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and of the "self-valuable word." This is an oversimplification. It
cannot be denied that the early Formalist notion of poetic language
was strongly affected by Russian Futurism. The first Formalist stud–
ies clearly favored poetry where semantics was "toned down" and
the sound-"laid bare."
But this fascination with the "self-valuable word" was a short–
lived affair. The emphasis of the Formalist study of verse soon shifted
from pure euphony toward the interrelationships between sound and
meaning.
This
increasing awareness of semantics was fundamentally a
recognition of the fact that poetry, however non-objective, cannot
dispense with meaning. Even in the most experimental poem of,
say, Edith Sitwell or Ezra Pound, even in the most bewildering pass–
age from
Finnegans Wake,
replete as it is with quasi-words, coined
ad hoc
from familiar morphemes, the meaning is always present
somehow, if only in an "approximate," potential form. The impact
of the context, as well as the analogies with cognate "real" words,
endow these bizarre products of the poet's linguistic fancy with a
certain semantic aura.
Clearly what was really at issue was not the emancipation from
meaning, but the autonomy vis-a.-vis the "referent."
This
latter ten–
dency is especially pronounced in the case of a poetic neologism,
which has no denotative value, as it does not point to any recogniz–
able element of extra-linguistic reality. But this is obviously an extreme
poetic situation. More often than not, we have to do in poetry not
with what might be called "pseudo-reference" (Yvor Winters' term),
but with "ambiguity" in the Empsonian sense of the word. The os–
ciIlation between several semantic planes, typical of the poetic con–
text, loosens up the bond between the sign and the object. Denotative
precision, aimed at by "practical" language, gives way to connotative
density, to the wealth of associations.
In other words, the hallmark of poetry as a unique mode of
discourse lies not in the absence of meaning but in the multiplicity
of meanings. This was indeed the view expressed in the mature
Formalist statements. "The aim of poetry," wrote Eikhenbaum, "is
to make perceptible the texture of the word in all its aspects." But
this meant clearly that the "inward form" of the word-i.e., the
semantic nexus inherent in it, is no less essential to the aesthetic
