Mary Chapin Carpenter says in her despairing song, "It wasn't what you said; it's what you didn't say". In sign language poetry, Michiko Kaneko and I are starting to understand how much poetic meaning comes from referents that aren't shown.
We have been thinking about two examples: The tree in Paul Scott's poem Tree and the knife blade in Johanna Mesch's Party. Both can be seen at www.bristol.ac.uk/bslpoetryanthology
In Tree, Paul does sign TREE when the seedling grows, but after that the hand that signed TREE shows the ground in which the tree grows. All sorts of actions occur as people, animals and objects make contact with the tree, even though the tree in not shown. The tree's presence is very strong, and perhaps all the stronger because it isn't there. The illusion is so powerful that I wrote several paragraphs once for a research paper, in which I carefully described the hand showing the tree, before going back for another look and finding the tree wasn't there. Michiko is quite right when she says that the illusion comes in no small part from the use of the gaze. Because Paul's eyes are fixed on where the tree should be, we accept that it is there.
Johanna's Party turns on the absence of the presence. We see the woman holding the knife as she slices the food, through a sign with a handling classifier showing how she handles the knife. On her other hand she shows a different handling classifier showing how one holds food of that size, shape and consistency (bread, perhaps?). It is clear from the use of space that she is slicing something held by that hand, and that the knife blade is extending from the handle she holds. Considering how easily we accept this, it is actually quite an extraordinary feat of mental agility. We simply know that the blade of the knife is there. But Johanna uses our mental agility against us as we get complacent and simply see what we want to see. When the woman plunges the hand holding the knife into her chest we naturally assume from the context (the argument with her fiance or husband) that the blade is pointing towards her chest and she aims to commit suicide. Only alert viewers will notice that she has not turned her hand around. She rams the knife's handle firmly against her chest but the unseen, absent blade that ought to be so present, is actually pointing away from the body. Watch it. It's a classic.
The trick would be impossible in English.
Both poems rely on sign language's use of empty space to create the poetic effect.
We have been thinking about two examples: The tree in Paul Scott's poem Tree and the knife blade in Johanna Mesch's Party. Both can be seen at www.bristol.ac.uk/bslpoetryanthology
In Tree, Paul does sign TREE when the seedling grows, but after that the hand that signed TREE shows the ground in which the tree grows. All sorts of actions occur as people, animals and objects make contact with the tree, even though the tree in not shown. The tree's presence is very strong, and perhaps all the stronger because it isn't there. The illusion is so powerful that I wrote several paragraphs once for a research paper, in which I carefully described the hand showing the tree, before going back for another look and finding the tree wasn't there. Michiko is quite right when she says that the illusion comes in no small part from the use of the gaze. Because Paul's eyes are fixed on where the tree should be, we accept that it is there.
Johanna's Party turns on the absence of the presence. We see the woman holding the knife as she slices the food, through a sign with a handling classifier showing how she handles the knife. On her other hand she shows a different handling classifier showing how one holds food of that size, shape and consistency (bread, perhaps?). It is clear from the use of space that she is slicing something held by that hand, and that the knife blade is extending from the handle she holds. Considering how easily we accept this, it is actually quite an extraordinary feat of mental agility. We simply know that the blade of the knife is there. But Johanna uses our mental agility against us as we get complacent and simply see what we want to see. When the woman plunges the hand holding the knife into her chest we naturally assume from the context (the argument with her fiance or husband) that the blade is pointing towards her chest and she aims to commit suicide. Only alert viewers will notice that she has not turned her hand around. She rams the knife's handle firmly against her chest but the unseen, absent blade that ought to be so present, is actually pointing away from the body. Watch it. It's a classic.
The trick would be impossible in English.
Both poems rely on sign language's use of empty space to create the poetic effect.
This made me think of Nilsson, Anna-Lena. 2010. Studies in Swedish Sign Language. Reference, Real Space Blending, and Interpretation. Doctoral thesis, Stockholm University: Department of Linguistics.
ReplyDeleteShe has some lovely data samples of invisible buoys, though all the ones I've seen occur in the context of conversational narratives, not poetry.
But it also brought to mind Merleau-Ponty's “the absence of a sign can be a sign, and expression is not the adjustment of an element of discourse to each element of meaning, but an operation of language upon language which suddenly is thrown out of focus towards its meaning.” (Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence)
and Sartre's “As always in art, one must lie to tell the truth"
(For some reason this comment popped up under the wrong post, so posting again)
thanks for article, it hepled me
ReplyDeleteUebersetzung Deutsch Englischtannlege