The Literary Addiction

Literature is plagued with a disease; a disease that runs rampant

through its veins and descends into its most beautiful excerpts. Literature is

addicted to obscurity, to transparency and to abstruse language

masquerading as diction. Literature has grown into a beast that cares not for

the wisdom or the profundity in words, but for their eloquence. Literature has

been kidnapped and hidden whilst a monster takes its stead. Readers have

adapted themselves to appreciate the length and voluminous traits of words

and sentences, rather than their earnestness and lucidity. In essence, the

god of literature has undergone a metamorphosis into obscure, pretentious,

bombastic, and paltry language in order appease the erudite, rather than

entertain the masses; yet words have reconstructed their foundation in such

a way that diversion from their current status would collapse the entire

framework of modern literature.

The science of semantics has made the diagnosis of language.

Humanity has dug a ravine that she will never be able to circumvent nor

cross. Emotion and inconsistent reasoning constantly cloud our judgment

and therefore make clear communication unachievable. Every word that one

hears is automatically and subconsciously translated into a referent. This

referent is the reference for understanding language; it is the symbol to

which one relates words in order to comprehend them.1 Unfortunately, every

1
The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase
person translates each individual word into a unique referent, thus creating

vagueness and a fissure in communication.

Still humans manage to function and speak somewhat efficiently due

to comparison. To emphasize and attempt clarity, one must use synonyms

and exaggeration. Take words such as ‘obese,’ ‘fat,’ and ‘chubby.’ With

certain ease, a slightly educated person is able to arrange these from least

to most extreme: chubby, fat, obese. Yet what if one were to ask where

‘portly’ would fit, or even ‘corpulent?’ And both appear to be euphemisms

which one must use constantly in order to avoid offense and words that even

could be labeled as more descriptive and eloquent. A journalist will never

write, ‘there were 25,401 people in the stadium,’ rather he or she would

address the crowd in a more appealing manner as to write, ‘The crowd

exceeded 25,000 people!’ or ‘the stadium was sold out’ in order to construct

a more interesting sentence. Yet in the effort to interest, the accuracy has

been lost. An identical concept is used in saying, ‘the dog frolicked through

the meadow whimsically’ vice, ‘the dog ran through the field.’ The

connotation of the words frolicked and whimsical, and maybe even meadow,

may change drastically from one interpreter to the next, and still the first

sentence is more appealing to the reader. Sentences such as these are the

epitome of irony; they are an attempt to become more descriptive with

vague words, or vague diction. And still such “eloquence” is enamoring to

readers.
 Still the quest for liberation from eloquent diction is quixotic. Education

is founded on the ideal that one must learn to write a certain way; one must

appreciate and enjoy certain books; one must write and speak a certain way.

Luckily, there are the rebellious, who diversify from this regime of tendency,

yet unfortunately they are not the “prestigious” nor the “authors.” To be

cultured is to follow expectation, and the cultured are those that run and

maintain society. They are the beautiful, the erudite, and the prestigious;

they are the lilies. Yet lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.2

And so this beast that we honor and respect, the beast of literacy,

must still reign over us for the sake of order. Yet one should still recognize

the fact that our culture is subservient to diction, i. e. to obscurity,

transparency and pretentious language. For knowledge is power, and more

importantly, liberty.

2
Lilies that Fester by C.S. Lewis