3.4.2.5. Phonetical Iconicity

Problem Question:

1. Which phono-graphical means are predominantly used in prose and which one in poetry?

2. What is sound-instrumenting?

3. What cases of sound-instrumenting do you know?

4. What is their stylistic function? Bring your own examples.

Check yourself:

Read and analyze the following passages from V. Wolfs novel «Between the Acts». Indicate the stylistic sound-instrumenting means and devices imitating the following sounds: a) of an airplane; b) of a butterfly beating on the pane window; c) of a foxtrot; d) of a rain; e) of broken mirrors; f) of a waltz.

1. And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse. No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears, (p. 125)

2. Suddenly the time stopped. The tune changed. A waltz, was it? Something half known, half not. The swallows danced it. Round and round, in and out they skimmed. Real swallows. Retreating and advancing. And the trees, О the trees, how gravely and sedately like senators in council, or the spaced pillars some cathedral church... Yes, they barred the music, and massed and hoarded and prevented what was fluid from overflowing. The swallows — or the martins were they? — the temple—haunting martins who come, always come… Yes, perched on the way they seemed to foretell what after all The Times was yesterday. Homes will be built. Each flat with its refrigerator, in the crannied wall. Each of us a free man; plates washed by machinery; not an airplane to vex us; all liberated; made whole... (p. 127)

3. The tune changed; snapped; broke; jagged. Foxtrot was it? Jazz? Anyhow the rhythm kicked, reared, snapped short. What a jangle and a jingle! Well, wit the means at her disposal, you can't ask too much. What a cackle, а сасоphony! Nothing ended. So abrupt. And corrupt. Such an outrage; such an insult; and not plain. Very up to date, all the same. What is her game? To disrupt? Jog and rot?Jerk and smirk? Put the finger to the nose? Squint and pry? Peak and spy?O the irreverence of the generation which is only momentarily — thanks be — the young». The young, who can't make, but only break; shiver into splinters the old vision; smash to atoms what was whole. What a cackle, what a rattle, what a yaffle — as they call the woodpecker, the laughing bird that flits from tree to tree.

V. Wolfe. Between the Acts. L.

1929 : 127-128

4. Look! Out they came, from the bushes — the riff-raff. Children! Imps - elves — demons. Holding what? Tin cans? Bedroom candlesticks? Old jars? My dear, that's the cheval glass

from the Rectory! And the mirror — that I lent her. My mother's. Cracked. What's the notion? Anything that's bright enough to reflect, presumably, ourselves?

Ourselves! Ourselves!

Out they leapt, jerked, skipped. Flashing, dazzling, dancing, jumping. Now old Bart... he was caught. Now Manresa. Here a nose... There a skirt…hen trousers only... Now perhaps a face... Ourselves? But that's cruel. To snap as we are, before we've had time to assume... And only, too, in parts… what's so distorting and upsetting and utterly unfair.

Mopping, mowing, whisking, frisking, the looking glasses darted, flashed, exposed. People in the back rows stood up to see the fun. Down they sat, caught themselves.

...What an awful show—up! Even for the old who, one might suppose, hadn't any longer any care about their faces... And Lord! The jangle and the din! The very cows joined in. Walloping, tail lashing, the reticence of nature was undone, and the barriers which should divide Man the Master from the Brute were dissolved. Then the dogs joined in. Excited by the uproar, scurrying and worrying, here they came! Look at them! And the hound, the Afghan hound... look at him! (p. 127-128)

It was the cheval glass that proved too heavy. Young Bornthorp... stopped. So did they all — hand glasses, tin cans, scraps of scullery glass, harness room glass, and heavily embossed silver mirrors — all stopped. And the audience saw themselves, not whole by any means, but at any rate sitting still. The hands of the clock had stopped at the present moment. It was now. Ourselves.

So that was her little game! To show us up, as we are, here and how. All shifted, preened, minced; hands were raised, legs shifted. Even Bart, even Lucy, turned away. All evaded or shaded themselves — save Mrs Manresa who, facing herself in the glass, used it as a glass; had out her mirror; powdered her nose; and moved one curl, disturbed by the breeze, to its place...

The mirror bearers squatted; malicious; observant; expectant; expository...

Each tried to shift an inch or two beyond the inquisitive insulting eye. Some made as if to go. «The play is over, I take it».

V. Wolf. Between the Acts. L., 1929 : 129-130

5. She returned to her eyes in the looking-glass. «In love», she must be; since her presence of his body in the room last night could so affect her; since the words he said, handing her a teacup, handing her a tennis racquet, could so attach themselves to a certain spot in her; and thus lie between them like a wire, tingling, tangling, vibrating — she roped, in the depths of the looking-glass, for a word to fit the infinitely quick vibrations of the aeroplane propeller that she had seen once at dawn at Croydon. Faster, faster, faster, it whizzed, whirred, buzzed, till all the flails became one flail and up soared the plane away and away....

«Where we know not, where we go not, neither know nor саrе», she hummed (P. 15).

6. A foolish, flattering lady, pausing on the threshold of what she once called |«the heart of the house», the threshold of the library, had once said: «Next to |the kitchen, the library is always the nicest room in the house». Then she added,

tepping across the threshold: «Books are the mirrors of soul».

...Thus the mirror that reflected the soul sublime, reflected also the soul boured. Nobody could pretend, as they looked at the shuffle of shilling shockers that week-enders had dropped, that the looking-glass always reflected the anguish of a Queen or the heroism of King Harry...

The fire greyed, then glowed, and the tortoise-shell butterfly beat on the lower pane of the window; beat, beat, beat; repeating that if no human being ever would be mouldy, the fie out and the tortoiseshell butterfly dead on the pane (p. 16).