Words; Their Use and Abuse

by William Mathews

For soft retreats, and night’s impressive hour,

To harmony impart divinest power.”

In view of all these considerations what can be more untrue than the statement so often made, that to be capable of easy translation is a test of the excellence of a composition? This doctrine, it has been well observed, goes upon the assumption that one language is just like another language,—that every language has all the ideas, turns of thought, delicacies of expression, figures, associations, abstractions, points of view which every other language has. “Now, as far as regards Science, it is true that all languages are pretty much alike for the purposes of Science; but even in this respect some are more suitable than others, which have to coin words or to borrow them, in order to express scientific ideas. But if languages are not all equally adapted even to furnish symbols for those universal and eternal truths in which Science consists, how can they be reasonably expected to be all equally rich, equally forcible, equally musical, equally exact, equally happy, in expressing the idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some original and fertile mind, who has availed himself of one of them? * * *

“It seems that a really great author must admit of translation, and that we have a test of his excellence when he reads to advantage in a foreign language as well as in his own. Then Shakespeare is a genius because he can be translated into German, and not a genius because he cannot be translated into French. The multiplication table is the most gifted of all conceivable compositions, because it loses nothing by translation, and can hardly be said to belong to any one language whatever. Whereas I should rather have conceived that, in proportion as ideas are novel and recondite, they would be difficult to put into words, and that the very fact of their having insinuated themselves into one language would diminish the chance of that happy accident being repeated in another. In the language of savages you can hardly express any idea or act of the intellect at all. Is the tongue of the Hottentot or Esquimau to be made the measure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes?”[4]

The truth is, music written for one instrument cannot be played upon another. To the most cunning writer that ever tried to translate the beauties of an author into a foreign tongue, we may say in the language of a French critic: “You are that ignorant musician who plays his part exactly, not skipping a single note, nor neglecting a rest,—only what is written in the key of fa, he plays in the key of sol. Faithful translator!”

When we think of the marvellous moral influence which words have exercised in all ages, we cannot wonder that the ancients believed there was a subtle sorcery in them, “a certain bewitchery or fascination,” indicating that language is of mystic origin. The Jews, believing that God had revealed a full-grown language to mankind, attached a divine character to language, and supposed that there was a natural and necessary connection between words and things. The name of a person was not a mere conventional sign, but an essential attribute, an integral part of the person himself. Hence we find in Genesis no less than fifty derivations of names, in almost all of which the derivation connects the name, prophetically or otherwise, with some event in the person’s life. Hence, also, the practice, under certain conditions, of changing men’s names, as illustrated in the histories of Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joshua and others. “Call me not Naomi (pleasant), but Mara (bitter),” said the broken-hearted widow of Elimelech. “Even in the New Testament we find our Lord Himself in a solemn moment fixing on the mind of His greatest apostle a new and solemn significance given to the name he bore. ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church.’ St. Paul also, is probably playing upon a name when, in Phil. iv, 3, he affectionately addresses a friend as γνήσιε Σύζυγε, ‘true yoke fellow,’ since it is an ancient and very probable supposition that Syzygus or Yokefellow is there a proper name.” The Gothic nations supposed that even their mysterious alphabetical characters, called “Runes,” possessed magical powers; that they could stop a sailing vessel or a flying arrow,—that they could excite love or hate, or even raise the dead. The Greeks believed that there was a necessary, mysterious connection between words and the objects they signified, so that man unconsciously expressed, in the words whereby he named things or persons, their innermost being and future destiny, as though in a symbol incomprehensible to himself. The accidental good omen in the name of an envoy who was called Hegesistratos, or “leader of an army,” decided a Greek general to assist the Samians, and led to the battle of Mycale. The Romans, in their levies, took care to enrol first names of good omen, such as Victor, Valerius, Salvius, Felix, and Faustus. Cæsar gave a command in Spain to an obscure Scipio, merely for the omen which his name involved. When an expedition had been planned under the leadership of Atrius Niger, the soldiers absolutely refused to proceed under a commander of so ill-omened a name,—dux abominandi nominis,—it being, as De Quincey says, “a pleonasm of darkness.” The same deep conviction that words are powers is seen in the favete linguis and bona verba quæso of the Romans, by which they endeavored to repress the utterance of any word suggestive of ill fortune, lest the event so suggested to the imagination should actually occur. So they were careful to avoid, by euphemisms, the utterance of any word directly expressive of death or other calamity, saying vixit instead of mortuus est, and “be the event fortunate or otherwise,” instead of “adverse.” The name Egesta they changed into Segesta, Maleventum into Beneventum, Axeinos into Euxine, and Epidamnus into Dyrrhachium, to escape the perils of a word suggestive of damnum, or detriment. Even in later times the same feeling has prevailed,—an illustration of which we have in the life of Pope Adrian VI, who, when elected, dared not retain his own name, as he wished, because he was told by his cardinals that every Pope who had done so had died in the first year of his reign.[5]

That there is a secret instinct which leads even the most illiterate peoples to recognize the potency of words, is illustrated by the use made of names in the East, in “the black art.” In the Island of Java, a fearful influence, it is said, attaches to names, and it is believed that demons, invoked in the name of a living individual, can be made to appear. One of the magic arts practised there is to write a man’s name on a skull, a bone, a shroud, a bier, an image made of paste, and then put it in a place where two roads meet, when a fearful enchantment, it is believed, will be wrought against the person whose name is so inscribed.

But we need not go to antiquity or to barbarous nations to learn the mystic power of words. There is not a day, hardly an hour of our lives, which does not furnish examples of their ominous force. Mr. Maurice says with truth, that “a light flashes out of a word sometimes which frightens one. It is a common word; one wonders how one has dared to use it so frequently and so carelessly, when there were such meanings hidden in it.” Shakespeare makes one of his characters say of another, “She speaks poniards, and every word stabs”; and there are, indeed, words which are sharper than drawn swords, which give more pain than a score of blows; and, again, there are words by which pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief removed, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, and courage infused. How often has a word of recognition to the struggling confirmed a sublime yet undecided purpose,—a word of sympathy opened a new vista to the desolate, that let in a prospect of heaven,—a word of truth fired a man of action to do a deed which has saved a nation or a cause,—or a genius to write words which have gone ringing down the ages!

“I have known a word more gentle

Than the breath of summer air;