The diachronic figure of literature provides us many instances if yoking in which we can read the basic of life as a collocation of two contrary elements. We can take Greek literature as the first point of departure. Sophoclean discourse on literature mingles on the debate between the fate and skepticism, a yoking germinated, somewhere between the old rooted pagan belief system and premature scientific thinking. Sochocle’s doomed hero Oedipus Rex in order to evade fate but he is defeated. Through fate dominated reasons in the drama, the aesthetic taste of the drama rests upon the way fate and skepticism are yoked together. With Renaissances literature, yoking tradition has found a new momentum. Falling victim of the pestilence of hatred poured in him by jealous Iago, Othello, and Shakespeare’s tragic hero happens to murder his beloved Desdemona in a surge of aggression. But, when the truth of Iago’s plot reveals, Othello realizes his mistake, the realization becomes intolerable and consequently, he finishes himself. Shakespeare gives Othello this word of speak:
I kissed thee era I killed thee.
Within the poetically inherent in the above lines, there lies yoking between two poles of life experiences. Kissing and killing are two distinct phenomena which can barely be expected to come together in our daily lives. Furthermore, this yoking speaks of the polarity between integration and disintegration, tragedy, and comedy, civilization , and savagery, as well as arrogant love and benevolent love, yes love and hates are clinches but what is important here is the way contrary poles of life experiences get merged telling its reader how contrary things and experiences co-exist and keep on giving distinct stature to aesthetics as a means of teaching and delighting.
With William Blake, a visionary Romantic, yoking has found even more delightful poetic bent. In his highly celebrated poem ’Tiger’, Blake merges blackness and whiteness together In his attempt to mystify the tiger.
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forest, if the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame they fearful symmetry
The burning bright eyes of Blake’s tiger that burn bright amidst the ‘jungle of night’ represent what the poet says ‘contrary state of human soul’. In this connection the imagery ‘bright and night ’ are metonymic signifiers of the universal human and malevolence, as well as beautiful and the ugly. The polarity between bright and night also correspond the creative and destructive forces of nature which Blake too envisions in the poem by creating the images ‘Lamb’ as a parallel to ‘tiger’. Where tiger exists there exists lamb too. In the electric fusions of tiger’s anger and lamb’s simplicity and meekness, Blake guides us to find the true essence of life ‘the contrary states’. This yoking is not the simple one. Our life yields nothings to us until and unless our actions and thoughts do not get impetus of such violently and fiercely opposite poles of experience.
The tradition of experiencing life with yoking find a rigorously philosophical bent with Friderich Nietzsche. The ‘discordant concord’ between Apollonian intellectuality and Dionysian passion is what Nietzsche calls a progenitor of perfect arts. As put forward by Nietzsche the Apollonian and Dionysian duality, the yoking between two distinct psychic forces gives life to art and literature and the epitome of which is the ancient Greek tragedy namely ‘Attic Tragedy’. Apollo represents benevolent god, the god of order, reasons and clarity whereas Dionysiud represents ecstasy and passion, the god of irrational behavior. A great appreciator of Greek art, Nietzsche argues that the magnitude of Greek art and literature depends on the balance yoking between these two psychic forces.
Greek art and literature have an ever-present influence on an aesthetic of all ages across the globe. This cause of this fact lies in the way Greek art and literature incorporate Dionysian and Apollonian qualities.
The art and literature that take their origin in yoking have a power of hypnotizing human consciousness and liberating the reader from the bouts of lethargy. Confronting us with the usual opposite poles of life, that is, the lovely and comic and unkind and tragic, yoking of literature provides us replication of the world of daily experience in which we can get the vision of the universality of life experiences as collocation of opposite poles and may find a definition of our life really lived. Moreover, to experience yoking means to know how to find a middle way in life nurtured by the polar opposite. Longing and cultivating ideas life along the polar ways is an extremist through whereas complicity and literature provide us a textual space to evoke discourse on how to understand the symbiosis between life and art.
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