOKS ABROAD

met Eugen Gomringer, a Swiss, the who

lead of was Max
the symbolists, particularly of Mal-
Bill's secretary at the Hochschule larme fur
and of Arno Holz, an east Prussian
Gestal-
tung at Ulm, Germany. To their poet of mutual de-
the late nineteenth and early twentieth
light and surprise, they discovered centuries,that
he sought
they his own new form, which
were also poets committed to a to
was new waypage
substitute ofspace for the old gram-
making poems, which would mar free andthe
syntax of the line with its redun-
poet
from the line as his basic structural unit. dancies of thought and feeling.1
In his first manifesto "From Line to Con-
Gomringer, working alone, called his new
stellation," 1954, Gomringer defined his new
poems "constellations''; and Pignatari working
constellation as:
with two other poets in Sao Paulo - Augusto
and Haroldo de Campos - conceived of his
the simplest possible kind of configuration in
poems as "ideograms." (In Sao Paulo the three poetry which has for its basic unit the word, it
poets, taking their name from Canto XX encloses
of a group of words as if it were drawing
Ezra Pound, were known as the Noigandres stars together to form a cluster.2
Group). The surprise meeting in 1955 between
Gomringer and Pignatari can be taken as Gomringer's
the vision was of a universal poetry
beginning of what was to be discovered to which,
be because of its simplicity and directness,
the worldwide movement of concrete poetry. could transcend the boundaries of language
The most important single aspect of the con-and culture to the benefit of language and of
mankind.
crete poetry movement is that poets in many
countries, speaking different languages, un- The Noigandres Group, also going back to
known to each other, began making similar Mallarme, took as their starting point his poem
innovations in structure almost immediately "Un coup de des," in which both page space
following World War II. This would seem and
totypographical devices are brought into
the poem as organic to structure and meaning:
indicate a significant relationship between the
new concept of form, live processes of com- "subdivisions prismatiques de l'idee." For they
munication, and the conditions of contempo- saw their concept of the poem as ideogram as
an evolutionary development growing out of
rary language, poetry, and culture. Gomringer
and the Noigandres Group found that they the experimental work of earlier poets. That
work, they were convinced, had brought "the
were preoccupied with the same linguistic con-
historical cycle of verse (as formal-rhythmical
cerns and that they had arrived at very similar
unit)... mere linear-temporistical develop-
solutions. They agreed to call their experiments
"concrete poetry" in 1956 after Pignatari ment"had to a close. A radical new concept of
returned to Sao Paulo. form was needed, they felt, whose nature was
predicted by the ideogramic method of Ezra
There are several significant areas of agree-
ment in the thinking and practice of thesePound's Cantos, which derived from Fenol-
poets. For instance: although both Gomringer losa's research into the Chinese written char-
acter; by the "word ideograms" of James
and the Brazilians were working to bring
poetry into new relationships with the other Joyce's Finnegans Wa\e with their "organic
arts and advanced areas of contemporary interpretation of time and space"; and by e.
e. cummings' "atomization of words, physi-
thought, they saw their experiments as related
to the mainstream of poetry. Gomringer ognomical typography" and "expressionistic
wanted to rescue the poem from literary pro-emphasis on space." The work of two Brazilian
fessionalism, for he saw that it had become poets, Oswald de Andrade and Joao Cabral de
Melo Neto, also contributed, and the Calli-
accessible for the most part only to poets and
critics. He wanted it to be able to take its grammes of Apollinaire were acknowledged
place as a functional object for spiritual asuseancestral.
(gebmuch), like other works of art, in theWhereas the emphasis in Gomringer's con-
contemporary environment; and he was able cept of the constellation is primarily visual,
the Noigandres ideogram is conceived of as
to perceive that the essence of poetry, concen-
tration and reduction of language, cana be "space-time" structure, the word and conse-
found in the most common modes of com- quendy the poem being conceived three-
munication now at work in our world - in dimensionally as verbivocovisud? The Bra-
zilian concrete poem is intended for oral
advertisements, slogans, signs in international
airports - in the live processes of mass com-performance in addition to the fact that it can
munication, which are generally considered be enjoyed simply as a visual object on the
page. But both the ideogram and the con-
to threaten the very existence of poetry. So
stellation are made of reduced language:
he gave up writing sonnets as beautifully
language stripped down to its nouns and verbs,
irrelevant to the present reality; and, following

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 CONCRETE POETRY 423

to the minute particles of letter poem, but at a of

and sound cost - drastically reduced lan-
which words are made. Space having become
guage. Consequently in the concrete poem we
the syntactic agent, the meaningfind
of athe
simultaneous
poem appeal to verbal and non-
verbal c relation-
is to be perceived from the structural om municatio n - "metacommunica-
ship of its spatial-linguistic elements. Thiscontribution the Noigandres
tion." The great
theory
means that in the last analysis the can makeof
content to our understanding of all
the concrete poem is inseparable
poetry from its
is the recognition that the essential poem
structure: in any structure resides in a very few words -
form = content in nouns and verbs mostly. The rest is linguis-
content = form tic convention. It can probably be said that the
poet working within linear structures succeeds
In the concrete poem form and content are or fails to the extent that he is able to keep
commutative. linguistic conventions from adulterating the
Gomringer conceived of the structural re- few words in which his actual poem is to be
lationships of his constellations in terms offound.
"play-activity" ( den\gegenstandden\spiel) .4 Every poem is in some way a space-time
That is to say, the concrete poem may be seen structure. The Noigandres poets were able to
as a highly serious linguistic game in whichperceive that "parallel to form-subject isomor-
the reader (or perceiver) is required to parti- phism, there is a space-time isomorphism,
cipate actively with his imaginative faculties to which creates movement. . . .In a first moment
complete the poem. It becomes possible, as of concrete poetry pragmatics," they discov-
the Danish poet Vagn Steen has emphasized, ered, "isomorphism tends to physiognomy,
that the highly perceptive reader may be ablethat is a movement imitating natural appear-
to make a better poem with the materials theance (motion); organic form and phenomen-
concrete poet gives him than the poet himself. ology of composition prevail. In a more
Gomringer believes that the "play-activity" in advanced stage, isomorphism tends to resolve
the concrete poem can have a beneficial effect itself into pure structural movement (move-
upon both language and the reader. He seemsment properly said); at this phase geometric
to be saying that it provides a way of extending form and mathematics of composition (sensible
the timeless function of poetry to delight, into rationalism) prevail."5 This would seem to
a psychologically restorative function much suggest that there are degrees of concreteness
needed by contemporary man, who has nearly obtainable by linguistic structures correspond-
forgotten what it means to become as a childing to the degree of synthesis resulting from
and to delight in simple, elemental things resolution of the isomorphic conflict, and that
such as the sounds of words, the forms of the resulting structure involves both time and
letters, word patterns on a page. space. The poet who stays with the line is much
There is a great deal of play-activity inmore deeply involved with time than with
Noigandres ideograms as in Gomringer's con- space, but he must accommodate the spatial
stellations. The Brazilian "Pilot Plan for Con- factor in some way if only to use it to indicate
crete Poetry" (1958) speaks of the poem as the ends of lines and the breaks between
"a mechanism regulating itself." But more stanzas.
emphasis is given to the problem of isomor- Perhaps what is being said here can be made
phism: "the conflict form-subject looking forclearer if we compare two very different poems
identification." This conflict goes on, of course,on the same subject - the wind: one a very
in all works of art. The Noigandres groupobjective and drastically reduced concret
became more conceptually aware of the iso-poem (or constellation) by Eugen Gomringer
morphic problem than most poets because, the other Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to th
having eliminated much of the grammatical West Wind." Let us look first at the concrete
structure of language upon which we rely topoem.6
convey meaning, they found that when one w w
word or a few words are isolated in a spatial d i
structure, they cannot be considered except as n n n

themselves, as separate material objects in re- i d i d

lationship to other word objects inhabiting w w

the same space. Syntactical Space, then, adds

the third or visual dimension to the poem. It would
In the verbivocovisual concrete poem, the attempted
problem of isomorphism resolves itself more will embod
successfully than in the linear-grammatical using the n

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424 BOOKS ABROAD

how much the poet can say with oneasword,

crete poem a rationally conceived construc-
tion he
for limiting himself to one word, of linguistic materials seems significant
has elimi-
to himeven
nated all possibility for comment, becausemeta-
"today more than ever it is
phor. Having eliminated grammar, thought structures
syntax, which are decisive."8 It is
line, meter: having almost succeeded increasingly intrue that in the most advanced
elim-
inating sound itself by engaging areas ofthe eye tothought, more and more
contemporary
such an extent that the reader reliance is notisimpelled
being placed upon nonverbal mathe-
to pronounce the word unless matical models as the basic structures for
he remembers
consciously to do so, Gomringer is left
thought. Printedwith
alone in the center of a blank
the letters of his word, the space page, ofmanyhis page,
of the profoundest concepts of all
and some typographical possibilities. time, suchFirst
as Einstein's
off famous formula, would
he chooses a light, unobtrusive look as slight-ashel-
typeface Gomringer's "wind" constel-
vetica. It is particularly important lation. in a poem
about the wind that the typefaceShelley, not be heavy
writing during a less scientific-
or obtrusive, or it would be semantically dis-at a time when language
technological period,
cordant. The structural organization of the
was less worn-out from overuse, not yet affected
poem involves printing the word by the multidirec-
visual assaults of the mass media, con-
tionally as the wind blows. ceives Space of aintrudes
quite different kind of poem when
between the letters in such a he waywishes to write
that theyabout the wind. Because
seem to float as though the wind were
he is such acting
a fine poet, he knows that in using
upon them as it acts upon leaves, the wind scraps of
as metaphor, as the take-off point
paper, and other light objects.for Still the poem
the expression of his own thoughts and
is very strictly organized, for if wehenumber
feelings, must also recreate it in some way
the letters of the word 1-2-3-4,linguistically we can see as that
an object. "Sounds as well as
its normal orthographic order has in
thoughts," heno in-
writes in "A Defense of Poetry"
stance been violated, although (1821), we are required
"have a relation both between each
to liberate ourselves from our habit other and oftowards
reading that which they represent."
from left to right across the page. But the There is no
conventions of his romantic age afford
preferable place or direction to him begin
also thereading
privileges of subjectivity,
this poem. Gomringer considers liberation
biographical of optimism, and confi-
reference,
the reading eye to be one of his dence most in important
the significance of the role of the
contributions. Looking at the poet in poem
society,as a
so that he can unabashedly
totality, we notice that it is so small in relation
assert: "Poets are the unacknowledged legis-
to the rest of the page that it leaves
lators of thea world."9
mere No poet writing today
trace, as the wind imprints itself can comfort
briefly himself
upon with such an illusion.
objects. But he can allow Shelley the privileges of his
We have here purity of language and in- own time and vision, even envy him a little,
tegrity of perception. The reader will find perhaps, and go on to find a great deal in his
this poem slight or spiritually profound to use of language as material in the texture of
the degree that he believes that the wind itself the poem to admire. In "Ode to the West
is slight or profound, for the poet has presented Wind," the poet's skillful handling of words
it to him simply for what it is as an object made up of w and wh in combination with
for contemplation. certain vowels - particularly o's and short fs
It cannot be denied that the poet who wishes - and repetition of the word "thou" results
to make concrete poems must be willing to in onomatopoeia of a high order which, like
give up a great deal of the luxury of language Gomringer's poem, captures the essential
and impressiveness of message available to nature of wind. This is combined, of course,
the more traditional poet. But at this moment with the rhythmic sweep of the lines within
in history the art seems to require it. The a stanzaic structure. Throughout Shelley's
Scottish concrete poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, poem one can find concrete lines sandwiched
has put it this way: between lines in which language is much less
objectified. For instance:
"concrete" by its very limitations offers a tangible
image of goodness and sanity; it is very far from . . .the leaves dead
the now-fashionable poetry of anguish and self. Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
. . .It is a mode of order, even if set in a space Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
which is full of doubt.7 Pestilence-stricken multitudes :10

Gomringer states that algebraic formulasThe concrete poet would probably limit him-
have always fascinated him, and that the con-self to the color words alone, searching for a

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 JOHANNES AAVIK, ARTIFICER 425

more precise word than "pale." "Ghosts"Royall

andH. Snow, eds., New York, American Book
Company,
"pestilence-stricken multitudes" would not be 1935, pp. 517, 531.
allowed to attach themselves to the wonder 10 Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind," 11. 2-5, ibid.,
that is leaf. p. 426.
11 Ibid., 1, 26, p. 427.
Other examples of concreteness or objectified
12 Ibid., 1, 39, p. 427.
language could be pointed out. Two are par- 13 De Campos, Pignatari, De Campos, "Pilot Plan. . .,"
ticularly fine examples of meaning forged into
Concrete Poetry. . ., p. 72.
the materiality of words: 14 Emmett Williams, Letter to Author, 25 February
1967, quoted in Solt, "A World Look. . .," ibid., p. 50.
Vaulted with all thy congregated might11

and this phrase which takes us to the very

floor of the sea:
Johannes Aavi\, Artificer of the
The sea blooms and the oozy woods. . . ,12 Estonian Language
By Paul F. Saagpakk
What, if anything, can the concrete poet
In 1880 Johannes Aavik was born in Estonia;
have gained by giving up what he has ob-
two years later James Joyce first saw the light
viously given up when we compare these two
of Apollo in Ireland. As creative men both of
poems? Most important, he is able to face the
them became artificers with an epiphanic
word as a purely objective thing rid of its
vision, one in the field of linguistics, the other
burden of redundancy and imprecision. He has in that of arts. Their creation testifies to makers
gained clarity and integrity of language, in
who play on the instrument of language with
other words. His position, the Noigandres
mature virtuosity. Aavik has become renowned
Group found, is one of "total responsibility in Sibelius' land and in other Scandinavian
towards language": each word must be con-
countries, while Joyce is world famous. Aavik
fronted in terms of its "sound, visual form, and
is the fabulous artificer of Estonian, a little-
semantic charge."13 The American concrete
known Finno-Ugric tongue, while Joyce
poet Emmett Williams discovered that, think-
worked in English, almost a universal lan-
ing of the word as a material object, much as
guage.
the painter thinks of his pigments, the sculptor
his stone, he could: Jung has characterized art as "a kind of
innate drive that seizes a human being and
do anything he wanted to with it. Collage it,makes him its instrument." Being seized by
paint it over, isolate every detail and look at it this drive, Aavik became a unique inventor
that way, throw it together at random, put it
not only in Estonian but also in world lin-
together according to a strict system.
guistics, and Joyce, one of the greatest artists
His reason for adopting this attitude toward
of our time. Both Aavik and Joyce worshiped
the word was not "so much protest," he con-beauty with its "wholeness, harmony, radi-
tends, "as finding a way, my way, to be a poet
ance," mastering not only their native tongues
under the circumstances of my place and with their inherent beauty but also other lan-
time."14 Blootnington, Ind. guages, and in particular admiring the charm
of Latin. For both of them the artist is like
"the God of creation" indifferently "paring
his fingernails."
1 Concrete Poetry: A World View, Mary Ellen Solt, ed., Mirabile dictu, these two
Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, 1968,
creators were"Aas revolutionary as Lucifier: the
World Look at Concrete Poetry," pp. 8-11, 12; and
one coining neologisms for literary Estonian,
Eugen Gomringer's manifestoes and statements on
concrete poetry, pp. 67-71.
the other, portmanteau words for his works.
2 Ibid., p. 67.
Unfortunately, Aavik, because of communism,
3 Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Haroldo de and Joyce, voluntarily, have experienced the
Campos, "Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry," pp. 70-72. meaning of Dante's words, "Tu pr over ai si
4 Gomringer, "From Line to Constellation," ibid., p. come sa di salejlo pane altrui. . . (Paradiso,
67. Canto XVII).
5 De Campos, Pignatari, De Campos, "Pilot Plan. . .," In the revolutionary year of 1905, in Estonia
ibid., pp. 70-72.
a new literary movement got under way, led
6Gomringer, "wind," ibid., p. 93.
by a group of young men calling itself Noor-
7 Ian Hamilton Finlay, "Letter to Pierre Gamier,
September 17th, 1963," ibid., p. 84. Eesti (Young Estonia) which turned its eyes
8 Gomringer, "Max Bill and Concrete Poetry," ibid., westward, away from Baltic provincialism.
pp. 68-69. The leader of the group, Gustav Suits, a poet,
9 Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defense of Poetry," English scholar, critic, was as instrumental in renewing
Romantic Poets, James Stephens, Edwin L. Beck, and Estonian poetry with devices from French

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