The double L code
“The rustle of the language” is a collection of essays, written between 1967 and 1980, on language, literature, and teaching – the pleasure of the text - .
Roland Barthes in the essay called “The rhetoric analysis”, presents literature as an institution and as a work. “As an institution, it collects all usages and all practices which govern the circuit of the thing written in a given society: the writer´s social status and ideology…” As a work he states that literature, it is constituted by the written message of a certain type. Taking, first, his notion of literature as a work we can say that he asserts that the literary works include elements which are not special to literature: this is narrative, story, argument, what Souriau has called diegesis. However literature possesses one element which defines it specifically: its language. Jakobson defines this element as poetics. The term poetics was first introduced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his work called “Poetics” (350 b.c.) and he proposed a systematic study of literature declaring: “I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first." However, what Barthes suggests regarding Jakobson´s poetics helps us perceive all literary works defined merely by the use of language and the present poetics in every single poetic or prosaic line. He makes no difference between poetry and prose. Indeed, the term Poetics has transformed itself into a new theory of general literary analysis. We can approach a text from this perspective taking the most relevant matter into account: literary language or rhetoric. But, how can poetics help us analyse a piece of literature? First of all, Barthes assumes that poetics is the analysis which permits answering this other question: What is it that makes a verbal message a work of art? Barthes calls it rhetoric. So, taking its functional definition we know that every message includes at least one level of expression, or level of signifiers, and one level of content, or level of signifieds. These two levels form the sign or group of signs. Literature is seen as a double system, denoted-connoted; in this double system, the manifest and specific level, which is that of the signifiers of the second system, will constitute Rhetoric.
According to Barthes, Jakobson´s contribution is that he distinguished six factors in every message: a sender, a receiver, a context or referent, a contact, a code, and finally the message itself. What is important here is that to each of these factors corresponds a function of language. Every discourse contains most of these factors, however, there is a dominance of one function or another over the rest. For example, if the emphasis is put on the person who emitting the message, the expressive or emotive function dominates; on the other hand, if the emphasis is put upon the message itself, “its configuration, the palpable aspects of its signs”, then the discourse is poetic. Consequently, literature is perceived as the emphasis of this function over the others. Barthes argues, “We can say that literature (work or text) is specifically a message which puts emphasis on itself”. When the message contains language, themes, ideas that repeat over time and texts we can talk about a figuration in the text of recurrent concepts, phrases or images that highlight an issue. This “poetics” or accumulation of things enhances the poetic dimension of the literary text. For example in “Hills like white elephants” (Hemingway, 1927) we can recognize two different images: first, “hill”; which is associated with dryness and loneliness and then “station” where people pass, come and go but never stay or remain. Also we can spot the concepts “nothing”, “nothingness” and “nada” in the dialogues. All this gives the reader an idea of loneliness, that is to say, a “poetics” of loneliness through concepts, images and ideas. We can even extend the idea of poetics to a series of authors that share a common ideological ground. It is interesting to see how the poetic function of language serves a platform for a major, cultural and sociological analysis of texts. At this point we can even go back to the notion of literature as an institution. In the United States we can find three distant movements that can be studied under the same optical lens. Whitman (1855), the lost generation (1920s) and the beatniks (1950s) share a discourse which transcended time. This discourse or message (from a functional perspective) contains the ideas of dissidence, non-conformism and disillusionment which under a sociological view give these writers a sense of social belonging as well. To make this clearer we can say that the literary message is emphasized in Whitman´s poetry as well as in Sandburg´s and Ginsberg´s. For instance, in the poem “Chicago” (1916) by Carl Sandburg the words or phrases “painted women”, “gunman” or “wanton hunger” are around the idea of prostitution, crime and poverty is repeated throughout the verses. Anaphors, catalogues, phrasing and metaphors help the poem convey the idea of non-conformism for a “muscular city” which is facing problems derived from industrialization and aggressiveness. It seems as if the author though dissatisfied, believes in the vitality of his city, of his roots as a country and trusts in the United States as a young nation compared to the old continent.
Barthes at the beginning of his work states, “Literature is not only a work of art but also a social institution” and this idea clearly reflects what a literary message can produce on a society. Barthes contributes to the literary analysis by providing literature with a new feature, that of a sociological perspective. For instance, Allan Ginsberg promotes the same discourse as Sandburg in his works of art. In his best known work “Howl” (1956), he describes the alienated Americans of the postwar 1950s. From the very title the idea of a crying pain gives the idea of disillusionment and regret. The repetition of literary devices such as: anaphors and catalogues help the reader see a relation between different works, or in other words, to identify how intertextuality works at this level. From this view, Ginsberg reads Sandburg and or vice versa. In another poem called “A supermarket in California” (1956) Ginsberg stresses on the idea of discomfort towards consumerism taking over the nation by that time. In the poem he circulates around in a supermarket. He goes shopping for images. He and Whitman (the ghost of him) are accomplices in the supermarket. The lyric speaker is Ginsberg himself feeling uncomfortable in that place, feeling a kind of outsider. The message here is given by the poetic function of language that expresses these feelings through the proficient use of diction. Whitman and Ginsberg experience a journey at the supermarket, however, both experience things differently, due to the fact that Whitman embodies naturalness whereas Ginsberg represents Artificiality. In the fourth verse of the poem Ginsberg puts, “I went into the neon fruit supermarket…”
The idea of Whitman appearing in the supermarket presents the notions of hallucination and this idea was also shared by Whitman, Sandburg and Ginsberg. The thematic link now works again at the level of intertextuality. Whitman in 1855 produced what is called “Leaves of grass” in which he promoted the notions of a philosophical, political and poetic transcendentalism. Transcendentalism views humans and nature in a sense of communion. Human nature is testified in nature and the other way around. They interact with each other,
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you…”
To conclude, it is interesting to see how from a linguistic and structuralist notion of language in their syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, we can expand the analysis to a more sociological spectrum. The poetic function of language and the notion of literature as an institution both shape the analysis of any work of art. The importance of Barthes in the literary analysis is his eagerness for taking language as the most relevant aspect in literature, what is more, as the crucial division of literary and non-literary texts. Thus, the double L, Language and Literature, produces an inseparable agreement.
