The Gordian Not: Appendix 3

Appendix 3: SM (Symbolic of Motives) Summary

Part One

1 I. The Poetic Motive

  • 1 Symbolism an “Unmotivated Motive”
  • 2 Deflections from the Poetic Motive
  • 4 Special Role of the Negative
  • 6 Intrinsic Delights of Symbolism
  • 13 Compulsive Aspects of Symbolism
    16 ms. pages moved from the end of PDC

17 II. Nature of the Project

  • 17 The Project as a Whole
  • 21 “Dramatistic” and “Scientistic”
  • 25 Plan of This Particular Book
    Approximately 12 ms. pages of new material
    “Plan of This Particular Book” (29) alludes to the “Orestes Trilogy” and to Dante’s Divine Comedy (see below, “Beyond Catharsis”).

29 III. Preparatory Etymology

  • 29 Specific and General Nature of Terms
  • 31 Poetic, Aesthetic, Artistic
  • 32 Beauty and War
  • 34 Imagination
  • 37 Classification and Propriety
  • 39 In Sum
  • 41 The Sublime
    Approx. 8 ms. page expansion of “Poetic, Aesthetic, Artistic” from PDC
    Considerably revised with some paragraphs from the PDC’s “Poetic, Aesthetic, Artistic” incorporated.

44 IV. Aristotle’s Dramatistic Terminology

  • 44 Literal and Analogical Terms
  • 48 “Poetics” Viewed Deductively
  • 54 Concealed and Fragmentary Dramatism
  • 57 Dramatistic Transformations
    Approximately 9 ms. page expansion of “Logic of the Terms” from PDC
    Considerably revised with some paragraphs from the PDC’s “Logic of the Terms” incorporated.

60 V. Imitation (Mimesis)

SM 60-79 corresponds to PDC 14-30 and Rueckert 5-18 (“Dramatistic View of Imitation”); SM 80-85 corresponds to PDC 31-35.

  • 60 “Imitation” Usually Conceived Too Scientistically
  • 66 Definitions of “Entelechy”
  • 74 Entelechy and Myth
  • 77 Imitation of Tensions
  • 80 Verisimilitude
  • 83 Imitation, Copy, Record
  • 85 Perfection
    2 ms. pages (PDC 35-37, starting “In sum . . .”) dropped. 5 new ms. pages added. Old and new sections end with the same long footnote (single-spaced in PDC, double-spaced in SM thus, adding a page).
  • 91 Individuation and Amplification #
    14 ms. page of new material

105 VI. The Language of Thisness #

  • 105 General and Particular #
  • 108 “Concrete” Words Are Abbreviations for Situations #
  • 113 “Universalizing” a Plot #
  • 115 Generalized Outline of Mrs. Dalloway #
  • 118 Similar Outline of A Passage to India
  • 122 Outline of Coriolanus
  • 123 Problem of Literary Genera #
  • 125 A Definition of A Passage to India as a Literary Genus
  • 126 “Poetic Affect” as a Critical Postulate #
    24 ms. pages of new material

129 VII. Recapitulation

5 ms. pages of new material

Approximately 77 ms. pages of new material plus 35 more of material originally in PDC (2 having been dropped from “Imitation (Mimesis)”—see above) plus 5 ms. pages (gained from additional titles and with double-spacing footnotes and block quotes) yields 117 ms. pages—close to Burke’s reported 120. Move “The Poetic Motive” to the beginning of the manuscript and the total comes to approximately 133. (Another possibi­lity—the 120 pages reported by Burke included “The Poetic Motive” but not the 13 pages section “Nature of the Project” which plausibly could have been added later).

134 VIII. Catharsis (Civic Aspect)

  • 134 Catharsis, Religious and Secular
  • 136 “Entelechial” View of Tragedy
  • 140 Euripides’ Trojan Women
  • 144 How Civic Catharsis Might Operate
  • 153 For Personalizing of Conflict (Antigone, Oresteia, Medea)
  • 155 Civic Motive Personalized in Alcestia
  • 160 Coriolanus and Timon of Athens Contrasted
  • 164 Ibsen’s Master-Builder (Civic and Personal Motives)
  • 167 A “Hypothetical Case”
  • 169 Catharsis and Transcendence
    Burke writes of taking a “first look at transcendence” (169), implying a further look—perhaps in a revised “Platonic Transcendence.”
  • 176 In Sum
    27 ms. pages of new material
    “Catharsis (First View)” (PDC 38-56) covers SM 134-152; SM 153-179 are new.

180 IX. Ostracism as “Cathartic”

  • 180 Plutarch’s “Tragic” View of Ostracism *
    Moved from the end of “Beyond Catharsis” (PDC 312-19; UC 66-70)
  • 188 Ostracism and Victimage in General
    3 ms. pages of new material

191 X. Tragic Triad of Motives

  • 191 Pity
  • 199 Fear
  • 202 Pride
  • 214 Money, Sex, and Tragic “Restfulness”
  • 218 The Four Kinds of Tragic Victim
  • 220 A “Break-Through”
    Approximately 12 ms. pages of new material
    “Pity, Fear, Pride” from PDC 56-74 covers SM 191-212 (an approximately 3 ms. page expansion). New material covers 213-22. “A Break-Through” alludes to Part Two which Burke says the squeamish may skip [“Thinking of the Body”] (220-22) and Part Three which will include discussion of “the allusiveness of tragedy” (220) [“Beyond Catharsis”] and “consideration of tragedy in its grander aspects” (220, 222) [“The Orestes Trilogy”].

Part Two

223 I. The Thinking of the Body

  • The Imagery of “No-No”

230 II. Hermeneutic Problem of Bodily Euphemisms

238 III. Bodily Analogues of the Tragic Triad

  • “Radiations”—and Their Range
  • In Sum, on Body-Imagery
    “The Thinking of the Body” from PDC presumably abridged
    This section begins on PDC 75; PDC covers another 300 pages to the beginning of “The Poetic Motive” which was moved to the beginning of the SM. If reconstruc­tion of the rest of the SM is accurate, the manuscript would cover over 500 pages, depending on how or if Burke intended to edit “The Thinking of the Body.”

Part Three

270 I. Form

  • “Form and Persecution in the Oresteia” from PDC

xxx II. The Orestes Trilogy

  • “Form and Persecution in the Oresteia” from PDC
  • Williams says SM’s table of contents does not include the Oresteia essays (UC 19); but Burke says in “Plan of This Particular Book” that he will “give a close analysis of Aeschylus’ Oresteia” (see above, SM 29) —one of several comments alluded to by Rueckert (UC 109).
  • Published in Rueckert’s Essays in the original, unedited version.

xxx III. “Beyond” Catharsis

Minus “Plutarch’s View of Ostracism” (PDC 312-19).* See above, “Ostracism as Cathartic” (SM 180-88). In “Plan of This Particular Book” (see above, SM 29) Burke alludes to an analysis of Dante’s Divine Comedy included in this section (PDC 294-96; UC 58-59). Apparent summaries of the original section can be found in “Rhetoric and Poetics” (LSA 298-99); discussion of “the Beyond” can also be found in “I, Eye, Ay—Concerning Emerson’s Early Essay on ‘Nature,’ and the Machinery of Transcendence” (LSA 186-200).

xxx IV. Catharsis (Universal Aspect)

In a PDC footnote (52), Burke says the sexual character of catharsis will be considered in a later chapter, “Catharsis (Second View).” The same note appears in an SM footnote (148) but with the new chapter title.

xxx V. Platonic Transcendence [Drama, Catharsis—Dialectic, Transcendence?]

Burke’s further look (?) at transcendence implied earlier (SM 169), perhaps incorporat­ing the Emerson essay (itself incorporating elements of “Beyond Catharsis,” see above) which appears to be Burke’s maturest discussion of catharsis and transcen­dence. Williams cites Burke’s June 1955 letter to Cowley (UC 13) in which he speaks of not yet having revised a new section—a “big item in my godam Symbolic”—devoted to Emerson’s essay on “Nature,” but Williams never mentions it again. Burke seems not to have incorporated the Emerson essay into the PDC manuscript which Williams has dated 1957-58, suggesting that the essay perhaps was to be incorporated later. Discussion of comic catharsis would perhaps have preceded it. The Emerson, Djuna Barnes [“Version, Con-, Per-, and In- (Thoughts on Djuna Barnes’s Novel Nightwood), LSA, pp. 240-253, see especially p. 244], and E. M. Forster [“Social and Cosmic Mystery: A Passage to India,” LSA, pp. 223-239] essays are published in 1966 and “Rhetoric and Poetics” in 1965; all involve some discussion of “the beyond,” or “beyonding,” suggesting that Burke is still working hard on the SM in the mid-1960s—specifically on the issues of “drama and catharsis, dialectic and transcendence.”

# included in “Glimpses into a Labyrinth of Interwoven Motives” as unpublished

*included in “Watchful of Hermetics to Be Strong in Hermeneutics” as mostly unpublished