Interjections

We live with others for years — in spring, when the first crocuses bloom in the garden, and in summer, when the wheat grows and the sun burns hot, and also in autumn, when it gets dark early and the birds fly south, and also in winter, when sometimes it is cold outside and warm inside, and sometimes it is cold inside and warm outside.

We live with others in all seasons of the year, for twenty years, for thirty years — with those we consider close to us, our beloved ones or significant others. They are above all our others, the ones dear to our heart with whom we share our everyday life, with all its joys and little pains, with every discreet « ah » and every discreet « oh ». Sometimes we think that our life consists of a long series of such interjections, marking the moments of joy, sadness, annoyance or despair: Ah, what beautiful weather! Eh, what a lovely day we had! Oh, such a splitting headache! Oh, dear, what a thing! Ah, the crocuses! Good Lord, oh, death!

Grammar terms these ah’s, oh’s and eh’s « interjections »: they are the most spontaneous, unpredictable and flexible parts of speech. People utter them without much thought when they are happy, when they are hurt, when they are afraid, when they have something to say, when they have nothing to say. Free and disobedient, interjections are the soul of utterance. An old Latin grammarian stated that interjections — these « non-words » — are independent utterances, that have no fixed place in the sentence, do not obey any syntax rules, and are intended to signify some affect or state of mind by means of an unformed word: ah and oh and eh. So people don’t utter them, but rather suggest them, insert them between their words as a place of pure unformed affect within the strong order of words — like a little question within the answer, or, as in the verse by the American poet Mary Oliver — « Instead oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly unanswered… ». By means of interjections, people try to add something else to the main thing they are saying, something that cannot be said, something for which there is no place in language, something the words fail to name — an unknown joy, a hidden desire, a long-held pain. Interjections burst into language to evoke something beyond it — something that can only be shown in the very formlessness of the spoken interjection. Ah, these little non-words! They are the unformed stones in the human garden, thrown in all directions — without direction — between the crocus beds of language.

We have a nice house, the house has a nice garden, in the garden we plant nice flowers, we have breakfast and coffee together, we watch the sky at sunset, the children wrestle around us and the dog wags its tail happily. And we grow and change with others, bodies along with other bodies, growing like young wheat, ripening like yellow pears, we share our experiences and memories: all these whispers « I love you », or « I’m scared » or « Don’t leave me ». There are so many of them. We go to sleep together, naturally, we wake up together; we spend time with each other, we fill our time and build a world — a world of joys and little pains — a garden with a lush green lawn and beds of purple crocuses, a space at the boundary of inside and outside, a space of intimacy and mutual understanding, of lunches and dinners, of cooking a meal, making the bed, enjoying a cigarette, touching a body — a space that spans all seasons, absorbing the colors of all times: blue like a varicose leg vein, yellow like a fried egg on the plate, green like mould in the bathroom, brown like a body in bed in autumn, black like the night.