Dear Bruce, Craig, and Karl,
First, thank you for saving me embarrassment. Your distinctions helped me
better describe the poem as indicative in mood (with the one exception of
the relict of the subjunctive, which I had noted) but rarely tilted toward
the kind of positive statement with which we associate the indicative (as
WK Smart says; I could not quickly get my hands on *Cambridge Grammar*).
The use of modal auxiliaries and hedges to qualify the speaker's stance--be
it epistemic, dynamic, or deontic--is precisely what I was interested in.
It was also a good caution to remember that these sentences are far from
simple declaratives.
The poem can be read on a number of levels: pre- versus postlapsarian,
Frost making use of the Eden myth to figure his love for either his wife or
his secretary (whom he unsuccessfully wooed after Elinor's death). One
point of interest is Jay Parini's suggestion that the source line for the
poem's first line is from *Hamlet *: "So have I heard and do in part
believe it," a line that Parini says Frost once called the most beautiful
in English. The decision to alter hearing to declaring seems interesting,
especially in light of David Crystal's discussion of the range of verbs,
including declarations versus representatives: *believe *belongs to *
representatives*,* *a type of verb by which “the speaker is committed, in
varying degrees, to the truth of a proposition,” but *declare *belongs to *
declarations,* by which* *“the speaker alters the external status or
condition of an object or situation solely by making the utterance”
(Crystal, “How Language Works” 277-78). Given Frost's larger poetics, which
often explore the implicit gap between the two—the failure of the speaker
to alter the external status or condition solely by making an utterance
(the kind of power implicit in chant and spells that Frost toys with in
“Mending Wall”) or by believing it (being committed to the proposition’s
truth as in the penultimate line of “Mowing”: “The fact is the sweetest
dream that labor knows” (Frost, *CPPP *26)]) strikes me as relevant here,
although I'll be the first to admit that the joy of reading Frost is the
freedom for us to walk away with different constructions of the text.
Thank you for taking time out of your days to assist me and to begin a
conversation about a wonderful poem!
Natalie
Natalie Gerber
Associate Professor, English
Secretary-Treasurer, Wallace Stevens Society
Associate Editor, *Wallace Stevens Journal*
phone: (716) 673-3855
email: [log in to unmask]
On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Natalie,
>
> I should like to comment on a few points made by Karl and Craig. I hope
> they will not in any way disparage the facts they have expressed. Yet I
> think it is an error to consider our world as "post-mythic."
>
> Is your impression that Frost violated his own law? The law cannot be
> taken literally anyway, since "one sound" is monotonous in the sense of a
> single syntactic construction. It may be a useful exercise to paraphrase
> his compound and complex sentences as simple sentences. Your idea was to
> alter the declarative to more than just the other moods of interrogative
> and imperative, but also subjunctive. As Karl mentioned, the subjunctive
> mood is now a relict of a number of semantic functions now carried by the
> modal auxiliaries in the three remaining moods.
>
> I think that Karl's use of the term "prolapsarian garden" was appropriate
> for what modern culture may still value in the myths of the past. Teachers
> especially should rise above the philosophy that rejects myth as a means to
> understanding truth. Even modern scientists accept the kinds of myths seen
> in the thought experiments that Einstein created as a way to understand
> theoretical concepts better. Kuhn proclaimed the whole of science as a
> paradigm created by scientists to replace the less useful or precise
> analyses of the past. I believe that myth is the domain of the poets.
> Myths paint pictures to express an underlying realty not captured in the
> languages of mathematics. The purpose of the arts seems ideally to give
> expression to some ineffable truth that the artist has become aware of.
> Fables are not taken as true depictions of physical reality, but stories
> to teach principles of truth. Too often the false garb of myth is its
> cause for rejection out of hand by the literalist. The success of drama and
> theater relies on the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the audience.
> There the line between truth and fiction can be fine indeed.
>
> To me Robert Frost's poem was telling us about the expressions of body
> language. His use of the Garden of Eden myth to refer to origins may have
> lent a rather sexist tone. Ironic it is that song birds are naturally male
> and human sex objects naturally female. But the functions of the limbic
> system in both are the same -- survival of the species.
>
> Bruce
>
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: "Hancock, Craig G" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: query on mood in a Robert Frost poem
> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:43:26 +0000
>
> Karl,
> It's also highly possible that the garden is a contemporary garden and
> the speaker is looking back at how the human voice of Eve might have
> influenced the birds' song and carried it through all these years. I didn't
> think of "he" as referring to Adam, but to a sort of distanced speaker
> (third person narration.)
> "Could" can also refer to ability. It's not that he has permission to
> believe it, but the ability to, which is a poetic leap of sorts--to find a
> sort of mythological truth that sustains its relevance in a post mythic
> world. To assert it is one thing, to believe it another. And "could," of
> course, brings up the possibility of not believing. If something is a
> simple declarative truth, it doesn't have the hesitancy that "could"
> implies.
> I agree that it's best to use a term like "subjunctive" for a
> particular way of expressing conditionality. We certainly have other ways
> to do that, and the modals have evolved as adjuncts in that process.
>
> Craig
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karl Hagen
> Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: query on mood in a Robert Frost poem
>
> I would be careful about applying the term "subjunctive" too loosely for
> an unreal situation. That's rather like calling any sentence where the
> subject isn't the agent a passive voice. Rather than talking in terms of
> unreality, it might be more helpful to think about epistemic, deontic, and
> dynamic modality (see the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language for
> more detail).
>
> In the most obvious reading (at least the one that seems most salient to
> me) both "would" and "could" have dynamic modality. In other words, we're
> referring to qualities and attitudes of the subject (Adam). Relative to the
> basic time described (in the prelapsarian garden), "would" indicates that
> the declaration has yet to occur. Presumably, he will be making this
> declaration after the fall, when the threat of loss becomes real.
>
> The big contrast that I see here is less between factuality and unreality
> as between declaration and belief. The first line suggests that there is a
> possibility Adam could say something that he doesn't believe (i.e., lie),
> even if he's not doing it in this case. That possibility reinforces the
> notion that the speaker's stance is one of reflecting back upon the garden
> from the fallen world.
>
> You can probably sketch out alternative readings in which "would" is
> epistemic (i.e., indicating that this is a conclusion of the speaker rather
> than direct assertion of truth), and "could" is deontic (giving
> permission), although they seem to me to make less sense in context.
>
> The expression "Be that as may be" is subjunctive, but it's also a
> fossilized idiom. Everything else is declarative, but I don't see this poem
> as an ironic violation of Frost's statement, as they hardly constitute
> "simple" declarative sentences. Their syntax is reasonably complex, with
> embedded clauses and phrases displaced from their ordinary order.
>
> Karl
>
> On Oct 10, 2013, at 3:17 AM, Natalie Gerber wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I would appreciate the group's expertise in weighing in on two questions
> of grammar regarding a Robert Frost poem that relies heavily on the modals
> would and could.
> >
> > Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same
> >
> > He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all
> > the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added
> > to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words.
> > Admittedly an eloquence so soft
> > Could only have had an influence on birds When call or laughter
> > carried it aloft.
> > Be that as may be, she was in their song.
> > Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed Had now persisted in the
> > woods so long That probably it never would be lost.
> > Never again would birds' song be the same.
> > And to do that to birds was why she came. (CPPP 308) Certainly, the
> > modals--along with expressions like be that as may be and admittedly and
> negators--function as hedges, qualifications, but I wonder whether we might
> say they make sentences in the text subjunctive, expressive of irreality,
> or whether we might say they indicate the speaker's stance toward his
> statement while remaining within the range of expression within the
> indicative.
> >
> > Also, I would appreciate your confirming for me that the poem is largely
> or entirely written in declarative sentences. The question interests me
> because Frost once wrote, "The simple declarative sentence used in making a
> plain statement is one sound. But Lord love ye it mustn't be worked to
> death. It is against the law of nature that whole poems should be written
> in it. If they are written they won't be read."
> > The poem strikes me as a successful violation of this law.
> >
> > In full disclosure, I am seeking your advice toward an essay I am
> revising that compares Frost's investment of belief in sound to Wallace
> Stevens' and William Carlos Williams'. The emphasis is upon Frost's notion
> of sentence sounds, but I'd like to get the grammar right.
> >
> > Thank you very much for any light you can shed.
> >
> > With best wishes,
> > Natalie
> > Natalie Gerber
> > Associate Professor, English
> > Secretary-Treasurer, Wallace Stevens Society Associate Editor, Wallace
> > Stevens Journal
> > phone: (716) 673-3855
> > email: [log in to unmask]
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