On Maltreating Words

Iread a phrase in a newspaper the other day, printed in very large letters at the top of a column, which ran as follows: "Crusade to Reform Auction Bridge." And I mused, in a slightly melancholy mood, upon the destiny and the decline of human words 5 and how clearly the fate of words illustrates the fall of man.

Surely anyone will see something a little strange in that remarkable combination of terms and topics^ anyone at least who knows what has been for mankind the meaning of the Crusade, not to speak of the meaning of the Cross. Indeed it is quite equally incongruous whether our sympathies are with the Cross or the Crescent. A Moslem of any historical imagination might well be annoyed at such treatment of the tremendous and heroic trial, through which his own creed and culture passed. And when we consider what the Crusade meant to the men of our own race, the fathers and founders of us all, it will indeed seem a steep and staggering disproportion 5 when we call up all the imagery which was familiar for so long in all European history and poetry and all the stages of that marvellous story j the first vast movement, anonymous and almost anis8 archicalj moving by mere popular impulse across the world, the mightiest mob in history. For no revolutionary movement of republicans or communists was ever so international as the First Crusade j few were so popular, for it is said that in all that wild democracy there were only nine knights. Then their destruction in the desert and the revenge or recovery, when the despair and darkness opened before the glory of Godfrey's ride 5 when the toppling battle-towers swayed and sank in flames around the city as Godfrey leapt upon the wall 5 the high place where he refused the crown of gold under the shadow of the crown of thorns j the return of a deeper darkness, and the last stand under the Horns of Hattin, where the knights died around the True Cross j the rush of the rescuer upon Acre and that vain victory after which the Lion Heart threw his lance to earth and turned his back on Jerusalem, that he might not see what he must not savej the strange and gloomy story of the Fourth Crusade and old Simon de Montfort riding away alone because he would not draw the sword against Christian men 5 the way in which that golden or crimson thread was woven into the tapestries of every land 3 whether they showed Douglas hurling the heart of Bruce before him in battle with the Saracens, or old Barbarossa sunken under the river but still waiting with his hand on his barbaric sword, or a light that shone in the desert i6o GENERALLY SPEAKING where St. Louis lay like one dying and mingling the Crucifixion with the Crusade. If we have any sense of the historic influence of these images among men, of how Godfrey blazed among the Nine Worthies or what it was that lingered on the lyre of Tasso, we shall perhaps repeat to ourselves in a curious and meditative voice those simple words, "Crusade to Reform Auction Bridge."

Of course this loss of verbal values comes gradually 3 and at the beginning may even be a tribute of the lesser thing to the greater. Somebody talks naturally enough about a crusade for liberty or a crusade for knowledge j then the hunt is up and everybody who honesdy believes in anything uses the term as a cliche 3 and we are all made familiar with the rush and hustle of a crusade for vaccination or against vivisection. In fact, the word "crusade" begins by meaning "movement" and ends with meaning merely "proposal," when it does not mean merely "fuss." We receive leaflets about a crusade against waste paper: leaflets that are decidedly waste paper. We receive visitors with a crusade against muzzling dogs: visitors whom we ardently desire to muzzle. Crusades for painting the lamp-posts green or putting the costermongers into livery follow each other with unabated enthusiasm j and we have already a crusade to reform auction bridge, and

ON MALTREATING WORDS i6i shall doubtless have another to improve ping-pong. Dieu le Vault,

Of course there are a great many other examples in everyday English, which may be represented as every bit as bad. We talk about a man being a martyr to indigestion, without being haunted or shamed by the burning shades of St. Lawrence or St. Sebastian. We say that Pebbleswick-on-Sea is a God-forsaken place, without committing ourselves to the highly heretical dogma that it is really forsaken of God. For it is heresy to suggest that even a successful watering-place can really be an exception, either to the divine omnipresence or to the divine charity and forgiveness. But that single phrase "God-forsaken," in itself so tragic, is also in itself a tragedy. I mean it is a marked example of this tragedy of the gradual weakening of words. For it is in itself a very powerful and even appalling phrase. It is not a piece of sound theology, but it is a piece of vigorous and vivid literature. It reminds us of some great phrase in "Paradise Lost," giving a glimpse of a sort of lurid negation and ruinous quiet j not light, but rather darkness visible. Yet, strange to say, a human being can say this awful thing about Pebbleswick without shuddering. Doubtless there are any number of other examples, which I could think of if I stopped to think. Perhaps there is some touch of such levity even In saying that a thing is "crucial" or in declaring that it is the crux of the question. Perhaps there is a grim reminder of it in the fact that "a Resurrectionist" generally means a body-snatcher and not a believer in the Resurrection.

But my wandering thoughts have strayed rather backwards to the origins of these things than outwards to the numberless examples of them. I think it obvious that the tendency is a general one, apart from extreme examples j though I would still lift a faint and feeble protest against the reformer of auction bridge being literally elevated to the position of Pontifex Maximus. But though we may reasonably remonstrate with some very abrupt accelerations of the process, it may be that it generally goes on as a slow process 5 and especially as a sleepy process. Most thoroughly bad processes are slow and sleepy 3 which is why I have sometimes been found wanting in a full and fanatical faith in evolution. And it seems to me that the moral of all these things is the very opposite of that which is offered to us by many evolutionists. There are indeed many of them so clear-headed as not to confuse strictly scientific evolution with a vague notion of ethical exaltation or expansion. But others do ask us to accept a sort of general upward tendency 5 and it seems to me that in these things there is a general downward tendency. In the matter of language, which is the main matter of literature, it is clear that words are perpetually falling below themselves. They are ceasing to say what they mean or to mean what they sayj they are always beginning to mean something that is not only quite different, but much less definite and strong. And, in this fall of man's chosen symbols, there may well be a symbol of his own fall. He has a difficulty in ruling his tongue 3 not only in the sense of the talking organ, but in the sense of the language that he talks. Almost when he is not looking, it is always running wild 3 or, worse still, running weak.

Now this distinction directly concerns all the talk about new art or experiments in literature. It does not make me believe in these things as a progress j but it does in a sense make me believe in them as a change. I am at once more tolerant of them and less trustful of them. I can see that people must be allowed to play about with human language to a certain extent 5 because unless it is kept stirring it goes stale. But I do not think a thing is necessarily great because we feel it as fresh j or necessarily small because we feel it as stale. All we are doing, when we pick our words or try our experiments, is resisting the general trend of all style towards staleness. Some traditionalists do go a little too stale. Many get a great deal too fresh, as the landladies were supposed to say. But their mistake is merely in supposing that they have any claim to progress or claim to pride. What they are doing, at the best, is to resist retrogression, the retrogression that simply goes with rep-petition. In other words, all artists are dedicated to an eternal struggle against the downward tendency of their own method and medium. For this reason they must sometimes be fresh j but there is no reason why they should not also be modest. There is nothing to brag about, in the mere fact that your only mode of expression is perpetually going to the dogs. The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation j but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep. There are some to whom this may even seem a sombre version of human existence j but not to me^ for I have long believed that the only really happy and hopeful faith is a faith in the Fall of Man.