May 14th, 1839 Queen Victoria attended a play at London's Covent Garden. The play she was attending, was about Cardinal Richelieu. In this play, the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, wrote the lines for the part of Cardinal Richelieu. The line was spoken as follows onto the Queen's royal ears;
True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!
The essence and deep definition the Queen should have taken from this was most certainly: The pen is mightier than the sword.
There are several documented predecessors, who penned such variants of this profound statement.
In Hebrews 4:12, the scripture tells us "Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart."
In Hamlet, William Shakespeare authored "....... many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose quills."
In a letter to Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson scribbled the statement "Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword: shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man, and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than yours Thomas Jefferson".
A pen and the legacy it spills, is some of the more potent communication, one could deliver. I have recently purchased a Pen & Ink brand sketch model fountain pen. The fountain pen floods my conscious with memories of my father, who it always seemed, was armed with this weapon. This pen is designed with a iridium tip, where it graces the presence of the page, by gliding over its surface. It delivers the ink, smoother than a straight razor shave. This pen has been a delight to scratch with and it comes in the box with three cartridges and a ink converter., so one could carefully avoid the messy past of earlier variants. If you should find yourself in a waging war of written words, the outpouring of carefully crafted love letters or just wanting a fine pen to draw up your grocery list: this author recommends the Pen & Ink Sketch model.
I hope this is the pen that you one day use to write the story of us.
ReplyDeleteIt will be such, I may need several hundred more cartridges and a redwoods produce of paper to effectively capture it.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. I too believe that the pen is mightier than the sword. If you think about it. Yet both may cause a scar that will heal with time. But a scar will fade with time but a pen will leave a mark that will never fade.
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