Grunts from the Wordgrump (2)

Some grunts are grudging admission of error by the Wordgrump himself.  Or, in tune with contemporary apologia, “I regret that mistakes were made.”

Because I am rapidly approaching the age when one must make arrangements to have oneself looked after, my keeper, uh…spouse of forty-four years, has agreed to keep an eye on this blog for errata and miscues grammatical or stylistic.  So I have recently had to correct a reference in a post to my grandfather as my “great-uncle”; and more gallingly, to change “affect” back to “effect” despite my innovative defense of “affect” intentionally used as a noun to serve context.  I know many who would have been cowed or convinced by my rationale.  Anita, however, is consistently unimpressed by verbal fandangos and immovable and imperturbable on the principles and practices of grammar.

            In point of fact, a hallmark of our union has been a perdurable mutual interest in the usage norms of Standard English.  We continue to have spirited discussions about the polysyllabic, the pluperfect, the present indicative, the possessive, the periodic; also, whether a particular paragraph is peregrine; or— when alliteration has achieved annoyance.

            I will never be bored or lonely so long as I have my soul mate to debate the right words writ in the right order.

"When they killed Mick. . . "

            I am first generation Irish. My father was born in Northern Ireland, County Armagh, in Crossmaglen, “where there are more rogues than honest men.”  My mother was born in the South, in the Republic, Gort, County Galway, adjacent to Coole Park, the demesne of Lady Gregory. My parents were emigrants. Growing up, I heard mention of figures such as Yeats and Lady Gregory in a rudimentary literary context.  They were the big house folk who started the Abbey Theater.  A family keepsake that hangs in my home is a picture of a 1904 performance of Lady Gregory's "Spreading the News."  A handbill announcing my grandfather's public auction of meadowland is affixed to the wall of the stage set.  Whether this is hem of the garment stuff or an accidental souvenir I really don't know.  I do know that I have always remembered my father's terse hand-washing explanation of his disenchantment with Irish nationalism: "When they killed Mick Collins, I was done with the lot of 'em."  That statement intrigued me as a boy although I did not understand it. Now that I know something of the history and the principals, I can appreciate the social and political conditions in Irish culture that created the need to both valorize and revile heroes, specifically Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.

Within a span of forty-five years an emergent Irish nation saw the rise and fall of two compelling public figures, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) and Michael Collins (1890-1922).  Parnell's career as parlimentary "obstructionist" leader on issues of land reform and home rule impacted the imagination of James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist and "Ivy Day in the Committee Room."  Yeats also drew upon the promise of the "uncrowned king," most fully in "Parnell's Funeral."  The response to Michael Collins has been different.  Even though the actual accomplishments of Collins as Director of Intelligence during the Anglo-Irish War and Commander-in-Chief of the Free State forces during the Civil War would be seen by many as surpassing Parnell, it is a puzzle that no major Irish writer was sparked to shape a lasting literary response by Collins's career.  Nonetheless Collins's reputation among “common people” is strong, and is sustained in popular fiction, verse, story and song.  The successful feature film, “Michael Collins,” directed by Neil Jordan, is a case in point.

            Why then did Parnell, whose effect on the Irish social order constituted only potential and promise, stir more formal literary response from Ireland's writers than Collins, whose impact is still felt today in the republic birthed by the treaty he shaped and signed?

            The literary and popular responses to Parnell and Collins may serve as benchmark representations of the Irish hero.  Why do we idolize and why do we revile?  Do public figures become iconic through the influence of literary response?  Are literary responses themselves determined by political allegiance?  These general questions are germane to most literary inquiry.  But they seem to have a particular cogency in Modern Irish Literature.

Grunts from the Wordgrump

>Is pleonasm a cure for a literary ailment or a cool way to deliver charientisms?  Answer: it depends on whether you think the delivery of sly insults is enabled or hindered by verbosity.

>David Crystal writing in the introduction of Fowler's classic first edition of . . . Modern English Usage:  "I have encountered people who inveigh against the split infinitive, prepositions at the end of sentences, and opening a sentence with but--to take just three topics--and who cite Modern English Usage in their support, evidently unaware of Fowler's strong condemnation of their pedantry.

>If I ever use lol, multiple !!!!!!!!!!! marks, omg or similar abominations in this blog, I will forfeit my Wordgrump appellation.

Sick of beauty?

  

   The truth in the old cliché about travel broadening one’s view of things can sometimes emerge in an unexpected way.  Last winter, while vacationing in Hawaii, a guide for our group recounted the most surprising question he had been asked. “Russ, do you ever get sick of all this beauty?”  A startling query. Sick of beauty?  Beauty energizes, revivifies, captures by rapture the compelling and restorative.  Right?  Russ responded to the query thoughtfully.  “Some people are so overwhelmed by what they see here, they have no place to put it.  And so they can’t grasp it.  They get worn out.”  That reply prompted me to set down some additional reflections on the question.

   When we recall the line from a Wallace Stevens’ poem, “. . .Death is the mother of beauty…,” we observe another arresting juxtaposition—death/mother/beauty.  Why these admixtures of the entropic and the expansive, the marvelous and the morose, the sought for and the aversive.  When confronted with the beautiful in any form, we are unavoidably challenged.  It’s never as easy as Aquinas’s definition—“that which being seen, pleases”—seems to suggest.  We may blink, exclaim, sigh or catch our breath to make sure we are seeing something so glorious we could not have imagined it on our own.  My example is the first time I saw the ocean.  I was very young, riding in the back seat of the family car, which was moving up a hill that placed more sky than horizon in my ken.  My father said, “OK, young man, you’re going to see it in a moment.” And at the crest there it was. More water than I could take in or believe existed.  And endless sand.  The Pacific.  Blue and tan.  Everywhere.  My parents eased me in.

   Once you’ve seen “that which pleases” you’ve only begun.  You have to continue to look.  A vista like the ocean demands concentration and energy to limn the land and see the sea.  Nature’s beauty (or what Hopkins termed, “God’s Grandeur,”) is so large and varied we employ renderings such as photographs, paintings, and written descriptions to provide us with more takes and angles.   By those efforts we honor the gifts of perception and understanding we have been given.  And we heed the advice of Henry James, “strive to be a person upon whom nothing is lost.”  But that’s not easy.  The appreciation of beauty can enervate as well as inspire.  It will never make us “sick” but from time to time we will find ourselves sated.  Then we need to find that place inside ourselves to put and protect the beautiful.  We’ll be hungry again soon enough. 

Blog Aborning!

   Why have I started to blog?  I am freeing myself from facebook—sort of. Facebook is primarily happyland.  It’s good for social contact, for staying in touch with family and friends, keeping tabs on your kith and kin.  But if you want to develop a thought or refine an observation, it’s a little like dancing in the dark by yourself. So, I'm looking for a bit more verbal room.  Where posts can perambulate, perhaps even percolate.

   What's with the moniker, "Casey's Whollywrit"?  Well first, it’s an obvious pun on “Holy Writ,” a reference to scripture.  And as one daughter pointed out, “Your posts on FB can only be so long, but with this . . . you can go to the blog and find the w-h-o-l-e  d-e-a-l.”  She and her sister collapsed in laughter at that witticism. I didn’t have to ask, a la Archie Bunker, “Was that a shot?”  I know when I’ve been punked. It’s all right.  I'm certain they love me. They have to; the will can always be changed.
   I mean “wholly” to convey not only completeness but conscious attention to the right words in the right order.  Two writers feed into that purpose.  Yeats gave us the norm that “words alone are certain good,” in this passage from an early  poem:

                                    But O, sick children of the world,
                                    Of all the many changing things
                                    In dreary dancing past us whirled,
                                    To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
                                    Words alone are certain good.

   And Mark Twain’s trenchant comment that "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug" set a standard hard to reach.  To make the attempt is to valorize careful diction, choosing one word over another.  I can't imagine writing or speaking anything without making conscious choices.

Finally, I intend to satisfy myself first in what I write here.  While comments are welcome and appreciated, my content will not be comment driven or shaped to evoke the equivalent of that little red flag that shows someone has clicked "Like" or left a note.  I've still got facebook for that.  Don't we all.