Karen Harrington is away promoting her new release, Janeology. But not to worry! Join guest blogger Grace Andreacchi during the month of April for further ruminations on the the fabulous life of the emerging writer.
It’s a fine gift to be able to say what you mean, and when I say a gift I also mean, of course, an art. The pursuit of this ideal has occupied great minds down the tolling ages. Some writers require for this purpose a vast vocabulary and an infinitely flexible syntax, the liberal use of the semi-colon; in this way they create a scene in the virtual theatre of the mind, enabling us to see, hear, even taste as they do; they press upon us the full richness of the borrowed experience – this is what it is like to be me, this is the colour and heft of my mistress’s hair, this is the sound of her voice, this the exact replica in words of her perfume; thus they draw us inexorably, fastening us with slim golden word chains, the carefully applied cosmetics of adjectives and adverbs, the devious charms of the dependent clause; and now they have hold of us well and truly they draw us under, ever deeper, until we are so lost in the shimmering aquamarine depths of the sentence we daren’t come up for breath in case we get the bends; and so we surrender, plunging right down to the bottom of that resounding ocean. Others do not make use of these methods. They say what they mean quickly, and get out. Both have their points.
For a writer the challenge to ‘say what you mean’ involves daily choices of this kind, and those choices are themselves predicated on the general command of our one and only tool – language. I’d have no rigid corset of rules – language lives and breathes, its beauty is ever-changing, constantly renewed. But a nicely turned phrase, an elegant syntax are as sweet a thing as a Dior gown on the right woman. It’s not enough to mean what you say, ‘Even the gentiles do that.’ We ought to say what we mean, be it with infinite subtlety or disarming candour.
Whether or not a writer means what she says is another matter entirely. It’s possible to mean a great deal more than you say, and, of course, a deal less. For an example of the former, the great poet of Heian Japan, Ono No Komachi:
Seeing the moonlight, spilling down through these trees,
My heart fills to the brim with autumn. (tr. Hirschfield & Aratami)
Examples of the latter we will, alas, always have with us.
Copyright © 2008 by Grace Andreacchi Hadas
Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years – sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.
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Your words tempt me to find an ocean of words, jump in and experience both life and death there.
Malcolm