When we think about languages existing and persisting over time, we tend to focus on how they change -- new words being coined, others going stale, rules we no longer follow. The other day, a friend of a friend treated to me on a short disquisition on words that didn't make it into the new volume of the dictionary.

But this article by Frank Kermode in the New York Review of Books about a new translation of the Bible made me wonder about the opposite phenomenon. I think (and this is based on no actual information) that certain works of literature (the King James' Bible, Shakespeare plays, etc.) weigh like anchors, keeping English from drifting too far out to sea. The prevalence and currency of these texts maintains their legibility and their legibility maintains certain features of the English language.

Think of it as a cosmic struggle between Hamlet and Twitter over our souls.