Wacky Word Wednesday: Chthonic

Chthonic

  /ˈkθɒnɪk/ Dwelling in or beneath the surface of the earth (oed.com)

I found this word in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, one of my favorite poetic works (and authors) of all time. I never particularly liked poetry until one day, on a sunny afternoon of second semester freshman year, my English professor trooped the class outside to read the Quartets. I was hooked. Eliot's poetry  is more than romantic sighing or melancholic brooding, it seems to me. His words sing; they produce a melody and rhythm of time, life, death -- especially death -- and what it means to be human. That might sound trite or ambiguously meaningless, but his theory of objective correlative organizes words in such a way as to give enormous depth and color. How I would like to write like this someday:

Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still. Shrieking voices

Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,

Always assail them. The Word in the desert

Is most attacked by voices of temptation,

The crying shadow in the funeral dance,

The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.