[How About This Book] Humanity Striving to Become Angels, a World Captivated by Words

Edward Wilson-Lee’s “The Grammar of Angels”

The Sublime Power of Language Held by Pico, the Prodigy of the Renaissance

From 900 Theses to Unforgettable Refrains: The Enduring Mystery of Words

There are times when a single sentence captures a person—not just because of logic. It is the rise and fall of the voice, the repeated cadences, the strangely lingering rhythm that first stirs the body. A lullaby puts a child to sleep, a speech moves a crowd, and a line from a song can echo in your mind all day. Before words are a tool for conveying meaning, they might be a substance that shakes people to their core.

The Grammar of Angels by Edward Wilson-Lee draws from the life of one Renaissance genius to explore this trembling: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. At the age of twenty-four, he arrived in Florence, presenting 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic, and declared his readiness to debate anyone on them.

His oration, often called the “Renaissance Manifesto,” has long been read as the starting point of the modern human view—that people can break free from predetermined roles and shape themselves. However, the Pico this book focuses on is somewhat different. Rather than a young philosopher proclaiming human dignity, he is portrayed as someone who dangerously questioned how far language can transform humanity.

Pico’s ambition was not confined to any single doctrine. He sought to bring together Aristotle and Plato, Christian theology, the Jewish Kabbalah, medieval Arabic philosophy, and ancient oral traditions. He aimed to break the one into many, and then bind the many back into one. Significantly, language was at the center of this synthesis. Having learned Hebrew, Latin, ancient Semitic languages, and Ethiopic Ge’ez, Pico discovered recurring beliefs across different traditions: that sound and rhythm have the power to seize the spirit, move the will, and break down barriers between individuals.

Here, “angels” are not just a pretty metaphor. They are intermediate beings that exist between humans and the divine—entities that seek to connect with a greater order beyond the individual self. For Pico, the “grammar of angels” was a form of language that could elevate humans to a higher dimension. Yet this sublimity immediately gives rise to darker questions.

If words can lead people to virtue, they can also guide them to evil. If an audience is entranced by a speech, a crowd bound by a chant, or an individual’s judgment loosened by rhythm and repetition, then where does free will remain? This is the most fascinating point of the book: it doesn’t stop at praising the beauty of language but goes further to ask just how close that beauty is to the art of manipulation.

The Renaissance is often remembered as the discovery of the human. But the Renaissance portrayed in this book is more tumultuous and uneasy. It was a time when texts from beyond Europe flooded into the world of Italian humanism, ancient texts were reread, and the intuitions of distant cultures emerged in surprising similarities.

Words can summon angels or move crowds. The Grammar of Angels explores both the sublimity and danger of language through the life of Pico della Mirandola. AI-generated image

Knowledge expanded, the world grew broader, and the foundations of the old order were shaken accordingly. It was no coincidence that Pico’s 900 theses clashed with the boundaries set by the Church. The attempt to unify all truths was beautiful, but equally dangerous. It inevitably came into conflict with a world determined to keep humanity bound within a single doctrine, a single institution, a single system of judgment.

Wilson-Lee does not treat this intellectual adventure as mere dry history. He revives the air of the Renaissance by following Pico’s life—his letters to teachers and friends, his appearances at hearings, his anecdotes involving women of the Medici family, and his enigmatic death at thirty-one. Thus, Pico in this book is not a taxidermied genius, but a young man who knew too much and tried to go too far. His life was short, but his questions lingered long after. Can words make us better beings? Or are they the force that first strips away what we believe to be our very selves?

This question is not unfamiliar to today’s readers. We are still enchanted by words. The speeches of politicians, advertising slogans, the brief refrains repeated by algorithms, the songs that won’t leave our heads, the chants that make people cheer or hate—these all pass by us every day. The mystery of language that Pico sought is not a remnant of superstition, but perhaps another name for the fact that humans are linguistic animals. Words do not merely express thoughts. Sometimes, they create thoughts, organize emotions, and push us from “I” toward “we.”

The lingering feeling left by The Grammar of Angels is therefore not wholly bright. If language can raise humans to the rank of angels, the same language can also reduce them to mere members of a crowd. Sublimity and demagoguery are not far apart. What Pico may have seen is that very boundary. Through the brief, lightning-like life of a young Renaissance philosopher, this book prompts us to look again at the foundations of the words we use and hear every day.

We believe we wield words, but sometimes words wield us. It is this old discomfort that makes the book so worth reading now.

The Grammar of Angels | Written by Edward Wilson-Lee | Translated by Kim Sujin | Kkachi Publishing | 336 pages

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.