I post a lot of stuff on Facebook. It's mostly miscellaneous musings, ideas that strike me throughout the day. Now and again it occurs to me that my blog readers might be interested in some of them. Here goes.
I remember in sixth class in school, when I was 11 or 12, I wrote a "column" with the title Bald Hawk Pool (a fanciful translation of my first name), sitting at my desk. I remember the very first article was in defence of stereotypes and the truth they generally contain. That's how long I've felt like this. Ha!
I'm always interested in learning new words, but it raises an issue in terms of writing. The consensus these days (and for quite some time) seems to favour a simple, direct style. This isn't just a question of communication but also of aesthetics. Plain English is held to be more elegant and forceful.
And I completely agree with this. (My own exemplar of masterful language use is Yeats's couplet: "The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun".)
But isn't there a danger that language will become unduly simplified if writers avoid the rare and archaic?
I remember reading an interview with the children's writer Helen Cresswell in which she was asked about her tendency to use rather advanced vocabulary in her books. (She actually introduced me to the word 'stipulate'.) Her reply was: "Well, if my readers don't know a word, they can jolly well look it up in the dictionary".
And, although the most poetic language is generally simple, this isn't always the case. Many of the most popular passages in English literature retain their popularity despite archaic terms. Who talks about fardels or a bare bodkin these days? An example that often comes to my mind is the enduringly popular Irish ballad A Nation Once Again. As a kid, I was stumped by the words "our fetters rent in twain". Not a phrase anyone would use today. It doesn't stop anyone belting it out in the pub.
In the first place, I am a melancholic. I wish I wasn't. I can't help suspecting that melancholics are a drain on the world insofar as they are melancholics, while cheerful and exuberant people lift us all up.
My melancholia consists mostly in anticipating failure for myself and everything I care about. I'm always fighting a battle against this. On a larger scale, this means anticipating defeat for every cause I cherish. My outlook is like Tolkien's. The Shadow is only ever defeated temporarily.
Another source of melancholia is a deep, deep sadness at the transience of all things. I can never remember a time I did not feel this.
My anticipation of failure gives me a sort of Hobbesian appreciation of any kind of social order. (I've never read Hobbes.)The absence of famine, war and chaos seems to me a massive achievement in itself. I am always apprehensive any radical change will endanger this.
OK, that's the downer stuff. Underneath all that, there is a sense of wonder which I've always felt but which was hugely developed when I discovered G.K. Chesterton.
I can wholeheartedly agree with Chesterton that mere existence itself outweighs infinitely anything that can be said against it. I love his words about the abyss of light that lies at the back of all our minds. As one Church Father said: "Concepts create idols. Only wonder understands".
But, a step below that (as it were) I feel a constant wonder and gratitude at how things are in their simplest categories. Space and time: man and woman: sleep and waking etc.
And finally, a lifelong humanism, best expressed perhaps in Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man" speech.
But it came into my mind through reading the Parnell biography I'm reading. They really did love to be ceremonial back then. It was customary for a person chairing a meeting to surrender the chair so that someone else could occupy it and call for a vote of thanks for the previous chair. Unyoking horses from a guest of honour's carriages so that the crowd could pull it themselves was another practice. And so on....the book is full of toasts, banners, rosettes, banquets, parades, processions, custom-written ballads, and so forth. And this seems to have been a popular appetite, not just an upper-class thing.
I guess you like this sort of thing or you don't. I like it. There is far too little ceremony in today's society, for my liking. I'm always pleased when I walk past the O'Reilly Hall in UCD and there are graduates in their robes and mortar-boards outside. It's one of the few ceremonial occasions we have left. One of the lecturers told me that, some time ago, there was a proposal to remove Latin from the graduation ceremonies. It quickly died a death, in the face of popular opposition. People wanted their "Harry Potter moment", as he put it.
One of my favourite funny passages from Chesterton, which I came across just now while looking for something else. The old duffer can still make me laugh out loud in this era of alternative comedy and dank memes. Stick with it.
"I cannot help having a dim suspicion that dignity has something to do with style; but anyhow the gestures, like the songs, of my grandfather’s time and type had a good deal to do with dignity. But, used as he was to ceremonial manners, he must have been a good deal mystified by a strange gentleman who entered the office and, having conferred with my father briefly on business, asked in a hushed voice if he might have the high privilege of being presented to the more ancient or ancestral head of the firm. He then approached my grandfather as if the old gentleman had been a sort of shrine, with profound bows and reverential apostrophes.
“You are a Monument,” said the strange gentleman, “Sir, you are a Landmark.”
My grandfather, slightly flattered, murmured politely that they had certainly been in Kensington for some little time.
“You are an Historical Character,” said the admiring stranger. “You have changed the whole destiny of Church and State.”
My grandfather still assumed airily that this might be a poetical manner of describing a successful house-agency. But a light began to break on my father, who had thought his way through all the High Church and Broad Church movements and was well-read in such things. He suddenly remembered the case of “Westerton versus Liddell” in which a Protestant churchwarden prosecuted a parson for one of the darker crimes of Popery, possibly wearing a surplice.
“And I only hope,” went on the stranger firmly, still addressing the Protestant Champion, “that the services at the Parish Church are now conducted in a manner of which you approve.”
My grandfather observed in a genial manner that he didn’t care how they were conducted. These remarkable words of the Protestant Champion caused his worshipper to gaze upon him with a new dawn of wonder, when my father intervened and explained the error pointing out the fine shade that divides Westerton and Chesterton. I may add that my grandfather, when the story was told, always used to insist that he had added to the phrase “I don’t care how they are conducted,” the qualifying words (repeated with a grave motion ot the hand) “provided it is with reverence and sincerity.” But I grieve to say that sceptics in the younger generation believed this to have been an afterthought.
Here's something odd. I recently found myself reading about a Lord Mayor of Dublin back in the day. It occurred to me that I didn't know who the current Lord Mayor of Dublin is. (I'm guessing you don't, either. I asked a few people and they didn't know. It's James Geoghegan of Fine Gael.)
And, for some reason-- how can you explain this?-- I derive GREAT PLEASURE from reflecting that the Lord Mayor of Dublin is an ancient title, going back to 1229, and that (most of the time) most people don't know who it is. The pleasure is from the combination of those facts. I can't explain it. I could analyse it in a long discursion, but nobody wants that.
I suppose I only notice the Lord Mayor when he/she does something controversial or annoying. Looking at the recent holders of the office, I remember Caroline Conroy because she got rid of the live animal Crib at the Mansion House. And I remember Hazel Chu because everything she says and does is annoying.
"I mentioned that Lord Monboddo told me, he awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking an air bath; after which he went to bed again, and slept two hours more. Johnson, who was always ready to beat down any thing that seemed to be exhibited with disproportionate importance, thus observed: 'I suppose, Sir, there is no more in it than this, he awakes at four, and cannot sleep till he chills himself, and makes the warmth of the bed a grateful sensation.'"
From The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791).
Interesting in the light of what historians are now discovering about "biphasic sleep".
For many years now (easily a decade) I've set my alarm two hours earlier than I have to get up, so I can wake up and immediately go back to sleep. Somehow I feel it prepares me for the shock of getting up and makes it easier. Otherwise I feel I've just closed my eyes and have to get up again. I've been told this is very unhealthy but perhaps I'm just continuing a venerable tradition!
But the genius of Boswell to remember these little trifles...
