The other day in Italian class we were discussing verbs. Verbs are one of the most beautiful parts of any language, in part because they don't usually translate directly. That is, there is almost always some nuance of meaning that is lost when you translate the verb. Learning to speak another language gives you the opportunity to put yourself into a new mindset and see the world in a different way... More on that in another post.
Back on track. We were studying the different uses of the simplest of tenses: present indicative. "I say," "you say," "he says," etc. While the Italian present indicative is used on several ways that the English equivalent is not, there is one interesting use that they share: providing second hand accounts of written works. That is, such as in the following sentence:
"In his famous book, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith makes the case for an 'Invisible Hand,' and therefore for free market economies."
Who is the subject in that sentence? Adam Smith. For those who are wondering, Adam Smith was an influential pioneer of economics.1 He published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, and it is still an well known and commonly referenced book on economics.
What is the verb tense? Present indicative: "Adam Smith makes." But he's dead. How can a dead man act in the present?
I've always known that we could use the grammar like this, but I guess it was the first time that it really hit me that writing things down is the best way to immortality known to humankind, because it's the best way to influence future generations. Sure, you can influence them through your actions now, in shaping their environment. But only like this will your intellect, your being, communicate directly with theirs.2
Turns out that I'm not the first one to have thought of this (shucks, another non-original idea). The writer of The Immortality of Writers proved himself right when 3,000 years ago he said, "Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter. Better is a book than a well built house."3
What significance does this have for me? Well, not a lot. I don't have a huge desire to be immortally dead, and I don't particularly like writing anyway. But, I think it does give reason to pause and think about the power and duration of everything that we write (or record), and perhaps another good reason to keep a journal.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith ↩
2
OK, not quite. Artistic representations of an artist's viewpoint predate any written writing system, and one could argue that a picture is worth a thousand words. And with the modern era of video cameras and audio recordings, there is no argument that an audio/video recording of someone actually speaking is far more effective than their written words alone. But, for most of human existence, writing has been the best immortality elixir available, and even in today's modern era it is yet easier and natural for many of us to write. ↩
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortality_of_Writers ↩
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