RT Article
T1 The Poet as "Rememberer": Anamnesis in David Jones's Language
JF Religion & literature
VO 49
IS 1
SP 121
OP 129
A1 Ward, Jean
LA English
PB Dep.
YR 2017
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1665853719
AB In his Preface to The Anathemata, David Jones describes himself as "an English monoglot," a claim he repeats in the Author's Preface to Epoch and Artist, where he also declares: "I have at my command no language but English." However, the number of' words and phrases in other languages-Latin, Greek, French, Welsh, to name only the most obvious-that any random search of his writings is likely to reveal, and the care that the poet takes in explaining, for example, how the title The Anathemata is to be understood and even how it should be pronounced, make one want to ask: if Jones is an English monoglot, then what kind of English is it that he says he has at his command? This article examines the polyglot nature of that supposedly single language, the "Englishes" within this English, by means of which Jones's work opens on to a vastly varied past, laying bare the "deposits" that are enshrined in the memory preserved in words; or, to use another of Jones's own metaphors, "squeezing every drain of evocation from the wordforms" of the language(s) chosen, making words mean, like the title of this work, "as much as they can be made to mean, or can evoke, or suggest."
K1 ANAMNESIS (The Greek word)
K1 ANATHEMATA, The (Poem)
K1 EPOCH & Artist (Book)
K1 JONES, David, 1895-1974
K1 POETRY (Literary form)