The Power of Words

Welcome to The Blogofiles! The truth is in here. Spread the word.

What sort of truth am I talking about?

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free?

Sort of.

The truth I’m talking about involves meaning. Clear transmission of ideas. Correct spelling. Careful word choice. Crafting a story.

Truth or Consequences.

Miscommunication, mistakes, missteps and misspellings craft stories of their own – a concept I plan to explore.

One person’s swordplay; another person’s wordplay

The pen is mightier than the sword. It is mightiest when wielded, not by a swordsmith, but a wordsmith versed in the art of literary lunge and parry, of verbal feint and riposte, and of en garde and touché.

And, just as he who lives by the sword dies by the sword, so it is with a man and his words. Or a woman and hers.

Martin Luther King Jr told America of his dream, and he died for it.

Lawyer Sergei Magnitzky stood up for his client against high-level corruption in Russia, and he paid for it with his life. His client, Bill Browder, has fought for his memory ever since; his name is memorialised in the Magnitsky Act, and Browder is Vladimir Putin’s enemy as a result.

Jesus was considered dangerous because of the words he spoke and whom they offended. He was crucified for those words.

In the beginning was the word… (John 1:1)
The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword … discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

History

History and literature, and music – which is a powerful form of literature – are replete with the idea that words have more power than weapons. Well, some weapons.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun.
(The Beach Boys, Student Demonstration Time, 1971)

I’ve just been reading up on the origins of the expression “The pen is mightier than the sword”. More interesting than exactly when, and by whom, those words were first written, I found The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual competition to crown the writer of the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. (This year’s winner, by Lisa Kluber of San Francisco: “Her Dear John missive flapped unambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like a pizza menu on the doorknob of my mind.“) Apparently, George Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a Victorian novelist, is known to have written the “pen is mightier” sentence in one of his novels.

His most famous opening sentence – “It was a dark and stormy night…” – was the inspiration for the founder of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Back to less-minor examples.

In 1517, Martin Luther wrote and nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the Schlosskirche Wittenberg. Having brought into motion with his words the Reformation that would divide the Catholic Church, he now lies at rest below the floor of that very building.

Staying with the theme of reformation, and holding on to pens and swords as well: on June 19, 1792, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a fellow-Thomas, Paine:

“Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man…”
(https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-20-02-0076-0014)

Finally, Napoléon Bonaparte knew well that ideas have power, and words are the units of that power: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”

Death

Words have power. Sometimes they have power over life and death:

“Fire!’”
“I hereby sentence you to…”
“Charge for the guns!” he said(: Into the valley of death rode the six hundred…)
“England expects that every man will do his duty.” (Said with flags.)

Life

And sometimes they have the power to celebrate life:

“I love you.”
“Will you marry me?”
“I do.”

This is where I segue away from the serious to the outright dangerous, by saying that marriage is way more than just a word – it’s a sentence. My wife loves it every time I remind her of that … joke. (Don’t worry about me. She won’t be reading this.)

The power of words.

Goals

My goals for The Blogofiles are for it to become:

A repository of words.
A celebration of sesquipedalianism, and specifically of useless, gratuitous and unnecessary sibilance.
A safe place in which to face one’s hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia head on.
A meeting place and a melting pot for mixed metaphors. It’ll be the bomb!
An oasis free from semantic bleaching. It’ll be awesome.
An academy for practicing the art of wordplay, enabling initiates to step without fear into the arena.
And, finally, a forward staging post at the front line of the fight against bad spelling. We will choose our battles and take prisoners one hideously misspelled headline, one lazy journalist, one complacently content content writer at a time.

Join me

Who out there shares my love for words?

Join me.

We’ll have fun, and we’ll die having tired.

There might be a book review or two, too.