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Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning
First published in 1928, 'Poetic Diction: A study in Meaning' presents not merely a theory of poetic diction but also a theory of poetry and a theory of knowledge. "Language has preserved for us the inner, living history of man's soul. It reveals the evolution of consciousness." Owen Barfield Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant writers and philosophers. A member of the Inklings, Barfield's ideas and literary artistry influenced fellow-Inklings C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and won praise from many of the foremost literary figures of the century. Praise for Owen Barfield: "A prolific and interesting thinker" - Times Literary Supplement "The wisest and best of my unofficial teachers."- C.S.Lewis "A masterpiece ... of prophetic value" - T.S.Eliot "possibly the clearest and most searching thinker of the present time" - Howard Nemerov
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
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About the author
Owen Barfield
71 books178 followersArthur Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.
Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:
Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.
Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:
But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the antiself. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?
Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.
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January 24, 2022
The Storehouse of the Imagination
The central metaphor of Poetic Diction is language as the storehouse of human imagination. Remarkably this was voiced 25 years before Wittgenstein’s Investigations, which it summarises rather neatly; and without any knowledge of Heidegger’s contemporaneously emerging philosophy, which identifies language as the “house of being” for humanity. As Barfield admits, his little book “claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge. It is as such… that it must be judged.” And is difficult to judge it as anything else than profoundly prescient. That it as relevant, important, and stimulating as it was almost a century ago is the best tribute there could possibly be to Barfield’s intellect.
The metaphor of the storehouse does exactly what poetic diction is supposed to do. It disorients whatever it was we thought about language (and for that matter about storehouses). We are accustomed to consider language as that which we read and hear. But Barfield puts language somewhere other than where it is seen or heard in use. Not in some Platonic abstraction existing in a galaxy far far away, but as a potential from which we continuously draw and which sustains us at every moment. What we know about the world, indeed what we can possibly know about the world, is contained somewhere in that storehouse, and only there. It is by exploring that storehouse that we are capable of “grasping the reality of nature” because it is there that we actually participate with reality, including the reality of each other.
In the preface to the second edition, Barfield makes his debt to the philosophy of Hume explicit: “The notion that knowledge consists of seeing what happens and getting used to it as distinct from consciously participating in what is was first worked out systematically by Hume.” Language in other words is tautologically not what is not-language. And what is not-language is what we refer to as reality. We act within reality but we participate in and through language. And it is in light of this recognition that Barfield makes one of his most provocative claims. “Only by imagination,” he says, “can the world be known… The difficulty lies in the fact that, outside poetry and the arts, that activity proceeds at an unconscious level.” It is through poetic diction that new relationships, connections, and inferences are made in the storehouse.
Consequently, “the study of poetry and of the poetic element in all meaningful language is a valuable exercise for other purposes than the practice or better enjoyment of poetry.” Science, as well as all other human inquiry proceeds poetically. Science works, when it does, precisely because it utilises the poetic principle. The alternative means the death of not just inquiry but something more fundamental. “Of all devices for dragooning the human spirit, the least clumsy is to procure its abortion in the womb of language,” Barfield says, echoing both Leibniz and modern Pragmatists. Attempts to control or direct the imagination are always disastrous. The function of language as storehouse is “… to mediate the transition from the unindividualized, dreaming spirit that carried the infancy of the world to the individualized human spirit, which has the future in its charge.” In other words, the storehouse is a legacy which makes the entire history of humanity available to each person.
There are both aesthetic and ethical implications of the storehouse metaphor. Aesthetically the feeling of pleasure and beauty derives not from a perception of some static pattern of relationships in the storehouse but the creation of a dynamic comparison between some established convention and an entirely unexpected new set of connections. Hence the aesthetic is always a fleeting moment. The novel becomes the established almost as soon as it is created. This is what leads to what might be called poetic ethics. Barfield notes that “the average word is a dead metaphor.” Dead metaphors are established comparisons we take for granted. We take such words literally, as if they unambiguously signify something which is not a word and connect to other words in some fixed formula. This leads to a form of secular fundamentalism, an insistence on controlling meaning and thus imagination. As I read it, therefore, we have a duty to continuously rattle the conventions contained in the storehouse. Perhaps in a way this is our fundamental duty as human beings.
The central metaphor of Poetic Diction is language as the storehouse of human imagination. Remarkably this was voiced 25 years before Wittgenstein’s Investigations, which it summarises rather neatly; and without any knowledge of Heidegger’s contemporaneously emerging philosophy, which identifies language as the “house of being” for humanity. As Barfield admits, his little book “claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge. It is as such… that it must be judged.” And is difficult to judge it as anything else than profoundly prescient. That it as relevant, important, and stimulating as it was almost a century ago is the best tribute there could possibly be to Barfield’s intellect.
The metaphor of the storehouse does exactly what poetic diction is supposed to do. It disorients whatever it was we thought about language (and for that matter about storehouses). We are accustomed to consider language as that which we read and hear. But Barfield puts language somewhere other than where it is seen or heard in use. Not in some Platonic abstraction existing in a galaxy far far away, but as a potential from which we continuously draw and which sustains us at every moment. What we know about the world, indeed what we can possibly know about the world, is contained somewhere in that storehouse, and only there. It is by exploring that storehouse that we are capable of “grasping the reality of nature” because it is there that we actually participate with reality, including the reality of each other.
In the preface to the second edition, Barfield makes his debt to the philosophy of Hume explicit: “The notion that knowledge consists of seeing what happens and getting used to it as distinct from consciously participating in what is was first worked out systematically by Hume.” Language in other words is tautologically not what is not-language. And what is not-language is what we refer to as reality. We act within reality but we participate in and through language. And it is in light of this recognition that Barfield makes one of his most provocative claims. “Only by imagination,” he says, “can the world be known… The difficulty lies in the fact that, outside poetry and the arts, that activity proceeds at an unconscious level.” It is through poetic diction that new relationships, connections, and inferences are made in the storehouse.
Consequently, “the study of poetry and of the poetic element in all meaningful language is a valuable exercise for other purposes than the practice or better enjoyment of poetry.” Science, as well as all other human inquiry proceeds poetically. Science works, when it does, precisely because it utilises the poetic principle. The alternative means the death of not just inquiry but something more fundamental. “Of all devices for dragooning the human spirit, the least clumsy is to procure its abortion in the womb of language,” Barfield says, echoing both Leibniz and modern Pragmatists. Attempts to control or direct the imagination are always disastrous. The function of language as storehouse is “… to mediate the transition from the unindividualized, dreaming spirit that carried the infancy of the world to the individualized human spirit, which has the future in its charge.” In other words, the storehouse is a legacy which makes the entire history of humanity available to each person.
There are both aesthetic and ethical implications of the storehouse metaphor. Aesthetically the feeling of pleasure and beauty derives not from a perception of some static pattern of relationships in the storehouse but the creation of a dynamic comparison between some established convention and an entirely unexpected new set of connections. Hence the aesthetic is always a fleeting moment. The novel becomes the established almost as soon as it is created. This is what leads to what might be called poetic ethics. Barfield notes that “the average word is a dead metaphor.” Dead metaphors are established comparisons we take for granted. We take such words literally, as if they unambiguously signify something which is not a word and connect to other words in some fixed formula. This leads to a form of secular fundamentalism, an insistence on controlling meaning and thus imagination. As I read it, therefore, we have a duty to continuously rattle the conventions contained in the storehouse. Perhaps in a way this is our fundamental duty as human beings.
July 14, 2023
Barfield's intellect and perception are a country mile more advanced than mine, so I have a lot of respect for this book. But frankly, it represents a lot of what I dislike most in literary criticism and in discursive writing in general—needlessly pretentious sentences, assumption of familiarity on the reader's part with far more than the standard canon, treating the realm of art as some sort of private esoteric domain, and redefinition of commonly accepted terms into concepts that have little to do with how they are commonly used (Barfield acknowledges this criticism in Appendix II and goes on to defend his redefinitions, but I wasn't motivated or interested enough on this initial reading to read the appendices). There are also many untranslated excerpts in different languages. It's fine to expect the average reader of a book like this to have some familiarity with Latin and Greek, but Barfield reproduces entire pages of French prose and just assumes you know it—as I guess the average English academic did in 1928? Wesleyan University Press's decision not to provide footnote translations is just a head-scratcher in what is otherwise a really nice edition.
Much of the book strikes me as a refutation of analytical philosophy and all of its future iterations. Not being familiar at all with that school of thinking and not having a particular desire to get into it due to the painfully pedantic language it typically employs, Poetic Diction was a struggle at times. Barfield's engagement with modernity is just as profound as that of the other Inklings, but he lacks the warmth that Lewis brought to even his most academic literary essays. I'm largely uncomfortable with his mega-Romantic manner of discussing poetry. The other Inklings too had a tendency to almost deify mythology and the imagination, but Barfield sounds little different than Emerson in this regard (in fact, he says the whole book can be summed up with Emerson's famous statement that "Language is fossil poetry"). I see much of it as mystical jargon with roots in reality (the Christological connections in his thought will be clear if you're looking for them), but I'm not a fan of elevating poetry to the extent that he does—as "the progressive incarnation of life in consciousness" and the poet as "creator of meaning", and I think we need to resist that inclination. It's easy to see why Barfield, like Charles Williams, found himself attracted to bizarre occult systems like Anthroposophy.
But I don't want to steer you away. There are many extraordinarily insightful things here, and it's probably something that serious literary minds should have a passing familiarity with, even if it may make you break down and cry if you fancy yourself a poet and you read his implausibly high standards for the good poet (and his all-too-hard-hitting description of the mediocre poet). The two chapters on "The Making of Meaning" are really fascinating, and there is a sense in which reading an academic work of this density, with its own vocabulary and style, is a poetic experience in itself. As I said, the guy was brilliant. But this book is somewhat of a strange, exotic forest with little treasures scattered throughout.
Much of the book strikes me as a refutation of analytical philosophy and all of its future iterations. Not being familiar at all with that school of thinking and not having a particular desire to get into it due to the painfully pedantic language it typically employs, Poetic Diction was a struggle at times. Barfield's engagement with modernity is just as profound as that of the other Inklings, but he lacks the warmth that Lewis brought to even his most academic literary essays. I'm largely uncomfortable with his mega-Romantic manner of discussing poetry. The other Inklings too had a tendency to almost deify mythology and the imagination, but Barfield sounds little different than Emerson in this regard (in fact, he says the whole book can be summed up with Emerson's famous statement that "Language is fossil poetry"). I see much of it as mystical jargon with roots in reality (the Christological connections in his thought will be clear if you're looking for them), but I'm not a fan of elevating poetry to the extent that he does—as "the progressive incarnation of life in consciousness" and the poet as "creator of meaning", and I think we need to resist that inclination. It's easy to see why Barfield, like Charles Williams, found himself attracted to bizarre occult systems like Anthroposophy.
But I don't want to steer you away. There are many extraordinarily insightful things here, and it's probably something that serious literary minds should have a passing familiarity with, even if it may make you break down and cry if you fancy yourself a poet and you read his implausibly high standards for the good poet (and his all-too-hard-hitting description of the mediocre poet). The two chapters on "The Making of Meaning" are really fascinating, and there is a sense in which reading an academic work of this density, with its own vocabulary and style, is a poetic experience in itself. As I said, the guy was brilliant. But this book is somewhat of a strange, exotic forest with little treasures scattered throughout.
March 25, 2022
I didn't get as much out of this as I'd hoped. I can't figure out if Barfield is brilliant and weird. Or just plain weird. There are so many non-sequiturs, I couldn't see the connections or figure out where he was going. It might be a case of, "It's not you, it's me." I'd suggest reading summaries of Barfield by people who understand what in the world he's talking about.
For example, the Conclusion chapter ends with: "Over the perpetual evolution of human consciousness, which is stamping itself upon the transformation of language, the spirit of poetry hovers, for ever unable to alight. It is only when we are lifted above that transformation, so that we behold it as present movement, that our startled souls feel the little pat and the throbbing, feathery warmth, which tells us that she has perched. It is only when we have risen from beholding the creature into beholding creation that our mortality catches for a moment the music of the turning spheres" (181).
Um... okay?
Other Quotes:
[on meaning] "Like sleeping beauties, they lie there prone and rigid in the walls of Castle Logic, waiting only for the kiss of Metaphor to awaken them to fresh life" (115).
"...for if meaning itself can never be conveyed from one person to another; words are not bottles; every individual must intuit meaning for himself, and the function of the poetic is to mediate such intuition by suitable suggestion" (133).
"...language does indeed appear historically as an endless process of metaphor transforming itself into meaning. Seeking for material in which to incarnate its last inspiration, imagination seizes on a suitable word or phrase, uses it as a metaphor, and so creates a meaning. The progress is from Meaning, through inspiration to imagination, and from imagination, through metaphor, to meaning; inspiration grasping the hitherto unapprehended, and imagination relating it to the already known" (141).
For example, the Conclusion chapter ends with: "Over the perpetual evolution of human consciousness, which is stamping itself upon the transformation of language, the spirit of poetry hovers, for ever unable to alight. It is only when we are lifted above that transformation, so that we behold it as present movement, that our startled souls feel the little pat and the throbbing, feathery warmth, which tells us that she has perched. It is only when we have risen from beholding the creature into beholding creation that our mortality catches for a moment the music of the turning spheres" (181).
Um... okay?
Other Quotes:
[on meaning] "Like sleeping beauties, they lie there prone and rigid in the walls of Castle Logic, waiting only for the kiss of Metaphor to awaken them to fresh life" (115).
"...for if meaning itself can never be conveyed from one person to another; words are not bottles; every individual must intuit meaning for himself, and the function of the poetic is to mediate such intuition by suitable suggestion" (133).
"...language does indeed appear historically as an endless process of metaphor transforming itself into meaning. Seeking for material in which to incarnate its last inspiration, imagination seizes on a suitable word or phrase, uses it as a metaphor, and so creates a meaning. The progress is from Meaning, through inspiration to imagination, and from imagination, through metaphor, to meaning; inspiration grasping the hitherto unapprehended, and imagination relating it to the already known" (141).
February 26, 2013
A few days ago I finished reading Owen Barfield’s POETIC DICTION (1928). He was a friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Not as well known as they, Barfield wrote mainly criticism and philosophical speculations. POETIC DICTION has been consistently reprinted and remains influential. Agreeing with Emerson’s “Nature,” Barfield argues that all language is in essence metaphorical, even scientific prose. He locates the poetic in the metaphorical use of language to create new perceptions of reality. Aesthetic pleasure derives in large part in the reader’s “learning a new perspective on reality” through metaphor. He also praises the use of archaic language and strange diction to do so. In many ways I am drawn to Barfield’s theories. I am not a poet—nor was I meant to be. But in my own prose I have tried to create by fresh metaphors and descriptions an effect similar to what Barfield praises. Of course, I am not doing justice to his book in this paragraph. I haven’t yet had time to react to some of his speculations. If his work has a fault, it might be one leveled at the so-called New Critics—Tate, Warren, and Brooks—that in concentrating on imagery, he neglects other aspects of poetry’s appeal: rhythm, implied dramatic interaction, and narrative structure. At any rate the book is brief, intriguing, but at times a bit obtuse. I recommend it to those of you who are poets or love poetry.
March 26, 2009
This was definitely new territory for me. I came away from reading it with a greater appreciation for the role of the poet in expanding language and meaning. I'll leave it to other reviewers who may be better versed in literature and philosophy to comment on the technical details of the book.
One thing I found interesting was that while extolling the virtue of the poetic, Barfield did not denigrate the need for the prosaic.
One thing I found interesting was that while extolling the virtue of the poetic, Barfield did not denigrate the need for the prosaic.
January 31, 2014
A difficult book, written for those of a classical education that as a practical matter doesn't exist anymore. It made me wish I had the means (or, more honestly, the patience) to learn and appreciate languages that function differently than my own. I found it necessary to stop midway through and read from the beginning in order to grasp the key concepts, and I hope I'll be forgiven for not tackling the appendices.
That difficulty is the only thing keeping this from a five-star review. Otherwise I found the book engaging and thought-provoking in a way that transcended the seemingly straightforward subject matter. "A Study in Meaning" is a very apt subtitle. Owen Barfield will make you think the mystery of life can be perceived through the study and appreciation of language.
That difficulty is the only thing keeping this from a five-star review. Otherwise I found the book engaging and thought-provoking in a way that transcended the seemingly straightforward subject matter. "A Study in Meaning" is a very apt subtitle. Owen Barfield will make you think the mystery of life can be perceived through the study and appreciation of language.
November 9, 2020
This book, regarded as a classic by some, is not about poetry per se. It's about Platonic Truth. (1) Eternal, external notions exist in an independent realm. Real poets, pure poets, are able to discern these truths via poetic intuition. Certain words and wordings with surface meaning are, really, but reflections of non-material, higher Reality. Only the poetic philosophers have the capacity to discern through poetic expression and use of metaphors and such. (2) Modern science in contrast is lost and mired in the mundane. They focus on parts of wholes, but never the whole as such. Science is about "the haphazard pull-and-push ignorance which claims in public the name of science and admits in private that it knows nothing; which, when it turns inward to the mind of the Knower, finds there a nothingness within, to match the nothingness without." (3).
Meaning - Reality itself - lives only in the higher, external realm. Criticism of such a reality is based on ignorance, which is the inability to discern properly. In this way, poetic philosophy immunizes itself from criticism. Truth, after all, is beyond common understanding. As an illustration of such, Barfield notes a problem with "the interpretation of Greek philosophy by modern Europeans. Such a one can read Plato and Aristotle through," he writes, "from end to end, he can even write books expounding their philosophy, and all without understanding a single sentence. Unless he has enough imagination and enough power of detachment from the established meanings or thought-forms of his own civilization, to enable him to grasp the meanings of the fundamental terms -- unless, in fact, he has the power not only of thinking but of unthinking -- he will simply re-interpret everything they say in terms of subsequent thought." Of course, a critic can respond, tolerantly and simply, with that's fine" and still wonder "why it is that the Barfield poet must live in an illusory world?" Here, "must" is a poetic word. Does it mean that Barfield's poet-philosopher needs an eternal world? Does he or she fear its absence? Or is his or her Meaning the product of both need and fear?
(1) In the preface to the second edition, the author highlights the book's subtitle, "A Study in Meaning," by saying that the book "claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge." Knowledge is about preexisting, primal archetypal realities ("Mind existed, as Life, and Meaning, before it become conscious of itself, as knowledge"). Barfield refers to the older, pure poets who drew "from primal source of Meaning." Actually, and interestingly, Barfield sees pure poetry preceding Plato's process of intuitive apprehension of Meaning. Plato was but a reflection of something deeper, richer and more archetypically primal. This was earlier Greek society that experienced a unified reality, as opposed to an analytic breaking down of reality into its component parts. "Thus," Barfield writes, "the old, instinctive consciousness of single meanings, which comes down to us as Greek myths, is already fighting for its life by Plato's time as the doctrine of Platonic Ideas (not 'abstract', though this word is often erroneously used in English translations)..."
(2) In the beginning, the role of mind in apprehending was minimal. "These primary 'meanings,' Barfield comments, "were given, as it were, by Nature, but the very condition of their being given was that they could not at the same time be apprehended in full consciousness; they could not be known, but only experienced, or lived." This experience of life (Nature) was of a unity and "the language of primitive men reports them as direct perceptual experience. The speaker has observed a unity, and is not therefore himself conscious of relation." With the evolution of consciousness, unified nature breaks down, following the analytic principle, into its component parts and with it, poetry loses something in Barfield's way of thinking that is wholly significant: losing our connection with the whole, which is Meaning, "the principle of living unity." This inability to discern properly, to discover - see, experience - what was once there but now is lost is, for Barfield, the definition of bad poetry. The good poet is one who enlivens words with mythical content. Words can be traced back to their roots that have mythical foundation, and mythical foundation because they represent something primal and true: "if one traces them back far enough, one reaches a period at which their meaning had a mythical content." Later, he adds that "As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols." Mythology, he says "is the ghost of concrete meaning. Connections between discrete phenomena, connections which are now apprehended as metaphor, were once perceived as immediate realities. As such the poet strives, by his own efforts, to see them, and to make others see them, again." That poet could be seen as "possessed" or the recipient of a divine "wind," filled with "archetypal strangeness," in contrast to today's poet who is "more inclined to think of inspiration as a mood -- a mood that may come and go in the course of a morning's work."
(3) Barfield describes the evolution of consciousness as the "ascending rational principle and the descending poetic principle." Unity of the latter, in other words, gives way in the evolution of consciousness to the analytic preoccupation of the former. In this way, the rational principle is "the anti-poetic." Though critical of modern science, Barfield also sees no distinction between "Poetry and Science as modes of experience." In stating that the "rational principle must be strongly developed in the great poet," he re-instates Plato's sense of rationality. But then he goes on to ask, "Is it necessary to add to this that the scientist, if he has 'discovered' anything, must also have discovered it by the right interaction of the rational and poetic principles? Really, there is no distinction between Poetry and Science, as kinds of knowing, at all. There's is only a distinction between bad poetry and bad science." It is interesting that Barfield stakes out a claim on science like this, which could be interpreted only as the science of (rational) knowing about Mind as an external, independent reality. While of course cosmic reality is external, independent, Barfield is referencing something quite different: the reality of Being that stands above and creates such a reality.
Meaning - Reality itself - lives only in the higher, external realm. Criticism of such a reality is based on ignorance, which is the inability to discern properly. In this way, poetic philosophy immunizes itself from criticism. Truth, after all, is beyond common understanding. As an illustration of such, Barfield notes a problem with "the interpretation of Greek philosophy by modern Europeans. Such a one can read Plato and Aristotle through," he writes, "from end to end, he can even write books expounding their philosophy, and all without understanding a single sentence. Unless he has enough imagination and enough power of detachment from the established meanings or thought-forms of his own civilization, to enable him to grasp the meanings of the fundamental terms -- unless, in fact, he has the power not only of thinking but of unthinking -- he will simply re-interpret everything they say in terms of subsequent thought." Of course, a critic can respond, tolerantly and simply, with that's fine" and still wonder "why it is that the Barfield poet must live in an illusory world?" Here, "must" is a poetic word. Does it mean that Barfield's poet-philosopher needs an eternal world? Does he or she fear its absence? Or is his or her Meaning the product of both need and fear?
(1) In the preface to the second edition, the author highlights the book's subtitle, "A Study in Meaning," by saying that the book "claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge." Knowledge is about preexisting, primal archetypal realities ("Mind existed, as Life, and Meaning, before it become conscious of itself, as knowledge"). Barfield refers to the older, pure poets who drew "from primal source of Meaning." Actually, and interestingly, Barfield sees pure poetry preceding Plato's process of intuitive apprehension of Meaning. Plato was but a reflection of something deeper, richer and more archetypically primal. This was earlier Greek society that experienced a unified reality, as opposed to an analytic breaking down of reality into its component parts. "Thus," Barfield writes, "the old, instinctive consciousness of single meanings, which comes down to us as Greek myths, is already fighting for its life by Plato's time as the doctrine of Platonic Ideas (not 'abstract', though this word is often erroneously used in English translations)..."
(2) In the beginning, the role of mind in apprehending was minimal. "These primary 'meanings,' Barfield comments, "were given, as it were, by Nature, but the very condition of their being given was that they could not at the same time be apprehended in full consciousness; they could not be known, but only experienced, or lived." This experience of life (Nature) was of a unity and "the language of primitive men reports them as direct perceptual experience. The speaker has observed a unity, and is not therefore himself conscious of relation." With the evolution of consciousness, unified nature breaks down, following the analytic principle, into its component parts and with it, poetry loses something in Barfield's way of thinking that is wholly significant: losing our connection with the whole, which is Meaning, "the principle of living unity." This inability to discern properly, to discover - see, experience - what was once there but now is lost is, for Barfield, the definition of bad poetry. The good poet is one who enlivens words with mythical content. Words can be traced back to their roots that have mythical foundation, and mythical foundation because they represent something primal and true: "if one traces them back far enough, one reaches a period at which their meaning had a mythical content." Later, he adds that "As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols." Mythology, he says "is the ghost of concrete meaning. Connections between discrete phenomena, connections which are now apprehended as metaphor, were once perceived as immediate realities. As such the poet strives, by his own efforts, to see them, and to make others see them, again." That poet could be seen as "possessed" or the recipient of a divine "wind," filled with "archetypal strangeness," in contrast to today's poet who is "more inclined to think of inspiration as a mood -- a mood that may come and go in the course of a morning's work."
(3) Barfield describes the evolution of consciousness as the "ascending rational principle and the descending poetic principle." Unity of the latter, in other words, gives way in the evolution of consciousness to the analytic preoccupation of the former. In this way, the rational principle is "the anti-poetic." Though critical of modern science, Barfield also sees no distinction between "Poetry and Science as modes of experience." In stating that the "rational principle must be strongly developed in the great poet," he re-instates Plato's sense of rationality. But then he goes on to ask, "Is it necessary to add to this that the scientist, if he has 'discovered' anything, must also have discovered it by the right interaction of the rational and poetic principles? Really, there is no distinction between Poetry and Science, as kinds of knowing, at all. There's is only a distinction between bad poetry and bad science." It is interesting that Barfield stakes out a claim on science like this, which could be interpreted only as the science of (rational) knowing about Mind as an external, independent reality. While of course cosmic reality is external, independent, Barfield is referencing something quite different: the reality of Being that stands above and creates such a reality.
February 24, 2019
C.S. Lewis called Owen Barfield the "wisest and best of my unofficial teachers," and Barfield's Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning is dedicated to Lewis (or, in the original publication of 1928, to Lewis' then-pseudonym, Clive Hamilton). The accompanying inscription, 'opposition is true friendship,' Barfield quotes from Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a work Lewis would later counter with his Great Divorce. Further epigraphs hail from Aristotle's De Anima and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. As the one is left in Greek, and the other comes from somewhere in the middle of a long philosophical memoir, we might have an idea of what we're in for reading Poetic Diction. Barfield writes for an audience of people, like his friend-opponent Lewis, who are versed in language and literature, history and philosophy, and for whom controversies of logic and metaphysics rooted in the theories of the Greeks and Romantics but also in Locke, Hume, and Kant are live and urgent. Presumably, whatever might have motivated his early readers, most of us who come to read Barfield today do so by way of Lewis and Tolkien, rather than by passing through the rich intellectual tradition in which the Inklings themselves were steeped. Thus, my main impression reading Barfield's work is of a sort of super-grown-up talking over my head--and this is not meant so much as a criticism of it as a recognition of my own insufficiency. Though I can count myself lucky for having avoided some of the prejudices and pomposity of Barfield, Lewis, et al., which I fancy I can detect here and there, I'm sure I am full of my own updated ones, as well as being just generally much more ignorant and uneducated.
It seems like there are two ways to approach Barfield, then. Either we read him mainly for the light he can shed on Tolkien and Lewis--and this seems to be the trail blazed by Flieger in Splintered Light--or we strive, by reading many more and still wiser authors he draws upon and puts himself in conversation with, to understand his contributions to the much larger currents of thought he saw himself and his circle engaged in. For the former, a summary of his thought probably suffices, and all these allusions and foreign languages can be dispensed with. But the latter is clearly preferable, if we can work up the time and effort to undertake it; indeed, the former probably ought to lead into the latter, as Flieger seems to argue: "Barfield is not a fantasist (though he is the author of a deftly humorous retelling of 'The Frog Prince,' The Silver Trumpet. Primarily, however, Barfield is a speculative thinker and philosopher whose interest lies chiefly in the relationship between language, myth, and cultural reality" (xxi).
Making it our goal to find the way back to myth and truth through fantasy makes sense, too, given Barfield's association with and influence on these luminary authors, better known for their fantasies but also possessed in their turn of a wealth of scholarship and religious insight speaking powerfully to our time if we can manage to hear, to learn the language in which to understand them. Another don of Tolkien scholarship, Tom Shippey, makes the argument at some length in works like Tolkien: Author of the Century, that the writer of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but also of The Silmarillion and On Fairy-stories, eminently deserves serious study alongside (or indeed slightly above) the giants of modern and post-modern literature. The likes of Woolf, Eliot, and Joyce, after all, for all their brilliance, seem to have sadly hollowed out the rolls of English departments, whereas the popularity of Tolkien and Lewis has been the impetus not just for major films leading new generations to their fantasy books, but also for scholarship delving into to the full range of their work and into the sources they draw upon.
Barfield, then, is an essential guide in this adventurous "Study in Meaning," of which there seems to be a revival perennially in the works. Whether in the focused Poetic Diction or in the sweeping Saving the Appearances, his erudite explications of exemplary passages of text, his logical refutations of counter-arguments we'd likely not dreamt of making in the first place, and his impassioned calls for ever more nuanced and subtle attention to the workings of imagination and consciousness are quite the experience. Numerous shorter works freely accessible on the page of his literary estate, which calls him, a little apocalyptically, "the first and last Inkling," will give you a taste of his style (oratorical, elliptical, sententious) and a sense of his driving concerns (philology, cultural history, mystical participation).
(Hereabouts is where I would give a more detailed analysis of a few of Barfield's books, and maybe someday I will, buckling down to study Greek and Coleridge and all that before re-reading them, but I just don't think I understand them well enough to be much help at this point. Still, I would love to hear from anyone out there who does!)
Intriguingly, while Barfield had such a tremendous impact on Lewis and Tolkien, and thus on anyone who's been led by them to try to read Beowulf in Old English or to see in Chaucer or in a church window a tenth of what a medieval might have seen there, he also cites some surprisingly esoteric "'friends'" in his afterword to Poetic Diction. Chief among Barfield's enthusiasms are the founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner; Goethe, the unacknowledged scientist; and numerous thinkers he recognizes as partaking, along with Barfield himself, of "Neo-Platonism, an underground stream, and philosophically no longer quite respectable" (223). The inexhaustible reading list Barfield bequeaths also includes Spengler's Decline of the West (featured prominently in Conroy's Lords of Discipline, it took me a while to realize this was a real book); Jung, Freud and other students of "the so-called 'psychology of the unconscious'"; Giambattista Vico; Susanne Langer; and many others one would hope to see courses about on Mythgard or Signum University someday. But we should hasten to browse among them in the meantime, to talk about them with other intrepid readers, and so to continue to pass along the thrill of discovery caught from the venerable Barfield.
It seems like there are two ways to approach Barfield, then. Either we read him mainly for the light he can shed on Tolkien and Lewis--and this seems to be the trail blazed by Flieger in Splintered Light--or we strive, by reading many more and still wiser authors he draws upon and puts himself in conversation with, to understand his contributions to the much larger currents of thought he saw himself and his circle engaged in. For the former, a summary of his thought probably suffices, and all these allusions and foreign languages can be dispensed with. But the latter is clearly preferable, if we can work up the time and effort to undertake it; indeed, the former probably ought to lead into the latter, as Flieger seems to argue: "Barfield is not a fantasist (though he is the author of a deftly humorous retelling of 'The Frog Prince,' The Silver Trumpet. Primarily, however, Barfield is a speculative thinker and philosopher whose interest lies chiefly in the relationship between language, myth, and cultural reality" (xxi).
Making it our goal to find the way back to myth and truth through fantasy makes sense, too, given Barfield's association with and influence on these luminary authors, better known for their fantasies but also possessed in their turn of a wealth of scholarship and religious insight speaking powerfully to our time if we can manage to hear, to learn the language in which to understand them. Another don of Tolkien scholarship, Tom Shippey, makes the argument at some length in works like Tolkien: Author of the Century, that the writer of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but also of The Silmarillion and On Fairy-stories, eminently deserves serious study alongside (or indeed slightly above) the giants of modern and post-modern literature. The likes of Woolf, Eliot, and Joyce, after all, for all their brilliance, seem to have sadly hollowed out the rolls of English departments, whereas the popularity of Tolkien and Lewis has been the impetus not just for major films leading new generations to their fantasy books, but also for scholarship delving into to the full range of their work and into the sources they draw upon.
Barfield, then, is an essential guide in this adventurous "Study in Meaning," of which there seems to be a revival perennially in the works. Whether in the focused Poetic Diction or in the sweeping Saving the Appearances, his erudite explications of exemplary passages of text, his logical refutations of counter-arguments we'd likely not dreamt of making in the first place, and his impassioned calls for ever more nuanced and subtle attention to the workings of imagination and consciousness are quite the experience. Numerous shorter works freely accessible on the page of his literary estate, which calls him, a little apocalyptically, "the first and last Inkling," will give you a taste of his style (oratorical, elliptical, sententious) and a sense of his driving concerns (philology, cultural history, mystical participation).
(Hereabouts is where I would give a more detailed analysis of a few of Barfield's books, and maybe someday I will, buckling down to study Greek and Coleridge and all that before re-reading them, but I just don't think I understand them well enough to be much help at this point. Still, I would love to hear from anyone out there who does!)
Intriguingly, while Barfield had such a tremendous impact on Lewis and Tolkien, and thus on anyone who's been led by them to try to read Beowulf in Old English or to see in Chaucer or in a church window a tenth of what a medieval might have seen there, he also cites some surprisingly esoteric "'friends'" in his afterword to Poetic Diction. Chief among Barfield's enthusiasms are the founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner; Goethe, the unacknowledged scientist; and numerous thinkers he recognizes as partaking, along with Barfield himself, of "Neo-Platonism, an underground stream, and philosophically no longer quite respectable" (223). The inexhaustible reading list Barfield bequeaths also includes Spengler's Decline of the West (featured prominently in Conroy's Lords of Discipline, it took me a while to realize this was a real book); Jung, Freud and other students of "the so-called 'psychology of the unconscious'"; Giambattista Vico; Susanne Langer; and many others one would hope to see courses about on Mythgard or Signum University someday. But we should hasten to browse among them in the meantime, to talk about them with other intrepid readers, and so to continue to pass along the thrill of discovery caught from the venerable Barfield.
June 27, 2023
Like, I assume, many others I am only aware of Owen Barfield and his works due to the fact that he was a member (a ‘minor’ one as many would have it) of the Inklings. This group included men, like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and even Charles Williams, whose fame has proven to be much more far reaching than his own and one might opine that Barfield is the fourth Inkling (analogous to being the fifth Beatle I think). After reading this book I can understand both why he likely deserves to be better known, as well as why he isn’t. As is often the case when I read works by members of generations prior to my own, I can only marvel at the length and breadth of their knowledge. Barfield was, professionally at least, a London solicitor, but his knowledge of philosophy, literature, and even psychology is astounding. This erudition is on full display in _Poetic Diction_ and while I would argue that Barfield is *almost* as good at presenting complex intellectual ideas in a way that is palatable to the average reader, he doesn’t quite reach the level of accessibility attained by his friend C. S. Lewis (though I might argue, perhaps unfairly, that this may be due to the fact that he simplifies less than did his friend). I am not knowledgeable enough in either linguistics or philosophy to comment on the ultimate validity of Barfield’s theories in this book, but I think his arguments were clear enough, and hopefully my understanding thorough enough, that I can at least give a sketch of them.
In the broadest terms, Barfield is attempting to not simply give an account of how a poet ought to compose their work (as the title might suggest), but nothing less than to illustrate the development of human consciousness as exemplified in his distinction between poetic and rational thought. Ultimately, he is outlining the difference between pre-modern (really pre-historical, both literally and figuratively) humanity and post-historical humanity as seen in how they participated in the world and the way in which this can be uniquely seen in the development of language. According to Barfield the human mind moved from a state of pure participation in Nature (with a capital ‘N’) in which our consciousness (and also therefore language) was subsumed, to an abstract and rational mode of thought that led to true self-awareness. This self-awareness severed our direct link to ‘natural’ participation, but granted the ability to perceive (in an us-them relationship of which we had not previously been aware) the realities of nature through the vehicle of metaphor. Ultimately poetic prose, in its broadest definition, is the way in which the inspired human mind can use metaphor in order to create new meanings in human understanding of the world. This use of metaphor is a more or less direct link to the previous ‘holistic’ way in which humanity viewed the world and is only perceptible by the Poet, an individual granted flashes of insight that recall a more primitive (or perhaps I should say primal) state of mind and exemplifies the concrete relationships of things in the world that we would otherwise miss. As with all of his Inkling compatriots Barfield is fascinated by myth and sees the life and thought of early humanity as being immersed in mythic consciousness, a consciousness which has since been lost, but which can sometimes be regained, piece by piece, through the creative activity of the poet.
The majority of the book is spent by Barfield in defining his terms, providing examples, and clarifying the distinction between poetic and prosaic language (and insight). He attempts to give a broad overview of the stages of human consciousness and the birth and development of poetic diction as seen in the works of ancient and modern poets as well as in the development of language. He raises concerns with the direction that not only linguistics, but philosophy and psychology have taken as being antithetical to the poetic mindset and which he believes will ultimately lead humanity farther from the truths of the world that can only be provided through the vehicle of poetic diction. This is ironic given the modern, and post-modern, obsession with ‘fact’ and logic, but Barfield sees these very characteristics as at the root of the weakness of their approach. As I noted above, I am not well versed enough in philosophy and linguistics to really comment on this, but I couldn’t help but feel that Barfield’s ideas are strongly influenced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, now considered debunked and very out of date. Barfield’s distinction might be that language, far from being something that determines our beliefs and ideas through accidental and relative circumstances, is rather a tool which, under the right conditions, allows us to perceive an objective truth in the world. I may be way off track here and I am merely grasping at things of which I am only partially aware, but this book certainly gave me much food for thought, and I am now very curious to read some of Barfield’s other works to see what further light they can shed on his ideas for me.
In the broadest terms, Barfield is attempting to not simply give an account of how a poet ought to compose their work (as the title might suggest), but nothing less than to illustrate the development of human consciousness as exemplified in his distinction between poetic and rational thought. Ultimately, he is outlining the difference between pre-modern (really pre-historical, both literally and figuratively) humanity and post-historical humanity as seen in how they participated in the world and the way in which this can be uniquely seen in the development of language. According to Barfield the human mind moved from a state of pure participation in Nature (with a capital ‘N’) in which our consciousness (and also therefore language) was subsumed, to an abstract and rational mode of thought that led to true self-awareness. This self-awareness severed our direct link to ‘natural’ participation, but granted the ability to perceive (in an us-them relationship of which we had not previously been aware) the realities of nature through the vehicle of metaphor. Ultimately poetic prose, in its broadest definition, is the way in which the inspired human mind can use metaphor in order to create new meanings in human understanding of the world. This use of metaphor is a more or less direct link to the previous ‘holistic’ way in which humanity viewed the world and is only perceptible by the Poet, an individual granted flashes of insight that recall a more primitive (or perhaps I should say primal) state of mind and exemplifies the concrete relationships of things in the world that we would otherwise miss. As with all of his Inkling compatriots Barfield is fascinated by myth and sees the life and thought of early humanity as being immersed in mythic consciousness, a consciousness which has since been lost, but which can sometimes be regained, piece by piece, through the creative activity of the poet.
The majority of the book is spent by Barfield in defining his terms, providing examples, and clarifying the distinction between poetic and prosaic language (and insight). He attempts to give a broad overview of the stages of human consciousness and the birth and development of poetic diction as seen in the works of ancient and modern poets as well as in the development of language. He raises concerns with the direction that not only linguistics, but philosophy and psychology have taken as being antithetical to the poetic mindset and which he believes will ultimately lead humanity farther from the truths of the world that can only be provided through the vehicle of poetic diction. This is ironic given the modern, and post-modern, obsession with ‘fact’ and logic, but Barfield sees these very characteristics as at the root of the weakness of their approach. As I noted above, I am not well versed enough in philosophy and linguistics to really comment on this, but I couldn’t help but feel that Barfield’s ideas are strongly influenced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, now considered debunked and very out of date. Barfield’s distinction might be that language, far from being something that determines our beliefs and ideas through accidental and relative circumstances, is rather a tool which, under the right conditions, allows us to perceive an objective truth in the world. I may be way off track here and I am merely grasping at things of which I am only partially aware, but this book certainly gave me much food for thought, and I am now very curious to read some of Barfield’s other works to see what further light they can shed on his ideas for me.
October 20, 2014
Assigned for Dr. Ralph Wood's Oxford Christians course at Baylor (2014). Some really great things in here, but not an accessible book. Here's Barfield's assessment of the book, 46 years after its publication: "If the book does anything, it erects a structure of thought on the basis of a felt difference between what it calls 'the Prosaic' and 'the Poetic'. Corollary thereto is a further distinction drawn between two kinds of poetry, or of the Poetic itself, and further the conception that that distinction reveals human consciousness as in process of evolution. And I wonder if the fact that I seemed to have discovered, or rather to be discovering, these thing for myself, mainly by pondering the felt difference to which I have referred, may not have imparted a certain energy that accounts for its having apparently outlasted some other books by men who knew a great deal more both of literature and of the history of ideas" (Afterword, 221).
Nemerov's Foreward:
2: should poets be contemplative?
3: should poets be philosophical?
4: shift in understanding "imagination"
4-5: Jonson and Ingenium, Exercitatio, Imitatio, and Lectio
5: separation of prose and poetry (17c and 18c)
6: turning point at French Revolution; Wordsworth opposed poetic diction
6-7: revolt and rebellion
7-9: Wordsworth and Blake
Barfield's Preface to the Second Edition:
15/17: only veridical scientific statements have meaning (what about that statement itself?—see p. 22)
17: Locke—no innate ideas (all from senses)
18: today philosophy requires a foundation in science
23-24: parable of a car
26: Coleridge
28: importance of imagination
29: loafing; thesis
31: secondary and primary imagination
32: genius (Hume); other genius pp.: 50, 66, 128, 131, 141, 161, 172, 220)
32: create
34: two functions of poetry; one is to mirror (see p. 36)
38: man's myth-making faculty; English poetry is still alive
Chapters 1-12:
41: definition of "poetic diction"
58: Coleridge: poetry is the best language (the best words in the best order)
63: language is metaphor
74: spiritus (also p. 80)
87-88: Odin
92: mythology and concrete meaning
106: importance of memory
107: find meaning inside yourself?
109: history of poetic inspiration; two moods
111: two kinds of poetry
112: "creation" an okay term to use; metaphor uses unknown to arouse cognition of the known (cf. Pieper?)
113-14: ruin meant "flow"?
115: sleeping beauty metaphor
131: change of meaning —> originality
136: Wilde
137: shift in the meaning of "subjective" in the 17c (see Appendix IV); Bacon applied mechanical principles to natural principles
137-38: Bacon, Newton, Kepler, Hobbes
140-41: language is basically a process of transforming metaphor into meaning
143-44: limitations of the rational principle
145: poetry does not equal meter
147: verse/prose (meter); poetic/prosaic (spiritual?)
152: review of poetic pleasure; archaism as the most characteristic phenomenon
158: creating vs. restoring
159-60: creating vs. imitating
167: fame of great poets is posthumous
168: can non-poets be good critics?
169-70: seers need interpreting (they can't interpret themselves)
170-77: strangeness
171: Aristotle's Poetics—unfamiliarity can aid contemplation
173-74: making familiar things stand out (Herbert, Chesterton)
179: Emerson on fossil poetry
180: Keats's love of Greek myths; Johnson/ColeridgeΩ–poetry arouses pleasure
Appendixes:
191: synthesis (all of Appendix II)
200: analogy
202: poetry as escape; madhouse
203: Jung and myths
210: Dante
217: Auerback, Bloom
Afterward:
218: Abrams's Mirror and the Lamp; Bodkin; Fiedler
219: Frye; Vico
220: Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being
221: Barfield's sense of inadequacy
Nemerov's Foreward:
2: should poets be contemplative?
3: should poets be philosophical?
4: shift in understanding "imagination"
4-5: Jonson and Ingenium, Exercitatio, Imitatio, and Lectio
5: separation of prose and poetry (17c and 18c)
6: turning point at French Revolution; Wordsworth opposed poetic diction
6-7: revolt and rebellion
7-9: Wordsworth and Blake
Barfield's Preface to the Second Edition:
15/17: only veridical scientific statements have meaning (what about that statement itself?—see p. 22)
17: Locke—no innate ideas (all from senses)
18: today philosophy requires a foundation in science
23-24: parable of a car
26: Coleridge
28: importance of imagination
29: loafing; thesis
31: secondary and primary imagination
32: genius (Hume); other genius pp.: 50, 66, 128, 131, 141, 161, 172, 220)
32: create
34: two functions of poetry; one is to mirror (see p. 36)
38: man's myth-making faculty; English poetry is still alive
Chapters 1-12:
41: definition of "poetic diction"
58: Coleridge: poetry is the best language (the best words in the best order)
63: language is metaphor
74: spiritus (also p. 80)
87-88: Odin
92: mythology and concrete meaning
106: importance of memory
107: find meaning inside yourself?
109: history of poetic inspiration; two moods
111: two kinds of poetry
112: "creation" an okay term to use; metaphor uses unknown to arouse cognition of the known (cf. Pieper?)
113-14: ruin meant "flow"?
115: sleeping beauty metaphor
131: change of meaning —> originality
136: Wilde
137: shift in the meaning of "subjective" in the 17c (see Appendix IV); Bacon applied mechanical principles to natural principles
137-38: Bacon, Newton, Kepler, Hobbes
140-41: language is basically a process of transforming metaphor into meaning
143-44: limitations of the rational principle
145: poetry does not equal meter
147: verse/prose (meter); poetic/prosaic (spiritual?)
152: review of poetic pleasure; archaism as the most characteristic phenomenon
158: creating vs. restoring
159-60: creating vs. imitating
167: fame of great poets is posthumous
168: can non-poets be good critics?
169-70: seers need interpreting (they can't interpret themselves)
170-77: strangeness
171: Aristotle's Poetics—unfamiliarity can aid contemplation
173-74: making familiar things stand out (Herbert, Chesterton)
179: Emerson on fossil poetry
180: Keats's love of Greek myths; Johnson/ColeridgeΩ–poetry arouses pleasure
Appendixes:
191: synthesis (all of Appendix II)
200: analogy
202: poetry as escape; madhouse
203: Jung and myths
210: Dante
217: Auerback, Bloom
Afterward:
218: Abrams's Mirror and the Lamp; Bodkin; Fiedler
219: Frye; Vico
220: Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being
221: Barfield's sense of inadequacy
July 18, 2025
This was different; one thing that's quite striking is his casual use of untranslated greek, latin and french.... only 100 years ago but Barfield was writing in a different age.
In general people today don't think enough about meaning, too often the study of texts with a modern mindset means the decoding of them as if the medium chosen is of low importance; conversely the postmodern mindset denies any true meaning; a book like this seeking to explore the concept of meaning more seriously whilst being neither modern nor postmodern is a helpful tonic.
Aside from that there's definitely something to Barfield's arguments about the history of words and meaning; but whilst I agree he's right to condemn modernism I don't think he has entirely correct answers. I think it's a bit of a misfire to divide the rational and the poetic and confine true meaning only to the latter.
Nonetheless a very thought provoking book - and certainly worth reading for anyone who's read a lot of CS Lewis and wants to understand him better.
In general people today don't think enough about meaning, too often the study of texts with a modern mindset means the decoding of them as if the medium chosen is of low importance; conversely the postmodern mindset denies any true meaning; a book like this seeking to explore the concept of meaning more seriously whilst being neither modern nor postmodern is a helpful tonic.
Aside from that there's definitely something to Barfield's arguments about the history of words and meaning; but whilst I agree he's right to condemn modernism I don't think he has entirely correct answers. I think it's a bit of a misfire to divide the rational and the poetic and confine true meaning only to the latter.
Nonetheless a very thought provoking book - and certainly worth reading for anyone who's read a lot of CS Lewis and wants to understand him better.
August 15, 2011
Owen Barfield has truly written a philosophical and literary masterpiece. "Poetic Diction" begins with a phenomenological analysis of poetry, and why it affects us the way it does. But it quickly expands into an exploration of how we know things, and the shape of reality as a whole. Barfield critiques the works of Locke, Kant and Hume, and provides a basis for understanding meaning as a description of our relationship with reality. Poetry becomes a description of this experience, about how our participation with reality changes our consciousness. Well researched and beautifully written. The Second Preface and the Appendices were extremely helpful, and contained some of the mean of the argument. Highly recommended for anyone interested in: poetry criticism, literary criticism, epistemology, metaphysics, or the history of philosophy.
July 25, 2017
I know that there is more in this book than I got out of it. Barfield assumes a lot from his readers, not only fluency in poetry and philosophy, but also French, Latin, and Greek. What I mostly derived from it was how poorly educated I really am. Some great insights made it in past my ignorance, however. Thus the four stars.
January 26, 2009
Really fine.
March 24, 2008
I think this book kind of fucked me up in the head. In trying to trace back to when I stopped believing and acting as if words mean the same thing to everybody, I think I find the headwaters of that belief in Barfield's writings and this book in particular. Or maybe I'm just a Gen-Xer with a heightened awareness of the role of stories and filters and worldviews.
In any event, Barfield lays out an sequence of interesting examples of how words have danced with meaning, and how that dance has changed leading up to modern times.
This book is heady stuff, but I thought it was an interesting read. And if I'm right about the role it's played in my life, it's made life more real but more complicated.
In any event, Barfield lays out an sequence of interesting examples of how words have danced with meaning, and how that dance has changed leading up to modern times.
This book is heady stuff, but I thought it was an interesting read. And if I'm right about the role it's played in my life, it's made life more real but more complicated.
December 27, 2011
According to Barfield, language has preserved the inner history of human beings and reveals the evolution of consciousness. Embedded in our subconscious is the memory of when language was more of an archetype symbolic expression, which is why poetry excites the aesthetic imagination and has the potential of producing a felt change in consciousness.
Barfield also attempts to heal the subject / object split that has occurred through the evolution of consciousness by providing a participatory epistemology that includes an extra sensory relationship between the person and the phenomenon. He stands on the shoulders of Kant, Goethe, and Rudolph Steiner. I will return to this book in the future, and I believe there is an extraordinary amount of treasure to found here.
Barfield also attempts to heal the subject / object split that has occurred through the evolution of consciousness by providing a participatory epistemology that includes an extra sensory relationship between the person and the phenomenon. He stands on the shoulders of Kant, Goethe, and Rudolph Steiner. I will return to this book in the future, and I believe there is an extraordinary amount of treasure to found here.
November 10, 2014
This is my second time to read this. I enjoyed it a lot more my second time through. I'm reading it because I have reread The Lord of the Rings 14 times, The Hobbit 8 times, The silmarillion 6 to 8 times, and all of the volumes of The History of Middle-earth, and other things by Tolkien between 1 and 3 times. I have read literary criticisms of Tolkien's work. So, I'm reading the other Inklings. I read a fair amount of C.S. Lewis. I don't really like Charles Williams. I am enjoying Own Barfield. His work is hard, but he shared the interests and values of the other Inklings and that gives me a little something. I just hope that what I get in the end will be worth the work it takes to understand the work.
November 24, 2020
This book and its approach to poetry is quite old-fashioned, but, by virtue of being so far removed from today’s approach, it also feels new and fresh. I was pleasant surprised and particularly enjoyed Barfield’s claims about the connection between poetry and consciousness.
January 20, 2023
A really fascinating book that challenges paradigms and ideas often taken for granted, addressing such questions as how did language development? What is meaning? And how dependant are humans on metaphor?
July 9, 2017
Stimulating and suggestive.
November 2, 2015
This is a difficult book to review. Its arguments are complex, broad in scope and application, and ironically reductive. On the face of it, it is a meditation on a line from Emerson--"Language is fossil poetry" (from "The Poet")--that is taken so far to the extreme that it breaks.
Most of what I have to say is criticism of Barfield which might give the impression that I hated the book. In fact, I quite liked it. The ideas have great appeal. The real shame is that he overreaches so far that I can no longer agree with him. In a way it is like empathizing with a grieving father who advocates revenge killing the accused murderer of his child. I understand the emotions, but he's just taken things too far.
Well, let me take a step back. Do you remember the theme song to The Facts of Life? Sing it with me:
I feel this song sums up Poetic Diction pretty well, but perhaps this statement requires some explanation...
Barfield's big idea is that if "language is fossil poetry," then working our way back into linguistic time, language should get intrinsically more and more poetic until finally we hit the bedrock of language where all human linguistic experience is ultimate poetry. What's more, this ur-poetry is supposedly a "truer" state of understanding of the universe than the cult of modern empiricism offers.
The Facts of Life
The first problem is that these are two distinct claims. Claim #1: older language is more intrinsically poetic. Claim #2: the more poetic language is a more accurate representation of the universe than the modern prosaic language. Barfield gives some evidence of #1 and thinks he's proved #2. This is little more than a textbook example of the kind of chronological snobbery that Barfield accused scientism of. The only way to infer the truth of #2 from #1 is to assume a priori that older is better.
The second problem is Barfield's oblique re-statement of William Paley's watchmaker argument from Natural Theology. Anyone who is familiar with the teleological argument against evolution by natural selection can see that Barfield's arguments here are a close cousin in the linguistic domain. Compare Barfield's descriptions of how poetic language degenerates over time to creationists assertions of genetic degeneration.
Applying Barfield's logic to the actual fossil record (rather than the linguistic fossil record), we would expect the essence of life (to keep the "essence" tangible, let's call it DNA shall we...) to get more and more potent as you move back in time until we arrive at the earliest organisms that are the quintessence of life. In fact, we know that the truth is entirely the opposite. DNA began simple and evolved non-random adaptations from random mutations over obscene timescales.
Whenever Barfield bumps up against such things he falls back on the claim that changes in consciousness drive changes in the perception of evidence. This is an incredibly lazy dismissal of empiricism. He really can't decide if he is a subjectivist or Platonic objectivist. He asserts either whenever it gives him the strongest argument against science.
He takes the good, and leaves the bad
The bulk of Barfield's evidence comes from two sources: internal reflection and historical linguistics. He rightly discusses poetry in terms of "a felt change in consciousness" that is accessible to us only through internal reflection. However, he does not allow for changes of consciousness that work both ways. If moving from prosaic to metaphoric thinking causes such a change that has value, is not the change caused by moving from metaphoric to prosaic also valuable? Would this not also qualify as poetic in Barfield's own system?
He also plays fast and loose with linguistics. His evidence of linguistic change is almost entirely predicated on the evolution of the Indo-European languages which is largely the story of transition from synthetic to isolating languages. But as I understand it, that is by no means the only direction of language change and is by no means a one-way street. He cites Chinese as being further along this path of degeneration from the poetic ideal, but yet this entirely contradicts his thesis. If his view of the interaction of language and consciousness were true, then the Chinese culture should be the epitome of scientism and it is not. His conception of poetry presupposes a strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which is now out of favor.
At best, the linguistic evidence is inconclusive--especially considering that anatomically modern humans have existed for ~200,000 years but our linguistic evidence is only about ~6,000 years old. The oldest languages we can point to are unlikely to be truly early languages at all. It occurs to me now that the Biblical creationist chronology begins around 6,000 years ago too. Coincidence?
When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams
...assert the Facts of Life are all about your internal experience of poetry.
Most of what I have to say is criticism of Barfield which might give the impression that I hated the book. In fact, I quite liked it. The ideas have great appeal. The real shame is that he overreaches so far that I can no longer agree with him. In a way it is like empathizing with a grieving father who advocates revenge killing the accused murderer of his child. I understand the emotions, but he's just taken things too far.
Well, let me take a step back. Do you remember the theme song to The Facts of Life? Sing it with me:
You take the good, you take the bad,
You take 'em both and there you have,
The Facts of Life.
[...]
When the world never seems
To be living up to your dreams
And suddenly you're finding out
The Facts of Life are all about you.
I feel this song sums up Poetic Diction pretty well, but perhaps this statement requires some explanation...
Barfield's big idea is that if "language is fossil poetry," then working our way back into linguistic time, language should get intrinsically more and more poetic until finally we hit the bedrock of language where all human linguistic experience is ultimate poetry. What's more, this ur-poetry is supposedly a "truer" state of understanding of the universe than the cult of modern empiricism offers.
The Facts of Life
The first problem is that these are two distinct claims. Claim #1: older language is more intrinsically poetic. Claim #2: the more poetic language is a more accurate representation of the universe than the modern prosaic language. Barfield gives some evidence of #1 and thinks he's proved #2. This is little more than a textbook example of the kind of chronological snobbery that Barfield accused scientism of. The only way to infer the truth of #2 from #1 is to assume a priori that older is better.
The second problem is Barfield's oblique re-statement of William Paley's watchmaker argument from Natural Theology. Anyone who is familiar with the teleological argument against evolution by natural selection can see that Barfield's arguments here are a close cousin in the linguistic domain. Compare Barfield's descriptions of how poetic language degenerates over time to creationists assertions of genetic degeneration.
Applying Barfield's logic to the actual fossil record (rather than the linguistic fossil record), we would expect the essence of life (to keep the "essence" tangible, let's call it DNA shall we...) to get more and more potent as you move back in time until we arrive at the earliest organisms that are the quintessence of life. In fact, we know that the truth is entirely the opposite. DNA began simple and evolved non-random adaptations from random mutations over obscene timescales.
Whenever Barfield bumps up against such things he falls back on the claim that changes in consciousness drive changes in the perception of evidence. This is an incredibly lazy dismissal of empiricism. He really can't decide if he is a subjectivist or Platonic objectivist. He asserts either whenever it gives him the strongest argument against science.
He takes the good, and leaves the bad
The bulk of Barfield's evidence comes from two sources: internal reflection and historical linguistics. He rightly discusses poetry in terms of "a felt change in consciousness" that is accessible to us only through internal reflection. However, he does not allow for changes of consciousness that work both ways. If moving from prosaic to metaphoric thinking causes such a change that has value, is not the change caused by moving from metaphoric to prosaic also valuable? Would this not also qualify as poetic in Barfield's own system?
He also plays fast and loose with linguistics. His evidence of linguistic change is almost entirely predicated on the evolution of the Indo-European languages which is largely the story of transition from synthetic to isolating languages. But as I understand it, that is by no means the only direction of language change and is by no means a one-way street. He cites Chinese as being further along this path of degeneration from the poetic ideal, but yet this entirely contradicts his thesis. If his view of the interaction of language and consciousness were true, then the Chinese culture should be the epitome of scientism and it is not. His conception of poetry presupposes a strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which is now out of favor.
At best, the linguistic evidence is inconclusive--especially considering that anatomically modern humans have existed for ~200,000 years but our linguistic evidence is only about ~6,000 years old. The oldest languages we can point to are unlikely to be truly early languages at all. It occurs to me now that the Biblical creationist chronology begins around 6,000 years ago too. Coincidence?
When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams
...assert the Facts of Life are all about your internal experience of poetry.
August 17, 2018
On Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield
"Wow, that man is intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity," Dad retorted upon hearing a quote from Owen Barfield's "Poetic Diction". I had just completed it on the plane ride over to visit with them and I was quite pleased with myself. Afterall, this was a dense read - Barfield would often slip into Latin, French, and at times German as if it were nothing. One reviewer stated (paraphrased) "the problem with this book starts long before you pick it up... the problem is with the reader. One must be classically educated to even read it". I was classically educated and I /still/ had to read some paragraphs multiple times to glean from their meaning. Nevertheless, this text will go into the canon of my "greats". Barfield gave context and education in things I hoped to grow in, but he also expanded my very premises and gave me new depths as to how I viewed language and meaning. Let us not forget the last and most precious gift: a microscope, periscope, and at times kaleidoscope into a world of things I don't yet know - how delicious.
Loquacious as he may be, Barfield is not pedantic, though he may be perceived as such, especially upon hearing an excerpt (as my father did). Barfield is simply committed to the highest goods that precise and comprehensive speech on a matter can serve. His many clauses and conditions in each sentence require some initial calibration to trod out the underlying subject-verb agreement and offer any sort of illumination to the reader. Once the reader begins to adapt, however, they find some of the most fair, rich, and worthy words on the subject of words and their meanings. And, of course, it is fitting that a book on words and meaning should be thus.
Sharp wit punctuates his treatise as he casts expert level shade on the lesser... which, come to find out, is the by-and-large of poetry. He jabs at misused elements of the form such as bad metaphors, cliche, and the too-vague-to-have-any-meaning as well as the poets who employ their poor usage. For a minute, you are invited to escape into his ivory tower, sipping some brandy in a smoking jacket with him, perhaps, until you realize you are the culprit of this same "lesser" that you are, with him, mocking. Another of his gifts: you will, at some point, laugh at yourself... but not in such a way as to discourage you from the art. This is because his words are indelibly inviting. He does not promise more and then elude you of it. He unveils the glory and leads in the way of obtaining it. More unique, perhaps, than the flourish of his own dialectic journey is the subtle distribution of tools he gives you along the way to obtain your own summits with the words and poems that move you. He makes an example of the word "ruin" - its poetic etymology, if you will, what it came to mean as poets breathed the electricity of creative meaning into it.
Sitting with a man's organized, compelling thoughts makes the reader want to organize their own. While a capital intellect, Barfield does not write as a professor, but as a lover: a man who loves beautiful things and is unafraid of the thinking it will take to gain them. His trails, too, are terribly alluring as his methods seem a parlor trick at first. He unashamedly states that he will prove the underlying truths about poetry by offering a critique from his own experiences. It is a risky (many would say faulty) way to begin a treatise, but, at every turn, Barfield proves entirely up to the task and I am well convinced that he has accomplished his goal of communicating truths clearly, deeply, and, indeed, through means of his own experiences. I am much more versed in the assessing of verse and in the determining of its poetic quality after having read this book. I am also more attentive to the power a word can hold, compound, and collect. Paired with my old professor's exhortations to not leave a sentence you have not fallen in love with, I am enriched with more tools of love and satisfaction.
For the love of words, I will write. For the promise of growth, I will write. For the prospect of someday having something worth saying, I will write today so that when I am old, I will be able to say it. Barfield's influence will stay with me forever because he didn't just give me, an average reader, information... but something to fall in love with... and so, long after I forget why "ruin" means so much, it will still be beautiful to me.
"Wow, that man is intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity," Dad retorted upon hearing a quote from Owen Barfield's "Poetic Diction". I had just completed it on the plane ride over to visit with them and I was quite pleased with myself. Afterall, this was a dense read - Barfield would often slip into Latin, French, and at times German as if it were nothing. One reviewer stated (paraphrased) "the problem with this book starts long before you pick it up... the problem is with the reader. One must be classically educated to even read it". I was classically educated and I /still/ had to read some paragraphs multiple times to glean from their meaning. Nevertheless, this text will go into the canon of my "greats". Barfield gave context and education in things I hoped to grow in, but he also expanded my very premises and gave me new depths as to how I viewed language and meaning. Let us not forget the last and most precious gift: a microscope, periscope, and at times kaleidoscope into a world of things I don't yet know - how delicious.
Loquacious as he may be, Barfield is not pedantic, though he may be perceived as such, especially upon hearing an excerpt (as my father did). Barfield is simply committed to the highest goods that precise and comprehensive speech on a matter can serve. His many clauses and conditions in each sentence require some initial calibration to trod out the underlying subject-verb agreement and offer any sort of illumination to the reader. Once the reader begins to adapt, however, they find some of the most fair, rich, and worthy words on the subject of words and their meanings. And, of course, it is fitting that a book on words and meaning should be thus.
Sharp wit punctuates his treatise as he casts expert level shade on the lesser... which, come to find out, is the by-and-large of poetry. He jabs at misused elements of the form such as bad metaphors, cliche, and the too-vague-to-have-any-meaning as well as the poets who employ their poor usage. For a minute, you are invited to escape into his ivory tower, sipping some brandy in a smoking jacket with him, perhaps, until you realize you are the culprit of this same "lesser" that you are, with him, mocking. Another of his gifts: you will, at some point, laugh at yourself... but not in such a way as to discourage you from the art. This is because his words are indelibly inviting. He does not promise more and then elude you of it. He unveils the glory and leads in the way of obtaining it. More unique, perhaps, than the flourish of his own dialectic journey is the subtle distribution of tools he gives you along the way to obtain your own summits with the words and poems that move you. He makes an example of the word "ruin" - its poetic etymology, if you will, what it came to mean as poets breathed the electricity of creative meaning into it.
Sitting with a man's organized, compelling thoughts makes the reader want to organize their own. While a capital intellect, Barfield does not write as a professor, but as a lover: a man who loves beautiful things and is unafraid of the thinking it will take to gain them. His trails, too, are terribly alluring as his methods seem a parlor trick at first. He unashamedly states that he will prove the underlying truths about poetry by offering a critique from his own experiences. It is a risky (many would say faulty) way to begin a treatise, but, at every turn, Barfield proves entirely up to the task and I am well convinced that he has accomplished his goal of communicating truths clearly, deeply, and, indeed, through means of his own experiences. I am much more versed in the assessing of verse and in the determining of its poetic quality after having read this book. I am also more attentive to the power a word can hold, compound, and collect. Paired with my old professor's exhortations to not leave a sentence you have not fallen in love with, I am enriched with more tools of love and satisfaction.
For the love of words, I will write. For the promise of growth, I will write. For the prospect of someday having something worth saying, I will write today so that when I am old, I will be able to say it. Barfield's influence will stay with me forever because he didn't just give me, an average reader, information... but something to fall in love with... and so, long after I forget why "ruin" means so much, it will still be beautiful to me.
July 31, 2024
This is the kind of stuff I wish I would have encountered in my lit theory classes (rather than interminable days of cultural studies). Barfield is probing for the threshold of revelation, so the book is at times dazzlingly lucid and at other times opaque and disorienting. I often felt like I was listening in on a conversation whose terms I'm only just able to comprehend. But it was worth the effort for the flashes of insight. I'm sure I'll keep coming back to it in my teaching and writing.
This line alone, from the conclusion, made it worthwhile: "Great poetry is the progressive incarnation of life in consciousness." (181)
This line alone, from the conclusion, made it worthwhile: "Great poetry is the progressive incarnation of life in consciousness." (181)
December 4, 2016
This is quite a difficult book for me to review, because I'm not really sure what to make of it. I suspect it will take at least one more reading before it really sinks in.
Actually, it is quite possible that Barfield himself wrote an excellent review, as part of is Preface to the book's second edition (1951 - the original being from 1928):
Yes indeed, Barfield attempts all that, nor am I ambitious enough to summarize the theory of poetry that he takes 225 pages to unfold. I can, however, mention some of its salient features.
First, that he distinguishes between poetry and verse. Poetry, for Barfield, is a quality of language: poetic diction, as opposed to prosaic diction, either of which may appear in verse or prose form.
Poetic language, poetry, he suggests, is language that creates new meaning for (at least some of) the words it uses.
A great deal of the book is given over to a proposed revision of the commonly-held theories (as of 1928) of how language arises, and of how words "create" meaning in the mind of the reader/writer/speaker/hearer. He does not explicitly rejects, but thoroughly criticizes, the philological assumption that all modern languages are grown from simple linguistic "roots," suggesting that out grancestors actually had much more capacity for abstraction in language than we give them credit for - and, at the same time, much more capacity for concrete specificity.
He suggests that words that seemed to have two meanings - such as the Latin verb "ruo," which is translated (depending on context) either as "rush" or "fall." It may be, he says, that to the Latin mind, there was a single meaning -- a single concept that has relationship to both, but is not either of, the modern concepts "rush" and "fall." He traces one of the word's English descendants, ruin, through a series of meaning-concepts it has represented over the centuries.
I can't really grok his conclusions very well; as I said, I shall have to reread this book at some point. But it has something to do with the idea that poetic language occurs precisely when the speaker/writer says/writes something that the hearer/reader finds "strange" -- for a variety of meanings of "strange," which however basically come to "the hearer/reader is given a new way of seeing something."
Actually, it is quite possible that Barfield himself wrote an excellent review, as part of is Preface to the book's second edition (1951 - the original being from 1928):
...[T]his book grew out of two empirical observations, first, that poetry reacts on the meanings of the words that it employs, and, secondly, that there appear to be two sorts of poetry... Thus, it claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge.
Yes indeed, Barfield attempts all that, nor am I ambitious enough to summarize the theory of poetry that he takes 225 pages to unfold. I can, however, mention some of its salient features.
First, that he distinguishes between poetry and verse. Poetry, for Barfield, is a quality of language: poetic diction, as opposed to prosaic diction, either of which may appear in verse or prose form.
Poetic language, poetry, he suggests, is language that creates new meaning for (at least some of) the words it uses.
When words are selected and arranged in such a way that their meaning either arouses, or is obviously intended to arouse, aesthetic imagination, the result may be described as poetic diction... Meaning includes the whole content of a word, or of a group of words arranged in a particular order, other than the actual sounds of which they are composed.Indeed, Barfield eschews discussion of things like rhyme, alliteration, and so on, except passim in service of other birds he is hunting.
A great deal of the book is given over to a proposed revision of the commonly-held theories (as of 1928) of how language arises, and of how words "create" meaning in the mind of the reader/writer/speaker/hearer. He does not explicitly rejects, but thoroughly criticizes, the philological assumption that all modern languages are grown from simple linguistic "roots," suggesting that out grancestors actually had much more capacity for abstraction in language than we give them credit for - and, at the same time, much more capacity for concrete specificity.
He suggests that words that seemed to have two meanings - such as the Latin verb "ruo," which is translated (depending on context) either as "rush" or "fall." It may be, he says, that to the Latin mind, there was a single meaning -- a single concept that has relationship to both, but is not either of, the modern concepts "rush" and "fall." He traces one of the word's English descendants, ruin, through a series of meaning-concepts it has represented over the centuries.
I can't really grok his conclusions very well; as I said, I shall have to reread this book at some point. But it has something to do with the idea that poetic language occurs precisely when the speaker/writer says/writes something that the hearer/reader finds "strange" -- for a variety of meanings of "strange," which however basically come to "the hearer/reader is given a new way of seeing something."
November 15, 2007
Don't have this fresh in my mind as it's been a while since I read this, but I think Barfield's work is interesting not only as a key to the thought of the Inklings, but as a philosophical/literary perspective parallel to but a bit off from mainstream 20th century thought. I feel like there are a lot of resonances with hermeneutic phenomenology, and hope to explore that further. For example, Barfield's ideas about metaphor seem to me very similar to Dreyfus' account of Heidegger's own work:
"On the contrary, Heidegger wants us to see that at an early stage of language the distinction metaphorical/literal has not yet emerged". p. 42, Being-In-The-World, Hubert Dreyfus. I find no mention of Heidegger or Ricoeur in the index and bibliography of Verlyn Flieger's book Splintered Light, on Tolkien and Barfield, which maybe isn't surprising considering how phenomenology was taken on so much by french thinkers (Tolkien was anything but a francophile) and it's association with Sartre's existentialism (who misinterpreted Heidegger, according to Dreyfus), but I think a mutual cross examination of both sides, eg, Barfield and Ricoeur, would be quite fruitful-- but maybe that's just me trying to consolidate my diverse interests.
"On the contrary, Heidegger wants us to see that at an early stage of language the distinction metaphorical/literal has not yet emerged". p. 42, Being-In-The-World, Hubert Dreyfus. I find no mention of Heidegger or Ricoeur in the index and bibliography of Verlyn Flieger's book Splintered Light, on Tolkien and Barfield, which maybe isn't surprising considering how phenomenology was taken on so much by french thinkers (Tolkien was anything but a francophile) and it's association with Sartre's existentialism (who misinterpreted Heidegger, according to Dreyfus), but I think a mutual cross examination of both sides, eg, Barfield and Ricoeur, would be quite fruitful-- but maybe that's just me trying to consolidate my diverse interests.
December 11, 2015
This was a fascinating little book that made me think a lot about different topics that I hadn't thought about all that much before. Because this field of literary studies is a relatively new field for me, I'm not sure how much I agree with his ideas (they all seemed to be pretty good ideas when I read it; but the first person to speak always sounds right until the second begins to speak), but they definitely provoked me to reflect on this more. I didn't read all of this book as thoroughly as I could, so some day I'd like to come back to this when I have more experience in this field and more time on my hands. Overall, this was a thought-provoking book with a lot of intriguing theories.
Rating: 3.5 Stars (Good).
Rating: 3.5 Stars (Good).
June 29, 2017
There is absolutely more to this book than I have gotten from it on this read, so someday I'm gonna have to read it again.
My 90-year-old landlord lent me this book earlier this month, and tonight we kicked a belligerent and drunk homeless man off the porch who had decided to set up camp with his sleeping bag directly across my door. I give this book four stars because I admire the way my landlord snatched the sleeping bag from the guy's hands, slowly plodded it to the curb, and threw it decisively into a puddle. We experienced this together, and for that, I give this book four stars and I will someday read it again.
My 90-year-old landlord lent me this book earlier this month, and tonight we kicked a belligerent and drunk homeless man off the porch who had decided to set up camp with his sleeping bag directly across my door. I give this book four stars because I admire the way my landlord snatched the sleeping bag from the guy's hands, slowly plodded it to the curb, and threw it decisively into a puddle. We experienced this together, and for that, I give this book four stars and I will someday read it again.
January 24, 2022
I really loved this book. Fair warning, Barfield's writing can be dense in places (particularly the Appendices) but the central thesis is enormously compelling and I look forward to finding further exploration of it, hopefully in other authors as well as other examples of Barfield's work. I should also note that I came to "Poetic Diction" out of my general interest in the Inklings and a desire to get a solid "feel" for how Barfield's thought fits within their conversation. The book is helpful in that context as well.
May 12, 2021
If poetic diction expresses the imagination's "demand for unity," is it any wonder that such diction is made to seem rarefied in our prosaic age of hot takes, fetishized discord, Grammarly outrage? Polished crass.
June 4, 2023
I picked this book up due to C.S. Lewis' recommendation. I think he recommended it in Miracles.
This book is dense. It has some very powerful and impressive ideas, yet the language is so dense it is hard to enjoy the ideas. It reminded me of Noam Chomsky and other philosophical works like Locke, Kant, etc. Barfield references such works, and this book reads like them.
Barfield posits that all language is originally poetic. That means persons created and used words for concrete and abstract experiences that they actually lived. Since language had not evolved and developed yet into what Barfield refers to as fossilized poetry, these persons felt a change of consciousness when they expressed this language. But after many millenia of development, the words lose their connection to real life experience and become defined by other words. This is a very interesting idea, and it feels quite true.
Likewise, Barfield suggests there is an intrinsic point in the history of all languages at which they are perfectly developed enough for artistic greatness. This is quite an egalitarian concept, and once again, it feels true.
Should we though continually tear down our language to make a return to primitive meaning or that sweet spot when a language is primed for artistic greatness? Will our language cause us to live a living death because its vocabulary and grammar are so far removed from real life? I do not believe Barfield would say he was suggesting such ideas, yet if not, truly, I do not know what his intentions or conclusions are. Perhaps, he had none, and this was a thought experiment searching for truth and that is all.
This book is dense. It has some very powerful and impressive ideas, yet the language is so dense it is hard to enjoy the ideas. It reminded me of Noam Chomsky and other philosophical works like Locke, Kant, etc. Barfield references such works, and this book reads like them.
Barfield posits that all language is originally poetic. That means persons created and used words for concrete and abstract experiences that they actually lived. Since language had not evolved and developed yet into what Barfield refers to as fossilized poetry, these persons felt a change of consciousness when they expressed this language. But after many millenia of development, the words lose their connection to real life experience and become defined by other words. This is a very interesting idea, and it feels quite true.
Likewise, Barfield suggests there is an intrinsic point in the history of all languages at which they are perfectly developed enough for artistic greatness. This is quite an egalitarian concept, and once again, it feels true.
Should we though continually tear down our language to make a return to primitive meaning or that sweet spot when a language is primed for artistic greatness? Will our language cause us to live a living death because its vocabulary and grammar are so far removed from real life? I do not believe Barfield would say he was suggesting such ideas, yet if not, truly, I do not know what his intentions or conclusions are. Perhaps, he had none, and this was a thought experiment searching for truth and that is all.
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