poetic is a pervasive aspect of all kinds of language; characterized by "figures and tropes... intensification of form .. . [and] association by analogy," it is the language "that most significantly interacts with the imagination" (1979:491-492). In constructing their dis- tinctions and contrasts, the madman and the migrant certainly use such instruments, although they do not limit themselves to words alone. Indeed, together they remind us that historical consciousness is not confined to one expressive mode. It may be created and conveyed-with great subtlety and no less "truth"-in a variety of genres