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CRITICAL OPINION

The Seriousness of PoetryMAXIMILIAN DE GAYNESFORD

‘THERE ARE MANY WAYS in which the thing I am trying invain to say may be tried in vain to be said’. 1 J. L. Austin sharedSamuel Beckett’s wistful fascination with the vulnerabilities of speech: that we may utter words and fail to say something, orfail to do something. Austin called the latter ‘infelicities’ in hisSpeech Act theory, and pounced on particular instances:

And I might mention that, quite differently again, we couldbe issuing any of these utterances, as we can issue an utter-ance of any kind whatsoever, in the course, for example, of acting a play or making a joke or writing a poem – in whichcase of course it would not be seriously meant and we shallnot be able to say that we seriously performed the actconcerned. 2

The remark may have gained more than its share of notoriety,

but it is a performance nevertheless, and one whose elementswe are plainly invited to relish. The mordant tensions andunsatisfactory releases, together with the rhythm with which

Essays in Criticism Vol. 59 No. 1# The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.doi: 10.1093/escrit/cgn025

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ESSAYS IN CRITICISMA QUARTERLY JOURNAL FOUNDED BY F. W. BATESON

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they succeed each other, have a poetic form and intensity thatcould have been modelled on Eliot:

Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . .Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’Let us go and make our visit. 3

There is the same constipated beginning, each consideration

given its due, each painful turn of the inner coil marked by itscomma or line-end, like a joking, self-deprecatory skit on thestage-philosopher, winding himself up through qualicationsand distinctions to achieve the eminence necessary to pronouncejudgement; the dash or aposiopesis, like a buttress against thebuild-up; and the same giving way under pressure, theproposal breaking its barriers and gushing out in one uninter-rupted loosing, the bird-chatter ‘-it / . . . it’ of Eliot’s nalcouplet matched by Austin’s mischievous ‘not . . . seriously’,bobbing up twice in the midst of the ow.

But Austin’s delivery threatens to evacuate his message; andthis because of its virtues, rather than in spite of them. Wederive pleasure from his utterance and its ways of combiningthe very effects it censures: play-acting, joking and poeticeffects. But their inclusion makes what is said either self-

defeating or false. It would be self-defeating if we xed on thefact that Austin combines these elements in issuing his utterance.Any one of them would be sufcient to make the utterancecount, by its own lights, as not seriously meant, not seriouslyperformed. Alternatively, it would be false if we xed insteadon the fact that evidently the utterance is seriously meant,seriously performed. For this very utterance combines

play-acting, joking and poetic effects, and yet still manages tobe seriously meant. So it would count straightforwardly as itsown counter-example. In short, what Austin calls impossible ispossible; and not just possible but actual; and not just actualbut actualised in and by the very utterance meant to assert theimpossibility. Vertiginous as this may appear, the disaster is

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plain enough: in describing one way of trying in vain to saysomething, Austin has realised another.

That there is something more generally self-contradictoryabout Austin’s pronouncements on poetry has been notedbefore. Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell are both alive tothe virtues of his theorising about Speech Acts but neverthelessnd regrettable intimations of prejudice in his strictureson poetry. 4 They interpret these failures as signs of a deeperand broader malaise in current philosophising. Of those whoremain focused on poetry, Geoffrey Hill calls it ‘a philosophical

irony’that a mind which strove for accuracy of denition whileregistering most acutely the quotidian duplicities, whichsought ‘decent and comely order’ as fervently as did theauthors of the antique tropes, felt free to regard poetry asone of the non-serious ‘parasitic’ ‘etiolations of language’,as a kind of ‘joking’. 5

That ‘felt free to’ is a gracious but steely way of putting the phi-losopher back in his place, a host delicately reminding an unrulyreveller that the invitation he has taken up so odiously was never,in fact, extended.

Christopher Ricks calls the paper from which this remark istaken ‘a Defence of Poetry for our age’. 6 It is certainlytempting to see it as completing a role-reversal of the partsdevised by Sidney. Austin had cast off the ‘sullen gravity’ of Sidney’s ‘rudely clothed’ philosopher, exchanging it for theimpish wit of his poet. Now Hill assumes the discarded roleand rebukes the philosopher for his unprincipled levity. 7

Where Austin had transformed Sidney’s elusively light-heartedway with his own prose efforts (‘this ink-wasting toy of mine’)into an allusively light-ngered way with the poetic efforts of

others,8

Hill nds a sterner way to ‘conjure’ us ‘no more tolaugh at the name of poets, as though they were next inheritorsto fools’. 9 For the quoted passage keeps its irritation gravely incheck, but there is a solemn measure to the half-increduloustone. The ‘philosophical irony’ is made to seem like unfaithful-ness to a common enterprise, an offence bordering on perdy.

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Under the politeness, a sense of betrayal runs; and this gives thesurface tension.

Ricks takes up the strain. Austin is, of twentieth centuryphilosophers, ‘the one most to be relished for his sensibilityand for what he makes of it in his word-work’. But hiscomments on poetry are ‘askew’, an ‘unrufed lapse’, ‘unthink-ing or thoughtless’. Worse, they are ‘pseudo-professional’,being in Ricks’s view ‘a philosopher’s slighting of the poet’senterprise’. 10

Is this fair? Austin’s tone is certainly playful, and somewhat

mocking towards poetry; a mild instance of that Saki-esquestrain in his sense of humour, centred on amusement at adultstreating others with a child’s malice, revealed in his taste fortasteless examples: treading on babies; throwing bricks inupturned faces; pushing people over cliffs. 11 It is in this samehigh manner that he clinches the quoted passage: ‘If the poetsays “Go and catch a falling star” or whatever it may be, hedoesn’t seriously issue an order’. The image, deniable butlingering, is of the poet as buffoon and knave, his occupationat once both laughably pretentious (striving at what it isclearly impossible to achieve) and contemptibly mendacious(pretending that what cannot be achieved can be).

(Austin is evidently pleased with this remark; he repeats itsessentials elsewhere. 12 But when we remember that thespeaker in Donne’s ‘Song’ is not even trying to issue an order,the joke falls at: ‘Go and catch a falling star – and [to para-phrase] you will accomplish something easier than nding awoman true and fair’ is no more an order than ‘Assault ourofcers – and you will be prosecuted’.)

If we take the hint and interpret Austin’s remarks as vaguelyinsulting towards poetry, it is likely we will be charged withover-sensitivity. That is precisely the advantage of levity, of course; that it wrong-foots the target into self-examination pre-

cluding effective response – is there a joke I am not getting? avulnerability I am revealing? The carefree phrase ‘whatever itmay be’ certainly helps plant the idea which philosopherscherish: that Austin did not mean to insult poetry; that hisremarks were at most careless. But if Austin is carefree, he israrely careless. And the offending, offensive passages are


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simply too extended and consistent, too persistent for this modeof exculpation. 13 Philosophers tend to nd what Austin sayscompletely innocuous. 14 They profess bemusement at theoffence caused. Some even attempt to reverse the charge: it isthose offended by Austin who are to blame for any unpleasant-ness arising; they are being unwarrantedly touchy. But theseresponses are disingenuous. Ten times Austin calls poetry‘non-’ or ‘not serious’; on two separate occasions, he repeatsthe phrase three times in quick succession. Subtle changes of detail and variations of emphasis may distinguish the passages

and justify individual examination. But it is the overkill whichis salient, and no doubt intended to be.Others try to excuse Austin on the grounds that his attentions

were xed elsewhere. John Searle, for example, argues thatAustin’s aim was to offer preliminary investigations of speechacts by looking at standard cases of making promises andissuing statements. Poetry rarely makes promises or issues state-ments, and when it does, it issues them in non-standard ways.So Austin quite properly excluded poetry from preliminaryconsideration. 15 But Austin does not call poetry ‘non-standard’,as this strategy demands; he calls it ‘non- serious ’ (ten times).And it is simply not plausible that a writer so conscious of the values of particular words would so frequently use oneword – and make a point of over-using it – when he meantanother. It is equally implausible that he would have done sowithout ever using the word he did mean.

If we refuse to let Austin off the hook, we make ourselvesimmediately responsible: to discover why someone so evidentlyalive to the ways of words should have been so dismissive of poetry. The diagnoses on offer vary a single theme: that Austinwas divided between sensibility and professional antipathy.The one made him acutely sensitive to the nature and value of poetry; the other nurtured the strong conviction that poetry is

not serious – that it is not meant seriously, and not to betaken seriously. 16 And all agree that it is philosophy which isto be held accountable for having misled him systematically inthis way. How? Some follow Ricks, who hints that it is the insti-tution and practice of philosophy simpliciter which is to blame;that Austin’s ‘aversion’ to poetry was ‘pseudo-professional’, ‘a

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philosopher’s slighting of the poet’s enterprise’. 17 Others followthe more cautious Hill: it is not philosophising as such which ledAustin astray, but the specic approach and set of tenets called‘empiricism’ which he is supposed to have espoused. 18

These are harsh accusations, and they are sustained by atti-tudes as troublingly divisive as the condition they diagnose.Hill’s ‘Discourse: For Stanley Rosen’ is as elegant a laugh atphilosophy as anything that needles in Austin. And in anotherpoem from the same collection, he writes

Metaphysics remainin common language something of a joke.Mourning my meaning is what I meant to say. 19

The rst line breaks in such a way as to give momentary praiseand reassurance, both of which are then stripped away, leavingmetaphysics that much the more bare for having had its needfor such covering played with. And Hill allows no pause, for

the mourning now mentioned is not for metaphysics; so eventhe appropriate reaction is stolen or given away. This ismocking, perhaps; ‘something of a joke’, certainly; and onethese lines themselves perform.

Occasions like these might provoke a parallel enquiry: whywould poets and critics so evidently alive to the value of systematic, abstract thought on these subjects be so hostile tophilosophy? This additional ‘philosophical irony’ becomesacute with the inclination to regard poetry as itself a form of philosophising, an inclination that is marked in Eliot’s remark,as careful in its apparent carefree-ness as anything in Austin,‘To talk vaguely of poets as philosophers does not get us veryfar, but it is the simplest reply to the question: “what is thecontent of poetry?”’ 20

Retaliation against philosophy might be counterproductive;

but it would certainly be understandable if philosophy wereindeed to nurture an aversion to poetry. To make good thatcharge would require close and informed scrutiny of a widesample of representative texts. Hill’s position is not supportedin this way. For Austin’s semantic theorising is far removedfrom the Lockean and post-Lockean accounts he has explicitly


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in mind. Sherry seeks to ground Hill’s interpretation in the claimthat Austin was a reductionist, attempting ‘to control languageby restricting its activity to referential functions’. 21 But thisascribes to Austin precisely the opposite of the view he holds,and the very one he scrupulously identies so as to reject it. 22

Ricks is happy with considerably less than the investigationcalled for; he offers a simple inference to the best explanation.Austin ‘reached for quotation marks’ when describing poetryas ‘not serious’; how better, or how else to explain this thanby supposing he felt ‘both an averting and something of anaversion’ to poetry?

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The inference is puzzling for several reasons. Partly becauseAustin’s use of inverted commas is inconsistent, so it is unclearwhether we can infer anything at all from the practice,let alone what we can legitimately infer. 24 Partly becauseinverted commas make words salient, so that, far fromaverting the attention, they attract it. Partly because the marks

do not invest that from which Austin is supposedly averse: i.e.‘poetry’. But mainly because they do invest that from which hecannot be averse; for he uses the marks to ornament ‘serious’and ‘not-serious’ alike. If Ricks were right, Austin would haveto have been equally averse to the serious; and since theserious evidently includes his own work (and, indeed, thesevery comments of his), Ricks’s view would merely intensifywhat it is meant to diagnose: the impression of self-contradictionabout Austin’s remarks on poetry. Moreover the inference issimply invalid: there is an alternative explanation whichexplains all the details of Austin’s usage and is therefore to bepreferred. His inverted commas are ‘tweezers lifting a common-place term out of its format of habitual connection’. This is Hill’sdescription of the use Ezra Pound makes of such marks in HughSelwyn Mauberley .25 We know Austin shared the aim because

he beat Hill to the image:words are not (except in their own little corner) facts orthings: we need therefore to prise them off the world, tohold them apart from and against it, so that we canrealize their inadequacies and arbitrariness. 26

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But why might Austin invite and encourage such scrutiny of ‘serious’ and ‘non-serious’? Allusion is one possibility. Hismarks make a point that Sidney evidently felt was familiar(‘Truly, Aristotle himself, in his discourse of poesy, plainly deter-mineth this question, saying that poetry is philosophoteron andspoudaioteron’ 27 ): it is in the light of what is serious ( spoudaios )that philosophical debate over the nature and value of poetryretains its strongest connections with what prompted itsinitiation. Plato’s concerns, after all, centred on two linkedclaims: that poetry is ‘as imitative as it could possibly be’, and

that imitation is ‘a kind of game; not something to be takenseriously’ ( paidian tina kai ou spoude ¯ n).28 And Aristotle’sdefence of tragic poetry was equally focused on the view thatit imitates and depicts what is serious; Homer, he thought,‘wrote in the serious style of poets’, and serious poetry is to betaken seriously. 29 More immediately, ‘serious’ has a deep reson-ance for the analytic school to which Austin was attached.Thoughts in poetry cannot be offered as true since ‘the requisiteseriousness is lacking’ ( der dazu no tige Ernst fehlt ).

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This is theview expressed by Gottlob Frege, founding voice of the analyticschool, whose Grundlegung der Arithmetik Austin had trans-lated. The view was contentious, and meant to be. AmongstAustin’s contemporaries, A. J. Ayer offered a more nuancedposition, 31 while R. G. Collingwood (whose lectures Eliotattended in October 1914) argued in diametrically opposedmanner that poetry is the most ‘serious’ of all uses of language; it is ‘prophetic’, ‘the community’s medicine for theworst disease of mind’, which is ‘the corruption of conscious-ness’.32 The controversy ensured that, for Austin’s immediateaudience and his successors, it was in the light of the ‘serious’that any remarks he had to offer on poetry would be judged.So it is most likely that his inverted commas were allusive inintent, a way of showing he knew this would be the case.

Another plausible reason for Austin’s use of inverted commas,consistent with the rst, is exculpation. Austin is acknowledgingthat the terms ‘serious’ and ‘non-serious’ alike are roughapproximations, inadequate except for the particular task hehas assigned them here: to function as a temporary label for atopic whose investigation is being deferred. The commas are


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scare quotes, drawing attention to the words so ornamented,urging caution about putting much weight on them. (‘Seriously’is not to be taken too seriously. ) And there is much need forexculpation, for Austin’s verdict is deeply ambiguous. Heasserts that an utterance issued in writing a poem ‘would notbe seriously meant’. But it is unclear whether ‘not’ modiesthe adverb (it is meant, but not seriously) or negates the verb(it is not meant at all). Equally critical, but of a differentorder, are the possibilities made available by the range of meanings associated with the adverb: ‘solemnly’ (in a stern, or

grave way), or ‘signicantly’ (in a critical, or important way),or ‘sincerely’ (in an earnest, or genuine, or honest, or deter-mined, or resolute way), or ‘humourlessly’ (in a staid way), or‘pedantically’ (in a dogged, or plodding way), or ‘pompously’(in a portentous way).

Unfortunately, Austin’s respondents make no attempt todispose of these ambiguities. Hence what they reject is noclearer than what Austin approves. Is it the idea that poetryis essentially comic (amusing, humorous, funny, jocular), orinsignicant (unimportant, non-critical), or supercial (frivo-lous, playful, triing, lacking depth or solidity), or irresolute(vacillating, indecisive, unsure), or insincere (disingenuous,inauthentic, untrue)? In leaving vague what Austin tries invain to say, it is in vain his respondents reply.

So Austin has much to excuse. Appealing to his notion of ‘infelicities’ with which we began, we have seen at least threevitiate his own attempts to discuss the seriousness of poetry:self-contradiction, inconsistency and vagueness. But the reasonwhy debate resists resolution lies deeper.

Recall the reason why Austin mentions poetry at all. 33 He isdefending the general claim that ‘saying can make it so’, andhis attention is caught by cases in which one’s saying somethingcan make it the case that one is committed to some person, or

thing, or course of action. For example, saying ‘I herebypromise to V’ can make it the case that one person is committedto a certain course of action in the promising way; saying thewords of the marriage service can make it the case that oneperson is committed to another in the marital way; and so on.And since it is the state or condition of being bound that these

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sayings make so, Austin expresses his general claim here usingthe (translated) motto of the Stock Exchange: ‘Our word isour bond’.

It is at this point that poetry makes its eeting appearance. Foran obvious objection arises: one can say things that are of theright form to make the saying of them a binding or committing(they are ‘commitment-apt’) and not actually create a bond ormake a commitment. Austin acknowledges the point with equa-nimity since his basic claim need suffer neither retraction noralteration. Saying can still make it so; it is just that certain

prior conditions need to be met for this to be the case. Forexample, the situation must allow it (if A is already married,saying the words of the marriage service in the appropriatesetting will not make it the case that A marries B). Second,one must say it ‘seriously’ (saying ‘I hereby promise to takeyou to the stars’ may not make it the case that I promiseanything at all, particularly if I am wearing a Groucho Marxmask and imitating his voice). When these prior conditions arenot met, saying does not make it so; there, one’s word is notone’s bond. Austin then stretches this defence. In poetry onesays things that are commitment-apt and does not actuallymake a commitment. But poetry is also a case of saying thingsnon-seriously. So poetry represents no counter-example to hisbasic claim either: there too, the prior conditions fail to be met.

This strategy raises two questions, one deep and onesubsidiary. The deep question is whether the strategy is necess-ary. One might hold that it is possible to say things in poetrywhich are commitment-apt and thereby make a commitment.If so, then poetry as such does not present even the appearanceof a counter-example to Austin’s basic claim. Hence no suchstrategy would be called for. The subsidiary question iswhether the strategy is suitable. It is subordinate because theanswer to the rst question is assumed: some kind of defence

is necessary. Suppose one cannot accept the solution Austinprovides because one holds that poetry is or can be ‘serious’.Then one would have to nd another reason to exempt poetsfrom what their commitment-apt utterances would otherwisebind them to. This would presumably be some third priorcondition that poetry fails to meet.


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In short, if we resist Austin’s remarks on poetry, two optionsare available. The rst option is to reject what he tries to do(i.e. to exempt poets from the requirements of commitment).The second option is to accept what he tries to do, and merelyto reject the way he himself does it (i.e. on grounds of ‘non-seriousness’).

Austin’s critics have satised themselves with the secondoption. Even the strongest endorse the view which makessome strategy or means of defence necessary. Saying somethingin poetry does not make it so; hence poetry as such presentsa prima facie counter-example to Austin’s view. Ricks iscomfortable with this position; it is the reason he thinks‘Austin was right to distinguish art-speech from direct utter-ance’. 34 He continues: ‘Austin . . . was right to judge that a“performative utterance” (“I name this ship . . .”) cannot bethought exactly to perform itself when it gures within thedifferent kind of occasion which is a poem’. That ‘exactly’ is

‘busy ducking and weaving’ in precisely the way ‘seriously’eludes in Austin’s remarks on poetry, as Ricks himself rightlycomplains. 35 But the swerve is strictly unnecessary. ThroughoutRicks’s stiff rebuke, he acknowledges Austin’s claim:performative-apt utterances in poetry do not perform.

Hill is equally accepting, though his acknowledgements aredense with attitude. At times he acknowledges the regret thatmay be felt: ‘Modern poetry . . . yearns for this sense of identity between saying and doing . . . but to Pound’s embarrass-ment and ours it discovers itself to possess no equivalent for“hereby”’. 36 At times he is susceptible himself to such wistfulfeelings:

They have conceded me – I think, beyond question –power of determination but without

force of edict.37

At other times he makes the yearning for identity between sayingand doing which would issue in a commitment to ‘stand by one’swords’ seem contemptible and shoddy, at once both laughablyposed

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Must men stand by what they writeas by their camp-beds or their weaponry

and lamentably inadequate:

or shell-shocked comrades while they sag and cry? 38

But we should be surprised that Austin’s critics take this secondoption. What Austin intended is, as we have seen, considerablybetter than is usually thought. But what he offered is actuallymuch worse.

One reason to be surprised that Austin’s critics take thesecond option is that it makes their hostility to him oddly unmo-tivated. He was wrong, no doubt, to call poetry non-serious.But it turns out that, far from insulting poetry, his intentionwas to liberate it (as this view would have it). Previously,poets were forced to insist on their licence, a permit to actother than as their utterances committed them to acting, oran excuse when they failed to behave in this way. But if Austin is right and commitment-apt utterances in poetrycould not issue in commitments anyway, poets are obviouslyfree to dispense altogether with licences, permits and excuses.Such instruments operate where there is a shortfall to license,a decit to permit, a let-down to excuse. But the utterances of poets could not commit them, no matter how pregnant withapt phrasing. So there could be no word/deed shortfall to

account for or excuse. Hence Austin’s ‘Apology for Poetry’ isthe most powerful there could be: that poetry needs no apology.A more signicant reason for surprise is that Austin’s critics

could not take the second option without ignoring theevidence of their own writings. For these writings reveal thatpoetry is a suitable candidate for Speech Act analysis: it doescontain performative utterances, and specically of the sortthat issue in commitments. For example, when Hill writes

So – Croker, MacSikker, O’Shem – I ask you:what are poems for? 39

he produces a paradigm performative, one of those peculiarlyreexive sayings in which the utterance itself is doing what it


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says is being done (‘I ask you . . .’), and where a ‘hereby’ couldproperly be added to make this function clear.

Questions are not the only example. When poets composelines of the form (respectively) ‘I sing of so-and-so’, ‘I lamentso-and-so’, and ‘I foretell such-and-such’, their utterances doprecisely what they name, in the manner of all performatives.The songs, dirges and prophecies which are, respectively, theproduct of such utterances name the very actions which thepoets who produced them perform. Indeed, poets employAustin’s full range of verbal phrases whose uttering is the

doing of an action that is not just the action of saying something:from ‘verdictives’ (to acquit; convict; value; assess; diagnose;analyse) and ‘exercitives’ (to name; order; grant; recom-mend; plead; dedicate), through ‘commissives’ (to commit;undertake; bind oneself; vow; swear), to ‘behabitives’ (to apolo-gise; thank; deplore; compliment; command; welcome; bidfarewell) and ‘expositives’ (to afrm; deny; remark; mention;inform; answer; testify; report; accept; concede). 40

The usage can often be ambiguous, and Hill employs this toeffect when he writes

I have learned one thing: not to look downSo much upon the damned. They, in their sphere,Harmonize strangely with the divineLove. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir. 41

‘Celebrate’ may be used constatively here, so that the wholesentence states a fact, describes a state of affairs, and is henceassessable as either ‘true’ or ‘false’ (we may legitimately ask ‘Isit the case that this person does, in fact, celebrate the love-choir?’). But ‘celebrate’ may also be used performatively here.Then the sentence would not describe or state what thespeaker is doing, but simply do it (celebrate the love-choir).

And the sentence would not be assessable as ‘true’/‘false’ buteither ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’, depending on the success withwhich the intended effect is brought off. If the use is performa-tive, we may ask about the scope of the implied ‘hereby’: does itcover some gesture of the speaker as he says the words, orperhaps the whole speech that has gone before, whose

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contents make up the entire poem? Either way, the speaker isperforming the role of celebrant and not just describinghimself in the role. So the possibility of a performative interpret-ation of ‘celebrate’ makes a considerable difference to ourunderstanding of the speaker – his position, his attitude, thecapacities and powers he takes himself to have, and so on.And this in turn makes a difference to our understanding of the poem. 42

The crucial claim, for present purposes, is that poets canissue commitments when they compose lines containing

commitment-apt phrases (‘commissives’). For example, ‘I vowto thee’, ‘I promise to such-and-such’, ‘I dedicate myself to such-and such’, and so on. Thus Hill issues one type of commitment – a promise – in his ‘Coplas’:

Oh my dear one, I shall grieve for youFor the rest of my life with slightlyVarying cadence, oh my dear one. 43

The point is complex, to be sure. The one so committed is notHill himself but his invention, the poet Sebastian Arrurruz.The artfulness of ‘slightly / Varying’ and its enjambmentarouse concern that the utterance might be merely artful. Andthe whole is expressed in such a way as to give due warningthat the speaker lacks wholeheartedness; that the form andnature of his commitment are subject to forces that may effecta ‘cadence’, a falling-off which may become a falling-away.But these concerns are not peculiar to poetry; they arise in theordinary case – is the speaker using direct speech or quoting;is he sincere; is he in earnest? And the existence of suchconcerns is grist to the mill, for it implies the possibility of success. If one could not issue a commitment in poetry, therewould be no question of whether on this or that occasion the

poet fails, or of what the specic causes of failure might be.More generally, there will be conditions on issuing commit-ments using commitment-apt phrases in poetry. Such phraseswill not usually issue in commitments, for example, if the poetis joking. But there is nothing surprising here; the same holdsoutside poetry. Questions about who is committed arise in


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both cases; neither speech-writers nor liturgists are bound by thevows they compose, for example. Other conditions will beproper to poetry, delineating its peculiarities. So there will becomplex rules about commitment-apt idioms which are old orarchaic, for example. Sometimes such forms make pronounce-ments ironic and non-binding; sometimes they secure the com-mitment they issue by embedding the pronouncement in pastallusion and tradition, thus witnessing to the conviction withwhich the poet binds himself. Not that it is always easy to tellwhich is in play; when Hill writes

Instruct me further in your travail,blind interpreter 44

the order (request) is made unstable by ‘travail’. Does that wordmark respect for what is venerable about the ‘blind interpreter’,or hint at something immodest or conceited about him? Theformer would secure the speaker’s commitment to being

taught with an explanation of why he has sought instruction,whereas the latter would cancel that commitment with a justi-cation of why he has refused instruction.

Notwithstanding such complications, the basic point is simpleenough: the more conditions there are on what is required tomake commitment-apt utterances in poetry issue commitments,the stronger the case against the second option. For conditionsimply the possibility of success; their whole point lies in thefact that such utterances in poetry can issue commitments.

One nal reason to be surprised that poets take the secondoption returns us to our point of departure: they thereby under-mine the claim that poetry is or could be ‘serious’. For beingserious is at least to acknowledge what is required if one is tobe taken seriously. And to be taken seriously in what one saysrequires making certain commitments, accepting certain obli-

gations: for example, to be reasonably clear about what onemeans; to be willing to explain what one says; to account forwhat one claims; to supply reasons for one’s position; and soon. To acknowledge these commitments and obligations is toaccept that it is possible to fail in these regards – to be lessthan clear, unable to explain one’s meaning, lacking in

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adequate reasons – and hence to stand in need of excuses. 45 So if utterances in poetry could not issue in commitments, poetswould stand in no such need. But they would also be compelledto accept that such utterances are ‘not serious’. Taking thesecond option entails taking the rst option. If poetry isnon-committal and exempt from excuses, it cannot be‘serious’ either. This is why what Austin offered poetry ismuch worse than what poets and critics thought he intended.And the irony is that they appear to have connived at thatreverse. Stung by what is supercially insulting about hisremarks, and in their eagerness to diagnose and reject what isdamaging about them, they have ignored what is trulyharmful, as one might swallow a camel so as to keep strainingat a gnat.

It is one thing to show Austin’s proposal is inconsistent withthe ‘seriousness’ of poetry, quite another to demonstrate thatpoets can be serious in the required ways. The latter task

would require specifying the conditions under which utterancesin poetry count as complying with clarity and the other con-ditions and obligations on ‘seriousness’. This would be acomplex matter, particularly if William Empson is right, that‘the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry’. 46 His claim needs to be set beside the stricture Yeatsexpressed: ‘You must always write as if you were shouting to aman across the street who you were afraid wouldn’t hear you,and trying to make him understand’. 47 But the question thatshould bother us is whether these views are as much opposedas they might at rst appear, and if they are, whether that oppo-sition is not of the supportive kind that the two sides of an archexert on each other. For ambiguity may threaten commitment toone’s utterances or it may strengthen it, depending on whether itis used to slide off a point (to make one’s excuses, perhaps) or to

make that point felt (perhaps by owning each of the meaningsthat could be meant). Hill writes:

And glowery is a mighty word with two meaningsif you crave ambiguity in plain speakingas I do. 48


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The word has two meanings whatever one’s attitude, so Hillmust mean that appreciation of its might depends on one’scraving for ambiguity, an appetite that stimulates one to seethat ‘glowery’ could mean either ‘glowing’ or ‘wrathful’. Andthe fact that it could mean both is singularly apt for the taskto which it is set: describing Moses’ countenance on his returnfrom meeting God.

The contrast is with cases where ambiguity threatens thecommitments required for seriousness.

The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned lookFrom its subsistence in the stiffening-mire. 49

Perhaps it is the mire which helps give it the look; but what isdoing the stiffening? It may be the mire, which stiffens as itdries. Or it may be that to which the mire is applied, since some-thing which is stiff can make stiff that with which it is contigu-ous. Or it may be those who are not caked with mire themselves

but have to experience it, stiff with disgust or horror. The poemdoes not continue in a way that resolves these questions, andthere seems to me a danger of diffusion, weakening both theresolution (the focus of the point) and the resolve. Points thatcan be taken in too many ways risk not being taken at all.

Regarding poetry as committed in the ways required forseriousness raises difculties. But they are of the nature of complications, not objections. We ask under what conditionsambiguous utterances (for example) count as serious becausewe suppose there are such conditions. Indeed, plausibly, it isonly because there are conditions under which utterances inpoetry count as complying with the conditions and obligationson ‘seriousness’ that we recognise ambiguity at all, either as apermissible exception to the relevant rules, or as the breakingof them. Moreover the complications here seem to be of the

sort that call more directly for the poet’s talents than the philo-sopher’s tools. For ambiguity can work to clarify meaning,just as word-play can serve to strengthen the binding force of a pronouncement, and it is up to poets to achieve this featwhen called on to do so. In achieving this, they show the featcould be accomplished, which is all philosophers could hope

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to achieve. A memorable remark of Ezra Pound, often quotedwith approval by Hill, assumes this point and focuses itfurther: ‘The poet’s job is to dene and yet again dene till thesurface of detail is in accord with the root in justice’. 50

Word-play and ambiguity can distend or distort meaning, of course, just as they can cancel the commitments which therelevant utterance seemed to announce. But it is partly becausewe know how word-play can reinforce a pronouncement thatwe recognise its capacity to evacuate pronouncements in theirdelivery. It is in these opposing powers that poets deal, just as

it is to the differences between their effects that literary criticsdraw attention. And what both activities reveal is not only thatambiguity has ‘serious’ as well as ‘non-serious’ uses, but thatwe can appeal to relevant criteria here, ways of telling whenone or the other is operative.

In short, poetry is capable of performative utterance, and inparticular of commitment-issuing utterance. What conditionspoetry must meet to count as serious in what it says is a difcultand controversial matter. But that such conditions exist and canbe met are claims we must endorse. Poetry is a speech act, inAustin’s own terms. Poets realise the possibilities this factaffords, just as critics assume them, whatever their philosophicalreections imply.

University of Reading

NOTES1 Proust (1931), in Proust and Three Dialogues with GeorgesDuthuit (1965), p. 123.2 ‘Performative Utterances’, in his Philosophical Papers ,ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock, 3rd edn. (Oxford,1979), pp. 233-52: 241.3

T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, in TheComplete Poems and Plays (1980), pp. 3-7: 3.4 Jacques Derrida, ‘Signature Event Context’ (1972), repr. in hisLimited Inc (Evanston, 1988), pp. 1-23. Stanley Cavell,‘Counter-Philosophy and the Pawn of Voice’, in his A Pitch of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), pp. 53-127.


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5 ‘Our Word is our Bond’ (1983), repr. in his Collected Critical Writings (Oxford, 2008), pp. 146-69: 157.6 ‘Austin’s Swink’ (1992), repr. in his Essays in Appreciation(Oxford, 1996), p. 261.7 ‘The Defence of Poesy’, in Gavin Alexander (ed.), Sidney’s‘The Defence of Poesy’ and Selected Renaissance LiteraryCriticism (2004), pp. 13, 53.8 Ricks’s paper ‘Austin’s Swink’ is an extended display of thevarying levels of allusion to poets and poetry to be found inAustin’s writings.9

‘The Defence of Poesy’, p. 53.10 ‘Austin’s Swink’: see pp. 260-2, 264.11 See ‘A Plea for Excuses’ (1956), repr. in his Philosophical Papers , pp. 175-204, esp. pp. 194, 190, 195.12 How To Do Things With Words , ed. J. O. Urmson (Oxford,1962), p. 104.13 There are six in all: How To Do Things With Words ,pp. 9-10, 20-2, 92 n. 1, 104, 121; ‘Performative Utterances’;

pp. 240-1. Similar remarks occur in an additional article,‘Performative/Constative’ (in C. E. Caton (ed.), Philosophyand Ordinary Language (1963), e.g. p. 24), which is a posthu-mous translation (by G. J. Warnock) of a lecture Austin deliveredin French; its evidence is insecure concerning the ner points onwhich critics have focused our attention.14 The general attitude is well represented by P. F. Strawson in‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’ (1964), repr. in hisLogico-Linguistic Papers (1971), pp. 149-69, esp. p. 149. Seealso John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge, 1969), p. 57 andn. 1, and Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990),pp. 5, 85, 103.15 ‘Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida’, Glyph # 2 , Johns Hopkins Textual Studies 7 (1977), pp. 198-208.16 For example the passage of Hill quoted above (‘Our Word’,

p. 157).17 ‘Austin’s Swink’, pp. 260-2, 264. This is the keynote of Ricks’s paper, though it is not always clearly sounded. Whenhe writes that Austin’s ‘denigration’ of poetry ‘was notaltogether true to himself’ (p. 264), that ‘altogether’ makes theremark oddly evasive.

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18 ‘Our Word’, pp. 148-50. See also Vincent Sherry, TheUncommon Tongue: The Poetry and Criticism of GeoffreyHill (Ann Arbor, 1987), p. 32.19 ‘On the Reality of the Symbol’, sect. 6, Without Title (2006),p. 14.20 The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Cambridge,Mass., 1933), p. 43.21 The Uncommon Tongue , p. 32.22 How To Do Things With Words , Lecture I, passim .23 ‘Austin’s Swink’, p. 262.24

Of the ten occasions where Austin uses ‘(non-)serious’ or‘(non-)seriously’, only four are ornamented with invertedcommas (or italics). See How To Do Things With Words ,pp. 9 (twice), 104, 121.25 ‘Our Word’, p. 151.26 ‘A Plea’, p. 182.27 ‘The Defence of Poesy’, p. 18.28 Republic , Book X, 602b7-8, trans. G. M. A. Grube,rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Plato: Complete Works , ed. JohnM. Cooper (Indianapolis, 1997), pp. 971-1223: 1206.29 Poetics , 1448a25-8, 1448b25-7, 1449a32-7, 1449b25 (theHomer remark is at 1448b34), trans. I. Bywater, in TheComplete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation ,ed. J. Barnes (Princeton, 1984), pp. 2316-40.30 ‘Der Gedanke’ (1918), in his Logische Untersuchungen ,

ed. G. Patzig (Go ¨ttingen, 1993), pp. 30-53: 36. My translation.31 Language, Truth and Logic (1936; republished 1971),pp. 27-8.32 The Principles of Art (1938; Oxford, 1958), p. 336.33 This is made clear at the rst occurrence; How To Do ThingsWith Words , pp. 9-10.34 ‘Austin’s Swink’ p. 261.35

Ibid.36 ‘Our Word’, p. 163.37 The Triumph of Love , VIII (1998), p. 3. This is one themeamong the several with which Hill binds together the concludingpassages of his paper ‘Our Word is our Bond’ (‘To return uponourselves . . .’), pp. 167-9.


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38 The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Pe ´ guy (1983), 1, lines13-16 (p. 9).39 The Triumph of Love , CXLVIII, p. 82.40 How To Do Things With Words , pp. 151-64.41 ‘Ovid in the Third Reich’, King Log (1968), p. 13.42 Robert Macfarlane uncovers a performative (admittedly in anextended sense) in an ‘uncertainty of proposition’ in Hill’s TheOrchards of Syon (p. 26); this uncertainty ‘enacts the experiencebeing described’ (‘Gravity and Grace in Geoffrey Hill’, EinC , 58(2008), 237-56: 50).43 ‘Coplas (ii)’, King Log , p. 54.44 The Triumph of Love , LXVII, p. 35.45 Peter McDonald neatly expresses Hill’s recognition of therelation between the seriousness of poetry, the existence of these obligations, and the plentiful opportunities for failure: inHill’s critical writing, ‘the gure of the poet must emerge assomeone mired in the complexity of language’s relations withboth afrmation and seriousness, as well as with imaginative

will; as someone in a x, who is not triumphing overlanguage, but battling a path within language’. Serious Poetry(Oxford, 2002), p. 100.46 Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930; rev. edn. 1963), p. 3.47 To Frank O’Connor; quoted in Richard Ellman, The Identityof Yeats (1954), p. 201.48 ‘In Memoriam: Ernst Barlach’, A Treatise of Civil Power(2007), p. 45.49 King Log , p. 14.50 Letter to Basil Bunting, December 1935, in The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941 , ed. D. D. Paige (1951), p. 366. Hillquotes it at least three times: in ‘Our Word’, p. 165; in ‘Poetryas “Menace” and “Atonement”’(1978), in Collected Critical Writings , p. 4; and in his interview with John Haffenden(1981), in Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation with JohnHaffenden (1981), pp. 76-99: 99.

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Gaynesford 2009