Oh, the Word of It

'Words, words, words. ' This was Hamlet's reply to Polonius' question, 'What do you read, my lord?' (Shakespeare, 1603). By repeating the word three times, Hamlet suggests that what he is reading is meaningless, just words. Literary criticism has - ironically - devoted many words to deciphering the triple use of “word.” Among the interpretations we find: Disdain for superficiality: Hamlet thinks Polonius's curiosity is trivial. He is likely being sarcastic. Emphasis on meaninglessness: By repeating "words," Hamlet suggests that the text he is reading, or language in general, lacks depth or substance, and cannot express complex emotions or the truth. Criticism of insincere behavior: Polonius's question might be motivated by an attempt to spy on Hamlet, who rejects this game of pretense. Reflects Hamlet's own contemplation: Hamlet struggles to find meaning in a world that seems chaotic.

These aren’t the only analyses, but they should be sufficient for the time being. The point here is that Shakespeare put “words” thrice in Hamlet’s mouth and we as spectators are left to figure out the meaning of a single, four-letter term that is used in the plural. So maybe, instead of this item from the English lexicon, easily located in any dictionary, it’s really about the context, about the actors, their actions, and their emotions? Kind of pulls the rug out from us as recipients of the exchange between Polonius and Hamlet, yet the phrase is familiar to everyone who knows anything about Shakespeare…

More words, because we’re not done here, not even close. “Words” is the title of a poem by Sylvia Plath, not very long, yet biting, or perhaps more accurately cutting. Plath’s words inflict wounds on a specific surface like a tree or a person, but the effect moves outward from the site where the damage occurs:

Axes

After whose stroke the wood rings,

And the echoes!

Echoes traveling

Off from the center like horses.

They don’t sound like words, they work in entirely different ways here, but then most of us know what Plath’s mind was like and how it ended. Does that mean she didn’t know what she was talking about? Hardly. Plath knew a lot more about things and saw syllables as sap or mirroring water, a green-eaten white skull, or dryness sounding like horses, all the while being simultaneous with stars, dry and drowning. And as the author says in the end, governing a life that essentially never stops being dead. Never stops clattering over the bones of a body, oozing upward like the blood of trees, running into time with every gallop.

I love these lines, Shakespeare’s and Plath’s, because they expect a word-drinker like me to hesitate very little before dashing headlong into their midst, flailing my ares or ears and hoping they’ll save me or at least love me back. However, there’s always Emily, my Emily, to anchor whatever needs anchoring, as in

She dealt her pretty words like Blades—

How glittering they shone—

And every One unbared a Nerve

Or wantoned with a Bone—

Plath clearly had read this poem and knew the kind (of) cuts that words could make, how close to the bone the lexicon flows, how much deadlier they are than any sin. Unless, of course, we can sin through words, crossing the Rubicon along with Caesar and knowing they could not be retrieved, those sounds. We might not ever declare alea iacta est, especially if our high school Latin is nearly all forgotten, but we know when we’ve thrown out, thrown away, phrases and entire paragraphs because for some reason they didn’t work. We try to call others back, but they don’t listen, we beg to be heard or to ignored, and we have no idea where things we’ve said have come from: the head, the heart, the gut. We all both need and fear our own Rubicon, although of us can’t locate it on a map.

Sometimes we get flustered, frustrated, flabbergasted, freaked out over things we want to say but can’t. I have my own solutions for those moments; you may have yours. In those moments I pull a shoebox out from under the bed and rummage around for Lewis Carroll despite the bad things people say about him. His way with words lets willing readers slip around inside the thing called Jabberwocky, forcing - forcing - the reader to slam up against the shores of meaning as if we were in bumper cars, bouncing off in unplanned directions, laughing and afraid, all the while shaking our heads and wondering how we’re able to enjoy our own perversity so much. Q.V.:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!…”

You know, I could ramble this way indefinitely, stopping here and there to reminisce, wallow, or predict the significance of words. I could confess my addiction to them and to the various ways they can be organized in the territory known as literature, but eventually I’d be allowing the door to a maelstrom as terrible as the one Poe had to confront. I’d prefer to avoid that if at all possible, although in the end… who knows? Besides, if one considers the words in more than one language, the abyss deepens swiftly, mercilessly. I may be teetering on the edge as I write this, but am determined not to give in - yet. There’s just one more point I’d like to make tonight, in the silent, slithering (stop it, Jabberwocky!) space I’m currently occupying.

I’m referring to cyberspace and all the world that is too much with us these days, as Wordsworth observed decades ago:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

Stop! I can’t think with all these words interrupting my thoughts years after I first ran into them. Because that’s what I did: ran into, trampled, beheaded, devoured, forgot, the resuscitated them. They were once dead and gone, and I had moved on, but as my grandmother insisted so long ago, there’s no rest for the wicked. And I am wicked, but also feeling abused, defeated, betrayed, furious at the cyberland constantly attacking the sanity it thinks I still have. I don’t. I am lost in a funhouse à la Barth, am caught in the metafictional web of exhaustion caused by literature, except now it’s the literature of social media. Trapped in the Poeian downwhirl that is the current language of a country I no longer know nor want to. A language in which gaslighting isn’t just the norm; it’s required.

Otherwise, say nothing, since words matter not. Words are purged, ruled unwanted and illegal. Insults, linguistic daggers, axes, you name it, are the only language allowed. At third-grade level. FAFO. TACO. Etc. The lovely lakes, meadows, hillsides, streams, and clouds are numb to the touch. Nothing there but silence. Or oblivion, which might be the same thing.

…….

………..

……

…………

Then a pale voice out of the void, repeated more and more nowadays, offering cruel hope to those foolish enough to refuse to let go of the string that might offer an escape to from the ship with its albatross:

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’ Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Maybe you will. We never know what might save us.

Maybe it’s just

Words. Words. Words.