Let us now turn to contemporary art and the ways in which it deliberately and systematically tries to increase its range of meanings.
According to the laws of redundancy, the probability that the article «the» will be followed by a noun or an adjective is extremely high. Similarly, after the phrase «in the event» the probability that «that» will be the next word is fairly high, whereas the probability that «elephant» will be the next word is very low. At least, this is true for the type of English we commonly use. Weaver gives numerous examples of this kind and concludes by saying that, in everyday language, a sentence such as «Constantinople fishing nasty pink» is quite improbable.» And yet such a sentence could be a perfect example of automatic writing as it was practiced by the Surrealists.
Let us now look at a poem by Giuseppe Ungaretti, entitled «L’Isola» («The Island»).
A una prods ove sera era perenne
di anziane selve assorte, scese e
s’inoltra
e lo richiame rumore di penne
ch’erasi sciolto dallo stridulo
batticuore dell’acqua torrida…
On a shore where evening was for ever
Of woods enrapt and ancient, he descended,
And advanced
And the sound of wings recalled him,
Sound unfettered from the shrill
Heartbeat of the torrid water. . .’6
There is no need to point out the various ways in which these few lines violate all linguistic probability, or to launch into a protracted critical analysis of the poem to show how, despite its lack of any conventional kind of meaning, it still conveys an immense amount of information about the island. At every new reading, this amount of information increases, endlessly expanding the message of the poem and opening up new and different perspectives, in perfect accordance with the intention of the poet who, while writing, was well aware of all the associations that an uncommon juxtaposition of words would provoke in the mind of the reader.
In other words, and to avoid overusing the technical terminology of information theory, what we most value in a message is not «information» but its aesthetic equivalent: its «poetic meaning,» its «quotient of imagination,» the «full resonance of the poetic word»—all those levels of signification that we distinguish from common meaning. From this point on if I use the term «information» to indicate the wealth of aesthetic meaning contained in a given message, it will be only to highlight those analogies that I deem most interesting.»
To avoid any possible ambiguity, I shall again emphasize that the equation «information opposite of meaning» has absolutely no axiological function, nor could it he used as a parameter of judgment. If it could, the nursery rhyme «Hey diddle diddle / The cat and the fiddle» would have greater aesthetic value than a poem by Petrarch, just as any Surrealist cadatme exquis (as well as any nasty pink from Constantinople) would have greater worth than a poem by Ungaretti. The concept of information is useful here only to clarify one of the directions of aesthetic discourse, which is then affected by other organizing factors.
That is, all deviation from the most banal linguistic order entails a new kind of organization, which can be considered as disorder in relation to the previous organization, and as order in relation to the parameters of the new discourse. But whereas classical art violated the conventional order of language within welldefined limits, contemporary art constantly challenges the initial order by means of an extremely «improbable» form of organization. In other words, whereas classical art introduced original elements within a linguistic system whose basic laws it substantially respected, contemporary art often manifests its originality by imposing a new linguistic system with its own inner laws.
In fact, one might say that rather than imposing a new system, contemporary art constantly oscillates between the rejection of the traditional linguistic system and its preservation—for if contemporary art imposed a totally new linguistic system, then its discourse would cease to be communicable. The dialectic between form and the possibility of multiple meanings, which constitutes the very essence of the «open work,» takes place in this oscillation. The contemporary poet proposes a system which is no longer that of the language in which he expresses himself, yet that system is not a nonexistent language;» he introduces forms of organized disorder into a system to increase its capacity to convey information.
It is clear that the signifying power of Petrarch’s poem is as great as that of any contemporary poem: at each new reading it discloses something new, something previously unnoticed. But let us look at another lyric poem, a contemporary love poem, probably one of the most beautiful ever written, «Le front aux vitres,» by Paul Eluard.
Le front aux vitres comme font les veilleurs de chagrin
Ciel dont j’ai depasse la nuit
Plaines toutes petites dans mes mains ouvertes
Dans lcur double horizon inerte indifferent
Le front aux vitres comme font les vcilleurs de chagrin
Je to cherche par dela l’attente
Je to cherche par deli moiméme
Et jc ne sais plus cant je t’aime
Lcquel de nous deux est absent.
With brow against the windowpane like those who keep
sorrowful vigil
Sky whose night I’ve left behind
Plains so small in my open hands
In their double horizon inert indifferent
With brow against the windowpane like those who keep
sorrowful vigil
I seek you beyond the waiting
I seek you beyond myself
And I no longer know, so deeply do I love you,
Which of the two of us is absent.
The emotional situation expressed in this poem is fairly similar to that of «Chiare, fresche e dolci acque»; on the other hand, aside from the absolute aesthetic value of the two poems, their communication procedures are completely different. In Petrarch, the partial rupture of the order of the linguistic code introduces a new, unidirectional order which, along with its original organization of phonic, rhythmic, and syntactic elements, conveys a rather ordinary message that can be understood in only one way.
In Eluard, on the contrary, it is obvious that the intention is precisely to draw as much poetic meaning as possible out of the very ambiguity of the message: the poet produces emotional tension by suggesting various gestures and emotions from which the reader can choose the ones that, by stimulating his own mental associations, best enable him to participate in the emotional situation evoked by the poem.
What all this means is that the contemporary poet constructs his or her poetic message with devices and according to procedures unlike those used by the medieval poet. Once again, the results are not at issue here. To analyze a work of art in terms of the amount of information it conveys is not the same as evaluating its aesthetic success, but merely a way of clarifying some of the characteristics and resources of its ability to communicate.’9
Musical Discourse
Let us now transpose all that has just been said onto a musical level: a classical sonata represents a system of probability that makes the succession and superposition of themes easily predictable. The tonal system institutes other rules of probability, whereby the pleasure and the attention of the listener are stimulated by his expectation of the inevitable resolutions of certain tonal progressions. In both cases, the composer can repeatedly break away from the established scheme of probability and introduce a potentially infinite number of variations into even the most elementary scale. The twelvetone system is just another system of probability. Not so the more contemporary serial compositions, in which the musician chooses a constellation of sounds that can lend themselves to a variety of possible connections.
Thus, he breaks away from the banal order of tonal probability and institutes a degree of disorder that, compared to the initial order, is quite high. By so doing, however, he also introduces new forms of organization which, being more open than the traditional one and therefore more charged with information, permit the development of new types of discourse and, as a result, new meanings.
Here again, we are confronting a poetics which, aiming at a greater availability of information, makes of this availability its very method of construction. This, of course, has absolutely no effect on the aesthetic result: a thousand awkward constellations of sounds that have broken away from the tonal system may well provide less information and satisfaction than Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the main objective of this new music is the creation of new discursive structures that will remain open to all sorts of possible conclusions.
In a letter to Hildegard Jone, Webern writes: «I have discovered a series that is to say, twelve sounds that includes a number of internal connections, not unlike that old formula
S A T O R
A R E P 0
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
which should be first read horizontally, then vertically, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top.» 2′) It is rather odd that, to give an idea of his constellation, Webern should have used the same formula used by information theorists to establish the statistical possibilities of two or more series of letters combining, each time yielding a different message. The model is, of course, that of the crossword puzzle, except that, for Webern, this technical stratagem is only one means by which a musical discourse can be organized, whereas for crossword puzzles such a combination is the only point of arrival.
A constellation is itself a kind of order; for although the poetics of openness seeks to make use of a disordered source of possible messages, it tries to do this without renouncing the transmission of an organized message. The result is a continuous oscillation between the institutionalized system of probability and sheer disorder: in other
