The Word Turned Image

Readers enter into an implicit contract that stipulates that written texts are to be read, not seen. This contract is necessary precisely because potentially each sign harbors different modes of signification that can be activated by the reader. Within Peirce's classic tripartite model of icon, symbol, and index, writing is by no means symbolic per se, just as images are not by nature iconic. Reading written texts ultimately involves suppressing their iconicity and confining signifiers to the symbolic mode. However, pattern poems violate this fundamental law of written language and upset our customary economy of reading: the text generates meaning on both the symbolic and the iconic level, and the reader is asked to read it on both levels. This article suggests a model for the way this process of functions, incorporating evidence from a scanning experiment that takes advantage of the physiology of the process. Written texts present a sequence of signifiers that functions as a set of instructions in the process. Under circumstances, the readers' eyes generally follow the given sequence, even though they may depart from it in a number of ways. (For examples see Rayner and Pollatsek 1989: 116; and Shebilske and Fisher 1983: 174; for a more general discussion see Gross 1994: esp. lo, 61-64.) This sequentiality of writing can be seen as reducing the use of what is, after all, a two-dimensional surface to a linearity that can be loosely termed one-dimensional. Little wonder, therefore, that I would like to thank Reinhard Dohl and Eugen Gomringer for permission to reproduce their poems (Figures 2 and 3). I am grateful to Patrick Rumble for his comments. Poetics Today 18:1 (Spring 1997). Copyright ? 1997 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.224 on Wed, 11 May 2016 06:32:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 16 Poetics Today 18:1 in the history of writing-and, more specifically, of literature-this restriction has frequently been challenged by texts that attempt to rebel against or undercut it. Texts that are presented as spatial (rather than linear) arrangements in order to activate the visual composition on the page as an element of signification have a long tradition. The arrangement on the page is certainly relevant in the case of poetry, where it can provide advance information about form, meter, and genre (see Hollander 1975: 26162, 268-70). Spatiality is further foregrounded in poems that are arranged as mazes, spirals, grids, flowers, etc. (see Adler and Ernst 1988 for examples and a taxonomy of such poems). While the reader is not released from the spatiotemporal sequence, the latter texts, in particular, subvert the line-byline horizontality that defines conventional Western alphabetical writing.' Pattern poemstechnopaigneia or carminafigurata-the earliest of which date back to classical antiquity, add a particular twist (see Adler and Ernst 1988; Dencker 1972; Ernst 1991; and Grimm 1989 for histories and examples of the genre). Here, the two-dimensionality of the written text is put to special use as words and sentences are arranged in the shape of an image. (George Herbert's Easter Wings is arguably the most famous example in the history of English literature.) In Peircean terms, pattern poems combine symbolic signs to form an iconic-pictorial-super-sign.2 Neither symbolic nor iconic signification is a quality of the signs themselves, as Peirce was the first to acknowledge. Rather, the terms symbol and icon refer to the way in which a signifier such as an image or word refers to what it signifies. Images, that is, function predominantly as iconic signs, whereas words are decoded as symbols. The different modes coexist, and a set of rules governing the process for any given visual text determines their respective prominence and instructs the reader as to which she or he should activate. Reading is thus by necessity selective, and our system of reading--in accordance with the written signifiers toward which it is directed--insists on the dominance of the symbolic mode. Written texts are supposed to be situated securely in the realm of symbolic signification. They consist of signifiers that represent phonemes and denote signifieds in highly conventionalized and largely arbitrary ways, without recourse to any form of resemblance. Historically, however, many letters are faded icons, and a long history of 1. The process of translates the spatiality of texts into temporality. It can be considered a measure of the slippage between the spatial and the temporal that the terms sequence and succession--as well as related ones such as linearity and progression-can refer to both realms. In what follows, a somewhat arbitrary decision has been made to refer to spatial arrangement as sequence and to the temporal process as succession. 2. Throughout this article, symbolic is used in the Peircean, or semiotic, sense. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.224 on Wed, 11 May 2016 06:32:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Gross * Reading Pattern Poems 17 lettres animees and Figurenalphabete attests to the iconic power of letters. Beginning readers are particularly susceptible to the iconicity of letters and words, and since the early nineteenth century a pedagogy of has tried to harness this iconic potential to the symbolic mode of signification (Figure i). The very insistence -inherent in such pedagogical endeavors that the iconic potential be domesticated and subordinated attests to the ease with which it can be activated and to the danger this presents to the process of reading. Everyday experience confirms that as soon as letters and words are perceived as images-and thus decoded as iconic signsthey disappear as symbolic signifiers, at least for the period during which they are scanned and processed as images. It seems, then, that symbolic and iconic signification are mutually exclusive, and symbolic signs depends on a suppression of iconicity. Pattern poems violate this fundamental law of written language. They upset the stable hierarchy between the symbolic and iconic modes and with it the habitual economy of reading. In pattern poems, the text generates meaning through both symbolic and iconic signification, and the reader is asked to read it on both levels. In what follows, I will suggest a model for the way this process of functions, incorporating evidence from an experiment I conducted that takes advantage of the physiology of the process. The temporal continuity of is a synthesis of the discontinuities that constitute it as a visual activity. Physiologically, takes place in an alternation of saccades-orjumps-of about 30 milliseconds andfixations of variable duration, averaging about 250 milliseconds. It is only during these fixations that visual information is registered, including not only the word or syllable on which the reader fixates, but also peripheral information that influences the locations of subsequent fixations.3 The experiment is based on the fact that in reading, physiological and mental activity are correlated.4 In attempting to highlight differences between written texts that do not invite iconic readings and pattern poems (by focusing on how the latter differs from normal reading), I found the distribution of fixation locations and the spatiotemporal pattern of saccades to be of particular interest. Using what is known as an tracker (more precisely, a corneal-reflectance and pupil-center eye tracker), I asked five volunteers to read three texts, each of which was pro3. For a more detailed account of the physiological basis of see, for example, Rayner and Pollatsek 1989. 4. Eye movements and fixations in are indicators of mental processing. Even cautious researchers affirm that movements clearly do provide a reasonably good reflection of the cognitive processes in reading (Pollatsek and Rayner 1990: i60). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.224 on Wed, 11 May 2016 06:32:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Figure 1 Bertall, ABC Trim: Aphabet enchant (1861)

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