Before Metal was Metal

I had a chance discovery in the book Another Life: And, The House on the Embankment by Yuri Trifonov. It's actually two books, urban novellas in the Russian povest genre. It's translated from Russian of course, but there was an adjective use of the word metal which reminded me of some things I've written about the history of metal (and metal radio shows) in the past [LINK] and [LINK].  The reference starts on page 243:

"Among the guests were some musicians, a chess champion, and a poet who had been deafening people at student parties with his crashingly metallic verses— in those days, for some reason, they were regarded as highly musical— and there was he usual gaggle of colorless, loud, shy or indolent students."

There was the verbage "metallic verses." The poet goes on to be described as loud, disruptive and non-conventional. It reminded me of Burroughs original usage of "metal music" in 1962. The book House on the Embankment was written in 1976, when proto-metal was in full swing in the West. But it certainly was not in full swing in Moscow. Trifonov was following another, earlier usage of the term. Metallic was used for a century to to describe the dissonance and abrasiveness of modern art, music, poetry and prose.  That exact same phrase metallic verses, even appears in multiple other works by other authors. Pondering that, I decided that music critics (myself included) have been very complacent, in giving William Burroughs the full credit for coining the term.

In other words, this use of the word metal has roots.  My theory is that the use of the word metal and metallic to mean abrasive, discordant, dissonant or powerful is an artifact of the industrial age. It was a time when enormous machines first stamped out metal parts in dark smoky factories. In the 1800s the word metal, was going thru a radical change in connotation; and we can see it art criticism over the last century. 

I'll start about a hundred years ago in a 1924 issue of the American Mercury. There writer Lewis Mumford used the term criticizing the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which dovetails nicely with the gothic trappings of early heavy metal:

"In the abstract universe of Pure Art, Edgar Poe might be a very great figure indeed: his cold metallic verses are like the notes of some thin brass instrument which admirably echoes the plutonian tears he drops over the graves of his impalpable maidens." 

Similarly in an 1872 edition of Watsons Art Journal, a review of a live performance of Miss Kellogg's Paulina visited a similar use of the word metallic:

"Her voice was in superb order; it was full, melodious, and sympathetic; and came out in passages of force, with ringing metallic power which surprised while it delighted everyone present."

 In 1865 Madame de Gasparin wrote in The Near and the Heavenly Horizons of metallic music describing that particular repetitive, percussive marching music.

"I shall  never forget those beautiful evenings—melancholy nevertheless, for civil war muttered on the horizon— when, under the acacias in blossom, we listened to the military music,— that admirable metallic music, so correct so disciplined, under which throbs a spirit all the more ardent, because it is well restrained. "

This one is kind of on the nose, but Henry John Whiting, published Portraits of Public Men in 1858, using the word metaphorically in two different contexts, in one paragraph.

"Some roomy old premises were taken, the merry rat-tat of the rivetters ' hammer gave out its metallic music, indicative of other metallic music at the pay table on Saturday night, and passengers who went that way saw a large building labelled Martin Samuelson and Co;. engineers and iron shipbuilders."

There is no shortage of examples, I only gave a small sample here to make a point. I found dozens of references rather quickly. The literal word metallic became a metaphor, and today that metaphor has become a literal meaning or the word, and can in turn be used metaphorically again. Art is an iterative process, but it took a decade for that connection to dawn on me.