Freedom for the Soul in Skill with Words
I have been realizing, since I began work on Shakespeare's plays, how very much we moderns and postmoderns have fettered our souls by our disregard for the art of speaking well.
Though I believe I have had one of the best classical educations (both in primary and secondary schools) currently available, I know really rather little about languages, and even less about the art of arranging syntax, images, and sounds for maximum effect. I know almost nothing about rhetoric, and am only slightly less ignorant of logic.
I used to have a certain contempt for debaters, viewing them as sophists of the sort found in Aristophanes' Clouds. Their word-juggling, especially combined with their logician's premise-and-conclusion play (which was as much sleight-of-hand to me as the tricks of any magician), left me with the sense that no truth lived behind the back of such intellectual sparkle.
But now, oh---how I wish more and more for a little of their art! How many times I have struggled to express the deep thoughts of my soul, and despaired, not because there are no words (though these too fail, eventually), but because I don't know what those words are, or how to combine them. Thank God indeed that I have no husband, for I would not know how to tell him the devotion of my heart. Thank God that I have no children, for I cannot describe God to them even as well as human speech might permit, had I skill in it.
It is a bleak thought. Ah, me, what we have lost! What can I say about trust, honor, duty, truth, pleasure, delight, richness, virtue, beauty, love, faithfulness, grace, truth, fear, safety, change, rest, war, peace, heroism, villainy, and a host of others: what can I say about any of these, except in platitudes that offend the worth of that which they are meant to express? And it is no good saying "well, to excel in words was the fashion of another day, and to excel in images, in computer chips and montages, is the fashion of this"---no, that will not do. Fashions come and go, but words remain. Words, spoken and written, are the natural expressive mode of the human soul. How my soul is imprisoned, lacking words!
It is a bitter realization. It is an aching knowledge. However, I thank God for it, for in it I have cause to thank Him again that He made me a creature capable (through the Spirit) of change. I can learn. I can stretch and grow. I can study, observe, humbly submit myself to learn, and be diligent in practice. My soul can be freed for expression as it has been freed from death. I have been brought from darkness into light, but as a mute. Now I can be taught to sing the praises of that same light that makes me almost to burst with the need to tell about it.
There is freedom for the soul in skill with words. It is not an ultimate freedom, nor perhaps an essential freedom. But I am convinced that the ability to speak about God to God, and to other human beings, and to the very rocks and dirt, is among the greatest human pleasures, and is certainly the next greatest human duty, after love.
Though I believe I have had one of the best classical educations (both in primary and secondary schools) currently available, I know really rather little about languages, and even less about the art of arranging syntax, images, and sounds for maximum effect. I know almost nothing about rhetoric, and am only slightly less ignorant of logic.
I used to have a certain contempt for debaters, viewing them as sophists of the sort found in Aristophanes' Clouds. Their word-juggling, especially combined with their logician's premise-and-conclusion play (which was as much sleight-of-hand to me as the tricks of any magician), left me with the sense that no truth lived behind the back of such intellectual sparkle.
But now, oh---how I wish more and more for a little of their art! How many times I have struggled to express the deep thoughts of my soul, and despaired, not because there are no words (though these too fail, eventually), but because I don't know what those words are, or how to combine them. Thank God indeed that I have no husband, for I would not know how to tell him the devotion of my heart. Thank God that I have no children, for I cannot describe God to them even as well as human speech might permit, had I skill in it.
It is a bleak thought. Ah, me, what we have lost! What can I say about trust, honor, duty, truth, pleasure, delight, richness, virtue, beauty, love, faithfulness, grace, truth, fear, safety, change, rest, war, peace, heroism, villainy, and a host of others: what can I say about any of these, except in platitudes that offend the worth of that which they are meant to express? And it is no good saying "well, to excel in words was the fashion of another day, and to excel in images, in computer chips and montages, is the fashion of this"---no, that will not do. Fashions come and go, but words remain. Words, spoken and written, are the natural expressive mode of the human soul. How my soul is imprisoned, lacking words!
It is a bitter realization. It is an aching knowledge. However, I thank God for it, for in it I have cause to thank Him again that He made me a creature capable (through the Spirit) of change. I can learn. I can stretch and grow. I can study, observe, humbly submit myself to learn, and be diligent in practice. My soul can be freed for expression as it has been freed from death. I have been brought from darkness into light, but as a mute. Now I can be taught to sing the praises of that same light that makes me almost to burst with the need to tell about it.
There is freedom for the soul in skill with words. It is not an ultimate freedom, nor perhaps an essential freedom. But I am convinced that the ability to speak about God to God, and to other human beings, and to the very rocks and dirt, is among the greatest human pleasures, and is certainly the next greatest human duty, after love.
posted by Praelucor at 11:35 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home