The personal - and the universal - in personal essays

Last night, as I lay in bed trying to find the perfect position to rest my knotty back, I spied the copy of Best American Essays 2006 that a friend brought back for me from the US. Since I've been working on proofs for a grammar book, I chose the essay titled, “Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood.”

The beauty of a great essay is that, while it remains personal, relating events or thoughts that are unique to the writer, the essay also holds an important question that is universal and pertinent to the reader. Why would anyone care to read how a man handles his daughter and a dead goldfish or about a young woman moving from New York to Los Angeles? Because late at night or during many moments in the day, ideas about death and choices and leaving a physical or emotional place are the very same ones that plague us. Some of the best essays explore questions and issues that we don't always want or dare to talk about; or they remind us of what we have forgotten but should remember again.

Michele Murano gives her essay an innocuous, rather mundane title. We think she is writing about grammar, and maybe it’s going to be humorous, like Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Next, we read the first paragraph and realize this particular "grammar" - more specifically, the subjunctive mood - is referring to the conjugation of verbs in Spanish. Okay then, Spanish grammar, a trip to Spain. This could very well be in the vein of Tim Parks's Italy books or Peter Mayle's writing about Provence. But, no, it isn't. Very much like life, the essay - or any powerful writing, really - never turns out the way you think it will.

Here are the first two pages -

"Think of it this way: learning to use the subjunctive mood is like learning to drive a stick shift. It's like falling in love with a car that isn't new or sporty but has a tilt steering wheel and a price you can afford. It's like being so in love with the possibilities, with the places you might go and the experiences you might have, that you pick up your new used car without quite knowing how to drive it, sputtering and stalling and rolling backward at every light. Then you drive the car each day for months, until the stalling stops and you figure out how to downshift, until you can hear the engine's registers and move through them with grace. And later, after you've gained control over the driving and lost control over so much else, you sell the car and most of your possessions and move yourself to Spain, to a place where language and circumstance will help you understand the subjunctive.

Remember that the subjunctive is a mood, not a tense. Verb tenses tell when something happens; moods tell how true. It's easy to skim over moods in a new language, to translate the words and think you've understood, which is why your first months in Spain will lack nuance. But eventually, after enough hours of conversations have passed, enough hours of talking with your students at the University of Oviedo and your housemate, Lola, and the friends you make when you wander the streets looking like a foreigner, you'll discover that you need the subjunctive in order to finish a question, or an answer, or a thought you couldn't have had without it.

In language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two. The indicative mood is for knowledge, facts, absolutes, for describing what's real or definite. You'd use the indicative to say, for example:

I was in love.
Or, The man I loved tried to kill himself.
Or, I moved to Spain because the man I loved, the man who tried to kill himself, was driving me insane.

The indicative helps you tell what happened or is happening or will happen in the future (when you believe you know for sure what the future will bring).

The subjunctive mood, on the other hand, is uncertain. It helps you tell what could have been or might be or what you want but may not get. You'd use the subjunctive to say:

I thought he'd improve without me.
Or, I left so that he'd begin to take care of himself.

Or later, after your perspective has been altered, by time and distance and a couple of cervezas in a brightly lit bar, you might say:

I deserted him (indicative).
I left him alone with his crazy self for a year (indicative).
Because I hoped (after which begins the subjunctive) that being apart might allow us to come together again.

English is losing the subjunctive mood. It lingers in some constructions ("If he were dead . . . ," for example), but it's no longer pervasive. That's the beauty and also the danger of English - that the definite and the might-be often look so much alike. And it's the reason why, during a period in your life when everything feels hypothetical, Spain will be a very seductive place to live.

In Spanish, verbs change to accomodate the subjunctive in every tense, and the rules, which are many and varied, have exceptions. In the beginning, you may feel defeated by this, even hopeless and angry sometimes. But eventually, in spite of your frustration with trying to explain, you'll know in the part of your mind that holds your stories, the part where grammar is felt before it's understood, that the uses of the subjunctive matter."

Posted by Monoceros at November 22, 2006 11:34 AM