The Style vs Substance Problem in Literature

[Raven Falcon.]

Hi all, I believe it's been two years since I last posted here. It's not that I didn't want to post. Frankly, I was too preoccupied (and still is, actually) with school and work. I haven't even been reading all that much (I read more books in the year before than all the books in the last two years combined). The few books and articles and short stories I've read, however, led me to ponder the problem of Flash vs Substance. Perhaps there are new difficult questions a superior mind can ask, but here I shall present my rookie answers to the most typical coffee house question surrounding this subject. Without further ado, here it is.

Are Style and Substance mutually exclusive in literary works?
To me, it's more of a spectrum than this A or B thing. If we look atThe Divine Comedy, the answer is no. Style and Substance come together into what is arguably the single most multi-dimensional work of art. Indeed, much of the comedy's substance is lost if we read any versions that do away with all but the basic structure of the poem (such as the few prose versions out there). Although written in poetry, which is a sign of stylistic conceit, Style is less married to Substance in Shakespeare's plays as it does in Dante's masterpiece. However much we celebrate the stylistic richness of Shakespeare's oeuvre, we remember the characters he created and the scenes they live in, so much so that they might as well be parts of ourselves that poured forth onto the pages instead. Because of this, we don't really mind reading versions of the plays with significant stylistic alterations (like the switch from verse to prose). It's also one of the reasons why he is adaptable across different times, places, and languages. The Novel also depends very little on Style. Nobody would put War and Peace on the pedestal of Style, yet it is one of the most substantial literary works of all time. The Brothers Karamazov is no different; Don Quixote too. These books are remembered for their characters-the vessels of substance. To conclude, the more concerned a literary work is with human beings, that is the more earthly, more general its theme is, the less Style-dependent it becomes. Vice-versa, the more specific, the more alien it is, the more Style-dependent it becomes.

There seems to exist a spectrum of stylistic dependency in literature.

Now that I've put forth my feeble thought on this problem, I'd love to read yours. Thank you.

[Clopin]

I mean you're right but there are novels which depend almost entirely on style for their effect such as Ulysses and The Waves.

[Raven Falcon.]

I mean you're right but there are novels whic depend almost entirely on style for their effect such as Ulysses and The Waves.
Haven't read The Waves, so I cannot appraise it. But Ulysses to me is a case of style over substance, which is why it is very dependent on style. What little substance Ulysses has cannot make up for any stylistic alterations, for style is all it has.

[Marcus1]

I don't like to think that there is a dialectical opposition between the two, or how writers somehow feel when they are writing a novel that they are torn between choosing style and content. On the contrary, both style and content complement each other - one cannot exist without the other. The reader may choose to draw a line up to his own choosing if he can't enjoy Faulkner or Pynchon or Gaddis or DFW (i myself cannot stomach them), which are definitely more stylistic and flashy in language and therefore in content as well. Personally, I find as much satisfaction in reading a book which sticks to conventional language while being heartfelt and truthful in its intentions. Case(s) in point: The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba, Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata.

[JCamilo]

there is not style over substance. The truth is style is substance.

[Raven Falcon.]

there is not style over substance. The truth is style is substance.

There's no doubt about that. What I am to convey here is the emphasis of one over the other, and how it varies according to genres.

It's a given that to create substance you cannot discard style, for style gives form to substance. What I'm saying is that rigidity in style is less critical in some works than others; and also that some writers put tremendous attention, energy, and time to style that the substance of their works suffer as a result.

[JCamilo]

There's no doubt about that. What I am to convey here is the emphasis of one over the other, and how it varies according to genres.

If style is substance there is not emphasis. It is that simple. If you notice something wrong with them, you are discoverying the writer's flaw.

[Raven Falcon.]

If style is substance there is not emphasis. It is that simple. If you notice something wrong with them, you are discoverying the writer's flaw.

Then all post modern books are flawed.

[ajvenigalla]

A lot of great novels and stories are recognized as much for style as for substance: Moby-Dick, Blood Meridian, the works of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and others

[stlukesguild]

Style vs Substance seems but another means of saying Art vs Content. As JCamilo suggests, I'm not certain that there is a dichotomy here... a "VS". There is as much artifice involved in a painting such as this:

http://img.artmall2000.com/catalog/Sargent/lrg/Mrs_Adrian_Iselin.jpg

... as there is in a painting such as this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/59/f8/92/59f8927d5a42990883a9683d252f7c09.jpg

One is more self-consciously or openly artificial or "artful" while one employs its artifice in creating the illusion of "realism" or naturalism.

I imagine the same is true of literature. Joyce, Sterne, Nabokov, Kafka, Calvino, etc... are far more blatantly artificial than Tolstoy, Dickens, Dostoevsky, or Flaubert... but neither approach is inherently less "artful" than the other.

If we are speaking of the idea of "content" as being defined as a "serious" or "profound" subject or "meaning" I have no use for that concept whatsoever. I'll take Shakespeare over Tolstoy and Sterne and Nabokov over Dostoevsky any time. IMO "content" is the result of the ART. Subject matter is irrelevant in terms of inherent value or merit. "Meaning" is rather like a definition. To me the value of all Art... including literature... lies in the experience.

[Pike Bishop]

Style is less married to Substance in Shakespeare's plays as it does in Dante's masterpiece. However much we celebrate the stylistic richness of Shakespeare's oeuvre, we remember the characters he created and the scenes they live in, so much so that they might as well be parts of ourselves that poured forth onto the pages instead. Because of this, we don't really mind reading versions of the plays with significant stylistic alterations (like the switch from verse to prose)

I agree that there is a spectrum dividing texts, which spans across texts where syle is substance, texts blending the two (the majority), and texts where style only serves to convey the substance. However, one cannot move the language of Shakespeare's plays without losing their brilliance. The genius of the characters' complexity and the plays' tragedy or comedy lies in Shakespeare's words. Replacing them with someone else's is like letting someone repaint Van Gogh or sing a karaoke version of a Beatles classic. People may be ok reading prose versions or classic comics of Shakespeare, but they aren't getting his true works, their style, or their substance.

[Scheherazade]

To me the value of all Art... including literature... lies in the experience.Which can be rather subjective, depending on many factors.

[Bartlebooth]

As others have mentioned, perhaps the question isn't so much style vs substance as what kind of style the author uses. A work that seems more "earthly" or "human" might not necessarily lack style. Instead, the creator could channel his or her stylistic skills towards a different end. A couple of years ago, I read a book about the painter Norman Rockwell which suggested that despite the simplicity of his works, he was very conscious of ideas of composition and style. A work with style that draws attention to itself is not necessarily more stylistically sophisticated.

[Pike Bishop]

A work with style that draws attention to itself is not necessarily more stylistically sophisticated.

Although I have a personal preference for elaborate styles like Faulkner's, Morrison's, and McCarthy's, the statement above is definitely true.

[cacian]

substance over always because style changes to chase it is rather rages
so I would they are not mutual they are habitual one depends on the other more
substance subsidies style because style shifts it is unreliable because of the mood.
style is language dependable.
substance is it not because it is rectifiable viable to everyday situation it makes style undeniable it follows but changes.

[Pike Bishop]

substance over always because style changes to chase it is rather rages
so I would they are not mutual they are habitual one depends on the other more
substance subsidies style because style shifts it is unreliable because of the mood.
style is language dependable.
substance is it not because it is rectifiable viable to everyday situation it makes style undeniable it follows but changes.

You claim that substance can exist without style and substance is not "language dependable;" so , I ask you two questions:

1. How and where does literary substance exist without any style?

2. How does literary substance exist independent of language?

[Ecurb]

"Substance" refers to physical material. The "substance" of a sculpture might be wood, or stone, or metal. The "substance" of a painting might be oil paints and canvas or watercolors and paper.

Clearly, when we speak of literary "substance" we are not talking about ink and paper, but about something else. What else, exactly, is unclear. We are using "substance" metaphorically. Stluke offers "content" as a reasonable alternative, but I'm not sure that works, either.

The content of a work of literature INCLUDES its style, and the style includes the content. The notion that "style" is like a spicy, curry sauce that can make meat (the substantial portion of the meal) that has "turned" in the tropical sun palatable is, I think, incorrect. Let's look at a simple example. from Emily Dickinson.


I NEVER saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God, 5
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

If "substance" refers to some meaning of a poem that can be paraphrased (some would call this "the heresy of paraphrase"), the poem says, "I can know what physical things look like without seeing them, and I can know about heaven without seeing it." Minor league stuff. Yet the "style" of the poem is simply a two verse, simple rhyme, with a simple rhythm. Only when the two are combined does the emotional resonance of the poem shine through. The style is the content; the content is the style.

[Pike Bishop]

I'm looking forward to your answer, Cacian. I'm sure you'll have something interesting to say.

[YesNo]

The style is the content; the content is the style.

Although it might be difficult to separate style and content, it seems they are different. Consider two teaching assistants in a math department using the same book and exams. One is courteous and the other is rude. Their styles differ, but the content of the courses they teach are not.

[JCamilo]

But two diffeerent contents notheless.

Fish with Stlukes, there is something being said by Dante and Eliot and Dante with their style. There is the emotions they want to pass, there is a need to build and organize a world view for one and chaos and fragmentation for other. Picasso didnt paint that way because he couldnt do otherwise, it was the only way possible for him to express the emotions he wanted to express. It was an world view, as much as DaVince paintings had his world view.

Change the math for a similar story, let's The story of the two that dreammed. Compare Borges telling the story and Paulo Coelho. Borges's precise and almost geometrical style is a way for him to show us what matters to him in the story: that two different men can have the same dream. Coelho poor style reflects the banality of his version, the limitation to the literal interpretation of the text (you will find what you search within yourself.

[mona amon]

I feel substance is what the artist is trying to say, style is the way in which he says it, the way in which he communicates his vision to the reader. So every artist has his own style. Some are just a lot better than the others, and substance is also equally important. It is no use having a beautiful way of saying things if the artist has nothing to say. The two are different things, but both are important and essential for a work of art to succeed.


Change the math for a similar story, let's The story of the two that dreammed. Compare Borges telling the story and Paulo Coelho. Borges's precise and almost geometrical style is a way for him to show us what matters to him in the story: that two different men can have the same dream. Coelho poor style reflects the banality of his version, the limitation to the literal interpretation of the text (you will find what you search within yourself.

For me the problem with this example is that both style and substance in Coelho's work is very much inferior to Borges. You say that the difference in substance lies in the difference in style. But I feel they are both saying different things, at different levels of intelligence, imagination and so on. Whatever may be the definition of substance, Borges has a lot more of it that Coelho. It is not just the style, though in this case, that also.

[JCamilo]

Well, Mona, of course they are different, they different in both Style and substance. And of course, not just style, but that his style is part of the substance. With the way Borges writes, you are receiving information of what he wants to express in the story. The text is so clear, the structure is so well crafted that when the final idea is given (both dreamt the same dream), you already got the overall idea of borges, of this misterious structure in the universe cointaining mini-universes, the multiplicity of the same thing, the doubles. The style is not the substance, but it is filled with substance. It is not an accident or just a mania.

But if you want two good writers, we can have Henry James and Kipling. They basically tell the same plot in The lesson of a master and The best story ever told. But the style is quite different and that is what lies all substance of both authors. The distance James keeps from the text, which is sort like the Sphinx without Oedipus, the lack of description, tells much of James game, his believe that things happens as an intelectual game. Kipling in other way make you jump in the story, give you much more details, flow you with imaginery, give us a first person narrative to engage you more, offer a possible explanation, a text by someone who, unlike james locked in his office, traveled around the other. The style is filled with substance, telling us a lot.

[Pike Bishop]

I feel substance is what the artist is trying to say, style is the way in which he says it, the way in which he communicates his vision to the reader. So every artist has his own style. Some are just a lot better than the others, and substance is also equally important. It is no use having a beautiful way of saying things if the artist has nothing to say. The two are different things, but both are important and essential for a work of art to succeed

The problem with the argument in this paragraph is that for most--if not all artists--the style is an immense part of their substance. Poets and literary prose and drama writers don't just use words to convey their substance as meaning; the substance lies in the very words they use themselves, in the way those words produce both semantic and sonorous effect.
Painters, particularly, post-impressionist and abstract expressionist painters don't just use the style of their images to convey meaning as substance either. The very style of their colors and images possess their own substance in themselves and their "relations" with the others.

So, style and substance may be two different things, but they are never entirely separate in any work of actual art.

[YesNo]

Alexander Pope writes: "The sound must seem an echo to the sense". (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sound-and-sense/) and Robert Frost talks of the "sound of sense". This makes me think that the problem of style and substance can be better viewed as how sound and sense relate in language. The style would be linked to the sound and the substance would be linked to sense, content, meaning or the intention of the words.

If one looks at it like that then sound and sense (style and substance) are different and they are different from what one finds in an image which might not have any intentionality associated with it.

In the case of Ecurb's example using Dickinson's poem, one can accept or reject the poem from two different perspectives. One can accept or reject the poem based on the metrical sounds that it uses, that is, one can judge it based on its style. One can also accept or reject the poem based on its theistic view, that is, the sense, content, or meaning underlying the poem.

Because of that I think style and substance (sound and sense) are different and perhaps peculiar to language.

[Ecurb]

We discussed translation a while back. Does a translated novel consist of the content without the style? It certainly sounds different from the original. Is the content of a novel contained in the Cliff Notes summary?

Robert Frost (the story goes) was once asked by a young lady, "I love your new poem, Mr. Frost, but what does it mean?"

"Do you want me to say it over again in worser English?" Frost responded.

For some human creations, style is contrasted not with "content" or "substance", but with "function". Two jackets can have the same function (keeping someone warm), but different styles. Yesno's example of a math book falls into this category -- there might be two styles by which one can learn to solve the same problem. For a work of art, the distinction is less clear, because the "function" of a work of art is to create an emotional response.

Classical (wordless) music offers an example. What is its "content" or "substance"? What is the "style"? Can we distinguish between them?

Yesno suggests the distinction between sound and meaning. It seems to me, though, that style also involves the juxtapositions of meanings, the structural similarities in the plot, etc., etc. Dickinson's style in "I never saw a moor" involves the similarity of both sound and meaning between the first and second stanzas. In "Anna Karenina" Levin's personality resembles aspect of the personalities of his two brothers, which helps the reader understand and think about Levin. Is this "content" or "style"? In music, the relationship of one sound (a note) to another creates a melody; in literature the "style" is created not merely by sound but by the relationship of one set of meanings to another (as is clear in Dickinson's poem).

[Pike Bishop]

Alexander Pope writes: "The sound must seem an echo to the sense". (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sound-and-sense/) and Robert Frost talks of the "sound of sense". This makes me think that the problem of style and substance can be better viewed as how sound and sense relate in language. The style would be linked to the sound and the substance would be linked to sense, content, meaning or the intention of the words.

If one looks at it like that then sound and sense (style and substance) are different and they are different from what one finds in an image which might not have any intentionality associated with it.

In the case of Ecurb's example using Dickinson's poem, one can accept or reject the poem from two different perspectives. One can accept or reject the poem based on the metrical sounds that it uses, that is, one can judge it based on its style. One can also accept or reject the poem based on its theistic view, that is, the sense, content, or meaning underlying the poem.

Because of that I think style and substance (sound and sense) are different and perhaps peculiar to language.

There are two significant problems with your argument here, YesNo:

1. Style in poetry, literary prose, and drama does not just lie in the sound. It also lies in the semantic dynamics of the language, which you failed to address.

2. The "sound" of a literary text is also part of the substance. The various sounds produced by the work's metre, lengths of sentences and paragraphs, and words are part of the substance of the works. They are not just conveyors of that substance. Anyone who has read poetic fiction writers like Morrison, McCarthy, or Faulkner; or any quality poets--particularly language poets--would see that.

[JCamilo]

We discussed translation a while back. Does a translated novel consist of the content without the style? It certainly sounds different from the original. Is the content of a novel contained in the Cliff Notes summary?


A translated work is a new work, with its own style and part of the substance of the original, but also with a new substance. And Cliff Notes cointain just part of the substance of a work, which is not just the plot or characters (or whatever basic resume) but the feelings in a work of art. There is some confusion when people here are thinking that Stlukes means as content only information or data. It is more than that.

[YesNo]

Classical (wordless) music offers an example. What is its "content" or "substance"? What is the "style"? Can we distinguish between them?

Yesno suggests the distinction between sound and meaning. It seems to me, though, that style also involves the juxtapositions of meanings, the structural similarities in the plot, etc., etc. Dickinson's style in "I never saw a moor" involves the similarity of both sound and meaning between the first and second stanzas. In "Anna Karenina" Levin's personality resembles aspect of the personalities of his two brothers, which helps the reader understand and think about Levin. Is this "content" or "style"? In music, the relationship of one sound (a note) to another creates a melody; in literature the "style" is created not merely by sound but by the relationship of one set of meanings to another (as is clear in Dickinson's poem).

I am beginning to see why language is different from art or music without lyrics. With language the words contain meanings which are pointers to something else beyond themselves. Music and art are pure style which can be pleasurable. Language adds "substance" or meaning to style which is the way the meaning is expressed.

If that is right, talking about poetry containing "images" is misunderstanding language or trying to removing the substance or content or intentionality from the words.

[Pike Bishop]

Language adds "substance" or meaning to style which is the way the meaning is expressed.

If that is right, talking about poetry containing "images" is misunderstanding language or trying to removing the substance or content or intentionality from the words.

1. As I showed in my previous post, which I will post below, language doesn't add substance or meaning to style. The language is both style and substance:

"Style in poetry, literary prose, and drama does not just lie in the sound. It also lies in the semantic dynamics of the language, which you failed to address.

The "sound" of a literary text is also part of the substance. The various sounds produced by the work's metre, lengths of sentences and paragraphs, and words are part of the substance of the works. They are not just conveyors of that substance. Anyone who has read poetic fiction writers like Morrison, McCarthy, or Faulkner; or any quality poets--particularly language poets--would see that."

If you would actually like to show how language adds substance to style, please do. You would radically change poetry and linguistics as we know them.

2. Poetry is definitely about images, if not entirely about them. All poetry, particularly imagist and symbolist, poetry is partially about its images. So, the one misunderstanding language (and poetry) is you. You are, of course, free to show how poetry is completely bereft of images. Again, because images are an inherent element of almost all poems, you will not be able to do so.


P.s. for a quick example of imagery in poems, here's one from the Imagist master, Ezra Pound:

In A Station Of The Metro:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.


There is no escaping the reality and importance of the images in that poem.

[cacian]

You claim that substance can exist without style and substance is not "language dependable;" so , I ask you two questions:
substance is us we make it happen our behaviour is substantial
the reason for this
we do not like changes we like the same because it establishes who we are
routine is not necessarily negative it depends what it is
that is substance
we make it so we can cope ie exist without having to desist so not to become depressed

we may at some stage become volatile and that it is because substance has stagnated
because it has not gone anywhere new better
without substance means we loose touch with reality of who we are hence volatile unreliable




1. How and where does literary substance exist without any style?
style is a luxury
we come around it because we feel substance has lost track of us
it becomes meaningless depressive it needs a style
it is to boost our lack of confidence towards substance
we wish to magnify it so we think we can see us better
it has positive and negative and can retraced to becoming substantial again



2. How does literary substance exist independent of language?
substance is us
literary is oral which becomes language
when a style is established
they both coexist because it is not possible to separate the human mind from speech which becomes words
which in turn becomes heard as the literary device to get by
to style is well is ideal
style reforms it is to improve substance

[Pike Bishop]

style is a luxury
we come around it because we feel substance has lost track of us
it becomes meaningless depressive it needs a style
it is to boost our lack of confidence towards substance
we wish to magnify it so we think we can see us better
it has positive and negative and can retraced to becoming substantial again

substance is us
literary is oral which becomes language
when a style is established
they both coexist because it is not possible to separate the human mind from speech which becomes words
which in turn becomes heard as the literary device to get by
to style is well is ideal
style reforms it is to improve substance

1. As to paragraph one, nothing you said answered my question or showed how literary substance can exist without style

2. As to paragraph two, nothing you said answered my question or showed how literary substance can exist independent of language.

I still look forward to your answering those questions if you ever feel you can do so.

[Scheherazade]

Aw, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy...

[Pike Bishop]

Aw, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy...

Now, if that were a poem, one could possibly argue absence of imagery...;)

[Scheherazade]

How about style and/or substance?

[Pike Bishop]

The presence of both? Certainly. The quality of either? I'll keep mum...;)

[Scheherazade]

So we are not just talking about having style and/or substance but their "quality" is also an issue?

This is getting more and more complicated!

[Pike Bishop]

No, I only brought up the quality issue for your gem. It has not been an issue of discussion, nor does it have to be. However, considering there are quality issues in substance and style, your taking it in that direction would not be extraneous.

[cacian]

So we are not just talking about having style and/or substance but their "quality" is also an issue?

This is getting more and more complicated!

it is only complicated when substance is abdicated and style is indicated ;)
quality does not shine
when idenity is tied
that means substance is dragged because a style is dictating

[Scheherazade]

it is only complicated when substance is abdicated and style is indicated ;)
But not if it is didactic? That would surely make it fantastic!

[Pike Bishop]

Plato, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Woolf, and Nietzsche were all didactic. Their different styles intermingled with their substances were all fantastic.

[cacian]

1. As to paragraph one, nothing you said answered my question or showed how literary substance can exist without style

style is secondary
the importance is to have substance first which we have naturally we are substance the matter of life and reason not the edge
to make a statement is to introduce style so substance shines or makes an impression
literary substance exist without style when we converse for example
we go with our feelings because we want to be approved or we wish convention comvcition
culture is substance
it needs not a style it just needs confidence and clarity tone of voice body language and so on
call it metaphysical
that is the answer.


2. As to paragraph two, nothing you said answered my question or showed how literary substance can exist independent of language.
literary substance without language?
language engages a substance to turn literate
one writes and reads in order to understand because one needs to see and hear in order to perfect improvement
substance without language exists when it is not expressed it is in our body language
frustration
anger
mood swings
misbehaviour
are as a result of not expressing substance we become absent
memory is affected
so it does not really exist it more harbours

I still look forward to your answering those questions if you ever feel you can do so.[/QUOTE]

[cacian]

Plato, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Woolf, and Nietzsche were all didactic. Their different styles intermingled with their substances were all fantastic.

ah yeah but the were definitely on something.

[Pike Bishop]

style is secondary
the importance is to have substance first which we have naturally we are substance the matter of life and reason not the edge
to make a statement is to introduce style so substance shines or makes an impression
literary substance exist without style when we converse for example
we go with our feelings because we want to be approved or we wish convention comvcition
culture is substance
it needs not a style it just needs confidence and clarity tone of voice body language and so on
call it metaphysical
that is the answer.

No, that is not the answer. It was some very interesting wordplay, but none of it showed showed how literary substance can exist without style. If you want to do so, you need to choose some actual texts and show how they separate style and substance. Since it can't be done, if you actually do so, you will probably earn a chair in most English departments.

As to your second paragraph, which I couldn't quote, it was also interesting wordplay, but it didn't show in any way how literary substance can exist independent of language. Until you show how it can actually do so, the fact remains that it can't.

[YesNo]

P.s. for a quick example of imagery in poems, here's one from the Imagist master, Ezra Pound:

In A Station Of The Metro:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.


There is no escaping the reality and importance of the images in that poem.

How many petals are on the bough? If those words were an image, I would know that. How many faces? Is the crowd on the right or on the left hand side of the image or does the crowd completely cover the image? Are the number of people in the crowd clearly countable or too fuzzy to count? If countable, does your count of the number of people agree with my count of the number of people in the image? Since this is about a metro, where is the train in the image? Is the train above the people or on the right or the left side of the image? Is there a station sign in the image showing us that this really is a metro? Is it on the right side or on the left side or maybe in the center of the image?

If those words represented an image, I would know that information along with a lot of other details.

My conclusion: those words do not constitute an image. They do mean something. They do have a sound. That is all they offer, which is quite a lot.

[Pike Bishop]

My conclusion: those words do not constitute an image. They do mean something. They do have a sound. That is all they offer, which is quite a lot.

Your conclusion is both unsupported and, respectfully, wrong. You can falsely deny "wet, black, boughs," "faces in the crownd" and a metro station are images all you like. They all are still images. Wet, black, boughs; faces in the crowd; and metro stations are all physical things evoking imagery when referenced. Until you can show otherwise, they are all still images in the poem.

[Bartlebooth]

How many petals are on the bough? If those words were an image, I would know that. How many faces? Is the crowd on the right or on the left hand side of the image or does the crowd completely cover the image? Are the number of people in the crowd clearly countable or too fuzzy to count? If countable, does your count of the number of people agree with my count of the number of people in the image? Since this is about a metro, where is the train in the image? Is the train above the people or on the right or the left side of the image? Is there a station sign in the image showing us that this really is a metro? Is it on the right side or on the left side or maybe in the center of the image?

If those words represented an image, I would know that information along with a lot of other details.

My conclusion: those words do not constitute an image. They do mean something. They do have a sound. That is all they offer, which is quite a lot.

I think that your understanding of what an image is might be a little limited. The poem might not exactly create a visual image of photographic precision, but do you really mean to suggest that it has no visual associations for you? I suppose that different people experience poetry differently, but personally, I found the work very evocative. The first line almost makes me think of an impressionist painting, with figures that don't have clearly defined features, but create the sense of a crowd of featureless people, with certain people growing clearer as the viewer's eye traverses the scene. And for me, the second line created the clear image of cherry blossom petals clinging to a branch after the rain. Perhaps you experienced the poem in a different way, but I feel that the imagery is definitely ingrained in the poem.

[cacian]

No, that is not the answer. It was some very interesting wordplay, but none of it showed showed how literary substance can exist without style. If you want to do so, you need to choose some actual texts and show how they separate style and substance. Since it can't be done, if you actually do so, you will probably earn a chair in most English departments.

As to your second paragraph, which I couldn't quote, it was also interesting wordplay, but it didn't show in any way how literary substance can exist independent of language. Until you show how it can actually do so, the fact remains that it can't.




there is this analogy related to metaphysic
body and mind relationship with the outside/environment and how they transform to inform or understand

lets consider a weather clock that indicates how and when the changes occur according to the hour/seasosn
for example
in a hour it will show there will be a storm
and would explain the shift of how nature moves from being sunny in an instant to becoming snowy the next
there is a study related to that.
the study of that would oen substance because the style has indicated a shift or a movement

the clock is the main substance

the style
would the handles that move from sunny to snowy
and shows how the temperature goes up and down and why

the evidence is the style
the substance is the carrier of this edidence
the clock
without it there would no style

without a style there is clock.
a style occurs when the changes occur and not because until then it is sedate

[YesNo]

I think that your understanding of what an image is might be a little limited. The poem might not exactly create a visual image of photographic precision, but do you really mean to suggest that it has no visual associations for you? I suppose that different people experience poetry differently, but personally, I found the work very evocative. The first line almost makes me think of an impressionist painting, with figures that don't have clearly defined features, but create the sense of a crowd of featureless people, with certain people growing clearer as the viewer's eye traverses the scene. And for me, the second line created the clear image of cherry blossom petals clinging to a branch after the rain. Perhaps you experienced the poem in a different way, but I feel that the imagery is definitely ingrained in the poem.

What I am trying to do is point out something obvious. A poem, or language in general, is neither a set of images nor is it music without lyrics. Those are at best metaphors of what language is and I think they are bad metaphors. Language is sound that communicates meaning.

Why are they bad metaphors? Because they devalue the role that meaning has in language and attempt to see language as only style without substance.

That brings us back to the OP where the question is whether there is any difference between style and substance in language. If one is thinking that style and substance (think "meaning") are the same thing, then one could make comparisons between language and some image or piece of music without lyrics. I don't think that comparison is valid because it throws away the meaning of the words.

Consider this: we are expressing our views using language in this thread. We are using words that we mentally verbalize through sounds that intend something very specific. Suppose we wrote this thread using images or posted audio tracks of non-lyrical music. Would we be able to communicate with each other? I think it is obvious that we would not.

[YesNo]

Your conclusion is both unsupported and, respectfully, wrong. You can falsely deny "wet, black, boughs," "faces in the crownd" and a metro station are images all you like. They all are still images. Wet, black, boughs; faces in the crowd; and metro stations are all physical things evoking imagery when referenced. Until you can show otherwise, they are all still images in the poem.

However you choose to understand the meaning of a word is something you as a reader do. You might see an image, hear some music or think of some idea. That is your personal experience. My experience may and probably will differ. The language that we are responding to has used style (sound) that we associate with a substance (sense) that allows us to understand. The language itself does not contain an image.

If one views style as sound and substance as sense or meaning then one can separate the two to see their difference. As speakers of English we don't experience this separation clearly, but if a paragraph of English we understand is translated into another language that we do not understand, that is, a language in which we cannot make the connection between sound and sense, then all we get from hearing the paragraph read is the style or sound. We might be tempted to think that the sound is not language until we realize that other people can make the association and understand.

[Bartlebooth]

What I am trying to do is point out something obvious. A poem, or language in general, is neither a set of images nor is it music without lyrics. Those are at best metaphors of what language is and I think they are bad metaphors. Language is sound that communicates meaning.

Why are they bad metaphors? Because they devalue the role that meaning has in language and attempt to see language as only style without substance.

That brings us back to the OP where the question is whether there is any difference between style and substance in language. If one is thinking that style and substance (think "meaning") are the same thing, then one could make comparisons between language and some image or piece of music without lyrics. I don't think that comparison is valid because it throws away the meaning of the words.

Consider this: we are expressing our views using language in this thread. We are using words that we mentally verbalize through sounds that intend something very specific. Suppose we wrote this thread using images or posted audio tracks of non-lyrical music. Would we be able to communicate with each other? I think it is obvious that we would not.

I'm definitely in agreement with the idea that poems are more than just images. When I tried to explain how I reacted to the poem, I wasn't really trying to suggest that those impressions were the only important aspects of the poem. But I'm a bit confused by why you emphasize the aural aspect of language. It's true that a major part of language is speaking and the sounds it produces, but I think that some aspects of language on the page might be important as well. While visual appearance isn't always integral, some writers are concerned with the visual patterns that words on a page create. For example, if you were listening to a free verse poem, it might not always be clear how the lines of the poem are divided. And concrete poems absolutely rely on how words are aligned. The same way we can't reduce language only to visual images or music, we shouldn't reduce it only to the spoken word.

[Pike Bishop]

there is this analogy related to metaphysic....
a style occurs when the changes occur and not because until then it is sedate

That, again, was some more interesting wordplay. Again, none of it showed how literary substance can exist without style or how literary substance can exist independent of language. As I said before, if you want to do so, you need to actually show some texts that do. You should also really use some syllogistic logic expressed through clear prosaic language.

[Pike Bishop]

However you choose to understand the meaning of a word is something you as a reader do. You might see an image, hear some music or think of some idea. That is your personal experience. My experience may and probably will differ. The language that we are responding to has used style (sound) that we associate with a substance (sense) that allows us to understand. The language itself does not contain an image.

If one views style as sound and substance as sense or meaning then one can separate the two to see their difference. As speakers of English we don't experience this separation clearly, but if a paragraph of English we understand is translated into another language that we do not understand, that is, a language in which we cannot make the connection between sound and sense, then all we get from hearing the paragraph read is the style or sound. We might be tempted to think that the sound is not language until we realize that other people can make the association and understand.

1. Firstly, the language itself does contain images. When the language contains a word, and/or a group of words, referencing physical objects or phemonena evoking images of them, it contains images. And readers don't have the conscious ability to control their cognitive reactions to words. For most, if not all, readers, the word "cat" will evoke an image of a cat or images of cats. So, again, language does contain images.

2. Your supposition about "viewing style as sound and substance as sense or meaning" assumes that supposition is correct; it's not . Style is much more than sound. Do you really think a writer's style is reduced to the sound of the words he or she chooses. Style exists in syntax, imagery, artistic mingling of words, and terseness in and/elaborateness of expression....it certainly doesn't just exist in sound. And substance is much more than just meaning. If you don't think there is substance in the style of brilliant writers like Dickinson, Faulkner, McCarthy, Proust, and Shakespeare, you need to read them again. There is as much substantive value in the way they wrote their literature as in the content of it.

Finally, we get much more out of translated literature than "style or sound." Translated texts by Dostoevsky for example bring profound existential examinations of man's nature. Translated texts of Proust bring meditations on memory un-matched by any writer in English. So, you may only be getting style or sound from translated texts; but you're incorrect in saying that's all that's there.

[Pike Bishop]

What I am trying to do is point out something obvious. A poem, or language in general, is neither a set of images nor is it music without lyrics. Those are at best metaphors of what language is and I think they are bad metaphors. Language is sound that communicates meaning.

Why are they bad metaphors? Because they devalue the role that meaning has in language and attempt to see language as only style without substance.

That brings us back to the OP where the question is whether there is any difference between style and substance in language. If one is thinking that style and substance (think "meaning") are the same thing, then one could make comparisons between language and some image or piece of music without lyrics. I don't think that comparison is valid because it throws away the meaning of the words.

Consider this: we are expressing our views using language in this thread. We are using words that we mentally verbalize through sounds that intend something very specific. Suppose we wrote this thread using images or posted audio tracks of non-lyrical music. Would we be able to communicate with each other? I think it is obvious that we would not.

1. Firstly, what you said isn't obvious at at all; in fact, it's incorrect. You can't just make an unsupported statement and claim it's "obvious;" it shows you are unable to support that statement. A poem is, partially, a set of images--and many more things--and I showed how in my post above. That is not a metaphor in any way; it is a statement of fact. And you can keep claiming "language is sound without meaning" all you want. It doesn't make it true, and it's not. You give no textual evidence or syllogistic logic to back that claim up, and nothing in consensual linguistics or literary study backs it up either.

2. Also, your claim about "bad metaphors" is an unsupported supposition unsuccessfully supported by another unsupported supposition. You do not prove or show in any way how Pound's images "devalue the role that meaning has in language and attempt to see language as only style without substance." If you want to actually do so, you need to actually address the images in Pound's poem and show how they do what you claim. You also have to prove your view of the "role that meaning has in language" is correct. You have yet to do so.

3. I never, and I believe nobody, asserted style and substance are the same thing. I correctly asserted they can never be fully separated, and I correctly supported that in my previous posts.

4. Finally, we have expressed our views through many aspects of language on this thread...including images. You just mistakenly, and without support claim we only verbalize sounds. Secondly, nobody claimed language and/or literature only expresses itself in images. So, your hypothetical is a red herring; however, at least you admit language does contain images. And try to stop saying things are "obvious," particularly when they are not. It looks silly when your claim is shown not to be obvious....and if you "think" something is obvious, it clearly is not.

[cacian]

That, again, was some more interesting wordplay. Again, none of it showed how literary substance can exist without style or how literary substance can exist independent of language. As I said before, if you want to do so, you need to actually show some texts that do. You should also really use some syllogistic logic expressed through clear prosaic language.

can i ask something
who says literary substance can exist without style?
how do we know for sure it does?

[Pike Bishop]

As you can see from my post you quoted, and my other posts, I stated clearly literary substance can't exist without syle.

You, however, have made statements suggesting the contrary:

"style is a luxury
we come around it because we feel substance has lost track of us"

[cacian]

As you can see from my post you quoted, and my other posts, I stated clearly literary substance can't exist without syle.

You, however, have made statements suggesting the contrary:

"style is a luxury
we come around it because we feel substance has lost track of us"

Pike Bishop
i side tracked i have forgotten about this bit.
ok now i have said that i need to explain why i said that...

well the way i wrote that is because i thought that style is comparable to fashion
one addresses a piece of material to transform into something wearable as well as unwearable
it is a design made to impress rather then wear
and that is because a stylist or a fashionista can do that
it is no longer about making a garment practical so it wearable it is about making a statement
i call it overbearing
if you watch the catwalk you will see designs one simply could not wear because it is too fiddly grandiose too big too small too weird it would look
stupid in everyday life

this example i compared to substance being no longer the reason why we write
it is more for the style to show we can
and substance must retain so style can make sense
the stream of consciousness is one style that is out of substance
it is not about saying it is about styling so one does not say much but wishes to impress through insignificance

therefore literary substance can be without style
for example everyday speech one does not composition more sound and effect
a style without substance
is a show without an utterance

substance indicates syndicates so the style does not get out of hand

[Pike Bishop]

Nothing you said above showed how literary substance can exist without style...and vice versa.

So, I say this as friendly advice. If you want to make a salient argument, don't try to do it in poetic form or poetic "prose." The style, content, and intent do not intermingle well, and they do not do so in your "arguments." Even the best rhetorical poets--e.g. Stevens, Eliot, and Wordsworth--knew their "arguments" would lose rhetorical clarity in their poetry. So, if you actually want to make your arguments, I suggest you do so in plain language. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time and effort, and failing to make your argument.

[Scheherazade]

I think the main problem with Cacian's argument here is that she does not exactly know what literary style is, which might be due to her EFL background, and she is assuming it is similar to another meaning of the word; ie, having style or having taste... Hence she is making references to fashion and so on.

Of course, this is a common problem with Cacian engaging in any discussion; she does not do her research before jumping and relies on her own assumptions to waffle on and and on... Unfortunately, communicating in solely in verse is a more recent hobby of hers, which further aids to blur the lines of her already blurry arguments, wasting not only her own time as you Pike points out but also others who have an interest in the debate.

[stlukesguild]

JCamilo- Picasso didn't paint that way because he couldn't do otherwise...

True. Picasso at age 14:

https://41.media.tumblr.com/97e4d5f34140f4c2f62e225216021b1f/tumblr_nnld1e42181uradzdo1_500.jpg

...it was the only way possible for him to express the emotions he wanted to express. It was an world view...

An artist's "style" is something that evolves slowly over the course of years like one's signature. For a visual artist this style is the result of what subjects the artist is obsessed with, his or her favorite colors, preferences for certain ways of handling light, space, texture, line, etc... One doesn't simply decide one day, "I want to paint Impressionism or Cubism." I suspect the same is true of the writer. I know that my own writing style... even though I don't in any way consider myself a writer... is something that has evolved over time. Undoubtedly I can identify certain influences... but surely not all. My style is a result of what I have read, which authors I like the most, what form and expressive intent my writing takes, etc...

[stlukesguild]

cacian- style is luxury

style is secondary

Cacian, you seem to assume a false dichotomy... a separation of "style" and "substance" (or "meaning"/"content"). Quite often this is how literature is taught at the grade-school level: you have the "meaning" and the form or style is thought of as simply an artful way of communicating this "meaning"... a bit of aesthetic perfume. I find this to be nonsense. The form taken by the poet... the language of poetry... is just as essential as the "meaning" or "substance". Form and meaning/substance are interwoven in constructing what we think of as content.

It has been pointed out before that reduced to their simplest "meaning" many of Shakespeare's sonnets convey nothing more profound than "When I think of you, I feel blue." If that was all the content of the sonnets, why bother? If all that form or style achieves is but an aesthetic perfume, why bother?

[mona amon]

cacian- style is luxury

style is secondary

Cacian, you seem to assume a false dichotomy...a separation of "style" and "substance" (or "meaning"/"content").

But is it not the same dichotomy as between cause and effect? There is no cause without effect, no effect without cause. Style is the vehicle by which the artist communicates his vision (substance) to the reader. The author uses style to create the effect, tell the story, communicate the emotions, which all add up to form the substance of the work. No style without substance, no substance without style, and yet they are not the same thing, or so it seems to me. That is why I'm finding this discussion confusing. I feel that the OP's question about the relative importance of style and substance is a legitimate one, which cannot be dismissed by saying they are just two ways of looking at the same aspect of the work.

[Pike Bishop]

But is it not the same dichotomy as between cause and effect? There is no cause without effect, no effect without cause. Style is the vehicle by which the artist communicates his vision (substance) to the reader. The author uses style to create the effect, tell the story, communicate the emotions, which all add up to form the substance of the work. No style without substance, no substance without style, and yet they are not the same thing, or so it seems to me. That is why I'm finding this discussion confusing. I feel that the OP's question about the relative importance of style and substance is a legitimate one, which cannot be dismissed by saying they are just two ways of looking at the same aspect of the work.

No, it is not the same dichotomy. Cause and effect are inherently separated because their relation is diachronous, as one inevitably follows the other. Style and substance are inherently tied together synchronically, as they always exist together simultaneously. And style isn't just the "vehicle by which the artist communicates his vision (substance) to the reader." It is part of his or her vision itself. If you don't think part of the reader's artistic vision lies in his or her style, you've been reading the wrong literature. Also, the style doesn't just "create the effect, tell the story, and communicate the emotions" It is part of the effect itself; it is part of the story; and it is part of the emotions communicated. Again, you are artificially separating style from substance and mistakenly arguing the former follows and serves the latter. It doesn't.

And I certainly never denied there are relative importances to substance and style; they just are never fully separated. I also never said they are "are just two ways of looking at the same aspect of the work. I have no idea where you got that from.

[YesNo]

I'm definitely in agreement with the idea that poems are more than just images. When I tried to explain how I reacted to the poem, I wasn't really trying to suggest that those impressions were the only important aspects of the poem. But I'm a bit confused by why you emphasize the aural aspect of language. It's true that a major part of language is speaking and the sounds it produces, but I think that some aspects of language on the page might be important as well. While visual appearance isn't always integral, some writers are concerned with the visual patterns that words on a page create. For example, if you were listening to a free verse poem, it might not always be clear how the lines of the poem are divided. And concrete poems absolutely rely on how words are aligned. The same way we can't reduce language only to visual images or music, we shouldn't reduce it only to the spoken word.

The reason I am emphasizing the aural part of communication is because words are generally what we use to communicate meaning and words are composed of sounds. We have other ways to communicate such as sign languages or body languages or art and music, but using words gives us a precise way to communicate when we are trying to get a point across such as how we are communicating in this thread.

I would consider poems that depend on visual patterns on a page to be art that contains words, just as music could have lyrics. The words contained in the art or music, however, represent sounds and that is what provides the meaning for the words.

I am not trying to argue with this that poetry should be metrical. What I am saying applies to free verse poetry as well as fiction. Words are based on sounds.

It is true that you might picture a house in your mind when you say the word "house", but that would be a personal way to understand the meaning of the word. I would picture a different house and right now when I say the word I don't imagine anything in particular. What is common to both of us when we read or hear "house" is not an image, but the original sound. Besides, the meaning that we need to understand is often far more complicated than just "house". It might be something like, "The Smiths lived happily in their house on Cedar Street." What is the image in that string of sounds? What image in your mind helps your mind construct that meaning? I can't think of any image that would work and yet we both understand what that sentence means.

[YesNo]

But is it not the same dichotomy as between cause and effect? There is no cause without effect, no effect without cause. Style is the vehicle by which the artist communicates his vision (substance) to the reader. The author uses style to create the effect, tell the story, communicate the emotions, which all add up to form the substance of the work. No style without substance, no substance without style, and yet they are not the same thing, or so it seems to me. That is why I'm finding this discussion confusing. I feel that the OP's question about the relative importance of style and substance is a legitimate one, which cannot be dismissed by saying they are just two ways of looking at the same aspect of the work.

I don't have a good answer yet to this, but I am trying to figure it out as well. What you wrote made me ask the following question: What if the author is a computer using an algorithm to generate the words?

In this scenario, I can see there being style without substance. There would be sound without meaning since the computer cannot understand the words. (See John Searle's Chinese room argument for why the computer cannot understand the language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room). However, the human listener or reader could construct some substance from the words unless the words were in a language the reader did not understand.

[Pike Bishop]

YesNo,

Words do not just contain sounds, and words are not just based on sounds. As I said before, your continually and mistakenly saying so doesn't make it true. As I've shown in my previous posts, words also contain and refer to ideas, images, and concepts; and interact with other words of their texts to form more of the same. And it doesn't matter if the image evoked by words and/or literary words are personal; they still evoke images. The word 'house' does evoke the image of a house for anybody who has ever seen a house; it does not just evoke the sound. So, the word "house" is an image. That is both the reality of words and literature and the reality of cognitive science and neurology.

Finally, the fact an image doesn't convey all a reader needs to know about that image doesn't change the fact it is still an image. So, your anecdote about "The Smiths' doesn't support your point at all. It only rightly acknowledges "house" is an image but is not sufficient to convey all the needed information on its own. So, even you correctly, if inadvertently, acknowledge "house" is an image, and images do exist in literary language.


P.s. "The Smiths," the Smiths lived happily," and "house on Cedar Street" are all images. So, well done. They all evoke physical imagery in every reader who could visually conceive what the Smiths, the Smiths living happilY, and a house on Cedar Street might look like. So, thanks again for showing imagery is a part of literary---and most other--language.

[Pike Bishop]

I don't have a good answer yet to this, but I am trying to figure it out as well. What you wrote made me ask the following question: What if the author is a computer using an algorithm to generate the words?

In this scenario, I can see there being style without substance. There would be sound without meaning since the computer cannot understand the words. (See John Searle's Chinese room argument for why the computer cannot understand the language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room). However, the human listener or reader could construct some substance from the words unless the words were in a language the reader did not understand.

Whether the computer could understand the words would have no bearing on the words it wrote. The words, if legible, would still contain style and substance, neither the style nor substance would precede each other, and the substance and style would remain inseparable. The fact a computer wrote those words wouldn't change that. However, if you would like to show how it would, I'd be intrigued to see you try to do so.

[mona amon]

I don't have a good answer yet to this, but I am trying to figure it out as well. What you wrote made me ask the following question: What if the author is a computer using an algorithm to generate the words?


In this scenario, I can see there being style without substance.

Or the artist a monkey playing with a paintbrush and paper, creating abstract 'art'. I would say they have both style and substance, but it is purely accidental and not intentional as with a human painter - well most human painters, though I sometimes wonder about the role of happy accidents in the production of a work of art. There must be some amount of the unintentional in every work of art, unless you are Gustave Flaubert constantly revising and rewriting with a perfectionist's obsessiveness.

[YesNo]

Here are some examples of style without substance:

1) My viewing an opera in Italian. I don't understand Italian. All I get is the style, which is the sound of the words.

2) My reciting a Sanskrit mantra such as the Gayatri mantra. I have memorized it, but I don't know what it means. It is all style for me.

3) A computer generated response in a Turing test would be another example of style without substance from the perspective of the computer since the computer cannot go beyond style and understand the words.

4) Gibberish spoken by an infant, at least to the parent.

5) Gibberish spoken by someone with mental challenges, perhaps to both the speaker and listener.

6) Gibberish spoken by those being verbally abusive, intending not to communicate.

An example of substance without style would be an idea for a poem prior to its being written.

[YesNo]

Or the artist a monkey playing with a paintbrush and paper, creating abstract 'art'. I would say they have both style and substance, but it is purely accidental and not intentional as with a human painter - well most human painters, though I sometimes wonder about the role of happy accidents in the producing of a work of art. There must be some amount of the unintentional in every work of art, unless you are Gustave Flaubert constantly revising and rewriting with a perfectionist's obsessiveness.

That might be another example. With the computer, because we know it is based on an algorithm, there can be no substance at least from the computer's point of view. Perhaps the monkey is intending to communicate something.

I hadn't considered the unintentional substance in art, but that opens up the idea that there is more to us than our individual conscious existences since we can be receptive to influence without being aware that we are.

[cacian]

I think the main problem with Cacian's argument here is that she does not exactly know what literary style is, which might be due to her EFL background, and she is assuming it is similar to another meaning of the word; ie, having style or having taste... Hence she is making references to fashion and so on.

Of course, this is a common problem with Cacian engaging in any discussion; she does not do her research before jumping and relies on her own assumptions to waffle on and and on... Unfortunately, communicating in solely in verse is a more recent hobby of hers, which further aids to blur the lines of her already blurry arguments, wasting not only her own time as you Pike points out but also others who have an interest in the debate.
i put the argument forward because i understood. it
ii would not have said it otherwise.

i don't agree with everything you said here.
Pike has invited in this thread to join in the discussion and so I did.
i wont argue with it either.

[cacian]

cacian- style is luxury

style is secondary

Cacian, you seem to assume a false dichotomy... a separation of "style" and "substance" (or "meaning"/"content"). Quite often this is how literature is taught at the grade-school level: you have the "meaning" and the form or style is thought of as simply an artful way of communicating this "meaning"... a bit of aesthetic perfume. I find this to be nonsense. The form taken by the poet... the language of poetry... is just as essential as the "meaning" or "substance". Form and meaning/substance are interwoven in constructing what we think of as content.

It has been pointed out before that reduced to their simplest "meaning" many of Shakespeare's sonnets convey nothing more profound than "When I think of you, I feel blue." If that was all the content of the sonnets, why bother? If all that form or style achieves is but an aesthetic perfume, why bother?
false dichotomy?
that is what a dichotomy does separate two things and so i did just that i applied it in this case because it is allowed.
it is just another way of looking at content.
i imagine the word dichotomy comes from dictionary or diction.

an aesthetic perfume?
a perfume is sill a perfume and as you pointed out it has achieved something is it not that better then nothing?

take a dictionary for example

it takes words apart and give a meaning.
language is segregated under a form a dictionary with a list of words with full meanings.
and if every meaning of each words is put together under a form of a book sentence by sentence would it make sense?

or even consider
Jekyll and Hyde
one character one dichotomy
substance versus style

and so in all of this
do you agree that in order to find things you have to write them down?

[cacian]

That, again, was some more interesting wordplay. Again, none of it showed how literary substance can exist without style or how literary substance can exist independent of language. As I said before, if you want to do so, you need to actually show some texts that do. You should also really use some syllogistic logic expressed through clear prosaic language.

let say this:
what is the format of a thought?
has it content/substance or style?
to think of something is content
a concept is without style

i have been reading up
Baltasar Gracian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltasar_Graci%C3%A1n
and stumbled on this


The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Gracián's style, generically called conceptism, is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of significance in a minimum of form, an approach referred to in Spanish as agudeza (wit), and which is brought to its extreme in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (literally Manual Oracle and Art of Discretion, commonly translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom), which is almost entirely composed of three hundred maxims with commentary. He constantly plays with words: each phrase becomes a puzzle, using the most diverse rhetorical devices.

there is more to content then style
there is assumption
assuming something when reading one thing

.

[North Star]

let say this:
what is the format of a thought?
has it content/substance or style?
to think of something is content
a concept is without style
No, all thought is molded by language and style. You don't use language just to communicate your thoughts, you use language to form these thoughts. As I am writing this, I am thinking in English, but when I'm in contact with the other natives, I think in Finnish, and when I'm alone in the woods, or in my apartment, I usually think in Finnish, but if there is a thought that somehow fits my English better, I might borrow words/concepts, and think of how I would translate it. There is no thought that is independent of style, language, and vocabulary.

[JCamilo]

Here are some examples of style without substance:

1) My viewing an opera in Italian. I don't understand Italian. All I get is the style, which is the sound of the words.

2) My reciting a Sanskrit mantra such as the Gayatri mantra. I have memorized it, but I don't know what it means. It is all style for me.

3) A computer generated response in a Turing test would be another example of style without substance from the perspective of the computer since the computer cannot go beyond style and understand the words.

4) Gibberish spoken by an infant, at least to the parent.

5) Gibberish spoken by someone with mental challenges, perhaps to both the speaker and listener.

6) Gibberish spoken by those being verbally abusive, intending not to communicate.

An example of substance without style would be an idea for a poem prior to its being written.

You are seriously confunding substance with data, information. It's more than this. Just go to a heavy metal show in a country where english is not the idiom and you will see. The fans may not understand the lyrics but most of them will understand the violence, agression, etc of heavy metal based on the style. Plus, the examples are not good, you may not understand Opera, but that is your incapacity to access the content of the work, not that this content does not exist.

[cacian]

No, all thought is molded by language and style. You don't use language just to communicate your thoughts, you use language to form these thoughts. As I am writing this, I am thinking in English, but when I'm in contact with the other natives, I think in Finnish, and when I'm alone in the woods, or in my apartment, I usually think in Finnish, but if there is a thought that somehow fits my English better, I might borrow words/concepts, and think of how I would translate it. There is no thought that is independent of style, language, and vocabulary.

do you consider a type of language to be a style?
for example french spanish.
i dont consider them style

[North Star]

do you consider a type of language to be a style?
for example french spanish.
i dont consider them style
No, style is not just the language in which one expresses thought, it is the way one expresses the thought using that language. Style doesn't exist independent of a language. Translating Dante into English using the same terza rima isn't going to be easy.

[cacian]

No, style is not just the language in which one expresses thought, it is the way one expresses the thought using that language. Style doesn't exist independent of a language. Translating Dante into English using the same terza rima isn't going to be easy.

but then Dante is not easy translated or not.
again
would it not be better for someone to read/learn a new language in order to read literature instead of resorting to translating it?
i believe in conservation of original work because once they are at the hands of others they lose their meaning
i think it does more damage then good long term it creates misunderstanding and dogma when it comes to studying it
i believe that people should entertain learning new languages to read literary material in their original format

[Pike Bishop]

Here are some examples of style without substance:

1) My viewing an opera in Italian. I don't understand Italian. All I get is the style, which is the sound of the words.

2) My reciting a Sanskrit mantra such as the Gayatri mantra. I have memorized it, but I don't know what it means. It is all style for me.

3) A computer generated response in a Turing test would be another example of style without substance from the perspective of the computer since the computer cannot go beyond style and understand the words.

4) Gibberish spoken by an infant, at least to the parent.

5) Gibberish spoken by someone with mental challenges, perhaps to both the speaker and listener.

6) Gibberish spoken by those being verbally abusive, intending not to communicate.

An example of substance without style would be an idea for a poem prior to its being written.

1. Whatever the perceiver of an art form receives does not dictate the style and/or substance of an art work. The style and substance are inherent elements of the art work itself. Using your logic, a blind person looking at a Van Gogh painting would erase its style as well...he or she wouldn't.

2. Again, your not knowing the meaning of a Gayatri mantra does not erase its meaning and/or substance at all. Your performance of it may have less meaning, but the meaning of the mantra stays the same.

3. Whether a computer or a human didn't understand the words of the literary or non-literary work would have no bearing on the still-existing substance of the work. Most, if not all, writers do not fully grasp the substance of their written work. That doesn't magically erase or affect that substance.

4-6--Actual gibberish has very little substance. However, like all written or oral expressions, the speaker of it has no impact on that substance.

7. One cannot form an idea for a poem without words, otherwise that "idea" is just subconscious, pre-conceptual pap, not an actual idea. So, an idea for a poem would always have style as well.

[YesNo]

You are seriously confunding substance with data, information. It's more than this. Just go to a heavy metal show in a country where english is not the idiom and you will see. The fans may not understand the lyrics but most of them will understand the violence, agression, etc of heavy metal based on the style. Plus, the examples are not good, you may not understand Opera, but that is your incapacity to access the content of the work, not that this content does not exist.

There is plenty of enjoyment from attending an opera in a language one does not understand because there is more going on than the lyrics. The same would apply to the heavy metal band whose lyrics may not be understandable even to native speakers. My point is one does not get substance from the language, only style.

The same thing goes for the Gayatri mantra which can be beneficial as sound without knowing the meaning of the words.

The computer response in a Turing test when the response makes no sense to the human listeners would be an example of style without substance from the perspective of both the computer and the listeners. This is not just data, but an actual string of words.

Gibberish coming from various sources is probably a good example of style without substance. I am thinking of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake as one example of that.

[YesNo]

1. Whatever the perceiver of an art form receives does not dictate the style and/or substance of an art work. The style and substance are inherent elements of the art work itself. Using your logic, a blind person looking at a Van Gogh painting would erase its style as well...he or she wouldn't.

From the perspective of the blind viewer there is nothing there.



2. Again, your not knowing the meaning of a Gayatri mantra does not erase its meaning and/or substance at all. Your performance of it may have less meaning, but the meaning of the mantra stays the same.

What I am trying to bring out in this example is the power of the style of language even if one does not understand it. I think sound is more powerful than an image which is one of the reasons why I am puzzled with the image metaphor that is used to describe poetry.



3. Whether a computer or a human didn't understand the words of the literary or non-literary work would have no bearing on the still-existing substance of the work. Most, if not all, writers do not fully grasp the substance of their written work. That doesn't magically erase or affect that substance.

In the case of the computer making a response in the Turing test (and failing the test), the words the computer generated had no substance from the computer's perspective nor from the perspective of the human listener. They were pure style.



4-6--Actual gibberish has very little substance. However, like all written or oral expressions, the speaker of it has no impact on that substance.

What you just wrote doesn't make any sense to me. So it would be pure style. It seems like you are saying that gibberish is an example of style without substance and then there is the however clause that follows that doesn't make sense.

So, I would use this passage as another example of style without substance.



7. One cannot form an idea for a poem without words, otherwise that "idea" is just subconscious, pre-conceptual pap, not an actual idea. So, an idea for a poem would always have style as well.

I think one needs to have some language to start with but I don't think it is clear what else is involved. Our thoughts can range in emotional content, but at this point it is not a poem.

[JCamilo]

You get a lot of substance, YesNo, because substance is not just information or data. The energy, the feeling you get from a long haired troglodyte riffing and grutting is part of the substance. There is a reason why rock and roll can have similar impact either you know the lyrics (be it grunting or not). There is a reason they feel the same either it is a solo or not. The artistic expression there is not only in lyrics. The same goes for Opera. Either you know what means Figaro or not, but you can relate to the emotions in that performance.

The way you are talking, you can only access the substance if you have a complete understanding of the artwork and that is not true, because frankly, I doubt there is such thing as complete understanding of any artwork. And art is not science, what is being shared is more than informaiton, it is feelings and experiences, things you cannot explain so well. (Even a scientific thesis is telling a bit about how you should access the thesis, the dry, direct, objective style in a thesis is a way to lead you to a more analytic approach, but you can see, they want to reduce a lot the possiblities of the text to avoid misinterpretation. But in art, misinterpretation is a legitimate form of dialogue).

I have no idea what the Turing text may be or not. It is art? It is a random set of world? No meaning at all? Hence random. It is style? or Just form?

As Gibberish, even your example showed how it is a bad example: Gibberish spoken by those being verbally abusive, intending not to communicate. So, if you know they are verbally abusive, you know some of the content. There is abuse. So there is some substance. I am sure also you can also tell by the gibberish the anger behind it. Substance.

And of course, Joyce has no substance? His destruction of language is about chaos, primordial creation of words, some sort of universal human circle. FW style is chaotic, destructive, a mix of words, because of this. There is a lot of substance.

[Pike Bishop]

My point is one does not get substance from the language, only style. The same thing goes for the Gayatri mantra which can be beneficial as sound without knowing the meaning of the words.

The computer response in a Turing test when the response makes no sense to the human listeners would be an example of style without substance from the perspective of both the computer and the listeners. This is not just data, but an actual string of words.

Gibberish coming from various sources is probably a good example of style without substance. I am thinking of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake as one example of that.

Now, you're just repeating what you've already said before like your own little mantra...despite my having shown, with actual syllogistic and textual support, that you are wrong.

1. There is substance to all musical or purposeful sound such as mantras. If you think you need words for substance in oral or written music, chants, or mantras, you need to re-examine your notions of musicology and phenomenology, as well as aesthetics.

2. Again, the substance of a linguistic text does not depend on the reception of the text, even if a Turing machine produced it. I showed why that is true in my last post; you clearly didn't read it.

3. If you think Finnegan's Wake, one of the greatest works in the English and Irish language is just gibberish, you need to take some more English classes. Its being too difficult for you does not make it gibberish.

[Pike Bishop]

From the perspective of the blind viewer there is nothing there.

What I am trying to bring out in this example is the power of the style of language even if one does not understand it. I think sound is more powerful than an image which is one of the reasons why I am puzzled with the image metaphor that is used to describe poetry.

In the case of the computer making a response in the Turing test (and failing the test), the words the computer generated had no substance from the computer's perspective nor from the perspective of the human listener. They were pure style.

What you just wrote doesn't make any sense to me. So it would be pure style. It seems like you are saying that gibberish is an example of style without substance and then there is the however clause that follows that doesn't make sense.

So, I would use this passage as another example of style without substance.

I think one needs to have some language to start with but I don't think it is clear what else is involved. Our thoughts can range in emotional content, but at this point it is not a poem.

1. The perspective of a blind viewer has no bearing on the substance of the Van Gogh painting. The blind person may see nothing there, but the substance doesn't go away. The same goes for a deaf person at a symphony; his or her deafness does not negate the substance of the music. According to your logic, a blind person looking at you and not seeing you would take away your substance. I don't think you want to go there.

2, You weren't just trying to "bring out the meaning" of the mantra, you were erroneously claiming your limited experience of the mantra negated its substance, and it doesn't. And you clearly don't understand imagery's place in poetry. However, you make the solipsistic and illogical mistake of thinking that actually negates imagery's clear presence in poetry, literature, and other written form...and it doesn't.

3. Because of your constant repetitions without syllogistic support, I am saying this for the last time. Whether the creator of a written work is a computer or a human, the substance of a work is not contingent on the views of the creator or the perceiver of it. Using your logic, J.K. Rowling's changed view--as well as any of her reader's views--of one of her Harry Potter novels would change its substance. So, your logic is clearly flawed.

4. What I said in my post made perfect sense, and it was both style and substance. So, if didn't understand it, you need to work on your English and/or your lexicon. And my "however" clause made perfect sense and was perfectly clear. Your not grasping it is a comment on your reading skills, not my writing. I'll spell it out for you, though, since you failed to adequately read it: even the substance of gibberish expression isn't dictated by its speaker; it's dictated by its expression.

5. Again, you terribly misread, misrepresented, and misunderstood what I wrote. I never said the ideas formed a poem; that's a terrible strawman on your part. I correctly said: "One cannot form an idea for a poem without words, otherwise that "idea" is just subconscious, pre-conceptual pap, not an actual idea. So, an idea for a poem would always have style as well." And that is absolutely true. The fact you didn't even bother to dispute it helps support that fact.


Finally, since you rudely and incorrectly disparaged one of my responses as "style without substance," I will speak frankly (but politely) with you. I have no interest in continually debating with someone who constructs severely flawed arguments then digs in and continually repeats them after they are shown to be wrong. I also have no interest in debating someone who hasn't effectively examined their flawed aesthetic arguments for their holes or illogical ramifications. So, I will no longer engage you on this or any other matter and am putting you on ignore. I have no interest in wasting any more of my time with your mantras.

Good luck on your discussions.

[tonywalt]

1. The perspective of a blind viewer has no bearing on the substance of the Van Gogh painting. The blind person may see nothing there, but the substance doesn't go away. The same goes for a deaf person at a symphony; his or her deafness does not negate the substance of the music. According to your logic, a blind person looking at you and not seeing you would take away your substance. I don't think you want to go there.

2, You weren't just trying to "bring out the meaning" of the mantra, you were erroneously claiming your limited experience of the mantra negated its substance, and it doesn't. And you clearly don't understand imagery's place in poetry. However, you make the solipsistic and illogical mistake of thinking that actually negates imagery's clear presence in poetry, literature, and other written form...and it doesn't.

3. Because of your constant repetitions without syllogistic support, I am saying this for the last time. Whether the creator of a written work is a computer or a human, the substance of a work is not contingent on the views of the creator or the perceiver of it. Using your logic, J.K. Rowling's changed view--as well as any of her reader's views--of one of her Harry Potter novels would change its substance. So, your logic is clearly flawed.

4. What I said in my post made perfect sense, and it was both style and substance. So, if didn't understand it, you need to work on your English and/or your lexicon. And my "however" clause made perfect sense and was perfectly clear. Your not grasping it is a comment on your reading skills, not my writing. I'll spell it out for you, though, since you failed to adequately read it: even the substance of gibberish expression isn't dictated by its speaker; it's dictated by its expression.

5. Again, you terribly misread, misrepresented, and misunderstood what I wrote. I never said the ideas formed a poem; that's a terrible strawman on your part. I correctly said: "One cannot form an idea for a poem without words, otherwise that "idea" is just subconscious, pre-conceptual pap, not an actual idea. So, an idea for a poem would always have style as well." And that is absolutely true. The fact you didn't even bother to dispute it helps support that fact.


Finally, since you rudely and incorrectly disparaged one of my responses as "style without substance," I will speak frankly (but politely) with you. I have no interest in continually debating with someone who constructs severely flawed arguments then digs in and continually repeats them after they are shown to be wrong. I also have no interest in debating someone who hasn't effectively examined their flawed aesthetic arguments for their holes or illogical ramifications. So, I will no longer engage you on this or any other matter and am putting you on ignore. I have no interest in wasting any more of my time with your mantras.

Good luck on your discussions.

Oh boy! I vaguely miss these soap box discussions! (Imagine the minutes and hours forming these arguments, each one blowing a different tune).

[Pike Bishop]

Oh boy! I vaguely miss these soap box discussions! (Imagine the minutes and hours forming these arguments, each one blowing a different tune).

What a remarkably exemplary statement. There certainly isn't much style to it, with "soap box" being a tired cliche. And, considering you make no cogent critique of any of my points, the substance is remarkably ephemeral as well.

Feel free to actually contribute if you ever feel you can...;)

[tonywalt]

What a remarkably exemplary statement. There certainly isn't much style to it, with "soap box" being a tired cliche. And, considering you make no cogent critique of any of my points, the substance is remarkably ephemeral as well.

Feel free to actually contribute if you ever feel you can...;)

I was just thinking of a few years back when we had long arguments and everyone stuck to their positions. I rarely saw compromise and I don't think it has changed. That said: I have contributed to the Marijuana thread, again.

[Pike Bishop]

Well, here's a suggestion if you want to be productive and polite in your discourse. Don't take cheap swipes at people's posts/arguments if you can't show the courtesy of actually backing them up. That's exactly what trolls do, and I don't believe you're a troll.

[tonywalt]

Well, here's a suggestion if you want to be productive and polite in your discourse. Don't take cheap swipes at people's posts/arguments if you can't show the courtesy of actually backing them up. That's exactly what trolls do, and I don't believe you're a troll.

I agree with that.

[Eiseabhal]

It is certainly possible to say very little with great style. It is certainly possible to find readers willing to accept that any surreal concatenation of words must be a sign of profundity. Deep wells may be full of junk. Elements of not so common sense must be employed by every reader. But we all have different tastes and most of us may enjoy stylish drivel at times just as we may need a cake made largely of fake cream and glaringly loud colours rather than an apple.

[ennison]

"Deep wells may be full of Junk" Eiseabhal? Echoes there of that Bletchley Park poet. Intentional?

[stlukesguild]

1) My viewing an opera in Italian. I don't understand Italian. All I get is the style, which is the sound of the words.

I don't speak Italian... and yet I certainly sense a content... feelings, emotions, drama etc... within the music, the tone of the language, vocal inflections, etc... Of course my grasp of the work is far greater when I understand what is being said... But I think it is like learning another language. With my limited German I can still read Goethe's Wandrers Nachtlied II:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

When I read this poem I don't translate the words in my head to English... rather I think of them in German... in the form in which they exist because the content of the poem is a result of the form wedded to the "meaning".

2) My reciting a Sanskrit mantra such as the Gayatri mantra. I have memorized it, but I don't know what it means. It is all style for me.

Yet you are but cognizant of a small portion of the "style" under such a situation. Content is the result of an inseparable wedding of form/style and meaning.

4) Gibberish spoken by an infant, at least to the parent.

When I speak to my dogs I have no doubt it is but "gibberish" to them most of the time. Certainly they recognize certain few words: their names, basic commands like "sit", "outside", etc... But they understand quite a lot from the inflection of my voice, body language, etc...

[YesNo]

You get a lot of substance, YesNo, because substance is not just information or data. The energy, the feeling you get from a long haired troglodyte riffing and grutting is part of the substance. There is a reason why rock and roll can have similar impact either you know the lyrics (be it grunting or not). There is a reason they feel the same either it is a solo or not. The artistic expression there is not only in lyrics. The same goes for Opera. Either you know what means Figaro or not, but you can relate to the emotions in that performance.

The way you are talking, you can only access the substance if you have a complete understanding of the artwork and that is not true, because frankly, I doubt there is such thing as complete understanding of any artwork. And art is not science, what is being shared is more than informaiton, it is feelings and experiences, things you cannot explain so well. (Even a scientific thesis is telling a bit about how you should access the thesis, the dry, direct, objective style in a thesis is a way to lead you to a more analytic approach, but you can see, they want to reduce a lot the possiblities of the text to avoid misinterpretation. But in art, misinterpretation is a legitimate form of dialogue).

I have no idea what the Turing text may be or not. It is art? It is a random set of world? No meaning at all? Hence random. It is style? or Just form?

As Gibberish, even your example showed how it is a bad example: Gibberish spoken by those being verbally abusive, intending not to communicate. So, if you know they are verbally abusive, you know some of the content. There is abuse. So there is some substance. I am sure also you can also tell by the gibberish the anger behind it. Substance.

And of course, Joyce has no substance? His destruction of language is about chaos, primordial creation of words, some sort of universal human circle. FW style is chaotic, destructive, a mix of words, because of this. There is a lot of substance.

What I am looking for are examples of style without substance. Do you know of any examples or is the distinction between style and substance irrelevant?

[stlukesguild]

One of my favorite essayists was Walter Pater (A great "stylist" by the way :D ). Pater's book, The Renaissance was profoundly influential upon the thinking of the Art pour l'Art movement... and ultimately Formalism/Modernism and abstract art. Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and any number of other modern artists were profoundly impacted by Pater's essay's and his notion that form and content were one in music... and that all art aspires to the same:

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a poem, for instance, its subject, namely, its given incidents or situation — that the mere matter of a picture, the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape — should be nothing without the form, the spirit, of the handling, that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter: this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees.

Who can separate the form from the "meaning" here?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6txOvK-mAk

[YesNo]

Now, you're just repeating what you've already said before like your own little mantra...despite my having shown, with actual syllogistic and textual support, that you are wrong.

You haven't shown anything.



1. There is substance to all musical or purposeful sound such as mantras. If you think you need words for substance in oral or written music, chants, or mantras, you need to re-examine your notions of musicology and phenomenology, as well as aesthetics.

We are talking about words, not music, nor images.



2. Again, the substance of a linguistic text does not depend on the reception of the text, even if a Turing machine produced it. I showed why that is true in my last post; you clearly didn't read it.

I think the example of the computer generating a verbal response that is not accepted by the human testers is a good example of style without substance. The problem is that it is an extreme example. What I suspect people are more concerned with when they talk style and substance is that they are annoyed with fraudulent style that has no substance backing it up and they wish those who provide something substantial would do it with more style.



3. If you think Finnegan's Wake, one of the greatest works in the English and Irish language is just gibberish, you need to take some more English classes. Its being too difficult for you does not make it gibberish.

This sounds like a confrontational style with no substance underlying it.

[JCamilo]

What I am looking for are examples of style without substance. Do you know of any examples or is the distinction between style and substance irrelevant?

I dont, but listen to Stlukes, style is not a technique or skill, that thee artist choose to add or remove. Da Vinci didnt paint that way because he dreammed to be photograph, no, that was part of his philosophy, it was a manifestation of his experriencies and ideas. When you develop a style is because your experience leads you there. So, if you analysee the style of work it will always say something.

[Poetaster]

You haven't shown anything.

Expect this. He claimed in a conservation with me that 'the vengeance of Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electa' referred to specific 'acts' of The Oresteia. Clytemnestra's 'vengeance' covers the entire trilogy, even after she dies with her ghost appearing to wake The Furies to pursue Orestes further to Areopagitica.


We are talking about words, not music, nor images.

Is not the point that words can create music and images?

[JCamilo]

The enttire discussion if words are images or not was an attempt to murder Semiotics.

[YesNo]

The enttire discussion if words are images or not was an attempt to murder Semiotics.

I am not following this. Could you elaborate?

[YesNo]

Expect this. He claimed in a conservation with me that 'the vengeance of Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electa' referred to specific 'acts' of The Oresteia. Clytemnestra's 'vengeance' covers the entire trilogy, even after she dies with her ghost appearing to wake The Furies to pursue Orestes further to Areopagitica.

Yeah, I remember reading that.

I do like to discuss ideas with people who disagree with me even if I think they are being irrational. It forces me to keep thinking about my position and find another way to express it. Ultimately the one I am trying to convince is myself.



Is not the point that words can create music and images?

My view is that words are composed of sound and those sounds allow us to create a communal meaning (or "sense", "understanding"). They don't create music or images, but understanding. Although there is some relationship to music, the sound of the words does not have to be metrical for understanding to occur.

There are other ways to communicate, but when words are used there is a sound basis rather than an image basis allowing us to understand each other.

[YesNo]

I dont, but listen to Stlukes, style is not a technique or skill, that thee artist choose to add or remove. Da Vinci didnt paint that way because he dreammed to be photograph, no, that was part of his philosophy, it was a manifestation of his experriencies and ideas. When you develop a style is because your experience leads you there. So, if you analysee the style of work it will always say something.

I think I agree with what you are saying if the context is limited to critiquing art, however, there are other ways to view the problem. The style and substance issue seems to have three directions it can go into.

1) Critiquing Literature and Art

Here style and substance may be the same thing. The person reviewing the art will see the style as representing something even if there is nothing that the art is about. Neither communication (understanding) nor truth is relevant.

2) Philosophy of Mind

Here the question is whether the style, words generated by a computer during a Turing test, imply that the computer understands the words. In this case style is the sound or printout. Substance is the meaning or understanding. Is there substance if there is style? I think the consensus today, based on Searle's critique, is "no", but there are some who may disagree and insist if something can generate style then that something has substance (understanding).

3) Falsification

Style can be used to justify something that is false and even prevent dissent. The RationalWiki article on what the author(s) call the "Style over Substance Fallacy" gives this argument: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Style_over_substance_fallacy One might see this during marketing or political campaigns. The most notorious example of this that I recall is when style was used to argue that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq over a decade ago. The substance came from UN inspectors who could not find any WMD.

[Poetaster]

My view is that words are composed of sound and those sounds allow us to create a communal meaning (or "sense", "understanding"). They don't create music or images, but understanding. Although there is some relationship to music, the sound of the words does not have to be metrical for understanding to occur.

There are other ways to communicate, but when words are used there is a sound basis rather than an image basis allowing us to understand each other.

I really like that, though I don't necessarily agree with it, if that makes sense.

[JCamilo]

I think I agree with what you are saying if the context is limited to critiquing art, however, there are other ways to view the problem. The style and substance issue seems to have three directions it can go into.

1) Critiquing Literature and Art

Here style and substance may be the same thing. The person reviewing the art will see the style as representing something even if there is nothing that the art is about. Neither communication (understanding) nor truth is relevant.

Ok, I am more than willing to say we are talking about this, Cacian about something however :D



2) Philosophy of Mind

Here the question is whether the style, words generated by a computer during a Turing test, imply that the computer understands the words. In this case style is the sound or printout. Substance is the meaning or understanding. Is there substance if there is style? I think the consensus today, based on Searle's critique, is "no", but there are some who may disagree and insist if something can generate style then that something has substance (understanding).

Again, be more specific about Turing. Isnt Turing test accused of failing to answer to aesthetical emotions? In this case wouldnt that be rather than no style or substance, but poor style and substance?

Anyways, substance is neither meaning or understanding (or only them). In Art, understanding is not primary, in the lack of a better word, enchantment is what first matters. The substance may be ephemeral, you know the stuff Ariel is made off.


3) Falsification

Style can be used to justify something that is false and even prevent dissent. The RationalWiki article on what the author(s) call the "Style over Substance Fallacy" gives this argument: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Style_over_substance_fallacy One might see this during marketing or political campaigns. The most notorious example of this that I recall is when style was used to argue that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq over a decade ago. The substance came from UN inspectors who could not find any WMD.

That is not lack of substance, it is false "substance". By the way, that a bunch of idiots let themselves be fooled by falacies is not about style without substance. It is style hiding substance. That is why some poeple can spot lies.

About the semiotics: because a written word is sign and by definitiion a sign is not the thing it represents. That simple. It is neither sound or image. Anyways, that would be irrelevant for the discussion, you do not use semiotics for what a poem means. If it suggeests imagens or music, it is like a painting suggesting movement, light, dimensions. Part of the Art that is artificial.

[Ecurb]

Isn't literature written? Aren't written words visual images, not sounds? (I'm not sure this is relevant to the style vs. substance discussion, but it seems to call YesNo's theory into question.)

[JCamilo]

I think Yesno means they arent the image of the object they represent or the scene they describe, not that written words are not graphical signs.

[WICKES]

It's an interesting question. There are writers I enjoy almost entirely for their style: Evelyn Waugh is a good example. He was a dreadful human being, whose cold, hate-filled snobbery and sadism is apparent throughout his novels. Of all the writers I admire he is the one I would least want to meet. Though he IS very funny and can create strong, believable comic characters, I love him above all for the polished beauty of his writing. He really has nothing of interest to say to me, with the exception of the Sword of Honour trilogy, which explains the attraction of war to a certain kind of man in a very insightful way. There are also poets I read for their style rather than what they have to say: Larkin for example, a technically brilliant poet who wrote very beautiful verse, but a man with nothing to offer but despair and misery. I also love the poems of Betjeman and de la Mare, but again for the beauty and rhythm of their poems rather than what the poems contain. Oh and Tennyson, who wrote some of the most beautiful stuff I've ever read, yet was no visionary- a "lawn poet" and "rectory prude" as Joyce called him.

Others I read almost entirely for what they have to say rather than how they say it- Blake's prophetic books for example. I also find the ideas contained in the works of D H Lawrence and Oscar Wilde more attractive than their style. Same goes for the poetry of Robert Graves and Ted Hughes- especially Ted Hughes. I very rarely enjoy his poetry AS poetry, and never find it as beautiful as, say, Larkin's or Hardy's, but he interests me more than them.

Sometimes I love both the style AND substance of a writer's works. Aldous Huxley for example, also Blake's lyric poems, T S Eliot's Four Quartets (so far as I can understand them) and the essays of Bertrand Russell.

[Pike Bishop]

Wicked, you are confusing "substance" with "content" here. They are not the same thing.

[YesNo]

Isn't literature written? Aren't written words visual images, not sounds? (I'm not sure this is relevant to the style vs. substance discussion, but it seems to call YesNo's theory into question.)

A JCamillo mentioned, the written words aren't images of the objects they represent but a visual way to code the sound of the words. To get back to the substance or meaning one goes back through sound.

It seemed to me relevant at the time I brought it up, because I suspected the image metaphor was de-valuing something I find to be crucial about words: they point to something else, that is, the image (and music) metaphors de-value the substance or meaning of the words emphasizing only style. An image does not need to have meaning. It need not point to anything beyond itself.

However, that is likely a different style vs substance concern than the OP had in mind which I think was more in line with how to write better: should one emphasize style or substance in one's writing?

When you mentioned Dickinson's poem about knowing where Heaven was as if the chart were given, I assume, since you have called yourself an atheist, that you don't believe in the content (substance) of her poem, but you are still accepting the poem for its style which is what counts for you rather than the actual content. I may have misunderstood your position, but I see a disconnect here. By contrast, as a panentheist, suppose Dickinson's content were atheistic, I would then reject the poem no matter how well I liked the style. From my point of view, style and content are different and content takes priority.

[JCamilo]

No, no. I accept the content of the Comedy, despite not believing on it at all (I mean most of the religious medieval thing). This is a bit of how substance & style work together: Suspension of Disbielief, The better the poet or writer is with his style, more he will make your experience with the substance (you never get all of it) more true. You engage more.

[YesNo]

Again, be more specific about Turing. Isnt Turing test accused of failing to answer to aesthetical emotions? In this case wouldnt that be rather than no style or substance, but poor style and substance?

Anyways, substance is neither meaning or understanding (or only them). In Art, understanding is not primary, in the lack of a better word, enchantment is what first matters. The substance may be ephemeral, you know the stuff Ariel is made off.

The Turing test is supposedly a way to tell if the machine has the same consciousness or understanding that we have. If enough people are fooled and think they are talking to a human being, then the machine passes the test based on its behavior which is usually all we have to go on when we want to know if a cat or insect or anything else is in any way conscious or not.

However, in the case of a machine, we know how it works. There is an algorithm backing up its behavior that fools us. Because of that it can't pass what could be called the Searle test: if a human being followed the algorithm the machine followed to communicate in a language the human did not know, would the human know what he actually wrote in that foreign language? Of course, the human would not know that after just following the algorithm. And so there is no need to assume the machine does either.

With art, I agree, much of it is style. It does not point beyond itself.



That is not lack of substance, it is false "substance". By the way, that a bunch of idiots let themselves be fooled by falacies is not about style without substance. It is style hiding substance. That is why some poeple can spot lies.

I agree that it is about style hiding substance, or in this case, the true state of things. There is an imaginary substance behind lies. It just doesn't happen to be true.



About the semiotics: because a written word is sign and by definitiion a sign is not the thing it represents. That simple. It is neither sound or image. Anyways, that would be irrelevant for the discussion, you do not use semiotics for what a poem means. If it suggeests imagens or music, it is like a painting suggesting movement, light, dimensions. Part of the Art that is artificial.

I think I agree here also. The sign points to something else. It is not the thing it represents.

However, why do we think today that a poem represents an image or even music? I find the metaphors suspicious. It seems to me a poem more likely represents a thought which need not have anything to do with an image or music. For example, take the sentences written in this post. What images come to mind? What music?

[YesNo]

No, no. I accept the content of the Comedy, despite not believing on it at all (I mean most of the religious medieval thing). This is a bit of how substance & style work together: Suspension of Disbielief, The better the poet or writer is with his style, more he will make your experience with the substance (you never get all of it) more true. You engage more.

I suppose I would as well. It all depends on how much the content is pushed in my face as something I must accept. Consider the movie Melancholia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)). This was well made. It had good style. I disagreed with the message. How should I approach the movie?

[JCamilo]

The Turing test is supposedly a way to tell if the machine has the same consciousness or understanding that we have. If enough people are fooled and think they are talking to a human being, then the machine passes the test based on its behavior which is usually all we have to go on when we want to know if a cat or insect or anything else is in any way conscious or not.

I think you misunderstand me, I know what is a turing test. But let's analyse the specific of a test, because the turing test is in the end just a way to produce a text. Does it really have "style" beyond correct grammatical structure for example?


Ince, or in this case, the true state of things. There is an imaginary substance behind lies. It just doesn't happen to be true.

The substance does not need to be even related to the topic. Let me give you an imaginary example: someone debates here, long words, always claimming to have explained all. Rude attacking the person, but avoids the topic completely. Obviously, about the topic no substance, but you get a lot of substance from this harsh, over the top use of language. It does not tell you what you want, but it is telling something.


I think I agree here also. The sign points to something else. It is not the thing it represents.

However, why do we think today that a poem represents an image or even music? I find the metaphors suspicious. It seems to me a poem more likely represents a thought which need not have anything to do with an image or music. For example, take the sentences written in this post. What images come to mind? What music?

That is when you get where semiotics will implode, because in france they think in a way, in united states another. Some defend a word does not even produce a meaning by itself, depending upon a verbal construction. Some will claim there is 3,5, phases of interpretation. Now, poems produce the artificial music not by the words itself, but by the use of metric, rhytim, etc. which they heritade from music itself. It is not exactly a semiotic example, but linguistic, as you are talking about phonems. Semiotics will only talk about signs. So, there is more than one process occuring when you read a poem. (or it should if you know the language of the poem).


I suppose I would as well. It all depends on how much the content is pushed in my face as something I must accept. Consider the movie Melancholia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)). This was well made. It had good style. I disagreed with the message. How should I approach the movie?

After Antichrist, you should approach it with a long poking stick. Being well made is technical, you are talking about the form. Style is more subtle and the style I found normal, cliche, not inovative. If you look beyond the cinematography (which i suspect where the "good" style is), the directing is feeble, the acting dull and the script empty. More elements of style as Cinema is a multiple art. Style will not save bad substance by the way and good substance will be ruined by bad style. They are not the same, but integrated. Most of flaws in good artworks is probally the lack of balance between both - think of flawed good books: Dracula who loses the moody of the book, once the gothic style goes to a urban setting, words because excessive, etc.

[YesNo]

I think you misunderstand me, I know what is a turing test. But let's analyse the specific of a test, because the turing test is in the end just a way to produce a text. Does it really have "style" beyond correct grammatical structure for example?

It may not even have correct grammatical structure, perhaps as much as a Google translated text. Perhaps what we need to do is define "style" and "substance". I would say that the text itself is at least part of its style. If the text exists at all, there is some style there.




The substance does not need to be even related to the topic. Let me give you an imaginary example: someone debates here, long words, always claimming to have explained all. Rude attacking the person, but avoids the topic completely. Obviously, about the topic no substance, but you get a lot of substance from this harsh, over the top use of language. It does not tell you what you want, but it is telling something.

Yes, there is "substance" in that style, but does that mean that style and substance are the same thing?



That is when you get where semiotics will implode, because in france they think in a way, in united states another. Some defend a word does not even produce a meaning by itself, depending upon a verbal construction. Some will claim there is 3,5, phases of interpretation. Now, poems produce the artificial music not by the words itself, but by the use of metric, rhytim, etc. which they heritade from music itself. It is not exactly a semiotic example, but linguistic, as you are talking about phonems. Semiotics will only talk about signs. So, there is more than one process occuring when you read a poem. (or it should if you know the language of the poem).

I don't think the word produces the meaning by itself. Meaning would need a community of speakers who understand the word where each of them produces similar meanings. My ulterior motive here is to claim that the consciousness needed to use words is not reducible to the words themselves.

I can see how the metrical aspect of some poetry can link this to music, but not all language is metrical. I can also see how some verbal descriptions can allow listeners to get a visual idea of something, but I don't think language is mainly used to provide a description of objects.



After Antichrist, you should approach it with a long poking stick. Being well made is technical, you are talking about the form. Style is more subtle and the style I found normal, cliche, not inovative. If you look beyond the cinematography (which i suspect where the "good" style is), the directing is feeble, the acting dull and the script empty. More elements of style as Cinema is a multiple art. Style will not save bad substance by the way and good substance will be ruined by bad style. They are not the same, but integrated. Most of flaws in good artworks is probally the lack of balance between both - think of flawed good books: Dracula who loses the moody of the book, once the gothic style goes to a urban setting, words because excessive, etc.

I agree that style will not save bad substance and good substance can be ruined by bad style. He did have a nice last scene with the earth being swallowed up by Melancholia.

[JCamilo]

It may not even have correct grammatical structure, perhaps as much as a Google translated text. Perhaps what we need to do is define "style" and "substance". I would say that the text itself is at least part of its style. If the text exists at all, there is some style there.

Style is a mark of the "artist" past experiences at that moment. It is a bit like DNA. I suspect for example, google translation style is so poor that we can see they basically inherite all from the previous text.


Yes, there is "substance" in that style, but does that mean that style and substance are the same thing?

No, they are things that mingle, work together. But different things.


I don't think the word produces the meaning by itself. Meaning would need a community of speakers who understand the word where each of them produces similar meanings. My ulterior motive here is to claim that the consciousness needed to use words is not reducible to the words themselves.

That is rather complicated. Sometimes it seems that the word do carry a context, sometimes it seems it is very basic. It is something all semioticism in the world cann't reach upon an agreement.


I can see how the metrical aspect of some poetry can link this to music, but not all language is metrical. I can also see how some verbal descriptions can allow listeners to get a visual idea of something, but I don't think language is mainly used to provide a description of objects.

Yes, not all. Poetic language (and may be in prose) is metrical. Typical prose language try to emulate the orality too, but a casual/matter of fact orality, which rythim is not musical and often use punctuation to achive this effect. And of course, many verbal construction do not produce image, like abstract ideas.


I agree that style will not save bad substance and good substance can be ruined by bad style. He did have a nice last scene with the earth being swallowed up by Melancholia.

Well, yeah. There is fragments because he domains well the technique of his trade, but he found no inspiration/combination/theme that worked as well as his Dogville/Manderlay.

[YesNo]

That is rather complicated. Sometimes it seems that the word do carry a context, sometimes it seems it is very basic. It is something all semioticism in the world cann't reach upon an agreement.

I am only vaguely aware of some of these positions. My ulterior motive is to neither eliminate consciousness nor reduce it to something that is supposedly unconscious.

Thoughts and words are both "about" something else. Sound is a convenient way to transmit a thought through space using words from one thinker to another. Words need to contain only enough information to allow the speakers to do the understanding with reasonable accuracy. Words fail when the speakers are not using the same language or when deception is involved.

This does appear to be far from the style vs substance issue, but it might be linked back by thinking of style as the words or thoughts themselves and substance as what the words or thoughts are about.