Style and simplicity

I am no linguist; but one of the things that stick to you after decades of historical reading is a certain amount of linguistic lore. And my long three-year wrestle with Dark Age British history has given me a particular amount of competence in the historical aspects of languages in a very obscure time indeed. So, when a fanfic writer appealed to the linguaphiles community for help with Rowena Ravenclaw's motto "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure", I was pretty much in my element. (Although if I had wanted to be severe, I'd have pointed out that Rowena's name, like that of Salazar Slytherin, is impossible for a dozen different reasons. Let's face it: JKR was and reains an utter duffer at history.) So were a dozen other people (http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/5415815.html), and the discussion went in every direction - solutions were proposed in Northumbrian Old English, in Middle Irish, in Latin, each being mercilessly trashed as soon as proposed by experts who disagreed. All good fun, and really more scholarly than the subject had a right to be.

One thing that bothered me slightly, however, is that nobody else of the dozen or so experts who intervened seemed to understand a point I made: that the couplet Wit beyond measure is Man's greatest treasure is so deficient in form that it sounds like a bad attempt to rhyme a translation from a previous form. Everyone insisted on keeping the reluctant and bombastic "beyond measure" in their proposed originals. Whatever happened to any ear for style? As my brilliant friend superversive has pointed out (http://superversive.livejournal.com/25477.html), epigrammatic wisdom has a specific form, as well as a specific kind of content, that makes it memorable - memorable in the original meaning, that is easy to remember. Why is it that so many brilliantly educated persons seemed unable to see that "beyond measure" is bad, unnecessary, and only there to rhyme?

a fragment - and the first Ricky Attanasio-related bit of writing in two years

One of the most enormous clashes of egos in the wizarding world took place in Milan in 1927. The most extraordinary fact about it is that nobody got killed; although there certainly were victors and losers - in fact, it might be said that they had been there before the clash ever happened.

Ever since the creation of the Italian Ministry for Magic in 1861, several local groups had managed to prevent the creation of any kind of Wizardrail in the country. A Swiss group had managed to use the Muggle line to Milan to run a few trains a week, but there it ended. Popular distaste for unnecessary Muggleified innovations, already raised to fever pitch by the effects of the Muggle unification of the country, was both encouraged and exploited by a number of settled interests, especially the Guilds of Bird Trainers and the breeders of winged horses, who both feared that their ancient craft would be decimated by the competition of this novel mass transportation system. The Wizards of Rivoaltus had also made it known that they did not want to risk anything that might interfere with the Bucintoro's mysterious paths, and while there was no evidence that any Wizardrail route would, still their word had weight. There was also the matter of the importers of flying carpets and flying cloaks; and underlying it all, the hidden, unreasonable hope burning at the back of many individual minds, who had heard the tale at their mothers' and grandmothers' breasts, that one day the Highway of the Sun would be rediscovered.

Still, having said all that, the most effective opposition by far was that of the Guilds of Bird-Trainers and of the winged horse breeders. Not only did they fear for their livelihoods, but they also had an aesthetic hate of the very idea that their complex and demanding craft - to get a flock of birds to collaborate in dragging a balloon-held ship along takes minute and demanding work - should be lost, as it had been lost elsewhere, at the iron hands of an unattractive, noisy, smoky, Muggle contraption. They knew that they could not compete if it were ever introduced; when the last bird-tamer died in London in 1921, 19,000 Italian wizards went to her funeral to show their feeling about the end of the distinctive English tradition of falcon flock taming. But they had other ways to oppose it. Long used to political action, lobbying, and networking, they created the first national associations of guilds exactly for the purpose of keeping Wizardrail out, and had many attentive ears in the Grand Council, in the Ministry and in every other authority of importance.

By 1925, it became clear that the new Muggle government had colossal plans for railway building, including new railway stations in Milan, Rome and elsewhere. Frustration in Switzerland rose to fever pitch, and a new wave of argument convulsed the Italian wizarding world. Surely it was time for Italian wizards to join the twentieth century? Surely the selfish arguments of a few outdated bird-feeders should not outweigh the convenience of the majority? From day to day the pressure rose: and the bird and horse interest decided that it was time for truly radical action. One sleepy evening in August, 1927, as the Grand Council - reduced by then to a resting place for the halt and the lame - puffed its way through a particularly irrelevant and unnecessary day's business, every bird-and-horse representative who could claim any kind of right to be there turned up. Working together with set, fierce faces, overwhelming the astonished and unprepared presidency, they presented and rammed through in a few minutes a bill for the perpetual prohibition of any new Wizardrail lines in Italy, including the re-use for wizarding purposes of any past, present and future Muggle ones, and backed by an oath to be taken by present and future Ministers. The one moment of danger passed when the then Minister, unaware of what had just happened and thinking he was dealing with the usual kind of inconsequent rubbish, signed the bill into law without reading it.

It was the last time for forty years that the Grand Council did anything significant, and the effect made many people feel that it had been better when it had done nothing. In Switzerland, frustration turned into rage, and for several days there was talk of open war against Italy. But the all too obvious predatory interests of Germany to their north, who had been following the whole affair with great interest, dissuaded the Swiss Ministry. While certain that they could, in the short term, overwhelm the feebly-led and divided Italians, they knew that this would only bring in the Berlin Ministry as Italy's supposed protectors, and end up with both Switzerland and Italy under Germany's thumb. So the Swiss Ministry encouraged popular anger to die down; but they could not expect the railway company, who had lost the most by the outrageous Italian law, to forget it.

Months passed; the sweltering Milanese summer passed, as it does, into a wet and foggy autumn. And one November morning, as fog slowly gave way to a gentle, pale wintry sunlight, the wizarding population of Milan, one and all, started gathering in front of the Central Station, dumb with astonishment.

Milan's Central Railway Station, the Muggle part, is itself a sufficiently astonishing structure - a kind of dream or delirium of just about anything that can be done with marble and glass. Making no pretentions of any kind to good taste, nonetheless it overwhelms the sight by its sheer boldness and enormity. But it was nothing to what had been placed on top of it - visible only to wizards - in the space of a night. Towers of glass and crystal, vast plates of electrum and gold, lights of solid emerald, rose to the sky as in a monstrous outpouring of Swiss grandeur and arrogance; and from the middle of it, a single Wizardrail line ran due north through the sky, with apparently no support. The Swiss never revealed how they had managed it, but they had somehow placed an enormous structure right on top of an already huge (and still unfinished) Muggle one, and so arranged Unplottable Spells, space-folds and other precautions as to make it virtually impossible for Muggles to find or see it. It dwarfed even the marvel of Platform 9 3/4ths.

The affront was awesome; and nobody expected the new Wizardrail Tower to last. As the wizard mob dispersed, leaving a few Aurors behind to cast memory charms on the local Muggles, everybody was whispering that surely in a day or two the bird-and-horse party would level the insult. And nobody will ever know what discussions took place between morning and night that November day among them, for Guild members keep their secrets. But the Wizardrail Tower is still standing, decades after it was raised.

It is still standing, but not alone, and not even proudly towering over everything else in sight. In fact, unless you knew the story, you would be surprised at it. For in two great semicircles rising from each side of it, east and west, there is a series of rising platforms built on pillars and connected to the Tower by flying bridges, each occupied by a large aviary and bird station, or by a stables for winged horses. The bird-and-horse men had answered blow for blow, and made sure that everyone understood that they were masters in their own country. Nothing has changed from then to the present.