Participles: Free Spirits Loose Upon the Page

Participles are the shakers and movers of the English language. They stir up text, making it flow in smooth rhythmic waves; they create color and texture from dull shadow, encouraging them to dance on the page. They “–ing and –en” their way into otherwise dull syntactic structures, animating their forms, infusing them with meaning. Syntactically, a participle is a non-finite form of a verb, and as such, it shares some properties with adjectives and other verb forms. Grammatically, it can function as both adjective and adverb.

Like adjectives, participles have the ability to modify constituents; however, they don’t always enjoy the same freedoms as these modifiers. For example, participles sound awkward, indeed, ungrammatical, when modified by a degree adverb. Brinton notes that one can say “a sweetly smiling girl,” but “a very sweetly smiling girl” is hyperbolically beyond the bounds of grammaticality (174). Nonetheless, the present participle adjective is often a descriptor of an action or situation that is in progress, which enables it to highlight the concurrency of that action with its modifier, bringing them into focus in real time. Compare the following sentences:

As Shane followed me down the street, he pleaded his case with feigned desperation.
Shane followed me down the street, pleading his case with feigned desperation.
Pleading his case with feigned desperation, Shane followed me down the street.

While the three sentences are semantically alike, the second two convey a sense of immediacy, which also emphasizes the close relationship between the adjacent clauses. In addition, the participial modifier underscores the simultaneousness of the occurrences by giving them equal treatment, thereby rendering them both immediate and actual.

Like verbs, participles have tense and they work with modals; but, unlike verbs, they never rule within the hierarchical environment of the sentence. On the other hand, in some respects — certainly poetically — the participle has greater clout than a copular or stative verb; and in some ways, it’s the only element that gives credibility to a main verb. I might tell you, for example, that a 100-year-old woman ran up 100 flights of stairs. But, I give you a real and more believable picture of that event if I say, A one-hundred-year-old woman ran up one hundred flights of stairs, trembling, cursing, and praying for death.

What Participles Look Like
In English, the participle appears in two forms — present tense and past tense. In the present tense, an -ing ending is attached to any bare verb form (write – writing, run – running, sing – singing, dance – dancing). Participles in the past tense are more complicated. They attach an -ed ending to the bare form of regular, or weak, verbs (danced, climbed, added); –en, -n, and –t endings to strong, or irregular, verbs (forgotten, torn, lost); and they demand stem changes as well as irregular endings to uniquely irregular verbs (run, drunk, lain). The past participle is the same verb form English-language speakers use with have or had to create the present perfect and past perfect forms (has run, have sung, had gone). These are present- and past-perfect verbs, which, when stripped of their auxiliaries, no longer function as verbs. In the following example, the main clause in sentence (a) comprises two lexical verbs, feel and write. By omitting the auxiliaries in sentence (b), the lexical verbs become participial modifiers, describing the subject.

(a) Dante had felt energized and he had written feverishly, so he finished La vita nuova in a fortnight.
(b) Energized and writing feverishly, Dante finished La vita nuova in a fortnight.

Where Participles Occur
Participles occur in all the tenses, with the exception of the progressive active, and the perfect progressive passive. Brinton (240) lists the following verb forms in which the present participle can and cannot occur:

Simple active: She’s always singing that song.

Perfect active: Having sung her last song, she bowed and left the room.

Progressive active: *having singing

Perfect progressive active: Having been singing all her life, she knew many songs by heart.

Perfect passive: Having been determined from the beginning, she released her first CD against great odds.

Progressive passive: Being called a songwriter makes it all worthwhile.

Perfect progressive passive: *Having been being determined…. (Although some consider this grammatical, I find it awkward at best; the perfect active or the progressive active are less unwieldy.)


The verb forms, at least those that are grammatical, can usually be changed into pure participles:

Singing that song makes her happy.
Her last song sung, she bowed and left the room.
Determined from the beginning, she released her first CD against great odds.

PARTICIPIAL PHRASES
Participial phrases comprise a participle accompanied by other lexical units that provide added information; for example, badly written prose, greatly inspired lecture, searching desperately for the homework assignment. According to Jacobs, linguists once thought participials were nothing more than reduced forms of the relative clause; that is, a relative clause containing a past participle shorn of its auxiliary and complementizer (313). For example, a sentence such as, "Barking loudly, Juno ran to the door" was simply a reduction of, "Juno, who was barking loudly, ran to the door." Yet, as logical as this may have seemed, it failed to rise to the occasion for all English-language verbs. Among the culprits, Jacobs notes the verb “contain”: “A bottle containing acid had a green color” cannot be forced into a relative clause with a present participle form; for example, * “A bottle that was containing acid had a green color” (313). However, the jury is still out, and some linguists still refer to participials as reduced relative clauses.

Uses of Participials
Participials have all sorts of uses for writers. In general, they give writers enormous flexibility and freedom. In particular, they allow them to fine-tune descriptive passages, bringing them to life in readers’ imaginations. Participials also give readers additional information that answers questions as to why or how an action took place. Compare the following sentences:

Dante, spurned and condemned, left Florence forever.

Dante, spurned by his former friends and condemned to death by the city council, left Florence forever.

While the first sentence is perfectly acceptable with its single participles, the second sentence not only modifies condemned, it tells the reader who spurned and condemned Dante. Participial phrases give writing vitality, which allows it to flow in rhythmically satisfying, yet unpredictable and surprising ways. Compare these sentences.

The principal yells and screams at the students on a daily basis.

The principal yells and screams at the students on a daily basis, her high-pitched voice screeching, her big yellow teeth gnashing, her arms flapping against her thick saddlebag thighs.

Participials add texture and movement to prose, bestowing it with a certain musicality. They also create an undercurrent of mystery by gracefully “suggesting relationships.” In this sense, they can take the place of subordinating clauses. Morenberg and Sommers offer an example of this technique in the following two sentences (49):

Because actor Anthony Hopkins glared directly at the camera and did not blink for long periods of time, he made the cannibalistic murderer of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter, a frightening presence on the screen.

Glaring directly at the camera and not blinking for long periods of time, actor Anthony Hopkins made the cannibalistic murderer of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter, a frightening presence on the screen.

Again, while the first example is grammatically acceptable, it’s rather flat, and it fails to underscore the essential connection between Hopkins’ glare and his frightening presence on the screen. However, a phrase such as glaring directly at the camera carries the reader into the theater. By fusing the participial phrase with the main clause, the writer has managed to underscore the causal relationship between the participial complementizer and the “frightening presence on the screen.”

Participial phrases are also creative alternatives to conjunctive adverbs such as thus, therefore, hence, for this reason. In the following examples, the participial phrase avoids the staccato effect of short sentences or clauses joined by conjunctive adverbs. Consider the difference between the following constructions:

The dogs were frightened by a noise outside the door. For this reason, they barked incessantly until I reassured them no one was there.

Frightened by a noise outside the door, the dogs barked incessantly until I reassured them no one was there.

Participials work well in absolute constructions — constructions that often use the participle form and highlight the essential connection between entities. Compare the following sentences:

Shana came in from sleigh riding. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining.

Shana, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, came in from sleigh riding.

In the first sentence, Shana’s cheeks and eyes are an afterthought, not necessarily connected to her sleigh-riding. In the second sentence, it’s clear that her flushed cheeks and shining eyes were caused by her exercise in the snow.

Placement of Participials
Participials are free spirits; they are not locked into entirely predictable slots in every sentence. Nonetheless, writers who insert them randomly run the risk of misplacing them, which disturbs the text. The positioning of participials affects the cadence and, often, the intonation of the sentence; and most important, it modifies and determines meaning. Consider the following sentences:

Looking guilty as she trotted up the driveway, Ziggy glared at Zion as if to warn her to keep her mouth shut about her adventure.

Ziggy, looking guilty as she trotted up the driveway, glared at Zion as if to warn her to keep her mouth shut about her adventure.

Ziggy glared at Zion as if to warn her to keep her mouth shut about her adventure, looking guilty as she trotted up the driveway.

In the first sentence, the phrase immediately captures the action and thrusts Ziggy directly into the reader’s imagination. The second sentence delays, or interrupts, the action of the text; this momentary lapse prevents the reader from being drawn too rapidly into the text — an effect the writer may or may not want. The third sentence barely escapes classification as a dangling modifier; its insertion after the main clause gives it more of a commentary role, which forces the reader to step back from the action.

Writers, then, try to control these free-spirited agents by first determining their relationships with the main clause. In general, if the participial describes something that occurred before the action of the main clause, it appears before that clause; likewise, if it paints a picture of something that happened after the action of the main clause, it should be positioned appropriately.

Misplaced Participials

Misplaced participles are participles whose referents are ambiguous; that is, while they modify a distant constituent, they are infelicitously juxtaposed with another constituent. The most common sinner is the dangling participle, which appears, or dangles, inappropriately at the end of a sentence. The following sentences should dismay and/or amuse the attentive reader:

Skipping down the hallway and giggling inappropriately on a daily basis, the students were stunned when Mr. Scott was fired.

Having once been a registered Communist, Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined Mr. Scott’s career.

In the first sentence, we are sure the students were skipping and giggling; that is, until we realize it was Mr. Scott. Thus, we’re forced to re-read the sentence to make sense of it. In the second sentence, we’re thrown off track because common knowledge immediately warns us of the writer’s error. Worse, if the knowledge isn’t common to the reader, it can lead to gross misunderstanding of the text.

Miscue Participials

Miscue participles are misplaced adjectival or adverbial modifiers; for example, this one from Groucho Marx: “Running down the street, I shot an elephant in my pajamas.” Miscue participles are different from misplaced participles in that their transference to another part of the sentence doesn’t disambiguate it. Miscue participles frequently appear in newspaper headlines, and are the source of great fun, except perhaps for the copywriters, who weren’t looking for a laugh.

IRAQI HEAD SEEKING ARMS
PROSTITUTES APPEALING TO POPE
TEACHERS STRIKING IDLE KIDS
ENRAGED COW INJURES FARMER WITH AX
MINERS REFUSING TO WORK AFTER DEATH
JUVENILE COURT TO TRY SHOOTING DEFENDANT
DRUNKEN DRIVER PAID $1000
COLD WAVE LINKED TO TEMPERATURES
POLICE BEGIN CAMPAIGN RUNNING DOWN JAY-WALKERS
LOCAL HIGHSCHOOL DROPOUTS CUT IN HALF


Types of Participials
Like all living creatures of the earth, participles play different roles depending on their immediate environment. If we want to determine the role of the participle, we must examine its linguistic environment.

Adverbial Participles
Adverbial participles, as the name implies, modify verbs or adjectives. We can see in the following examples why they might be considered reductions. Starting with a subordinate clause: Until I perused Jacobs’ book, I had never experienced the joys of syntax, we can give perused a more immediate air by replacing the simple past with a present participle: Until perusing Jacobs’ book, I had never experienced the joys of syntax. We can then eliminate the complementizer, reducing it even further; however, in order to retain the original meaning, we're forced to eliminate the negation in the main clause: Perusing Jacobs’ book, I experienced the joys of syntax for the first time.

The forms in which the adverbial participle appears are distinct and not interchangeable. The authors of The Grammar Book discuss six forms of the adverbial participle — the first three forms are present participle forms; the second three are past participle forms (501):

• To modify an action that is taking place at the same time or in overlapping time: Running every day for a year, Ari started feeling stronger and healthier.
• To refer to a past activity with a specific time reference, which is interrupted by a specific time reference in the main clause: Having run since 5 AM, Ari returned to her apartment at 6 PM.
• To refer to an ongoing past activity that took place before the activity in the main clause: Having been running every day for a year, Ari decided to enter the New York City marathon.
• To express causal relationship: Toned and strengthened, Ari paid the 25-dollar entry fee.
  To express a more immediate causal relationship: Being toned and strengthened, Ari felt sure the marathon was going to change her life for the better.
• To refer to an action that was completed before the action of the main clause and to underscore the causal relationship: Having once been toned and strengthened, Ari looked back on her workout days with nostalgia.
  

Adjectival Participles
Adjectival participles can appear in pre-nominal or post-nominal slots. As attributes of the noun, they generally appear before the NP: Shana’s overstuffed closet is a mess. When adjectival participles are predicative, they can be placed before or after the NP: Kyla’s closet is stuffed with expensive clothing. Filled to the brim, Jaaron’s closet is inaccessible.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell whether an adjectival participle is really a verbal in disguise. For example:

Beatrice is striking.

Beatrice is striking Dante.

If there is any uncertainty, an intensifier test might distinguish the participial roles, especially the present participle form. If the sentence is grammatical, the participle is nominative: Beatrice is VERY striking. If the sentence is ungrammatical, the participle is predicative:*Beatrice is very striking Dante.

Passive Verbs vs. Adjectival Participles
Past participles are an integral part of the structure of passive verbs; but as such their roles are not always easily determined. In general, the past participle is adjectival when it describes a noun phrase; it’s passive when it describes how or by what agent or instrument an action occurs. However, when there is no post-nominal prepositional phrase, the distinction becomes clouded. For example, in a sentence such as The milk was spilled, the past participle spilled could be regarded as passive, but it could also be called adjectival. Once the by-phrase is added, its function becomes clear: The milk was spilled by Kyla — the participle is functioning verbally. The milk was spilled, and there was no sense crying over it — the past participle is adjectival.

Faux Past Participles
Sometimes adjectives have all the appearance of past participles, but they are really just ordinary adjectives donning the garb of participles. Some of these tricky adjectives are listed in The Grammar Book (586): one-legged man, naked truth, green-eyed monster. These can be tested by using the intensifier test. *the very one-legged man. The other two examples might pass the intensifier test, but only as emphatics or tongue-in-cheek referents: The very naked truth. The very green-eyed monster.

CONTROVERSIES
Linguistics is not an exact science. As in all fields of research there is disagreement among researchers, and their lofty disputes even involve labels for various parts of speech.

The Gerund
Most linguists regard the gerund as a substantive participle, which is often used interchangeably with the infinitive, another non-finite form of the verb. The following two sentences are transposable.

Winning is the object of the game.
The object of the game is to win.

In fact, a gerund is usually regarded as a noun, although some linguists prefer to classify it as a present participle. Indeed, it shares the same ending with the present participle, but it does not represent the doing of the action, rather, the naming of the action. In this way, it can function grammatically as a subject or a complement of the verb, but, it does not have verbal qualities. Since a sentence in English must contain a noun phrase and a verb phrase, the sentence is rendered ungrammatical if a gerund tries to stand in for a verb phrase: *The telephone ringing. *The telling of Chaucer’s tale. Warriner defines a gerund as a verbal noun, because it is derived from a verb and it functions as a noun (454). By extension, a gerund phrase is a phrase containing a gerund and its complements. The following sentence contains a gerund phrase as subject:

Entering the grand salon of the rich and famous was the greatest experience of Booth’s life.

Compare this with the following sentence:

Entering the grand salon of the rich and famous, Booth felt queasy and out of place.

Here, the participial is identical to that of the previous sentence, but it is not a gerund; it is a present participle phrase. One way to test whether an –ing word is a gerund or a present participle is to determine its function in a sentence. If it functions as a noun, it’s a gerund. Furthermore, if the sentence loses meaning when the past participle is substituted for the present participle, it’s a gerund. We can see this in the following sentence.

*Entered the grand salon of the rich and famous was the greatest experience of Booth’s life.


Gerunds and Verbs that Can’t Live Without Them
Some verbs need gerunds to clarify their meaning. For instance, a verb such as try can be followed by a gerund or an infinitive, each of which conveys a different meaning: Jaaron tried to work in an office suggests that Jaaron looked for work in a traditional office, but couldn’t find such a job. On the other hand, Jaaron tried working in an office communicates the idea that she worked in an office for a short period, but then realized it wasn’t for her. Further, words such as enjoy, deny, quit, and many others must be followed by a gerund: Jaaron enjoyed working in an office. *Jaaron enjoyed to work in an office. It’s not uncommon to hear this error in non-native speakers of English, whose native languages stipulate that when one verb follows another, the second verb must be in the infinitive. Consider the following examples from Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese: A Jaaron piaceva lavorare in un officio. A Jaaron le gustaba trabajar in una oficina. Jaaron amait travailler dans un bureau. Jaaron mochte in einem Büro arbeiten. O Jaaron amou trabalhar num escritório.

Gerunds, then, may or may not belong in a discussion of the participle. But there is no doubt as to its semantic importance. For example, I forgot to bring my homework today has a very different meaning from I forgot bringing my homework today (cf. the excellent discussion of the gerund in The Grammar Book 648-9).

Participles as Imperatives
Brown argues that present participles might function as imperatives as well as nouns and adjectives. He is referring to cases in which the participle is an essential part of the command; and he cites examples from English-language translations of the Bible, such as the following:

Jesus said [to his disciples], “And as ye go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’.”

If, says Brown, Jesus’ disciples went off to preach and preached something other than “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” they would not have obeyed his command. In another example, he cites the command “keep on moving: If the commandee wishes to obey, his/her movement must be either continuous or continual; if it’s neither, s/he has not obeyed the command. If we accept Brown’s claim that the participle’s power to “define, or limit, the imperative” (8) makes it inseparable from the command, then it’s an imperative. However, grammarians are yet to yield to his argument; they continue in their insistence that participles function only in the indicative present and past, never in the imperative.

PEDAGOGY
There is no dearth of controversy surrounding the teaching of grammatical structures as a vehicle for improving students’ writing and speaking abilities in a first or second language. Some claim to have proven the uselessness of formal grammar instruction; others hail it as a cure-all for sloppy thinking and feeble communicative skills. More pragmatic educators, who view messages from diehard theoreticians with a critical eye, know that communicative skills can be taught; but there is no single path to that end. Practical educators are eclectic in their choices of teaching methodologies; and they become adept at hacking through paths overgrown with theories, extracting just what they need. Communicative skills can be taught, but instructors must give students opportunities to experiment, discuss, and analyze with as much objectivity as possible.

Reasons for Teaching Participial Use
More than any other grammatical form, participles allow writers great flexibility. As we have seen, participials can be transported in and around a sentence or main clause to produce different effects. When students understand these effects and begin to play with their possibilities without worrying about being wrong or right or pleasing their teacher, their writing improves. Furthermore, in the ESL classroom, teaching about participles can help students avoid some of the present-tense errors prevalent in non-native speakers whose native languages don’t recognized the difference between present-tense constructions such as I am going and I go, or I like and I do like.

Applications in Writing Instruction
While it’s far from certain that students become better writers as a result of formal grammar instruction, teachers can create practical writing lessons around the use of the participle. To stimulate background knowledge and set the stage for a formal lesson, write some humorous miscues on the board, especially from headlines written by professional copywriters. Besides those already mentioned in this paper, try:

POLICE HELP DOG BITTING VICTIM
STOLEN PAINTING FOUND BY TREE
SISTERS REUNITED AFTER 18 YEARS ON CHECKOUT LINE
MILK DRINKERS TURNING TO POWDER
PANDA MATING FAILS. VETERINARIAN TAKING OVER.
DEAF MUTE GETS NEW HEARING IN KILLING
(“Silly Headlines”)

Give students time to come up with blundering headlines of their own creation; or, if you have Internet access in your classroom, let them do a search for additional misplaced participials (there are plenty to be had). Working your way backwards into the lesson by sharing humorous miscues helps students understand both the subtle and not-so-subtle powers of language. The next step is to share some misplaced modifiers and ask students how the sentences might be rescued. The following sentences can serve as models:

Driving through Washington, Mt St. Helens dominated the landscape.
Crossing the room, her foot bled all over the carpet.
Driving home in yesterday’s storm, a tree fell on the back of my car.
In evening clothes and with her hair specially styled, Mark thought his mother as glamorous as a film star. (“Dangling, Hanging, or Unattached Participles.”)

As students analyze and repair these ill-written sentences, they learn some fundamentals about the plasticity of language as it occurs within syntactical and semantic boundaries. In addition, they learn that language can be manipulated, and, most important of all, they have the power to manipulate it.

To give students an opportunity to practice with participles, give them sentence-combining exercises as a whole-class, group, or individual activity. Morenberg and Sommers include first-rate sentence-combining exercises in The Writer’s Options. Students are asked to combine sets of sentences into a single sentence with the help of participial phrases. Here is one example, which they model (54):

He was slowed by Parkinson’s disease.
Muhammad Ali moved deliberately among the adoring children in the mall.
He signed autographs.
He shook hands.
And he spoke in a soft voice.

Slowed by Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali moved deliberately among the adoring children at the mall, signing autographs, shaking hands, and speaking in a soft voice (54).

Besides sentence combining, students are also given prompts and asked to enrich them by creating their own participial phrases. For example, “Mom stared at me for a minute.” After modeling a response, let students write their own elaboration.

Horrified at my latest fashion statement, Mom stared at me for a minute, examining the small gold stud in my tongue (58).


Applications in Poetry
I have yet to find a student, no matter what age, who doesn’t enjoy writing autobiographical poems, or bio poems. An excellent way to teach participial usage without presenting a formal grammar lesson is to model a bio poem and then ask students to do a similar poem about themselves, a friend, relative, or story character. You can model a poem emphasizing any grammatical construction, and vary the requirements depending on students’ ages and abilities. For elementary-school students and older English-language students, it’s essential that you brainstorm with the class to create lists of words from which they can choose. In this way, they can enjoy the creativity and excitement of language without flailing under its lexicon. Here is an example of one model:


Name
Three –ing words describing things you do every day
Who is hoping ……………………………………..
Who is looking forward to……………………………….
Three words to describe how you feel at the end of a day
Three words to describe how you feel in the morning
A statement about something you love

And here is a poem by a third-grade immigrant from Poland has been in the United States for two years:

Dominika
Playing with her friends, talking on the phone, eating chocolate
Who is hoping that her father comes very soon
Who is looking forward to visiting Poland in the summer
At night:
Tired, Brain-Fried, Exhausted
In the morning:
Energized, convinced I should study, looking for breakfast.
Dominika loves living.

The object of this activity is to convince students they have the power to maneuver language within a tight framework. And, at the same time, you can guide them to the discovery of some specific and important aspects of prescriptive grammar.


CONCLUSION
The participle, of course, is only a small part of a huge, complex system of language. Obviously, it cannot, or should not, be taught in isolation; but it can be highlighted as one of the most versatile and playful constructions of the English language. In addition, the participle lends itself to experimentation, so student writers can try out different participial phrases or create new ones with different sentence combinations in re-writes of their own papers. Offering students tools that will enable them to work freely and creatively within carefully explicated parameters will help them in all aspects of their academic, professional, and personal lives. These are the most profound and useful gifts a teacher can offer.

WORKS CITED

Brinton, Laurel J. The Structure of Modern English. Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s Pub
lishing Company 2000.

Brown. T. Pierce. “Participles.” Internet article:
http://www.oldpaths.com/Archive/Brown/T/Pierce/1923/imperati.html

Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Diane Larsen-Freeman. The Grammar Book. Boston:
Heinle and Heinle 1999.

“Dangling, Hanging, or Unattached Participles.” Internet source:
http://lbarker.orcon.net.nz/hangingparticiple.html

Garner, Bryan A. A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press 1998.

Jacobs, Roderick A. English Syntax. New York: Oxford University Press 1995.

Morenberg, Max and Jeff Sommers. The Writer’s Options: Lessons in Style and Ar
rangement 6th Edition. New York: Longman, 1999.

“Silly Headlines.” Internet source: http://www.sandpoint.com/off_the_cuff/headline.htm

Warriner, John. English Composition and Grammar. New York: Harcourt Brace Jano
vich 1988.

The Excuse Letter

First published by The Vocabula Review

"Tony is reel shamed of hisself," began my mother's carefully misspelled letter regarding my brother's unexcused absence from school the previous day, "an' he wont do nothin like dis aggen."

It was a joke that no one understood except my mother and brother. I didn't get it either, but I was impressed by the furrows it had left on the brows of the office secretaries at Northport High School. Mrs. Endee, the head secretary, was the first to read it: "Tony dint wanna cum to school iesturday cuz he waz lazy an dint feeel like geting outta bed."

She narrowed her eyes and handed the letter to Mrs. Sabatino, who skimmed it, emitted a “tsk,” and passed it to Mrs. Geller. They kept glancing at my brother's stony face, not sure how to react. I couldn't decide whether they pitied our genetic pool or suspected a conspiracy. After all, the handwriting was meticulous, the syntax only slightly reproachable; even the writing paper was clean, crisp, whiter than newly washed linen drying in the summer sun.

What intrigued me most, however, was my mother and brother's willingness to appear — well — stupid. They regularly held court at lofty gatherings, quoting Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, sipping champagne from long-stemmed crystal—a gift from one of my mother's wealthy customers—staging elegant disagreements about topics I only pretended to understand. How could they jeopardize their shining, carefully wrought personas for a prank? It may have been a heroic high dive; but, still, it struck me as slightly absurd given their very public acts of intellectualism and high-stakes literacy — for in those days, literacy referenced things literate; that is, reading and writing. A literate person was called a learned person, which, even today, is a relative description. An illiterate person was someone who couldn’t read or write. Things were more easily defined in those days before color and gradations of gray.

Nonetheless, as I watched the secretaries mumble and mull over the meticulously penned errors, it occurred to me this was not simply a private joke between my mother and brother; this was an act of rebellion against rule makers, rule executors, moneyed and comfortable members of the middle class, hypocrisy, and the superficiality of appearances.

We as a culture value appearances above all. We kneel in awe of surface things, impressed by the paraphernalia of authority, beauty, literacy, wealth; and eager to condemn anyone without those trappings. I understood that our family had now been judged illiterate, and I thought that was pretty funny. Whatever these readers knew of us had been gleaned from that silly, awkwardly composed letter. Now, they understood why my brother and I were such frequent visitors to Assistant Principal Fazio's chamber of "bad choices and disappointing behavior." With such a mother, with such an illiterate mother, one could hardly expect otherwise. They looked sorry for us and advised us not to be late for homeroom.

It was a superb lesson for me. Writing was an act of power. Writing could announce one's superiority and ridicule the uninitiated without their ever knowing it. Writing had the muscle to supersede or suspend reality, creating images that didn’t exist—mirror tricks and slights of hand. It revealed truths by lying and exposed lies by telling the truth. Writing, the fourth dimension, made all things possible. My mother, a woman who had spent her life shaking off the nightmare of the poor house, a book in one hand and a sewing needle in the other, had staked out and judged her audience, correctly predicting their reaction and aiming her dart so precisely, no one felt its sting. Mission accomplished. We left the office.

DINO BUZZATI: Inside the Fantastic

Dino Buzzati—journalist, short-story writer, novelist, playwright, artist, mountaineer, poet, musician—explored the uncertain boundaries between reality and fantasy where symbols, space, and time overlap and intertwine; he observed the unobservable, documented everything that was elusive in that dimension, and chronicled his findings with the professionalism of a consummate newspaper reporter. He is our universal commentator, assigned to a world that exists beyond familiar horizons. Born in 1906 in the mountainous region near Belluno in northern Italy, he lived his entire life Milan. In 1928, he began working as a reporter for the Milan-based newspaper Corriera della sera where he remained until his death in 1972. His life spanned two world wars, Mussolini’s fascist regime, civil war in northern Italy, and literary movements that included futurism, hermeticism, and neo-realism.

In Europe, Buzzati’s literary fame is both wide-spread and enduring. Giannetto estimates that he has been translated into twenty-five languages (Coraggio 77), most particularly, French, Spanish, and German. Indeed, there are Dino Buzzati literary associations in Italy and in France, and his work is standard fare in any study of contemporary Italian literature. Given all this, Buzzati has been remarkably neglected in the English-speaking world. Some critics speculate that Buzzati’s independence, his unwillingness to join any particular literary movement or bow to any social or political groups alienated him from the forefront of Italian literature (Serra 3). In an article for the Corriera della serra in June 1946, the author himself writes that he is considered “un po’ fuori gioco” [a bit outside of things] (qtd. in Serra 4). Others suggest that the genre of the fantastic in which he wrote is always outside the mainstream and is never regarded as serious literature. Nonetheless, he has been compared to writers such as Hoffman, Poe, and Kafka; and some maintain that Kafka was his chief influence (Smith 751)). However, scholars of both Buzzati and Kafka heartily disagree. In fact, Buzzati himself admitted to having been influenced by Poe—he illustrated Poe’s City of the Dead when he was eighteen years old—as well as Scott, Conrad, Hoffman, Dickens, Chekov, and Tolstoy. “E poi gli altri dicono Kafka. Io non dico niente” [And then others say Kafka. I don’t say anything] (qtd. in Coraggio 56). Buzzati is not well known in the English-speaking world, but his work is no less valuable for its having been overlooked.

His literary career began in 1933 with the publication of his first novel, Bàrnabo delle montagne, which was received with some enthusiasm by critics. His second novel, Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio, appeared two years later, and in 1940, he published Il deserto dei Tartari, his first great success, which was immediately translated into a variety of European languages. During World War II, he was a foreign correspondent for Corriere della sera, an assignment that certainly influenced much of his writing, especially his views of death and the world beyond the obvious. Gianfranceschi notes that journalism forced Buzzati to gaze “al di là delle prime apparenze dei fatti di cronaca” [beyond the first impressions and apparent facts of news items], and “trasfigurare la realtà per scoprirne meglio i significati risposti e meno contingenti” [to transform reality (making it easier)to discover its secret and less obvious meanings] (15).

STYLE:

The translator’s first concerns are the author’s original style, why the author selected that particular style, and how best to render it in the target language. Buzzati’s style is straight-forward journalism that flows with a very definite rhythm into the dimensions of metaphor and dream where “il sogno stesso è cercato come luogo metaforico di una verità più profonda” [the dream itself is sought as a metaphoric place that has an even more profound truth] (Biondi 23). His voice, however, remains detached, and it is this very detachment that gives credence to some of the most fantastic stories such as “Suicide in the Park,” “The Landslide,” and “The Alienation,” all of which have a connection with journalism. A woman metamorphoses into a luxury automobile in order to give her husband a mechanized trophy and then deliberately smashes herself into a stone wall when he wants to trade her in. This bizarre story avoids incredulity because its style “rimane scrupolosamente legato alle quotidianità” [remains scrupulously linked to everyday occurrences] (Mignone 26) and, more important, because it is corroborated by a newspaper clipping that reports the suicide victim’s final minutes. Thus, what might have been a tongue-in-cheek spoof enters the realm of possibility and becomes a poignant story about misplaced love and sacrifice. In “The Landslide” a newspaper publisher sends Giovanni out to cover a story that has not yet occurred. In “The Alienation” a newspaper columnist—Buzzati himself—is body-snatched by an alien figure who moves into his office, taking over his persona and his life. Clearly, this blend of journalism and the fantastic lifts the stories above melodrama, keeps them out of the genre of science fiction, and introduces us to another reality in which ambiguity and uncertainty are the norm.

Buzzati is famous for his use of repetitive words and phrases that give his stories various rhythms and create an undercurrent that suddenly sends his protagonists directly into the spectral reality of the fantastic. Many scholars have noted the repetition of words such as eppure [and yet, although, in spite of] in the famous story “Seven Floors” (cf. Arslan 75; Mignone 28): “Despite his mild fever . . . .”; “Although his illness was barely negligible . . . .”; “In spite of his overall good condition . . . .” The repetition of eppure introduces the fantastic, inexplicable element that finally destroys Giuseppe Corte. It is one of several key words that “segnano . . . il passaggio dal ragionamento normalmente plausibile agli avvenimenti improbabili” [signal . . . the passage from what normally would be plausible thinking to improbable events] (Arslan 75). Arslan explains that we are not dealing with monsters or supernatural beings, but with “la presenza della morte” [the presence of death] (75). This is apparent in “Yet, They’re Knocking at the Door” where we witness the Grons’ determination to ignore forces that are slamming against the very foundations of their existence, certain that they are somehow beyond anyone’s grasp. In “The Night” there is an insistent, steady repetition of the phrase “but it isn’t this,” which warns us that something catastrophic is approaching, confusing our ability to perceive reality, rendering us helpless against its fantastic power.

THE THEMES:

Several themes run through Buzzati’s stories, novels, and plays. The first among them is time—a theme, says Serra, that “domina in tutta l’opera buzzatiana” [dominates Buzzati’s entire literary production] (98). It has been said that Buzzati uses time in his stories in the same way that De Chirico uses space in his paintings “De Chirico . . . and Buzzati . . . operate within the same spectrum of distorted reality” (Chomel 16). The effect, says Chomel, is “a feeling of subtle malaise that is not necessarily related to the situations and characters” (16).

In stories such as “The Seven Messengers,” “Solitudes,” “The Landslide,” and especially “A Love Letter,” time is a major player that is calculated and predicted in terms of its relationship with space, juggled into a confusion of days, locked into large crates, or thrown out of synch with the events that are supposed to compose it,. And yet [eppure], as Buzzati says in “In that Precise Moment,” time remains uncontrollable, and the minutes and hours march forward like great lords “with so much composure, no one would ever say they are our enemies.” For Buzzati, says Serra, time “è il nemico più accanito e irremissible, l’ostacolo insormontabile dei personaggi buzzatiani [is the most relentless and irremissible enemy, the most insurmountable obstacle facing his characters] (96)). In “Yet, They’re Knocking at the Door” time is represented by the raging river, which rushes in a violent flow of destruction as the Gron family defies its urgency with a slow-paced game of cards. In “The Seven Messengers” the prince gives most of his energy to the measurement of time and its relationship to space; and, in the process, he never finds the outermost frontier. In “The Lost Days” time is a tangible, packable item with the power to render a rich man impotent.

Thus, time is the force that leads us into the clutches of death, a theme that appears in Buzzati’s stories as it appears in life: waiting outside the garden gate, furtively entering our homes as we lie sleeping, or violently tearing away at the foundations of our homes. In fact, Biondi notes that “questo tempo, oggettive, eterno è visto come potenza reale, figura viva . . . che tuttavia finisce per identificarsi con la morte” [this objective and eternal time is seen as a real power, a living figure . . . that, nevertheless, ends up by identifying itself with death] (33). In “The Cloak” death even shows that it is capable of a small act of kindness as it waits in the dusty road for the young soldier to bid farewell to his family.

Death, then, is not cruel. It is the anticipation of death that causes Buzzati’s characters to suffer agonies. It is only at the final moment, when death has finally convinced its prey to yield to its power, that peace descends. Giovanni and the cloaked figure of death gallop toward the immovable mountains that hold the secrets of another reality. His suffering is not at death’s hands, for he is already dead; his pain is caused by his attachment to the world and the necessity of saying goodbye. Giuseppe Corte resigns himself to the lowering of the shades, and the hapless newspaper reporter in “The Landslide” feels death’s touch with an orgasmic thrill. There is a duality here, which Bonifazi says is typical of the fantastic (236). But there is also a great and almost humorous contradiction in the fact that something so dreaded and grim as death can bring such joy and peace when it finally conquers. Buzzati himself observed, “Se la morte non ci fosse, la vita sarebbe una cretinata” [If there were no death, life would be a stupid act] (qtd. in Danstrup 138). This duality is, in fact, a harmony of opposing forces emanating from the surreal, indefinite frontier between reality and fantasy where every character is “prisonier d’une force mystériuse . . . qu’elle ne peut se définir” [a prisoner of a mysterious force . . . beyond definition] (Frontenac 70).

Some call this mysterious force destiny, a notably Italian theme that appears time and time again in Italian literature. Though it is never mentioned by name, destiny is a key player in many of Buzzati’s stories, most particularly in “The Landslide.” Here is a rare case in which the protagonist has no hint of what is to come and no reason to try to escape from it. And it is not coincidental that the journalist becomes the story he is seeking. Nonetheless, some critics maintain that in stories such as “The Seven Messengers,” “Seven Floors,” “A Love Letter,” and “The Enchanted Jacket,” destiny is a personal choice of the protagonists (cf. Donat 28). But this is not necessarily how Buzzati views destiny. For him, destiny is all powerful and firmly entrenched in the reality of the fantastic. Savelli writes:

"Quello che è rilevante nell’inesorabile discesa del protagonista dal settimo piano al più basso, quello dei moribondi, è l’assoluta banalità e insignificanza delle circostanze che lo fanno trasferire da un piano all’altro. Fino a che non si realizza, il destino è invisibile—e in ciò il racconto rispetta in pieno il decorso naturale di ciò che si intende per ‘destino’—ma quando si compie risulta enigmatico, addirittura incomprensibile."
[What is inexorable in the protagonist’s descent from the seventh to the lowest floor—that of the dying—is the absolute banality and insignificance of the circumstances that made him transfer from one floor to another. Up until this point, destiny is invisible and, in this sense, the story fully respects the natural course of what is meant by ‘destiny’—but once [the descent] is complete, it becomes enigmatic and completely incomprehensible] (134).

Buzzati’s aim is not to define destiny or fear or time; it is to examine the function of torment in terms of its relationship with destiny's “dolorosa conferma delle nascoste verità della vita” [painful confirmation of life’s hidden truths] (Toscani 68). Buzzati’s characters “constituent une galerie d’ombres” [make up a gallery of shades, or ghosts] (Frontenac 69) who really have no more power over destiny than they do over death: the prince is pulled into an unexplored world beyond the familiar, Giuseppe Corte never has the option of putting on his coat and checking out of the hospital, the letter to Ornella is not meant to be sent, and the ordinary man whose income-producing powers catapult him into the world of the fantastic is as much a victim of destiny as one of his own greed. “Tutti i racconti . . . mettono in gioco i grandi destini dell’uomo . . . con un al di là variamente ipotizzabile e descrivibile” [All the stories . . . put into play humankind’s great destinies . . . with a varyingly hypothetical and describable other world] (Jacomuzzi 106).


Waiting is another theme that is woven into the fabric of Buzzatian storytelling. “Buzzati’s characters are always waiting for the fulfillment of the dreams [that] are their obsessions or their fixations. They wait rather than act” (Fitch 190). The prince sets out on a journey whose direction is perhaps linear, perhaps circular, but consistently marked by increasingly longer periods of waiting for the return of a messenger who will bring news from an increasingly distant homeland. Although the prince has ostensibly set out in search of a limit, a borderline, a final point of return, he focuses on the wait rather than on the adventure. His life becomes a repetition of setting up camp, breaking camp, traveling, and waiting. Indeed, says Kanduth, this “ambiente abitudinale . . . suggerisce una permanente attesa” [atmosphere of the habitual . . . suggests a permanent state of waiting] (178).

Waiting has two faces in “The Cloak”: the mother’s long, sad period of waiting is alleviated by a mere second of joy at seeing Giovanni return from the war, and is then shattered by his immediate retreat to the figure of death. For death also waits, grimfaced, unemotional. And it is death who wins the prize. The fantastic image of Giovanni and death, each cloaked in black, galloping across the plains, recalls “l’irreparibile fuga del tempo, l’attesa, i dolori, e l’angosica sia della vita cha della morte” [time’s inevitable flight, the waiting, the pain, and the agony of both life and death] (Danstrup, 138).

A firm belief in the power of destiny discourages action and encourages dependency on time. Thus, life becomes a non-act of waiting and a longing for happiness or salvation. “Per questo, i personaggi buzzatiani sono sempre protesi verso l’attesa di un evento eccezionale che possa cambiare la loro monotona esistenza” [For this reason, Buzzati’s characters are always yearning for an exceptional event that might change their monotonous existence] (Serra, 188). The father in “The Good Daughters,” whose unwillingness to act against his daughters’ selfishness and cruelty makes him a willing slave to their every whim, is finally killed by his own inaction. Giuseppe Corte waits for the “destructive process” of his cells to consume him as he gives up his independence to a routine of checkups, tranquilizers, and unpleasant coincidences that insure his descent to the floor “where only the priest works”; and yet [eppure], almost until he takes his final breath, he waits for some fantastic turn of events that will transport him back to the seventh floor. According to Serra, waiting is the most characteristic of human conditions and reflects the “carattere passivo” [passive character] of the individual (41). Moreover, waiting is the existential state of being that reflects a belief in the power of fate and the futility of action. “L’homme nait pour mourir” [people are born to die] (Frontenac 71), and it is their duty to prepare for death, not by doing, but by waiting for it to snatch them from their terrestrial reality.

These themes of time, death, destiny, and waiting are connected to another theme that permeates all of Buzzati’s work: the perennial human state of isolation and solitude. All Buzzati’s characters are alone. They are separated, first from their homeland (“The Seven Messengers”) and family (“The Good Daughters”), then from normal society (“Seven Floors), and finally from their own persona (“The Alienation”). “Ciascuno vive nel suo piccolo cerchio” [Each person lives in his/her own little circle] (Biondi, 32). Indeed, the normal human condition is one of isolation. No matter how much we fill our lives with places to go and people to see (“A Love Letter”), no matter how we perceive our nearest and dearest (“The Good Daughters,” “The Confession”), and no matter how we strive to realize our dreams (“Attila’s Grave”), we are alone with our thoughts at the end of the day (“The Night”); and, suddenly, the shades are drawn, “shutting out the passage of the light” (Seven Floors”).

This sense of solitude and isolation is brought into harsh relief by the curious, unsettling story, “The Alienation,” which examines our estrangement from the rest of the world, from our families, from our past and present, and finally from ourselves. Isolation afflicts us with the inability to touch one another. In “Suicide in the Park” Faustina transforms herself into an automobile in order to maintain a relationship with her husband; in “A Love Letter” Enrico communicates with his beloved Ornella in a letter whose sentiments are not openly expressed, but scattered into fragments on a page that will never be sent.

Isolation, maintains Fitch, “is the absence of a system of meaning for the world” (27). More matter-of-factly, it is humankind’s detachment from nature (“The Walls”) and from one another (“Suicide At Park”). The journalist in search of a landslide that will eventually blot out his existence, enters a world where he is entirely isolated. Although he speaks the same language as those around him, he is unable to communicate with anyone. Each character has his own definition of a landslide and each has his own idea of its importance. In the sketch “The Autostrada” everyone has physically disappeared, and yet [eppure], they are still among the living, driving their cars, and even obeying the traffic laws by signaling before passing. In “The Night” “people find it advisable to bolt the doors against the unknown that lurks in the darkness.

THE CHARACTERS:

Buzzati’s characters are never fully defined. Their given names are common Italian names such as Giuseppe, Giovanni, Enrico; and their family names, if mentioned, are often mono or duo-syllabic (Gron, Corte, Tassol). Their lives are filled with repetition, routine, and monotony in what Buzzati calls “l’assurda condizione umana” [the absurd human condition] (qtd. in Lacroix 202). His characters are humble, ordinary, and unblessed, for they are less important than the realities that determine the course of their lives, and far more mundane than the fantastic events that eventually consume them. Carlo (“The Changed Brother”), one of the few Buzzatian characters with a sense of rebellion, is quickly stripped of his individuality by mysterious forces within the gloomy structure of the boarding school; Signora Gron, who is too haughty and cold for this world, is sucked up by the force of the river. Any show of defiance against the norm is met with condescension (“Seven Floors”), and anyone who waves a red flag of warning must do so anonymously (“Anonymous Letter”). His characters live within carefully restricted boundaries; in fact, if they are not certain of those boundaries, they go in search of them (“The Seven Messengers”), or they bow to people who tell them what to do, how to act, and what to think (“The Good Daughters,” “Seven Floors,” “And Yet They’re Knocking at the Door,” etc.).

Buzzati is a dark writer who sheds a fantastic light on the human condition. His attention “si concentra su una realtà più profonda, universale, proficua non meno leggittima e vera della realtà oggettiva esterna” [focuses on a more profound, universal, and useful reality that is no less legitimate and no less real than objective, external reality] (Serra, 188). His world of the fantastic can be read on many levels. Martin insists that Buzzati is “playing with the rational reader” (78); and that in stories such as “The Seven Messengers” he “creates an open text [that] has the potential to give the reader total freedom, as long as s/he does not attempt to try to force a concrete overall meaning upon it” (79). Indeed, Martin writes an extremely fine essay in which he claims that the prince represents the reader of texts in the borderless world of literature.

However Buzzati is read, it is important to remember that he is not simply examining “the existential condition of his characters” (Wood, 337); he is exploring realities that exist beyond the obvious; and he is examining the way those realities shape humankind’s existence.

"La componente fantastica en el escridor de Belluno es algo tan necesario como el aire que respira, casi un estilo proprio, un lenguaje intimo que traduce la observación y experiencia de la relidad a través del filtro de la introspeción."
[The fantastic component in the writer from Belluno is as necessary as the air he breathes, an almost unique style, an intimate language that translates the observation and experience of a reality through the filter of introspection] (Rivera, 477).

Buzzati was never concerned with literary societies, popular causes, or intellectual fashions. He was a true individual who had the courage to follow his own fantastic road, to seek universal truths concerning the very nature of life and death, and to recount what he saw without trepidation and without apology.


WORK CITED


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