Tongues

“Of what the heart is full, the mouth runs over”, as the saying goes, and mine is full as you already know of Greek, though I don't, unlike Virginia Woolf, know of any birds that speak it, and if I did I wouldn't be able to converse with them for I don't speak it either. Of French and German I know a little. I should know more since in my more youthful years I studied both - the former to the equivalent of an A-level and the latter to GCSE – though I was never what you might call fluent, or comfortable or at ease. Of Italian, I know nothing, though according to an incorrect and never corrected BTEC certificate I speak it with distinction.

Of French and German I've retained the odd phrase and word, not enough for a two-way conversation since I don't think my ear would cope with the other person answering back, certainly not if it was at their native pace; even subtitles sometimes move too quickly. Yet it's comforting to still have some knowledge.

In listening I do better, as in I like the sounds of that being spoken. The different modulations of tone, the abruptness or the jollity, the way the tongue has to wrap itself around words or press itself against teeth or the mouth's roof. But can I understand any of that being said? Not in its entirety – a whole sentence, for example – unless it's a phrase book classic. However, you do get to recognise similarities between languages you know and those you don't, like when a word which sounds similar also shares the same meaning, which is, for me, a University Challenge moment: I was right!

Surprisingly, the written is where I come apart, utterly, if the writing that is has to be done by yours truly. I get all tangled up in verbs and nouns, regular and irregular, masculine and feminine. The accents. The umlaut. If written by another hand I can often comprehend the meaning, or at least grasp it and derive some sense of it. All then is not lost. Although I sometimes wish in printed text there were more footnotes and less assumptions that you'll know how to translate or interpret a foreign verse or phrase suddenly inserted, say, in an English language novel. That's one area I think new editions of classics could improve upon, because though you read on you wonder what you've missed: was it a witty remark or a reprimand?

We're not as well-versed (or as well educated? Perhaps 'drilled' is a apter term) in European languages as people were, if you were of a certain class, that is, and had access to schooling, in the form of private tutors, governesses or boarding schools. Or possibly had ambitions (and the finances) to embark on European tours as some of them had (and did!), where it would have been prudent to have been able to speak with the locals to settle your own arrangements, especially if you foresaw staying months at a time. I could be entirely wrong, but phrases, including those written, seem to trip off their tongues. Some of the, ahem, more socially mobile even seem to use this skill as a 'secret' language, in correspondence, for example, where their meaning might be hidden should the letter be opened by someone other than the intended or maybe just better expressed.

Was this the product of rote learning, I wonder? And did it prove to be of some, or no, help, when in the land of its origin, if, as I'm presuming European travel was de rigueur? But then, perhaps the advantage of being able to speak another language was solely, at that time, in setting yourself apart from the lower classes and getting ahead.

Whatever the case, as I'm no (as you may have guessed) scholar on the subject, the English now are lazier in this regard. In learning and speaking. In comprehension. (And yes, also in our mother tongue!) Such conversational skill is really an art, which I think is the crux of the matter for the English tackling anything foreign. It's a confidence issue – it was and still is for me at any rate - yet I enjoy subtitled dramas and films and translated works. I get as close as my brain will permit me to appreciate languages i.e. in forms I can readily absorb through my eyes and ears, where nothing is asked of my tongue and where no, or very few, demands are made on my brain's underdeveloped language department.

Picture credit: The Two Knights Sat and Looked at Each Other Without Speaking, 1970, Peter Blake (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned during 2019.

Greek-speaking Pool

Last year I spent a good portion of time dedicating myself to Greek in translation: Greek poets, Greek dramatists, Greek philosophers and Greek historians, naturally with gaps in-between, which other reading material filled in, because too much of that would make your mind at first swell then burst or spin. Even so I wafted around in this Greek bubble. My mind expanding as well as revelling in the betrayals, the abductions, the incest, the infants abandoned on hilltops and mountainous slopes, the slaughter, the prophecies of the oracles and the petitioning of kings and gods.

This wasn't the first time I had dipped a toe in and then plunged my whole body, but on this second baptism I was going deeper, under, even. On occasion I spluttered and then later came up gasping for air. So good. So juicy. So political. So rich and powerful, in images and words.

I wondered if these Greek waters were an escape from Brexit? Or had I paved the way to them the year before; in other words, had Homer opened up a door, which I was now being led through and into the passage beyond it, and down some steps into deeper waters, until only my head was above them?

I don't think it was more one or the other. I was just ready: to make up lost time and in the same breath - when I permitted myself to breathe - worry that time would run out before I'd read all I wanted to read. The age of my eyes played on my mind, too, but now is not the moment to explain this. I don't know if I could put it in terms that would be understood, anyway. It just seemed, to me, then, a factor that needed to be factored in. So many books...which at moments was a scary and an awesome thought, particularly when I kept finding more....then more, classic and contemporary, and which all said: read me.

But it was to the Greek I kept returning: verse, prose, tragedies, comedies, dramatic monologues, philosophical dialogues, histories and political themes and biographies, as well as the myths, retold or explained. Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Apollonius of Rhodes, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Alexander the Great. Natalie Haynes, Edith Hall, Tom Holland, Stephen Fry, and some renowned translators. But you can't really do ancient Greece without getting pulled a little, or a lot, into ancient Rome, which launches you into waters that are not too unfamiliar but just unfamiliar enough to set you off on a whole new course of reading.

Words have long been my drug of choice, but this Greek-speaking pool, though willingly re-entered, was intoxicating and impregnating, and all-consuming as if, like Orestes, I was being pursued by the furies, although I knew not of what wrong I had committed. There was no blood on my hands, only book-print and ink from the notes made with a leaky pen. And oh, maybe some beetroot stains because I was in a beetroot phase then.

All family members that were alive at that time were, when I checked, still very much alive, so if they were indeed after me (which the high incidence of storm clouds and insects in my local area seemed to testify to), then it was, unusually for them, for something other than murder but which still, in their view, demanded vengeance or justice.

I came to the conclusion that the prime driving force in this pursuit was Megaera, one of the three sisters as recognised, I think, by Virgil, the Roman poet, for the madness seemed to descend whenever I took a breath, a break from Greek and took up non-Greek reading matter. Megaera, as her name implies, obviously then flew into a jealous rage and with her sisters, Allecto and Tisiphone, hounded me until I once again plunged into the Greek-speaking pool. Although that's not to say these furies then left me; they were soothed that was all.

Ultimately, they're always with me, as are their demands that everything should have a link, even a tenuous one, to ancient or modern Greece; and if not Greece then Rome. They go so far as to put books in my path and send heralds with messages of new verse translations and retelling of myths. Their current behaviour is, you could say, more kindly than angry, but only as long as I comply will these waters through which I steer remain calm. 

Picture credit: The Return of Ulysses, 1968, Giorgio  de Chirico.

This post was penned in 2019.

Putting One's Fingers on the Keys

For ten years and one day I've been putting one's fingers on the keys and writing these - what would you call them: articles, pieces? I generally refer to them as blogs since that's what this site is designed to host but really they're too long to be termed as such. As well as too diverse in subject matter. Essays?

This isn't the place to debate it. Or maybe it is...? But I don't feel like getting myself into that tangle. Perhaps they don't need a label...

Anyway, as I was saying it was ten years yesterday. And yes, I'm going to say it: it doesn't seem possible. I never thought that when I signed myself up to this that ten years on I'd still be going. Though it's true, I sometimes have that thought in regards to life too: still here then. I'll no doubt be thinking that later on in the year when I turn 40.

But ten years of doing one thing is a different milestone to that of existing.

A decade of doing anything, as opposed to doing nothing i.e. just simply being, with no cares in the world beyond your own, can be a slog, if input from you – mental or physical - is required. Even the things you choose to do you can reach an impasse on.

But ten years is pretty good going when you consider my usual bail-out is, at the most, eight, and moreover because in this instance there's been very few misgivings. I was tempted to say none but I'm sure there must have been some, though I've never, even if it's proved a struggle, been lost for words. How I put them down is my problem. Because often what I want and how they actually come out is very different. What works in my head doesn't always work on computer-generated paper. The end product is rarely my original design. Even this isn't...

I want to rip this up and start again, but though it might be different, would it be better? And well, it's not paper in the nineteenth and twentieth century sense, and tearing, ripping is so much more satisfying.

It's just typical that I'm experiencing writer's problems on my ten-year anniversary. You, however, wouldn't know if I weren't. If I were just saying it for effect, if it were part of what I had in mind all along, when in reality I'm sailing through. This sea, well, okay a small rock-pool, of words is pouring out of me. They know exactly where I'm headed and are taking me there, not in the most direct route, but there all the same.

Ah me, I wish that were true.

Crabs keep pinching my fingers so that I frequently have to stop to blow on them, which lessens the pain but interrupts the flow (is there one?) and induces stumbles i.e. more hits of the delete key.

Perhaps I should do as writers do and start from the beginning. I would, but I don't know what the beginning was or why there was one. Greek mythology had chaos and I had, well, nothing; no epiphany of anything, no light-bulb moment, just this desire to write that like a crazy fool I followed, not that in these ten years I've profited by it.

Can you die by the pen? I guess it's more feasible than by keys of letters. I mean, how lethal would they be if they were thrown at you for example? Well, if it were the full keyboard and a screen were attached, then it would, I imagine, do some damage, as would being made to swallow the keys individually. Swallow the alphabet literally. Poison letters, poisonous letters, poisoned by letter, take your pick. Okay, so I was wrong. I don't think I just write, and as I write I think.

No, you're right, it's not the best method. The results are too varied. But planning in advance also works against me. What to do in those kind of circumstances? Close your eyes and hope for the best. Open sesame! Ooh, that's a new thought. And ooh, there's a new word.

If I told you I was a serious writer I'd be kidding you. I'd doubt you'd fall for it anyway. I read lots of serious writing, quite boring stuff actually. Histories and tragedies, as well as all the notes at the back. Stuff that nobody under or over a certain age much bothers with, unless it's on a reading list or they've developed a late-onset interest. Grandiose ideas that my mind can entertain but my fingers, with their hopping nature, can't.

Picture credit: The Letters, 2007, Arsen Savador (source: Wikiart).