Michelle Ward-- Van Der Leeuw's Beautiful Words

In Van Der Leeuw’s chapter dedicated to Beautiful Words he discusses poetry and the connection to the poet. Van Der Leeuw suggests that the poet is the creator of words. In this sense, I made the connection with the sometime implicit ambiguity of words used within poetry. I think that poetry is created not only to express the ideas of the poet but also to connect to a general emotion that the words can evoke. Ambiguity of words creates a new meaning intended by the poet. In this sense, the poet is indeed the creator of words. One of the most interesting aspects of Van Der Leeuw’s beautiful words is when he refers to the human language. Van Der Leeuw states that “What we write and speak as language in our daily lives is a language estranged from its basic nature and robbed of magic.” I connected this quote to the lack of ornament in our daily language. If you read texts in the times of Aristotle and Dickens, language is decorated and ornament. Beautifully, image evoking, descriptive language was once seen as common and daily. Can we ever revert back to the times in which language is ornament? Poetry and writing in general does not seem to lack to once ornament language but why does our speech not reflect intelligence and creativity? Has our technology age created a narrative in which we live by that promotes to-the-point language to ensure that we can continue to produce materials? The magic is lost within our language and our ability to communicate as decorated, beautiful language using beings. The magic of our decorated language has been robbed.