Proclaimer Blog
Beauty in words (1)
I’ve written before about the beauty of words, but some half term reading brought the lesson home again, extremely vividly. A short break allowed me to catch my EMA breath and also devour some long piled books including two fiction books about or around WWII. First I read Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise (or at least a translation of it). This was closely followed by Kate Atkinson’s new book A god in ruins.
Nemirovsky’s book is a masterclass in nothing-happens-fiction. In Vol 1 (plot spoiler ahead!) some people leave Paris and then return. In Vol 2 a family house a German officer and at the same time hide a French fugitive (who is not discovered). Then the officer leaves. Woop-de-do. Virtually nothing happens (certainly when compared to Atkinson’s book).
In the latter (another plot spoiler) there is an interesting idea of a wartime pilot whose humdrum life after the end of hostilities is left rather empty by the lack of war. It’s an interesting idea, but right at the end you discover that this fiction is a fiction within a fiction. Too difficult to explain fully, and too clever by half.
Interestingly, one book left me amazed and one left me cold. Can you guess which? Atkinson’s left me cold. The excitement and tension (of which there were plenty) was created by plot and structure: in itself no bad thing. But the words themselves lacked any beauty, it seemed to me. Contrast this with Nemirovsky’s book where the words were themselves beautiful and thus the lack of action did not seem to matter. I was captivated.
Therein lies an important preaching truth. You can have clever structures and devices (and indeed, many Bible passages do), but these in themselves are insufficient to captivate congregations with Christ. They need beautiful words. I don’t mean flowery or shouty or clever, necessarily. I just mean beautiful. The Bible is full of beauty in its words because of the beauty of the One it pictures. Our sermons must be full of beautiful words too.