William Meznarich
ENG 337
Dr. Sexson
April 24, 2009
Lists in Literature:
The Oral Tradition versus the Literate One
After listening to twenty-plus presentations of people memorizing fifty seemingly trivial items, I wondered as I am sure many of my classmates wondered, “What is the point?” And Dr. Sexson had an answer prepared for us, if we could memorize these fifty somewhat meaningless things with such ease then imagine if we took this new art of memory and used it on our undergraduate studies. But with that statement, these lists went back to being pretty much pointless, with the only purpose of them being to serve the point of how easy memorization could be. It was not until a later day in class, where Sexson seemed to start another argument explaining that these lists we were reciting were magical and poetic (this will be explained in further detail later). This revelation confused me and started my mind thinking. I had first been of the camp that regarded lists in literature as Raymond Adolph Prier describes as “a series…[which may only] include three, four, or at the most five members before the mind traces off horizontally in an inevitable ’etc’” (Prier 43). In my paper, I wish to compare the importance of lists in both the literate tradition and the oral tradition; whereas the literate sees the list as copious and meaningless and the oral (or illiterate) sees the list as important, and even magical and poetic.
Once again, before the recitations Dr. Sexson urged us to pick a list of items which had some sort of meaning for us and not necessarily fifty random items. He explained that he wanted this exercise to be of use to us and not just tedious homework. It was only later that he explained the magical and poetic potential that these list contained, and to showcase that potential, he read a passage from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, where Humbert Humbert is musing over Dolores Haze’s class roll list, and remarks on its beauty:
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this “Haze, Dolores” (she!) in its special bower of names…I am trying to analyze the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those others…my Lolita” (Nabokov 52-53).
He then pointed us towards two sections in Ong where he discusses the poetic significances of lists as well as the magic of words. To Ong lists must be understood as having importance in an operational context such as in the catalogue of ships in Homer’s Illiad and in a narrative context such as the genealogy lists in the Torah, where fathers and sons are not merely listed, but are actively being beget and begot by one another (Ong 97-98). In the oral tradition, lists are not redundant or aggregative descriptions, but instead are essential to the narrative.
The magical qualities of words are also associated with these lists. Ong notes that “writing is often regarded at first as an instrument of secret and magic power…[where] scraps of writing are used as magical amulets” (Ong 92). He goes on to talk about the cargo cults of South Pacific islands where:
Illiterates or semi-literates think that the commercial papers -- orders, bills of lading, receipts, and the like -- that they know figure in shipping operations are magical instruments to make ships and cargo come in from across the sea, and they elaborate various rituals manipulating written texts in the hope that cargo will turn for their own possession and use (Ong 92).
These magical words in lists can be seen in canonized literature too, such as the spell the three witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth conjure at the beginning of the play.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches' mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble (1.1.8-35).
The list’s contents, instructions, and order give it notable magical qualities, which causes interest in the listener and not boredom. There is something trancelike in its meticulous description, as if the spell was really working to conjure up malevolent spirits in its listeners. This magical element, or mysticism, of meditation on letters is addressed several times in Ong, most notably in his description of the Judeo mysticism cult known as Cabbalists. Cabbalist believed that
the sacred Hebrew alphabet is, mystically speaking, supposed to contain all the Names of God. A form of Cabalist meditation particularly developed in Spain at this time consisted in meditating on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, combining them and recombining them to form the Names of God (Yates 177).
Thus, it is understood that it is possible to meditate or worship by using a list and repeating its contents over and over. It means that there is a possibility of a magical element to any list, Shakespeare obviously knew this and so did Sexson as he had Christine of the Laughing Rats perform her list of Rabis in the dark, in order to help us be mystified simply by the sound.
In the literate tradition there is a different quality that explains what writings are works and what writings are purely incidental. Michel Foucault, an important figurehead in the post-structuralist movement in France with Roland Barthes among others, ventured to try and explain what is and what is not a work.
Even when an individual has been accepted as an author, we must still ask whether everything that he wrote, said, or left behind is part of his work. The problem is both theoretical and technical. When undertaking the publication of Nietzsche's works, for example, where should one stop? Surely everything must be published, but what is "everything"? Everything that Nietzsche himself published, certainly. And what about the rough drafts for his works? Obviously. The plans for his aphorisms? Yes. The deleted passages and the notes at the bottom of the page? Yes. What if, within a workbook filled with aphorisms, one finds a reference, the notation of a meeting or of an address, or a laundry list: is it a work, or not? Why not? And so on, ad infinitum (Foucault).
His point that he is trying to make is not for the legitimacy of the “laundry list” among other incidental writings as works; instead, he believes the question of what is and what is not a work is inherent in the literary quality and importance of that work and not necessarily simply because it was written by a noteworthy intellectual. The list then becomes subjugated to the role of incidental or happenstance writing, simply saying it is not a work because it obviously was not intended by the author to be one. The list or catalogue in future novels becomes only a throwback to the classic style, and all the power that it seemingly once contained is lost in the literate culture.
The literate tradition approach differed greatly from what the oral tradition expected. The oral tradition believed in framed narratives, as explained by Ong as boxes within boxes. With this sort of narrative style the list was incorporated to help the poet remember the narrative, but the list was not static, but extremely fluid, changing in order from performance to performance. As Ong notes, there was no chronological order to these lists and no way to even conceive of one; if a poet were to forget a piece of the narrative, he would just have to add it later on. And even if a poet then got that piece in the right chronological order the next time, he would inevitable “leave out other episodes or get them in the wrong chronological order” (Ong 140-141). This is very different from the literate tradition, which relies on Freytag’s Pyramid, where there is a body rising towards a climax and then a conclusion. Lists or catalogues of items or things in this structure are easily viewed as meaningless because they do not add to the climax or story and are in fact keeping the reader away from the “real” narrative.
However, I believe there is an importance to this lists even in a literate, print culture that we live in today. The lists can mesmerize the reader, taking him back to that oral culture of sound over sight, that according to Ong we once preferred. These lists can even be considered poetic for that effect as something unrepentantly beautiful and once again entrancing. It is unfortunate, however, that an author or poet cannot guarantee these effects in his or her readers because it cannot be guaranteed that the reader will not just say etc. and skip to the end of this list and say that it is meaningless. Words can never be meaningless, or else they would not be words, and lists are only meaningless and redundant when we let them be. Ong explains biblical genealogies in a way I think is appropriate for all oral works:
[these passages] are not felt as thing-like, but as reconstitutions of time, impossible to ‘examine’ because they are not presented visually but rather are utterances which are heard. In a primary oral culture or a culture with heavy oral residue even genealogies are not ‘lists’ of data but rather ‘memory of songs sung’ (Ong 98).
These are not redundant lists of words, or longwinded genealogies, but instead these are epic musical and theatrical performances. This argument is strengthened when one realizes that often the witches list from Macbeth (noted above) is often sung and not merely spoken. These lists do have the potential to be magical and to be poetic, but the best outcome is the combination of the two, that is for the list to become musical! To be both entrancing, melodic, and beautiful. If we were in the real oral culture, we would be able to understand that all words, all lists, all sounds are musical.
