Radiant Ignition: Scarry Puts the Psychology Back in Lit-Crit

Hazy, smooth, pastel and pretty, the book jacket of Dreaming by the Book was clearly designed to make the potential reader reflect upon the pleasant possibilities of imagination. The author, Elaine Scarry, is our own Cabot professor of aesthetics; her impressive list of honors and credentials attest to the feasibility of the academic study of beauty, which might seem too slippery and subjective to bear such scrutiny. Perhaps we should instead see the seeming incomprehensibility of beauty as an invitation to further study; Scarry has a slim volume on this subject out right now, entitled On Beauty and Being Just. In Dreaming by the Book, she asks how literature instructs our imaginations. This is not a Freudian exercise, but instead an ambitious look at how words guide us in the act of imagination. But any attempted explanation of one of the most mysterious and wonderful habits of the human mind must end in confusion and disappointment. Scarry's high and beautiful ambitions can only be partially realized.

The premise is intriguing: Scarry claims we imagine best when guided word by word, as in great literature. Whatever we imagine without this guidance is dull and unsatisfying compared to the detail and life our imaginings attain under the tutelage of Homer or Flaubert (two of Scarry's favorite examples). She claims that the "ordinary enfeeblement of images has a striking exception in the verbal arts, where images somehow do acquire the vivacity of perceptual objects, and it is the purpose of this book to trace some of the ways this comes about." Literature contains structures and formats that allow the reader to envision brilliantly.

To discuss these structures, Scarry describes "the deep structure of perception" with the tools of philosophy and cognitive psychology, as well as literary criticism. The mechanisms of imagination are the focus of the book. Scarry classifies the actions of literature within the imagination of the individual reader, identifying five main devices: radiant ignition, rarity, dyadic addition and subtraction, stretching and floral supposition. Scarry adds to this already esoteric and complex classification three chapters on aspects of repicturing, addressing circles, skating and "quickening with flowers."

These are indeed beautiful descriptions of these activities--with terms like "radiant ignition" and "floral supposition," one might be tempted to accept Scarry's logic for the sake of its prettiness. Images of beauty dominate the book, from simple flowers to the grace of Achilles' movements to the gossamer-like qualities of Emma Bovary's apron strings and wisps of hair blowing in the wind. Even violence in literature can be pretty, if the author uses imaginative devices well.

In the world of literary criticism, as long as one can cite examples, one's ideas will have validity. Scarry quotes liberally from some authors (like Homer and Flaubert) and occasionally from other poets or novelists to support her airy-sounding ideas. But the skeptical reader's sensibilities will hesitate to accept these categories, mechanisms, formats, processes or other structures imposed upon the activity of imagination guided by words. Dreaming by the Book is a rather formulaic approach to an extremely free-flowing activity.

Scarry's writing is not always lucid. She sometimes lets an idea wrap itself around and strangle a sentence. The bold argument laid out in the first chapters of the book gives way to examinations of devices that seem imposed upon, rather than found in literary works. Her system of categories makes her argument seem more complete and scientific than it could possibly be, and the reader is disappointed.

Scarry's ideas and floral vocabulary are more tempting than convincing. If she had presented her system as tentative rather than perfect and complete, if she had acknowledged the counter-arguments and reasons for hesitation, her argument would be easier to swallow.