Brooks begins the essay by discussing common prejudices on paradox.
He says that
paradox is often considered as intellectual than emotional, clever than profound, and
rational than divinely irrational. He dismisses these notions and argues that ‘paradox
is the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry’. He points at the contradictions
that are inherent in poetry and states that if those contradictions do not exist, some
of the best poetry will not exist today. He illustrates this by citing examples from
canonical poems.
Brooks comments that William Wordsworth is a poet who distrusts sophistry and
relies on simplicity. Though he will not provide too many examples for paradox,
some of his best poems emerge out of paradoxical situations. He quotes from the
poem It is a Beauteous Evening and illustrates that the poem is based on paradoxical
context. Looking at the evening sky, the poet is filled with worship whereas the girl
who walks with him is not at all moved by the sight. The paradox is revealed when
the poet says that the girl is deeply devotional because she unconsciously
sympathizes with all forms of nature throughout the year whereas the poet’s worship
is temporary and sporadic. The self-righteous nun like evening sky is contrasted with
the innocence of the girl who wears no sign of devotion but is in communion with
nature.
Paradox is employed to evoke romantic preoccupation with wonder and surprise.
Neoclassical poets like Alexander Pope invoke irony, though irony and wonder often happen
together. The fusion of irony and wonder is found in the poems of Blake, Coleridge and Gray.
Paradox unites the opposites and contradictory through the imagination of the poet.
Paradox springs from the very nature of poetic language. In poetic use, both
connotation and denotation gain prominence. The poet has to make up his language
as he goes. In scientific use of language, terms are stabilized and frozen in strict
denotation. The poet has to work with metaphors to express the subtle nature of
human emotion. Poetic language involves continual tilting of the planes, necessary
overlapping, discrepancies and contradictions. The nature of poetic language forces
poets to be paradoxical. In Wordsworth’s Evening sonnet, the evening is described as
“beauteous, calm, free, holy, quiet, breathless”. By placing the adjectives calm and
breathless-which suggests excitement that upsets the calm and quiet- together, the
poem invokes paradox.
Brooks delves into an in-depth analysis of the poem Canonization by John Donne.
According to him, this poem provides a concrete example for extension of the basic
metaphor into a paradox. In the poem, profane love is treated equal to divine love.
The poet has daringly used religious terms to describe two lovers who have
renounced the world and have hermitage in each other’s body. By describing the
lovers fit for canonization, the poet has produced an effective parody of Christian
sainthood.
The double and contradictory meaning of the word ‘die’ for is another instance of
paradox. The lovers are willing to die if they cannot live by love. Here the poet hints
at the double meaning of the word. In 16 and 17 century, the word ‘die’ refers to
experience the consummation of the act of love. In that sense, it also means their love
is not exhausted by lust. At another instance, the poet stresses on the duality and
singleness of love. The lovers are compared to phoenix, which dies to be born.
Similarly the lovers have renounced life in order to gain most intense life. He also
quotes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to emphasize the metaphor of love and
pilgrimage to the holy land.
Brooks has offered a detailed analysis of the poem and states that the only way the poet could
say what canonization says is by paradox. Donne has maintained love and religion and has
effectively portrayed the complexity of the experience. According to Brooks, Donne is
obsessed with the problem of unity and resolves the contradictory ideas by employing
paradoxes. Imagination, according to Coleridge, brings together the opposites such as
sameness with difference, general with concrete, idea with image, individual with
representative etc…By quoting Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and Turtle”, he establishes that
paradox is the only solution to unite the double/ multiple names of life. He concludes by
commenting that the urn in which the ash of the lovers is kept is the poem itself. Like the
phoenix it rises from the ashes and we have to be prepared to accept the paradoxes of
imagination.
