"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep."
- Prospero (IV. i)
"O brave new world, / That has such people in't!"
-Miranda (V. i)
These are certainly not Shakespeare's most quoted lines, but they have somehow retained their familiarity, and therefore their influence, in the English language.
The night before last I went to Write Club - a once-a-month gathering of writers and wits who face-off with their expositions addressing universally thematic rivals (ie. Method vs. Madness, Sacred vs. Profane, etc.). As I listened to these writers tackle these topics with (in most cases) a fabulous ripeness of humor and relevance, I thought that it really is interesting, from a linguistic perspective, how much of our communication (and often our most intelligent communication) consists of idioms, colloquialisms, abbreviations, and allusions. We've taken the simplest metaphor - a word - and chained it with others to create metaphors on top of metaphors on top of metaphors. Not suprisingly then is the fact that these tend to be both the most lasting and the most dynamic bits of language.
About a year ago was the the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and I was involved in an homage of sorts to the lasting effects this version of the Bible has had on our culture since its publication. My portion of the performance consisted of reading an original poem in which I wrote each line using or alluding to an idiom from the KJV. It was a fun and complex feat, despite it being ripe with clichés -- purposely so, of course ;-). It is below.
The
Writing on the Wall
When
the sweat of my brow seems more like peace offerings
Of
sour grapes, and labours of love become like lambs
Led
to the slaughter, how will I read the writing on the wall?
Will
I join the ranks of blind leading the blind
Who
live in a daily surrender to the powers that be,
Never
noting their pearls as they are cast before swine?
Or
will I sit with the salt of the earth
To
whom everything there is a season and all things must pass
From
strength to strength thru songs of “Thy will be done.”?
Maybe
I’ll wash my hands of fighting the good fight
And
eat, drink, and be merry till my fall becomes
Merely
a fly in the ointment of faith.
Perhaps
I’ll become a voice crying in the wilderness of wolves
In
sheep’s clothing, clutching the thorn in my flesh as I yell, “Blessed
Are
the peacemakers” while suppressing my thirst for my eye and my tooth.
Or
maybe, I’ll harden my heart and bite the dust
As
I bury my face in the sand, moaning a final “woe is me”
While the grit and dust fill my mouth and stop
my breath.
Yet,
if within myself I find the strength to not be me of little faith,
Or
let the wall’s writing put words in my mouth, my heart’s desire just might rise
Out
of the ashes and the dust, and erase the writing, etching instead
“Let
there be light!”
-Emily
Decker (2011)
love it!
ReplyDeleteThis is great! I would like to go to Write Club. Sounds like Stein's salon. :O) Just imagine Paris at the workshop. It is going to be amazing! A rose is a rose...A salon is a salon... or is it?
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