Abstraction


Abstract, abstraction and so on are words thrown around all the time in poetry, and often without much solid – or at least congruent – meaning.

An abstraction is literally a ‘taking-away’ from something, a vaguer look at a solid concept. For example, we could say that ‘animal’ is an abstraction from ‘cow’, or that ‘person’ is an abstraction from ‘telephone repairman’.

An abstraction may also be an abstract noun, though, such as ‘love’, ‘peace’, ‘death’, ‘fortune’, etc.

Or it may be an abstract verb, such as ‘eat’ or ‘move’ or ‘take’. More concrete verbs might be ‘chew’, ‘walk’ and ‘grab’, or might entail phrases such as ‘eat with cutlery’, ‘move on foot’ or ‘take in his hand’.

The logic is that the word is a non-specific generalisation based on an observed event or series of events. All you need to know is that an abstract word is like using a generic template. Saying ‘it was love’ calls upon well worked, common (trite) concepts of what ‘love’ means. It contains nothing of what made that love special or individual or meaningful.

An easy way to recognise abstraction is by trying to imagine what scene it is depicting. ‘It was love’ may call up images of holding hands and moonlit walks, but it actually says none of that, and at best any derived images will be inconsistent, vague and cliché.