Poetry and Prophecy

This very rich book presents a series of soundings at intersection of poetry and prophecy and invites us to examine how each may enhance understanding of other. The argument is marked by a lively tension between a Platonic view which locates poetry with inspiration, mantic and a type of dangerous and, for Plato, unwelcome confusion and Aristotelian tradition which understands poiesis as a kind of making and sees poetry as a craft or art. While Aristotelian model underpins conjunction of poetics and linguistics, especially as developed by Jakobson, from which book departs, authors are also by poetry and by their encounters with diviners, mediums, shamans, oracles, composers and bards. Leavitt endeavours with considerable energy and erudition to theorize relationship of inspiration to craft that both poetry and prophecy invite.The papers demonstrate that sharper forms of dissociation correlate with neither more elaborately crafted nor more inspired forms of poetry. Trawick shows South Indian goddess Mariamman speaking more curtly than her medium would in ordinary conversation. Balzer displays a range of broadly shamanistic Sakha (Siberian) genres across which degree to which consciousness is altered do es not correspond in any obvious way with manner in which utterance is crafted. In Leavitt's North Indian case, oracular medium and poetic bard are complementary figures; elaborated poetic utterances directed to gods are distinguished from narrower utterances emanting from gods. Thus, whereas the ability to provoke enthusiasm and delight (p. 149) is used to entice oracle to appear, oracle itself does not use poetry to same extent. The prevalence of poetry in prayers, hymns and formulaic utterances in many societies is surely also to be remarked. In fact, priestly invocations from inscribed texts are often as poetic as compositions of prophet. Thus, rather than simply conjoining poetry with prophecy, it might be more useful to examine poetry across a range of types (or ends or functions) of religious communication. Instead, Leavitt identifies himself with a whole series of head-scratchers from Plutarch onwards who are perplexed at this quality of oracular (prophetic) language.Leavitt interestingly recoups by defining an form of language marked by a flattening of reflexivity -- in contrast to poetry defined, following Jakobson, by a heightened reflexivity (metalinguistic) -- that may be characteristic of oracular language. It is important to recognize that reflexivity refers here not to psychological state of speakers but to degree utterances draw attention to themselves as linguistically crafted.Most poetry in West, distinguished as art, has little political impact. Yet in many societies poetry is all too readily interpreted as prophecy and may need to exercise caution. Hence one reason for recourse to infralinguistic codes may be that insofar as oracles' words carry weight, speakers are relieved of responsibility for deliberate or unruly significance. Thus they cannot be so easily attributed as committing sorts of acts that Tedlock ruefully discovers his divination provoked. (Of course, poetry may produce same ambiguating effect, as Bill McKellin has demonstrated, by opposite means, namely, through what Friedrich here calls intentional obscurity.) Moreover, in case of Kumaon oracles' words are largely restricted to performative utterances of self-identification, blessing and like (p. 146). Such illocutionary acts do not require tropological flourishes we associate with perlocutionary exhortations. Indeed, performativeness in Austinian sense may be impeded by excessive performance in Bauman's sense of display by an expert and evaluation by an audience, a meta-linguistic playfulness that in drawing attention to itself provokes recognition of role of language in creating effects that illocutionary performance attempts to naturalize. …