A Word Holds Its Power

Twin brothers fall into the mouth of a cave where a giant dwells. The ogre has killed many by kindling fires and filling the cavern with smoke until they suffocate. But Spider-Grandmother has given the children a command: if ever you are trapped in the cave, say the word thain-mom, “above my eyes.” When the giant lights the fire, the twins repeat thain-mom again and again—and the smoke stays above their eyes. Three great clouds rise; the children do not cough, do not weep. The giant’s wife grows afraid and lets them go. It is N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa writer, who recounts this story of his people in The Way to Rainy Mountain. A single word, spoken, and death is held at bay. Then, on the same page, comes this commentary, which might well be the key to the entire book.

English

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. And the word is sacred.

English

A word holds its power within itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. Through words, a man may deal with the world as an equal. And the word is sacred.

Everything hinges on the first verb. A word does not designate—it can. Where we treat the word as a label stuck afterward onto a thing already there—a convenient sound, and ultimately replaceable—Momaday treats it as a force that precedes the thing and brings it forth: it gives origin to all things. The word does not come from the thing; it comes “from nothing,” and it is the word that opens sound and meaning. Hence the final proposition, which is no pious ornament: if the word brings things into being, then it is sacred, in the precise sense that it must not be handled lightly.

Of this power, the name is the most charged part. For Momaday, a name is not a mere address, an identifier written in registers and surviving its bearer in archives.

English

A man’s name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes. Until recent times, the Kiowas would not speak the name of a dead man. To do so would have been disrespectful and dishonest. The dead take their names with them out of the world.

English

A man’s name belongs to him; he may keep it or give it as he chooses. Until recently, the Kiowas did not speak the name of the dead. To do so would have been disrespectful and disloyal. The dead take their names with them out of the world.

If the name were a label, it would remain after death, available, reusable, carved in stone. But if it holds its power within itself, it is bound to a life as breath is to a chest: it fades with it, and to speak it again would be to draw from nothingness what has returned there. The dead take their names with them out of the world. The restraint that follows is not superstition: it is the direct consequence of a view of language where naming is holding present.

And the same power can serve to repel. Momaday’s grandmother, Aho, had a word for this. Before what was evil—seen, heard, or merely thought—she would say zei-dl-bei, “fearsome.” A single word, always the same, which she set against evil and the incomprehensible. Momaday is careful not to hear it as a curse: it was not an exclamation so much, I think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder. The word does not express the old woman’s fear: it keeps it at bay. Just as thain-mom held the smoke above the twins’ eyes, zei-dl-bei holds chaos at a distance. Here, speech is a gesture—extended like a hand.

We must draw the line before we draw near. We speak much, and we usually treat the word as a sign: a conventional token, arbitrary, pointing to a thing without touching it, and which writing detaches from any mouth to preserve indefinitely. Its strength lies precisely in being detachable, archivable, repeatable without harm. Momaday’s word is the opposite in every way: it is powerful only when bound—to a breath, to a life, to a moment—and that is why it is perishable, why a name can leave the world, why it is not uttered carelessly. Ours endures because it clings to nothing; his acts because it clings to everything. It would be wrong to merge the two in some vague praise of “the magic of words.”

But once the difference is established, a narrow point remains, one we know without admitting it. We, too, still have words that do rather than say: the oath that binds, the blessing, the name given to a child, the word sought at a dying man’s bedside. These we do not handle lightly—proof that some part of us still holds the word sacred, though we no longer know how to name it. Momaday knows, and that is why he writes it before the language that bore it fades: the same speech that keeps the remembered earth is the one that defends against disorder.

The question his grandmother settled with a word remains. Before what surpasses us, do we still have a word that wards off—or only words that describe?