The rhythm of memory: a reading of poetic rhythm in David Jones's ...
The rhythm of memory: a reading of poetic rhythm in David Jones's ...
The rhythm of memory: a reading of poetic rhythm in David Jones's ...
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Rhythm <strong>of</strong> Memory 9Ball’s textual identity, but it also reproduces what I shall show <strong>in</strong> a moment is a key shapethroughout In Parenthesis. F<strong>in</strong>ally, the full sum <strong>of</strong> Ball’s number is <strong>of</strong> course, eleven, figur<strong>in</strong>g(literally) the last two letters <strong>of</strong> the name. In British number slang, eleven is “legs eleven”: theseare <strong>in</strong>fantry soldiers, they “go up” to the front and <strong>in</strong>to battle “on legs”, and Ball’s wound <strong>in</strong> theleg, however biographical it may be, is thus a symbolic one. But the relevance <strong>of</strong> the symbol isnot external, to symbolic mean<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> general, as it were, but <strong>in</strong>ternal and <strong>rhythm</strong>ic.It will be helpful at this po<strong>in</strong>t, to look the open<strong>in</strong>g l<strong>in</strong>es <strong>of</strong> In Parenthesis, as an illustration <strong>of</strong> howeveryth<strong>in</strong>g starts with the complex <strong>of</strong> number and name and their <strong>in</strong>terplay:’49 Wyatt, 01549 Wyatt.Com<strong>in</strong>g sergeant.Pick ’em up, pick ’em up—I’ll stalk with<strong>in</strong> yer chamber.Private Leg . . . sick.Private Ball . . . absent.’01 Ball, ’01 Ball, Ball <strong>of</strong> No.1.Where’s Ball, 25201 Ball—you corporal,Ball <strong>of</strong> your section.IP, 1 4Even the section number enters the number dance. <strong>The</strong> “’em” <strong>in</strong> “pick ’em up” is <strong>of</strong> course thelegs, but Private Leg, never aga<strong>in</strong> mentioned, is “sick”: he functions as a proleptic joke. Ball’smilitary <strong>in</strong>efficiency – he is late on parade and has his name taken – is <strong>poetic</strong> efficacy. He is bothabsent and present. <strong>The</strong> apparently realistic character anecdote start<strong>in</strong>g the text <strong>in</strong> fact charges it<strong>in</strong> a different way, by <strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g the dynamics <strong>of</strong> <strong>rhythm</strong> <strong>in</strong>to the name. And so it is that Ball isalso the object his name designates, the pivotal ball-bear<strong>in</strong>g on which the text turns. This imagereiterates the 10—01 comb<strong>in</strong>ation previously mentioned. <strong>The</strong>re is more, however. Ball’s firstname, John, is a double one <strong>in</strong> the sense that, like Jack, it has a generic use, applicable to any“John” whose name you don’t know, while it at the same time designat<strong>in</strong>g an <strong>in</strong>dividual. As aLondoner surrounded by Welshmen, John Ball is also, by paronomasia, a parodic, John Bull,whose name <strong>in</strong>congruously calls up a type he <strong>in</strong> no way represents. F<strong>in</strong>ally, Private Ball’s nameand rank together do the same th<strong>in</strong>g as the “efficacious word”, they euphemise another <strong>of</strong> theabsent entities, those “impolite words” the poet tells us he had to omit.I have traced the trajectory <strong>of</strong> the word “efficacious” from euphemism, through paronomasicparody to l<strong>in</strong>guistic appositeness. <strong>The</strong> trajectory <strong>of</strong> the name <strong>of</strong> Ball moves through the samestages: from euphemism (a form <strong>of</strong> disguise, <strong>of</strong> course), to the comic parody the vowels <strong>of</strong> thename suggest, and thence to the series <strong>of</strong> metaphorical manipulations that encapsulate the historyand fate <strong>of</strong> the character. Opened up and spatialised, the name is transformed <strong>in</strong>to situation andnarrative. It becomes a textual mach<strong>in</strong>e, a text <strong>in</strong> itself; it is, as we have seen the weapons –theballista-baulk– and the projectile, and, <strong>in</strong> the form <strong>of</strong> the rifle, betokens the <strong>of</strong>fer<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the text. In