Jakobson

Around the time the "the Raven" was written there is a linguist who studied the peculiarities of the term "nevermore" (59) stating that it "fuses end with endlessness. It contrasts the prospective with the foregone, the eternal with the transient, negation with assertion"(Beaudelaire). It is interesting how ambiguity often draws people in. I think this is due to the desire to make sense of things and when there is no sense, there is a repetition of the idea until some sort of conclusion is drawn. In "the Raven" the word "nevermore" is repeated as the last word in half of the last stanzas.

Today I workshopped a poem called the Flatlands, I will write it here:
Flatlands
Why do I tread
fully awake on these flatlands?
dry, empty, profoundly filled
with the intricate weavings of knowing
when it is anger, violence
pain, pleasure
that drive me?

dry, cracked brown floor
doesn’t breath but
wind blows me
closer to truth.
Getting closer,
my breathing gets
thinner, more fully absorbed
in what I see
from a reasonable distance.

(the sun won’t stop!)
I walk the Flatlands

Doesn’t matter, I see it.
My God is transcendent
My Self is absorbed
I walk the Flatlands.


People thought that I was to answer the question: "Why do I tread fully awake on these flatlands?" but as a writer I was grappling with my own confusion and wanted to bring that across in the poem. I repeated the lines "I walk the Flatlands" because of its own ambilavent meaning to me. I think this is similar to what Poe was trying to do with the word, "nevermore." Obviously, the poem was a personal one to Poe, as it relates to the death of his beloved wife." He grapples with the word "nevermore" repeating it like some sort of catharsis, turning it around until its meaning is something that he can come to terms with. Perhaps he is thinking, can there truly never be more? Or can I get some other meaning out of this?

It is significant how on page 68, Jakobson refers to examples of the saying "Well" named by Dorothy Parker: "'Well!' the young man said. 'Well!' she said. 'Well, here we are,' he said. 'Here we are,' she said, 'Aren't we?' 'I should say we are,' he said, 'Eeyop! Here we are.' Well!' she said. 'Well!' he said, 'well.'" In this dialogue, I sense disunity between the two speakers even thought they seem to be disagreeing. Here again, the repetition is bringing forth a sense of disunity much how in "the Raven" the word "nevermore" was repeated.

Jakobson talks about how it is "Only in poetry with its regular reiteration of equivalent units is the time of the speech flow experienced, as it is." Verse contains a certain characteristic, Jakobson calls it the "measure of sequences" (72), is not used in regular language. He states further on that "verse is primarily a recurrent "figure of sound."

Questions:
What is the recurrent "figure of sound"?