Some of you may know that author of Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit, JRR Tolkein, was by profession a philologist. What's a philologist--well you might have sussed this out by recognizing all those languages that populate his many books, Elvish, Adunaic, Khuzdul, Sindarin, Westron, the dreaded Black Language of the Orcs and more. Philologists are students of language history and Tolkein drew on his academic studies to create original languages with roots in the Germanic and Old English tongue.
Writers who have command of language will always be counted among my favorites--their prose more poetry than not, their turns of phrase and images can quite literally send shivers down my spine. But to invent entire languages, vocabulary and grammar is no simple thing which may begin to explain why Tolkein's stories have endured so well.
I was thinking of Tolkein the other day when I came upon an old Scottish Anglican hymn entitled Abide With Me. The hymn is a prayer asking God to remain with the speaker throughout his lifetime, at his side so to speak. Abide is one of those tricky words that have several contrasting meanings. When we say we cannot abide someone we mean we can't stand to be with them. But an abiding presence is a comfort, and to abide by some law or decree means to follow its rules. Tolkein would tell us that Abide comes from the old english word abyden which meant to wait or remain--close to the meaning of the Abide in the hymn.
Meander is another one of those words that have a curious set of contextual meanings. When a river meanders it forms a series of sinuous looping curves and a meandering walk is one that takes its time but may also suggest a kind of aimlessness--a roaming without fixed destination in mind. Meander comes to us from the Greek, Maiandros, the name of a winding river located in Asia Minor. One wonders if it knew its mind?
I like words like these two precisely because they are elastic, sufficiently giving to lend themselves to new purposes and that is a hallmark of language use I particularly enjoy in the hands of a gifted author. Not only are words such as these pleasant to the ear, they have a roundness, a suavity if you will --a generosity of meaning that sets them apart.
Word play--or if you prefer being playful with words, was once considered a high form of art, a practice employed by gentlemen and ladies of taste and decorum whose flirtations nonetheless occasionally bordered on the scandalous. It took wit and poise to suggest by innuendo what one could never say explicitly. That art is all but lost today. We live in a world of corporate speak, of vulgarities, and jargon--a soup of technocratic prattle and street punk derivatives. It's harsh and sharp and dissonant to the ear--but worse yet devoid of real meaning, invented to last for the moment and be banished forever after.
Moving between languages as in translation poses it own trapdoors and alleyways. Given my limited skills beyond English, halfway decent Spanish, a little Italian some French and German I can generally obtain only the barest gist when I chance upon a work of literature written in another tongue. I have read some poetry in Spanish--and while I am not a judge of the literal I am of the sound. When I read a great translation of Lorca or Neruda the words become the sounds and the poet's mystery remains the same--although different.
But then there are words which can never be translated. Goethe's weltschmerz for one. The literal english, 'World Pain' , does not begin to convey the depth--the world weariness and melancholy that consumes one's soul. And you may call me a romantic but no words breathed into the ear of one's cherished resonate more eloquently than Je T'aime, not even Te Amo though I count it a fair second, certainly not Ich Liebe Dich.
Abide with me, while we meander , it will be fun.
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