2 posts tagged “meaning”
When Mary Queen of Scots escaped from the castle of Lochleven in 1568, she traveled south, letting her hopes travel an ill wind towards England. She rode for sixty miles before resting, later writing that she had "been three nights like the owls".
This phrase has stayed with me for days. Mary's evocative words clung to me, finding life even after centuries have passed and the tragedy of their mistress has dimmed into near myth. The words are clear, easily understood; she has communicated to us that she and her doomed followers had to flee: silently and by night. But her words are also deep, like a forest tempting me to venture further into the meanings that grow there; to experience other emotions I might find as they cool my cheek, to take her metaphor and spur it in a different direction, smelling the good, rich words I discover as they brush against me like inquisitive branches.
"Evocative" is one of my favorite words. If I could see it, I would see a shadowy face staring through a veil, pitted with embroidery. Its eyes are furtive: darting, dancing and daring. I don't doubt their realism - I know the sweep of line, the arch shadowing from above - but their meaning is an iceberg of significance that avoids me; I am tempted me to look deeper, to learn more, to envision it all.
An evocative word or phrase moves you; it makes you think. The surface definition is plain - but you must advance into the heart of its imagery, into the heart of the speaker, in order to obtain enlightenment.
Now, I know that Mary crossed the border into England, was apprehended once more and then beheaded 19 years later. But I also know that for three nights she flew low, the wind cold and laden with drops lifted from the North Sea, cutting into her famous white skin. I know that she hid amongst the trees, and searched for her food amongst the crofters and peasants of the Lowlands. I am able to see all of these things because her words dropped the crumbs before me, urging me to follow.
One evening, feeling oddly energetic, I thought I would wade through my book collection - intending to dip my hands into the glinting river of words and photographs, to lift each book up and then tell it to its face whether it could stay or not.
A hard job, but a necessary one. It had reached a point when I would have to use a blasting compound (oh, how the neighbors would fuss) to mine the desired book. And of course, if any room was freed up, it meant that I was now able to buy more. A Catch Twenty-Who Cares situation, actually.
In the course of my burrowing I extracted, delicately and with a dentist's art, many titles. Titles that taught me dialogues, dialects, style, how to think and how to see: beyond my life, beyond my time, beyond my city, beyond the black of my dreaming eyelids.
I found books that I had forgotten:
A pocket-sized 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (with owner's signature and date: 1900)
'The Edwardians' by Vita Sackville-West (signed, "To Claire Beresford, Christmas, The Antibes - 1930. From D.")
'The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion In The Year 1764-1765' by her 'kinsman' Alexander Blacker Kerr ("To Helen with much love, Aunt Janet - 1926")
And then I took out a very sorry littlte thing.
It had lost its cover. Tape yellowed the binder. The edges were thin: like tissue, like skin. The brown pages were weak and torn. It smelled musty, woodsy - thinking perhaps of the forests where those pages were born, shaved from fragrant acres of fallen trees. When I picked it up, it fell apart in flakes - words and phrases scattered into my hands.
It was my Roget's Pocket Theasurus. I remember using it in college, when I wrote my history papers - a cup of tea at my elbow, pretending I was a scholar. I used it for my English compositions, when a word would stop me with the efficiency of Becher's Brook.
Sometimes I would just read it - its Plan of Classification was my Periodic Table. The trails of definitions and uses were a word's DNA. It was a book of alchemy, a guide to magic.
Now, I use the thesaurus on my computer - always with a twinge of guilt. But I always remembered how this little book used to lead me through the tangled path of my language to find its hidden, living words.
I looked at it gently - I feared that even a hard glance would shatter it - before putting it carefully back.
