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When Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures

By Roy Peter Clark

In 1935 Italian Fascists invaded Ethiopia, a military attack that did not go unanswered by His Highness Haile Selassie. From the city of Addis Ababa, the great emperor issued this Conscription Act:

And there you have it, as crisp an imperial order as you will ever find, 73 razor sharp words that may be worth thousands of pictures -- except for the picture of Mussolini's inverted execution.

In an age when Congressional bills run into the thousands of pages, it is a pleasure to be reintroduced to some of history's most enduring short texts.

At the bottom of this brief essay you will find the texts of these historical documents:

The Ten Commandments
The 23rd Psalm
The Lords Prayer
A Shakespearean Sonnet
The Preamble to the Constitution
The rousing final verses of the "I Have a Dream" speech

Add up the words in the passages. Now guess the total.

This challenge was inspired by remarks heard at the Tucson Festival of Books, a glorious encounter of hundreds of authors and thousands of readers. The keynote speaker was Scott Simon, a veteran television and radio journalist, a novelist and a true man of the word. It was Simon who said that the truism -- "a picture is worth a thousand words" -- might not be so true after all.

Showing no disrespect to the visual journalists and artists whose work lifts our spirits and fires our determination, Simon offered the above list of iconic documents as evidence that short writing at its greatest can transcend the degrading forces of history and stand smile-for-smile with the Mona Lisa and her progeny.

I've done the math, and all of the famous documents produced below, with their titles, equal (Drum roll, please) (Is that your final answer?) (Want to phone a friend?) -- 958 words.

What kind of picture, asked Simon, could compete with that?

Here are the famous documents:

The Ten Commandments
I am the Lord your God.
You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.

The 23rd Psalm
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Hippocratic Oath
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this artif they desire to learn itwithout fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

The Lords Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
 the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen

Shakespearean Sonnet
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Preamble to the Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Ending of "I Have a Dream" by MLK
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Now it's time for you to help. In the comments section below, please send us a short text of historical importance that you think can stand with the ones cited here. It should be fewer than 200 words. Fewer than 100 words is even better. Post a link so that we can share it with our readers. We'll give you one: The Gettysburg Address.

Full post as published by Writing Tools on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).