Narration (4 page)

Now it has often been said that the Americans in their feeling about the English language they are using have some connection with the Elizabethan way of using the English they are using.

This is not really true. The early English through the Elizabethans used words in every way they like the lively way the words had the words that would later be there to stay but now had come there and coming there had all the excitement of arriving in any way they could arrive and they were arriving in every kind of a way.

That made them use the language the English language in their way and it is and was a wonderful way but it is not at all the way we are using the language that has really come to stay. Because there is no doubt about it that English language that we all use has come to stay, we are changing grammar and punctuation and shoving it around and putting pressure upon it but there it is and it has certainly as any American is bound to say it has come as it is it has come to stay.

Now wherein is our use of it so different and it is completely different from the way the English used it in the early day when it was first coming if not coming to stay and then later when the nineteenth century had it as a language that had completely and entirely come to do nothing really do nothing but stay.

It has been said that our use of the English language has some connection with the Elizabethans and that has been said because at that time the English language moved around, words were themselves and having been discovered and having been exciting by being next to each other were gaily and happily
alive and everyone who had anything to do with them felt that way about them. The words themselves at that time did not decide what they were to do in the way that the meaning should come out of them but every one who did anything with them was excited by the way anyone could use anyone of them and how wonderful it was to do what anyone was doing with them. That made the liveliness of the period ending with the Elizabethans that every one liked everything that any word was and liked anything that any one could do with anyone of them any word or all the words that were there then, but and that is where it was very different from the American way of using those words they did not want the words the settled words the known words to act in a particularly that is to move in a particular way and also in any kind of a direction.

The English from Chaucer to the Elizabethans played with words they endlessly played with words because it was such an exciting thing to have them there words that had come to be the words they had just come to use then.

But the American has a different feeling, these words the words that the Englishman had settled into having as a steady and unchangeable something, they the Americans did not care for the particular use these later Englishmen had come to have for them and the American had then decided that any word which was a word which was there if you put enough pressure upon them if you arranged and concentrated and took away all excrescences from them you could make these same words do what you needed to do with them.

And they did this thing and they are doing this thing and punctuation and arranging them and destroying any connection between them between the
words that would that did when the English used them make of them having a beginning and a middle and an ending to them has made of these English words words that move as the Americans move with them move always move and in every and in any direction. It is a very interesting thing that this this has been done a very interesting thing that this has been done by the pressure brought to bear upon them brought to bear upon these words which came to us as they were and as they still are but now they have an entirely different movement in them.

Anybody can tell this the minute they pick up any ordinary book any ordinary newspaper any ordinary advertisement or read any ordinary road sign or slang or conversation. The words used are the same words but they have such a different pressure put upon them that in the case of the English the words have the feeling of containing that in which they are staying and with the American they have the feeling that they are and indicate and feel moving existing inside in them.

And so there is all this and twenty-five years move around so quickly and a century does not move around at all and at any time that is to say at some time a century will have its ending and its beginning and after all why not after all since after all after all nothing so any American can know nothing does need to have a middle and ending and a beginning and certainly at the end of every century or so at the end of a grandfather to a granddaughter at the end of a grandmother to a grandson, there will be that every one has something that is no longer anything and still if you have had always had had a daily life in every moment of your living that is not changing and your language will have the words feeling that thing feeling that they are there and staying and if you have not any day your daily living as an American
never can have and never does have any day in his living then the words which are their words will have in them the feeling of moving even if by spelling and lettering they are the same words that the English have who have in them the feeling of staying.

And so this is what I have to say about our language which is our language today and in our way as any words are are our words to-day.

I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do when they live where they have to live that is where they have come to live which of course they do do.

I HAVE
said and anybody can say anybody might say that knowledge is what you know. Knowledge is what you know and there is nothing more difficult to say than that that knowledge is what you know.

Let’s make our flour meal and meat in Georgia.

Is that prose or poetry and why.

Let’s make our flour meal and meat in Georgia.

This is a sign I read as we rode on a train from Atlanta to Birmingham and I wondered then and am still wondering is it poetry or is it prose let’s make our flour meal and meat in Georgia, it might be poetry and it might be prose and of course there is a reason why a reason why it might be poetry and a reason why it might be prose.

Does let’s make our flour meal and meat in Georgia move in various ways and very well and has that to do really to do with narrative in poetry, has it really to do with narrative at all and is it more important in poetry that a thing should move in various kinds of ways than it is in prose supposing both of them to be narrative. I think about these things a great deal these- days because things anything anyone can see does move move about and just move in various kinds of ways and sometimes I wonder if that makes poetry and sometimes I wonder if that makes prose and now I wonder is there any such thing as poetry is there any such thing as prose or is it just that now anything moves about in various ways it sometimes stays still but a great deal it does move about in various ways. Since what you know is what you know do you or do you not know this.

There are now several questions is there anything that is not narrative and what is narrative what has narrative gotten to be now. When one used to think of narrative one meant a telling of what is happening in successive moments of its happening the quality of telling depending upon the conviction of the one telling that there was a distinct succession in happening, that one thing happened after something else and since that happening in succession was a profound conviction in every one then really there was no difference whether anyone began in the beginning or the middle or the ending because since narrative was a progressive telling of things that were progressively happening it really did not make any difference where you were at what moment you were in your happening since the important part of telling anything was the conviction that anything that everything was progressively happening. But now we have changed all that we really have. We really now do not really know that anything is progressively happening and as knowledge is what you know and as now we do not know that anything is progressively happening where are we then in narrative writing and what has this to do with poetry and with prose if it has that is to say if poetry and prose have anything to do with anything and anything has anything to do with narrative that is the telling of what is happening.

I know what poetry and prose has been and I have been telling this thing telling what poetry and prose has been and when I told it I said it in this way. This is what I said about what poetry and prose has been.

Does telling anything as it is being needed being telling now by anyone does it mean cutting loose from anything, no because there is nothing to cut loose from. Remember this that is do not remember but know this when there is no more to tell about what prose and poetry has been.

It is funny that Americans that an American who has always believed that they were the people knowing everything about repression are really the ones who have naturally been moving in the direction that there is nothing to cut loose from.

So to begin to tell what I did tell because I knew it then very very well what prose and poetry has been.

I said prose concerned itself with the internal balance of sentences which are things that exist in and for themselves and are not complete as anything because anything existing in and for itself does not have to have completion, if it exists in and for itself there is no relation of it to it and therefore there is no element of completion, it is a thing that exists by internal balancing that is what a sentence is and since that is what a sentence is or rather what a sentence was perhaps now there is no longer any need for a sentence to be existing perhaps not, in any case certainly that is what a sentence has been a thing that by internal balancing made itself what it was. I further have said and do say that a succession of these sentences were used in paragraphing and that these sentences existing in that way and being included by a paragraphing ending made not by their balancing but by the need of progression made a paragraph that had an emotional meaning while the sentence itself had none. This is what I said the sentence and the paragraph had been has been and now let me say it again.

Let me say again what the sentence and the paragraph has been and what has been its relation to narrative that is the telling of anything.

Narrative has been the telling of anything because there has been always has been a feeling that something followed another thing that there was succession in happening.

In a kind of a way what has made the Old Testament such permanently good reading is that really in a way in the Old Testament writing there really was not any such thing there was not really any succession of anything and really in the Old Testament there is really no sentence existing and no paragraphing, think about this thing, think if you have not really been knowing this thing and then let us go on telling about what paragraphs and sentences have been what prose and poetry has been. So then in the Old Testament writing there is really no actual conclusion that anything is progressing that one thing is succeeding another thing, that anything in that sense in the sense of succeeding happening is a narrative of anything, but most writing is based on this thing most writing has been a real narrative writing a telling of the story of anything in the way that thing has been happening and now everything is not that thing there is at present not a sense of anything being successively happening, moving is in every direction beginning and ending is not really exciting, anything is anything, anything is happening and anybody can know anything at any time that anything is happening and so really and truly is there any sentence and any paragraphing is there prose and poetry as the same thing or different things is there now any narrative of any successive thing.

I always remember during the war being so interested in one thing in seeing the American soldiers standing, standing and doing nothing standing for a long time not even talking but just standing and being watched by the whole French population and their feeling the feeling of the whole population that the American soldier standing there and doing nothing impressed them as the American soldier as no soldier could impress by doing anything. It is a much more impressive thing to anyone to see anyone standing, that is
not in action than acting or doing anything doing anything being a successive thing, standing not being a successive thing but being something existing. That is then the difference between narrative as it has been and narrative as it is now. And this has come to be a natural thing in a perfectly natural way that the narrative of to-day is not a narrative of succession as all the writing for a good many hundreds of years has been.

And so to begin again with what I have said that poetry and prose has been that sentences and paragraphs have been that narrative has been.

I said then that sentences as they have for centuries been written were a balancing a complete inner balance of something that stated something as being existing and that a paragraph was a succession of these sentences that going on and then stopping made the emotional content of something having a beginning and middle and ending. Sentences are contained within themselves and anything really contained within itself has no beginning or middle or ending, anyone can know this thing by knowing anything at any moment of their living, in short by knowing anything. How do you know anything, well you know anything as complete knowledge as having it completely in you at the actual moment that you have it. That is what knowledge is, and essentially therefore knowledge is not succession but an immediate existing. All these things then are as they are and we come back to what poetry is what prose is and the reason why and what it all has to do with narrative and whether any narrative is existing now and how and why.