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emmagreen1220-blog · 6 years ago

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Motif in Literature

Examples of Motif in Literature

Motif, in essence, is a recurring element, whether a concept, a phrase, an image, an object, an event, or a situation. This element can reappear within a single work, but also across many works written by one or numerous different authors (not always consciously imitating each other). Modern scholars tend to distinguish these two meanings of the word “motif” in literary studies by labeling the recurrence of elements in a single work with the German word leitmotif (“leading motif”)—borrowed from early analyses of the music of Wagner—and by referring to the repetition of concepts and themes across literary works with the rather old term topos (pl. topoi; “(common) place”)—borrowed from ancient rhetoric. So that you can understand better this distinction, below we provide examples of both topoi and leitmotifs, i.e., the two different types of motifs.

Across Many Works (Topoi)

Example #1: Ubi Sunt

“Ubi sunt” is Latin for “where are… [they]?” and it is one of the oldest and most pervasive motifs in world literature. It is a melancholic comment on the transience of life, usually made through a series of rhetorical questions concerning the fate of the most exemplary people of the past, be they the bravest, the wealthiest, or the most beautiful. Sometimes, ubi sunt can also take the form of a nostalgic yearning for “the good ol’ days;” in this case, the mood it tries to convey approximates the one captured by the numerous variations of another widespread motif: the “golden age” motif.

The Bible

You can find one of the earliest appearances of the ubi sunt motif in the Book of Baruch (33:16-19), a deuterocanonical book of the Bible (meaning: it is considered to be part of the Bible only by Catholics and Orthodox Christians). In fact, the expression ubi sunt is derived from the Latin translation of the first two words of this passage:

Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lorded it over the animals on earth; those who made sport of the birds of the air, and who hoarded up silver and gold in which people trust, and there is no end to their getting; those who schemed to get silver, and were anxious, but there is no trace of their works? They have vanished and gone down to Hades, and others have arisen in their place.

Medieval Poetry

Medieval poets attempted to bring to mind this feeling of fleetingness pretty often, and you can find the same motif expressed in numerous poems written in many different languages during this period of time. Thus, the Old English poem Wanderer asks “Where is the horse gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?/ Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?” and 13th-century French trouvère Rutebeuf sings “What has become of my friends/ That I had held so close/ And loved so much?”

One of the most famous evocations of the ubi sunt motif can be found in another French poet of the Middle Ages, the notorious François Villon. In his “Ballade of the Ladies of Times Past,” he sings that all the most beautiful maidens in history have disappeared just like last year’s snows. The poem contains perhaps the most imitated and alluded-to refrain of this kind: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

On a more positive note, the well-known academic commercium song “Gaudeamus igitur” contains the verses “Where are those who trod this globe/ In the years before us?” but only so as to inspire those who listen to seize the day, which is another prominent literary topos sometimes associated with the ubi sunt: the carpe diem motif. But we’ll get back to it later.

Renaissance and Romanticism

Shakespeare revisits the ubi sunt motif in the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech given by Hamlet in the fifth act of his most celebrated play, as does James Macpherson in his pseudo-translations of Ossian, Fragments of Ancient Poetry: “Where is Fingal the King? where is Oscur, my son? where are all my race?”

From the Romantic period come two more personalized and, thus, more devastating manifestations of the ubi sunt motif. The first one can be found in Goethe’s “Dedication” to Faust, in which he bemoans the fact that the people he wrote his poems for can no longer read them:

They hear no longer these succeeding measures, The souls, to whom my earliest songs I sang: Dispersed the friendly troop, with all its pleasures, And still, alas! the echoes first that rang!

The second example comes from Charles Lamb’s brief poem “The Old Familiar Faces” which opens with this heart-rending tercet:

I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

We can list many more examples, but we guess the above should suffice. As you can see, all of the works quoted here essentially say the same depressing thing—namely that life ends and that even the most remarkable among us will eventually die. Because of this, they can all be considered variations of the same theme, in this case labeled the ubi sunt motif.

Example #2: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

Ars longa, vita brevis is another Latin phrase which is used as a common designation for a recurring theme in literature. Meaning “art is long, life is short,” this motif is essentially the optimistic other side of the ubi sunt coin. It says that even though our time on earth is short, and our beauty, bravery and wealth mean little when death arrives, our artistic creations remain long after we’re gone and can outlive us by centuries; death may conquer life, but art triumphs over death. The phrase is most frequently used with reference to the timelessness of the written word, or more particularly, poetry.

Ancient Rome

Interestingly enough, the antithetical phrase “ars longa, vita brevis” is a misinterpretation of an aphorism by the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, who actually says (as translated by Chaucer): “the life so short, the craft so long to learn.” It is in this manner that Seneca quotes him in On the Shortness of Life from where the Latin phrase originates. However, the word “ars,” which originally meant “craft” or “technique,” in time came to mean “the fine arts,” which inspired many poets to reinterpret this initially pessimistic quote into the much more hopeful idea that art outlasts its creator.

The most celebrated ancient meditation upon this ars longa motif is the final poem of the third book of the Odes by Horace, in which the poet confidently—and correctly—predicts that, through his poetry, he has built himself a monument as enduring as time itself (tr. Sidney Alexander):

I have erected a monument more durable than bronze, loftier than the regal pile of pyramids that cannot be destroyed either by corroding rains or the tempestuous North wind or the endless passage of the years or the flight of centuries. Not all of me shall die. A great part of me shall escape Libitina, Goddess of Death.

William Shakespeare

If that first line from Horace above rings any bells, it is because you’ve probably already read it rephrased into English by none other than Shakespeare in his Sonnet 55: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.” However, as he informs us in the second stanza of the same sonnet, Shakespeare is interested in the timelessness of poetry not because of his own fame, but because of the beauty of his lover:

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.

Shakespeare restates these feelings several times, most famously in the closing couplet of Sonnet 18, which, referring to itself, claims that:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Romanticism

Far from being the only one, Shakespeare is merely one of the hundreds and hundreds of poets who adapted Horace’s ode and generated their own variation of the ars longa motif. Alexander Pushkin directly imitates Horace in “Exegi momentum,” and both Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Shelley’s “Ozymandias” comment upon the timelessness of art in connection with the brevity of life—though in a much less confident manner. One of the most popular Romantic poems which uses this motif is certainly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” which, among others, contains these verses:

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Example #3: Carpe diem

Of course, in addition to producing artistic creations which may outlast you, there’s another way for you to confront the brevity of life; and that is by living it to the full. Made famous by the 1989 movie, Dead Poets Society, this motif is most succinctly referred to as the “carpe diem” motif, which is Latin for “seize the day” and which, once again, comes from Horace (I.11): “Even as we speak, envious Time is fleeing./ Seize the day: entrusting as little as possible to tomorrow.” Horace himself has written quite a few verses expressing this very same feeling, and who knows how many poems written after him are no more than variations of this motif! Here are just a few.

Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet to Helen” (II.43)

Pierre de Ronsard was the first French poet to be called “a prince of poets,” and it is only because he wrote in French that he is not that famous in the English-speaking world. Few of his poems have, nevertheless, reached a wide audience. Famously adapted by W. B. Yeats under the title “When You Are Old,” the most famous of Ronsard’s numerous “Sonnets to Helen” is undoubtedly one of the most memorable expressions of the carpe diem motif in any language. In it, Ronsard warns Helene that one day he will be dead and she just an old crone, sitting by the fireside and regretting the fact that she had once scorned the advances of one who loved her and thought her beautiful; however, the poet doesn’t want Helene to recognize this as a reason for concern, but as an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of life (tr. Humbert Wolfe):

And since what comes to-morrow who can say? Live, pluck the roses of the world to-day.

Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

Writing a century after Ronsard, English Cavalier poet Robert Herrick voices the very same opinion in the 208th poem of his lifework, the collection of verses, Hesperides, with language which obviously echoes his French predecessor:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today To-morrow will be dying.

Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

In the last stanza of Herrick’s carpe diem masterpiece, the poet urges the virgins to “be not coy, but use [their] time” while they still can. Written probably just a year after “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” was published, “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell’s most famous love-song, is merely a modification of this advice, in this case, addressed to one particular lady.

In the first stanza of the poem, Marvell explains to this shy maiden that if they had “but world enough, and time,” he would have courted her for millennia, praising her eyes for at least a century and adoring each of her breasts for twice that time. However—he goes on in the second stanza—he can always hear “Time’s wingèd chariot” behind him, making him fully aware that, before too long, his lust will turn into ashes, and his beloved’s “long preserved virginity” will be tried by worms.

And if that is the case—Marvell finally gets to the point in the third stanza—then why all the coyness? “Let us sport us while we may,” the poet urges his beloved, “and tear our pleasures with rough strife/ Through the iron gates of life.” That way the two will have nothing to regret when they die because they’ve made the most of their lives:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

In a Single Work (Leitmotifs)

Example #1: William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606)

Back in the time when there were no computers and Ctrl+F shortcuts, an English literary critic by the name of Caroline Spurgeon managed to diligently index every single image and metaphor in all of Shakespeare’s plays.

“It is a curious thing,” she notes at the beginning of Chapter XV of her pioneer study Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us, “that the part played by recurrent images in raising, developing, sustaining and repeating emotion in [Shakespeare’s] tragedies has not, so far as I know, ever yet been noticed. It is a part somewhat analogous to the action of a recurrent theme or ‘motif’ in a musical fugue or sonata, or in one of Wagner’s operas.” And then she proceeds to trace “the recurring images which serve as ‘motifs’” in each of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, after having done the same with his histories, comedies, and romances in the previous three chapters.

Spurgeon singles out Macbeth’s imagery as “more rich and varied, more highly imaginative, more unapproachable… than that of any other single play.” However, among the several motifs she registers, one seems to stand out—that of Macbeth’s ill-fitting garments. Shakespeare makes recurrent allusions to this humiliating image of “a notably small man enveloped in a coat far too big for him.” First, it is Macbeth who brings attention to it, after he is named the Thane of Cawdor in the third scene of the first act (I.3.108-9):

The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me In borrow’d robes?

Just a few moments later (I.3.144-6), Banquo explicitly calls it to mind by claiming of Macbeth that:

New honours come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould But with the aid of use.

And when Lady Macbeth later scolds her husband for his hesitation in relation to the murder of King Duncan, she admonishes him with these words (I.7.36-7): “Was the hope drunk/ wherein you dress’d yourself?” Macduff also resorts to clothing imagery in an ironic comment on Macbeth becoming the new king just as he sends Ross to the coronation in Scone (II.4.37-8): “Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!/ Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!”

Shakespeare returns to this same motif twice more in the second scene of the fifth act when, first, Caithness describes the already shaken Macbeth as someone who “cannot buckle his distemper’d cause/ within the belt of his rule” (V.2.15) and, furthermore, when Angus, just a few verses later (V.2.20) “sums up the essence” of Macbeth:

now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe Upon a dwarfish thief.

The motif of Macbeth’s “ill-fitting garments” is probably not something one is capable of noticing at first or even third reading; however, as Spurgeon demonstrated, it was always there in the verses, appearing over and over again across the play, so as to serve as a sort of a soundtrack for its main protagonist; just like a Wagnerian leitmotif.

Example #2: William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is one of the indisputable masterpieces of 20th-century modernist literature (though Wyndham Lewis and Vladimir Nabokov would probably disagree). Similarly to a few other books which share comparable reputation—think Proust’s In Search of Lost Time—Faulkner’s novel deals prominently with the topic of subjective vs. objective time. Faulkner uses several motifs masterfully, not only so as to periodically suggest and hint at the theme (mainly that of arrested development), but also so as to provide some unity to his highly experimental work.

And this is especially evident by Faulkner’s prominent use of motifs in the first two parts of his work, which are narrated, respectively, by the intellectually disabled Benjamin “Benjy” Compson (who acts as if he is 3 even though he is 33 years old) and the depressed and deteriorated Quentin on the day of his suicide. Since both of these parts are presented in a stream of consciousness fashion, it can be difficult for the reader to make out the chronology of the described events or detect any intelligible storyline. However, by saturating Benjy’s and Quentin’s accounts with sporadically reappearing motifs, Faulkner successfully compensates for this lack of narrative clarity, transforming the first half of his novel into a sort of a lyrical exposé, rich with refrains and repetitions.

Think of these Faulknerian leitmotifs as conspicuous cues planted in the text so as to remind the reader from time to time that it is still the same story he’s trying to get to the bottom of, even though occasionally it may not seem like that. To understand this better, just consider how the word “caddie”—often uttered at the golf course—reminds Benjy of his favorite sibling’s name and stirs his mind into a whirlwind of unrelated associations of his sister Caddy. The word “caddie” itself doesn’t stand for anything here, i.e., it is not a symbol; it is merely a cue for a stream of connotations, a motif Faulkner spins out into something more important for the overall theme: the brothers’ relationship with Caddy.

Another thing that Benjy is passionate about is fire. It is an image he is fascinated and calmed by, and it often comes to his mind for no apparent reason whatsoever. A few examples should suffice: “I liked to smell Versh’s house. There was a fire in it…;” “There was a fire in the house, rising and falling…;” “He was just looking at the fire, Caddy said”… The fire-motif here works the same way choruses work in songs: reemerging from time to time to create a lyrical pattern. It is difficult to say whether the fire is meant to represent something: to Benjy, it is probably a friendly element and, just like caddies, it seems to have some kind of a warm connection to Caddy.

However, the fire-motif is infused with other meanings when it reappears in the second part as in this meditation by Quentin:

If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame.

In Dante’s Purgatorio, poets are purified by passing through a wall of fire; it is what Dante has to do in order to see Beatrice. However, Quentin’s love for his sister seems something beyond purification, which is why he associates fire with both “clean flames” and “hell” at the same time: on the other side of the “clean flame” there is no Paradise, but “pointing and horror.” The phrase “amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame” reappears four times in Quentin’s musings, thus becoming a sort of a sub-motif which always recalls and points to something more than what the phrase itself contains.

It is difficult to say here more without getting into unnecessary details with regards to our keyword, but, if you are interested, an excellent place to go on with your research is Sartre’s exceptional essay “Time in the Work of Faulkner”: large parts of it treat some of Faulkner’s time-related motifs, mostly in Quentin’s part (reference).

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jimbroadstreet-blog · 8 years ago

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English Language

A Treatise on the English Language Jim Broadstreet, sr.

A beautiful hodge-podge conglomeration. A gift of many gods and squires. A collection of words and sounds from greatly disparate sources.

It is one of those situations where the extant is more mysterious than fiction could ever be. Had a group of linguists set out to formulate a new verbal tool of communication and produced what is now known as English its members would have had to have been given high marks for ingenuity but very low ones for discipline. But of course that it not what happened.

As is the case with all phenomena this one has been in the process of undisciplined evolution since before Geoffrey Chaucer. The process continues unabated today.

The author of these words is in love with American English! With all of its lack of coherent discipline there do exist some stringent rules the mastering of which requires a great amount of rote-learning and discerning listening. (If something spoken doesn’t sound right it probably isn’t.) Few people, authors, statesmen, poets or scribes, and certainly including me, ever attain perfection. Those few who come close finally lose the struggle to the perfection itself. Let me offer an example pertaining to both rules and sound:

The great orator Winston Churchill received a letter from some well-meaning student of word-formulation mildly berating him for having, in a speech to Parliament, ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s response was a priceless bit of wit. “Yes Madam” he wrote, “That is the sort of thing up with which I cannot put.” Another bit from this great mind was, when shown a picture of a grandchild, said “now that’s a baby.”

While doing my best to use my language as properly as possible I find myself being much too judgmental about how well others use it. Too picky, I say, because evolution occasionally dictates a bit of bastardization. (And I would submit that bastardizing the English language is a feat in itself.) The most egregious example coming to mind is the necessity (or is it, really?) of bowing to sexist political correctness making singular “he” or “her” into the plural “they”. I love womankind dearly but it seems to me that a blanket statement could be issued from somewhere on high that we strugglers do not mean to be offensive but we believe that the protection of our language is even more important than the possible slight slight to femininity … the double word usage purposeful even though spell-check underlines one with a red stripe.

On the rare occasion when I am asked to speak to a group I do declare that belief. It doesn’t seem to have lost me female friends.

Now I will reverse course almost completely. For all rules and regulations we might impose on ourselves there must be exceptions. Following are a few examples of our difficult language being used, to the best of the user’s abilities; to purvey meaningful sets of thought. One is crudely chiseled into a sandstone cemetery marker. It rests in an old Ozark country church plot. The stone is shaped to sort of depict a person, with shoulders and head. At the left, top side are the letters “sac”. Opposite and separated by the curve of the “head” are the letters “red”. Below is inscribed an approximate accounting of a happening depicted on that tablet. “On june 14 in 1917 At 16 yeres and 3 munths Daniel took the gun frum the rake the trigger got cot on a nale and she fired and this prevalent seen happened.” Imagine the grief and sorrow and the desire to find help in properly spelling that word, for Daniel’s sake … prevalent.

A gentleman I knew, realizing that his death was not so very far off, wrote an abbreviated book of memories for his offspring. He also realized that his life had been more difficult than most, thus interesting to his offspring, growing up dirt poor in a small town and surviving the hardships of the Great Depression and the battlefields in France while coping with a case of influenza in the 1918/19 epidemic. Worst of all, however, was his accidental shooting and killing of his son while in the woods hunting. Though far from “correct” his use of English was somehow eloquent and certainly profound.

And then there are much lighter jewels. Al Capp, though a master wordsmith, used words and phrases of his own making them exactly fit the characters in his comic strip Lil Abner. My favorite is the proclamation of the irrecusable Mamy Yocum, when she was driven to her utmost limit … “Yo has went too fer!” And there was the senator from Dogpatch, one Jack S Phogbound … “There’s no Jack S like our Jack S.”

Some “miss-uses” of the language are, of course, intentional. Read The Jabberwok. My grandfather loved words so much that he often made up his own. For the condition of diarrhea, for instance, he used his words “the random scrauntch.” He would severely berate all dogs with words such as useless and ugly in the most pleasant tones one can imagine. The animals heard the sing-song of his strong baritone voice and believed they were being honored for being in the old man’s presence.

On occasion a malfunctioning bit of English will pop up which simply must be ridiculed. A good example is a sign nailed to a tree south of Branson, Missouri. “Jesus is comming.”

Money speaks loudly. Its usage, however, sometimes has unintended consequences. Following the end of the Second World War the United States emerged as the undisputed financial powerhouse of the world. What that meant, among a multitude of other things, was the U.S. bought and used more of the world’s resources than any other nation. U.S. citizens traveled more than anyone else. The U.S. developed larger and more sophisticated passenger airplanes and led the way to jet propulsion. When lumber was harvested almost anywhere in the world it was done using feet/inches measurements and sold in board footage. Plywood was manufactured in Asia and Africa in fractions of inches. AND, air traffic control towers, all around the globe, even in nations where the U.S. was a cold-war adversary, used English for international flights. The United States of America is an arrogant nation! But much of that is changing. Let’s see what happens.

Any work of poetry or prose worth its salt is quickly translated into American English because America is where more people buy books. The author, along with my first wife, Lydia, spent a year, plus, in Finland. We earned enough money to get by “teaching” conversation Americanized English. Most of our “students” were executives in Finish industries such as paper mills. I also went to the home of the commanding general of what remained of the Finish Air Force. (Finland had been decimated by the Soviet Union during World War II and not allowed to rearm to any significant degree until the final “war reparations” payment was made in 1957.) These people were intent on learning conversational English. Money talks and the U.S. was where the money was.

Now, in 2017, the educated youth of Finland use Americanized English as their conversation communications, most without a hint of accent. They shun the highly disciplined Finnish and embrace a tongue that requires considerable figuring-out. The watching of American T.V. and movies are seldom dubbed into Finnish and the captions are not paid much attention. This mass export of our entertainment is another huge reason for Americanized English spreading so far and wide.

Are there societal ramifications involved in our language being so irrational and difficult to master? I had not thought about that before yesterday when a learned friend of mine, Jerry Norris, casually mentioned … in exactly what context I don’t remember … that

Modern Hebrew has relatively few words. Hebrew and Arabic are the two official languages of Israel. There are, I assume, even fewer words in some of the primitive languages in such places as Borneo, equatorial Africa and some Amazonian forests.

Does this range of language scope impact society and how does it affect United States foreign policy? I will offer these few thoughts on the subject.

Even taking into consideration the popular spelling bees where young folks demonstrate almost unbelievable powers of memory, it is unlikely that any individual has ever known the meaning of every word in use in American English. Given that, it is very likely that even someone with the vocabulary of the editorialist Kathleen Parker will occasionally come into contact with a word previously unknown to her. So some go off to schools of higher learning and, at least hopefully, become more erudite in that regard. Then, returning to society at large, they are judged to be “better spoken” or, if some caution is not used, they might be judged by their past friends as “talking down” or having become ivory tower idiots “without a lick of common sense.”

(One way to see the difference in “sizes” of languages is to compare the bulk of their lexicons, dictionaries and, especially, thesauri.)

This phenomenon of there being too many words, from too diverse origins and, therefore, too many nuances, surely impacts politics. The term “blue collar” is bantered around. And then there are references to the “hinterland”, the “fly over area” and the “rural states.” Now the pollsters and pundits openly divide us as being college educated, or not. It is not difficult to witness that the more educated a population-at-large is the more interest there is in a society larger than its immediate surrounds. (That enlightenment, I believe, can be attained either by formal schooling or simply by the dominate attitude prevalent in the “blue” regions.) NOW – can a higher quality vernacular derived from a higher level of education be equated with more caring for one’s fellow man – or what is generally referred to as “progressivism” or “liberalism”? I firmly believe that, yes, it can, but the broaching of that hypothesis is not generally well accepted. I believe that the best expenditure of money, by any nation or society, has to be on educating the populace. It is well established that liberal-arts, science, professional and trade educations result in higher rates of employment, less crime/incarceration and overall better environments.

There are, today, two men in the positions of being at least titular national, and to some degree world, leaders ... Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Donald Trump of the United States. The Israeli need not rely on his language of few words. The American totally lacks the ability to command his language of many words, only a smattering of which he has committed to memory. Netanyahu, educated in the U.S. (and other parts of the world) speaks, fluently and eloquently (though sometimes not very sensibly), in several languages. Trump, who does not have time to read books, seems to have a severely limited vocabulary made up of about fifty percent adjectives and superlatives which he is able, at least in his own mind, to enhance by simple reiteration. From his main source of enlightenment, Fox News, he can attain, by ear, all the facts concerning world events, past, present and to-come. His minions are said to bring him everything praiseworthy from the more stellar printed news outlets such as Breitbart News and Sunday tabloids.

The editorialist George Will is by no means a flaming liberal but Donald Trump is simply too much for him to ignore. In a recent piece Will used these words to begin: “It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about Donald Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.” Isn’t that great? While I’m at it I will include more of this Will article, not so much to emphasize Trump’s atrocious use of English, but to demonstrate just how limited this man’ storehouse of knowledge apparently is. Trump actually stated these two unbelievable miscarriages of history: “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” Will wrote of this insane group of words … “Because Trump is syntactically challenged, it was possible and tempting to see this not as a historical howler about a man who died 122 years ago, but as just another of Trump’s fender benders, this one involving verb tenses.” The other one was Trump saying that Andrew Jackson was “angry about the Civil War” though that conflict did not begin until 16 years after Jackson’s death.

But perhaps we should try to be more tolerant of this strange man with his affliction of solipsism. He was, after all, able to become one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of China/Korean Peninsula relations in a ten-minute conversation with the present leader of China, President Xi. If Trump’s “university” was still in operation, he could, I suppose, teach at least a six credit-hour course on the subject to those who are considerably slower learners. And then, too, this brilliant man would be able to fabricate any missing pieces from the ten-minute lesson and believe them to be absolute, not alternate or fake, facts. This ability is a product of Solipsism.

Oh please! Enough of that and back to the English language:

(But here is another aside that I believe warrants mentioning. I just re-read the preceding words and found many “errors” according to this computer. Some of them I corrected. To some of them I said to-hell-with-it. It is my conviction that if “spell check” can be allowed to so sanitize the language that no creativity can seep in we will have lost too much.)

German is a harsh language; so much so that the users do not need to add swear words to enhance it. French, on the other hand, is so soft that it seems to me more a noise than a language. (It’s not a wonder that those two peoples have had a few differences in the past!)

The Queen’s English, Australian English, Jamaican English and American English, and other Englishes, are so different in inflections, emphases, and even spelling, that it is said that as close friends as England and America have been since about 1812 the only thing separating the two nations is a common language.

Let’s look at a few rules that have, somehow, come to be accepted for use in the English language … keeping in mind, of course, that “rules exist to be broken.” Some are not rules at all. Huh?

Take, for instance, the comma … please. Now in the 89th year of my life I have given up hope on the subject of commas. Some of my dearest friends are emeritus professors and retired teachers. The sage, and my friend, Marge Bramer, will probably take time from her extremely busy life to read this --- if for no other reason than to be polite. She could red line all sorts of transgressions on the language and as highly as I regard her intellect and learning I will probably simply fall back on excuses like that it’s an age thing. But, seriously, it seems to me that the comma is best used sparingly to make the sentence sound right. Lately I have taken up the use of …’s as a substitute for the comma or colon or about anything else I think works at the time. Nobody seems to question it, even my spell check. Am I somewhat disappointed? Maybe

There are more exact rules such as that it’s i before e except after c … but don’t rely on that too much. And the rule that a preposition must not be used to end a sentence with. How did that sound to you? The damned spell check threw green ink, or some kind of compound?, at it. And see? How can a ? be used like that in the middle of a sentence?

It has long been a puzzlement to me that our words stolen from French can end in “in”, like the composer Chopin’s name, but be pronounced as though it is “an.” But our words that are actually French, with silent letters (what the hell are they there for, anyway?) must be recognized as being French or our pronunciation will seem, to the linguistic snob to be gauche. I would still rather ride a train into a de pot than a depo because it’s simply more honest. But some people who use languages other than English would rather fight than give them up, or let them become too adulterated. Remember the salty old uncle of the bride in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? In his defense of his ancient and beloved language, stated that “all words have their origins in Greek.” Some wise-ass young woman asked if that included Kimono.

A few years ago there was a fleeting movement to attempt to “clean up” America’s slang with its abundance of “four letter words” and swearing. “Only people with limited intellect and knowledge of the language resort to the use of offensive words”- they said. At the time it seemed incumbent on me to allow as how that seemed to be pissin’well true, goddamit. But modern music, especially rap, has mooted that cause anyway.

My wife get’s exasperated when I argue with her because, she says, I can debate with her beyond her ability to sensibly retort. I have attempted to argue without playing word games or using the language to my advantage. It doesn’t work.

There is a difference in playing with words and playing on words. As I have stated before, I do love the English language. I also love debate and I also love, sometimes, to respond to cute little bits of pseudo psychology. One such bit, as I deem it, is considering the breakup of someone’s romance – “Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” Using that “deep” philosophical question, and in light of the facts that humans practice animal husbandry, and we are descended from both gatherers and hunters, I often offer vegetarian acquaintances a play of words with the “love” question: “Is it better to have lived and been eaten than never to have lived at all?”

In days ahead I might decide to add more to these words as examples of fine, humorous or powerful writings come my way.

Until then I will leave you with this: What a beautiful bird the frog are / When he stand he sit almost / And when he sit he sit on what he ain’t got / almost.

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