English Version | 'In the beginning, was the Word' - John 1:1-4

The word was an idea. Transforming these ideas again into words in a way that makes everyone understand them is fundamental. But is the word what it used to be?

Artwork de João Oliveira
Artwork de João Oliveira

What a fabulous thing that should happen to us. They say it was all due to the differences in vegetation between the Eastern and Western regions of Southern and Equatorial Africa: in one of these, the fruits grew in small bushes, close to the floor; on the other side, the monkeys that we were at the time had to reach vertically to get the gifts nature provided. Thanks to this exercise we ended up developing bipedalism, we became erect beasts and, as a consequence, created the ideal conditions so that evolution would grant us vocal organs that were extraordinary in their complexity. In an instant, that lasted no more than two or three million years, we went from being beings with the ability to grunt and point to objects, people, and situations, to being able to define them as if we used labels. We went from “aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh” — screamed in panic while pointing at a fire burning up the forest — to a calm “Genoveve, there seems to be a fire outside I can hear the crackle of a bush and I smell something burning.” At the drop of a hat, these magnificent hominids, that we still are to this day, managed to pronounce immensely more sophisticated sounds than mere grunts. This is why we chose to label said sounds, with their meanings, and until we got to abstract thinking it was only a millennium or two. In no time, we possessed one of our biggest assets and most useful tools: the word. With it, we could make up anything. Not just that but in very few millennia, as soon as someone invented the written word, we could even annotate words, so we wouldn’t forget them, and with it establish a code.

We’re at a point where the human being has gotten used to having words, so much so that it has conceived with its different languages and has learned how to write them down. Humans have figured out that the word is the most efficient instrument for control and persuasion: an expert communicator will always have an immense advantage over everyone else, whether we’re talking about an eloquent religious speaker, an inspiring military leader, or a captivating seller with a fluent speech. It’s not a coincidence that when someone has a way with words we say they have the “gift of gab” — let’s point out that it’s a gift we’re talking about, not a mundane or common talent, a skill like any other, or a product of a certain amount of work: it’s a gift, a piece of divine heritage, a cosmic endowment, a blessing given by the universe. The mastery over words and its potential for communicative proficiency created in humans a certain lust for control of speech. Let’s keep in mind that to communicate is to stimulate thoughts when it doesn’t actually induce them — and let’s consider those thoughts in of it themselves spark, move and arrange someone’s thoughts that are constructed through words. And words have evolved in such a way that there are now people that are able to compose poetry through them — place your eyes on Homero and the way he organized his words with an acute aesthetic sense, with historical awareness, with a political message, and, above all, with emphasis, if the word was considered art back then it could also be turned into a science. It shouldn't be a surprise that rhetoric came to be. Legends say rhetoric was created in Sicily around the 5th century B.C., in a very specific situation in which persuasion was fundamental to leave and win land in a process of redistribution around Siracusa. Even if this is the first moment on the record where speech persuasion was key in getting an advantage over competitors, that doesn’t mean that rhetoric was born in that place, at that time. It’s quite the opposite actually, it was — and actually still is, since evolution won’t stop until language and words cease to exist — the intentional and careful practice of speech that allowed the most excellent, the so-called gifted ones, to be successful in their endeavors. Rhetoric, vaguely defined as the art of communicating with the intent of persuasion, is one of the fundamental pillars of speech in Western thought, just like logic and dialect, the art of argument through the juxtaposition of ideas.

So, in the beginning, was the word — since the beginning what distinguishes us from the rest is the word, that is the idea that transforms itself back into a word because that is the only way it can express. Maybe swords and arrows, and later muskets and canons have, during perpetually repeating wars, helped to shape the globe throughout the centuries, throughout millennia; but what has really changed the world were words, always the words: creating belief, creating doubt, creating thoughts, motivating, punishing, moralizing, defining, establishing, making the law, promising, criticizing, questioning, praising, seducing and mobilizing. There were many speeches that stayed in History after changing the course of said History. There are three fundamental ingredients that a speech must have — and it's essential to understand that a speech only gains its status when the passing of time allows it: style, substance, and impact. It’s in the style that the aesthetic aura of a speech resides, that should be equally beautiful when reading it and listening to it. A great master of the word will know how to find the perfect balance. Then there’s substance. For a great speech to be great, beauty isn’t enough: in order to inspire and mobilize, to make a difference and mark its place in history, it must tackle important, profound, and wide themes, relevant to a considerable amount of society, if not an entire nation. The values, principles, and ideas expressed in the speech must be seductive, and stimulating for the population is intended. That is the only way a speech may garner its rarest ingredient: impact. Anyone who listens to a great speech must feel moved, touched by the words, whether, for the inspiration, belief, motivation, or anger provoked: what matters in a great speech is that from it, emotions and reactions arise.

There were many speeches that stayed in History and we could easily use one of the most famous, or even recent ones, to facilitate the comprehension of the context — yes, we could speak of the speech Pope Urban II delivered in Clermont-Ferrand, in 1095, inciting noblemen and Christian warriors to travel to reconquer the Holy Land, in what would be the First Crusade (1096-1099), but maybe we lack the sensibility to truly understand his words and motivations in the context of its significance for the Western history. Even the famous Gettysburg Address, from Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, might be hard to understand, since it happened after the Battle of Gettysburg that occurred during the War of Secession, the American Civil War. Let it be known, however, that Lincoln’s speech, a man that definitely possessed the gift of gab, lasted for only three minutes and was made up of only 272 words. It is truly extraordinary how someone can change so much with such a small amount of syllables, but Lincoln did it and his heartfelt and inspiring address would change the course of the Civil War and, consequently, the configuration of the United States, the West, and the world (again, with just 272 words). When Emmeline Pankhurst gave his Freedom or Death speech, in Connecticut, in 1923, and used the extraordinary analogy of two hungry babies — one that cries, one that waits patiently: which one gets its food first? Of course, it's the one that cries — to justify her radical way to make politics, can we understand how she and her fellow militant comrades had no other solution? They were suffragettes and to make themselves heard, had to go on hunger strikes, set fire to golf fields, or let themselves be run over by horses. “Either you kill women, or you give them the right to vote”, said Pankhurst, but it might be hard to understand, here and now, her deep conviction. It would certainly be easier to understand the impact of I Have a Dream, given by Martin Luther King Jr., in 1963, in front of over 250 thousand supporters of the American Civil Rights Movement, a speech in favor of the abolishment of segregation in which he declared without room for doubt, that all men are born equal (its truly strange that someone has to say it so eloquently in order to be heard, but the truth is that certain parts of it are still appliable today). Still in the United States and not long after the speech mentioned previously, in 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy addressed the American people during his inauguration with a speech that included the very well-known — and often replicated — the expression “don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” But this is just one passage that comes right at the end of the text, one where innumerable difficulties and tensions are mentioned and that ends in this brilliant manner, motivating in an optimistic manner the self-sacrificing spirit of the American people. In that same speech, JFK makes truly powerful statements, like the one that alludes to the Cold War, that was then at its peak: “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” She didn’t make it to President, but she was the First Lady between 1993 and 2001: Hillary Clinton made, in 1995, in Beijing, a powerful speech during the Fourth World Conference on Women organized by the United Nations. It was during that speech that Hillary Clinton said the powerful words: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all”.

Another very famous statesman, known for his proficient use of the word — he was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his “mastery of historical and biographical description, as well as the brilliant oratory in defense of human rights” —, whether it’d be State addresses or a casual conversation spiced up with either whisky or champagne, Winston Churchill, United Kingdom’s prime minister during the Second World War, pronounced unforgettable words in a speech that would later be known as We Shall Fight on the Beaches, in 1940, inciting British people to face the Germans: “We shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender.” Speeches that have a less warmongering approach, more peaceful, are in no way, shape, or form, less mobilizing and inspiring that this magnificent one, given by Winston Churchill. In the 20th century, there are two blatant examples that relate to the idea of great pacifist speeches: Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. The first fought for India’s independence from British rule, stating, in the colossal Quit India, in 1942, “In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by nonviolence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master,” said Gandhi. The South African leader, Mandela, the adamant opposer of Apartheid, gave in 1964 the speech I Am Prepared to Die, which touches on equality and harmony, while simultaneously refusing to view the resistance to the segregation South African regime as a terrorist movement. “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal that I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

But the word doesn’t just exist in its spoken register. Certain as it might be that this is one of its composing parts, it is also true that the word is like a person with its own value and meaning, —or meanings, how many times doesn’t have more than one meaning? There are plenty of definitions. There are even those that, with the passing of time, get distorted and pulled in directions far different from their original meaning — the “literally” that is almost always used in the wrong ways; “resilience” that ceased to be a property of matter, of a body, to be able to proceed to its original shape after a shock, to being unabashedly appropriated to those that seek to speak of personal resistance. If there are words that gain meanings, there are words that fade so others can be used, usually replaced by imported ones: what happened to “ao fim e ao cabo” (directly translated to “at the end and at the cable”, generally meaning “after all”), that has now been replaced with “ao fim do dia” (at the end of the day) made in the USA? Ultimately we are always after foreign conclusions to express a conclusion: “ao fim e ao cabo” comes from Spanish. I swear. The word is, as you can see, an extraordinary and intangible artifact in all its complexity, its functionality, and even its multiple dimensions and meanings. The word is also the word you give, the word of honor, the compromise assumed. Between all the words that have been discarded as unusable, this might be the most perceptible. Or, at least, the illusion that it remains, we tend to imagine (with some reason) that in times gone by, a handshake was enough to seal a compromise once a word was given. Nowadays, most negotiators and an army of lawyers aren’t enough to guarantee that a deal will be respected. If fraud and the art of deception aren’t new inventions by any means, it’s hard to imagine nowadays this might ever be a possibility. By looking at the world around us, we can, for example, take Ukraine as an example: how many negotiations were done and how many words were given by Russia? Promises to never attack civilians, that they would retreat from x, y, and z, that humanitarian corridors would be respected, and that they would cease fire if Ukraine didn’t resist. Where are the results? While I’m writing this, news just came in that a Red Cross building was bombed in Mariupol, that airstrikes were going to hit Kyiv, Jitomir, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Poltava. There are over 4 million refugees and 6 and a half million displaced people. What are words good for?

We look at the modern world and it’s hard to not feel like the word is meaningless. On one hand, in a mass production and fast consumption society, where everything is instantaneous, and the world is a finger away, and that finger scrolls in the smartphone, who goes to the trouble of even reading this article? I’m sure very few. Any meme, video on TikTok, or Instagram story is immensely more appealing and fitting to this world’s attention span. We live in the era of the decay of words, where the speech is concise — there are even those who in the near-future hope we’ll communicate with emojis (this is actually true) —, less respected, less elaborate, and surely less complex. The immediacy took away the capacity to read between the lines, interpret alternative meanings, and understand irony and other figures of speech that a quality speech used to have. It’s no wonder that, in this context, populism has room to grow. It’s also no wonder that the price of the word has reduced — ask any literary translator how much they earn now and how much they made 15 years ago and you’ll see what they tell about the monetary value of the word. In the beginning, was the word, but now we've reached the end, and lastly, it’s important to emphasize that this simplification of language — the use of the word — fragilizes nuances, and those nuances can make a lot of difference in the use of words. I will conclude with a very clear example, one of the most simple variations so we can see the difference between the singular and plural and the difference between using one and the other: the last word and the last words. In the singular, it becomes a decision; in the plural, a farewell.

Originally translated from Vogue Portugal's The Quote Issue, published April 2022.For full credits and stories, check the print version.