Elaine
Burklow, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
In the introduction to
A Grammar of Motives Kenneth Burke discusses his pentad in relation
to a photographic exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The
exhibit was a mural comprised of photographs of war ships and one aerial
photograph in particular captured Burke's attention. He recalled "two
launches, proceeding side by side on a tranquil sea. Their wakes crossed
and recrossed each other in almost an infinity of lines. Yet despite
the inticateness of this tracery, the picture gave an impression of
great simplicity, because one could quickly perceive the generating
principle of its design" (xvi). Burke compares the design generated
by the ships' wakes to his pentad, which "should provide us with a kind
of simplicity that can be developed into considerable complexity, and
yet can be discovered beneath its elaboration" (xvi).
Burke actually referred
to the "Road to Victory" exhibit in an earlier essay titled "War and
Cultural Life," published in the American Journal of Sociology in November
of 1942. In that essay, he discusses "the element of placement" in these
photographs and noted that "one gets a very strong feeling that the
war, vast as it is, is part of a still vaster configuration" (409).
He also discusses the exhibit in terms that anticipate the later formulation
of the pentad: "The war may be considered as a scene motivating our
acts-but this exhibit causes us to remember that the war may also be
considered as an act placed in a more inclusive motivational scene and
being enacted by agents with whom, likewise, motives originate" (409).
Burke also has in mind the function of art as propaganda, an issue he
had raised several years earlier in "Revolutionary Symbolism in America,"
his speech before the first American Writers' Congress in 1935.
In "War and Cultural Life,"
he describes "propaganda art" (406) as follows: "War, when fought under
conditions of totality, obviously requires the enlistment of art, of
hortatory or admonitory rhetoric, of information presented in ways that
cushion the discouragements of defeats, or intensify the encouragements
of victories" (406). The radio series, "This Is War," for example has
"served resourcefully and convincingly to translate the war into human
terms . . . in a dramatic idiom that appealed to both the aesthetically
naive and the aesthetically sophisticated" (408). He calls the photographic
exhibit "Road to Victory" "the most 'natural' aesthetic adjustment to
war conditions" which he has "seen so far" (408). Burke was so moved
by the exhibit that he was certain these photographs could "call forth
a certain philosophic or 'meditative' attitude toward the war quite
as it also gives nourishment to a strong sense of our national power"
(408). He enthusiastically declared that "it would be a very good service
both to the strength of our patriotism and to its quality if this exhibit
could be shown throughout the United States" (408).
"War and Cultural Life
was published in November of 1942. Earlier, in the January, 1942, edition
of Direction, Burke critiques his "Where Are We Now" article (which
had appeared some months earlier, also in Direction) in light of the
war's escalation, claiming that "[a]s a result of this momentous change
my words were, to put it mildly, repellently false in tone: and they
literally make me wince" (5). His previous article had been concerned
with issues of industrialism, the worker, and aspects of Roosevelt's
New Deal. But Burke shifts from his position as a critic of America's
business/labor situation to vow that "in this solemn situation, our
first duty to our nation and to ourselves is to approach every problem,
to conceive of every issue, in terms that will make for the maximum
of national unity, and so for the maximum of effectiveness against our
Axis enemies" (5). The scene, especially the bombing of Pearl Harbor
and the United States' entry into the war in Europe, motivated and provided
direction for Burke as he continued to write, and in the early and very
critical stages of what would become A Grammar of Motives, the
first volume in his planned trilogy (A Rhetoric of Motives and
A Symbolic of Motives to follow).
Works
Cited
Burke,
Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. 1945. Rpt. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1969.
---.
"War and Cultural Life." The American Journal of Sociology 48
(November 1942): 404-410.
---.
"When 'Now' Becomes 'Then."' Direction 5 (February-March 1942):
5.
---.
"Where Are We Now?" Direction 4 (December 1941): 3-5.
Copyright
1999--Elaine Burklow.
