The rhythm of memory: a reading of poetic rhythm in David Jones's ...

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Rhythm of Memory 10as much as In Parenthesis is made of a double wealth of personal and literary memory, its rhythmcan be seen as a rifling of the canon of memory. Which is why concluding remarks will be allabout trajectories and will try to show the validity of this metaphor.As might be expected from a war narrative, In Parenthesis describes several instances of artillery orrifle fire. But not only are these strategically placed in the narrative, but they are accompanied byechoes and parody so that they become a system. I can do little more here than give a shortoutline.• In Part 2, occurs what Dilworth calls the “primal” (412) shell burst (IP, 23). I shall returnto this.• In Part 3, Ball observes flares mounting from British and later from German trenches:“lights elegantly curved above his lines” (IP, 50).• In Part 3 occurs the epitome of the meaningless action as a nervous John Ball, on nightsentry duty, fires his rifle at nothing but the empty darkness out over No Man’s Land (IP,53-54).• In Part 4, the whole idea of artillery is parodied as the soldiers suggest a bombardment ofthe Christmas Day issue of unpalatable army tobacco: “Heave that bull-shit to Jerry, tinand all, for a happy Christmas—it’ll gas the sod.” (IP, 72). A parodic parabola thatincludes the paronomasic joke on Ball’s name.• In Part 4, a number of different shell trajectories are described:: duds, shrapnel, shellsfalling short.• In Part 7, where “muck rains down from heaven” (IP 164), Ball momentarily findshimself in the “navel” of the Wood, at a centre of calm (like Melville’s Ahab in the quietheart of the maelstrom of cachalots). This place is determined by two things: the drippingpercolation of human blood from the vegetation and, high above, “trundling projectiles”that “intersect their arcs at zenith” (IP, 181). Significantly enough, this centre is reachedonly shortly before the “ballista-baulk” of Private Ball’s wound in the leg and the crawl tothe close of the narrative. The narrative centre is determined not by its central place in thedisposition of the narrative but by virtue of its relationship to what might be called arhythmic signature, the trajectory of artillery shells passing and “intersecting” above. Thecentre, where blood percolates and drips down is also a place upon which John Ballstumbles and in which he stumbles when the bullet’s trajectory strikes him down.
Rhythm of Memory 11The entire isotopy of trajectories has its origin in the doings of war, and, in that sense is part ofmemory. But what memory retains is essentially the point or the moment of impact. What thepoem does is to use the shape of the trajectory, not only to produce with it the type of variationto be found in the passages I have just glanced at, but as a shape of the narrative and a shaping ofnames. Over and against this shaping, which involves, as I have tried to show, an involution ofcause and effect, the poem produces its own text by conjugating material that may well be seen asmemory with the memory of texts from the canon of literature. Because the text comes in thisway to be metaphorically assimilated to the abandoned, offered rifle, it can indeed be seen as aprocess of “rifling”, that is of ransacking both memory and the literary canon and as a trajectoryin itself. This is the process that I think can justifiably be called the rhythm of memory.I shall conclude with an epilogue reading of the “primal” shell-burst in Part 2 of the poem (IP,23-24). The passage is unfortunately far too long to quote fully. It narrates the first occasion onwhich Ball experiences artillery fire. The shell-burst itself is only a part of the picture and thoughits violence is evident and clearly chronicled, what is, perhaps, more to the point is that the shelllands amongst mangolds, turning their churned pulp into a euphemism of the blood spilled laterin the wood. The final image of the sequence, in which the “sap of vegetables slobbered thespotless breech-block of N°3 gun”, is not merely a proleptic detail but, more essentially, arhythmic statement, a metaphor of the rhythmic association of effect and potential cause (theironically “spotless” artillery piece is capable of inflicting exactly the same damage), and ametaphor of the trajectory / shape of the entire narrative. I have used the term shell-burst, butwhat the page and a half long text really describes is trajectory. It transforms parenthesis intoparabola; the arrival of the shell and its explosion erupt into Ball’s existence, bringing at the sametime a hyper-charge of meaning (analogous, of course, to the overloaded rifle around thewounded Ball’s neck) and at the same moment, an image of the meaninglessness of warfare.Interestingly enough, the shell is described as hurtling “out of the vortex, rifling the air…” (myitalics); its oncoming force is textualised by an accumulation of epithets, the hyperbole of whichis clearly mimetic :an on-rushing pervasion, saturating all existence; with exactitude, logarithmic, dial-timed,millesimal—of calculated velocity, some mean chemist’s contrivance, a stinking physicists destroyingtoy. (IP 24)But there is a system of balances here: to this accumulation of epithets and actions and thevariety of different fields they predicate, corresponds a list of insignificant minutiae perceived byBall in the “highly alert” state the influence of the shell’s approach produces in him: “the tilt of abucket, the movement of a straw, the disappearing right boot of Sergeant Snell …”. One list
Page 1: Rhythm of Memory 1The rhythm of mem
Page 5 and 6: Rhythm of Memory 5how glad we thoug
Page 7 and 8: Rhythm of Memory 7“efficacious”
Page 9: Rhythm of Memory 9Ball’s textual
Page 13: Rhythm of Memory 13—. The Anathé

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