800 KS
WI
human nature and cosmic nature, and suggests the speaker's attitude
toward being "natural." Different senses of a word are brought into
a detenninate relationship which also is implicitly evaluative.
Single words, then, even when not used metaphorically, can be
as complex as metaphoric symbols. A failure to understand this is
partly responsible for the false distinction between cognitive and
emotive statements in the discussion of poetry and ethics. "The trouble
I think is," Empson writes, "that Professor Richards conceives the
Sense of a word in a given use as something single, however 'elaborate,'
and therefore thinks that anything beyond that Sense has got to be
explained in terms of feelings, and feelings of course are Emotions,
or Tones."
Empson says that any word has to be apprehended as a meaning,
and that the meaning is usually not single but complex. Emotions and
implications are so tied together that each calls up the other. Even
swear words and obscenities are chosen for their width and depth of
implication. In ordinary usage, the emotion in a word is backed up
by a judgment which the speaker would be prepared to maintain
if
the situation seemed to call for greater explicitness. "Indeed, the
standard way of making a word carry more weight either
in
poetry
or
~
• .1.
J)C)NALI>
ADAMS
~
says:
"I have a lot more respect for an unpreten–
tious craftsman shaping out a tailored story
for a slick magazine than I have for the kind
of cerebral jugglery that caused me to chuck
The Hopkins Review across the room."
N. Y. Times Book Review, Feb. 24, 1952
Subscriptions to The Hopkins
Review
$1.25
a year (four issues).
Box
1227,
The Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore
18,
Md.
