The
good old split infinitive is at a point of endemic insertion. Many
writers are not even aware anymore when they include one. The most
famous example can be heard in both series of Star Trek and STNG
where the phrase "to boldly go" is heard in the Captain's opening
speech. Of course, that first line of the speech isn't even a sentence,
so I don't know why I'm even going into this. "Space: The final
frontier" does not have a verb. So I guess it might be considered an
interjection. By way of illumination, I could introduce the view of my
washing machine by putting on some ambient music and talking into a
microphone and saying, "Water: The laundry habitat. These are the
adventures of my vest and pants."
After declaring it's going to
be either a five year or continuing mission, the next three lines all
begin with infinitives, "to explore, to seek and to go." Aren't they
all kind of the same? Exploring and seeking are pretty similar. I know
there is a difference between discovering North America and looking for
car keys, but in the Star Trek speech their search refers to "new worlds, new life and new
civilizations." Wouldn't they all be found in the same place? You find
one and the rest are just foregone conclusions.
The trick is
the Captains don't say "to painstakingly explore" or "to vigorously
seek." No. The infinitives remain intact there. They are not modified
or corrupted. They remain simple, direct and effective, but then again,
they aren't really sentences either. They sound like they were written
by Yoda. "To explore strange new worlds, we will." is the way he would
say it if he was captain of the Enterprise. At least he doesn't split
his infinitives.
Kirk and Picard could also have said "to
explore enthusiastically or assiduously or diligently." They could have
said "to seek eagerly, ardently or energetically," but no, they don't
abuse those particular bare infinitives. They save that until the end.
My suggestion would be to fix, to modify and to improve the last line
by having them say, "To go courageously beyond grammatical boundaries
and explore, our quest is."
No comments:
Post a Comment