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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Ok and Un, Early Champions of Literalism

Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman on 04/24/07 at 05:38 PM

Adam Roberts thinks he can find better evidence of Jack London’s mastery of the art of dialogue than yours truly, a trained Jack London scholar. He is so very, very wrong. I now present an excerpt from London’s play The First Poet, collected in The Turtles of Tasman. The scene:

The hill nearest to the plain terminates in a cliff, in the face of which, nearly at the level of the ground, are four caves, with low, narrow entrances. Before the caves, and distant from them less than one hundred feet, is a broad, flat rock, on which are laid several sharp slivers of flint, which, like the rock, are blood-stained. Between the rock and the cave-entrances, on a low pile of stones, is squatted a man, stout and hairy. Across his knees is a thick club, and behind him crouches a woman. At his right and left are two men somewhat resembling him, and like him, bearing wooden clubs ... It is late afternoon. The name of him on the pile of stones is Uk, the name of his mate, Ala; and of those at his right and left, Ok and Un.

Uk: Be still! (turning to the woman behind him) Thou seest that they become still. None save me can make his kind be still, except perhaps the chief of the apes, when in the night he deems he hears a serpent.... At whom dost thou stare so long? At Oan? Oan, come to me!

Oan: I am thy cub.

Uk: Oan, thou art a fool!

Ok and Un: Ho! ho! Oan is a fool!

All the Tribe: Ho! ho! Oan is a fool!

Oan: Why am I a fool?

Uk: Dost thou not chant strange words? Last night I heard thee chant strange words at the mouth of thy cave.

Oan: Ay! They are marvellous words; they were born within me in the dark.

Uk: Art thou a woman, that thou shouldst bring forth? Why dost thou not sleep when it is dark?

Oan: I did half sleep; perhaps I dreamed.

Don’t leave! The cavemen haven’t even discussed the danger of non-literal speech yet:

Oan: They are wonderful words. They are such:

The bright day is gone—

Uk: Now I see thou art liar as well as fool: behold, the day is not gone!

Oan: But the day was gone in that hour when my song was born to me.

Uk: Then shouldst thou have sung it only at that time, and not when it is yet day. But beware lest thou awaken me in the night. Make thou many stars, that they fly in the whiskers of Gurr.

Did I forget to introduce Gurr? He’s a tiger. You heard me right. The danger of non-literal speech is being eaten by a tiger. Not to mentio—LOOK OUT!

O men! O men with the heart of hyenas! Behold, Gurr cometh not! I did but strive to deceive you, that I might the more easily slay this singer, who is very swift of foot. Gather ye before me, for I would speak wisdom...

Where does one even start analyzing a play about cave-people rendered in a ninth grader’s notion of Shakespearean English? With an acknowledgment of Uk’s hypocritical use of non-literal speech—he yelled “Behold! Gurr cometh! He cometh swiftly from the wood!” before crushing Oan’s skull with his club—and an analysis of what it suggests London thought about the application of literary techniques and tropes in the public sphere? (Three guesses as to what I’m working on right now. Answers failing to rhyme with “evisceration” will be ignored.)

Comments

Dude, you’re working on tergiversation? Awesome.

(And are you sure this isn’t a heretofore undiscovered passage from The Eye of Argon?)

By on 04/24/07 at 10:03 PM | Permanent link to this comment

It’s not London’s fault modern English didn’t maintain the distinction between second person formal and informal. Anyway, it’s all in the performance. (Come on, tell me that wouldn’t be funny if it was Michael Keaton as Oan and Al Pacino as Uk.)

(Did you use this passage as an example of something once already in the last year or two, or am I just having a bad case of deja vu?)

By David Moles on 04/25/07 at 06:21 AM | Permanent link to this comment

I misread David’s comment. I thought he wrote Michael Crichton and Al Pacino, which I submit is even finer casting.

By John Holbo on 04/25/07 at 09:38 AM | Permanent link to this comment

I haven’t seen Crichton act, but he definitely art liar as well as fool. And I would pay good money to see Al Pacino hit him over the head.

By David Moles on 04/25/07 at 03:21 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Ok and Un, Early Champions of Literalism

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