Fluidity and Solidness in Poetry

The abundance of juxtapositions of fluidity with solidness in poetry requires an explanation involving a universal feature of human psychology.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The ‘Little’ Tower of Babel,” 1563. WikiArt. Public Domain.

I have seen a medicine
That’s able to breathe life into a stone,
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch,
Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,
To give great Charlemain a pen in’s hand,
And write to her a love-line.

— Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well (2022)

Through history and prehistory, people have had an immediate understanding of the difference between a liquid and a solid, without needing scientists to explain the difference to them.

— Dennis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution (2010)

Shakespeare mixes fluidity with solidness in the quote above, the former represented by breath and the latter by an animated rock. Lafeu, the character who speaks the lines, is using a metaphorical scenario to make the point that the medicine is special and strong. Arguably, however, Shakespeare also chose this metaphor because it adds aesthetic value to the story by way of contradiction. A cold, solid, static, lifeless rock is opposite in our minds, and in reality, to breath, life, quickness, dancing, fire and motion, and therefore it’s surprising and amusing to imagine a…