“Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings“ - Honoré de Balzac
One of the most intriguing concepts given to us by fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien, among many of course, is the concept of a cellar door. He explored this observation during his 1955 lecture English and Welsh given at Oxford University.
“Most English-speaking people... will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant”.
Now, alongside the clear bragging rights I, a proud Cymro, can claim after such a ringing endorsement of ones mother tongue from one of the world’s most famed linguists, the idea being explored here is utterly fascinating. Words in and of themselves can act as sensory portals, transporting those who experience them to another place seen through the mind’s eye.
This is, to my mind, a blow struck against the purely utilitarian theories in linguistics.
It is fundamentally to allow the beautiful complexity of the world to wash over oneself - meaning, both that which can be empirically observed or spiritually understood, will comingle in a dance too stunning to recount accurately in the meaning of words. Everything is happening, all the time. From the death of a loved one - the loss, the sweet memories, the future without, the “what ifs“ had they not died - to the sight of a sunset over the sea from atop a cliff - the majesty of the natural world, the brain-bending chemistry of our nearest star, the terrifying physics of its workings, the filmic sense of an ending of all things - nothing can be stripped down to an easy answer or a definitive conclusion. This beautiful complexity bubbles up to the surface on hearing or uttering a cellar door, or one of the many words in Welsh that strike the same beautiful note.
This realisation, however, has also struck people into a form of inaction for millennia, especially if they were/are in a negative state of mind, or prone to romantic flights of reverie and procrastination.
Take the 15th-century Welsh bard Lewis Glyn Cothi for an example of the former. He wrote one of the most startlingly modern poetic elucidations of his era. In “Marwnad Siôn y Glyn“ (“Elegy for Siôn of the Glen“), this travelling wordsmith bucks the trend followed by the other bards of his day - paid-for praise of nobles, religious tracts to cover their asses from damnation (they were known for rather loose morals) - Lewis Glyn Cothi turned his pen to events in his own life: the death of his infant son. This poem is moving for all the obvious reasons; the death of a child, the rage stage of grief expressed by a broken father at the situation, pleading with God, sweet memories of the boy as he was. But that’s not what is startling here. Take this excerpt from the poem:
Welsh Original (see below for English translation)
Fy mab, fy muarth baban,
fy mron, fy nghalon, fy nghân,
fy mryd cyn fy marw ydoedd,
fy mardd doeth, fy mreuddwyd oedd;
fy nhegan oedd, fy nghannwyll,
fy enaid teg, fy un twyll;
fy nghyw yn dysgu fy nghân,
fy nghae Esyllt, fy nghusan;
fy nyth, gwae fi yn ei ôl,
fy ehedydd, fy hudol;
fy Siôn, fy mwa, fy saeth,
f’ymbiliwr, fy mabolaeth.
English Translation
“My son, my baby in the backyard,
my breast, my heart, my song,
my time before I died he was,
my wise bard, my dream he was;
my toy he was, my candle,
my fair soul, my cheeky boy,
my little chick learning my songs,
my field of Esyllt, my kiss;
my nest, woe is me for not dying,
my skylark, my magical one;
my Siôn, my bow, my arrow
my pleading one, my legacy”.
Here the bard has simply listed all the ways he could describe his dead son. It is as though he believes that he could, simply by saying the words, or writing them, it could in some way bring him back. We could also conclude that this list is all he can do now: damning God or fate or himself for not being at his boy’s side won’t do a damned thing. Too much time spent down memory lane could find the bard getting lost there forever. He just lists the words, like an incantation but without the hope of it working.
This blend of poetic beauty and existential futility from the bard’s perspective is the perfect example of what has been discussed here so far. You can see why such considerations, alongside a real-life tragedy, can be enough to cause deep existential angst, or worse, to strike one down with a charged bolt of nihilism. Language itself, here in the form of verse, speeds this process along, driving the grieving father to feel tiny and insignificant in the face of forces beyond his control. To question God.
And that’s exactly what he does - elsewhere in the poem the bard asks God (indirectly, adding to the sense of futility) as to why He would allow Lazarus to be resurrected, but ignored his son; why Saint Beuno could bring back 7 souls from the 7 Heavens, but his son did not become an 8th. Life’s regularly unfair and unexpected tragedies can strip away a man’s capacity to derive meaning from the mythic, to start us damning the convenience of ancient narrative, envying the miraculous. To feel so small that your voice cannot be heard, despite your anguished screams.
And yet, this poem contains so much meaning: the mere act of bardic composition renders this nihilistic wail an utterly beautiful work of art. Meaning for the reader is to witness the bard’s inability to find meaning all. The glory of the language transcends the piteous subject. The complexity of this phenomenon is beauty itself.
NB When I studied this in school, our teacher told us that “by the end of this lesson, every girl will be crying“. He was wrong. The boys cried too: the sadness, the wrath, the beauty of the piece when recited properly; it’s almost too much to take. I still cry on reading this poem. I’ve recited it in public once. My cheeks were wet by the end. I’m nevertheless glad for the privilege of learning about this bard’s work. Learning really is beyond valuable.
“Love is not just a confrontation with the absurdity of the world; it is a refusal to be broken by it. It is one of the ways we can each of us be stronger than our rocks. There is nothing we can do to change the constraints of our existence” - Albert Camus
It’s clear that the nature of language can go beyond the mere exchange of information. Or it should do, at the very least…
Can we honestly say that this is even partly the case today; beyond small talk, do our public-facing sense-makers engage in what we’ve discussed here?
Lamentably, I fear that most do not. Snaring your limbic system is often the aim, dragging you along on a journey of frantic, tribalistic highs and baser, hateful lows.
What was once a neatly arranged line of spears, primed to defend against the creeping nihilism borne from tragedy, is now just an empty rack resting in an abandoned armoury. Ritual, the oral tradition, and a form of kinship beyond “Yeah I’ve met Jim next door. Nice guy. He has a cat… I think“, has been crushed under the weight of a gargantuan (and painfully bland) modernity:
“I want it in my inbox by 4.30!“,
“I can’t do lunch today, I have a Zoom meeting at 12“,
“I know I don’t know X, but here’s my detailed opinion based on news articles written by another person I don’t know“.
It’s a hollow ‘thunk’ sounded on a cracked bell - devoid of deeper meaning. Not beautiful.
How can we regain this lost arsenal, to perhaps use it in defence against the specific forms of emptiness found in modernity? I believe that some of these weapons, expressed as principles, are set out beautifully in a somewhat unexpected place: the Theory of Enchantment, an anti-racism training concept founded by the writer Chloé Valdary. Here’s a video outlining this fascinating model:
I hope you can see why I referred to a lost arsenal as opposed to, say, a new arsenal in describing the concepts laid out thus far: after watching this video, do you remember this kind of feeling in day-to-day life? Not only a personal feeling, but a mutual sense gleaned from others in society. I know that this specific model is new to most of you, but does it not feel familiar somehow? As though the sweet scents of a long abandoned bakery have somehow come back to a vacant lot. Is this not how you remember society operating before some unknown, recent inflection point? A mutual understanding that people are people - I am one and so are they. Disagreements are just that - a point at which two parties do not agree. Claims of evil, repression and malice were reserved for actual acts of evil, repression and malice. Outdated or innocently ignorant views were met with gentle discussion, or even a mild, usually youthful dismissal: shrugs, a shook head, or laughter behind the subject’s back; “can you believe grandad still uses the term X?“, without disowning grandad and reporting him to the local police. Racism, and indeed all forms of bigotry, were still there, but it seems that we had moved beyond it owning us, our speech, our systems. The Theory of Enchantment almost feels like a beacon signalling us from an alternate timeline: the one we should have followed. It goes to show that, sometimes all it takes to be truly radical is to point out what we’ve forgotten. For some of you, this maybe the way you still see the world operating.
I envy you.
But fear not (or at least don’t let it freeze you): if we start by using the principles outlined in Ms. Valdary’s excellent system more broadly than within the confines of race (something already often inferred by her, and within the model itself, to be fair - but worth stating anyway), that would be an excellent start in getting us back/forward to this better state of affairs.
But this reclamation/founding requires a more fundamental approach, one that cannot be sketched out entirely in the form of a theory or model. I believe that a full-scale embrace of the world’s oral traditions as a pillar of civilisation is something that would get us closer to a true resolution. Let’s explore why.
“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination“ - Ludwig Wittgenstein, from ‘Philosophical Investigations’.
Stories from the oral traditions of our world are the fashioned jewels from the uncut gems of language. The best tales (in this instance, those that hold the most meaning) have survived the ravages of time, the barbs of cynicism, and the buffeting winds of whim and taste. They hold within them every archetype for every sort of person, interaction, circumstance and feeling you may encounter. They warn, they celebrate, they ask unanswerable questions, and provide clear guidance for each stage of a person’s life. If every solution to the major problems humanity faces - war, climate, privation, disease, excess, tyranny, depression - can be faced, incrementally improved, and maybe solved, you better believe that the resulting TED Talks will include allusions to ancient tales that contain the wisdom that was employed in doing so. So if the representative solutions, answers, or salves can be spotted retrospectively within these tales, why not search the canon from the start?
Some do, of course, but some is not all, when perhaps all we need is more.
There are barriers to overcome in this quest. Many of these tales come with a sort of “baggage” attached. Once the “baggage” is removed from something as polarising as, say, an Old Testament story, the lessons inherent in the tales become prime: if one is taught sincerely that they’re adherence to an Abrahamic faith is not a prerequisite for the absorption of the wisdom held in, say, the story of Cain and Abel, I believe that many of the issues we face could be improved, maybe even prevented from reoccurring as regularly as they do. There are, of course, many thousands of tales from outside the world’s major religions that are easier to parse for most people, but there is still other forms of baggage which follow: often we storytellers face an overarching feeling of “these are for kids“, or “I prefer history/science/facts“, or “I don’t have time for this, can you just get to the point“ from audiences that aren’t ardent storytelling fans. We then, being a largely affable and polite group, will conclude that “Well, it’s just not their thing“.
I no longer feel that this is a reasonable response.
The tales are often simple, but the discussion that results is likely deeply complex. This is a prime reason the difficulty to engage arises: hard stuff is hard, so why do it?
Storytellers can adapt by “reading the room“ better, adapting ones style of addressing a tale in order to appeal. Plus, storytellers tend to know more than just the one tale. But we cannot just focus on ourselves.
The listener may have been possessed by the anchor-like drag of modernity: that heady mix of sloth, a discomfort at new experiences, and cynicism. The only real way to counter this is to push for the oral traditions to be placed back in their rightful position alongside the world’s great literary traditions, music, visual arts, philosophy and science. And, crucially, not simply stating that they are already there - they simply are not. Just as these other fields of human endeavour and excellence are engaged with almost universally by people, the oral traditions are so ignored, relegated to such a niche that the term “the storytelling audience“ is not seen as a bizarre term in the way that, say, “the music audience“ would be - everybody likes music and has a relationship with the phenomenon.
This siloing is beyond a loss: this is the slow death of culture, the terminal decline of civilisations. We must relearn how to engage in these oral traditions in a way that is more expansive than is currently done, to gently modernise whilst retaining the core identities of the traditions in all their glorious uniqueness. In fact, here is a model for ethically approaching such a renaissance. My treatise on embedded storytelling does not solve the issue discussed here, rather it is (part of) a blueprint for building the tools that will.
“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about” - W. H. Auden
Chloé Valdary has the right idea, or at the very least is walking in the right direction, with her Theory of Enchantment. On reading an earlier draft of this piece, Ms. Valdary commented: “…The "chant" in enchantment actually alludes to the oral tradition that is necessary for healing“.
She gets it.
For what it is designed to do, I cannot imagine a more apt model than the Theory of Enchantment - fluid but strong, open but defined, ground-breaking but familiar. From my perspective, I think it’s a vital body of work to peruse for any professional storyteller working today. But…
if you decide to engage in this joyous, complex battle by advocating for a re-embracing the world’s oral traditions and the mythic, you’ll find a whole Reality of Enchantment. It’s all around us, all the time. It’s very, very complex, so incredibly dense, hard to do, almost impossible,
and that is as beautiful as life itself.