Languages

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form/Meter

“Languages” is written in free verse: it has no formal rhyme scheme or meter that would ensure that the lines are standardized in some form. In choosing to write the poem in free verse, Sandburg ensures that the poem’s form (free verse) and its content (a meditation on the nature of languages) complement one another. Like the river described by the poem’s speaker, the text of the poem is free-flowing and unpredictable, winding its way through its imagery and ideas in a way that mirrors the fluid nature of language itself. The use of free verse lends the poem a dynamism that underscores the speaker’s opening claim: “There are no handles upon a language” (Line 1, italics added). In forgoing the regimentation of set rhyme and meter—both of which are potential “handles” for controlling the use of language—the speaker disavows any artificial constraints he could place upon the poem, instead giving free rein to the words, images, and ideas contained within it.

Symbolism/Imagery

While a relatively short poem, “Languages” nevertheless manages to contain a lot of information and ideas through the careful use of imagery and symbolism throughout the text. The natural imagery is the most consistent use of symbolism throughout the poem, as the likening of a language to a “river” (Line 4)—with all of the resultant implications—helps to immediately embody the qualities the speaker wishes to attribute to language: fluidity, unpredictability, the power to connect, and an ultimate end. Similarly, the reference to “faded hieroglyphics” (Line 17) is potent symbolism for the ways in which writing both attempts to regiment and preserve language, while also ultimately failing to do so: The “hieroglyphics” of the Ancient Egyptians did preserve their language after the loss of their civilization, but the knowledge of how to read the script vanished for many centuries, and the Ancient Egyptian language is now the preserve of scholars instead of a living force. In using such natural and historical imagery, the speaker manages to convey rich ideas in very few words.

Repetition

The speaker uses repetition of key images and ideas to make a strong impression of the nature of language. In drawing repeatedly upon the symbol of the river, and in elaborating upon the implications the metaphor has when used to describe language, the speaker repeatedly brings to the reader’s attention the key ideas of the text: language’s dynamism, its essential role in human society, and also its inevitable end in terms of individual languages. Repetition is also important for conveying the idea of time, as the three separate mentions of large units of time—“Once in a thousand years” (Line 5); “Ten thousand years from now” (Line 18); “Ten thousand years ago” (Line 23)—emphasize both the passage of time and the sheer scale of human history, which has already seen the rise and fall of many civilizations and their languages, and will surely see the rise and fall of many more, including the eventual extinction of the “Word wrapped round your tongue today” (Line 13).

Irony

There is something ironic about the very fact that this poem—a form of written language—has as its theme the ultimate extinction of language and the futility of even writing as an attempt to preserve a language. In referencing the “faded hieroglyphics” in Line 17, the speaker signals that he is aware of this irony, and that even his own work may ultimately end up as an unintelligible puzzle to the civilizations of the future. Nevertheless, this irony gives the poem a degree of poignancy, as the poem itself is proof both of language’s dynamism and its limited life cycle: The poem may indeed end up as “faded hieroglyphics” (Line 17) with the passage of time, but its present existence and use is a celebration of human expression and connection.