Litera chewer
I have a friend, a professor of English actually, who pronounces literature as litera chewer. She’s from New Orleans so some accommodation can be made for her unique pronunciation. Maybe they all say litera chewer down in Naw Luns.
It got me thinking, what exactly is litera chewer and what value does it have in our lives? Literature goes way back in time to before any written language was invented, to those enchanting and gripping tales told around the campfire, those myths and legends and proto-fairy tales that entertained our oldest ancestors. The oral recitation of stories was a form of literature too.
If we were able to transportate ourselves back 50,000 years and visit our ancestors, one of the things that we would find most surprising would be the laughter, the rich quality of their stories, the good times. It was a form of entertainment that was well practiced and appreciated.
I remember when we first got a TV in our house. It was duly considered by my father, who suspected that it was an unholy thing and that it would bring into our consecrated home, uncensored and unwholesome content. We were a strictly Calvinist Baptist household. My father was the minister of the flock in a small church so this matter was of upmost importance.
In any case he relented under pressure from us children and we did acquire a television. The rabbit ears antenna sat on top of the set and picked up one of the 3 stations that were within range. Sometimes when the atmospheric conditions were bad we had to twist and turn the two long telescopic wands and try to aim them at an imaginary signal traveling through the air.
I was fascinated with the mystery of how pictures could get inside our TV and carefully examined the antenna wire for clues. It was flat not round, having 2 wires encased in plastic with a space in between, and I thought, aha, that must be how the pictures travel into the TV, through this special wire.
Anyways, we had a TV and we watched it. Every night. Religiously. Gun Smoke, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy were a few of the shows, the Lone Ranger, Lawrence Welk, the Ed Sullivan Show. They told a story or sang some songs and were entertaining, sometimes funny. We were glued to the set every evening until 8:30 which was our bedtime. There was no dispensation or accommodation after that, whatever came later in the programming was unknown to us. But this was our story time. This was our time gathered around the glowing campfire with our tribe.
Skip ahead to the present day. We have 500 channels on TV plus the internet - ‘social’ media. We can create our own content, Facebook and all that, but all people can seem to manage is 6 words and 3 emojis; that’s their litera chewer. A small bite by any measure but it satisfies our need to connect. I guess. 280 characters is the limit of our expression, or maybe the limit of our imagination.
Check out this literature from Homer. A tempest, a shipwreck, marooned on an island, discovers a beautiful goddess all in one paragraph. Kinda like a Simpson’s cartoon.
. . . For blows aplenty
awaited me from the god who shakes the earth.
Cross gales he blew, making me lose my bearings,
and heaved up seas beyond imagination—
huge and foundering seas. All I could do
was hold hard, groaning under every shock,
until my craft broke up in the hurricane.
I kept afloat and swam . . . or drifted,
taken by wind and current to this coast
where I went in on big swells running landward.
But cliffs and rock shoals made that place forbidding,
so I turned back, swimming off shore, and came
in the end to a river, to auspicious water,
with smooth beach and a rise that broke the wind.
I lay there where I fell till strength returned.
Then sacred night came on, and I went inland
to high ground and a leaf bed in a thicket.
Heaven sent slumber in an endless tide
submerging my sad heart among the leaves.
That night and next day’s dawn and noon I slept;
the sun went west; and then sweet sleep unbound me,
when I became aware of maids . . .
playing along the beach; the princess, too,
most beautiful. I prayed her to assist me,
and her good sense was perfect; one could hope
for no behavior like it from the young,
thoughtless as they most often are. But she
gave me good provender and good red wine,
a river bath, and finally this clothing.
There is the bitter tale. These are the facts.
This was performed, not written, as you might suspect by the action words, the dense imagery, the cadence of the language. Homer and his lute mesmerized the audience for 2 1/2 hours, about the duration of a movie.
The story of Odysseus has influenced Western Civilization for 3,000 years. And even before then, before it was written down, it circulated among the towns and villages of ancient Greece, playing in the market square on the weekend, performed by Homer and his predecessors. And before then there were stories, sung and danced around the campfire, kept in rhythm with the drum and flute.
Our myths and stories and our urge to tell them come from the deepest part of our pre-history. When we first discovered the power of language, some unknown millennia ago, we also discovered magic. When we first learned how to imbue sound with meaning and make words we increased our capacity to communicate and also to enjoy.
The point of my tirade is this: literature is a powerful element of human culture. It’s transformative; it’s illuminating for the reader and cathartic for the writer. It’s one of our finest accomplishments as human beings.
May the Muse bless you, those spirits who inspire and ‘put in mind’ the words, the lyrics, the dance moves that are so divine. This is how the ancient Greeks saw it.
Feel free to share your favorite literary experience as a teller or as a listener.