Perfection Wasted

Lexicological Analysis of the Poem “Perfection Wasted” by John Updike

The poem under analysis belongs to an American writer John Updike (1932–2009). It concerns the theme of death and the uniqueness of each individual, which have been polished the whole life to achieve the ‘perfection’ and is ‘wasted’ when the individual dies.

According to the stylistic characteristic of the vocabulary, most words belong to the neutral layer of the vocabulary (death, loved, stage, faces, etc.), but there are a few examples of words belonging to formal (cease, descendant, response — bookish, poetic) and informal layers (‘magic’ in the meaning of ‘exceptional skill, talent’ — colloquial; also contracted forms: that’s, aren’t). Poetic words are used to achieve a certain degree of elevation, because it is a poem. Colloquial words and contracted forms make the poem more expressive and close to the reader.

According to the etymological characteristic, native words prevail in the text. Their etymology ascends either to Proto-Germanic (death, brand, which, soft, witticisms, laughter, tears) or PIE (whole, life, love, heartbeat, glow, earrings, twinned). The word ‘witticism’, though contains a native root, was coined in 17th century with the help of a Greek suffix –ism, on the model of ‘criticism’, hence is considered a hybrid. Another hybrid is the word ‘performance’, which consists of an Anglo-French phonetic borrowing root ‘perform’, fully assimilated, and a Latin suffix –ance (morphemic borrowing).

The borrowed words, according to the source of borrowing, can be divided into ones from Old Norse, French (including Middle and Old French), Greek, and Latin.

Old Norse borrowings are the following: same, slant, take, they. All of them are fully assimilated phonetic borrowings. The word ‘phone’ has been borrowed from Greek as word-forming element meaning ‘voice, sound’ (morphemic borrowing, graphically non-assimilated). French borrowings are file, rapid, pool (in the meaning of ‘merge’), develop, all of which are fully assimilated phonetic borrowings; descendant — graphically non-assimilated. There is one Middle French borrowing of Latin origin— ‘adjust’, which is a semantic borrowing (the word already existed in Middle English with the meaning of ‘to correct, remedy’), graphically non-assimilated. Some words are considered to be borrowed either directly from Latin or via Anglo-French, French, Middle or Old French: memories, pack, rapid, imitator, act. All of them are fully assimilated phonetic borrowings. The words ‘quip’ and ‘confused’ are borrowed from Latin, fully assimilated phonetic borrowings.

Most of the borrowings in the poem are from Old French, such as:

(of Latin origin) perfection, waste, market, stage, face, close, diamond, access — fully assimilated phonetic borrowings; cease — phonetically non-assimilated [si:s];

(of Germanic origin) regret, blanch (both of them are phonetic borrowings, the former is phonetically non-assimilated, the latter is completely assimilated);

(of Old Persian origin) magic (phonetic borrowing, fully assimilated).

Thus, most of the words are fully assimilated, but there are some that are graphically or phonetically non-assimilated. Most of them are phonetic borrowings, but there are several morphemic borrowings (suffixes) and one semantic borrowing.

According to the derivational structure, there are monomorphic words (death, life, slant, glow, phone) and polymorphic ones: suffixational derivatives (regrettable, witticisms, performance, etc.), endocentric compounds (footlight, rapid-access, heartbeat).

By means of suffixation the adjectives are derived from verbs (regret + –able), the nouns are derived from adjectives (witty + –ism). Some suffixes are meaningful: –able ‘capable of, susceptible of, fit for, tending to, given to’, some have only grammatical meaning: –ed (past participle).

The word ‘phone’ is shortened from ‘telephone’ (aphaeresis). The word ‘market’ (v) is formed by means of conversion from ‘market’ (n) (locative meaning).

Root words prevail in the text. The root morphemes of the aforementioned compound words are free morphemes (foot, light, rapid, etc.), so are the root morphemes of the derivatives (regret, perform). Taking into account the origin of the word ‘descend’, scend (which is also a part of the word ‘ascend’) may be considered a bound morpheme. The suffixes (–able, –ism, –ance, –ed, –ing) also belong to that class.

According to the semantic characteristic of the vocabulary, the words can be divided into monosemantic (witticism, regrettable, phone), and polysemantic (lip, brand, magic, perfection, warm, etc.). E.g., the word ‘lip’ (n) has several meanings: ‘either of the two fleshy parts or folds forming the margins of the mouth’, ‘a liplike part or structure’, ‘any edge or rim’, etc. This word is a noun and not a verb, because it is preceded by a definite article (left-handed microcontext). Moreover, it is used in the phrase ‘the lip of the stage’; that is why, according to the right-handed microcontext, it is possible to say that the third meaning (nominative-derivative, metaphorisation) is realised in this case. Another example is the word ‘brand’, two meanings of which are realised here: ‘a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic’ (colligationally conditioned) and ‘kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark’ (nominative). The former can be proved by the grammatical structure: ‘a brand of’ is equal to ‘a sort of’, the latter is seen from the right-handed context: one more word from this semantic field is used — ‘market’.

It is also important to distinguish between homonyms. E.g., the adjective ‘pooled’ can be derived from any of two lexical homonyms: pool¹ ‘to form a pool’ and pool² ‘to put something into a common stock’, but from the context (both right-handed microcontext and a wider context of the line) it is clear that the second variant is correct (breathing of several people is united and synchronized with the heartbeat of the ‘performer’).

Sometimes context helps to differentiate between connotational meanings: e.g., the word ‘tears’ in the first case has a causative connotation ‘tears from laughing’ and in the second — ‘tears from crying’. This connotation cannot be identified in the microcontext, but the context of several lines helps to understand that some concepts are opposed, including these two (enantiosemy), in order to show that ‘loved ones’ share with an individual any emotions.

There are the following semantic fields in the poem: notions associated with the sphere of theatre (stage, footlight, performance, act), associated with humour (joke, laughter, witticisms, quips), technology (phone, rapid-access, file), the expression of emotions (laughter, tears), advertising (brand, market), phenomena concerning the human body (life, death, heartbeat, breath, faces), abstract notions (life, death, perfection).

There are the following synonyms: joke, quip, witticism, with ‘joke’ being also a synonymic dominant and a hypernym for the last two. The words ‘quip’ and ‘witticism’ are absolute synonyms (meaning of ‘witty remark’, neutral), while ‘joke’ is an ideographic synonym (‘a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter’). The words ‘imitators’ and ‘descendants’ are contextual synonyms denoting people who cannot repeat someone’s life and personality. Furthermore, the words ‘life’ and ‘death’, ‘laughter’ and ‘tears’, ‘in’ and ‘out’ are root antonyms, namely, contradictories. The words ‘performance’ and ‘act’ are connected by the relations of meronymy (the former is a holonym, the latter is a meronym).

There is a phraseological collocation in the text — ‘the lip of the stage’ which means ‘the edge of the stage’, i.e. the component ‘stage’ is used in its direct meaning and the component ‘lip’ is used metaphorically. An example of a free word-group is ‘diamond earrings’, in which the word ‘diamond’ means a precious stone contained in the earrings and can be substituted by any other word denoting such kind of thing.

According to the use of lexicological stylistic devices, there are can be distinguished the following: metaphors (soft faces — synaesthesia, lip of the stage — position), pun (brand ‘a kind’ and ‘a trademark’; magic ‘the art of producing illusions’ and ‘a particular skill’). Furthermore, the whole poem is a metaphor: life is equated to the stage performance.

perfection - OFr < L

wasted - Anglo-Fr&Old North Fr < L

and - OE < PIE

another - OE

regret - OFr < Pr-Germ

regrettable - mono

thing - OE < PIE

about - OE

death - OE < Pr-Germ

is - OE < PIE

cease - OFr < L

of - OE < PIE

your - OE < Pr-Germ

own - OE < PIE

brand - OE < Pr-Germ

magic - OFr < old Persian (poss. PIE), poly, informal - exceptional skill or talent

which - OE < Pr-Germ

take - Scandinavian < Pr-Germ (Old Norse)

whole - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

life - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

to - OE < West Germ < PIE

develop - Fr < OFr < Celtic or Germ

market - Old North Fr < L < Etruscan

quip - L

witty - OE

witticism - coinage from witty, on the pattern of criticism

slant - Scandinavian < Pr-Germ (Old Norse)

adjust - MidFr < OFr < Late L < L

few - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

those - OE

love - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

one - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

near - OE < Old Norse

lip - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

stage - OFr < Vulgar L < L < PIE

their - Old Norse

soft - OE < West Germanic < Pr-Germ

face - OFr < Vulgar L < L

blanch - OFr, Germ origin

in - ME < OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

foot - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

light - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

glow - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

laughter - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

close - OFr < L

tear - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

confuse - L

with - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

diamond - OFr < Medieval L < Vulgar L < L

earring - OE

ear - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

ring - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

warm - OE < Pr-Germ < PIE

pooled - Late 17th century (originally denoting a game of cards having a pool): from French poule in the sense 'stake, kitty'

breath - from Proto-Germanic *bræthaz, from PIE root, poly;

in

out

your

heart - native, from Proto-Germanic *herton- from PIE *kerd-, poly;

beat - native, from Proto-Germanic from PIE root, poly;

response - from Old French respons (Modern French réponse) and directly from Latin responsum "an answer", poly;

performance - via Anglo-French performer from Old French parfornir "to do, carry out, finish, accomplish", poly;

twinned - Old English twinn "consisting of two, twofold, double, two-by-two," from Proto-Germanic *twisnjaz "double", from PIE *dwisno-; poly;

jokes - < Latin jocus, poly;

over - from Proto-Germanic *uberi, from PIE root, poly;

phone - borrowed from French téléphone, from PIE root, mono, shortening;

memories - neutral, Anglo-French memorie and directly from Latin memoria "memory, remembrance, faculty of remembering," from PIE root, poly;

packed - possibly influenced by Anglo-French empaker (late 13c.) and Medieval Latin paccare "pack.", probably from a Low German word, origin unknown;

rapid - neutral, borrowed from French rapide (17c.) and directly from Latin rapidus "hasty, swift, rapid; snatching; fierce, impetuous," from PIE root, poly.

access - neutral, borrowed from Old French, originated in Latin, poly;

file - neutral, borrowed from French file "a row", originated in Latin, poly;

act - noun, neutral, borrowing from Old French acte "(official) document," and directly from Latin actus "a doing, a driving, impulse; a part in a play, act," from PIE root, poly;

Who - native

will

do

it - neutral, native, poly;

again - neutral, borrowed from Scandinavian languages, poly;

that - neutral, native, poly;

no

imitator - noun, borrowed from Middle French imitateur or directly from the language of its origin - Latin imitator "a copyist; a mimic", poly;

descendant - noun, borrowed from French descendant, poly;

are - v, native, poly;

same - adj, borrowed from Old Norse same, samr "same", originated in PIE *samos "same", poly. (Old Norse)