Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Linguistic Beauty and Beyond

The beauty of language was mentioned briefly in class, but was not elaborated on. I feel like certain words hold more beauty than others. For example the word “content” is more beautiful than the word “tent.” Amazing how much three letters can change the mood of a word! A word’s beauty can be determined either by its sound or what it represents. To Mark Twain, the most beautiful phrase in the human language is, “cellar door.” A cellar door, by all means does not represent anything beautiful nor does anything that lies in a cellar (well, most cellars anyway.) Yet, it sounds pretty. Then there are poems, poems have the unsurpassed ability to make words that are tragic, beautiful. I’ll use a poem of my own to prove my point:

Flashbacks

Framed memories sit on shelves collecting dust,
As do ones in chests
discretely seeking significance,
As we burry them –
no X to mark.

Outside,
Negatives reside on footprints wore down
from the eroding plate tectonics
Of recall.

Remembrance is among those
Of a catastrophic, brilliant decay.
Arrogant to choice;
Appealing to virtue.
Whose repressed fossils cannot be prevented
by wavering weather.

We live among painful returns.
They peak from their secluded
now and then.
Haunting self-ghosts of magnitude,
Trapping us in embarrassment and regret, so glory.
Jealous of framed memories
Colorful and wanted.
_______________________

Painful flashbacks certainly are not beautiful, but language allows us to express “ugly” feelings, events, and objects in an artistic, beautiful way. Beauty as it relates to language is more subjective than beauty in the physical. This could be because we have immense control over language –more than physicality. We can determine how rich and beautiful our vocabulary is. And what sounds beautiful to me may not sound beautiful to you.

It was also mentioned that naming something almost changes what that object is. I disagree, we attach beauty to a name because of what that name represents. Sorry Shakespeare, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The fact that we named it a ‘rose’ does not change the way it looks, smells, or feels. We think of the word ‘rose’ as a beautiful word because ‘ rose’ is a name for a beautiful flower.

Beauty can lie beyond objects and language as well. There can be beautiful experiences and like Nick said, “beautiful emotions.” Helping someone in need may be a beautiful experience. Yet, what would be a beautiful emotion?

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