Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Various

Various

Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

THE WONDERS OF WORDS

Every nation has its legend of a 'golden age' when all was young and fresh and fair 'comme les couleurs primitives de la nature' even before the existence of this gaunt shadow of Sorrow the shadow of ourselves that ever stalks in company with us; an epoch of Saturnian rule, when gods held sweet converse with men, and man primeval bounded with all the elasticity of god-given juvenility:

And even now, in spite of our atheism and our apathism, amid all the overwhelming world-influences of this great 'living Present' the ghost of the dead Past will come rushing back upon us with its solemn voices and its infinite wailings of pity: but soft and faint it comes; for the wild jarrings of the Now almost prevent us from hearing its still, small voices. It

Besides, what is History but the story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing itself in jubilee and wail?

So it is in the individual (for is not the individual ever the rudimental, formula-like expression of that awful problem which nations and humanity itself are slowly and painfully working out?): in the 'moonlight of memory' these sorrowful mementos revisit every one of us; and

and vanitas vanitatum! are not only the satisfied croakings of blasé Childe Harolds, but our universal experience; while from childhood's gushing glee even unto manhood's sad satiety, we feel that all are nought but the phantasmagoria

Listen now to a snatch of melody:

So saith the mild Braminical Wordsworth. Now it will be remembered that Wordsworth, in that glorious ode whence we extract the above, develops the Platonic idea (shall we call Platonic that which has been entertained by the wise and the feeling of all times?) of a shadowy recollection of past and eternal existence in the profundities of the Divine Heart. 'It sounds forth here a mournful remembrance of a faded world of gods and heroes as the echoing plaint for the loss of man's original, celestial state, and paradisiacal innocence.' And then we have those transcendent lines that come to us like aromatic breezes blowing from the Spice Islands:

But,

what have the golden age and Platonic dicta to do with our word-ramble? A good deal. For we will endeavor to show that words, being the very sign-manual of man's convictions, contain the elements of what may throw light on both. To essay this:

Why is it that we generally speak of death as a 'return,' or a 'return home'? And how is it that this same idea has so remarkably interwoven itself with the very warp and woof of our language and poetry?  so that in our fervency, we can sing:

Does not the very idea (not to mention the composition of the word) of a 'return' involve a previously having been in the place? And we can scarcely call that 'home' where we have never been before. So, that 'old Hebrew book' sublimely tells us that 'the spirit of the man returneth to God who gave it.'

Is it possible that these can be obscure intimations of that bygone time when WE were rocked in the bosom of the Divine consciousness? Perhaps And now if the reader will pardon a piece of moralizing, we would say that these expressions teach us in the most emphatic way that 'This is not our rest.' So that when we have dived into every mine of knowledge and drunk from every fountain of pleasure; when, with Dante, we arrive at the painful conclusion that

(since, indeed, the Finite can never gain entire satisfaction in itself) we may not despair, but still the heart-throbbings, knowing that He who has for a season enveloped us in the mantle of this sleep-rounded life, and thrown around himself the drapery of the universe spangling it with stars will again take us back to his fatherly bosom.

Somewhat analogous to these, and arguing the eternity of our existence, we have such words as 'decease,' which merely imports a withdrawal; 'demise,' implying also a laying down, a removal. By the way, it is rather curious to observe the notions in the mind of mankind that have given rise to the words expressing 'death.' Thus we have the Latin word mors allied, perhaps, to the Greek μιρα and μορα,1 from μερομαι to portion out, to assign. Even this, however, there was a repulsion to using; and both the Greeks and Romans were wont to slip clear of the employment of their θνατος, mors, etc., by such circumlocutions as vitam suam mutare, transire e seculo; κοιμσατο chalkeon hypnon] he slept the brazen sleep (Homer's Iliad, λ, 241); δ σκτος οσσ εκλυψεν and darkness covered his eyes (Iliad, Ζ, 11); or he completeth the destiny of life, etc. This reminds us of the French aversion to uttering their mort. These expressions, again, are suggestive of our 'fate,' with an application similar to the Latin fatum, which, indeed, is none other than 'id quod fatum est a deis' a God's word. So that in this sense we may all be considered 'fatalists,' and all things fated. Why not? However, in the following from Festus, it is the 'deil' that makes the assertion:

In which we may agree that his majesty was not so very far wrong.

In which we may agree that his majesty was not so very far wrong.

Moreover, 'Why should we mourn departed friends?' since we know that they are but lying in the μοιμητριον (cemetery) the sleeping place; or, as the vivid old Hebrew faith would have it, the house of the living (Bethaim). Is not this testimony for the soul's immortality worth as much as all the rhapsody written thereon, from Plato to Addison?

Some words are the very essence of poetry; redolent with all beauteous phantasies; odoriferous as flowers in spring, or discoursing an awful organ-melody, like to the re-bellowing of the hoarse-sounding sea. For instance, those two noble old Saxon words 'main' and 'deep,' that we apply to the ocean what a music is there about them! The 'main' is the maegen the strength, the strong one; the great 'deep' is precisely what the name imports. Our employment of 'deep' reminds of the Latin altum, which, properly signifying high or lofty, is, by a familiar species of metonymy, put for its opposite.

By the way, how exceedingly timid are our poets and poetasters generally of the open sea la pleine mer. They linger around the shores thereof, in a vain attempt to sit snugly there à leur aise, while they 'call spirits from the vasty deep' that never did and never would come on such conditions, though they grew hoarse over it. We all remember how Sandy Smith labors with making abortive grabs at its amber tails, main, etc. (rather slippery articles on the whole) but he is not

Hail shade of Thomson! But hear how the exile sings it:

This we, for our part, would pronounce one of the very best open-sea sketches we have ever met with; and if the reader will take even our unequal rendering, he may think so too.

'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the 'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and 'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is levant, raising himself up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from orior; while 'occident' is, of course, the opposite in signification, namely, the declining, the 'setting' place.

'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is τς λθης ροταμς the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a dip therein.

There exists not a more poetic expression than 'Hyperborean,' i. e. υπερβρεος beyond Boreas; or, as a modern poet finely and faithfully expands it:

Homer never manifested himself to be more of a poet than in the creation of this word. By the way, the Hyperboreans were regarded by the ancients as an extremely happy and pious people.

How few of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' (μβροτος, immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance Milton's 'ambrosial flowers.' It was, like the 'nectar' (νκταρ, an elixir vitæ), considered a veritable elixir of immortality, and consequently denied to men.

The Immortals, in their golden halls of 'many-topped Olympus,' seem to have led a merry-enough life of it over their nectar and ambrosia, their laughter and intrigues.

But not half as jolly were they as were Odin and the Iotun dead drunk in Valhalla over their mead and ale, from

The daisy (Saxon Daeges ege) has often been cited as fragrant with poesy. It is the Day's Eye: we remember Chaucer's affectionate lines:

Nor is he alone in his love for the

An odoriferous-enough (etymologic) bouquet could we cull from the names of Flora's children. What a beauty is there in the 'primrose,' which is just the prime-rose; in the 'Beauty of the Night' and the 'Morning Glory,' except when a pompous scientific terminology, would convert it into a convolvulus! So, too, the 'Anemone' (νεμος, the wind-flower), into which it is fabled Venus changed her Adonis. What a story of maiden's love does the 'Sweet William' tell; and how many charming associations cluster around the 'Forget-me-not!' Again, is there not poetry in calling a certain family of minute crustacea, whose two eyes meet and form a single round spot in the centre of the head, 'Cyclops' (κκλοψ, circular-eyed)?

And if any one thinketh that there cannot be poetry even in the dry technicalities of science, let him take such an expression as 'coral,' which, in the original Greek, κορλιον, signifies a sea damsel; or the chemical 'cobalt,' 'which,' remarks Webster, 'is said to be the German Kobold, a goblin, the demon of the mines; so called by miners, because cobalt was troublesome to miners, and at first its value was not known.' Ah! but these terms were created before Science, in its rigidity, had taught us the truth in regard to these matters. Yes! and fortunate is it for us that we still have words, and ideas clustering around these words, that have not yet been chilled and exanimated by the frigid touch of an empirical knowledge. For

And may benign heaven deliver us from those buckram individuals who imagine that Nature is as narrow and rigid as their own contracted selves, and who would seek to array her in their own exquisite bottle-green bifurcations and a gilet à la mode! These characters always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the lion's hide thrown round him and the long, flowing peruke of the times! O Jupiter tonans! let us have either the lion or the ass only let it be veracious!