Imitation Sequence, Step 4: Altering Words
Reveling in, and learning from, destruction!
This is the fourth step in a sequence of imitation exercises. The rationale and outline is here. The first step here, and the second, and the third. If you try this stuff, tell me how it goes!
One way to understand a beautiful thing is to mar and ruin it completely. That is the spirit of this fourth step in our imitation sequence, altering the words of the passages and reflecting on the effect of these alterations.
Trust me, you will get more out of this to the extent that you make it an exercise in vandalism.
I’ll show you three ways to alter words:
Generalizing
Specifying
Drawing synonyms from a different language of origin
Generalizing the Language
We have good precedent for this one from rhetorical tradition. George Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), took a cheerful hatchet to a famous passage from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus tells the people not to be anxious:
“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass which to-day is in the field and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe you?”
Campbell says we can “infrigidate” (awesome word) the passage by “the substitution of more general terms.” Here’s his revision, with the additions in bold:
Consider the flowers [general term for “lilies”]
how they gradually increase in their size [“grow”];
they do no manner of work [“toil not, spin not”],
and yet I declare to you that no king whatever, in his most splendid habit, [“Solomon in all his glory”]
is dressed up like [“arrayed like”] them.
If, then, God in his providence doth so adorn the vegetable productions [“do so clothe the grass”]
which continue but a little time on the land [“which today is in the field”],
and are afterward put into the fire [“tomorrow is cast into the oven”],
how much more will he provide clothing for you [“clothe you”]?
You can see his method. The specific “lilies” becomes the generic “flowers.” “Toil” and “spin” become “work.” “Field,” a kind of land, becomes “land” in general. “Grass” becomes the broader “vegetable productions.” And so on.
Campbell looks upon his work and wails, “How spiritless is the same sentiment rendered by these small variations!” Yes, and this drainage of spirit makes us appreciate the concrete comforts of the original all the more.
Specifying the Language
But this is just one way to alter words, from specific to general. You can also go the other direction, from general to specific, and still succeed as a vandal. Take this snippet from one of my passages. B. B. Warfield is calling his brethren to love all humankind.
Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice.
What if it were:
Wherever men itch, there will we be to scratch. Wherever men lift, there will we be to spot. Wherever men forget, there will we be to remind. Wherever men graduate, there will we be to holler.
Woof. The effect is totally ruined. In the original, the repeated “wherever” emphasizes the universality of the lovingkindness Warfield wants to commend. But by replacing “suffer” with just one kind of suffering, “itch,” I spoil the expansiveness. And though the shift from “succeed” to “graduate” renders a more concrete image—we can see caps and gowns—it narrows the range of our rejoicing, so that only one moment of success, not all, get the desired celebration.
Drawing from Different Languages of Origin
English is a language with a long and layered history. Jeanne Fahnestock, in her magisterial Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion, relates that there are three layers of English that are especially helpful for understanding why certain styles have certain flavors.
The core of modern English is Old English, the language from which we get our most frequently used and most emotionally punchy words: heart, friend, gut, stone. We resort to these words when we want to say something heartfelt, visceral, and raw.
The next layer of modern English is Norman French, the language from which we get our fanciest, snootiest, most majestic words: majesty, colonel, reverend, fortress. These words carry a sense of grandeur (another Norman French word) and fanciness.
The next layer is Greek and Latin borrowings from the world of academia, all those -ity, -tion, -ology words and words with prepositional prefixes: institution, laceration, biology, ontology. These words carry a sense of rational distance and “objectivity.”
You can find the origin of any word instantly by googling—and you’ll need to if you try this way of altering words in your passage. Over time, you’ll get a feel for it. You may find you have a feel for it already, because people instinctively use the words in the ways I have described.
Consider the difference between these sentences:
“I ate my supper”
“I consumed my subsistence.”
“Ate” and “supper” are words with an Old English lineage. “Consumed” and “subsistence” come from Latin. The first sentence is homely and textured. The second is robotic.
Another:
“Scurry into the helm!”
“Retreat into the castle!”
“Scurry” and “helm” = OE. “Retreat” and “castle” = Norman French. The first one sounds like something from Lord of the Rings (Tolkien loved words like those), while the second sounds a little less gritty, a little more fancy.
Let’s try it. Here is another stretch of my Warfield passage:
Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours.
And here is my alteration using the word-origin approach:
Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our contemporaries [latinate term for “fellows”]:
it means melting into [Old English term for “absorption”] them.
It means forgetfulness of self in others.
It means entering into every hominid’s [latinate for “man’s”] hopes and phobias [Greek term for “fears”], longings and despairs:
it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, manifold [OE for “multiplicity”] sympathies.
It means affluence [French term for “richness”] of development.
It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,—pinioning [French-origin term for “binding”] ourselves to a thousand souls by the threads [OE for “filaments”] of so charitable [latinate for “loving”] a fellow feeling [OE for “sympathy”] that their lives become ours.
Again, woof! I sense a tonal jarring when I change “hopes and fears” to “hopes and phobias.” We’ve jumped out of the realm of the heart and into the psychological clinic. And much glory and splendor is lost when I degrade Warfield’s French-origin term “filaments” to “threads” in “the filaments of so loving a sympathy.”
By doing this, I am made aware of Warfield’s shifting from one register to the next, even in mid-sentence. “Manysidedness” is an Old English word. You can tell by its compound nature, similar to OE words such as “heartfelt,” “homebound,” “wayfaring.” But the analogues of “manysidedness” are latinate: “multiform” and “multiplicity.” He could just be going for the alliteration of the M-sound, but there is also a kind of jump in the loftiness as you move through the series. When I change “multiplicity” to “manifold”—from Latin to Old English—that progression in loftiness is reversed.
Also, “multiplicity” ends on a vowel sound, and vowel sounds tend to ring in the ear and flash in the eye more than consonant sounds. So maybe he wanted that glittering, twinkling quality that is in “multiplicity,” which is not in “manifold,” a word that always reminds me of the golden flakes and folds of a croissant.
There are many other ways to adjust words. The main thing is to revel in the destruction, and then look back to see why the author chose just the words she chose to obtain just the effects she desired.
This is intimate work. You are no longer reading, you’re tinkering, touching instead of looking, passing from spectator to apprentice. Have fun with it.
