Belles Lettres - June 26 2026

 

Belle Lettres

June 26 2026

A new word to me.

Clearly pilfered from the French

I let it roll off my tongue

with Gallic élan.

Belletrist,

which is writing

not so much for what it says

as how it says it;

with beauty, elegance, and grace.

That is, writing for the sake of it.

Which comes naturally to the French

who also live that way.

Not just wine and song

but rolling their r’s

as if to savour them,

moving their mouths

because words should be caressed

as one makes love,

and talking with their hands

in case words aren’t enough

  — because if some is good

more must surely be better.

While we are practical

and our language

a namby-pamby one,

swallowing our words

and speaking through pinched lips

with stilted tongues;

like repressed Englishmen

who speak marble-mouthed

and nearly shut,

a taciturn adolescent

grumbling under her breath

while rolling her eyes in disgust.

English is shameless, as well;

a mongrel language

that steals from all the others.

So while the French demand purity

we have no compunction

about borrowing words.

The colonizers   . . . colonized.

I aspire to be a belletrist,

penning essays

just for the sake of it,

writing poems

that land on the ear

with the rich resonance

and subtle overtones

of musical notes.

Like Bach’s Cello Suite

Ravel’s Sonatine,

a Chopin etude

Beethoven symphony.

But instead of instruments

beautiful words.

I began this wanting to evoke the excitement of encountering a new word. Especially one that distils a nuanced or complex idea down to a single term. And in this case, a beautiful one with a delightful mouth feel:  I can’t help wanting to say it out loud in my best French accent. (The first thing I had to get used to trying to learn French was to move my mouth. No swallowing words, as we English speakers do.)

I somehow never got around to the excitement part. Except inasmuch as it’s implied.