Critical Account of Ashberys Clepsydra - Essay Example

Critical Account of Ashbery’s “Clepsydra” On the surface level, John Ashbery’s “Clepsydra” appears to be the narration of the scenic and concrete reality of the world, but a deeper understanding of the poem seems to divulge a new horizon, before the readers, of the poet’s “hovering” mind that is in continual search for a greater truth which prevails beneath this concrete reality of the world. Therefore though the poem recounts various features of the exterior landscape such sky, sunshine, hilly sites, summer, clouds, mirage, waterfall, air, draught, etc, the readers, at some moments, becomes aware of the interiority of the narration and also become absorbed into the poet’s “reckoning” soul that conjures up the interior landscape of mind basing upon this reckoning. Indeed both the form and the content of the poem are complementary to each other. Especially the form of “Clepsydra” is designed in a way that ensures the theme of the “graceful non-absence”, abstractness and the wholeness of truth to be intermingled with the description of concrete reality. Poet’s Concerns about the Limitations of Language As a poet, John Ashbery appears to be well-aware of the limitation of language and the perception of his readers. He is aware of the fact that there prevails a “dividing force / Between our slightest steps and notes taken on them” (Ashbery 31). As an attempt to overcome such a “dividing force” Ashbery creates enough space for his readers to be accustomed with his writing, thought-process and also with the inaccessible nature of his subject-matter. Therefore he has to make several beginnings and peripheries in “Clepsydra”. Later in the poem Ashbery comments on such beginning that “There was no statement / At the beginning. There was only a breathless waste” (Ashbery 29). He also remarks on the effect of such beginning that it is meant to shape: “everything in projected / After-effects orphaned by playing the part intended for them, / Though one must not forget the nature of this / Emptiness” (Ashbery 29). Indeed such declaration of the speaker does not totally discard what he tells about the illusive nature of his object of quest. Indeed in the prevision, the poem deals with the limits of language what the poet calls, “Exaggerated strictness of the condition” (Ashbery 30). It is something that the poet calls, “both mirage and the little / That was present, the miserable totality / Mustered at any given moment” (Ashbery 29). His readers become also aware of the deceptive nature of “words” through the speaker says that words are something “to be constantly coming back from / ……continuing the dialogue into / Those mysterious and near regions that are / Precisely the time of its being furthered” (Ashbery 28). The “prevision” of the poem also plays a significant role to instigate to be absorbed into the speaker’s intuitive and reasoning mind that is aware of the illusive and evading nature of thought, as he describes the situation in the following lines: ……………………….………..The Condition Of those moments of timeless elasticity and blindness Was being joined secretly so That their paths would cross again and be separated Only to join again in a final assumption rising like a shout And be endless in the discovery of the declamatory Nature of the distance traveled. (Ashbery 28) The speaker again makes it clear for his readers that the prevision, “the distance traveled” is of “declamatory nature”, even though he has no other choice but to use it. Themes of the Poem: Interiority of a Reckoning Mind, Illusive Nature of Truth, The theme of the interiority of a reckoning mind is established through the diction, imagery, reasoning tone and discursive narration of nature. Necessarily the narration is couched in a set of parataxis and typical displacements and flexible syntax that reveal more of the wholeness of the truth that lies beneath fractions of nature. Indeed the poet’s mind hovers on the landscape discursively to tell the untold, to grab the truth that is unstuck, hovers like a mirage. It is something like a graceful kind of non-absence. For Ashbery, the creator “has momentarily turned away, / Marrying detachment with respect” (Ashbery 27). So He is incipient in “pieces” that “Are seen as parts of a spectrum, independent / Yet symbolic of their staggered times of arrival” (Ashbery 27). Oft-repeatedly Ashbery’s approach towards the presence of the greater truth or the creator is echoed with a set of reasoning. For him, the presence of the “creator” is a form of “non-absence”. This “non-absent” existence of the “creator” is intangible in concrete reality of the world and also in conscious sensory organs of human beings. “The creator” is tangible only through “reckoning”, intuition, “reasons” and an attempt to “reckon” the partial truths into the whole truth, the speaker in “Clepsydra” says, “The reason why it happened only since/You woke up is letting the steam disappear/From those clouds when the landscape all around/Is hilly sites that will have to be reckoned/Into the total…” (Ashbery 27) For Ashbery, what the sensory images yield only “an undeduced result” to mind. Only intuition and reasoning -what the poet calls it is “reckoning”- can make the intangible whole incipient. Otherwise none can get “any closer to the basic / Principle operating behind it than at the distracted / Entity of a mirage” (Ashbery 27). Ashbery’s poetic bent lies in the fact that he can intermingled the interactions of a reasoning mind with the features of natures successfully. “The half-meant, half-perceived / Motion of fronds” (Ashbery 27) is brilliantly associated with “summer”. In the next line, the speaker drags this association up to draught, as he says, “And expansion into little draughts” (Ashbery 27). Ashbery’s ontology of truth is reasoned through the natural phenomenon. At “willed moment” the “half-meant” and “half-perceived” scarcely “come into being” in “the way a waterfall / Drums at different levels” (Ashbery 27). He also describes the eluding nature of truth, the “creator”. He is aware of the epistemological relationship between knowledge and language. He insinuates that knowledge about the truth comes into being through reasoning and it exists in language, as the speaker in “Clepsydra” says, “Each moment / Of utterance is the true one; likewise none are true” (Ashbery 27). Like “a serpentine / Gesture”, truth bounds “from air to air.” According to the poet, it remains hidden “behind a congruent / Message, the way air hides the sky” (Ashebry 28) and the truth is torn apart into pieces, as the speaker says, “[the] serpentine / Gesture…..is, in fact, / Tearing it limb from limb at this very moment” (Ashbery 28). Another recurring theme in “Clepsydra” is that it deals with the limitations of human being’s desire to know. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker acknowledges that the limitations of language does not allow human mind to get “closer to the basic / Principle operating behind” the world (Ashbery 27). Limitations of language rather prolongs the human’s failure of expression of the knowledge about the truth in a form “non-absence” and “half-perceived”, as the speaker says, “In this way prolong your dance of non-discovery / In brittle, useless architecture that is nevertheless / The Map of your desires, irreproachable, beyond / Madness and the toe of approaching night, if only / You desire to arrange it this way” (Ashbery 31). Writing Style and Diction of the Poem Regarding the style of Ashbery’s writing and diction, it can be asserted that his writing more or less directly follows his thought process. That is, his use of graceful parataxis, flexible syntax, his casual displacement and hovering around the subject matter- all these make the form of “Clepsydra” assimilated into its content. The motif that works behind such innovation of using obscure words and expression is that human thought and experiences themselves are blurred and obscure. In “Clepsydra” Ashbery takes obscurantism to a level of artistic elegance through its aesthetic use. His art of writing is artfully plunged into aesthetic of the blur. His words are smeared with the intended obscurity and half-articulated because the slippery fade-out of expression is more meaningful for the poet than clarity. Any careless reader, at a first glance, would find that Ashbery is absorbed into the beauty of landscape, but only it is the slippery displacement, obscurity of expressions and mindlessly mindful deviations that insinuate the fact that he is engaged into his interior landscape. Various objects of the nature, such as summer, drought, sky, sunshine, hilly sites, clouds, mirage, waterfall, air, etc oft-repeatedly come into his choice of words. But these natural objects are only meant to feed the poet’s intuitive thought-process. Also the poet’s use of the pronoun “you” makes the poet’s experience down-to-earth and makes him detached from the speaker’s self. This “you” seems to be the poet’s earlier self; yet the use of “you” is more universal than the presence of the poet’s egoistic “I”. Indeed the obscurantism, parataxis, flexible syntax and diction that are invested in “Clepsydra” assign the poem with the speed of the poet’s thought. Works Cited Ashbery, John, “Clepsydra,” Rivers and Mountains, New York: Holt, 1966 Read More