W.S. Merwin and "Losing a Language" Flashcards

W.S. Merwin: Biography and Literary Career

  • Personal Background:

    • William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin was born in New York City in 1927.

    • In the late 1970s, Merwin relocated to Hawaii to pursue the study of Zen Buddhism.

    • He currently resides on the island of Maui, living on a property that was once a pineapple plantation.

  • Literary Output and Recognition:

    • Merwin is a prolific writer with a career spanning over thirty volumes of poetry, prose, and translation.

    • His debut collection, A Mask for Janus, was published in 1952 and was selected for the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize.

    • He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on two separate occasions:

      • In 1971 for his collection The Carrier of Ladders.

      • In 2009 for his collection The Shadow of Sirius.

    • Merwin attained the highest literary honor in the United States by serving as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2011.

  • Recurring Themes:

    • Merwin's body of work addresses a diverse array of subjects.

    • He has written extensively on the Vietnam conflict.

    • A significant portion of his writing is dedicated to environmental destruction and ecological concerns.

Context of "Losing a Language"

  • Publication History:

    • The poem "Losing a Language" was first published in Merwin’s 1988 collection titled The Rain in the Trees.

  • Core Concept:

    • The poem explores the tragic, silent, and often unnoticed extinction of native languages and the subsequent loss of the specific cultural realities and psychological nuances those languages once held.

The Erosion of Language and Meaning

  • The Breath of Language:

    • Merwin describes the death of a language as a physiological event: "A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back."

    • This suggests language is a living entity that requires the "breath" of speakers to survive.

  • The Plight of the Elders:

    • The "old" generation still retains memories of things they could say—specific concepts or expressions unique to their tongue.

    • However, they are paralyzed by the realization that "such things are no longer believed," indicating a shift in the cultural value system where ancestral knowledge is dismissed as obsolete.

  • The Loss of Specificity:

    • The younger generation is described as having "fewer words."

    • This linguistic poverty stems from the fact that "many of the things the words were about no longer exist."

    • Merwin provides two specific, poignant examples of lost linguistic concepts:

      • The noun used for "standing in mist by a haunted tree."

      • The specific verb for "I."

Generational Disconnect and External Persuasion

  • The Break in Transmission:

    • Cultural continuity is halted because children refuse to repeat the phrases spoken by their parents.

    • The natural cycle of linguistic inheritance is broken.

  • The Influence of Globalization/Modernity:

    • Children are described as being "persuaded" that it is "better to say everything differently."

    • The goal of this new way of speaking is social or economic mobility: to be "admired somewhere farther and farther away."

    • This creates a geographical and psychological distance between the speaker and their home, leading to a place "where nothing that is here is known."

Alienation and the "New Owners"

  • Social Isolation:

    • The result of this linguistic shift is a profound silence: "we have little to say to each other."

    • The shared reality between the old world and the new has evaporated.

  • The Perspective of the Colonizer/Successor:

    • The speakers (likely the indigenous or original inhabitants) are viewed as "wrong and dark in the eyes of the new owners."

    • The term "new owners" implies a colonial or capitalist takeover where the original inhabitants and their culture are judged harshly by those who have replaced them.

  • Technological Incomprehensibility:

    • The tools of the new culture, such as the "radio," are described as "incomprehensible," further emphasizing the divide between the traditional life and the modern, technologically mediated world.

Imagery of Ruin and the Unseen Change

  • Sensory Metaphors:

    • Merwin uses the phrase "the day is glass," suggesting a fragile, transparent, yet perhaps cold and sterile reality.

    • A "voice at the door" is now "foreign everywhere," reflecting a total loss of belonging even in one's own space.

  • The Replacement of Identity with Deception:

    • In the absence of a true, culturally grounded identity ("instead of a name"), there is only "a lie."

  • The Invisibility of Loss:

    • A critical point in the poem is that "nobody has seen it happening" and "nobody remembers."

    • The death of a language is not an explosive event but a slow fading that escapes the notice of the general population.

  • Linguistic Prophecy and Extinction:

    • The poem concludes by stating that this loss is precisely what the words "were made to prophesy."

    • The final images are of permanence and loss:

      • The "extinct feather," referencing the biological extinctions (like birds in Hawaii) that mirror linguistic ones.

      • The "rain we saw," grounding the poem in Merwin's Hawaiian environment and the ephemeral nature of memory.