Violent Connection: A Language Strategy Of Modern Poetry

Violent link is bringing two traditionally unconnected words together, breaking both of the words' conventional meanings, having a impact on each other to create a new meaning. Otherwise, it also means create a new meaning by juxtaposing two words and forming a similarity. In texture, violent link appears to be putting words related in war or politics with words describing nature. In forms, it appears to be putting political verbs or adjective together with nouns of nature. In this paper, I create the critical term and analyze it with the help of poems from Wystan Hugh Auden and Tomas Transtromer. I will depict how it develops in literature and its philosophy background, then analyze the significance of violent link. I will analyze this problem through the following three chapters.In the first chapter, I come up with the definition of violent link and illustrate it with poems of two poets. Then argue and discern the differences between oxymoron? paradox?irony and irony. The word violent in "violent link" means not only in breaking traditional meaning but also in expressing emotion and de-structuring governing ideology by breaking linguistic meaning. Different from the other critical terms, violent link refers to the mutual and reciprocal distorting.In the second chapter, analyze the process how violent link forms. After comparing the difference from 19th century poems to the world second war poems, I will focus on the literature developing process and the change of expressing ways. Nature is basic image in poems, I take the change of the nature image in poems as a clue to see how different poets respond to different facts in different times. Nature image in poems changed from pure and gorgeous status into frightening and elusive from 19th century to world second war, and eventually becoming the phenomenon that nature image is linked with political words. This reveals that the poets are not limited to express personal emotion anymore, they try to handle with more social and culture problems in a way that break the historical meaning and refer to contemporary backgrounds. After second world war, economy develops quickly and make people lost in another war because it lures and affects people in a more invisible and unconscious way. After Auden, Tomas Transtromer redefines words by juxtaposing and making an affinity between two things, aiming at recall and revert people's feeling towards living. Transtromer takes normal lives as a basic and guides people to deeper level to feel ourselves with way influenced by super-reality, aiming at guiding people back to themselves in such a complex and political modern life.In the third chapter, I will analyze violent link through the three following parts: linguistic aesthetic and philosophy. Firstly, poetry recall people to come back to his nature at the process that meaning of the words is being broken and rebuilt. Secondly, in the violent link, traditional grand words are denied and defamed by the somewhat ugly and low words, the method is influenced by Adorno's negative aesthetic. Last of all, the poets de-structure the domineering economic and political logic through violent link.