CELLAR DOOR

The English compound '''cellar door''' (RP: ) plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay ''English and Welsh'' (1955) holds its sound is intrinsically beautiful.

Contents

Tolkien

Misattributions

Cultural references

References in literature

References in film and television

References in music

Other

Notes

External links

Tolkien

''Cellar door'' is a combination of words in the English language once characterized by J. R. R. Tolkien to have an especially beautiful sound. In his 1955 essay "English and Welsh", commenting on his affection towards the Welsh language, Tolkien wrote:
: "Most English-speaking people...will admit that ''cellar door'' is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, ''sky'', and far more beautiful than ''beautiful''. Well then, in Welsh for me ''cellar doors'' are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."
Tolkien also once used the phrase to illustrate a point about his writing process during an interview:
:"Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me - 'cellar door', say. From that, I might think of a name, 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow."^[1]
Tolkien's discourse is the most likely origin of this concept and the only documented one. Further insights into why Tolkien found the word ''cellar-door'' aesthetically pleasing can be found in considering texts in his constructed language of Quenya. The poem Namárië opens with the words:
:''Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva.''^[2]
Tolkien's text contains a large number of sonorants and a paucity of stop consonants; only the brief stops /t/ and /d/ appear in the opening of his text. It contains many open syllables and few consonant clusters. Vowels are mainly monophthongs, and few diphthongs or other vowel sounds more complex in articulation appear here. These same phonetic features distinguish the English word ''cellar-door''. Note also that Tolkien's pronunciation of that word would not feature any rhotic sound, since he was speaking with non-rhotic accent: .
Compare this text with another poem in one of Tolkien's constructed language, the evil inscription of the One Ring in his Black Speech of Mordor:
:''Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.''
This text contains many consonant clusters (/zg/, /mb/, /θr/, /kr/) and a far larger variety of stop consonants.

Misattributions

Nonetheless, this phrase has been subject to a legendary degree of misattribution.
The story may be traced to 1989, with R. Lederer's ''Crazy English''^[3] alluding to a survey, conducted in the 1940s, probing the word in the English language generally thought to be the most beautiful. Contributing to this survey, American writer H. L. Mencken supposedly claimed that a Chinese student, who knew little or no English, especially liked the phrase ''cellar door'' — not for what it meant, but rather for how it sounded. Some accounts describe the immigrant as Italian rather than Chinese.
In 1991, Jacques Barzun repeated the claim, attributing it to a "Japanese friend":
:I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was “cellardoor.” It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside — the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with “celandine,” where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely.^[4]
The remark is attributed to "a famous linguist" in the dialogue script of ''Donnie Darko'' (2001). When asked about the origin of the phrase, the film director attributed it to Edgar Allan Poe^[5]

Cultural references

References in literature

★ In Larry Niven's ''A World Out of Time'', the city that the protagonist wakes up in, after 240 years of cryogenic sleep, is called Selerdor.

★ The cover of Stephen King's ''On Writing'' is a photograph of a cellar door.

★ In the comic book series ''Ultimate Spider-Man'', Norman Osborn uses "cellar door" as a codeword to trigger his son's hypnosis.

★ An island in Ursula K. Le Guin's ''Earthsea'' series is named Selidor.

★ In Edmund White's "Our Paris", White compares what he thinks as the most beautiful-sounding French word, chalumeau, to cellar door. He attributes it to Edgar Allan Poe.

References in film and television

★ Monty Python's ''Woody and Tinny Words'' sketch finds humor in the pure sounds of English words and their inherent beauty (woody) or ugliness (tinny); see also Inherently funny word.

★ The phrase is mentioned in the 2001 film ''Donnie Darko'' during a conversation between Donnie, the film's protagonist, and his English teacher. The English teacher states, "A famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that ''cellar door'' is the most beautiful." In the director's commentary Richard Kelly mistakenly attributes the phrase to Edgar Allan Poe. It was actually J.R.R. Tolkien.

★ Celador is the name of the British entertainment production company that produced the television show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' and the 2002 dramatic film entitled ''Dirty Pretty Things''.

★ Cellar Door Films is a North East, British based film collective. Mainly producing shorts, such as 'Oceanic', 'The Last Temptation of Jeff', and 'War Pigs' - a music video for a competition by the band CAKE, which scooped 2nd place.

References in music

★ In The Residents song "Red Rider", from ''The Commercial Album'', Lyrics: "Cellar Doors were open for the storms were out that night..."

★ ''The Cellar Door'' was a club on 34th Street in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. that operated in the 1960s and 70s. It was one of the premier music spots in Washington and many important artists of the era played there. The Danny Gatton "Redneck Jazz Explosion" live performance recordings were made here on New Year's Eve 1978. After closing the club's management became Cellar Door Productions, now a subsidiary of Live Nation.

★ A 1970 Miles Davis album is entitled ''The Cellar Door Sessions'', also featuring Keith Jarrett. It was recorded on December 16–19 at the Washington, DC club mentioned above.

★ ''Cellar Door'' is the name of the 2004 album by musician John Vanderslice.

★ The phrase appears in Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done".

★ The phrase is also used in the song "Angelsea" by Cat Stevens.

★ Holly Brook's debut album, ''Like Blood Like Honey'', features the song "Cellar Door" as the closing track.

★ Death metal band Glass casket have a song titled "Cellar Door" on the album ''We Are Gathered Here Today''.

★ Cellardoor is an independent electro-acoustic Brooklyn, NY-based pop band.

★ The phrase appears in the song "The House That Dripped Blood" by The Mountain Goats.

★ The Lemonheads' hit "It's A Shame About Ray" includes the lyric "the cellar door was open, I could never stay away."

★ The hardcore/screamo band Escape The Fate has a song titled "Cellar Door" on their album "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" (Epitaph Records, 2006)

★ American power metal band Cellador acquired their name from a combination of the two words.

★ "Cellar Doors, Donnie!" is a song title by the screamo band Mozart Season.

★ The phrase appears repeatedly in Pearls Before Swine's song "Playmate."

★ "Lock the cellar door" is a lyric in the song Talk Dirty to Me by Poison.

★ There is a song named "CellarDoor" by Nicolas Kuecken

★ Cellar Door is an Icelandic band
★ [1].

★ Cellar Door is also the name of a Los Angeles-based progressive metal quartet
★ [2].

★ Appears in the 1894 song "I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard" by Henry W. Petrie and Phillip Wingate.

★ Sell Adore is an Australian band from the South Gippsland area, Victoria.
★ [3].

★ The avant-garde metal band, Dødheimsgard, have a song titled "Cellar Door" on the album ''Supervillain Outcast''.

Other

★ Cellar Door Records is a small music label operating in the Cleveland, Ohio area.

★ Cellar Door is the name of a Jazz and Cabaret Venue under London's Strand.

★ The phrase "Cellar door" is also used to refer to the point where tourism meets winemaking — a shop at a winery that allows visitors to taste and buy the wine made there or using grapes from that area.

★ The phrase is referenced in online game ''Kingdom of Loathing'', as you must enter a bar cellar to fight rats. "The bartender shows you where the cellar door is (you pause a moment to admire the phrase) and you descend into the darkness."

★ There is a Cellar Door Drive in Bristow, Virginia.

★ The browser-based online game Selador chose this name because it sounded beautiful and mysterious, according to the founders. Apparently the idea came from watching the movie "Donnie Darko" (as noted above).

★ The Cellar Door is a resale shop known as "Cedar Rapids' #2 Tourist Attraction." (wwww.thecellardoor.net)

★ There is a reference to "cellar door" in the monologue "Alby" by Emo Phillips

★ There is a planet named Cella Dor in the Corsair home system in the computer game Freelancer.

★ The Cellar Door is the name of the undergraduate literary magazine of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

★ Pacific Grove, California has a restaurant called The Cellar Door Chop Shoppe & Fine Wine Emporium.

★ The Cellar Door[4] is also the name of a downtown wine lounge in the city of Visalia in California's Central Valley.

Notes

1. We talked of love, death, and fairy tales
2. J. R. R. Tolkien, ''The Fellowship of the Ring''
3. Richard Lederer, ''Crazy English'' (1989), revised edition (1998), ISBN 978-0671023232.
4. Jacques Barzun, ''An Essay on French Verse for Readers of English Poetry'' (New Directions, 1991). ISBN 0-8112-1157-6
5. Ross Smith, ''Inside Language'', Walking Tree Publishers (2007), p. 65).

External links

★ Beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) words, according to various references

★ Transcript of Monty Python "Woody and Tinny Words" sketch