DeWitt Henry
HERE IS A PRONOUNCEMENT BY A CRITIC: “LANGUAGE cannot convey non-verbal experience; being successive and linear, it cannot express simultaneous experiences; being composed of separate and divisible units it cannot reveal the unbroken flow of the process of living. Reality cannot be expressed or conveyed— only the illusion of it” (A. A. Mendilow, Time and the Novel, London, 1952).
In fact, English does have the resources to express simultaneous experiences. For instance, the Middle English Arthurian poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is structured to counterpoint the lord of the castle's hunting and the lady of the castle's attempt to seduce Gawain back in his chamber. Note how the verbs begin in definite past tense, then subtly change to continuous past tense, distancing the lord's action and freezing it in dynamic stasis; then how we slide back to continuous past, and from that to definite past describing Gawain's perspective:
Hunters after them HASTENED with horns So loud in their sharp burst of sound as TO SUNDER The cliffs. What creatures ESCAPED from the shooters, HUNTED and HARRIED from heights to the water, WERE PULLED down and RENT at the places there ready; Such skill the men showed at these low-lying stations, So great were the greyhounds that quickly they got them And DRAGGED them down, fast the folk there might look
At the sight.
Carried with bliss away, The lord DID OFT ALIGHT, Oft GALLOP; so that day He PASSED till the dark night.
THUS FROLLICKED the lord on the fringe of the forest, And Gawain the good in his gay bed REPOSED, LYING snugly, TILL sunlight shone on the walls, 'Neath a coverlet bright with curtains about it. As softly he SLUMBERED, a slight sound he HEARD At his door, made with caution, and quickly it opened. The hero HEAVED up his head from the clothes; By a corner he CAUGHT UP the curtain a little, And GLANCED out with head to behold what had happened.
The lady it was, most lovely TO LOOK AT, Who SHUT the door after her stealthily, slyly, And TURNED toward the bed …
Compare the simultaneously actions in these sentences by Bernard Malamud from The Fixer (he is deliberately imitating Russian syntax, of course):
A butcher HOLDING up by its thick yellow feet a SQUAWKING hen BEATING its wings SAW the wagon GO BY and SAID something witty to his customers. One of these, a young woman who TURNED TO LOOK, CALLED to Yakov, but BY THEN the wagon was out of the marketplace, SCATTERING some chickens NESTING in the ruts of the road and a flock of JABBERING ducks, AS IT CLATTERED ON.
Imagine two lovers parting in a crowded, public place such as a train station. The leave-taking is all consuming to the lovers, but is counterpointed by surrounding actions that they are indifferent to. Think of ten or fifteen typical actions, such as: (1) a blind woman whose dog is being teased by a child; (2) a mother scolding the child for teasing the dog; (3) porters rolling carts of luggage in and out; (4) a team of Irish clog dancers performing; or (5) food vendors cooking everything from pizza to chow mein. Now portray the blur of these actions, in prose, centering on the lovers' parting.
Imitating the passages above, look to verbs (including the full conjugation of tenses, definite and progressive); adverbial conjunctions (e.g., as, meanwhile, while, during, when, still); punctuation (e.g., semicolon, dash, parentheses), and gerunds (participles used as an adjective or noun). Also note as verbal conditions: alternating focus, cross-references, vivid contrast between actions, and emphatic unity of time.
The implicit lessons here are (1) that theoretical or descriptive “rules” about art ought to provoke writers to a kind of “oh, yeah?”; (2) that all art brings reality to mind, rather than presenting reality; and (3) that students need to explore the resources of grammar and punctuation in the complex English sentence.