The verb “cleave” has two contradictory senses in English: it means both “to separate” and “to join together” (and so figures its own self-separated, self-joined meanings). Out this week is a journal article in which I discuss “cleave” and other self-antithetical words (I call them “antagonyms”) when they occur in English poetry, as well as the implications of antagonymy for reading.
To think about this, I look at a small selection of poems: “I felt a Cleaving” by Emily Dickinson, “A Hagging Match” by Seamus Heaney, “Insolent storm strikes at the skull” by Sylvia Plath, a couple by Geoffrey Hill (Péguy and Orchards, as well as some essays), and “Even now your eyes are mixed with mine” by Isaac Rosenberg. Shakespeare and Crashaw and Keats are in there, and so are Empson (on ambiguity), Derrida (on pharmakon), Hillis Miller (on parasite), Plato (on Thamus), Freud (on Egyptian and dreams), and the KJV.
[Read a PDF of the article here]. The full table of contents for this issue of The Comparatist, the theme of which is “antagonisms,” is here.