Parlez-Vous Franglais? An Essay

Essay: 1590s, "short non-fiction literary composition" (first attested in writings of Montaigne published in 1580 and in writings of Sir Francis Bacon published in 1597), from Middle French essai "trial, attempt, essay," from Late Latin exagium "a weighing, weight," from Latin exigere "test," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + agere (see act) apparently meaning here "to weigh." The suggestion is of unpolished writing.

Poise: early 15c., "weight, quality of being heavy," later "significance, importance" (mid-15c.), from Old French pois "weight, balance, consideration" (12c., Modern French poids), from Medieval Latin pesum "weight," from Latin pensum "something weighted or weighed," (source of Provençal and Catalan pes, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian peso), noun use of neuter past participle of pendere "to weigh" (see pendant). The sense of "steadiness, composure" first recorded 1640s, from notion of being equally weighted on either side (1550s). Meaning "balance" is from 1711; meaning "way in which the body is carried" is from 1770.

As much as I want to say that it is necessary for me to say this, I know it is not, but humour me, friend. If you can imagine a red-lipped young lady in a well worn grey sweater laid upon a bed low to the ground in a room with hardwood floors and a balcony, you must know that she has a dull and persistent pain in her low back which wraps around in throbs to her womb. You know that she wants more than anything to write with meaning the flashes and sparks which blink her eyes open at night, but that with her cold belly, her hand shakes at the temptation. She knows as well as you that she must try and she appreciates your allowance for her incapacitation. Of course it does not much matter to a common reader the sitting place and view or breakfast of the writer; indeed we could argue it the duty of the one with the pen to render something legible which has an absolute weight. Of course it matters immensely to the writer the minute details which are nigh-never shared, that the pen be specific, the feet dangling, and that it is a task to say anything at all for it is the fancy of those who never dare say a word that it is an easy thing which offers itself not to them; contrary, friend, this is why I mention the lady's fragile state as she writes.


Sometimes it will take three hours since the occasion to have the truth realized while walking to the train station that upon greeting the girls after school, the 3rd grader did not in fact say she had grandma homework ("grand-mere"), but grammar homework ("grammaire"); you must refrain from laughing out loud at yourself alone in public for that is a sorry sight in any language. Other truths elude us more easily than that however, and we must be tolerant of their beastly selves with their regenerative heads on long necks.
When we passively perceive our nameless neighbors on the street, we undoubtedly take for granted that they chose more or less deliberately the style of their hair, the rouge on their cheeks, the shoes on their feet and we undoubtedly take for granted the things which they did not choose, as they may well have too. Each moment just a moment and subject to whims of fancy. We know this, but oh how we love to immortalize. How we dearly love to declare things to be, for we are so well built for it, and applaud is due to all of us who have ever dared to declare ourselves a thing, only to redact ourselves back into raw material. The trouble with declarations is always who hears them and how.

We know as a matter of course the importance of language, and for sake of semantics I shall emphasize, for communication, as that is indeed the intent and cause eventually effected of such. We may reflect on the misunderstandings between friends over the use of a word with various connotations, to say nothing of every college-aged rascal in Mexico adding o's and a's to the ends of their American-English and finding their company sorely confused. For certainly if anyone must know what is being said it is the person doing the saying and so we are left with a question of the ears.

Now we pause. We turn to look at the task at hand: an essai. Simply, an attempt unpolished to weigh and consider things, and gauge a rough measure of balance for the sake of poising ourselves ready to face a truth, the world. And on we go.

There is no one who knows better than each of us what things mean. Or, to say more precisely, there is no one who could know better than each of us what things could mean. Certainly to operate otherwise would be such a dreadful act of disrespect, a folly waste of time trying to control another's life with any honest semblance of holding their sake in your hands. Knowing this, we must place trust in the ears of those who offer us their time for listening. So that when we ourselves lend our ears to others, we may feel at liberty to prefer this word to that, to remember the phrase as we liked it best, perhaps the way it was before the 'clarification,' to put all the possibilities of what to say in a pot and simmer. We may let the guilt of accent and dialect boil off like wine, and skim from the surface the questions of accuracy or equivalencies like bones and bay leaves in a stew.

We may prefer an English translation of an originally French poem, we may speak in slang, and combine recipes, so long as we know that quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire! And remember that no matter where we find ourselves, we may always find refuge in an inflected, "huh?" and trust that the one thing that you can always make others understand is that you don't understand.

"Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep instead of talking through the long winter's night? It is not to the cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things are permanently more valuable than others." Virginia Woolf, On Not Knowing Greek, 1925