Note: I will be citing Stephanie Sabar’s insightful article on the phenomenon of Gestalt psychology. She explains what the Gestalt is and how it applies to everyday life. However, I will omit many details concerning namely therapeutic and deeply psychological functions of the Gestalt. I will focus on those details which apply most aptly to my developing understanding of the philosophy of the written word.
When one is reading anything containing multiple lines of words, one subconsciously expects embedded within the experience a certain aesthetic sense of flow that, lacking better terminology, pulls the reader along. Especially in prosaic works such as works of fiction, nonfiction, and essays, and separately in poetry, it assists with the maintenance of a comfortable reading progression while providing subconscious interpretation of the work. For example, in fiction, this sense of flow is mostly synonymous with craft elements which hook the reader into absorbing the work through seamless plot devices and language. I theorize that in the aesthetic interpretation of anything containing multiple lines, including along with the above examples written advertisements and even grocery lists, the first letters of words play vital roles in the subconscious achievement of this sense of flow; in spite of this, I will centralize my theory on paragraphs, as the same principle applies no matter the literary form. Even each individual letter, as I shall explain, has the potential to be aesthetically attractive to readers because of the power of the alphabet.
Specifically, the first letters of the first words of sentences and of paragraphs, and also of lines, satisfy that which I call the vertical reading appeal. At the same time, the first letters of individual words in general satisfy a horizontal reading appeal. I will refer to these collectively as “the appeals,” and sometimes informally as “jumbled acrostic.” The appeals can be approximately defined as metaphysical embodiments of the abstract connections between the letters, very roughly resembling invisible ropes or chains, which aesthetically stand out among the flux of the total sum of letters (see Example A for a visual explanation.)
Example A: red = vertical reading appeal; green = horizontal reading appeal; imagine tracing the connections of the letters to resemble ropes or chains
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure
and praising pain was born.
I will give you a complete account of the system, and
expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of truth, the master-builder of
human happiness.
No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but
because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure…
They approach the mode of full acrostic, which on its own approaches the alphabet. On a hierarchical morphological scale, on the bottom level are situated the appeals. Just above this level is that of full acrostic. At the top of this scale is the alphabet. Each level is separated by degrees of the graphemic and idealistic organization of haphazard letters (graphemes;) the most idealistic level is the most aesthetically pleasing for the reader: since all letters must be taken from the full ordered set of the alphabet, and since the alphabet is the most aesthetically “appealing” set of graphemes possible, then it stands that all letters, individualized or as parts of words, contain an inherent aesthetic quality. The appeals (the jumbled acrostic) contain haphazard graphemes that are not expected to form legible words that are words on their own account, the least parallel to the alphabet and the least ideal ordered set of graphemes. This approaches the full acrostic, which contains graphemes that form legible words that are not expected to be interpreted as words on their own account, yet is genre-specific to poetry, which solely allows these coincidental words to be interpreted as such. Even in an acrostic poem, the full ideal of the alphabet still longs to be satisfied (unless, of course, the acrostic sets out to spell the alphabet, but since this is such a rarity, I need not focus on that possibility.) Full acrostic is more idealistic in its set order than is the jumbled acrostic yet less idealistic than is the alphabet, which it approaches; this means that it is also respectively more and less aesthetically “appealing.” The alphabet contains the only ideal set of graphemes yet is not resemblant of a word on its own account. Its idealness is evolutionary and has developed over centuries of language development and growth. As a result, the alphabet is the most aesthetically, and arguably visually, appealing level (see Example B.)
Example B: The jumbled acrostics are taken from the dummy text in Example A.
Alphabet: | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ | Most Aesthetically Appealing; Least Ambitious Approaching Toward Ideal (because it is the ideal;) Most Ideal |
Full Acrostic: | Fixated Leaves Overflowing Watery Evening Rods | |
The Appeals (Jumbled Acrostic:) | (Vertical:) BAIEHNB… (Horizontal:) BIMETYHATMIODP… | Least Aesthetically Appealing; Most Ambitious Approaching Toward Ideal; Least Ideal |
Overall, the individual words that are words on their own account, excluding their respective first letters, supplement these degrees of flow precisely by impeding upon them: these degrees of flow are meant to be inherently subliminal and not urgently perceived. The jumbled acrostic, hidden deepest in the flux of the total sum of letters in the paragraph, approaches the alphabet with the greatest ambition. As a result of all of this, too long of a sequence of the same letter burdens the writing and dulls the literary aesthetic of the paragraph. In certain poetic situations, the artistic license behind the aesthetic quality of the poem may contradict this observation.
The fondness of these appeals assumed by the reader gratifies a repressed infatuation with the alphabet formed by its longstanding historical development. The reader longs for this ideal to be achieved through the appeals, yet is fully aware that this has a slim to nonexistent chance of occurring within prose and a greater yet still improbable chance of occurring in poetry. It is irrelevant that the ordered set of graphemes known as the alphabet is not a legible word. All that matters is that the reader inevitably seeks this highest linguistic and aesthetic order in unwelcoming contexts because they know that those words have been formed by the alphabet. Sabar explains that “...what we see is interpreted and given meaning by the observer, based on memories, expectations, beliefs…” (Sabar). In the case of the appeals, the meaning is grafted from our idealistic understanding of the alphabet. The appeals approach the alphabetical ideal without reaching it, yet this is close enough to satisfy this sense of flow because humans are used to the remoteness of ideals.
My linguistic-aesthetic theory is predicated on this aforementioned sense of flow. Roughly equivalent and more appropriate than my term is Gestalt. This is a conceptual psychological form coined by Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels (1859 - 1932) combining that temporal quality “processe[d] overtime, such as a melody,” and that nontemporal quality resembling two-dimensional geometrical shapes (Sabar). Gestalts can be elucidated through the example provided by Sabar. The concept of squareness is not inherent in a square or squarelike object; rather, squareness is an overarching Gestalt, or “whole quality” of the object brought about by the “certain configuration” of its angles and lines (Sabar). Alternatively, the squareness of this object is akin to the Platonic form of a perfect circle: there exists the concept of a perfect circle, but theoretically it can never be fully realized by humanity as it is illustrated through an imperfect human effort. Essentially, the appeals are Gestalts in their own right. The temporal quality is achieved through the reading process, and the nontemporal quality is realized through the constructed but sensually and physically invisible shape of the embodiment of the abstract connection of the letters (i.e. the invisible rope or chain illustrated in Chart A.)
The resultant aesthetic would be defined by Gestalt psychologists as a tertiary quality, which is “understood as a quality beyond the first two elements in a perception - the first being the sensory stimulus from the outside world; the second being the person's internal experience of the external stimulus” (Sabar). In the case of the appeals, the first element is the perception of the letters on the page stemming from the color of the ink, typeface, texture, et cetera, and the second is the reception of the letters as part of their sentences and not as a part of the Gestalt whole, the third being the subsequent recognition of the “Gestalt whole” that is linguistically akin to the Platonic perfect circle. This phenomenon closely relates to the Gestalt principle of isomorphism: there is “‘a functional and structural correspondence’ between the mental experience of what our senses present to us and the underlying neurological and physiological processes of the brain” (Sabar,) and in the case of the appeals, this “correspondence” comes from the mental experience of perceiving the letters on the page or screen and the neurological process of relating these haphazard letters to both one another and the ideal ordered set of graphemes, the alphabet.
A primary Gestalt principle, the “tendency towards closure or completion” (Sabar), applies to my theory in an interesting way, as Sabar’s example mentions a musical scale. A musical scale, such as the E major scale (E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, and E,) contains a certain set order of tones. The specificity of the tones is inherent to its definition as a scale, in that if D# were instead D♮, it would no longer be strictly the E major scale because it would become the E major scale in the Mixolydian mode and start on B instead of E. In this fashion, a musical scale is like a Gestalt. In the jumbled acrostic, one seeks the alphabetic ideal, seeking a completion that they know is not there. The absence of this completion compliments the flow of the letters aesthetically as it also allows for the reader to subconsciously organize the letters alphabetically in order to weave a rudimentary mental frequency distribution table. In the end, the strict order of the letters does not matter, nor does even the total frequency of each specific letter, just as the order of tones does not matter for a musical scale, nor the distributed frequency of each individual note, because a listener can sense the key even if the tones of the scale are randomized and F, B, and D are missing, and perhaps even if E and G are missing. (Keys in music are equivalent to the alphabet in linguistics.) As long as the majority of the letters appears, and as long as there is a decent amount of unique letters available, the reader is satisfied (see Example C.)
Example C: Again I borrow the jumbled acrostic from the dummy text of Example A, except in this case, I use the entire paragraph instead of a sample portion, and I only chart out the horizontal appeal. This is greatly satisfactory because only F, J, L, Q, U, V, X, and Z fail to chart.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ76133024601032770119003020
When an author realizes this, they can reorient sentences so that the most important clause or term is primarily accentuated to increase the probability that a unique letter, unique from the previous and subsequent first letters of words, appears as the first letter of the sentence, satisfying the appeals. At the same time, the author is encouraged to incorporate a variety of concrete words in their stories, paragraphs, et cetera, in order to achieve the same end.
Humans are inclined to seek order in life, and they categorize things in order to achieve this end. This propensity acts as an illustration of the Gestalt quality of transposability. Sabar clarifies this point with another example pertaining to melody, but for my purposes, I will reorient her example so that the explanation will pertain to the appeals. I keep saying that a paragraph contains these appeals, but so does a poem, an advertisement, and a grocery list. The context is still the same: in the flux of the total sum of letters, the appeals stand out as aesthetically attractive to the reader; its relative idealness as compared to the alphabet is its distinct quality (Sabar). She adds that “whole qualities are described as emergent in Gestalt psychology” (Sabar); in the case of the appeals, the individual letters mean nothing until they are ascribed in relation to an ideal, which is the alphabet. In this vein, due to the “interdependency” (Sabar) of the letters that form the appeals, the change of one letter brings it closer to or farther from the alphabetic ideal. The allure of the jumbled acrostic is the closest thing that one can get to this ideal without achieving the full acrostic because it has that potential to resemble individual legible words which augments the Gestalt quality even more, considering that the letters of these words, similarly to the appeals, are “organized as a separate coherent entity with definite boundaries” (Sabar).
This theory partially may help to explain why, even if one hates the book that they are reading, they continue to read it. It is because they want to see what there is to see. Their curiosity has been piqued not only by the plot and character interactions and developments, but also by their deeply encoded relationship with their respective alphabet.
Work Cited:
Sabar, Stephanie. “What’s a Gestalt?” Gestalt Review 17.1 (2013): 6–34. Web.
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