[In the metaphysical poetry of 16th century
England, a complaint is a song, a poem, by a spurned lover to his beloved. Thus the title of Philip Roth’s breakthrough
novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, is a
witty double entendre, for the novel
is both an account of Alexander Portnoy’s emotional disorders that bring him
into psychoanalysis and also a love song to his beloved, which is to say, of
course, to his mother.]
In the past few days, I have revealed myself on this blog to
be a prig, a prude, a reactionary when it comes to English usage. Indeed, were I more of a fan of the old TV
show Seinfeld, I might even describe
myself as a Language Nazi. I quibble
over presently, I fulminate against beg the question, I draw a line in the
sand at the incorrect use of “transpire” to mean “happen” rather than “become
known” [it originally means “to breathe about.”]
I am, of course, well aware that in these actions I stand
not on solid ground but rather on linguistic quicksand. Comparative Linguists are fond of pointing
out that language evolves and grows and changes endlessly, despite the efforts
of William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.
Indeed, one often finds that although people living close to one another
can understand one another quite well, one can, by a series of geographical dislocations,
end up with two communities, speaking ostensibly the same language, who are
mutually incomprehensible. I once
listened to Noam Chomsky on YouTube describing this well-known phenomenon. Nobody, he observed, ever actually speaks
Correct English. What made his discourse
especially delicious was that it was couched easily, effortlessly, fluently in
precisely the Correct English that he was claiming no one speaks.
So why do I do it?
There are two reasons, and the purpose of this post is merely to set
them forth, not, heaven knows, to try to infect others with my disorder.
The first reason is that there are endlessly many logical
distinctions available to be made, and in my view one of the functions of
language is to make them. “That poses a
question so urgent that it virtually demands to be raised” means something
different from “That simply assumes what you claim to be trying to prove and
thus reduces what you have said to a miserable tautology.” This is a real distinction. It can obviously be expressed in many
different ways. Which we choose is a
matter of convention, and conventions in language, as in dress or body
adornment, change over time. But using “begs
the question” to mean both obliterates a real distinction, and thus contributes
to the coarsening and dumbing down of discourse.
The second reason is aesthetic, not logical. One of my principal aesthetic pleasures is
the contemplation of the work of an artist who simultaneously embraces and transcends
the formal constraints of an art form.
Consider, as an example, the fugue.
The rules of musical composition governing the writing of a fugue are
severe indeed, stipulating as they do the sequence of voices or lines, the
interval at which each enters, and so forth.
In the hands of a journeyman composer, these restraints are all too
evident, and conspire to produce a work that is tedious and predictable. But not when Bach writes a fugue. Bach plays with the rules, teases them,
inverts them, all the while conforming to them rigorously. The result is a beauty that seems both
spontaneous, free form, utterly expressive, and yet is a perfect instantiation
of the inviolable rules of the fugue.
Thus, we may imagine, God played with His laws of Nature as He created
the world.
Language is, to be sure, a medium of communication, but it
is also an art form in the right hands. A
great writer produces graceful, seemingly effortless prose that articulates
with precision complex concepts while conforming strictly to the rules that define
correct usage. The language of Plato, of
Marx, of Hume – and yes, of Chomsky at his best – is as much a work of art as a
Bach fugue or a Dickinson poem. It takes
our breath away.
It is not easy to write in this manner, even if, like Moliere’s bourgeois gentilhomme, one has been
speaking prose all one’s life without knowing it. It requires focused attention and much
practice. I recall once watching Yo Yo Ma
play the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. As he played, he leaned back, away from the
instrument, as though he were listening to the music rather than producing it,
while his arms and hands did the most complex, precise things to create that
music. Since I am an amateur mediocre
violist, who has actually played one of those Suites arranged for my
instrument, I have some dim sense of the years of endless work that the young Yo Yo Ma did to achieve that magical transcendence.
That, in a few words, is why I flinch when someone is
described as disinterested when what
is meant is that she is uninterested.