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Sense and Word in Liturgical Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

David Birch
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Extract

When E. Gordon Craig in 1922 wrote,

“To man words come easiest and earliest to lie with. So that now in this twentieth century nearly all speech is a lie. I would not go so far as to laughingly admit that speech of that kind was an art. I should rather call it a mess.”

he was making the distinction between the role of language as a vehicle for communicating essentials, and the role of language as an art-form. As a theatrical designer who was to revolutionise traditional concepts of theatre, he was keenly aware of the difficulty in using language to represent exactly those things we wish to communicate to others. One word may have a variety of meanings, or because of constant use in a multitude of ways, have lost much of its original meaning. Reliance on the word itself is therefore not always the best or most effective guide to meaning. He continues:

“Once a merely natural thing—it became an art; but when it exceeded its natural term of life, having talked itself hoarse-black in the face—the silver of speech rubbed off and we came to the lead underneath, and inside the lead . . . lies.”

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 59 , Issue 695 , April 1978 , pp. 176 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 E. Gordon Craig, Scene (First published by O.U.P. 1923, re‐issued by Benjamin Blom, New York 1968) p 1

2 Ibid. p 1

3 Ibid. p 4

4 Rutherston, Albert Sixteen Designs for the Theatre (O.U.P. London 1927) p 15Google Scholar

5 Chomsky, Noam Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (The M.I.T. Press Camb. Mass. 1965, eighth printing 1972)Google Scholar p 4

6 Artaud, Antonin The Theater and its Double (New York, 1938Google Scholar, revised edition 1958) p 107

7 E. Gordon Craig, op. cit. p 13

8 Albert Rutherston, op. cit. p 13

9 The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (De Sacra Liturgia) C.T.S. London 1967Google Scholar, Chapter 2 section 50 p 23

10 The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (Early English Text Society, O.U.P. London 1944, Original Series No 218, revised reprint 1973) p 16, lines 3–6

11 Laeuchli, Samuel, The Language of Faith (Epworth Press London 1959) p 235Google Scholar