Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

41As for the variedly virtuous, the vocabulary of each will fluctuate to exactly fill the altering bounds of their experiential knowledge, growing more colourful or more austere as their passions wax or wane, but each passion clearly correlated by a thoughtword to the unique state and thing which is its cause and aim.

42Even fools will talk wisely in my new language for they will lack the materials to do otherwise.

43He stared at me then asked sharply how such a language was devized?

44By grammatical logarithms, said I, for each letter in my alphabet of twenty-five consonants and ten vowels, hath the value of a number linking it to a class of things (in the case of the consonants) or class of actions (in the case of the vowels).

45The student of my language is taught very few and simple words, and these as example only, for he is given (to be metaphorickal) the bricks wherewith any word he needs may be builded, besides a grammar by which these words may be swiftly presented to the understanding of an instructed fellow.

46This allows an educated man to bestow upon anything he encounters in the universe a name entirely different from any other, yet so intelligible that a well taught child of ten years can, from that name alone, even if it signifies a thing of which the child hath had no previous knowledge, imagine at once the form, colour, material, weight, bigness, usefulness or danger of the signified thing, and conceive it so accurately that, if the thing be artificial, the child can at once construct an accurate replica, provided only that he hath possession and mastery of the requisite tools.

47This significant nomenclature would hugely benefit the art of wars; for if (as is the French custom) a new recruit received a nom de guerre , and it were in my new diction, so short a name as Kohudlitex or Palipugisk, whispered to a commander at a review of troops, would let him know a soldier’s rank, regiment, age, birthplace, ancestry and character, and inable him to address that man with that familiarity which inspireth true loyaltie and devotion, when manifested by the nobility toward uttered in such nonsounding things as silence, or tears.

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83I asked him for a particular example of what he meant; he said he would relate a peculiar domestic circumstance.

84My wife’s family were of the Royal faction (said he, sighing) which I did not know at first, for her father owed mine money he was unwilling to repay, and for fear of a lawsuit (my father was a scrivener and understood the courts) he conversed only upon such topicks as did not promote disunion.

85Indeed, my good wise father, knowing that I yearned toward matrimony, and that his debtor had a marriageable daughter, proposed an alliance which would sink the debt in a marriage settlement, which proposal was not unwelcome; so I was taken to the girl, and finding her meek mannered, without apparent defects of face and form (indeed, she was beautiful) I gladly bestowed myself upon her.

86I was thirty-five years of age at that time, and since early youth, when it first dawned upon my developing soul that God had endowed it with no ordinary qualities, I had prepared myself to write a book which the world would not willingly let die, partly by reading everything great which preceeded me: yes, but also by the cultivation of fortitude, sobriety and chastity, for no good thing may emanate from a bad man.

87I had conceived an Epic on the story of King Arthur, and was now sure I needed nothing to begin it but that well of constant sensible solace which is owed by a wife to the husband of her body.

88What my wife brought me was silence; meek she had seemed and meek her manner remained, as befitted one not much more than half my age, but that meekness enclosed a cold sullen obdurate resistance which granted to my mind, heart and soul nothing .

89Our conjoyned society was therefor mutual torture, but my torture was greater, for whether beside her or apart from her I desired her continually and hopelessly, whereas she found a little happiness in my occasional absences.

90After a very few weeks she got a pretext for visiting her family in Oxfordshire, and refused to return from thence, being supported in this rebellion by her Royalist father and brothers (the King had just inaugurated a greater Rebellion by making Oxford his capital city, where his followers gloried in their first slight early triumphs).

91Did I not find her departure a great relief? Oh no I did not.

92My publick self did not suffer, I infused new vigour into my service to the Commonwealth, authoring in a brief space no less than four treatises on divorce, and one upon a general reform of education, and one defending the right of all to print what they willed: for the Pressbiters were snarling at my heels — I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs by the known rules of ancient liberty, when straight a barbarous noise environed me of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.

93I also saw off the press a complete collection of my short earlier poems, but this was in some sort a farewell to poesy: for despairing of all lawful domestic solace (for my advocacy of divorce had not perswaded the rational part of parlement to change the laws) I must despair of all honest manhood: so my plan to write a great Protestant Christian Epic which would cleanse the matrix of Civil Liberty and Justice from the obfuscs put upon it by the too voluptuous pens of courtly Ariosto, Spencer and Tasso, had become dross rubbish to me.

94And I am certain poetry would have remained dead to me, had not my wife’s family opened negotiations to return her, for Cromwel was begining to take the helm of state, and clearly the King would not now last long in England; so in tears she returned to me and –

95He paused, himself overcome by tears.

96Seeing that his flagon was emptied I refilled it, remarking softly, that I was glad the Royal defeat had brought unity to one family at least.

97Whatever produced those tears, (he cried suddenly aloud) her repentance, her wish to be one with me was genuine and complete, and these appealing tears, melting my very marrow, made me see that I had erred as greatly as she, for feeling unloved by her, my love of God had become without true content or gratitude: to me the Grandeur of the Creation, the Incarnation, Christ’s Loving Mercy, the Resurrection of the Flesh had been meer words, meer empty words without her tearful return.

98I asked him if he had not placed upon the domestic bond a greater weight than it could bear: he seemed not to hear that question.

99And now (said he) though I will soon be as stone blind as Homer was, my mind’s eye commands so wide a firmament that beneath it the matter of England, great though it be, appears as small a thing as would appear the matter of Troy, Rome and Jerusalem envisioned from the glowing Zenith by the Enthroned First Mover.