Ontology and Address...I, You, Ich, Du, Sie, Vous, Tu...

We speak often of the problem of the “I” in lyric poetry, but what of the “You”? Literary critics struggle with whether to assume that the “I” who speaks is the poet or a character or a narrator, but perhaps the first question ought to be, “to whom is this ‘I’ speaking?” To start with the “I” rather than the “you” implies a certain ethical and ontological stance that may not be appropriate to all lyric nor even to all speech.




George Herbert’s devotional poems, such as "Jordan (1)" would be incomprehensible without considering the “You” that the poems address. This “you” is generally either God or a fellow Christian (or both simultaneously), or a potential convert or wayward Christian. This you, especially when it indicates God, is a powerful force. The poem is not a circle radiating from a central “I” but an ellipse, defined by its two poles.

While I do not intend to address God in my poems, I do often use direct address and dialogue. I am struggling with the role of the “I” in poems – whether I want one to write with this pronoun at all, or if so, with what relation to have to the pronoun -- but I had not considered the opposing “you.” This, perhaps, says more about my character than that of anyone’s poems.

But why do we assume the I is equivalent to the poet? I'd be open to the possibility that other people consider the "you" first, but a number of grad and undergrad literature courses suggest that most people make that fatal intentional fallacy. Does our tendency to make the intentional fallacy suggest something about our original relationship to the world? Or, perhaps, conversely, we cannot help but feel addressed by the poem... implicitly called to by an other behind the page.

Herbert's poems do not call directly the reader: they speak to God. The reader, for the most part, simply listens in on conversations between the poet and God. “Jordan (1)” begins with a series of questions; these are not rhetorical questions posed to the open air but questions put to God and Christians who read poetry. The poem asks: “Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair / become a verse? Is there in truth no beautie?” Insofar as he addresses other Christians, Herbert less asks these questions than he implies their response: poetry’s proper role is to display beautiful truths not pretty fictions. Insofar as he speaks to God, Herbert appears to genuinely inquire into poetry’s potential for presenting sacred subjects; perhaps poetry, as artifice, can only remain several removes from the truth. He refers to the "painted chair" and alludes to the infamous Platonic defamation of the poets; but like Plato, he duplicitly presents this "argument" in poetry, undercutting our trust the explicit statement.

Because the poem actually puts the question to God, this is not idle speculation; as a Christian minister, Herbert could expect an answer of sorts. The answer might not come in sonnet reply, but as addressed to God, his poem takes on the power of prayer. This element of “craft” is performative: Herbert performs prayer in poetry. His craft choices addresses the problem of craft: should poetry craftily generate more false images of “enchanted groves” and “purling streams” or should it speak directly (to God) and avoid artifice?

Of course, the poem itself appears within a sturdy form: iambic pentameter with alternating end rhyme. Apparently, this aspect of craft is appropriate or necessary for communicating even with God. When a poet writes in images, it causes all to “be vail’d” and “he that reades, divines, catching the sense at two removes.” God, of course, created the original world; poem that addresses God in images would be periphrastic. Herbert even begs that he not be punished “with losse of rime” because he would use his rhymes to say “My God, My King.” In “Jordan (2)” Herbert regrets when his writing was “curling with metaphors a plain intention, decking the sense, as if it were to sell.” I will not have the space to fully consider the second poem, but it is important to note that, though it does not commence with questions and directly invoke an addressee, the poem still implicitly presents itself to God, as framed by the first poem.

Identifying the addressee of the poem as God implicitly suggests that the speaker of the poem is the poet. If this poem truly performs prayer, then it must be prayed by a living soul, not a fictional or artificial narrator. Confession not only celebrates God, but confesses one’s own sins; to create a ‘narrator’ dissociable from the poet would prevent the poem from fulfilling this second function. If the poem addressed someone else – say, a mother or a lover – we could possible envision a scenario in which the narrator has an identity distinct from the poet. For example, as Linda Gregerson points out in “Rhetorical Contract in the Erotic Poem,” the famous Marvell poem “To His Coy Mistress” appears to directly address the lady beloved, but in fact the title offsets the addresser and addressee as his coy mistress. The title casts the poem in an ironic light; someone is saying this to his lover, but it isn’t necessarily the poet. To do the same to an address to God, would be to mock the entire framework of the confessional poem; the poem would no longer be confessional nor could it perform the act of prayer. We must assume sincerity in address in the Herbert poem; the craft element must be taken as intentional in order for the poem to have its intended effect.