Katherine Revello
Opinion Editor
In a world of speeches boiled down to 30-second clips run repeatedly by incensed talking heads, where stinging bits of intellectual drivel are condensed into 140-character quips and the essence of great literature is condensed into 90-minute generic scenes of sexualized gloss, it’s time to let the somber chime of bells mark the death of rhetoric.
And the tombstone reads, in the garbled, truncated grammar of text speak: #RIP the art of the argument, killed by srsly strong belief in conciseness.
The argument of brevity being the lifeblood of wisdom is wholly fallacious, and those who adhere to this doctrine confuse spartan straightforwardness for truth sans pretention. But the wispy garments of language are not some gaudy adornment worn for mere flash. Nor do they cloak its merits in bulky, confusing masses. Rather, they adorn and tantalizingly wrap the svelte figure of truth.
In a letter to a female acquaintance, Thomas Jefferson wrote a dialogue revolving around the dominions of the head and the heart: “Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain.”
This is something lovely and moving in the words wrapping up Jefferson’s sentiment that enhances, not detracts, from his wisdom. Wordiness is at times excessive, certainly. The roughly 500 words of this column ought to be sufficient to convey my point without being excessively dull. But, without overly belaboring my message, I must also embellish, tastefully — otherwise, this page would be more white than black.
A single bloom is a thing of beauty, but its beauty is enhanced when its setting is augmented by sprays of contrasting shapes and colors.
Noting the blazing hue of the fast-turning maple conjures up an image.
Or there is the image provided by describing the blazing scarlet regalia of leaves, hanging like a massive coat around its thickly knotted trunk, ramrod straight, like a soldier at attention.
How much more vivid are these details? How much crisper is the picture?
Language is such an extraordinary creature. Its myriad synonyms and wealth of adjectives are, like the minds that channel the words, individualist. The uniquely formed facets of the mind cannot be channeled into one all-encompassing utilitarian description.
Usage, exposure and impulse make different words leap to the tongue of different people.
Language is both nebulous and precise. Each word has a definite meaning. But that meaning is influenced by colloquialisms. In context, it changes yet more.
And the thoughts channeled by a mass of words become wonderfully unique in their order and structure. They all each possess necessity by themselves, and then as part of their collective. There is meaning within meaning, movement within movement, “mobilis in mobili” as Captain Nemo said in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
Strip away the clauses and the commas and what is left? A hulking, empty husk — a frame with rough form but no precision, no art.
The soul, the melting pot of reason and feeling, does not move in stiff jerks. It glides gracefully across the spiritual plane. And its silky layers insulate it from the terrible asphyxiating death of being laid bare in a cold, economical world.