Cacophony is a mix of unpleasant sounds used in poetry and music for artistic effect. It is the opposite of euphony. Examples include Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Cacophony is used to convey chaos and destruction. Some types of music also use this effect.
A cacophony is a mix of harsh, unpleasant, or conflicting sounds. It is commonly used to describe poetry, but can also be found in musical composition. Sometimes the cacophony is accidental, other times it’s intentionally used for artistic effect. Cacophony is the opposite of euphony, which means pleasant and melodious sounds.
Some scholars classify cacophony and dissonance similarly, while others describe dissonance as inharmonious sounds and cacophony as a writer’s strategy to achieve a discordant effect.
An example of discordant sounds found in poetry would be Hart Crane’s poem “The Bridge” (1930), which uses cacophony to communicate chaos and evil in the industrial world:
The nasal whine of power whips a new universe…
Where gushing columns light up the evening sky,
Under the looming stacks of the gigantic power station
The stars prick the eyes with sharp ammonia proverbs,
New truths, new hints in hummed velvet
Of dynamo, where the leash of hearing is strummed….
Power’s script, – wounded, coil-bound, refined-
It’s stopped at the slap of belts on booming, prodded reels
In the swollen broth, harnessed jelly of the stars.
Furthermore, the following passage from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) shows the chaotic and destructive effects of war:
And being no stranger to the art of warfare, I have a description for him
of cannons, culverins, muskets, carbines, pistols, bullets, powder,
swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, threats,
countermines, bombings, naval battles…
In both passages, the language is composed in such a way as to avoid being melodious, but instead gives the reader the impression of harsh, rattling sounds that do not naturally flow together. Much like the themes of industrialization or war, the words each author uses effectively shock the reader in a way that idea and language intertwine for purposefully messy effect.
Many types of music also use this effect to produce a messy sound by mixing chords that don’t fit logically. Examples can be found in industrial rock and some tracks by metal bands.
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