Zdzisław Łapiński
Motoric Impulse in the Poetry of
Julian Przyboś
Literary Studies in Poland 21, 67-79
Zdzisław Łapiński
M otoric Im pulse in the P oetry o f Julian Przybos
1
Even the first contact with the poetic practice o f Julian Przybos worked out in the 1930s renders it possible to grasp its basic orientation. The object o f mimesis here is the field o f consciousness. This field, with the entire variability o f narrative rules in prose and poetry, can be linked with diverse techniques of “the stream o f consciousness” appearing in those years. Above all, the common assum ption is that all inform ation about the represented external reality is to reach the reader in a roundabout way, through the psychic states of “I” highly concretized in time and space. The orientation on faithfulness, to impressions, and not to the objects and phenom ena that cause them, and the intensity o f m etaphors resulting from it, account for the fact that it is not easy to determine an actual state o f affairs in Przybos’s poems. Yet it is indispensable for the reader to attem pt this—if only intuitively—if he wishes to understand and experience his poetry in a correct way.
The actual state o f affairs in pieces typical o f Przybos’s poetry is as follows:
The scene is set in town or country, during specified period o f the day and the year. The hero likes m ountainous terrain, he willingly keeps close to streams, rivers and lakes, from time to time going as far as the sea or even the ocean. To feel well he needs a forest or a grove, or even a few trees, plus birds, o f course. Sometimes a person close to him is keeping him company but in general he is not afraid o f solitude. Towards people he behaves
with reserve. He keeps moving. Sometimes he is carried in a vehicle, e. g., a horse-drawn cart, streetcar, ship or a plane. But ask him about the most proper form o f locom otion and m ost certainly he is bound to say that it is plain walking and hiking. Only when the physical strain o f the muscles makes him change the relation between his person and the surrounding does he give an impression o f controlling the situation. This pedestrian always directs his attention to the external world: he keeps watching things around him. But at the same time he closely watches his own reactions. The intensive em otions influence the way in which he perceives the world, invokes images from the past and suggests visions o f future events. Because he is alone he is not accustomed to talk, or in other words, to use his voice. But he carries on an inner conversation with himself and others. Fragments and scraps o f this dialogue reach u s—some questions, interjections, orders and succinct statements. This helps us guess the course o f events because we learn about everything exclusively through the hero himself. The events are developing fast and are brief, usually a few minutes or even seconds. A bout other things, indispensable for the understanding o f what is going on, we learn from preliminary information and from additional rem arks that are made few and far between, and justified as the h ero ’s associations. The main events are the very perceptual processes, particularly linked to eyesight, body m otion and muscular tension. These data are intermixed with rising and falling em otional states. Yet the hero is not only a passive recipient o f impulses coming to him from the world, from the inner organism or from the depth o f the psyche. On the contrary, he reveals feverish and purposeful activity. From a stream o f data he selects only those facts which are of significance to him; in conflicting states he m akes decisions. The m atter is usually solved by an act o f will, an expression of the fundam ental attitude and drives stemming from it.
This list o f details embracing the scenery, impressions o f the hero and his forms o f behaviour does not impose with its richness but is governed by iron-clad consistency. It suffices to change only one item on this list and the construction o f a poem is altered. Let us, for instance, give the main character a m om ent o f rest, put him at the table, and immediately the hero who was putting together a poem in his mind while walking is replaced by the hero who takes down
M o to r ic Im pu lse in the P o e tr y o f P rz y b o ś 69
ready-made thoughts on a piece o f paper; and a poem implying only some philosophy is changed into a piece that speaks directly about this philosophy (that is exactly the difference between two program m at ic works “Ciężar poem atu” <The Burden o f a Poem> and “Żyjąc” <Living>). And what if the author permits the same hero to lie down on his back and close his eyes? Then not only the whole world o f the hero is changed but also the entire language organization o f a piece is altered, together with its versification, and free verse slowly gives way to prose poem (cf. “Zaokienny neon” <The N eon Light Outside the W indow > from the cycle Pióro z ognia <A Feather Made o f Fire>).
These transform ations are not, let us say it again, accidental. All the listed components bear systematic character. They were worked out by the author gradually as optim al solution for his poetics. It was to express values experienced most strongly and thoughts rooted most deeply. Toward the end o f the 1930s rejection o f some until then necessary components followed from his tendency to acquire new experiences reflected by new means o f expression. In terms o f the artistic trends dom inating those years it was an attem pt to subject oneself to impulses resulting from surrealism and to modify the constructivistic foundations o f his own poetics.
In the field o f consciousness, revealed in Przyboś’s poetry, the m ain role is played by experience coming from outside, i.e. perception, and that following from one’s own body, i.e. (as the psychologists say) proprioception. As regards perception, particularly the visual one, the critics writing about Przyboś devoted much attention to i t . 1 This information is also available, owing to a lucky coincidence, to English-speaking readers. Bogdana Carpenter wrote a very useful
1 S ee, e.g ., A . Ł a s z o w s k i , “ H o ry zo n t Juliana P r z y b o sia ” (The H o rizo n o f J.P.),
G a ze ta A r ty s tó w , 1934, no. 1, p. 3; M , C h m i e l o w i e c , “P ró b a p op u larnej recenzji”
(A R o u g h D raft o f a “P o p u la r ” R e v ie w ), K u ltu ra , 1939, n o . 4, p. 6. On so m e an alogies in the d o m a in o f visual p ercep tio n b etw een the p o e tic in sigh ts o f P rzy b o ś and the d isco v e ries o f ex p erim en ta l p sy c h o lo g y see Z. Ł a p i ń s k i , “» Ś w ia t ca ły — ja k ż e zm ieścić g o w ź r e n ic y « . O k ategoriach p ercep cyjn ych w p o ezji Ju lian a P r z y b o sia ” (“The W h o le W o r ld — H o w to C o m p ress It in th e E y e .” O n the Perceptual C ategories in the P o etry o f J .P .), [in:] S tu d ia z te o r ii i h isto rii p o e z ji, S eries 2, ed. M . G ło w iń sk i, W ro cła w 1970.
introduction to the history o f the Polish avant-garde. She writes at length about the visual experiences contained in Przyboś.2
Thus, I feel free to give up the discussion o f issues concerning perception, and I will deal with proprioception, or rather a fragment o f it called kinesthesia, that is, experience gained from tensing muscles and moving the body.
2
I do not know whether poets have already been classified according to the position o f the body o f a person who speaks in poems. If such a taxonomy were to be applied to the contem porary Polish literature then Julian Przyboś (1901 — 1970) would take one extreme end and M iron Białoszewski (1922— 1983) the other: the two most outstanding representatives o f two different phases of the Polish avant-garde.3 In his poems Przyboś stands straight, possibly even tense. This position is more than a natural way o f existing in the world, it is almost a manifestation, a reflection o f pride from victory over inert matter, from overcoming gravity. Białoszewski, on the other hand, praises lying down. “Leżenia” (Lying Down) is the title o f a poem and it is, as it were, a draft o f a new literary genre, following from a program m atic posture o f the p o e t.4 Przyboś is all concentrated on subjecting the world to his energy, so overwhelm ing that it is enough to make one gesture, one glance to transform the surroundings. This characteristic for our civilization tem ptation to subjugate nature, this “breathtaking anthropocentrism ” 5 is treated by Białoszewski as something to overcome; he does not want to rule the reality, he wants to be subjected to it.
- B. C a r p e n t e r , The P o e tic A v a n t-g a rd e in P olan d. 1 9 1 8 — 1939, S e a ttle — L o n d on 1983, pp. 110— 140.
3 O n so m e a sp ects o f the b o d y as a lyric m ed iu m in co n te m p o r a r y P o lish p o etry see J. Ł u k a s z e w i c z , “P ró b a c ia ła ” (The B o d y as T e st), [in .] L a u r i ciało, W arszaw a 1971.
4 F o r brilliant interp retation o f “ L e ż e n ia ” (by J. S ła w iń sk i) see T . K o s t k i e w i - c z o w a , A . O k o p i e ń - S ł a w i ń s k a , J. S ł a w i ń s k i , C z y ta m y u tw o r y w sp ó łcze sn e (R ea d
ing C o n te m p o r a ry L ite ra tu re ), W arszaw a 1967.
5 T h e phrase is taken from C . J. G l a c k e n , T ra ces on th e R h odian S h o re :
N a tu re a n d C u ltu re in W estern Thought f r o m A n cien t T im es to th e E n d o f the 18th C e n tu ry , B erkeley 1973, p. 494.
M o to r ic Im pu lse in th e P o e tr y o f P rz y b o ś 71
The straightened body in Przyboś shows high mobility: byłem tyle, ile biegiem (I was as much as I ran ).6 But it was an impeded run, rather an effort to start running, impatient gait. The world o f Przyboś is the place where you walk:, aż tak idąc, aby tylko przekraczać widnokrąg (walking only to the point o f crossing ho r
izon).7
For someone taking a horizontal position all the vigorous forms o f behaviour seem doubtful: Boję się bytu za bardzo energicznego (I am afraid o f an overly energetic existence), says Białoszewski.8 A walking man looks upon a man who is lying down with an air o f superiority. On poems from the volume Było i było (There Was and There Was) Przyboś remarks contem ptuously: owoc nudy czy artystycznej abulii (it is the fruit o f boredom or an atrophy o f artistic will).9
According to the calculations by Thomas De Quincey, based on, as he writes, “good d a ta ” .
W ord sw orth m ust h ave traversed a dista n ce o f 175 to 180,000 E nglish m ile s— a m o d e o f e x ertio n w h ich , to him , sto o d in the stead o f w ine, spirits and all o th e r stim u la n ts w h atsoever to the an im al sp irits; to w hich he has been in d eb ted for a life o f u n clo u d e d h ap p in ess, and we for m uch o f w hat is m o st ex cellen t in his w r itin g s .10
It is a pity to say th at the Polish rom antic poets were no match for the English walker. They had some brilliant performances (e.g. Antoni Malczewski conquered Aiguille du M idi—3,843 m in the Mont-Blanc range in 1818) but they lacked persistence. It was Przyboś who was to make up for these shortcomings.
He makes his first steps in Sponad (From Above, 1930), his
6 J. P r z y b o ś , “Z n o w u na ro d zin n y ch p o la c h ” (On N a tiv e L ands A g a in ), [in:] P ism a zebran e, ed. R . Skręt, K ra k ó w 1984, v ol. 1, p. 203.
7 J. P r z y b o ś , “Z iem ią gw iezd n ie p o ję tą ” (On Earth C o n ceiv ed as a Star),
ibidem , p. 221.
8 M . B i a ł o s z e w s k i , R o z k u rz (P u lv e riza tio n ), W arszaw a 1980, p. 117.
9 J. P r z y b o ś , “Z p o w o d u B y ło i b y ło M iro n a B ia ło sz e w sk ie g o ” (E x re : T here
W as a n d There W as by M .B .), P o e zja , 1966, n o . 2, p. 98; cf. J. K w i a t k o w s k i ,
“ A b u lia i litu rgia” (The A tro p h y o f the W ill and the Liturgy, 1963), [in:] K lu c ze do
w y o b ra źn i, K ra k ó w 1973.
10 Th. D e Q u i n c e y , “W illiam W o rd sw o rth ” (1839), [in:] R e c o lle c tio n s o f the
third book o f poems. He appears there on several occasions as a concrete person, as someone who acts and, at the same time, informs about it. This action (in the physical sense) is walking; he will not stop doing this till his last poems. Perhaps he is under an illusion that he c a n — as a shepherd in one o f his lyrical pieces— “to walk a stream ” (or anything else in his surroundings), but he certainly knows how to “walk a poem .” When he wants to check the verity of his great predecessors he takes a closer look at their poetic gait:
In S lo w a c k i’s “S zw ajcaria” there is n o exp erien ce o f a to u r ist an d a w alker; the trip d u rin g w hich, after all, y o u h a v e to clim b , p u ff and b lo w and sw eat it o u t, c h a n g ed under S lo w a c k i’s pen in to so m e sw a n s flo a tin g o n a lake, so m e a n g e ls’ flights to the peak s.
Przyboś contrasts this poem with Mickiewicz’s “N a Alpach w Splügen” (At Splügen in the Alps) where “an impression of height and toil of the Alpine climber” is rendered p ro p erly .11
If we were to look for an ideal form for the Przyboś walker we could find it in the following description.
In a P arisian square to w ers th e m o st b eau tifu l m o n u m en t o f ou r p o et. On a tall c o lu m n M ic k ie w ic z — with an im age o f a p ilg r im — w alk s v io le n t and inspired and in a m o m en t o f cla irv o y a n t h o p e m akes a sign w ith his raised h and, lea d in g us to so m e th in g that o n ly his eyes can s e e . 12
3
Thus, a poet is someone walking and making a pointing gesture. The gesture m otif is not often present in the poems by Przyboś but it is always very expressive:
L iczyłem se k u n d y n a d rzew a, ro zw a h a n e zaw ieją i, w gn iew ie,
ram ieniem w z d łu żo n y m o d ok rzyk u zerw ałem m o st, który się przed w zg ó rzem o c ią g a ł i zw lek ał.
[I c o u n te d se co n d s on trees, sw a n g b y sto rm w in d , and, in anger, w ith arm ex ten d ed by a sh o u t I tore aw ay th e bridge that d ragged o n b efore a h i l l .] 13
11 J. P r z y b o ś . “ W b łęk itu k ra in ie” (In the A zu re L and), [in:] L in ia i g w a r, v ol. 1, K r a k ó w 1959, p. 294.
12 J. P r z y b o ś , “ M ic k ie w ic z ,” ibidem , pp. 2 6 9 —270.
13 J. P r z y b o ś , „Z b ły sk a w ic ” (F rom L igh tn in gs), [in:] P is m a zebrane, vol. 1, p. 62.
M o to r ic Im pu lse in th e P o e tr y o f P r z y b o ś 73
W hat is more, the gesture is, in a way, built into the grammatical structure o f this poetry owing to the dom inant role played in it by deixis.14 Przyboś devoted much space in his essays and other prose works to the relation between words and gestures. Delivering an official praise o f the novelist Tadeusz Breza he said:
W hile r ea d in g B r eza ’s p rose I gain so m e tim e s an im p r essio n as i f his sp eech returned to the so u rc es o f th e w ord, to gestie g en esis o f h u m a n s p e e c h : to hand m o v e m e n ts, to m a k in g a face, to ex p ressin g w ith o n e ’s en tire p erson w hat is n o w ex p ressed o n ly by la n g u a g e .15
Przyboś points to those features o f Tadeusz Breza’s prose which can be analyzed nowadays using the extensive though somewhat chaotic research on para-verbal and non-verbal comm unication. It is interesting, however, that the poet does not perceive, in the picture of this comm unication as used by the novelist, the most striking thing while underlining secondary matters. It is with difficulty that we can find in Breza’s prose a return to what is prim ordial—in psyche, behaviour and language. His sensitivity reacts prim arily to signals exchanged by the people from a milieu with long-lasting traditions and well-worked out manners, where every shade o f a ges ture, face expression or intonation contains palpable inform ation, owing to its conventionality. Breza moves in the social territory; he is interested in conventions and wants to depict com m unication process, or relations am ong people. Przyboś finds himself most at ease in the natural environment, he seeks spontaneity and reveals expressive functions which bind man not so much with another fellow man but with nature. At the basis o f his poetics there is the rememberance about “the gestie genesis o f human speech.” Hence, we have the curvature o f perspective from which the writer was seen and whose praise Przyboś was to voice. The same m otif is taken up by Przyboś on another occasion when interpreting Mickiewicz’s poem “ Farys.”
T h ey say th a t the p rim itive m an exp ressed h im se lf w ith gestu res and m o tio n s o f the w h o le b o d y . T h en ex p ressio n w as lim ited to sk im p y m o tio n s o f th e to n g u e and thu s h u m an sp eech started , and then the w ord acq u ired force and m ea n in g
14 See Z. Ł a p i ń s k i , “ M iejsce na ziem i i m iejsce w w ierszu . O sk ła d n ik a ch d eik ty c zn y ch w liryce P r z y b o sia ” (A P lace on Earth and in the P o em . O n D e ic tic E lem en ts in P .’s Lyric P o em s), [in:] P rze strz e ń i lite ra tu r a , ed. M . G ło w iń sk i and A . O k o p ie ń -S ła w iń sk a , W ro cła w 1978.
as co m p a r e d with the form er in a rticu la te sh o u ts a cc o m p a n y in g gestu res and b od y m o tio n s. T h e p rim itive m an w ou ld sh o u t and g esticu la te a lo t u sin g up an en o rm o u s a m o u n t o f ph ysical en ergy to in v o k e the sim p lest im age. T h e p rim itiv e language w as all d irected extern ally, it w as m ea n t for the eyes. T h e sp eech o f a cultured m an b eca m e sparing, the w o r d — a m in o r m o tio n o f the to n g u e —g a in s sign ifican ce, it d o e s n o t p o in t to th in gs o u tsid e but ca lls t h i n g s . up in im a g in a tio n , it is turned inw ard. A cu ltured , str o n g m an p ro v id es the w ord w ith the p ow er to stim u la te inner feelin gs, im ages and id e a s .16
In the poetry by Przyboś “cultured m an” did not quite eliminate “the primitive m an.” They ju st switched their places. The primitive man became the hero o f the poem who is present in it bodily; the cultured m an—its creator present in it only as a hidden maker o f the piece. “ Inarticulate shouts” change into onom atopoeic disson ances. “In order to create the simplest image” the hero still uses up an “enorm ous am ount o f energy” which, however, is not physical but psychical. The language is “still directed outward, m eant for the eyes,” but this time only in “im agination.”
T o sum up, external mobility gave way to internal one, that is to say, physical actions turned into psychical ones. But this trans formed m an does not break links with his forefather, he does not renounce entirely his archaic deposits o f personality. His spiritualism remembers about physiological aspects, the psyche—about body, the m otion o f thoughts—about the m otion o f muscles.
4
We put our muscles when we want to do or make something. But their stimulation, the preliminary phase o f operation, and a speci fic “image” o f future actions o f the muscles may also arise under the influence o f closely watched external events with which we tend to identify ourselves. Psychology uses in that instance the word “em pathy.” Em pathy perm its us to co-feel the states experienced by others, and by a further analogy—the states and processes of nature.
In the 1930s the notion o f empathy was a household word o f psychology, it became even a com ponent o f common knowledge.
16 J. P r z y b o ś , “S łab y i m o c n y w iersz” (W eek and S tr o n g V erse), [ in :] C z y ta
M o to r ic Im pu lse in th e P o e tr y o f P r zy b o ś 75
Przyboś was interested in discoveries of Gestaltpsychologie, and he knew earlier works o f the German experimental school so that we can certainly surmise that he had contacts with the concepts of Theodore Lipps or his disciples and popularizers. They also could have a share in developing one o f the aspects o f his poetics. One way or another, the idea o f empathy was underlying many of his images.
Przyboś went much further with this idea, further than any aca demic psychologist would dare. In his poems we come across not only experiences stemming from identification with the milieu but also a conviction that the milieu reciprocates. Hence, the sense o f exchangeability o f muscular experience, an impression that my internal actions may find an outward extension and that someone may draw experience from me. Then there is nothing simpler than to say: kwiat za ciebie wytknął złoty języczek uwagi (flower stuck out the golden tongue o f attention for you).17 Or:
o b a r c z o n y w ęglarz, za m nie zrzucając w ór, p o c h y lił się,
w y p ro sto w a ł, o d sa p n ą ł.
[bu rd en ed c o a lm a n — in p la ce o f m e — th r o w in g o f f his sack / b en t d o w n / straigh ten ed u p / to o k a deep b r e a th .]18
The last quotation comes from a poem about the birth o f a poem. The effort of the coalm an is as if a muscular equivalent o f the poetic strain and an event relieving one from that strain. Thus empathic images not only keep recurring in the experience o f the hero o f lyrical lines but retain also, according to the author, the direct contact with the very act o f creation.
5
Przyboś oriented his effort mainly on the contents on the edge o f consciousness, the contents that followed to the same degree from internal biography as from the current situation in the world
17 J. P r z y b o ś . “ Z zakrętu, z d rogi n a g łej” (At the Turn o f th e R oad, S u d d e n ly ), [in:] P ism a ze b ra n e, v ol. 1, p. 115.
in which the “I”, the hero and narrator o f events, found itself. The reader could only be a voiceless spectator at the dram a o f creation. But the poet was highly sensitive to the vicissitudes o f his pieces, to their literary life. He maintained that a poem is fully realized only when recited, and he was sorry that the practice o f today pushes spoken poetry on the sidelines. Thus, he used to sit on juries o f various recitation competitions, travelled to meetings where he recited his own poems, recorded in the radio pieces that he was reading himself.
Writes one o f the critics participating in those recording sessions: “Przyboś had a voice [lacking] natural stamina, muscularity [...] He rebelled against physiological handicaps and limitations. When voicing his poem he was putting up a fight with his voice.” Some times he suffered from grotesque defeats but was capable o f imposing on the listener his own truth about poetry. “The listener discovered that the true nest for a poem is always the hum an body.” 19
C orporal experiences related to motion and productive effort o f the organism find expression in Przyboś also, or, maybe primarily, in the sound composition o f a poem. A poem is born not only in the eye and the heart but also in the throat. A printed poem resembles a petrified product o f the articulatory apparatus function, i.e. the lungs, vocal chords, tongue.
In one o f his poems we find the term : “baby-poem .” 20 The poem being born is treated by the writer as a corporal extension o f his own substance. The “organic” character o f a piece— a fairly old and cliche m etaphor — acquires here concretness and sounds alm ost literal.
The poet kept coming back in his essays to what he called “the hatching ground o f hearing and movem ent.” He described it in the following way:
It is a d irectio n a l ten sio n o f the gift o f to n g u e tow ard tw o sen ses o f ex p ress iv en ess: to the se n se o f h earin g and to the se n se o f m uscle m o v em e n t w hen the p o e t tries to grasp yet u n sp o k en p h e n o m e n o n .- 1
19 A . G r o n c z e w s k i , “P o d w ie czo rek z to rtu ra m i” (A T o r tu ro u s E n tertain m en t),
M ie się c zn ik L ite r a c k i, 1988, no. 23, pp. 6 9 — 71.
20 J. P r z y b o ś , “J a sk ó łk a ” (S w a llo w ), [in:] P ism a ze b ra n e, v ol. 1, p. 224. 21 J. P r z y b o ś , “ N o w o ś ć p o tr zą sa k w ia te m ” (N o v e lty S h ak es a F low er), [in:]
M o to r ic Im pu lse in th e P o e tr y o f P r zy b o ś 77
Looking at Julian Przyboś oeuvre from the “m otoric” angle permits to notice the relationship among seemingly diverse components. The walker m otif stands for personalization o f thought, that m an— and according to the writer, the most successful embodiment o f him, the creato r—is by nature a m otoric being; the m otif o f gesture and its role in hum an speech genesis points to the m otoric principle o f language. In turn, the notion o f empathy binds the experience o f the subject to the rest o f its surroundings, i.e. to other people and nature, organic and inorganic. Finally, the persistent concern o f the poet for the most appropriate realization o f his poems, reciting them out loud (in spite o f rather discouraging results) testifies to a belief that the author must convey a quantum o f verbal energy to the listener in a completely literal and physical sense.
But the above attem pt at grasping and commenting on the function o f m otoric experiences in the poetry does not reflect the fact how deep is the writer’s intuition in getting at the basic features o f language and how consistent he is in his poetics.
It is worthwhile recalling here that during first 3 decades o f this century linguists wrote a lot about articulation experiences as superior to acoustic data in the speech reception process. And estheticians dilligently studied these works before structuralism over shadowed these problems. But Jan M ukarovskÿ, before dealing with the “semantic gesture,” delivered a lecture O motorickèm deni v poezii (1927),22 while Mikhail Bakhtin wrote penetratingly :
O ften th e a c o u stic sid e o f the w ord p la y s a relatively m in o r role in p oetry; the m o tio n w h ich p ro d u ces aco u stic so u n d — the stro n g est in th e articu la tio n app aratu s but em b r a c in g th e w h o le b o d y , the m o v em e n t in d eed im p lem en ted in rea d in g or co -e x p e r ie n c e d by the listen er or ex p erien ced o n ly as a p o ssib ility , is m uch m ore essen tia l th a n w hat w e hear and w hat p la y s the serv ice ro le o f c a llin g on ap p rop riate p ro d u ctiv e m o v em e n t. O r even m ore su b serv ien t role o f se n se cip h er. O r the role o f the b a sis for in to n a tio n w hich requires so u n d flexibility o f the w ord but is neutral to so u n d s q u a lity and for th e rh ythm , w h ich , o f c o u rse, is m o to ric in ch a r a c te r. 2}
22 P ragu e 1985.
M . B a k h t i n , “P ro b le m a so d er zh a n iy a , m a ter ia la i form y v slo v e sn o m k h u d o - zh e stv e n n o m tv o rch estv e” (1924), [in:] V o p ro sy lite ra tu ry i e s te tik i, M o sk v a 1975, pp. 6 6 —67.
This lost train o f thought was revived in the works o f psycho linguists some time ago. A few competing “m otoric theories o f speech perception” were born. I would like to quote here a compact outline o f one o f such theories worked out within the last 30 years by Alvin Liberman et al. In its newer version it looks as follows :
T he first cla im o f the m o to r theory [ . . . ] is that the o b je cts o f sp eech p ercep tio n are the in tend ed p h o n e tic gestu res o f the speaker, represented in the brain as invariant m o to r c o m m a n d s that call fo r m o v em e n ts o f the articu lators through certain lin gu istical sign ifican t c o n fig u r a tio n s. T h ese gestural c o m m a n d s are the p h y si cal reality u n d erly in g the trad ition al p h o n e tic n o tio n s —for ex a m p le, “to n g u e b ack in g ,” “lip ro u n d in g ,” and “ja w ra isin g ” — that p ro v id e the b asis for p h o n etic categ o ries. T h ey are the elem en tary ev en ts o f sp eech p r o d u c tio n and p ercep tion . P h o n etic segm en ts are sim p ly gro u p s o f o n e or m ore o f th ese elem en tary e v en ts; thus [b] c o n sists o f a lab ial sto p gesture and [m] o f that sa m e gestu re c o m b in e d w ith a v elu m -lo w erin g gestu re. P h o n o lo g ic a lly , o f co u rse, the gestu res th e m selv es m ust be v iew ed as g rou p s o f featu res, such as “ la b ia l,” “s to p ,” “ n a sa l,” but these features are attrib u tes o f the gestural ev en ts, n o t ev en ts as such. T o perceive an u tteran ce, then, is to perceive a specific pattern o f in tend ed gestures.
Equally im portant for us is the second assum ption:
T he se co n d cla im o f the theory is a co ro lla ry o f the first: i f sp eech p ercep tio n and sp eech p rod u ctio n share the sam e set o f invarian ts, they m ust be u ltim ately linked. T h is link, we argue, is n ot a learned a sso c ia tio n , a result o f the fact that w hat p e o p le hear w hen they listen to sp eech is w hat they d o w hen they speak. R ather, the link is in n ately specified, req u irin g o n ly ep ig en etic d ev elo p m en t to bring it in to play. O n this cla im , p ercep tio n o f the gestu res o ccu rs in th e sp ecialized m o d e , d ifferent in im p o r ta n t w ays from the au d ito ry m o d e , resp o n sib le a lso for the p r o d u c tio n o f p h o n e tic structures, and part o f the larger sp ec ia liza tio n for lan gu age. T h e a d a p tiv e fu n ctio n o f the p ercep tu al sid e o f this m ode, th e side w ith w hich the m o to r theory is directly co n cern ed , is to m ake the c o n v ersio n from a c o u stic sign al to gesture a u to m a tica lly , and so to let listeners p erceive p h o n etic structure w ith ou t m ed ia tio n by (or tran slation from ) the au d ito ry ap p earan ces that the so u n d m ight, o n p u rely p sy c h o a c o u stic gro u n d s, be exp ected to h a v e .24
I shall not summarize the arguments for the theory presented here but would like to observe how much it explains the intuitive tendencies o f Przyboś. For example, empiathy, operating within a poem within the framework o f the represented world, as we could suppose
24 A . M . L i b e r m a n and I. G . M a t t i n g l y , “T h e M o to r T h eo ry o f S p eech P ercep tion R e v is e d ,” C o g n itio n , 1985, n o . 21, pp. 2 — 3.
M o to r ic Im pu lse in th e P o e tr y o f P rzy b o ś 79
so far, now becomes a principle almost organically binding the sender and the recipient o f a poem. On the other hand, the aim by all means to read poetry aloud can be seen from another perspective as a result o f a characteristic but erroneous belief that the m otoric reception o f a poem requires acoustic experience. It may be surmised that on the basis o f similar hypotheses it will be easier in the future to describe and understand everything that Przyboś put into his program m atic m etaphor:
transm itując ru ch y i trud m e g o cia ła na struny g ło so w e i na n ap ęd
n a p o m y k a ją ceg o o n ich z n a c z ą c o j ę z y k a ...
[tran sm ittin g the m o v em e n ts and toil o f m y b o d y / o n to vocal ch o r d s an d o n the m o to r / or that la n g u a g e that sign ifican tly a llu d es to t h e m ...J 25
T ransl. by B ogdan L a w e n d o w s k i
25 J. P r z y b o ś , “ W ięcej o m a n ife st” (Plus a M a n ife sto ), [ in :] U tw o r y p o e ty c k ie , W arszaw a 1975, p. 572.
