The Independency of the Literary Text

A literary essay deals the independency of the literary text from the author and writing.

Bennett has asked; "where or when does a literary text begin?" But before this question and in the way to answer we should ask "What is the literary text? When we take a mere look for a literary text, we will find that the literary text is an independent intellectual entity. Literature is not the writing, and the literary text is different from the linguist text. Writing is a vehicle of literature and the linguistic text is a mirror of the literary text.

Although Bennett had tried to catch the beginning in Paradise Lost and introduced it as the beginning from beginning but we can see the confusion in Bennett’s assumption which pushes him to say; "Despite the complications of Milton’s opening, however, at least it tries (or pretend to try to begin at the beginning, rather than in the middle." And what I see as a cause for this conflict is the linguistic approach to the literary text. In fact, the literary text is different from the linguistic text, and the beginning of the literary text differs from the beginning of the linguistic text.

To understand the literary text, we should differentiate between the writing and its message and these from the literary text; literature. The beginning of the writing is simply and obviously starts from the first word of it, but its message may started before or after it while the literary text is always before the writing and before the message and even before the author and the reader. So when Bennett referred to the Milton’s Paradise as an example of the beginning from the beginning, or when he had referred to Dante’ Comedy as an example of the beginning from the middle he meant the message, and not the writing nor the literature.

The importance of this understanding becomes clear when we remember the cooperative and shared nature of literary knowledge. Literature can't start from the paper or its theme, and the letter of the author is just a part from his personality, so literature which is older than the author can't be explained by the writing or its letter, and the beginning of Bennett is not accepted.

The condition become more complex in lyric poetry and in the same time becomes more cleaer that the beginning of the text situates in pretext level. In expressive narrative prose poetry where the anti-narrative narrative and anti-poetic poetry co-exist, we usually find the clear pretext beginning which has broken the lyricism. Kareem Abdullah in his "Whenever I Call You, My throat Gets Perfumed" he said:

"This ether bears the perfume of your images, blossoming alone in my eyes' night, raining with abundant dreams, in whose new springs swim the voices of my blooming youth. How could I collect the sprinkle of your eyes while these stars beseech for washing their darkness by the blueness of your shores? Flower coronas stand every morning at your window, waiting the moment you get up to grant them the perfume. Flocks of birds land down on your table, hoping that crumbs of your voice would make them sing very softly. Even your clothes in their cupboard are impatiently waiting for your soft fingers to caress them so that they dance playfully and recover their glittering."

He, despite his continuous present, bears the past image and the future dreams and begins his narrative with a space out of time, but it is definitely a mirror of pretext life. In opposite to the certainty of Kareem Abdullah, we find the beginning of Fareed Ghanem is merely a hallucination in his expressive narrative prose poetry "Overcrowding"  where he said:

"Just now we've concluded the conquest of Constantinople. It took us fifty three seconds, the time between two cigarettes and two hallucinations. Then, we came back."

We can see the transfiguration of the pretext elements represented in phrase of "conquest of Constantinople" and the global theme. The weight of the text has existed with a magnificent picture in these hallucination moments to give explanation to the defragmentation while the post-textual transfiguration has been present the narrative descriptive style which gives the familiarity in the reader soul for this hallucinated moment.

It is so risky making a literary view according to approaches has been essentially ordered to deal with storytelling writing because of the strict adherent of these arts to the places and time; the thing which is absent in poetry. But in narrative poetry, we find ideas and figures which transfigure in a narrato-lyric text and can give a universal concept about literary artistry.

So now it becomes clear that there are a time-place adherent writing, a time-place free writing and the middle situation. The first; I mean the time-place adherent writing represented by short fiction and novel, while the second; the time-place free writing represented by poetry but in the third class we find the middle area between them which is represented by prose poetry and because the dimming of the expressionism and lyricism in the traditional prose poetry, the contrary expressive narrative prose poetry group has endeavored to write a text keeping the lyricism glory with free writing in a narrato-lyric text characterized by a superficial narrative prose structure and deep a lyric, expressive and poetic deep structure.

In "A Farmer" of Anwar Jaber (Anwer Ghani), we see the potent pretext life has taken its fall transfiguration in his expressive narrative text which represents the authorial transfiguration where he said:

"I am an old farmer knowing this earth perfume. I grew between its legumes like a butterfly loving the sunshine. Come here look at Euphrates. He is sweet and clear. He doesn't know any spite. With a brown garment and a headband, he descended as a desert cavalier, so it is not strange to see all that sand covering his face."

But also the reader has a potent presence also in phrase "come here" and "to see" and this represents the reader transfiguration. The pressure of the text can be seen through the logic personification of the pronoun of Euphrates, and this is the textual transfiguration.

These transfigurations can be seen in Abdussalam Sinan’s "Amazement" where he said:

"He is roaring like a dragon; whenever I contemplate his pain sockets with its dark wrinkles, I scatter in his mummy skeleton due to the tiredness of the ragged time. A burning flame irradiates from those hard eyes."

In this expressive narrative prose poetry piece, we can grope the higher lyricism, symbolism and fragmentation which are not usually present in traditional prose poetry and the authorial aim transfigure in the global expressive description and the extreme use of words of feelings type like "roaring, dragon, pain sockets, scatter, mummy skeleton, ragged time, burning flame, hard eyes." It is obvious that the use of adjectives here is not just for description but it is for expressive the strong feelings and this is a tool of expressive narrative. The textual aim transfigures in the superficial logic narrative despite the deep fragmentation. Another feature of the text transfiguration is the harmony in the words lexicon where we can see"" dragon, pain sockets, dark wrinkles, scatter, mummy skeleton, tiredness, ragged time, burning flame, irradiates and hard eyes." Although the words are belong to a generalized terrible meaning field, we can see the very close subclasses and the potent proximity. It is so obvious the correlation between words in this piece "dragon/ burning flame/ hard eyes, pain sockets/tiredness/ ragged time, dark wrinkle/mummy skeleton, scatter/ irradiates." The reader has been also noticed in the text in phrase" the tiredness of the ragged time which is a universal conscious element. Everything in the text appears to be out of the personal author experience it represents the generalized awareness and the pressure of the reader on the text (reader transfiguration) and this pressure has degrees and everything in the text tends to outstand the logicality, proximity and harmony it represents the textual pressure (text transfiguration).

The authorial, textual and readerly transfiguration has obviously appeared in the poetess Rahmeh Innab’s "The Zest of my Heart". And in a general speaking, beside the poetic metaphoric elements in the feminine arts, there is always a potent transfiguration of the writing’s aims so in my opinion the feminine writing is a good material for the studies deals with writing transfiguration science.

In this expressive narrative piece, Rahmeh has said:

"Oh the zest of my heart, how you can conglobate my femininity and blow in my dough olive and ripe pomegranate your vigorous fragrance make it grows, shakes and then toddles in a narcosis your starry dawn has overthrown."

We don’t need much speech to explain the potent emotional winds in this piece and the high expressiveness level which represent the authorial transfiguration. The reader was present in the pointing to the femininity and the ecstatic status which represents the reader transfiguration. By using what we call "the nearby symbolism" and a clear conductive message the text reaches its aim and that is representing the text transfiguration.

 

So the text is a mirror and transfiguration of pre-textual, textual and post-textual objects and aims. Although Bennett admitted that Laurence Sterne’s "The Life and Opinions of Tristram is a writing about life but he also related the beginning of the text  to the theme and content while we saw Tristam Shandy  said:

"I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."

We can see the pre- and post-textual elements which press in the text, we see the pre-textual author’s aims (I should), the textual aims in phrase (different figure), and the post-textual reader’s aims (the reader is likely to see me). The writing is a transfiguration and a permanent attempt to occur with the complete existence and it start from remote points outside the text and not from the textual theme or letter as Bennett said.

From these notes we can confidently say that the literary text is neither the theme nor the writing; it is the conscious presence where the author, the language and the reader participate in. The literary text is a universal system involving many texts, many authors and many stories. So Bennette did not point to the real site when he had said "If beginnings always have a context and it therefore determined by what comes before, the opening to Tristam Shandy makes it clear that, in turn, beginnings determine what comes after."

While we can find a soled thematic details and logical time-place related events in the novel, this is not true in poetry. Bennett had found "satirical prevarication and pedantry, combined with blustering assertiveness, characterize the whole novel (i.e. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or The Whale). This description is misleading where it shows that the literature is a textual element and all its presence is limited to the paper, but this is not true. You can't catch all the literature in the paper and the text is just a vehicle and the success in collection a good material from the text about the literature in the novel doesn’t make it a generalized situation or a universal base. In poetry, we almost always can't know the literature just from the written text and we should search many extra-textual factors to grope the actual literary text. So the literary text is different from the written text and has independent intellectual presence.

 

References

1-Andrew Bennett, Nicholas Royle: An Introduction to literature, criticism and theory; 1995

2-Arcs magazine for expressive narrative prose poetry, 2018.

3- Anwer Ghani (Anwar Jaber): Narratolyric Writing, 2016.

4-Laurence Sterne’s "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shand , Gentlemen (1759)"