The Language of poetry

The poet, according to the times, has been revered as a god, honored as a hero, feared for his power, despised or almost forgotten. Its importance in the society has varied according to the poetry has reached a more or less determining role.

Whether or not poetry forms part of literature has been a widely discussed topic. The truth is that, like the novel, it translates human experiences into an elaborate language, rich in meanings. This chapter aims to point out the characteristics that distinguish poetry from the rest of the literature. Such differences will help us to understand the attractiveness that it exerts and the reasons that lead poets to use such means of expression.

Poetry has its own language, in which words are the stones that the poet uses to "build" his compositions. Like every writer, the poet must know the value of the word, which can be used beyond its usual meaning: the choice of each word depends both on its particular assessment, as well as on its appearance and sonority. But the main task of the poet is to order the words in effective schemes.

The theme in poetry is also characteristic: it is easy to describe exactly a certain object, but poetry is destined to much more, that is, it tries to express the intimate nature of an object or experience, that the more important and expressive is for example, a deeply felt experience of beauty or love, the poetry is nourished by it.

Certain themes are so fundamental that their poetic expression exerts an enormous attraction on humanity; therefore, in this chapter we will consider some of these means of expression.

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Poetry is the language of emotions, its musical rhythm affects us more directly and deeply than prose: writers use it to express a moment of joy or sadness and transmit their deep message to the reader's mind. The ancient Greeks considered that the ability of poets to give more intensity to language was the gift of a goddess. This belief is reflected in the painting by Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) who represents the poet and his muse.

Literature can be divided into two major fields; poetry and prose, different art forms under many aspects, but mainly in the use of language.

Since the prose was developed among the Greeks, writers, scientists and philosophers used it to express ideas and theories: naturally, they needed a clear and logical language, understandable to most people (such as mathematical signs . , +, -, etc., are understood by those who have studied mathematics).

If the scientist uses, for example, the word "sea" he will surely mean "a vast expanse of salt water", attributing only a more scientific and precise meaning to the elementary and familiar value of the word.

The words, however, are signs, and, although without changing their meaning, they may adopt the one the reader wants to give them: whoever reads the word "sea" may think of the blue Mediterranean or the stormy northern Atlantic. In the same way, the most common words such as "house" and "man" acquire a different meaning depending on who reads them.

The poet himself can confer extraordinary values ​​on words, even this is his way of using them, having little regard for their normal meaning and giving them a particular one destined to awaken new echoes in the mind and heart of the reader.

Let's examine as an example a fragment of In the Ascension, by Fray Luis de León (1527 - 1591)
This troubled sea,
Who will put a brake on it? Who concert
the fierce wind, angry?
Being you covered,
What north will guide the ship to the port?

The poet, immersed in helplessness, reflects it in the image of the sea, the storm and the ship. If God abandons us, says the poet, we will be defenseless in the troubled sea (life). The ship (man) will lose its north, helpless. Insecurity and fear arise from a chain of images through the poetic word.

The poetic language differs from the logical language of descriptive prose in that the writer does everything possible to avoid emotional meanings; On the other hand, it is much more difficult to distinguish poetic language from "imaginative" prose (that of certain novelists, for example): the words of the Frenchman Marcel Proust (1871-1922) or the Englishman DH Lawrence (1885-1930) reach often a "poetic" or emotional effect.

Similarly, prose can reach an emotional intensity that brings it closer to poetry. So in this fragment of Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" (1852-1901) of ¡Adiós Cordera!

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With what hatred Rosa watched the road stained with extinguished coals; with which the wires of the telegraph will go. Oh, well, Cordera did not approach. That was the world, the unknown, that took everything. And without thinking, Rosa leaned her head on the stick nailed like a banner on the tip of Somonte. The wind sang in the bowels of the dry pine, its metallic song. Now Rosa would understand. It was a song of tears, of abandonment, of loneliness, of death. In the rapid vibrations, like moans, I thought I heard very far the voice that sobbed in the way forward: Goodbye, Rosa! Goodbye, Cordera!

In this passage, the writer, even using an essentially descriptive language, achieves through the containment of the feeling and the expressiveness of the language to reach the poetic emotionality.

Whoever writes with the intention of recording facts, uses precise terms lacking in double meaning; the Babylonians avoided the poetic language when they wrote the data relating to the fields and to the crops. These data are recorded in clay tablets like the one we see in the image (approximately 3100 a.C.)

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This photograph presents the sea as seen by fishermen, who consider it their means of subsistence instead of source of poetic inspiration; However, a similar scene can provoke an emotional impression in another observer. In the image presented in the lower part, the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) represents the waves as claws, underlining in this way the destructive power of the sea .

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But a writer does not convert his own language into poetry, giving only words an emotive meaning, all the more so as they are foreign to prose, even imaginative, those resources with which one obtains the general effect proper to poetry; in effect, the poet is allowed on the one hand a greater brevity of expression, on the other a particular use of rhythm.