tintinnabulations
A facebook status update led me here, to the Web site of lost words. The folks from Oxford want you to pick a work, but not just any word: a word that has slipped through the cracks of language and become all but obsolete. You can adopt a word to name a pet, get tattooed on your arm, or sky write above your town.
In a certain way, I disapprove of this inorganic way of promoting the use of language. If no one is using the word, maybe it's just because the word is obsolete. That's how language evolves. Words fall out of favor and are replaced by new ones, like bootylicious and locavore.
But, as a Person of the Word, I can fully relate to wanting to save words from extinction. (I also want to save the Blue-Footed Boobie from extinction, just for the record.) This summer, while I was volunteering at The Telling Room, I was asked by a young poet for a word, which she may or may not use in the poem she was going to write. My word (which soon became hers): tintinnabulations.
I first used the word in the "long-word game," which we played in the Hendrickson household many years ago. Sanctimonious was another favorite. I guess this was my mother's idea of "saving the words."
The poet used the word in a sestina, "a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time." It was funny and clever, written in the voice of a small child.
I, on the other hand, am off to charter a plane to have the word written above the skyline of Portland, Maine on my last full day here.
the great leslie
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Reader Comments (3)
When I was a girl we had to memorize poems. While, given the length of this work by Poe, I'm assuming we had only to memorize part of it. However, it is from this that I discovered the word tintinnabulation. I think also, that Patti Ryan played that game with us and that it was she who reintroduced it. I can see us on her front porch in Long Beach, Mississippi, and hear her Southern voice say the word tintinnabulation.
As for parsimonious, anybody's guess! My favorite will always be goodolboys! xoxoxmom
The Bells
Edgar Allan Poe
Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II
Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III
Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now - now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale - faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells!
IV
Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people - ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls: -
And their king it is who tolls: -
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells: -
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells: -
To the sobbing of the bells: -
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells, -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
And thanks, Gail, for reading! I hope Maine is lovely today!