Over at Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens continues to document his odyssey with cancer. In the latest episode, “Unspoken truths,” he tells us that he’s now losing his primary instrument: his voice. It’s hard to believe that we may no longer hear his Richard-Burtonish timbre.
My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them: they are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at least I can do the listening for free. Can they come and see me? Yes, but only in a way. So now every day I go to a waiting room, and watch the awful news from Japan on cable TV (often closed-captioned, just to torture myself) and wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.
Just yesterday I was listening to the audio version of Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ read by RD and Lalla Ward. I got to thinking about the difference between Hitch and RD in their speech, and whereas they both get complemented on their accents, (what alternative do they have?) for me the quality of Hitchens’ voice has the edge. I mean if Hitch were to read your charge sheet – even that would sound cool. You’d have to plead guilty, regardless.
BigBob
Leave it to Hitch to appreciate the bittersweet irony of loss of voice of a most eloquent and passionate defender of free speech.
Someone should assemble a video compilation of Hitch’s best televised (i.e. “you tubed”)debates.
YES!
Someone managed to create a compilation of some good snippets from debates and other public appearances. While it’s not about complete debates and is missing some other great moments, it’s still pretty good.
“I could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so.” Sadly ‘could once’ sounds valedictory.
So it does–too soon.
I cried when I read this — especially that last paragraph. Such powerful writing.
Same here, sniff..
I never thought of Hitch as having Richard Burton’s tone. I can’t imagine Hitch doing the monologue for Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds….
I honestly admit that I don’t know what Hitch means by this:
In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.
I understand apposition as a sort of repetition or replacement of the subject. Like ‘My son, Jamie, walked’. Jamie and My son would be apposite. Or as I learnt the term when trying to lean latin ‘Mi filius, Iacobus, ambulavit’.
Oh well. I’m nothing if not ignorant. I’d never try to argue the Hitch was wrong. Just need to learn what apposition means. 🙂
P.S. Go Hitch. Long may you be.
Just cogitating here. Did he mean speech gives freedom or is freedom?
That would be apposition as I understand it. But would also be arguable.
He means I take it the grammatical sense – “The placing of a word beside, or in syntactic parallelism with, another; spec. the addition of one substantive to another, or to a noun clause, as an attribute or complement; the position of the substantive so added.” – OED Online
Which is what I meant by my example of ‘Jamie, my son, walks’.
Which does not explain how freedom is parallel to speech. Because if he means free speech is apposite to freedom of speech, then it’s just a tautology. He’s not saying anything informative, and it’s arguable that speech is free. Maybe not in the States, but in the majority of locales….
Perhaps he means that one is free to say whatever one likes. Consequences be dammed?
I’m not trying to one-up the Hitch (would that were possible), just trying to extract the marrow from the bone. So to speak. He’s not given to superficial usage of the English language. It must mean something more than ‘free speech is freedom of speech’. It must be something that speak to the human condition.
Too much subjunctive for one comment me thinks.
Having once lost the ability to speak, I interpreted this to mean simply that the ability to speak is freedom of sorts. To be able to express himself fluently, to be able to draw attention away from his voice to the words that he’s speaking, to be able to manipulate others with his voice — he has lost the ability to do these things with ease, which is a loss of freedom.
yes!
Some years ago my Dad lost the ability to speak as a result of surgery to remove a cancer of the larynx (the whole voice box was removed). His frustration at being so often unable to make himself understood was very hard to witness. He wrote one time that even four years as prisoner of war during WWII didn’t make him feel as imprisoned as the loss of his voice did. I hope Christopher Hitchens is able to regain his freedom of speech very soon.
I think we are getting too technical.
The adjective ‘apposite’ – apt, appropriate. So probably he uses ‘beautiful apposition’ as a way the describe the ‘appositeness’ more, er, appositely!
Sorry to sum up, he means – I take it – the to be able to speak gives one freedom, as being allowed to speak freely also does, & that the two are closely related. I am sure he will have raised the ire of some Deaf people though.
thefreedictionary.com
Sense number one is a grammatical technicality.
It is sense number two that I think is being utilized in this case.
2. Apposition: A placing side by side or next to each other.
The word “freedom” and the word “speech” in this case make for a most beautiful apposition of words when concatenated thus: “Freedom of Speech”
Finally! (Someone else reads it as I did. Ergo, we must be right. 😉 )
Reminds me of how Roger Ebert never realized the moment that he spoke his last word. At least they can both still write.
Exactly what occurred to me.
Truly sad. And a beautiful piece of writing.
I don’t have a reference to it but I read somewhere not long ago that Hitchens is thought of to be the best debator the English speaking world has seen in the last 50 years. He is truly amazing to listen to.
Let’s hope he gets his voice back soon!
Ditto on the nearly crying while reading this. I’m really going to miss the Hitch when he’s gone (be that now or later, since I’m highly likely to outlive him).