Multiple Discourses, Multiple Meanings: Jeanette Winterson's Language of Multiplicity and Variety. Agnieszka Miksza

polyphonic prose as “rich in poetic sound devices” (Frye 360) and therefore this entry is similar to Shaw’s definition. The publication also includes Amy Lowell’s Can Grande’s Castle, which was inspired by the French poet, Paul Fort (ibid.). Cuddon highlights that this type of prose was actually developed by Lowell, and it was named by Fletcher, who also used this style in Breakers and Granite (1921). Similarly, Cuddon also indicates that sound devices (rhythms, assonance) are employed in this type of prose as well. The exact date of coining the term “polyphonic prose” (1914) is given in Joseph T. Shipley’s dictionary, where he notes that Amy Lowell wanted to create an “orchestral form” (317): “a blending of meter, free verse, rime, assonance, alliteration, and the return” (ibid.). Although Paul Fort was an inspiration for the development of this form, Fletcher perceived it as different from his poetry, claiming that no similarity to the “elaborate rhythms” (ibid.) of Browne, de Quincey and Melville is to be found in either poetry or prose. He also states that after 1914, polyphonic prose exists both in American and British literature (ibid.). Delville claims that Amy Lowell’s polyphonic prose demonstrates the ambivalence of attitude of early Modernist writers to lyricism in prose. Her prose proves to be a continuation of the Decadent roots of the prose poem as regards its musicality (6). She is also seen as an early example of an American variation of the Baudelairian project which created a prose supple enough to be able to reproduce “the lyrical impulses of the soul, the ebbs and flows of reverie, the pangs of conscience” (Delville 7).

      As far as the prose poem is concerned, it is defined as “a short composition printed in prose paragraphs, yet containing the striking imagery, calculated rhythmic effects, and other devices of poetry” (Morner 176). It is also stated that Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard of the Night was the work which marks the appearance of the prose poem as a genre in 1836, and it was an inspiration for Charles Baudelaire’s Little Poems in Prose (ibid.). Rimbaud, Wilde, Lowell and T.S. Eliot are also proposed as authors of prose poems (ibid.). It is interesting to observe that these names are also included in dictionary definitions of poetic prose and ←14 | 15→polyphonic prose: Lowell is mentioned with a reference to polyphonic prose, and Rimbaud and Wilde are enumerated in dictionary entries concerning poetic prose (Cuddon 291). In Cuddon’s dictionary, it can also be read that authors such as Rimbaud, Wilde and Lowell can be authors of both polyphonic prose and prose poem.

      It has been suggested that boundaries between the prose poem, poetic prose and polyphonic prose are far from being precise, and to a great extent, their definitions overlap. It can only be observed that while we deal with musicality of poetic language when discussing polyphonic prose, other components of poetry including imagery, metaphors and symbols are also taken into consideration in the case of the prose poem.

      The prose poem and poetic prose seem to be particularly closely connected, and they may be perceived as “twin terms”. Bernard, for example, saw correspondence between these two and claimed that they are historically interrelated (qtd. in Santilli 21), and Simon perceives the prose poem as a fragment of poetic prose; however, Santilli holds the opposite view, arguing that “prose poetry and poetic prose exist at opposite ends of the prose scale and are mutually exclusive”. She also makes a distinction between these two terms with a reference to the essential difference between a genre (or a form) and style, stating “it is precisely this style that cannot be contained inside the severe perimeters of the prose poem” (22), and that the “florid verbosity” (ibid.) of poetic prose is juxtaposed with the “unnatural brevity” (ibid.) of the prose poem.

      In chapter 1 of Such Rare Citings, Santilli mentions one more term related to the prose poem which was analyzed by Jonathan Monroe in A Poverty of Objects, namely “the Romantic fragment” (Santilli 31) – a form of presenting one’s ideas which was developed by German Romantics, among others. According to Santilli, the prose poem and Romantic fragment are considered by Monroe as interchangeable. Therefore, fragments by Schlegel and Baudelaire’s prose poems portray “not so much an illumination of the self by itself (alone and self-sufficient) as an illumination of the self by discourses that surround, traverse, and overdetermine it and from which it cannot finally retreat into sublime isolation […]” (qtd. in Santilli 36).

      The difference between English and German fragments was analyzed in Levinson’s publication The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form. It seems that these two manifest different ideas since

      [t];he English Romantics practiced the fragment; they generated the form naïvely—not in the absence of ideological and material constraints but without benefit of collaboration, perceived precedent, or theoretical apparatus. Whereas the German fragments ←15 | 16→reflect upon contemporary life and thought, the English fragments reflect those realities. (Levinson 11)

      The above quote distinguishes “reflecting upon” from “reflecting” life and leads to the conclusion that the German fragments were more meditations than the realistic portrayals of the world which were the domain of English fragments. It can be concluded that these fragments are contrasted by the author and juxtaposed as idealism versus realism.

      The point of transition between the Romantic fragment and prose poem are de Quincey’s works (Santilli 71). Santilli emphasizes that de Quincey was a direct inspiration for Beaudelaire in his creation of prose poems since he was conducting research on de Quincey’s work and later he wrote his own prose poems (101). Beaudelaire was also involved in research concerning Poe’s works. In “Notes Nouvelles sur Edgar Poe”, he demonstrated his agreement with Poe’s theories, especially the one concerning brevity. It is also emphasized that a connection exists between brevity and the fragmentariness of the text (102).

      According to Delville, the first prose poem in nineteenth-century France was Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen (1869) and it is defined by M. Riffaterre as “the literary genre with an oxymoron for a name” (1). It was Baudelaire who explained the characteristic features of the genre for the first time in his preface to Poems: “the miracle of a poetic prose, musical though rhythmless and rhymeless, flexible yet rugged enough to identify with the lyrical impulses of the soul, the ebbs and flows of reverie, the pangs of conscience” (1). Thus, Baudelaire initiated the trend which was later continued by the followers of the British Decadence who practiced prose poem and other genres which constituted a mixture of prose and poetry (1). Murphy also describes connections between critical and aesthetic prose, referring to Oscar Wilde and his essay in which he defined the role of the critic, to “replicate the aesthetic experience in his prose” (ibid.). Hence, aestheticism appears to be a good background for introducing prose poetry by such Decadent writers as Bertrand, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, which was later translated by Merill and collected in the book titled Pastels in Prose. Merill’s anthology inspired British Decadent writers, and the most prominent authors of the prose poem at the end of the nineteenth century: Ernest Dowson, William Sharp and Oscar Wilde (Poems in Prose) (Delville 5). What characterized a Decadent prose poem was its “colourful, heavily stylized vocabulary with a deceptively simple, self-consciously archaic diction often inspired by the King James Bible”. In addition, Stein’s “Cubist vignettes”, Anderson’s “Whitmanesque hymns” and Bly’s “Deep Image” poems and the new American avant-garde “Language poetry” group have all been mentioned with regard to other forms of ←16 | 17→development of the prose poem in English. Delville emphasizes the difficulties in defining prose poetry, concluding that “the history of the prose poem in English is, to a large extent, the history of successive attempts of poets to re-define the parameters governing our expectations of what a poem (or a prose poem) should look or sound like”. He refers to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, in which a detailed definition of prose poem can be found, and quotes other definitions by Martin Gray and M. H. Abrams, concluding that the prose poem is regarded from the angle of poetry and what is, in fact, defined is “the poetic” (2).

      These definitions juxtapose poetry and prose, which brings to mind Ursula K. Le Guin’s distinction between poetry (“the beautiful dumb blonde, all words”) and prose (“smart brunette with glasses, all ideas”) (Delville 109). Delville quotes Roland Barthes, who refers to poetry as “merely an ornamental version of prose” (2), and Jean Cohen, who claims that “prose is only a moderate kind of poetry”, finally arriving at the following