Paul Griffiths talks to W. J. Davies about his Ophelian novels, let me tell you and let me go on

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aul Griffiths’ let me tell you and its sequel, let me go on, are based on a deceptively simple premise: they use only the 481 different words Shakespeare gave Ophelia in Hamlet. Named “O” here, she has the chance to tell her story on her own terms, first her life before the events of the play, then, more mysteriously, after. Playful and exuberant, these are those rare kinds of experimentations which manage to be both formally inventive and deeply affecting; Harry Matthews described let me tell you as “a beautiful and enthralling work, as well as a great success in Oulipian terms.” In the play, Ophelia’s words are used to mark her descent into madness. In Griffiths’ novels, with those same words set to different purposes and rhythms, she finds new ways to describe her inner life, her past and the possible futures that lie ahead.

WJD: I’d like to begin by going back to how you started these novels, Paul. Which came first, Ophelia or the experimental form?

PG: I’d already settled on this idea of writing with a restricted vocabulary, but it didn’t take long to decide it should be Ophelia’s. Not only is she a sympathetic and enigmatic character of whom we well might want to learn more than we do in the play, she has a vocabulary of just the right size: a little under 500 different words, many of which are archaic or unusual, so that they can’t be used too often. Indeed, only about a third of her words are to be found in the core vocabulary of Basic English. So the protagonist of let me tell you and let me go on has a minimal vocabulary with which to express her thoughts, her feelings, the whole story of her life, and her relationships with other people. She shares the condition we all experience when we can’t find words for what we want to say, except that with her that condition is taken to an extreme.

It must have felt extreme at times for you, too, writing a life in that way.

Yes, but before we go any further, I want to say that this limitation, like any such limitation if it’s to be useful, is not so much a constraint as a release. It pushes you to find ways round the problem.

The freedom within the limitation. It reminds me of Beckett’s description of his decision to write in French instead of English, that he was able to write “without style,” which I take to be writing in a way that’s free, or more free, of linguistic habits and clichés. There’s a crispness and clarity to the prose in your novels because of the restraint.

Thank you. This particular limitation makes it possible to say very simple things freshly, because they have had to go through the sieve, as it were. The narrator of let me tell you is aware of the challenge that faces her, but she is also aware of the possibilities. She even starts out, right at the beginning of the first chapter, by bringing it into the open:

So: now I come to speak. At last. I will tell you all I know. I was deceived to think I could not do this. I have the powers; I take them here. I have the right. I have the means. My words may be poor, but they will have to do.

She doesn’t have to refer to this again; from here, her words will speak for themselves.

One of the things she wants her words to do is make connections with others, I think, while remaining herself as well. To be seen and heard and acknowledged as a person among others.

It matters to her, yes. I think it’s one of those very simple things her words are able to say so clearly. She has a little soliloquy on “the hand,” for example, at the end of which she turns to the reader:

A hand may be an argument to them that do not believe in love.

“Here is my hand,” one will say. “This is my hand. I give you my hand.” There’s nothing I may give you that means more.

“I take your hand,” the other will say. “I have your hand in mine.” There’s nothing I may take from you that means more. “And in being like that, I have given you my hand. This is my hand. This is me.”

Here: I have held it out to you. Take my hand. Go with me. Be with me.

During the thirteen years I spent writing the book, I found other possibilities raised by working with a restricted vocabulary—and particularly with the Ophelian vocabulary. One example: Ophelia never names herself, so the narrator of my novels can’t call herself “Ophelia” but only “O,” which puts her at a slight remove from the Shakespeare character. She both is Ophelia and is not; she has a little room for maneuver, which she develops through the first book.

I suppose the majority of us don’t go around saying our own names all that often, unless we’re introducing ourselves, which Ophelia never has the chance to do.

That’s true. The only character Ophelia names is Hamlet—but I don’t have her do so in the novels, because Hamlet’s presence would be overwhelming. Accordingly, O refers to him only as “the young lord,” and his name has to be filtered into the text another way. (I took it as a rule that every word Ophelia speaks, whether in the Second Quarto text or the First Folio, has to make its appearance in let me tell you.) O can also talk about her “father” and her “brother,” but she doesn’t have the word “mother.”

An absence that leaves Ophelia more vulnerable to the men in the play, perhaps?

Possibly, but this is where Ophelia and O are not quite the same. For me, a lack became a benefit. If in telling the story of her life O cannot speak of her mother, there must be some reason. Searching for a possible reason led me into territory such as this, where the mother is crowing to her daughter about a threesome:

“To be dupped and dupped again. To be dupped by the one and then by the other, and then by the one again, for as long as it will take that you cannot remember which is which. To have them look and look and find the doors, find all the doors. Call out. More. More. Now. To be gyved. To be jangled. To be larded. To be larded all over and in me. To be done. To be well and truly done.”

Not only does this allow me to use some unusual words, and not only does it provide a reason why O shuns even the word “mother,” it gives voice to the fulminating understory of frustrated and corrupt sex that’s there in the play.

Then, in contrast, we have a scene involving O’s first love, whom she cannot name, but whom she can certainly address:

You are my sun. You have sun-blasted me, and turned me to light.

You have made me like glass—like glass in an ecstasy from your light, like glass in which light rained and rained and rained and goes on, like glass in which there are showers of light that cannot end.

Such youthful sentiments! It breathes so much life into her story.

There are other characters in O’s tiny, enclosed world, characters made possible by her words, most notably the Polonius family maid. Polonius is a high court official, and so his household would certainly include servants. A maid is plausible; she is also necessary. O’s mother being venomous, it is the maid who, in her strength, gives O a sense of home. It’s also the maid who reveals to the young O the whole story lying ahead. This was one of the gifts let me tell you gave me, to mitigate the long labor: to find that I could, with so few words, produce a tolerable synopsis of the play. That was fun. Here’s an example:

“What will truly please him will be the men that come to do a play. He’ll know them from before. He’ll have one of them redeliver a speech, which your father will not like, but for one of the words.

“He, the young lord as he is by now, will then have them give their play—but with a speech that he’s made up for one of them—before the king, the lady and many another: indeed, almost all of you. Not me, as I do not have to say. But you’ll be there. This is when you are a young lady. You’ll be there, as will he—he’ll play with you at the play. With you and with the king. More with the king.”

The Ophelian vocabulary, limited as it is, nevertheless has some very useful words: “time,” “memory,” “remember,” “music,” “play,” “other” and “another,” to name a few. At the same time, many simple words are missing, besides “mother.” The protagonist of let me tell you and let me go on is relating an autobiography in which she can never say “I am,” so again ways have to be found round this.

Are there any others that stick in the memory?

I found it hard to do without “or.” I wanted my central character to have alternatives.

And despite that O uses so many different kinds of speech and writing while telling her story.

I wanted the novels to have as much variety as possible, to counter the restriction; I wanted the text to burst out from its confines. So in let me tell you there are songs and sonnets, childhood reminiscences and tales of high misdemeanor, letters (from Polonius abroad) and a play. The Polonius letters allowed in some comedy, which I was glad to have, and which again, of course, accords with the Shakespeare play. The play in the novel does that, too, as a little comedy being rehearsed by O, her father, her brother, and the young lord, with all the release and irritation that come with amateur theatricals. I should say that when other characters speak, whether in the play or as themselves, their words have to occur not only in Ophelian but also in their own vocabularies. There are intersections I found interesting in telling me things about Shakespeare’s language in the play. For instance, Ophelia shares “obey” only with Gertrude. Make of that what you will, as I might say in Ophelian.

And they say it respectively to the men who govern their lives, Polonius and Claudius. But “obey” is also said by Hamlet, for example, in Act 1, Scene 2, to Gertrude: “I shall in all my best obey you, madam.” I suppose he is making the point of emphatically not saying it to Claudius but to his mother.

Whoops. Yes, of course. Let me check. Indeed, Hamlet says it twice, whether we’re looking at the Second Quarto or the First Folio. I suppose I could say that in both Hamlet’s usages his mother is the one he will obey, and so Gertrude is there in the immediate context—also that in both there’s a high degree of irony. But it would be more honest to admit I slipped up—though it was a productive error: it prompted me to have O make a point of sharing the word with Gertrude.

I’m sure that’s not the only mistake in terms of the rules of the game. The first edition of let me tell you, published by Reality Street in 2008, failed to include the word “sewing,” which of course is in the Ophelian vocabulary:, “. . . as I was sewing in my closet . . .” (Q2), “. . . as I was sewing in my chamber . . .” (F1).

Speaking of the different editions, I let O have all the Ophelian words in both Q2 and F1, in order not to miss words, as in this case, where by doubling up we are allowed both “chamber” and “closet.” The case that clinched the decision was another line: “Like sweet bells jangled out of time” (Q2), “Like sweet bells jangled out of tune” (F1). It was really important to have “time,” which Ophelia doesn’t say anywhere else, and “tune” was useful, too. (A nice coincidence: Gertrude has both words in her speech on Ophelia’s death, F1 version: “Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes.”)

To come back to Hamlet, I took the decision that in let me go on the young lord speaks in the novel only when he’s in character in the play rehearsal; I didn’t think I could or should make up lines for Hamlet.

I agree. Hamlet recedes further when you take O’s story beyond him in let me go on, freeing her even further.

Right. In let me go on, we’ve left Hamlet behind, along with all but one of the other characters from the Shakespeare play. Where let me tell you was largely narrated in the past tense—though with this small vocabulary, consistency of tense had to be abandoned from time to time—in let me go on we follow O in her present as she seeks out what she can now be, having exited her play.

The limitation to Ophelia’s words means O’s voice is distinctly consistent across both novels, but did you notice as you were writing the sequel a change in how you approached this next part of her story?

Having left Elsinore, we can move further away from the diction of the play. O now moves not so much through time as through space here, in a new landscape where she meets other people who share her situation. Like her, they have kept their original vocabularies, so, like the Shakespeare characters in let me tell you, they can use only words that Ophelia also has. And though they have left their plays, they may still be marked by their experiences there. Here, for example, is an important character from Antony and Cleopatra:

“There was . . . let’s call him a soldier. He’s in love. A soldier in love. And there’s two he’s in love with. A he and a she. And these two are in love with each other. They do not see his love. They are so in tune with each other that for them there’s no other music.”

Generally speaking, the prose is lighter here, more contemporary. That was partly because I’d had a lot of time with the language, through let me tell you and other things, as well as because the original play had been left behind.

At one point, though, it comes back in the person of Ophelia’s brother making an attempt to retrieve her:

“I wish I did not have to say this to you—”

“Father. Is he not well?”

“He is well; he is well.”

“Go on.”

“You remember how he comes to his death?”

“How could I not?”

“With him now it’s like it’s a true death, like he’ll be dead and gone. He goes on with it—you know what he’s like—but his heart’s not in it now.”

O’s longest encounter is with her counterpart in the First, so-called “Bad,” Quarto: Ofelia—or “O-fie,” as she has to call herself. O-fie lives on the top of a mountain (we spend a good bit of time in both books up the mountain or over the mountain, for obvious reasons), and O makes her way up there.

It’s a significant moment of companionship and recognition for her.

It is. They tell each other stories, sing songs, compare fashion preferences, or just hang out, basking in their affinity. O-fie has more words than O, and introduces some that O does not have. One or two Ofelian but non-Ophelian words here break the otherwise strict rule that both books are entirely in Ophelian. Perhaps the infringement will signal to O that she should move on. Certainly it causes her a little confusion, as in this dialogue, where O begins:

“Tell me all you may of yourself.”

“You’ll know it already.”

“All what?”

“Already. Like: by now, from before. Already.”

“I’ll remember.”

Eventually, though, O realizes that her quest does not end here, with her second self, and that she must go on to find her first. Further along she has conversations with the captain of a ship going by, the hostess of a pub, a sprite who takes up residence in her head, and an observant Jew who is reading the Psalms, albeit in the King James Version, which was published close in time to Hamlet (seven years after the Second Quarto) and duly includes passages in Ophelian:

Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God . . .

Her soul is her own, not made up of the judgments of others. So she comes back to a belief that she alone can take her where she needs to go? “I have the right. I have the means.”

Exactly. Besides, the inhabitants of this fairytale world are often too caught up in their own dramas to offer the protagonist any advice or assistance; think of the two young women who speak at the same time and squabble. Some, though, treat her with more compassion and steer her in the direction of the one they believe will answer her needs: the Master.

Yet though her final encounter is not with some magus, she does end the book, as she did let me tell you, at a point where an altogether new realm of existence seems to be opening up for her.

Will she again cross the threshold?

For now, the question is left in the reader’s hands.

let me tell you and let me go on are published by Henningham Family Press in the UK and available in the US in a combined edition, published by New York Review Books.