March 17, 2011

• Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly — an analysis

  “Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.“  –Cicero

  For all the literary criticism surrounding Vogon poetry, few critics have sufficiently explored the complex ways it deconstructs the social relationship of power in the bourgeoisie/proletariat binary.  In the nuances of this deconstruction of the social Other, Vogon poets such as Jeltz and Kraltz are in fact redefining the social contract in which society exists at all.  For an example of this complex implied commentary, I submit to you an excerpt from the famous poem “Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly,” by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

  Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me
  As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
  Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes
  And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
  Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my
  blurglecrucheon, see if I don’t!

  A few decades ago, when New Criticism was regrettably popular among the less-educated faculty of American universities, one would have analyzed this poem (and others in its genre, such as those penned by Trawl Azgoth of Kria or Paula Nancy Milstone Jennings of Sussez) in a textual manner, pointing out the ways in which the words of the poem adhered (or failed to adhere) to the laws and stipulations of the lexical form, vis a vi the internal laws and regularities of language.  The linguistic character of language was in fact quite an important discovery for New Critics, who had not yet considered the ramifications of said character.

  The community of literary critics have recently come to better understand, however, the complex strategical situation in a certain society which we give the name Power, and the ramifications of Power in the lexical proletariat; whereas a poem is thought to be required to follow the internal laws and regularities of language, the language lawmakers take on the role of the bourgeoisie.  Thus the act of defining poetry becomes an exercise of Power, and the poet becomes a laborer toiling in the service of those who have that Power.  Speaking of poetry, still in The Gay Science, Nietzsche declares that there are those who look for the origin, the Ursprung, of poetry, when in fact there is no Ursprung of poetry, there is only an invention of poetry. Somebody had the rather curious idea of using a certain number of rhythmic or musical properties of language to speak, to impose his words, to establish by means of those words a certain relation of power over others. Poetry, too, was invented or made, and thus imposed.  It is this imposition of poetry upon the “un-poemed” that separates the Self from the Other, the unknown, the unformed.

  If the Other defined by the “un-poemed” is unknown, then what is poetical is therefore what is known, what is seen–that which is fixed by the inescapable gaze of the panopticon, the all-seeing eye of the reader.  Knowledge was invented, then. To say that it was invented is to say that it has no origin. More precisely, it is to say, however paradoxical this may be, that knowledge is absolutely not inscribed in human nature. Knowledge doesn’t constitute man’s oldest instinct; and, conversely, in human behavior, the human appetite, the human instinct, there is no such thing as the seed of knowledge. As a matter of fact, Nietzsche says, knowledge does have a connection with the instincts, but it cannot be present in them, and cannot even be one instinct among the others. Knowledge is simply the outcome of the interplay, the encounter, the junction, the struggle, and the compromise between the instincts. Something is produced because the instincts meet, fight one another, and at the end of their battles finally reach a compromise. That something is knowledge.  And this knowledge forms the core of the “poemed,” if you will, that which forms the lexical law which the exercise of Power inflicts upon both the Other and the Self.  It was by obscure power relations that poetry was invented. It was also by pure and obscure power relations that religion was invented. We see the meanness, then, of all these small beginnings as compared with the solemnity of their origin as conceived by philosophers. The historian should not be afraid of the meanness of things, for it was out of the sequence of mean and little things that, finally, great things were formed. Good historical method requires us to counterpose the meticulous and unavowable meanness of these fabrications and inventions, to the solemnity of origins.

  Here we can see, however, the poet crying out against those impositions of poetry’s origins, those lexical laws which are enforced upon him.  His bee is “lurgid,” he drangles “hooptiously,” rejecting both the role of the proletariat and the norms of the bourgeoisie.  He implores us “groop,” rather than the “blethorp” that society would have him say, and thus identifies himself with the Other, the unknown.  This is an insurrection of subjugated knowledge, or rather un-knowledge, the un-knowledge of the poet deconstructing the imposition placed upon the un-poemed.

  The poet, of course, is aware of the political ramifications of his defiant statement.  The poet is a function of discourse, and as a function of discourse, we must consider the characteristics of a discourse that support this use and determine its differences from other discourses. If we limit our remarks only to those books or texts with poets, we can isolate the poet’s Self.  Jeltz rejects the binary of the poemed and un-poemed, and in doing so, struggles against his own Self, in time coming to see his Self as yet another imposition of Power (“rend thee in the gobblewarts…”).  And thus the deconstruction of that which separates out the Other is in the end the deconstruction of the Self, an act of lexical suicide.

  Indeed, the depth of the relationships of Power within Vogon poetry have hardly been examined in current academic literature.  I can point to many other such examples as compelling as this.

  In the end, this critic–and, I believe, Jeltz himself–would have us cry along with the Preacher:  “υἱέ μου φύλαξαι ποιῆσαι βιβλία πολλά οὐκ ἔστιν περασμός καὶ μελέτη πολλὴ κόπωσις σαρκός!”

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