Words and Our Lives
By Eli Siegel

     We can love each word, because every word is a great poetic success. The word the by itself is poetry. So is the word so. So is give, and bosh. Every word that has come to exist and be used by people is a success. Otherwise, why would it be used? 

    Since all poetry is a matter of words and their relations, it is good to look at some words closely. I take the best-known stanza of Thomas Gray's "Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude." What it says in language other than Gray's is: when a person has been sick and gets out of bed, the way he sees things is so pleasant that it is wonderful. 

    The word see is different each time we have another word going along with it. If we say "the antelope sees," it is different from 'the grandmother sees." "The antelope sees" happens to be a pretty effective phrase, because we don't think of the antelope seeing. "The grandmother sees" is also affecting, because we may not think of a grandmother seeing, for a different reason. So the word see can be used dramatically in relation to what goes with it. 

    This happens to be the first word in the stanza, and it is used in the imperative mood. The word is used as a request, so it has a sharpness to it. If it were "You see," it would be softer; "See" has a sharpness. 

    Words have all the qualities of steak; words have all the qualities of caterpillars and mosquitoes. They happen to be the representatives of reality, and reality is the most versatile thing there is. So the word see is already a rich thing, but here it is used sharply. 

Continued from TRO 1399, titled "Words, Sex, and Kindness."

Words, Honest & Musical 

All these words have got to do with every living person. A person might say, "What have I got to do with the word and? I just use it. I don't know how it came." People have said that it comes from the word add— that what you began with was verbs and nouns, and then you had to get more subtle so you got words like prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions. 

     We have the word breathe. Why is it that the word is so very big? The word breathe stands for something, and it seems that millions of people for hundreds of years have said, "That word will do. It really covers the subject. What I do with my lungs is covered by this word." It has a certain sound, and when we think of breathe and compare it to lost, lost seems hurried, with the st, and breathe seems very soft and leisurely. Then, breathe, though different from lost, is also different from vigour. Is it all by chance? Is this all just a collection of sounds? Is this all just pretty? Not at all. Because every one of these sounds has something to do with the fate of people. 

     After having a quatrain with the first and third lines rhyming, and the second and fourth, Gray changes, and for the rest of the stanza has two couplets, with vale and gale, skies and paradise: 

     If we feel that Gray's words have been put down honestly and at the same time they come to music, and they say something that we want said, we can say that it is beautiful; because music and honesty will make for beauty. Naturalness and richness will make for beauty. 

Conclusion: from TRO 1400, titled "What Impels Us."

Democratically Created

We have the word meanest. The est is the superlative, and there is a sense of excess about meanest, because superlative is next to excess. Then we have floweret. Et is one of the endings that English uses to show something small—as in executivelet, meaning little executive. Or kitchenette, meaning little kitchen, or pitcherlet, little pitcher. There are other endings meaning small— there is kin. And they can be used sometimes in a natural way, sometimes not. If one wanted to insult Senator Dulles, one could call him senatorlet. 

     The point is that words undergo transformations, changes. They undergo changes because the mind of man wants them to undergo changes. All these technical things were never planned by any professor. When somebody said for the first time "kitchenette," the professor wasn't behind it. When somebody said "pantalet," the professor wasn't behind it. When someone said in French "mignonette," the professor wasn't behind it. These things come from a desire to see the world truly and flexibly. 

     When we think of the line "The meanest floweret of the vale," we have a feeling of pride and also of humility—and of something mighty beautiful. There is a certain relation in the line of est and et; and after having the diminutive, after floweret, we have the widening of vale. It would be good to think of just how the first word of the stanza, see, goes with vale. With see we get to a point; with vale we seem to be spreading out. It is very soft. So what we feel through ourselves is this relation of sharpness and softness. Then we have the wideness in mean coming through the delicacy of floweret. Suppose we had "the meanest little flower"—it would be awful! 

     "The simplest note that swells the gale": here again we have pride, because this is the superlative; yet it seems to have in it humility. One could say, "He is the modestest person," or as Carlyle would say, "he is the reluctantest person." I advise you not to say it unless you know whom you are talking to; but Carlyle would say it: "Parliament went about in the most dishonest and comfortablest manner"—and he would point out the est. 

     After dealing with these dainty things—one little flower, the simplest note—Gray has "The common sun, the air, the skies, / To him are opening paradise." Because we have not seen these things for a while, when we do see them it is like heaven. So the sentiment is true. I could object here and there to a phrase—a word like swells I think is not the best word there. However, the upshot of the whole thing is a collection of words serving a thought, and music honestly and richly had. 

     Anyone should ask himself which is better, "To him are opening paradise" or "Are opening paradise to him." The word paradise coming last seems to clinch it. 

     The words here have a long history. It isn't to be expected that every person go into the history of every word, or the placing. But I think it can be expected, if a person is going to like himself, that he like words, and that he not just take them as things to be used, but think of them as representing the history of man and the true proletarian instinct of man—because language was democratically created. There is nothing more democratic than language, and every time we meet a language we should bow to it and say: Here man worked instinctively and came to something! 

     We should like every language. There are different effects to be had in every language. And in each instance, words are put together to bring help and to get help.