Federal University of Santa Catarina

French Letters - Basic Cycle

Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

Notes on Signs in Rotation

Octavio Paz

The rhythm is not only the oldest and most permanent element of language, but it still is not
difficult for it to be prior to speech itself" (p.11)

"Rhythm is a condition of the poem, while it is non-essential for prose" (p.11)

To language by natural inclination, tends to have rhythm As if obeying a
mysterious law of gravity, the words return to poetry spontaneously At the bottom of
all prose circulates, more or less rarefied by the demands of discourse, the invisible
rhythmic current. And thought, insofar as it is language, undergoes the same
fascination (p.12)

Prose is a late genre, born from the distrust of thought towards trends.
the natural language. Poetry belongs to all times; it is the natural form of expression
of men. There are no peoples without poetry, but there are those who have no prose therefore,
one could say that prose is not an inherently expressive form of
society while it is inconceivable to have a society without songs, myths
or other poetic expressions" (p.12)

While the poem presents itself as a closed order, prose tends to manifest
it is like an open and linear construction” (p.12)

The ancient rhetoricians said that rhythm is the father of meter. When a meter
empties of content and converts into inert form, mere sound shell, the rhythm continues
"engendering new meters." (p.13)

Every verbal rhythm already contains within itself the image and constitutes, whether real or
potentially, a complete poetic sentence." (p.13)

The meter is a measurement that tends to separate from language; rhythm never separates from
speech because it is speech itself. The meter is procedure, manner, the rhythm is temporality.
concrete." (p.14)

The distinction between meter and rhythm forbids calling a large number of them poems.
correctly versified works that, through sheer inertia, remain listed as such in the manuals
of literature." (p.14)

The commas and periods are excessive; the poem is a rhythmic ebb and flow of words.
(p.15)

In modern languages, meters are composed of a certain number of

syllables, duration cut by stressed accents and pauses The accents and pauses constitute
the oldest and most purely rhythmic part of the meter, are still close to the
drumbeat, of the ritual ceremony and the dancing heels that strike on
floor." (p.15)
Federal University of Santa Catarina
Basic Cycle French Literature
Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

Languages oscillate between prose and poetry, rhythm and discourse. In some, it is
the rhythmic predominance is visible, in others there is an excessive growth of the
analytical and discursive elements at the expense of the rhythmic and imaginative.

The evolution of modern poetry in French and English is an example of the relationships
between verbal rhythm and poetic creation. French is a language without tonic accents and the
the resources of the pause and the caesura replace them. In English, what really matters is the
accent. English poetry tends to be pure rhythm dance, song. French is discourse,
poetic meditation.

The renewal of modern English poetry is mainly due to two

poets and a fiction writer Ezra Pound T S. Eliot and James Joyce. Despite their works
they will be very different, one common note unites them: all are a reconquest of
European heritage.

(...) Thus, the citations from the poem - its spiritual sources - can be divided into two
parts. The references to the world of personal and cosmic salvation allude to the quotes from Dante, Buddha,
Saint Augustine, the Upanishads and the myths of vegetation. The second half of
subdivided, in turn, into two: the first corresponds to the birth of our age,
the second, to your present situation.” (p.19)

Analogy is the language of the poet. Analogy is rhythm.

I conclude: the poetic reform of Pound, Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Cummings, and Marianne
Moore can be seen as a re-Latinization of English-language poetry. It is revealing.
that all these poets were from the United States.

The Germans gave France a worldview and a symbolic philosophy, the

English, a myth the image of the poet as an exile, fighting against men and
the stars.

Modern French poetry is born with romantic prose and its precursors are
Rousseau and Chateaubriand. Prose ceases to be a servant of reason and becomes
confidant of sensitivity. Its rhythm obeys the outbursts of the heart and the leaps of
fantasy logo converts into poem."(p.25)

In the center of a reasoning nation, a grove of images sprouted,

a new order of chivalry armed from head to toe with poisoned weapons One hundred
years away from German romanticism, poetry began to fight again in the same
borders. And this rebellion was primarily a rebellion against the French verse, against the
syllabic versification and poetic discourse.

The Spanish verse, whatever its length, consists of a combination of

accents — dance steps — and syllabic measure. It is a unit in which they embrace
two opposites one that is dance and the other that is linear narrative, march, in the military sense of the term.
word. Our traditional verse, the octosyllable, is a verse on horseback, made to trot and
to fight, but
Federal University of Santa Catarina
French Letters - Basic Cycle
Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

also to dance.” (p.28)

The Spanish accents lead us to conceive of man as an extreme being and to

at the same time as a meeting place of the lower and upper worlds Sharp,
graves, proparoxytone, bisegmental — beats on the drum skin, claps, shouts,
clarins: the poetry of the Spanish language is festive and funereal dance, erotic dance and flight
mystical. Almost all of our poems, without excluding the mystical ones, can be sung and
"danced, as they say that the pre-Socratic philosophers danced." (p.29)

(...) Thus, prose tends to merge with poetry, to be poetry itself. The
poem, on the contrary, cannot rely on Spanish prose." (p.31)

The modern period is divided into two moments: the 'modernist', the peak of
Parnassian and Symbolist influences from France, and the contemporary. In both, the
Hispano-American poets were the initiators of the reform and on two occasions the criticism
peninsular denounced the 'mental Gallicism' of the Hispanic Americans - for later
to recognize that these imports and innovations were also, and above all, a
rediscovery of the verbal powers of Castilian.” (p.32)

The method of poetic association by the 'modernists' is sometimes a true mania, and the
synesthesia Correspondence between music and colors, rhythm and ideas, world of sensations
that rhyme with invisible realities.” (p.32)

"Modernism" also opens the way for the interpenetration between prose and verse. A
spoken language, and therefore, the technical term and that of science, the expression in French
or in English and, finally, everything that constitutes urban speech. Humor, the monologue, arise.
the conversation, a verbal collage.” (p.34)

As in the time of modernism, the two centers of the avant-garde were Buenos Aires.
(Borges, Girondo, Molinari) and Mexico (Pellicer Viliaurrutia, Gorostiza). In Cuba arises
the mulatto poetry to sing, dance and curse (Nicolás Guillén, Emiho Ballagas), no
Ecuador. Jorge Carrera Andrade begins a 'registration of the world', inventory of images
Americans, but the poet who best embodies this period is Pablo Neruda.

Modern poetry in our language is yet another example of the relationship between prose and verse.
rhythm and meter. The description could extend to Italian, which has a structure
similar to Spanish, or to German, mine of rhythms. In what regards to
Spanish, it is worth repeating that the peak of rhythmic versification, the result of
reform carried out by Hispanic-American poets is actually a return to
traditional Spanish verse.” (p.36)

(...)the images are imaginary products.

It is worth noting, then, that we designate with the word image all form
verbal, phrase or set of phrases, that the poet says is that when united they compose a poem.
(p.37)

(...) The image is a cipher of the human condition.

Federal University of Santa Catarina
French Letters - Basic Cycle
Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

Epic, dramatic, or lyrical, condensed into a sentence or developed over a thousand pages,
every image brings together or combines opposing, indifferent, or distant realities
yes.

The same does not happen with poetry. The poet names things; these are feathers,
those are stones, and suddenly it claims: the stones are feathers, this and that. The
elements of the image do not lose their concrete and singular character the stones continue
being stones, rough, hard, impenetrable, yellow from the sun or green from moss stones
heavy. And the feathers, light feathers.” (p.38)

Eastern thought has not suffered from this horror of the 'other', of what is, and is not the same.
Time. The Western world is one of this or that" In the oldest Upanishad it is stated
without ellipses the principle of the reality of opposites 'You are woman, You are man, You are'
the boy and also the maiden. You, like an old man, lean on a staff, you are the
dark blue bird and the green with red eyes, you are the seasons and the seas! And these
The Upanishad Chandogya condenses them in the famous formula 'You are that.'
The whole history of Eastern thought starts from this ancient statement, of the same
"the way of the West originates from that of Parmenides." (p.39)

Chuang-Tse thus explains the functional and relative nature of opposites: "There is nothing
that is not this; there is nothing that is not that. This lives in relation to that and the
doctrine of the interdependence of this and that. Life is life in the face of death and vice versa.
reverse. The statement is in light of the negation. And vice versa.” (p.41)

Thinking is breathing because thought and life are not separate universes but vessels.
communicators, that is, that. The ultimate identity between man and the world, the
consciousness and being, Being and existence, is humanity's oldest belief and the root of
science and religion,
magic and poetry.” (p.42)

Sensitive centers are nodes of energy, confluences of stellar currents,

blood, nervous. Each of the postures of the embraced bodies is a sign of an
zodiac ruled by the triple rhythm of sap, blood, and light.

For Eastern tradition, truth is a personal experience, therefore, in a sense

strict, and communicable each must start and redo the process by themselves
truth. And no one, except for the one who undertakes the adventure, can know if they have arrived or
not to fullness, to identity with being. Knowledge is mutable, sometimes, this "being
not knowing" is expressed in a laugh, a smile or a paradox, but that smile
It can also indicate that the supporter found nothing. All knowledge is ...
It reduces then to knowing that knowledge is impossible.” (p.43)

(...) He says that this experience of returning to what we originally are is 'entering into
birdcage without making them sing" Fan is gala and return, ring is song and names"
Thus, the phrase also means 'to return to the place where names are not needed', to
Federal University of Santa Catarina
French Letters - Basic Cycle
Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

silence, kingdom of evidence or place where names and things merge and are the
the same thing, to poetry, reigns where naming is being." (p.44)

Language is meaning, the sense of this or that. Feathers are light, stones,
heavy The light is light in relation to the heavy, the dark in front of the luminous, etc. (p.44)

(...) or, in other words, in itself! Even language is an infinite possibility of

meanings, when updated in a sentence, when truly becoming in
language, this possibility is fixed in a single direction. In prose, the unity of
phrase is achieved through meaning, which is something like an arrow that forces all the
words pointing to the same object or in the same direction. Now, the
Image is a phrase in which the plurality of meanings does not disappear.

The images of the poet have meaning on various levels, firstly, they possess
authenticity the poet saw or heard them are the genuine expression of his vision and
world experience It is, therefore, a truth of a psychological nature, that
evidently has nothing to do with the problem that concerns us. Secondly,
These images constitute an objective reality, valid in themselves: they are works.
(p.45)

Every sentence has a reference to another, it is susceptible to being explained by another.

Thanks to the mobility of the signs, words can be explained by words.
When we stumble upon an obscure sentence, we say, 'What do these words mean?'
to say this or that” And to say “this or that” we resort to other words.
(p.47)

The meaning of the image, on the contrary, is the image itself; it cannot be expressed in other ways.
words. The image explains itself Nothing except it can say what it wants to say
Meaning and image are the same thing.

The same happens with the poem; its images do not lead us to anything else, as occurs
with prose, but they put us in front of a concrete reality." (p.47)

Derived from the significant nature of language, two attributes distinguish words
first, its mobility or intermutability, second, by virtue of its
mobility, the ability of a word to be explained by another. We can
say in many ways the simplest idea, or change the words of a text or of
a sentence without severely altering the meaning or explaining one sentence with another. Nothing
this is possible with the image.” (p.48)

(…) the image reconciles opposites, but this reconciliation cannot be explained
through words, except for those of the image, which have ceased to be so. Thus, the image is
a desperate resource against the silence that invades us every time we try
expressing the terrible experience of what surrounds us is of ourselves." (p.48)

Language surpasses the circle of relative meanings, This and That, and says the
indescribable the stones are feathers, that is, that. Language indicates, represents; the poem
does not explain nor represents: presents." (p.49,50)
Federal University of Santa Catarina
French Letters - Basic Cycle
Literary Studies II
Juliana Aparecida Cabral

The image does not explain invites us to recreate it and, literally, to relive it. The saying of
the poet engages in poetic communion. The image transmutes man and converts him through
your turn in image, that is, in a space where opposites merge.” (p.50)

Poetry is metamorphosis, change, alchemical operation, and for this reason it is the boundary of magic,
of religion and other attempts to transform man and make this one or that one
this "other" that is himself." (p.50)

Poetry puts man out of himself and, simultaneously, makes him return to his being.
return it to yourself. Man is his own image and that other
phrase that is rhythm, that is image, the man." (p.50)