Erstwhile Eloquence
I love words.
I love them the way a painter loves burnt ochre or cerulean blue. The way a chef loves saffron and celeriac.
As a child I remember being sent to the dictionary when I did not know how to spell a word. The obvious question of childhood—how to find a word I did not already know how to spell—was met with a consistent response: Sound it out.
Ah phonics, the Swiss Army knife of learning to form words from letters based on accepted usage. It was an indispensable tool in my archeological expeditions into the far reaches of that repository of every word in the English language, from the archaic to the modern. Don’t even get me started on etymology or we’ll be here all day…
Erstwhile: adj. former, previous, in the past;
from the root-erst, the superlative of early,
as in earliest, thus archaic.
I came across the word erstwhile in something I was reading the other day and realized I had not seen it in a while. Had it, as a word, fulfilled its meaning? What about all the other words that seemed to have fallen out of current usage because mass communication was aimed at a third grade reading level? In this age of social media—which is often anything but sociable—language was being reduced to only the seemingly essential; in fact, it’s pared down even more than that in the quest for only 145 characters. I wonder how Hawthorne would have fared. Hemingway would likely have done alright.
Being new to the medium of the little blue birdie, I am learning a discipline from which my writing could benefit: that is, making every word count in my quest to compress meaningful thought into virtual space the length and duration of a chirp. Words do matter, but they also count. Even the spaces between them count. How much can I get out of one word so that I do not waste any, as if the words themselves were in short supply? Maybe it only seems that way because the study of them, the discovery of their myriad species amongst the varied genus, has been neglected in an age that moves at the speed of fiber optics. The dictionary contains so many, waiting unused, in a culture too hurried to notice on their way to the next craze, the next cause, the next crisis. In the search for the pithy, is something of value being discarded? Is the emphasis on quick commercials of content leading to dismantling the purpose of communication: To be understood and To understand?
If there is some shortage of words why throw away the erstwhile just because they are no longer vogue. Gems from the same neighborhood as erstwhile: erica, a species of heath, low and full and evergreen; eristic, characterized by disputatious, often subtle and specious reasoning; errantry, a knight’s roaming quest, ersatz- substitute, synthetic. Honestly, on Twitter one can find ersatz Don Quixotes aplenty, engaged in errantry, chasing causes armed only with the eristic, often missing the lasting value of erstwhile concepts, whose worth is as evergreen as erica.
Just say’n…
There is something that can get lost in the quest for simplicity alone. Eloquence. Communication, in art or word, that is persuasive, moving, vivid. Eloquent writing can take one on a deeper journey of unexpected delight in the description of a scene, unforgettable insight in the revelation of a character; it is the plot pausing to take in the view, to notice, even cherish the fortuitous encounter.
Consider the poet, the connoisseur of words who wastes none. Even in ancient times, eloquence was the apex sought in rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Communication is at the heart of all art. The composer, the painter, the author—all seeking not only to convey, but to elicit a response. Much of modernity is about the swift and the spare, but in the relentless pursuit of such, eloquence is sacrificed. Until all that remains on the altar is the trivial cliche. For the writer, as for the designer, the zenith is the clean line.
“Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.”
As I thought about how the right word, even an old one, can say what strings of simple, overused words cannot convey, I was reminded of that scene from Remains of the Day. The housekeeper, a young Emma Thompson, literally pries a book from the hands of Anthony Hopkins, the archetypal head butler, teasing him about what he is reading. He confesses in his humiliation he reads to improve his mind and his understanding of the English language. His search for greater eloquence drives him to pursue his understanding of the words themselves. To read that which is eloquent, even if it is beyond our present literary or linguistic capacity, is to learn. To learn is to grow. To grow is to live.
The movie was about an erstwhile era, asking the question if something of value was lost because some aspects were deeply flawed. It suggests caution not to discard carelessly just because some things must eventually go. Can we hold fast that which is good, and let go the rest, save the lessons learned? In all the flash, and noise, and chaos of our modern world, are we losing the heart of what it is to be human by failing to understand the words?
