I’m
rather behind with my posts after a difficult few weeks – so the event of the
Olympic flame being carried through a neighbouring village actually happened a
few weeks ago…
I
hadn’t been overly fussed about it – not being a sporty person, even from an
armchair – but when the route of the flame was shown on tv and a friend was
quite excited because it was going to pass right by her house I began to think
that it was quite a momentous occasion and asked if I could go and watch it
with her.
It
turned out to be one of those rare days – bright and sunny – which made it
easier to get up, get dressed and have breakfast in time to arrive at her house uncharacteristically
early for me, 8 am. There was a convenient bench by the side of the road near
the house and so we went to sit on it and chatted with neighbours as we waited
for the show to begin.
The
razzmatazz started – rather bizarrely – with the police. Three of them roared
up on huge motorbikes, blue lights flashing and positioned themselves across
the road. Then came a Coca Cola bus and a Lloyds Bank bus full of smiling young
people - it seemed churlish to entertain thoughts of how inappropriate it is for
Coca Cola to be promoting a sports event or to consider the disaster that is Lloyd’s Bank so I
suspended my cynicism and waved with the rest. (At least the Coca Cola bus had cleaned up its emissions I was glad to see.)
While
waiting for the torch-carrier to appear I chatted to one of my friend’s
neighbours who informed me that he was a semiotician. “What’s that?” I asked. “That’s
what most people say”, he replied, “It’s the study of signs”. I thought that sounded interesting and rattled
on to him about how I’d been thinking lately about how metaphor is endemic in language;
how almost everything is described in terms of something else (although often
we are not aware of it), meaning that thought reflects the interrelationship of
things. “Ah yes”, he replied, "Roland Barthes said 'no
sooner is a form seen than it must resemble something: humanity seems
doomed to analogy'", adding that he himself thought it was a positive thing rather
than a doom. Nietzsche also had something to say about this, I learnt, for
instance: “The drive toward the formation of metaphors is
the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense
with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself”.
At this point the conversation was interrupted by shouts hailing the
first glimpse of the torch-bearer, flanked by assistants.
The handover of the flame happened just beside us, where the next runner was
waiting, leaving her
predecessor recovering from the exertion and the emotion of the event.
After all the excitement, my
friend invited her neighbours and myself back for early elevenses and we sat
in the garden in the heat of the morning with coffee and biscuits, chatting and
joking. I’d have liked to have learnt more about semiotics but didn’t want to hijack
the conversation by being nerdy :-)
Later, back home, I did a bit of research,
finding an online introduction to the subject by my erstwhile informant, Daniel
Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners. I haven’t read the whole book and have only a superficial grasp of the subject,
but what I did understand appealed to me:
Humans might be described as meaning-makers - Homo
significans; we are driven by a desire to make meaning
which we do through our creation and interpretation of signs. Signs can be
words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects which only have
meaning when we invest them with it.
Semiotics isn’t a discipline but a mode of inquiry. It’s important
because it helps us to see that reality is in fact a system of signs and doesn’t
have an independent, objective existence.
“Studying
semiotics can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and
of the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing it. It can help us
to realize that information or meaning is not 'contained' in the world or in
books, computers or audio-visual media. Meaning is not 'transmitted' to us - we
actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of
which we are normally unaware. Becoming aware of such codes is both inherently
fascinating and intellectually empowering.” Deconstructing and contesting the realities of
signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are
suppressed. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance
of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the
world of meanings which we inhabit.”
The chapter on Rhetorical Tropes I found the most interesting since poets have to choose, as Coleridge stated, not only words in the right order, but the right words in the right order. A poem is often quite short (compared to a novel for instance) and therefore has to signal its meaning in fewer words. The words are potentised in order to have the most impact and this potentisation is often achieved by metaphor – by signs - indeed, the whole poem may be a metaphor. The interpretation of these signs, the decoding, depends on the reader who gives meaning to the text. What this meaning will be depends to some extent on whether he or she is part of the culture the text has come out of and understands its conventions.
Inevitably, some signs will have individual significance for the reader – or indeed for the poet. It’s interesting in the poetry reading group I go to, how one person’s reading of a poem might be very different to another’s - or there again, skewed slightly - by an individual association of an experience with a particular object or sign.
Umberto Eco, I learnt, uses the term ‘semiosis’ to mean the process
involved in a culture producing signs and attributing meaning to them. Although
a social endeavour, he has recognised that an individual may use semiosis and
that subjectivity will play a part in this. I recognise this in my own poetry
where an object or act or experience will have a particular significance,
potent to myself, but may be too personal to communicate that significance to
the reader. (Poetry workshops are particularly useful, I find, in testing out
whether or not a metaphor is too personal to contribute meaningfully to a poem.)
But some of the best poetry works by extending the agreed meaning given to a
particular sign in a highly-individual or personal way which is yet comprehensible to the reader. Sometimes this meaning is almost out of
our range and yet potent and evocative, stretching us, expanding our
understanding in a thoroughly satisfying way.
I’m
not sure now that I’m doing anything more in my musing than turning the same
soil with a different tool, so I’ll stop :-)
As for the Olympic Flame – what a wealth of meaning and cultural associations! Reminiscent of Prometheus’ theft of fire from the god Zeus to give to humans, it was kept burning during the ancient Olympic games in Olympia, Greece. Our contemporary ceremony with the relay of the flame from Greece to the site of the current games was instigated in 1936 by the Nazis… the perpetrators of one of humanity's darkest hours. The flame is kindled in Olympia by the rays of the sun (through a parabolic mirror) – a ‘pure’ form of fire reminding us, perhaps, of the Olympian god, Apollo, a beardless, athletic youth associated with the sun. It celebrates the living flame, passed from generation to generation, as we once again display the physical prowess and fortitude of the human animal.
Put like that, it does feel quite momentous that it passed through the village of Bow Street and was handed over opposite the local Spa shop – a meeting of the global and the local, the mundane and the mythical, the past and the present. And how interesting to meet the neighbours!
