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14
INTRODUCTION
absolutely unfounded theories on the bare bones of the contentless
figures. But the figures are nothing but their exemplifications; the fact
that they have logical reference and structure does not ipso facto make
them poetic-in this De is right—but neither does it make them non-
poetic, as De seems to think. The exemplification demonstrates the poetic
applicability of the form. Poetry, indeed, does not represent a use of
language at all, a service of language to an extrinsic end. According to
one view, and we think this is the view of the early Indian poeticians,
poetry can be taken as the exploitation of language for its own sake and
poetics as the investigation of language insofar as it escapes the immediate
limitations of utility and achieves a condition of self-illumination which
we might call beauty.
General as they are, the figures are not specialized in their application.
Comparison is inherently neither poetic nor rhetorical: A simile, to use
the formal terminology of the Indian poetic, is a statement about two
terms (upameya, upamāna 'subject and object of comparison') tending
to the explicit point that they share a common property (sādhāraṇadharma
*tertium') and expressed through use of some adverbial particle indicating
likeness ('like', 'as'). Customary law, for example, is based upon the
careful examination of similarities in this sense: A's behavior was very
much like B's (in another case), which was judged to be culpable (thus
establishing a principle of similarity: the law), and therefore A is also
guilty. The rhetorical use of the figures is equally irrelevant to their
pure form, their expressive tity. In part, the pure formalism of the
figures explains the possibility of confusion between poetic and rhetoric;
the figures are forms of assertion and judgement which are common to
all intelligent discourse. This point, which the later (medieval) Indian
critics of the figurative school often emphasized in order to establish that
the essence of poetry (beauty) cannot be shown on this level of formalism
(propositions) alone,13 was not unknown to tradition (where even the
terminology of poetics is borrowed from other formalistic disciplines,
particularly grammar and logic), nor, in all likelihood, to the figurationists
themselves. They situate poetics quite consciously next to the disciplines
of logic and grammar, because logic and grammar provide the background
and approach to the poetic problem.
By our notion of a rhetoric, the figures are among the persuasive
devices which further the course of an argument and produce conviction.
The argument of course is supposed to be true, and as such can get along
13 Dhvanikära and Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaloka, ed. Durgaprasad (Bombay,
1891), 1.14-15, 2.29 ff.
INTRODUCTION
absolutely unfounded theories on the bare bones of the contentless
figures. But the figures are nothing but their exemplifications; the fact
that they have logical reference and structure does not ipso facto make
them poetic-in this De is right—but neither does it make them non-
poetic, as De seems to think. The exemplification demonstrates the poetic
applicability of the form. Poetry, indeed, does not represent a use of
language at all, a service of language to an extrinsic end. According to
one view, and we think this is the view of the early Indian poeticians,
poetry can be taken as the exploitation of language for its own sake and
poetics as the investigation of language insofar as it escapes the immediate
limitations of utility and achieves a condition of self-illumination which
we might call beauty.
General as they are, the figures are not specialized in their application.
Comparison is inherently neither poetic nor rhetorical: A simile, to use
the formal terminology of the Indian poetic, is a statement about two
terms (upameya, upamāna 'subject and object of comparison') tending
to the explicit point that they share a common property (sādhāraṇadharma
*tertium') and expressed through use of some adverbial particle indicating
likeness ('like', 'as'). Customary law, for example, is based upon the
careful examination of similarities in this sense: A's behavior was very
much like B's (in another case), which was judged to be culpable (thus
establishing a principle of similarity: the law), and therefore A is also
guilty. The rhetorical use of the figures is equally irrelevant to their
pure form, their expressive tity. In part, the pure formalism of the
figures explains the possibility of confusion between poetic and rhetoric;
the figures are forms of assertion and judgement which are common to
all intelligent discourse. This point, which the later (medieval) Indian
critics of the figurative school often emphasized in order to establish that
the essence of poetry (beauty) cannot be shown on this level of formalism
(propositions) alone,13 was not unknown to tradition (where even the
terminology of poetics is borrowed from other formalistic disciplines,
particularly grammar and logic), nor, in all likelihood, to the figurationists
themselves. They situate poetics quite consciously next to the disciplines
of logic and grammar, because logic and grammar provide the background
and approach to the poetic problem.
By our notion of a rhetoric, the figures are among the persuasive
devices which further the course of an argument and produce conviction.
The argument of course is supposed to be true, and as such can get along
13 Dhvanikära and Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaloka, ed. Durgaprasad (Bombay,
1891), 1.14-15, 2.29 ff.