Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1908 — THE LINGUISTIC ANARCHISTS. [ARTICLE]

THE LINGUISTIC ANARCHISTS.

Tricks to Attract Attention by Eccen- _ tHC Phrases and Forms. It Is In the literary language that the linguistic anarchist Is moßt. frequently met with, claims the Forum, and there he Is a clearly defined type. Falling to arrest attention by the quality of his thought or the charm of his expression, he forces himself upon our notice by shocking our sense of that which is becoming and normal 1 in language. He depends upon a dull linguistic moral sense In his readers for the acceptance of whatever is novel and striking in language as permissible or even artistic. Unfortunately his faith is only too often justified by the result. That which at first seems a wanton piece of revolting, violence comes to he endured, then accepted', and even in the end regarded as admirable. As Bagehot remarks in his study of the poetry of Robert Browning, when "we put down a healthy, instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy, insane attraction.” “ 'This healthy, instinctive aversion every sensitive reader must frequently feel toward the language In which Browning’s poetry is written, toward those peculiarly Browningesque features of style which have contributed so much to the growth of tne BrownA lng cult. Our objection is not that this poetry has style, that it is individual. Its fault is that It has too much ( style, that it is too individual and that it does not sufficiently take into account the persons to whom it is addressed. The author lays violent hands upon the language for no other reason than that he has some private purpose to accomplish. This appears in wilfully obscure syntax, in the unusual value and collocation of words, j sometimes humorous hut not always I appropriately so. But above 'all it t appears in rhyme, for here, besides the usual feeling for language, there I is a special language convention that may be violated, the convention of rhyming. These" grotesque rhymes, as they have been called, are sometimes appropriate to the matter of the poems in which they occur; but that their pse is not dependent upon any such consideration is evidenced by such poems as “Count Gismold,’’ “t'he Grammarian’s Funeral,” and many others, where they are altogether out of place. They are cheap sensational tricks, linguistic contortions, gone through with to make the dull readei* gape and admire. Only one who had lost or who had never had any sensitiveness to the order and, the fitness of language could ever become enamored of such vicious creations. Another obvious Instance of the lit-t erary linguistic anarch is to be found in Whitman, in whom disregard of the traditions of language is sometimes taken as merely part of a general disregard of the law and tradition. This, however, is too extreme a statement of the case. It has been shown with a fair degree of certainty that Whitman was not wilfully inconsiderate of law and order, that he thought he had before him the vision of a larger law than has been revealed to most mss, a constructive philosophy of life which the diligent and the sympathetic may read in his verse. But granting this, in his choice of a means whereby to voice forth this philosophy of life, Whitman has fallen into a serious economic error. He has made the mistake of centring attention upon his form much to the detriment of his matter. For besides the strangeness of the thought even the sympathetic

reader Is confronted by an added and a considerable impediment in the outlandlsbness of the expression; only after the shock of surprise has passed away, after the linguistic misdemeanors have been forgiven and forgotten, can the thought receive full justice. Numerous examples of these stumbling blocks will come readily to mind. We cannot quote illustrations of his wfoiisnvtms sentence structure, hut in vocabulary we have such creations as “literatuses” (plural of literatus), "civillzee,” “discorrupt,” “cool-fresh-ing breeze,” “me melted-word with sweat.’’ Whitman also frequently uses French and Spanish words, whether in correct or incorrect forms matters not to him, and he does tms not because the French words are elegant or are necessary to express a subtle meaning, nor even as is sometimes said because he holds the tneory that the American population 1b heterogeneous and therefore American authors should use a polyglot vocabulary, French, Spanish, Polish and all other outlandish words without restriction; he doeß it merely because the use of these foreign words is striking and unexpected. If we add to our list such horrid Latinlsms and Gallicisms as "O me imperturbe.” “I have not the dencatesse of a diplomat” and others of their kind, we certainly Justify the statement that Whitman had little respect for the language in which he wrote. His style is not the result of the scholar’s care or of the nice discrimination of the literary artist. He Is merely gunning for attention with a big gun. We say the phrases or words are In bad taste; but they are worse than that, they are intentionally oh* struslve and offensive And whether yon want to hear him or not, he takes, the life of the language.