A C T A U N I V E R S I T A T I S L O D Z I E N S I S FO LIA L ITTER A R IA A N G LIC A 6, 2003
Joanna K ruczkow ska
LANGUAGE AND FICTION AS SU B JEC TS A N D M EDIA OF SIM O N ARM ITAGE’S PO E M S
Sim on A rm itage is one o f the m ost successful poets oi the 90’s young generation (“ New G e n eratio n ” ) in G re at B ritain, the au th o r o f five poetry books and a c o -a u th o r o f one. C om ing from the n o rth o f E n gland , he is extrem ely sensitive to local and slang idiom , “ slipping betw een registers and reality.” 1 Before becoming a freelance writer, A rm itage w orked as a probation officer in O ldham and used th a t “ benefit o f unblinkered experience” 2 in som e o f the poem s I am going to discuss. Inspired by I ed H ughes, W. H. A uden and R o b ert Lowell, he has been com pared to Paul M u ld o o n in his fragm entary vision o f the world and disrupted poetic-narratives.
A rm itage once com m ented on his writing: “ F o r m e, poetry has become . . . a dialogue between one p a rt o f m yself and ano th er. O ne inform s and the o th er translates. . . . I t ’s bugged, and the person listening in is once again the au th o r. W riting has become a way o f takin g p a rt w ith o u t having to participate, and a way o f being alone w ithout being lonely . . . w ords have no m eaning unless they’re spoken, seen o r h e a rd .” 3 I his view of poetry correspo nds to some o f its a u th o r’s various ap pro aches to language and literary fiction as b o th subjects an d m edia o f his poetry. His notion o f language ranges from a p oint where language fails as a m eans o f com m unication and a system o f m eaningful signs to the p o in t w here it can actually give rise to facts perceived as real or where it surpasses hu m an com prehension. Between these two extrem es there are attitu d e s closer to one or the other: language interru p tin g the vision o f the real w orld or, on the o th er h an d , c o n stitu tin g indispen sable facts in a ch ain o f events. D iscussing literary fiction, A rm itage reveals the m echanics of poetic im agery.
1 Philip Gross, “ Slangland,” Poetry Review 82.2 (1992): 56-57.
2 Peter Forbes, “ Simon Armitage. K id,” Poetry Review Special Issue (1994): 4. 3 Simon Armitage, “ K id ,” Poetry Review Special Issue (1994): 8.
H e also m akes use o f intertextual devices, borro w in g his ch aracters from o th er a u th o rs’ w ork, introducing double a u th o rs and m odifying all those figures throug h fictionalising.
In his poetry n otions o f language as a m eans o f co m m u n icatio n as well as a reflection o f life vary from failure to o m nip oten t creation. In “ S peaking T erm s” language c a n n o t perform its fundam ental functions: referential, artistic, em otional.
Picturesque,
a talking point, except words being what they are
we wouldn’t want to lose the only sense we can share in: silence.
1 could say the clouds are the action of our day stopped here to evidence the last four hundred miles like a mobile, hardly moving.4
Powerless, disabled by the tw o characters o f the poem w ho are n o t on speaking term s with each other, the value o f language as a m eans of dialogue, of sharing thoughts, im pressions, em otions, has been reduced to p h atic basic statem ents:
But I ask you the time
and you tell me, in one word, precisely.
In an o th er poem , “A bstracting Electricity,” language is reduced to absurd “ p latitu d e s” (“ one standpipe d o esn ’t m ake a sum m er . . . ” 5). It a b a n d o n s its logic when uttered. W ords are no longer signs but merely unintelligible sounds:
T here’s an echo; let’s talk for the sake of it. Language, we know, is less use than half a scissors . . . 6
L anguage fails the speaker even before it is pro nounced. It hovers on the b rink o f its phonetic realisation:
unspeakable
but there on the tip o f your tongue.7
4 This and the next quotes from: Simon Armitage, Kid (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 65.
5 ¡hid., p. 43. 6 Ibid., p. 42. 7 ¡bid., p. 43.
T h e second extrem e assum es th a t language has a pow er o f causing things:
It is / the way o f things, the taking shape of things, beginning with their names.*
and going beyond them , beyond hum an experience, the universe, as in the poem “ Z oo m !”9 where the m ysterious “ it” begins within the speaker s im m ediate surroundings and is eventually “ bulleted in to a neighbouring galaxy, em erging / sm aller and sm oother / than a billiard ball bu t weighing m ore th an S a tu rn .” W hen people ask the speaker w hat it is, he says: “ I t ’s ju st w ord s,” belittling the burden o f the w ords’ m eaning. I he users o f the “ small and sm ooth and heavy,” unaw are o f its im po rtan ce and n atu re, would n o t accept the sp eak er’s answer. T he w ords exceed the em pirical thinking o f the people who take “it” for som ething tangible. I heir confusion stem s from the conflict o f tw o form s o f perception, sensual and linguistic, one exercised by the people in the poem , the o th er rem aining an unexplored potential.
“ T he lim its o f my language m ean the limits of my w o rld ,’’10 Ludw ig W ittgenstein once said, .. solipsism strictly carried o u t coincides with pure realism .” 11 B ertrand Russel prefaced W ittgenstein’s T ractatus: “T h e essential business o f language is to assert or deny facts.” Y et “ in practice, language is always m ore or less vague” 12 for it consists also o f m eaningless w ords conveying em otion. Indeed, W ittgenstein’s vision o f a logically perfect language was never fulfilled and this unfulfillm ent is the to p ic o f “ Z o o m !” . W ords “ bulleting” into the universe in “ Z oom !” slip o u t o f their users’ con tro l and cross the line o f im m ediate sensual perception. 1 here, they hinge on the unknow n which can only be im agined o r grasped by the visionary m ind.
W ithin this bipolar view on language there is a tran sito ry zone. I will consider tw o poem s, one bearing a relationship to the first notio n of language and distu rbing the vision o f reality by m eans o f im precision and inadequacy, and the o th er supporting the second concept of w ords actually constituting the substance o f events. The poems are two d ram atic m onologues: “ Eyew itness” and “T he S tuff.”
In “ Eyew itness” language builds up a faithful psychological p o rtra it of the eponym ous speaker while falsifying facts with the rhetoric o f equivocality, understatem en t and flannel:
* “ Song,” in: Kid, p. 54.
9 Zoom!, p. 81. All quotations in this paragraph are taken from this poem.
10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, I rench, Trubner), p. 149.
" Ibid., p. 153. 12 Ibid., p. 8.
As you will appreciate, these contact lenses are n o t binoculars,
my acuity is not what it used to be and the pollen count
was astronomical that day. But if I said the rear view m irror
and the wing m irror and the windows made a kaleidoscope
which turned his yellow teeth through each of its facets
I could hardly be accused of distortion, Please bear with me.
I will take for granted your understanding th at conjecture
is anathem a to me but even the layman could not have failed
to notice something furtive in his gait; something circumspect
about his m anner. Clearly the em bankm ent was a vantage point
with which he had not reckoned. The knife for instance,
a polished thing o f the bowie type was raised
a t an angle on which I need n o t elaborate and though the mist
was soupish and the level-crossing bumpy would I be lying
if I said his upper lip trembled like the lip of a man
on the brink o f an incident? I would not. W hatever happened
after th at is anybody’s business, but clearly the dog was n o t restrained
and an ambulance would have struggled in th at traffic.
Am I making myself transparent?13
T h e rh etoric an d o th er cunning devices include: persu asio n in a tone o f certainty (“A s you will appreciate;” “ clearly” - an ox y m o ro n o f the w hole poem ); conditional sentences distancing the speaker from the facts he describes and letting him evade responsibility fo r his w ords (“ B ut if I said” ); a reference to people not involved in the events (“ even the laym an / could n o t have failed to n otice” ); groundless ju d g m en t (“ with which he had n o t reck o n ed ”); examples, details and hypothesis n arrated in the quasi-investigation style (“T h e knife / for instance, / a polished thing o f
a bow ie type . . . ; ” “ the dog was not restrained / and an am bu lan ce w ould have struggled / in th a t traffic” ); a rhetorical answ er m akin g th e question also rh e to ric al (“ w ould I be lying” - “ I w ould n o t” ); g eneralizatio n (“ W h atev er hap p en ed after th a t ” ); defense by aggression ( “ a n y b o d y ’s business; I need n o t e lab o rate” ). A nd the m ost im p o rtan t: am biguities (“ a vantage p o in t” — is it a p oint o f view o f the eyewitness o r a convenient place fo r the criminal?; “ tra n sp a re n t” - does it com m ent on the story o r is it the lapse o f the tongue, a p a rt o f the “ tran sp a ren t lie” collocation?); w ithdraw ing half-w ay thro u g h the sentence and suspending m o re specific inform ation (“ at an angle on which I need no t e la b o ra te ” ); and finally defying anticipated accusations, annihilating them while form ulating (“ I could hardly be accused o f d isto rtio n ;” “ I will take for granted y o ur u n d e rsta n ding I th a t conjecture / is an ath em a to m e;” “ would I be lying ’). All this beating ab o u t the bush adding to the blurred and relative vision o f the events presented in th e evidence (shortsig htedn ess, w eath er an d ro a d conditions, m irro rs, standing distance) puts the reco nstructio n o f the crim e beyond the bounds o f possibility.14 L anguage, when its rh etorical pow ers are consciously used, im poses the way o f perceiving th e extralinguistic w orld, creates com m on-sense illusions often w ith o u t a ch an ce fo r th e listener / reader to try and pass a reasonable o r objective ju d g m en t on the message.
On the co n trary , “T he S tuff,” 15 an o th er w itness’s story, levels the gap betw een language and the tangible, giving w ords a factual statu s. Even at the beginning the reader finds the sp ea k er’s fla m b o y a n t sayings and idiom atic expressions to prove his linguistic inventiveness o r form usual speech links which can either be replaced w ith o th er phrases o r w ords (like the vague “ s t u f f ’ in the title, subsequently called “it ” or nicknam es, can be substituted w ith “ d ru g s” ) or simply avoided:
We’d heard all the warnings; knew its nicknames. It arrived in our town by word o f mouth and crackled like wildfire through the grapevine o f gab and gossip. It came from the south
11 The same impossibility applies to “ Judge Chutney’s Final Summary. 1 he judge, trying to avoid expressing facts, inundates his listeners with idiomatic collocations signifying abstract notions mingled with words referring to m aterial designates, and in this way restores the original meaning of idioms (eg. you have held out/agam st the avalanche/of evidence, I have taken guidelines/for tramlines/and have fo llow ed/ trains o f thought', I have picked up ¡and hauled in/a line o f inquiry,/the thread/of a story/which ends in m y hands/with the h ea d /o f a viper, to take it/a ll back/would mean unpicking/every stitch/in every sentence... etc.). He concludes his evasive summary with a verdict obscuring the division between the concept and the experience: Life to mean life, life to mean livingand adds he is tired o f mind/and tired o f body (Kid, p. 31-35).
so we shunned it, naturally; sent it to C oventry16
and wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole if it h ad n ’t been a t the club one night. Well, peer group pressure and all that twaddle so we fu ssed around it like flie s round shite
and watched, and waited
till one kid risked it, stepped up and licked it and came from every pore in his body.
That clinched it. It snowballed; whirlpooled.'1
T h e speaker continues in slangish elliptical discourse up to the last two lines thus proving th a t the initial w ords describing im precise o r vapid in fo rm atio n have signalled the “ tw addle‘s” significance:
I said grapevine, barge pole, whirlpool, chloride, concrete, bandage, station, story. H onest.1*
T his is w here the w ords an d th e facts find co m m o n grou nd in the m ix ture o f language’s em otional, m etalingual and referential functions.
A p a rt from the ones in italics, the enum erated nou ns adh ere to facts: “ bulking it up w ith scouring pow der . . . o r sodium ch lorid e;” “ having shed a pair o f concrete slippers;” “ its cryptic h o ard in g w hich stum ped the police: / ‘O ldham - H om e o f the tu b u la r b an d ag e’;” “ pushed us / dow n to the sta tio n .” T he last elem ent in the chain encapsulates th eir interaction: “ sto ry .” T h e w ord echoes the sp eak er’s previous fact-related sentence: “ I spoke the ad d ict’s side o f the sto ry ” and w orks as a p a rt o f the collo cation “th e side o f the sto ry .” H ow ever, it also sum s it up, betraying the m echanics o f this n arrativ e - chronological bu t d isrup ted by w ords regarded as com m onplace m etap h o rs which nevertheless act a significant p a r t o f the true events. T h e narrativ e is no longer a S tru ctu ralist system o f “ g ra m m a r” w here “ w o rd s” com bine into “ sentences,” 19 or, in B arthian term s, the level o f sequences am o u n ts to the level o f action s to p p ed by the
16 The speaker, like Armitage himself, comes probably from the n orth o f England; whatever comes from the south, is literally naturally shunned and sent to Coventry, back south. A nother example of a “recycled” idiom regaining its original meaning.
17 Zoom!, p. 68. M y italics. 18 Ibid., p. 69.
19 Structuralists attem pted to look a t fiction as a kind o f elemental gram m ar in which various “ w ords” - or functions - combine according to a set o f rules to become a particular sequence, or “ sentence” : th at is, the narrative itself.
level o f n arra tio n (a single stru ctu re to con tain “all the w orld stories advocated by P ropp).
T h e division o f language into poetic an d colloquial, w ritten and spoken, and o f the w orld into signifiers and signifieds has been lifted, since their com m unicatio n is possible only on the level o f story-telling b oth past and present. T his notio n refers us to th a t o f in tertextuality based on a belief th a t the world consists o f texts freely interfering with one an o th er. 1 he aim o f this interference is no t even add ing new m eaning or inventing it but a sheer plaisir du texte which in “T he S tu f f ’ is the sp ea k er’s nam e-and- create gam e aim ed at m isleading the court or the police.
T h e n arrativ e brings to m ind o th er A rm itag e’s poem s - those o n fiction in a piece o f literature. In tertextuality with its shift o f im p ortan ce from the au th o r-te x t to the reader-text relation has m ultiplied the possibilities of literary com position (always based on the arb itra ry licentia poetica) by introducing do uble auth o rs, as well as characters and a u th o rs from w orks o f o th er writers. F acto rs involved in these m an ip u latio n s - m etafiction, self-com m ent, p arod y, irony - disclose n o t so m uch w riting processes which would ru n under the text surface (as in M odernism ) as its techniques which ru n on the surface, giving an unexpected or even clashing effect. L iterary tra d itio n (w hose conventions are used and overused) and history (which is no tra n sp a re n t statem ent o f the absolute “ tru th ” and thu s it is presented in an ironic and problem atic way) function as either contexts, texts, or both. T he w orld and literature are equally fictitious realities (Borges); in other term s, o u r quest for sense leads us to the annihilation o f the sense itself.
Such an interfered, aberred constru ctio n o f the w orld presented (the above-m entioned distance and textual interactions) found its way to a few o f A rm itag e’s “m etap oem s,” such as “ L ooking for W eldon Kees,"~n the poem from the series devoted to a certain R ob in so n in K id,21 and “ I he M e ta p h o r N ow S tanding at P latform 8.” 22
R o b in so n , a p erso n a borrow ed from W eldon K e e s’s poem s, is an am biguous figure. Presented in the situations m ost banal (eg. the b e a c lr3) and m ost extrem e (eg. suicide24), he is literally in tw o m inds ab o u t his own existence. T h e idiom atic title w ith a changed w ord, as well as pun s in other titles - “ R o b in so n ’s Life Sentence” o r “ R o b in so n ’s R esig n atio n ” raise suspicion ab o u t the protagonist. A “ historical” person, a seer, a ghost,
20 Kid, p. 13-16.
21 The Robinson poems include: “ Looking for Weldon Kees, Robinson in 1 wo Cities, “ M r R obinson’s H oliday,” “ D ear R obinson,” “ R obinson’s Life Sentence, 8 p.m. and Raining When R obinson,” “ R obinson’s Life Statem ent,” “ Robinson s Resignation.
22 Kid, p. 52-53.
23 “ M r Robinson Holidays,” in: Kid, p. 24-25. 24 “ Robinson in Two Cities,” in: Kid, p. 18.
a p aran o iac, a suspect and an eyewitness, an aesthete indulging in decorum in the face o f death, last b u t no t least, a M r R o b in so n sum m ing up his life in a sentence. “ R obinso n . . . this no t-q u ite-ch aracter lurks th ro u g h the book . . mos t often glimpsed ju st disappearing. H is n arrativ es are lists o f m om ents th a t never q u ite add up to a biography: guilty fingerprints th a t d o n ’t quite m atch. His life blurs at the edges with o th e r figm ents o f the real w o rld .”25 H e lives his ow n and o ther peo ple’s lives, a truly universal character reflecting everybody’s behaviour an d speech p attern s. H is eq u i vocality indicates questionable elem ents o f the fictitious literary w orld, eg. the notions o f the au th o r and the protagonist in “L ooking for W eldon K ees.” T h e real au th o r o f the poem , judging from the b o o k cover, is Sim on A rm itage. H e has introduced him self into his ow n poem :
I ’d heard it said by Michael H ofm ann
that “ Collected Poems” would blow my head off, but,
being out of print and a hot potato, it might be a hard one to get hold of;
m ore than a case of shopping and finding
nothing on the shelves between K eats and K ipling.“
T h e real-life details w ould speak for the “ au th en ticity ” o f the poem - the nam e o f M ichael H ofm ann (A rm itage’s New G en pal), the ad in the T L S , and the facts concerning the d istribution and po pu larity o f K ees’s Collected
Poems. Yet w hen it com es to the very person o f the late W eldon Kees,
the a u th o r appearing in a flashback, we can no longer be so sure. Kees vanished m ysteriously on 18 July 1955, his car located near the entrance to the G olden G a te Bridge, his body never found:
There was too much water under the Golden Gate since the day that dude became overrated,
the dawn
he locked both doors of his T udor Fort and took one small step off the face o f the planet.
N o will, no note, no outline o f police chalk on the deck around his drainpipes and overcoat, not even a whiff o f spontaneous combustion to hang his vaporizing act on.27
25 Philip Gross, “ Slangland,” Poetry Review 82.2 (1992): 56-57. 26 Kid, p. 13.
N ow he has been identified with his collection (m etonym y in the title - the nam e o f the a u th o r replaces the title o f his book). T h e w ord follow ing the last q u o te stirs further d oubts. It seems W eldon K ees lived in the times o f R obinson - and o f Sim on A rm itage, startingly, w ho was bo rn eight years after K ees’s death:
Simultaneously, Robinson . . . was back in town
and giving me the runaround.2*
As a functioning em bodim ent o f the fictitious character o f K ees’s, R o binson could be a living p ro o f o f the literary piece’s independence after its a u th o r’s d e a th (it is interesting to n otice th a t R o b in so n ’s sig n atu re, X , is an an ag ram o f “ K ees” ). Instead o f K ees distributin g his w ork, it is being distributed by its own p ro tag o n ist (“ U nd ern eath , a parcel, w rapped in a bin-bag, / a b o u t a size and weight o f a book, a h a rd b a c k .” 29). R o b in so n ’s existence is ju st as fugitive as K ees’s (“ n o t even a w h if f ’ etc.); he dissolves into the air, “ being ou t o f print and a ho t p o ta to .”
H ere are d ram atis personae in o rd er o f appearance: tw o w riters and their com m on pro tag o n ist, all three living double lives in the real and literary w orlds.
I. Facts:
1. Sim on A rm itage, the a u th o r o f the poem “ L o o k in g for W eldon K ees” ; bo rn in 1963.
2. W eldon K ees, the au th o r o f C ollected Poems, bo rn in 1914. 3. Robinson, the p ro tag o n ist o f K ees’s fo u r poem s.
4. R obinson, a real-life figure (inform ation n o t checked), living either in the times o f W eldon Kees or Sim on A rm itage.
II. F iction (in “ L ooking for W eldon K ees”):
1. “ I ” (“ Sim on A rm itage” ), the speaker o f A rm itag e’s poem “ L ooking for W eldon K ees.”
2a. “ W eldon K ees” or “ the d ud e,” the character in “ L o o k in g ...” and the au th o r o f Collected Poem s which the speaker is look ing for.
2b. E pony m ous ‘ Weldon K ees,' Collected Poems, the book by W eldon Kees.
3. “Robinson," the p ro tag o n ist o f W eldon K ees’s Collected . . . which the speaker is looking for.
4. “ R o b in so n ,” the speaker’s friend in “ L o o k in g ...”
(Italics signal the distance between life and fiction, fictio n’s “ n arra tin g the facts.)
24 ibid. 29 Ibid, p. 16.
T h e figures o f A rm itage, Kees and R o b in so n as the re ad er know s them from books, m edia, school lectures etc., have been d oubled and m odified through fictionalising. “ Looking...” is a prelude to A rm itage’s later “apocryph a l” intertextu al experim ents from the collection “T h e D ead Sea P o em s” 30 where in the opening piece the au th o r com es across the Q um ram Scrolls in the desert.
A n o th er poem , “T h e M e ta p h o r N ow S tanding at P latform 8,” uses a sim ilar technique o f duplicating and tran sfo rm in g o n th e level o f im agery, startin g with the title where th e w ord “m e ta p h o r” replaces the w ord ‘tra in ,’ a seem ing tau to lo g y o f th e w ord and th e device (th e “ m e ta p h o r” is a m e ta p h o r o f a train):
The M etaphor Now Standing a t Platform 8 will separate at Birmingham New Street . .. Parents and their children are today invited to the engine of the m etaphor . ..
Take heart, a boy
could do worse than be a spotter of m etaphors . .. This is a m etaphor I’m running here
not a jam boree . ..
T he tra in runs long distances and provides the passenger w ith certain diversions on the way - the pleasures o f the con su m p tio n o f words:
Here is the buffet car at the centre o f the m etaphor, where hot buttered toast
and alcoholic beverages will certainly be mentioned. In the next breath, lunch will be served .. .
Passengers, as p art of our Transports of Delight programme let me welcome this m orning’s poets. Beginning at the guard’s van they will troubadour the aisle reciting their short but engaging pieces.31
T h e train -m e ta p h o r with its “delights” is opposed to travelling by a “ b o at tra in ” and a “ seaplane,” qualified in th e text w ith the epithets “ allegorical” and “ sym bolic” respectively. T h e qualifiers are m irro r images - the “ b o at tra in ” is an allegory (the “ allegorical” allegory) and the “ seaplane” is a sym bol (the “ sym bolic” sym bol). T h e first tak es you to or from a port; it is a m ain land destinatio n or a p o in t o f d e p a rtu re th a t counts. Such is the n atu re o f allegory - one re p resen tatio n (im age) and one in terp retatio n , b o th obeying the rules o f a given artistic convention. T hu s, it should be entirely translatable. T he “ seap lane,” on th e o th er hand ,
30 Simon Armitage, The Dead Sea Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1995). 31 Ibid., p. 52-53.
takes off and lands on the — unreliable — w ater surface. A sym bol should allow m ore readings th an an allegory; its m eaning is u ndeterm ined (we can dive in and search the d epths for it). It is still tran slata b le th o u g h in m any different ways.
W e could stop here to conclude th a t the poem presents a p ostm od ern ist concept o f m e ta p h o r as an open-ended device. But the m e ta p h o r is not a jo u rn e y here. It is a m eans o f tra n s p o rt. A n d the jo u rn e y is life (“ M ad am , life is no t a destinatio n b u t a jou rn ey ). 1 he gist oi the link betw een life-journey and train -m e ta p h o r rath er reflects I. A. R ichards theory o f m etap h o r, the one o f a ten o r and a vehicle. W h at is m eant (life-journey) is carried by w hat is said, its m eans o f tra n sp o rt (train- m etaphor). T he m e ta p h o r is thus “ a train o f events, a train o f th o u g h t, and, to repeat after New C ritics, “ n o t a problem of language, but the radical m ode in which we correlate all ou r know ledge and experience.
A rm itage, having reinvented the universal perso na o f a d u b io u s literary status, reveals the processes o f transform ing real-life details in to fiction. H e em ploys a m etaliterary distance tow ards the a u th o r and the ch a racter as well as the tools o f his creation, exposing functions and w orkings o f poetic figures. By doing so, he m akes the reader, plunging into delightful co n sum ption o f w ords, p o nder over the creative process which m ad e th at consum ption possible.
T he p o e t’s notio n o f language ranges from a p o in t w here language is a lim it on h u m an experience to a p o in t where it denies th a t experience; in betw een there is a tran sito ry zone w here the speakers try to falsify reality o r m ake it equal with language. W ords can be enslaved by the m ind, com pelled to reflect tho u g h ts and distorted im pressions o f the half-seen and half-heard w orld, break dow n h alf way th ro u g h the im paired speeches. They can, nevertheless, get ou t o f sensory and m ental co n tro l as well. Such
language annihilates, constitutes, alters facts.
D epartm ent of English Poetry and D ram a and Poetry University o f Łódź
