After the publication of upwards of one thousand posts (mini-essays and poetry) over the past four, or so, years, we feel entitled to take this brief, “Time Out,” to discuss the metaphysical phenomena of words, themselves, and their nuanced and unlimited resonance. Words, orally delivered or written, symbolize and inter-actively communicate Man’s intended meaning. It is especially appropriate for us, at plinyblog, to do so, given our eternal predilection for the painstaking choice of vocabulary most representative of the writer’s or speaker’s feelings and intentions.
Not being formally educated in the disciplines of anthropology or neuroscience, we can only deduce the dynamics of the development of spoken forms of communication in the early Paleolithic Age. It is our assumption that when Homo sapiens began living in groups, common experiences and emotions,, i.e., fear, pleasure, attraction, love, anger, and the like were expressed in recognizable signals, together with common observations (like a tree, stone, water, food) were ultimately expressed in personally recognizable utterances; the latter ultimately advancing to the mutual facility for the transmission of personal thought or observation. It is our presumption that the commonly used and recognizable utterances were the precursors to communicated words. Cave symbols and art, likewise, functioned as individual expressions and perceptions of the artist’s environment, but were not socially interactive
It is our further presumption that each developing colony or tribe mutually came to share and beneficially use, commonly recognizable forms of oral expression, and with the progressive intermix of independent societies, the joint acknowledgment and use of such popularly used, ” spoken word symbols” in time, empirically and usefully, evolved into the respective local language.
Words, both oral and written, afforded Man, the unique franchise of transmission of thought, and led to his ubiquitous progress in empirical advancement as well as his available avenue of emotional and aesthetic expression, humanistic and otherwise.
We are confident in our declaration that there exists no phenomenon on Planet Earth, more empirically effective than the written or orally communicated word. It is notably relevant that private thought dynamically, amounts to an inner conversation with oneself. Externally, the universal use of language (words) historically bears out the historically authenticated expression, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” an experiential declaration that the written word is perforce more effective than violence in effecting social or political change, The abstract or metaphysical status of the thematic, ubiquitous, “word” is unlimited in its potential for empirical impact.
The unlimited, ubiquity of words, oral or written, is empirically demonstrated by their utilitarian potential ranging from expressions of warm, tender love to a newborn baby, to the ominous and despicable declaration of hatred or war. Words, (so much more communicative and effective than grunts) are invaluable tools, if precisely used and tactically employed, that can create or change human relationships. Words have the demonstrated potential to express and persuade others to change feelings or intentions, to effect business or commercial transactions, to instruct, to direct, to greet, to chastise, to praise, to inform, to criticize, to summon attention, including the distressful cry for help, to record events, for aesthetic expression, to make declarations of fact, for criticism, as a helpful guide and, most significantly, to express emotions, including love and hate.
For effective communication, words used as expressions of mundane intention must be respectfully and sensitively selected and employed for clarity, but notably, evaluated before their employment for their predictable impact on the listener or reader.
By sheer contrast, the uniquely aesthetic miracle of true poetry is singular and distinguishable from our thematic discussion of thought or opinion, but nonetheless, attains the level of true magistery in its nuanced employment of words in its intended singular mission, We see poetics as the unique, artistic distillation of reality, into its metaphysical components for aesthetic observation and thoughtful contemplation. This ethereal goal, in our view, is unlike the dynamics of general communication, is singularly accomplished by the poet’s use of an economy of words and word imagery. By illustration, a young girl’s beauty has been poetically described by us, in a past verse, as “a rosebud on a drift of snow.” Recent offerings, albeit, often in scholarly sources, would, in our view, unfortunately, rely for their questionable distinction as poetry, on the use of remote or obscure vocabulary, presented in exotic lengths of line.
Words, whether mundanely recorded on invoices and bills or employed as humanistic expressions of Man of his temporal environment, are meaningful, at times, empirically determinative, and are not, to be inappropriately or thoughtlessly employed. Misunderstandings, conceivably crucial and eventful, and opportunities, often singular and valuable, should not be the hapless victim of unexpressed or inartfully transmitted intent, but rather, be represented by meaningful and selected words
-p..
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