A Quintessential Love Story Worth Sharing

 Rediscovering John Galsworthy

Exactly twelve days after I was born in a small farming town in southeastern Philippines, the great director and actor Orson Welles broadcast on radio in Wisconsin a dramatic adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic short-story, “The Apple Tree.” Of course there was no way that I could have known this at the time; I was only a malnourished infant in a country that had just come out of brutal enemy occupation. I only discovered the fact about this confluence of events four nights ago while surfing the modern-day marvel called the Web. I stumbled serendipitously on the complete script of Welles’ broadcast while looking for traces of the great love story that had so bewitched and given me so much pleasure one magical summer in the late 60s.

You must forgive me for what in every way looks like juvenile excitement over only an old story and an old English-language writer that modern anthologies seem to have even completely forgotten. But to me “The Apple Tree” was—and still is—the quintessential love story. The quiet tragedy between the London cosmopolite Frank Ashurst and the beautiful Welsh country lass Megan David, told with great empathy and narrative skill by a master of the English language, haunted me for years. To me it was just a happy accident that the story was written by a writer who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Galsworthy was an English prose stylist so luminous in his language and so engaging in his storytelling that I gladly surrendered that summer and the next, reading practically the whole body of his novels and short fiction.

Take, as a first taste of Galsworthy, this passage from the opening lines of “The Apple Tree” as retold by Welles: “The familiar words of Hippolytus echoed in my mind: ‘The apple-tree, the singing, and the gold.’ The apple tree. And then, quite suddenly, I remembered. I’d been here before. Years before. I’d stood on this self-same hill. I knew the valley into which I looked. That ribbon of road and the old well behind. Life has moments of sheer beauty, of unbidden flying rapture that—they last no longer than the span of a cloud’s flight over the sun. I’d stumbled on just such a moment. In my own life, I’d stumbled on a buried memory of wild, sweet time.”

The English I am writing and you are reading now is, for the most part, what it is precisely because I had stumbled on “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy and fell in love with both many years ago. It was in the public library of the British-Philippine Council, that time when it was still at old R. Hidalgo Street, in what is now largely Manila’s Muslim quarter in Quiapo. The story was part of a Galsworthy hardbound collection with russet cover simply entitled Caravan. I never got to own a personal copy of the book, but read and reread everything in it, so enchanted was I by Galsworthy’s narrative art, which was so far removed from the run of the English-language authors available to me at the time. But in the following years Galsworthy dropped out of sight from the shelves of bookstores. I looked far and wide to get a copy of Caravan, scouring every bookstore I could get myself into both here and in my travels, but could not find one. In time, distracted and enthused by English-language stylists with comparable if not greater facility with prose, I gave up my search for both the writer and the book.

But four nights ago, from the lens of more than half a century, there was Orson Welles in digital form talking to me about “The Apple Tree” and Galsworthy in his Mercury Theater dramatization of the story, sponsored intriguingly by then the leading American maker of beer. To the tune of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, as indicated in the script, the great actor and director of Citizen Kane (which, it is probably worth mentioning, is considered the greatest film of all time) began: “Tonight, the Mercury brings you one of the loveliest of all love stories. It’s by John Galsworthy and it’s called ... ‘The Apple Tree’.” I almost fell off my computer swivel chair, so profound and delightful was my shock. The treasured gem that I had given up looking for after so many years was suddenly and literally in my fingertips again.

And so now I can relive again and again that unforgettable first encounter between Frank and Megan, as first imagined by the great Galsworthy and now retold by the digital Welles:

FRANK ASHURST (narrates): It was a girl. The wind blew her crude, little skirt against her legs and lifted her battered tam-o’-shanter. It was clear she was a country girl -- her shoes were split, her hands were rough and brown, and her hair waved untidily across her forehead. But her lashes were long and dark, and her gray eyes were a wonder: dewy, as if opened for the first time that day.

MEGAN: Hello.

ROBERT: Could you tell us if there’s a farm near here where we could spend the night?  My friend’s getting pretty lame.

MEGAN: Well, there’s our farm, sir.

FRANK: Oh, could you put us up?

MEGAN: I’m sure my aunt would be glad to. If you like, I’ll show you the way.

The way that Megan showed to Frank was, in the small compass of “The Apple Tree,” a path that led not only to such great love and so much heartbreak, but also to some of the most compelling and beautiful lines of prose I have seen in English literature. I dare you now to tarry a little from your purely mundane pursuits to take that path. (written circa 2002-2003)

This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date.

A Conversation About Language and Grammar Well-Worth Sharing

BLESSED ARE THEY WHO CAN SPEAK IN
SIMPLE, CLEAR, EFFORTLESS ENGLISH!

With great nostalgia and admittedly with not just a little excitement, I am sharing with every English speaker and serious learner of English very interesting and animated conversations I had in 2016—that's over seven years ago!—with two very articulate readers of my English Plain and Simple column in The Manila Times.

The extended online conversation was triggered by this tough grammar question by reader Michael Galario: “Do noun clauses grammatically functioning as subjects in a sentence follow the sequence-of-tenses rule?” He followed it with this even tougher question: "What about sentences with relative clauses? Do they obey the sequence-of-tenses rule in English?”

Michael then presented three examples of such sentences, among them this provocative one: “The girl who is singing the song right now had an affair with the CEO.” (He observed parenthetically that the singing happens at the moment of speaking; that the affair was in the past and that it may no longer be subsisting at the present time.)

To answer Michael’s second question satisfactorily, I presented a quick review of the relative clauses in English, in the course of which I observed that "there's really no such thing as a complex-complex sentence but only four types," namely simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. (Read my essay "The sequence of tenses for sentences with relative clauses," November 5, 2016) https://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=6724.0)

At that point a very articulate new follower of my column, Maximo Tumbali, interjected with a contrary thought. He suggested that there’s even a need to add a sixth type—the complex-complex-complex-complex—and presented this sentence as an example: “He got mad when I told him that he should study in order to be able to move on to the next level until he graduates from the secondary.”

What followed next was this very interesting, instructive, and high animated online exchange of views about grammar and communication between Max Tumbali and me.

Part 1 - Blessed are they who can speak in simple, clear, effortless English!

Max Tumbali: Don’t you think the continuing complexity of a sentence complicates one’s effort to seize what it all means, but to the composer it’s a mark of ingenuity?

Joe (that’s me): Oh, yes, complexity is the stuff that not a few stupefying grammarians in academe love to revel in. It feeds their vainglory to declare that some sentences can get very complicated in construction. It’s really a good, absorbing, brain-stretching diversion to parse and diagram them. From the looks of it, though, that example of yours is simply a complex sentence. It has “he got mad” as the independent clause, with “when I told him” as the first dependent clause and “that he should study” as the second dependent clause, which is then modified by the adverbial clause “to be able to move on to the next level until he graduates from the secondary.” I hope I didn’t confound you with that analysis.

                   IMAGE CREDIT: SKYGRAMMAR.COM
                                        The Four Types of Sentence Structure in English

Max: Absolutely not! On the contrary, you enlightened me so much about that sentence type’s anatomy. You’re truly a guru. But how would you classify Marcel Proust’s typical kilometric sentence?

Joe: I would classify Proust’s long prose as one overextended sentence that wonderfully works without any hitch, as in a flowing, uninterrupted dream. Of course, it defies traditional sentence diagramming, and I won’t recommend to lesser creative mortals like you and me to pursue such writing. To be truly communicative, it pays to write plain and simple prose.

Max: You’re undoubtedly right, although sometimes some writers admit that they can better express their thoughts through more complex sentences. And do you agree with what one English teacher said sometime ago that the easiest way to learn English is through or by ear? And that an English sentence is construed to be correct if it sounds good to the ear?

Joe: Yes, absolutely, it’s easiest to learn English by ear. Just beware that doggerel can sound good to the ear even if it has atrocious grammar and syntax.Max: But if communication is the apparent purpose, shouldn’t there be less emphasis on the study of English grammar and more on the oral use of English where most often grammatical rules are violated or just taken for granted?

Joe: All the more should good English grammar be emphasized, whether in written or oral communication. It’s the mark of an educated, precise, discerning, knowledgeable thinker. Whether we admit or not, we get assaulted by bad English and get leery at someone who, no matter how high in social standing or authority, bungles grammar and usage much too often and may not even be aware of it.

Max: That should always be the case. So aren’t you alarmed that most college students, graduates, professionals—worst, even statesmen—can’t speak correct English these days? How would you account for this decadence in the quality of their spoken English?

Joe: Those who habitually express themselves in complex-compound and compound-complex sentences aren’t really clear and precise thinkers. They haven’t learned how to organize their thoughts and make them easily understandable to their listeners. When I listen to them, I can’t help but silently exclaim that blessed are they who are able to speak in simple, clear, plain, effortless English! (December 10, 2016)

Part 2 - Blessed are they who can speak in simple, clear, effortless English!

This continues the extended conversation between Maximo Tumbali and me that started the previous week.

Max: I agree with you but with regard to a philosopher trying to deliberate on a philosophical issue, he thinks that by employing complex sentences, he can better drive home the point taking into account not only its denotative meaning but also its connotations and nuances. His effort is much similar to preparing a special menu that requires more varied ingredients to achieve a desired taste.

Joe: Maybe so, Max, but I think a philosopher who can explain his complicated ideas in plain and simple language can convince people much more easily than philosophers who use very dense and convoluted prose.

       IMAGE CREDIT: BY LLUÍS MAS MANCHÓN, E. RODERO     PUBLISHED IN COMMUNICATIONS 2018

              The complex chart of the Interactive Communication Process (ICP)

Max: I think so, too. But then simplifying the medium of expression in the desire to make an idea or thought intelligible and understandable, one may court the danger of reducing the scope that that idea is intended to cover, thus sacrificing the integrity and the wholeness of the thought. The explanation may be complicated, but if it serves to evoke all that the idea stands for, then why should it be jettisoned in favor of a much simpler one?

Joe: Let me be lecturesque a little bit, Max. Communication is actually a matter of conveying one’s thoughts and ideas in the appropriate language register, which is simply the variety of language that a speaker uses in a particular social context or situation. Philosophers will have their own language register, and so with poets, clerics, managers, salesmen, office clerks, and janitors, but the good communicator calibrates his language register to fit a particular audience or listener. In truth, you can only communicate effectively with someone by using the words, thoughts, ideas, and images that are already in that person’s head.

Max: Well, I think I deserved that lecture considering my mind’s limited reach. But what I want to point out is that in our attempt to convey our message to others in the clearest and simplest way possible, we somehow in the process chip away some elements that, though maybe not essential, can aid in capturing the whole essence of what we want to convey… We dare reduce to the barest minimum our mode of expression in the hope that others won’t miss the meaning of our message. But then as you have said, one has to calibrate his mode of communicating to suit his listener’s capacity to understand. In short, it obliges all parties involved to be generous, sincere, capable, tolerant, and unprejudicial in pursuing the task of attaining clarity of meaning.

Joe: That’s true, Max. When we write or say our ideas aloud, we are actually trying to share our perception of reality with other people. But no matter how long or detailed we are in sharing that perception, it will never be the totality of all that we know because that totality can only be perceived by ourselves alone. It’s the stuff of what we are as a unique living mind.

Max: Well, I guess that encapsulates our understanding of the nature of human communication. But just a thought: Wouldn’t we in the future perhaps stumble on an invention that will render obsolete our usual way of communicating—perhaps a piece of invention that will bring us closest to a genuine understanding of ourselves, our thoughts, and our reality? And I’d like to add that our unintended misperception of reality is a dangerous thing.

Joe: That’s right, Max. It’s just that some people actually couldn’t resist pursuing dangerous things. (December 17, 2016)

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This two-part conversation appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its December 10 and 17, 2016 issues, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

Noble and Inspiring Thoughts in Jeopardy: "Desiderata"

As every competent advertising practitioner or propagandist would know, people tend to uncritically accept ideas that conform to their strongly held beliefs or give vent to their own deepest desires and expectations. This was certainly true with the poster that spuriously attributes to Abraham Lincoln an anonymous writer’s letter to his son’s teacher—an attribution that I made an effort to rectify in my previous two columns. 

There is another popular inspirational poster that similarly uses a wrong attribution to give more weight to its message. The poster carries a very well-worded meditative poem and credits it as follows: “Found in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore; Dated 1692.” This attribution makes it appear that the poem, despite its very contemporary English, dates back to the American colonial period over 300 years ago and had been written anonymously. As it turns out, however, the poem is of much recent vintage. It is a 1920s creation by a Terre Haute, Indiana lawyer and poet, Max Ehrmann (1872-1945). 

That poem is “Desiderata.” 

Because “Desiderata” (Latin for “things to be desired”) still has a subsisting copyright, I can only quote a few lines for those whose recollection of it may have somewhat dimmed through the years:

“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

“As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit…

“Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Click the link that follows to read “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann in full.   

How did the credits for this charming meditation on life get it all wrong? 

It turns out that sometime before 1959, the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore had come across a copy of “Desiderata” and included it in his collection of devotional materials. When he made a handout of it for his congregation, he identified its source by putting this notation on top of the handout: “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692.” In the ensuing years, as the handout changed from hand to hand and went through many printings, some printer evidently took the notation as indicating that the poem itself had been found in Old St. Paul’s Church way back in 1692, its founding date. Nobody noticed this mistake, and the poem’s suddenly acquired centuries’ old patina gave it even more depth and charm.

Indeed, so popular had the poem become that the U.S. magazine Success printed it in its August 1971 issue. For this the magazine was sued for copyright infringement by Robert L. Bell, owner of Crescendo Publishing Co., which had acquired the rights to “Desiderata” from Ehrmann’s successors. After a five-year litigation, during which the defendants argued that “permission [to publish] was given gratuitously” in this particular case, the court ruled in favor of Success magazine. However, on the strength of a copy of “Desiderata” published by Indiana Publishing Co. with a 1927 copyright notice, Bell was able to pursue his copyright claim elsewhere in the U.S.

So then, as in the case of the spurious Lincoln letter, I think the producers of the “Desiderata” poster should stop using the poem’s wrong attribution once and for all and give credit where credit is due. This will not only give justice to Ehrmann, who said in his diary that he wrote the poem simply “to leave a humble gift—a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods,” but also give our children and ourselves a keener sense of history and a greater respect for it.

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 17, 2006 issue © 2006 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

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