subjectivity exists only at “the mute rim” (226) of the body, at the threshold between the wound and external reality; the acquisition of new knowledge extends this horizon. This is a subjectivity which exists at the temporal edge of the subject, its existence is verified as experiential, “where the wound smiles,” (219) and connects wo/man to the external world. The shock and augmentation applied to this conditional truth establishes the “higher causality conditions / setting the reverse signs of memory and dream” (231). Establishing a failure in the mechanism of recall allows the subjective position in the poem to be understood as a polyvalent and selfdepriving function of discourse. If the locus of experience is subject to manipulation by the application of violence, and the collective voice always dominates the individual, then there can be no accountable subjectivity in war. 5. The Remnant The application of matrices of information on the poem allows Prynne the assertion that each object and poem functions archeologically to bring a mass of details to the surface in order to establish a cognitive understanding of the poem.57 In Wound Response a preliminary definition is established as a manifold of the possibilities of truth, represented by the frameworks of meaning which overlay the object. For Prynne, the frameworks of definition and the archaeological are united. In the essay “Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words,” Prynne writes that the, “literary nature of the literary text marks it for a reading with a heightened sense of the accumulated layers and aspects of association which form the significatory resonance of previous usage.”58 The meaning of any object or symbol is defined by its historical usage, its variant possibilities and its socio-historical context. The subjective self becomes an overlay of memories of the subject and the collective, gained by a convergence of patterns of experience, relationships, and attempts to codify and ascertain knowledge. Where the overlays of information do not mesh completely and there is an indiscernibly defined signifier, the referential reading of the text is supported by the residual reading. In a poem about the imposition of memory, the ideas, phrases and 57 Olson, et al., Collected Prose, 205. 58 J.H. Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words: The William Matthews Lectures 1992, (London: Birkbeck College, 1993) 18.
concepts that the reader takes away with them is of an equally fundamental importance as the thematic content of the poem. By establishing the memory of trauma as just beyond the attainable grasp of the wounded subject, Prynne enforces the reader’s reliance on the physiological and psychological reactions to the wound, as creating a source of subjectivity. The physiological and biochemical descriptions which filter throughout the poem provide a new interpretation of, “the warmth of cognition […] starry and granular” (223). Mellor writes: “the word ‘granule’ has complex scientific significance: for example, the granule cells of the hippocampus—the primitive part of the cerebrum believed to be important in the laying down of memory traces—have been studied because of their greater excitement of activity according to frequency of input.”59 Prynne’s metonymic writing of the body as a condition of the landscape exemplifies the usage of a traditional ontology. By depicting a still central position wherein bases of knowledge expands outward in all directions, “like spokes from the nave of a wheel,” illuminating “the mute rim,” where the day “sparkles and shines” allows the acquisition of knowledge to sanctify the subject. This Wordsworthian depiction of the world leaves the scene, “calm is all nature as a resting wheel,”60 and in stark opposition to the scenes of warfare depicted in the poem. By juxtaposing the scientific with the lyrical pastoral Prynne incites the debate between contemporary forms of technological and scientific explanation and a traditional nature-based ontology, and between the capitalist model of life and one based on traditional social groups. This division also stands to represent the movement of Prynne’s own poetic, from the modernist proposition of Force Of Circumstance to the late-modernism of Wound Response. This change, Prynne implies, is also noted as representative of the attitude between primitive and civilised attitudes to the Vietnam War. In this manner the concept of war is presented as the complete destruction of nature, and therefore the denial and ultimate destruction of the subject. The imposition of expression-defining limiters demands that the poem and each individual word, be examined in 59 Mellors, “Mysteries of the Organism: Conceptual Models and J.H. Prynne’s Wound Response,” 240. 60 Prynne, Poems. This Quotation is from ‘The Oval Window,’ 337.
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