“Always write with the ear, not the eye.” C.S. Lewis’ advice to a young writer in 1959 makes so much sense to me today. The words in a sentence should be in balance, of meaning, supporting phrases and the requirements of syntax. It should not be too long nor too short. It should have a subject and a verb, and preferably an object to complete the meaning. But Lewis’ counsel refers to something beyond the purely grammatical construction of a sentence. It should sound nice! As a student of Sanskrit and Odissi dance, I can find one of the best examples of a perfect rhythmic sentence in Jayadeva’s Geeta Govinda –
“Lalita lavanga lata parisheelana komala malaya sameere
Madhukara nikara karambita kokila koojita kunja kuteere.”
(Tender clove creepers touching the gentle breeze from the Malaya mountains, swarms of honey bees intermingled, cuckoos cooing in arbour cottages…)
The words (in Sanskrit, not the translation!) are infused with the rhythm of alliteration and bring alive the sights and sounds of Spring. I concede that Sanskrit is a language meant to be heard and possesses a natural advantage in that department. Even so, occasionally one finds in a sentence written in English, a remarkably rhythmic quality that is pleasing to the senses. “What the sixteenth century European traveller in the Indian subcontinent was faced with, a multiplicity of conceptual structures, blended, overlapping, knotted together and even disparate, is not too different from the situation confronting the specialized modern ethnographer.”
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