Words, Words...
Dowrl: a World turned upside down, where the poet writes beans and eats verses...
Words, Words
I went searching for words.
I wanted to find the one that could best account for the state of the World, a World in which... Precisely, what can be said about this World in order to explain what is happening in it?
What is happening in the world? What would be so difficult to describe with words?
I will give just one example: Netanyahu, a confessed genocidaire, nominates Trump (and here words are already lacking to qualify the man in a coherent way) for the Nobel Peace Prize!!
By chance, I discovered a popular Egyptian song that reacted to the awarding of the same Nobel Prize to Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel at the time of the agreement celebrated with Egypt.
The song speaks of an ordinary citizen, called Salam (a name that means Peace), who sleeps one day, wakes up, reads the news of peace in the newspapers and, since then, confuses words: "when 'Mechanem Jiben wins the Meipro Loben' means that 'Menachem Begin won the Nobel Prize', then 'dowrl' means a 'world' that has been turned upside down."
It ends by telling the Nobel Committee of the problems it had caused:
So in this twisted time
Many horrors will happen to us
So the beating replaces the word
And the writer takes a saw
So the toep is the poet who
Lives in an apartment, inside a stanza, inside a poem, and
Writes beans and eats verses.
Now, then, to my search for words.
It occurred to me to call it bizarre. But, going to the dictionary, I realized that the first meaning of the word, in Portuguese and in its Spanish origin, speaks of something that stands out for its good appearance, good bearing, elegance... only informally does it refer to something that is odd, strange, eccentric. It wasn't enough. The word had occurred to me because I had thought of comic books in which "bizarre" qualified characters from parallel universes where everything would be inverted (see, for example, Bizarro Superman).
"Parallel universe"? "Alternative dimension"? "Mirror world"? These expressions and others close or equivalent, which could pretend to replace my first intuition of "bizarre," also didn't convince me. All carry the idea of another World that would be inverted or parallel in opposition to ours, which would continue to obey the "normal" norms of nature and society.
Why not simply say "upside-down world"? The expression seems too easy, too simple, too usual, in such a way that it wouldn't carry the force with which I see the World plunging into the absurd and the surreal.
"Absurd," "surreal"... Like so many other words (perhaps all words!), these two are first weighed and judged according to the impact they have on our hearing and understanding. Then, when we dive into their meanings constructed by etymology, we discover in them a greater, lesser, different, new or renewed force... I like both "absurd" and "surreal," I appreciate the force they carry, but still they seemed insufficient to me. Etymology didn't quite convince me: something that is out of tune and, therefore, incomprehensible, and something that is above reality and, therefore, seems absurd, are things that speak to what I want to say, but don't do so with the necessary power.
"Kafkaesque"? Not yet. Too individual. Yes, it conveys the oppression resulting from the absurd and surreal, but it is universal only insofar as it concerns individuals, all individuals.
"Oneiric," something from the world of dreams? "Delirious," something that goes off the expected course? "Hallucinatory," something from the universe of the disturbed and disturbing? Yes, a little of each. However, neither singularly nor together do they account for the general picture.
"Chimerical," fanciful, illusory, monstrous? Yes, a little of that too, especially the monstrous.
"Nonsensical," disjointed, displaced? Yes, yes...
"Grotesque"? I like the sound, I like the force, I even visualize the grimace with which the word is pronounced. But the origin, in paintings found in ancient caves, seen as fantastic and strange, takes away some of the power I like.
"Aberrant," that which deviates or moves away from the path, is also more satisfying as impact than as unraveled origin.
"Anomalous," irregular, unequal, outside the norm; "Eccentric," outside the center; "Proparoxytone," crooked, irregular; "Unusual," not habitual, not customary... All this continues to be partially or totally true, but continues not to be sufficient.
"Dystopian," a bad place, opposite to utopian? Yes, I like it... "Paradoxical," contrary to common opinion, I like less. As well as "Contradictory," which says the opposite.
"Perverse," turned, inverted, sounds very good to me as an accusation and as an offense I would like to make to the world. And stronger than its neighbors: "Distorted," "Subverted," "Disturbed."
In short, I only partially satisfied the hunger I had for a word that could be thrown in the face of the World.
I continued then in the search, but now I wanted to find the best words that would speak of the effect resulting from the perception of a "World out of Plumb.1" Words that would speak of my bewilderment and my incomprehension.
"Perplexity" is one of my favorites, even before knowing that it refers to a mind that bends over itself trying to understand something. "Disconcert," to take out of order, is good, but less so.
"Stupefaction," besides having a beautiful rhythm, a beautiful construction, speaks of being astonished, stunned. "Bewilderment," besides perhaps having Arabic origin (this always touches a weakness of mine), speaks of the confusion of the senses. "Stupor," becoming immobile with amazement.
Being "Agape," with an open mouth, "Flabbergasted," breathless, "Astonished," struck by thunder...
All this speaks of me before the World, but words capable of saying everything are still missing.
As a result of the combination between the absurdity of life and perplexity arises that which is equally difficult to capture with sufficiently good words.
"Despair" is a possibility, but "Hopelessness" seems more precise to me, and "Desperation" when one thinks of the process of gradual plunge into the place where one no longer expects.
"Disheartening"! What a beautiful word! Without breath, without the breath that makes us live and fills our chest, preventing it from collapsing.
And "Discouragement"?! A word so often repeated to refer to the everyday, but which speaks to us, in truth, of the absence of soul, of spirit, of the divine touch!
"Dejection," "Prostration," which speak of one who has been knocked down, of one who sees himself thrown to the ground, defenseless.
"Melancholy," originally linked to the idea of a black bile causing incomprehensible diseases, how much weight in this word!
"Affliction," the condition of one who has suffered a blow from adversity...
The ones that come closest?
Perhaps "Anguish," that sensation, including physical, of tightness in the chest, that takes our breath away, that wants to prostrate us...
Perhaps "Agony," the struggle against death.
Mundo fora de Prumo is the name in Portuguese of a book, written by my friend José Garcez Ghirardi, dealing with the transformations os Sheakesperian England.