"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him -- a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words.
"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane -- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger -- why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold? -- that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now -- that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and -- "
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Pottymouth Responds to a Question
Pottymouth in Iraq
''From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains," said Marine Corporal Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. ''We're looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain -- how Iraq's looking."
Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half.
''I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq," he said. ''We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news. But I guess we don't pay that much attention to the news."
Let me explain.
What I mean is, Georgie-Porgie and I don’t watch the news. At least we don’t watch the news together. Maybe he watches the news from time to time, I wouldn’t know. And every once in a while if there is a nice human interest story on lesbians or may be on “Brokeback Mountain, I’ll watch, so I can have something to talk about with the girls.
But I don’t watch these depressing stories about casualties and roadside bombs and Frist and DeLay, goddamn assholes, gonna fuck the whole program, and the goddamn New York toilet paper, all the news that’s shit to print, they’re tearing this country apart. Aid and comfort to the enemy, and demoralizing to our courageous troops. And now the terrorists know that we listen in on their communications for god’s sake. You know that “Roll Call” on that goddamn radical liberal NPR, probably has a lot of that goddamn Soros money behind it, and Buffet actually going with Sam Nunn and Turner to see that movie by those radical liberal environmentalists, who the hell do they think they are, and this Jim Liar or whatever ought to have his ass rendered unto Caesar in a casa I know about in Libya--Libya, for god’s sake, which is little enough in return for what we did for that towelhead Muamarr. And now we’ve got that yarmulke-wearing whore who will say anything he needs to say to save his sorry ass, and lose the majority in Congress, and when that levee gives way there’s no telling who is going to spend time in the slammer, along with Scooter and a dozen other decent, patriotic guys who were knocking themselves out trying to bring freedom and democracy to these camel-fucking bastards.
Excuse my french. But I feel a lot better now.
''From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains," said Marine Corporal Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. ''We're looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain -- how Iraq's looking."
Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half.
''I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq," he said. ''We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news. But I guess we don't pay that much attention to the news."
Let me explain.
What I mean is, Georgie-Porgie and I don’t watch the news. At least we don’t watch the news together. Maybe he watches the news from time to time, I wouldn’t know. And every once in a while if there is a nice human interest story on lesbians or may be on “Brokeback Mountain, I’ll watch, so I can have something to talk about with the girls.
But I don’t watch these depressing stories about casualties and roadside bombs and Frist and DeLay, goddamn assholes, gonna fuck the whole program, and the goddamn New York toilet paper, all the news that’s shit to print, they’re tearing this country apart. Aid and comfort to the enemy, and demoralizing to our courageous troops. And now the terrorists know that we listen in on their communications for god’s sake. You know that “Roll Call” on that goddamn radical liberal NPR, probably has a lot of that goddamn Soros money behind it, and Buffet actually going with Sam Nunn and Turner to see that movie by those radical liberal environmentalists, who the hell do they think they are, and this Jim Liar or whatever ought to have his ass rendered unto Caesar in a casa I know about in Libya--Libya, for god’s sake, which is little enough in return for what we did for that towelhead Muamarr. And now we’ve got that yarmulke-wearing whore who will say anything he needs to say to save his sorry ass, and lose the majority in Congress, and when that levee gives way there’s no telling who is going to spend time in the slammer, along with Scooter and a dozen other decent, patriotic guys who were knocking themselves out trying to bring freedom and democracy to these camel-fucking bastards.
Excuse my french. But I feel a lot better now.
Pottymouth Gets a Letter from the CIA
Hey, sir,
I can’t tell you my name because I’m UC for the CIA, just like the Plame dame. I’m not even writing this letter. I’m dictating it to a machine that garbles all the sounds so nobody can recognize my voice, then puts them back together and sends them to a computer, and the computer . . .
Well, you get the idea.
But you already know one thing about me. I’m from the South. You know that because I said “Hey” and not “Hi,’ the way they do in the North.
But the reason I’m writing you is because I want to thank you for trying to help us with the torture business. No easy job, I know, with Mother Teresa McCain making such a stink, throwing his POW weight around, and all that holier-than-thou crap. Makes me sick just to think about it. Whose side is he on, anyway?
So anyway, thanks a lot for your help. And if you think a goddam piece of paper is going to make a whole helluva lot of difference, you’ve got another think coming.
But there was one other thing I wanted to tell you.
Here at the CIA we do a lot of gaming--and I don’t mean five card stud. I mean, if we’ve got a problem we make a game out of it, and play it out. So in the Iraq-game we have three sides, Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. But there are two or three different kind of Sunnis so we have people who play those different kinds, and behave as if . . . well shit, I can’t remember it all, but you get the idea.
So a couple of weeks ago, right around Christmas, we played the “ticking bomb” game. You know, a terrorist has planted a “dirty bomb” in New York City, and it’s due to go off in an hour. We’ve captured the terrorist, and we know he knows where it is. (Don’t ask me how we captured the dude, or how we know he knows where it is. We were just following the story Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Weekly Standard.) So do we torture this guy until he tells us what we want to know? You bet.
So we set up the game. I’m one of the torturers. We’ve got a bomb squad ready to go. And for the terrorist we get this really good looking broad we’ve worked with before. She speaks French so we name her Maham-ette. We pretend-string her up by her thumbs or whatever, and she plays along with it for a while and says “Nevair!” a lot, but finally she says, “OK guys, this isn’t fun anymore, in fact it’s beginning to hurt,” so we pretend-cut her down, and we yell, “OK, Maham-ette, where’s the Bomb?” And she’s like, “It’s in locker 666 on the second floor of Ali-ben Gold’s Gym in Jackson Heights.” The bomb squad takes off like the Bears’ linebackers blitzing Favre, but just as they get to the door the broad screams, “Stop! Wait! Come back here. Dumb me, I forgot to tell you something.” We all stop, and wait for her to start talking again.
“You assholes,” she says. “We terrorists were smart enough to build the bomb, and smart enough to disassemble the sucker, and air-freight it over a period of two years, from Hamburg and Kuala Lumpur and Allah knows where to Kennedy and Dulles and Miami, and then smart enough to reassemble it in Jersey City, and smart enough to drive it through the tunnel and stow it in the locker in the gym. But we’re not smart enough to give it a fail-safe trigger? The puppy is spring-loaded. You open the door to locker 666, or even bang it around a little, and that is the end of New York City as we have known it.” She paused, then she said, “My advice to you is, get in your squad cars, turn on the sirens and the flashing blue lights, and head for Chicago.” She looked at the hairs on her wrist. “You’ve got forty-three minutes.”
And then Patty--that was her real name, Patty--Patty looked around the room at us, and then she looked down at the floor, and then she, I don’t know, she started to cry. . . .
Well sir, I didn’t mean to make such a long story of this, but I thought you ought to know what we are thinking about over here in Virginia.
Patriotically yours,
I can’t tell you my name because I’m UC for the CIA, just like the Plame dame. I’m not even writing this letter. I’m dictating it to a machine that garbles all the sounds so nobody can recognize my voice, then puts them back together and sends them to a computer, and the computer . . .
Well, you get the idea.
But you already know one thing about me. I’m from the South. You know that because I said “Hey” and not “Hi,’ the way they do in the North.
But the reason I’m writing you is because I want to thank you for trying to help us with the torture business. No easy job, I know, with Mother Teresa McCain making such a stink, throwing his POW weight around, and all that holier-than-thou crap. Makes me sick just to think about it. Whose side is he on, anyway?
So anyway, thanks a lot for your help. And if you think a goddam piece of paper is going to make a whole helluva lot of difference, you’ve got another think coming.
But there was one other thing I wanted to tell you.
Here at the CIA we do a lot of gaming--and I don’t mean five card stud. I mean, if we’ve got a problem we make a game out of it, and play it out. So in the Iraq-game we have three sides, Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. But there are two or three different kind of Sunnis so we have people who play those different kinds, and behave as if . . . well shit, I can’t remember it all, but you get the idea.
So a couple of weeks ago, right around Christmas, we played the “ticking bomb” game. You know, a terrorist has planted a “dirty bomb” in New York City, and it’s due to go off in an hour. We’ve captured the terrorist, and we know he knows where it is. (Don’t ask me how we captured the dude, or how we know he knows where it is. We were just following the story Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Weekly Standard.) So do we torture this guy until he tells us what we want to know? You bet.
So we set up the game. I’m one of the torturers. We’ve got a bomb squad ready to go. And for the terrorist we get this really good looking broad we’ve worked with before. She speaks French so we name her Maham-ette. We pretend-string her up by her thumbs or whatever, and she plays along with it for a while and says “Nevair!” a lot, but finally she says, “OK guys, this isn’t fun anymore, in fact it’s beginning to hurt,” so we pretend-cut her down, and we yell, “OK, Maham-ette, where’s the Bomb?” And she’s like, “It’s in locker 666 on the second floor of Ali-ben Gold’s Gym in Jackson Heights.” The bomb squad takes off like the Bears’ linebackers blitzing Favre, but just as they get to the door the broad screams, “Stop! Wait! Come back here. Dumb me, I forgot to tell you something.” We all stop, and wait for her to start talking again.
“You assholes,” she says. “We terrorists were smart enough to build the bomb, and smart enough to disassemble the sucker, and air-freight it over a period of two years, from Hamburg and Kuala Lumpur and Allah knows where to Kennedy and Dulles and Miami, and then smart enough to reassemble it in Jersey City, and smart enough to drive it through the tunnel and stow it in the locker in the gym. But we’re not smart enough to give it a fail-safe trigger? The puppy is spring-loaded. You open the door to locker 666, or even bang it around a little, and that is the end of New York City as we have known it.” She paused, then she said, “My advice to you is, get in your squad cars, turn on the sirens and the flashing blue lights, and head for Chicago.” She looked at the hairs on her wrist. “You’ve got forty-three minutes.”
And then Patty--that was her real name, Patty--Patty looked around the room at us, and then she looked down at the floor, and then she, I don’t know, she started to cry. . . .
Well sir, I didn’t mean to make such a long story of this, but I thought you ought to know what we are thinking about over here in Virginia.
Patriotically yours,
Pottymouth Visits Walter Reed Hospital
Pottymouth at Walter Reed
“Hey, soldier, that must be a serious head wound. I can hardly see your face. And I see that you have lost a fucking leg.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh Christ. I didn’t know you were a woman.”
“Yes sir, I am. But it’s all in a good cause, isn’t it, sir. Freedom and democracy, I mean.”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
“‘Course, I won’t be able to get married and have kids now. Nobody will have me, looking the way I do.”
“Oh, I’m sure . . . “
“But that’s all right, sir, because Jesus is coming back real soon, and He’s going to make everything all right. Isn’t He, sir. . . . Isn’t He?”
“Well . . .”
“But sir, if Jesus don’t come back . . . if Jesus don’t come back. . . I don’t want to live anymore.”
Pottymouth pats the child’s remaining foot, says, “Hang in there, kid,” moves to the next bed.
“Hey, soldier, that must be a serious head wound. I can hardly see your face. And I see that you have lost a fucking leg.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh Christ. I didn’t know you were a woman.”
“Yes sir, I am. But it’s all in a good cause, isn’t it, sir. Freedom and democracy, I mean.”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
“‘Course, I won’t be able to get married and have kids now. Nobody will have me, looking the way I do.”
“Oh, I’m sure . . . “
“But that’s all right, sir, because Jesus is coming back real soon, and He’s going to make everything all right. Isn’t He, sir. . . . Isn’t He?”
“Well . . .”
“But sir, if Jesus don’t come back . . . if Jesus don’t come back. . . I don’t want to live anymore.”
Pottymouth pats the child’s remaining foot, says, “Hang in there, kid,” moves to the next bed.
Friday, September 17, 2010
SOME ETYMOLOGIES
SOME ETYMOLOGIES
PERSPECTIVE
From spek-, to observe; Lat. specere, to look at, whence DESPISE, PROSPECT,
A perspective is a point of view, a standpoint, a place from which to take in the view, or prospect. It is the ground on which I stand in order to see. One’s standpoint is one’s finite self, subject to the conditions of time, space, substance, and causality. The standpoint from which I look is located by the date of my birth and the place where I was born: Aristotle saw differently from the way Darwin saw; an Australian aborigine sees differently from a Parisian. It is also located by my genetic pool (my “substance”); and by the historical and social circumstances in which I live--by my economic status, tradition, education, beliefs, childhood traumas, and other factors: men do not see the way women do, and rich people do not see in the same way poor people do, and high school dropouts do not see the way Ph.D.’s see. There is no standpoint that is not prejudiced, partial, myopic, astigmatic. There is no such thing as an innocent eye. My perspective, then, is constituted by or is the same thing as the sum of my prejudices .
The stand of ground which I occupy is not one that I take, for I have no choice in the matter. It is a ground to which, onto which, I am thrown by the mere fact of my having been born. And that ground is not the immaculate Grund of Pure Reason. It is the mud of experienced existence, the soilure of living in the world. There is no transcending the mud. Dust thou art, and dirty thou shalt remain, to the end of thy days.
SCOPE
From Gk. skopos, watcher, goal, aim; whence also BISHOP, EPISCOPAL
The homoscopic (or homeoscopic) way looks for similarities among apparent differences. It readily accepts the notion that the human soul is rather like a chariot drawn by two horses, the one noble and the other base; it understands the assertion that a certain gentleman’s beloved is somehow like a red, red rose; it discerns the presence of the sacred in apparently wholly natural and historical processes. In folk tales and legends it finds expressions of a universal collective unconscious; and it can read in simple convex and concave figures representations of the male and female genitalia, respectively.
The heteroscopic way looks for differences among similarities. It is literal rather than analogical or anagogical or metaphorical or metonymic or symbolic in its use of language, and it likes one word to mean one thing, and one thing only. Heteroscopy doesn’t think that the poetry of George Herbert is rather like that of John Donne, that Mozart sounds something like Haydn, or that a cubist painting by Braque resembles one by Picasso.
The meroscopic way looks for parts, ingredients, units, atomic constituents, building blocks, “emes” (phonemes, mythemes); for the bricks or the cells or the trees.
The holoscopic way looks for wholes, patterns, gestalts, systems, processes; for the wall or the organism or the forest.
Analytical chemists, particle physicists, taxonomists, semanticists, and other Democriteans, Aristotelians, Cartesians, and Lévi-Straussians typically combine the heteroscopic and meroscopic ways of looking to find the smallest constituent element that makes a difference:
The second [rule] was to divide up each of the difficulties which I examined into as many parts as possible. . . .
The third was to carry on my reflections in due order, commencing with objects that were the most simple and easy to understand, in order to rise little by little . . . to knowledge of the most complex. . . . (Descartes, Discourse, Part II)
“Atom,” that is, “the uncuttable,” the nondivisible.
Gestalt psychologists, holistic therapists, environmentalists, poets, mystics, so-called archaic peoples, and other Heracliteans, Platonists, Coleridgeans and Whiteheadians typically combine homoscopic and holoscopic ways of looking to find those myths and rituals that inform the lives of all persons at all times and in all places, or that One or Whole of which each individual is a part, or that organic system of which each part is a living cell, or that ongoing Process which is the only Reality we are able to know.
METHOD
From Gk. methodos, a “going after,” pursuit (as of knowledge); from met(a)-, after + hodos, journey
A method is the path or route one takes, or the way (Lat. via) one wends, or along which one wanders. An algorithmic method is a precisely defined path which must be followed step by step, and leads to the capture of the prey or prize, or to the destination or goal. Once the path is known and mapped, others can follow it. A heuristic method is one in which neither the route nor the goal is known, or known well, or known before the journey is undertaken; but when the--or a--destination is reached or the--or a--prize taken, it is recognized as such, and celebrated with the cry of ”Eureka” (from Gk. heureka, ”I have found [it]”; the root is the same as ”heuristic”).
The former--the algorithmic--is the method of mathematicians, computer programmers, and--before Kuhn--normal science. The latter is the method of everybody else. Marxists, Freudians, semioticians, Cliometricians, Comteans, and structuralists (amongst others) would like to believe that they use algorithmic methods--that is, that they are practicing a science--but that is a belief that may be doubted.
To pass the time Socrates and Plato played catch with their students, whereas Aristotle took his students on hikes to the seashore and the mountains. From the founding of Aristotle’s Peripatetic school to Heidegger’s “Conversations on a Country Road,” walking has been thought to be conducive to thinking.
The way of the algorithmic method is to move as efficiently as possible from point to point by way of a series of straight lines and angles.
The way of the heuristic method is to wander intuitively from here to an unknown there, to double back because something here is a reminder of something back there, a something not ignored or dismissed but left back there to return to as time and occasion and memory permit. Heuristic is not eager to get to the end of the journey, to the proof or conclusion or result, for it takes delight in the very process of moving, muscles warm in the vernal heat, noting with equal pleasure and gratitude the flowers and feces along the way.
The way is not only a path or route but a use as well.
“How do I hold these chop sticks?”
“How do I connect the printer to the computer?”
“How do I address the President of the United States?”
Whether as path or as use, the way must be shown to the one who doesn’t know it by the one who does. The apprentice must learn the way from the master. The apprentice must “apprehend”--impossible task!--the way. Hath the mind hands?
There are many ways, but not all of them are right. One can misuse chopsticks and interpretive systems.
For those who do not know the right way, or knowing it have strayed from it, there are authorities who know what it is and who point it out.
Dicit ei Jesus: Ego sum via [hodos], et veritas, et vita. Joan.x.6
And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. John 10:4-6.
And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. Isaiah 30:21
The fourth of the Four Noble Truths taught by the Enlightened One is the Noble Eightfold Path.
The scriptures of the Taoists is entitled Tao Te Ching. “Tao” (or “Dao”) means “the Way.
PRINCIPLE
From per-, meaning forward or through, but with many variations. Lat. princeps, “he who takes first place,” whence PRINCE; Lat. pretium, worth, value, whence APPRECIATE, DEPRECIATE
Every method, or journey, begins at the beginning, with the first step, and this is the chief or principal step. Principles are self-evident, and cannot be proved by appeal to higher or more basic ideas or values: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator . . . “ The Zetetic, the Seeker, sets forth on his quest, or stroll, from the place where he is--from his principles, which is to say his prejudices.
“We must begin with things known to us.” --Aristotle, Eth.I.4.
“We must begin wherever we are. . . . It [is] impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely. Wherever we are: in a text where we believe ourselves to be.” --Derrida
METAPHOR
From Greek metapherein, to transfer; from the root bher1, to carry; also to bear children, hence BURDEN, BIRTH
The modern interest in matters linguistical has spawned a weighty load of studies of metaphor. Certainly the topic is fertile intellectual ground, and has attracted the attention of some of our most fecund thinkers. What is nearly intolerable, however, is that, despite all the effort devoted to the study of metaphor, the fruit of this labor is stillborn, as it seems to me. For I can find no consensus, no freight of useful meaning pregnant with insight that can be carried over into or engender other endeavors. The holoscopic and homoscopic Ricoeur believes that the symbol gives birth--no, rise--to thought, that there is in certain uses of language a “surplus of meaning,” and metaphor tells us something new about the world. The heteroscopic and meroscopic Donald Davidson does not, for in his view a metaphor has no special cognitive content or meaning other than what it “literally” says. (Like many of the recent generation of French intellectuals and their American epigones, Ricoeur dwells in the exosphere of the intellect. He will not readily suffer anything so gross as an example to sully his mind. This atmosphere is not suspirable by empiricists and pragmatists, however, and we suffocate and die.)
I am not equipped to bear the onus of adjudicating the many conflicting claims, and anything I had to say would probably be a miscarriage of the truth. So I shall say no more of metaphor.
ALLEGORY
From the Greek allegorein, to speak in other (terms), to speak figuratively, from allos, other, and agoreuein, to speak in the agora, that is, to speak in public; whence ALIEN, ALTERNATE, ADULTERATE (from allos); CRAM, CATEGORY (from ger-1, to gather)
There are four kinds of plots. In a plot of spectacle the incidents are arranged so as to be visually exciting, the denouement being the most exciting of all. Examples are a display of fireworks or any James Bond movie.
In a plot of action the incidents represent the successive stages of “X’s attempt to . . . “: Oedipus’s attempt to find the killer of Laius; the attempt by Edmund, bastard son of Gloucester, to acquire wealth and honor. Most--all?--detective novels have plots of action.
In a plot of character the episodes depict events that are significant in the shaping of the protagonist. Whereas in a plot of action the protagonist is active, in a plot of character the protagonist is typically passive. Events befall him or her. The protagonist is typically a youth, and in the denouement the youth makes a decision that expresses his or her character, as that character has been formed by the youth’s experiences. The genre is the Bildungsroman, and the classic instance in English is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
In a plot of thought the incidents are arranged so as to illustrate a more or less elaborate system of ideas. “Allegory” is the name of a plot of thought. “What comes next” is determined by the system of ideas. In his allegory the Catholic Dante employs symbols (see below), and the protagonist’s journey (a common device in allegory) is vertical. The several episodes contribute to the hero’s edification, and the denouement is the ecstasy of the intellect in the beatific vision. The Protestant Bunyan employs personification, not symbolism, and the hero’s journey is horizontal. Bunyan was less interested in theological understanding than in moral perfection, and the several personifications are typically of helps or hindrances to the straightening and strengthening of Christian’s will. (Over the Gate to the City is written, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of life. . . .”)
SYMBOL
From the Greek sumballein, to throw together, compare; whence PARLOR, PROBLEM
The word is simply the Greek term for a device and practice common in the Mediterranean basin from at least as early as 3500 BCE. The device was typically a piece of soft clay inscribed or stamped with a figure agreed on by two parties distant from one another. It was “a ‘mark,’ ‘sign,’ or ‘tally’ as a material indication of identification or agreement. . . . Agreed symbola between Athens and her tribute-paying allies . . . [were] used for sealing purposes to prevent fraud in the conveyance of the tribute.” In a related sense the “tally” was a safe-conduct pass: “The need for these arose when, for trading and other reasons, individuals travelled abroad and needed the protection from personal injury and distraint . . . which traditional guest-friendship . . . could not give” (The Oxford Classical Dictionary). The need for a sensible, perceptible representative of something as invisible as an agreement or an identity arose out of practical financial, legal, and political concerns.
Centuries later a very different set of needs and concerns transformed the concept of symbol.
I set it down as true that, understood as the literary practice of, say, Dante, the Metaphysical poets, and Eliot, “symbolism” did not exist--and could not have existed--before 325 CE. Prior to that year, thinking in the civilized world was governed by the Laws of Thought, three in number: 1) the Law of Contradiction, that nothing can be both P and not-P; 2) the Law of Excluded Middle, that anything must be either P or not-P; 3) the Law of Identity, that if anything is P, then it is P.
In 325 CE, at Nicea, the party of Athanasius defeated the party of Arius. Thereafter orthodox Christology declared in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man, begotten, not made, of one substance (not of a similar substance or being, homoiousion, but of one substance, the same being, homoousion) with the Father, yet who was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of a mortal woman. At Nicea the perfectly sensible Laws of Thought were consciously, deliberately, rebelliously declared to be null and void, and were replaced by the scandalon (Gk., snare, trap, stumbling block) that there had appeared in history a P that was also not-P, that this P was both P and not-P, and that this P was P and something else. In 325 CE an itinerant Jewish rabbi and miracle worker became the first symbol. The trajectory of Western civilization was significantly altered by the elision of an iota.
All symbols are incarnations, and have an ontological--not merely linguistic--relation to what they symbolize. In the artificial world of the Commedia, Virgil is both the historical person who wrote the Aeneid and the incarnation of human wisdom; Beatrice is both the young woman who inspired Dante and the incarnation of divine wisdom, of revelation. In the view of the mad master of the Pequod, Moby Dick is both a whale and the embodiment of evil.
“In the view of.” It is not self-evident that a symbol is a symbol. Its status as a symbol must be assented to by a leap of faith, so what is a symbol for me may not be a symbol for you.
As the creeds suggest, a symbol cannot be invented or made but must be begotten, must grow. Once it has come into the world it can be found--”Eureka!”--and understood as a symbol: “Familiar in sea traditions by the 1830’s, Mocha Dick (or, at least, a white whale) is alleged to have sunk three ships, [and] to have stove in three others” (Feidelson, in the Introduction to Moby Dick [1964]).
Symbols are mortal. Treaties can be broken, contracts can be breached, safe-conduct can be withdrawn. They are kept alive only in and by a community that continually renews its faith in the symbol, whether that is a community of worshipers, or a community of readers (Fish).
In both his life and art Eliot was an Anglo-Catholic. Auden too was an Anglican, but in his art--at least in his later work--he is a left-wing Protestant, and eschews the use of symbols.
For obvious reasons, both Judaism and Islam are unreceptive to symbolism: (Ex. 20:4: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.) The first internationally recognized Jewish painter was Mark Chagall (1887-1985). The glory of Islam is its architectural dercoration and its calligraphy.
INTERPRET
From Latin interpres, interpreter, negotiator
A Latin Dictionary for Schools (LDS) in “Table of Roots” gives its root as prat- or plat- meaning flat, plain, spread [out], and lists middleman, mediator, broker, factor as other synonyms. .
An interpreter is one who mediates between two plains or fields, that is, one who mediates between the two different crops grown on the fields. An interpreter is one who knows how many bushels of rye are worth how many bushels of barley, how many sheep are worth a cow. A text is produce, livestock, and its value is its meaning, its meaning is its value, what it’s worth. The interpreter knows that value because he is an experienced factor or broker: “This is what it sold for last year.”
Poetry then is a crop, a commodity: soybeans down an eighth, pork bellies down three-eighths, but the future of poetry is immense. Critical Inquiry, or the Chicago Board of Trade.
“This is what it sold for last year.” That is, “This is, according to the OED, what it meant in the seventeenth century.” Better yet, “This is, according to Marx (or Freud or Jung or Lacan or whoever), what it really means.” A “strong” interpretation (H. Bloom) is always to be preferred to a weak.
“Strong,” from strenk-, tight, narrow; whence, from a variamt, STRANGULATE; and from a second variant (Gk. stranx, drop) “that which can be squeezed out.”
The meaning of a text is not what the author intended (the labor theory of value), but what it can be sold for, what the interpreter can sqeeze out of it (its surplus value). The surplus value always accrues to the capitalist-interpreter, and enhances his reputation and increases his net financial worth.
(Q. “What do Mr. Justice Bork, E.D. Hirsch, and Pat Robertson have in common?” A. “They all believe in the intention of the author.”)
The interpres divum is Mercury, the divine messenger, sent by Jove, Jupiter, Zeus pater. In Greek the name of the divine messenger is Hermes, whence “hermeneutics.” The interpres divum speaks to mortals the mind or will or intent of the Immortals. The closest thing we have to the Immortals are Homer and Thucydides and Plato and Giotto and Bach, Mohammed and the quartet known only as J,E,D, and P, the unknown authors of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the crops/texts they grew and siloed for us.
But also ”per-. To traffic in, sell. Latin interpres, go-between, negotiator. INTERPRET. Greek pernemi, I sell, whence porne, prostitute: PORNOGRAPHY.
The name of the literary reviewer is always Pandarus, his occupation that of pimp, one who touts le plaisir du texte. A text is a woman’s body, and to read it is to know it, to have carnal knowledge of it. The literary critic rejoices, it may be, in the polymorphous perversity of the text’s ambiguities and contradictions (Whitman, Empson, Derrida), or else probes the corpus for the G-spot of its veritable meaning (Freud, Hirsch).
GUILT
Middle English, gult, gilt; Old English, gylt
There is no forebear in Greek or Latin for “guilt.”
Guilt has four moments: there must be a law; there must be knowledge of the law; there must be freedom to obey or disobey the law; the law must be broken. While it is not an ingredient in the formation of guilt, the idea of punishment cannot be separated from the idea of guilt.
I recognize three kinds of guilt. “Civil guilt” arises from the breaking of a law that was set in place by a legislative body. Civil guilt covers everything from a parking ticket to homicide and acts of terrorism. “Tragic guilt” arises when a person acts in ignorance of the consequences of his action, and brings pain and suffering to persons he holds dear, including himself. I call this tragic guilt because it is the basic pattern of Greek tragedy. Hippolytus. was a devotee of the chaste Artemis, but in his devotion to her he scanted his devotion to Aphrodite. In revenge she colluded with Poseidon, and together they arranged for Hippolytus to be dragged to his death by his horses. Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek forces assembled against Troy, but the armada was prevented from sailing by contrary winds. Agamemnon was told that in order for the fleet to sail he would have to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia; and being a man he subordinated the domestic values of family and kinship to the political and military values of governance and rule, and did as he was told. On his return from Troy his wife, Clytemnestra, subordinated the masculine values to the feminine, took revenge for her daughter’s death, and slaughtered Agamemnon in his bath. Oedipus did not blind himself because he felt guilty for killing his father and marrying his mother, and needed to perform an act of expiation for his crime. He put out his eyes, rather, so that he could not see his neighbors looking at him, pointing their fingers at him, and saying, “That is the man who killed his father and married his mother.” Greek culture was a shame culture.
It was only when the teachings of a small,. obscure Jewish sect began to seep into the consciousness of the Mediterranean Basin that there could arise “religious or existential” guilt.. There is only one God, said this sect, not two as in Gnosticism or many as in Greek and Roman polytheism, and He has set forth his law. And when held up against this law it is clear that all have sinned--that is, have broken the law--have come short of the glory of the one God, and therefore are guilty under the law and are deserving of punishment. In “tragic guilt” the protagonist typically acts in ignorance of the situation; in “religious guilt” the protagonist may know what the law is but acts in defiance of it and of its Author. Dante’s Hell is full of defiant ones; Macbeth, Claudius, and Edmund know that what they are doing is breaking the law; and Milton’s Satan (or Lucifer) is almost admirable in his rebellion. In an extreme version of the sect’s teaching, simply to exist is to be guilty. The sect also taught, however, that God has provided a means for circumventing the punishment.
TEXT
From a root teks-, “to weave”; whence TEXT, TISSUE, TOIL(S) (“a trap”), SUBTLE
So the Latin texo, I weave; textilis, woven, wrought; a web or fabric; textor, weaver; textum, that which is woven, a web.
In Greek tekton, carpenter, builder: ARCHITECT; tekhne, art, craft, skill:TECHNOLOGY; technique
The poet is a textor, and works at the weaver’s trade. What she produces is a textile, web, or tissue. The greatest textor of the ancient world was Arachne, whose confidence in her tekhne was so great as to move her to challenge Athena/Minerva herself. In her textile the Goddess celebrated the immortals, and showed the dreadful fate of four humans who braved the gods.
Arachne also texed the gods, but showed how they deceived poor mortal girls--Europa, Asterie, Danae, and of course Leda. The beauty of Arachne’s textile infuriated the Goddess, so she tore it from the loom, then took Arachne’s shuttle and beat her on the head, not until the girl was dead but until she hung herself. Showing a strange sort of compassion the Goddess restored Arachne to life, but metamorphosed into an insect, she and her descendants condemned forever to hang from the thread they spin out of their own guts. Sylvia Plath, or Daddy Long-Legs.
Yeats varied the image a little:
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been nought.”
The last thing the weaver does is tie off the loose threads. So: ned-. to bind, tie. . . . nodus, a knot: NODE, DÉNOUEMENT.
“Kritikism” (from skeri-, to cut, separate, sift; in Greek krinein, to separate, decide, judge) also understands the text as a weaving. It cuts here and there in the fabric to find the thread of the argument, to discover just how the weaver put the textile together. A poet (from kwei-, to pile up, build, make; in Greek poiein, to make) is a maker, and a poem is a made thing, not unlike a pot or a pair of shoes (except, of course, that it has no “use”).
After Descartes and Kant shifted concern from ontology to epistemology, literary theorists shifted their interests from the poem as a made thing to the mental faculties--imagination, fancy, judgment--that were necessary to write and/or judge poetry. In more recent times, after Peirce, Frege, and Wittgenstein shifted concern from epistemology to logic and language, literary theorists turned their attention to the meaning of poetry.
To describe the poet as a maker and the poem as something made is as unfashionable now as the wearing of a codpiece or a peplos.
It may be unfashionable, but it is still enjoyable, and perhaps even profitable, to think of the text as a made thing. As such the text is a web, toils, a “trap for contemplation;” or it is a snare to be used by the sly inquisitor or devious prosecuting attorney: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
But it is also a fabric or tissue, a mere fabrication, a tissue of lies, because it is Maya, the veil of appearance drawn over the Really Real, not even as real as shadows thrown on the wall of a cave. It is the imitation of an imitation, the distorted image of my face that I see in a glass, or mirror, darkly. The hope is gone, however, of ever looking upon the sun, or seeing face to face; for Art, the Mirror of Nature, is as clouded as St. Paul’s glass. It is at two removes from the The--The Good, The True, The Beautiful. As Stevens knew, the The is an illusion:
It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter
The fox ran out of his hole.
(Yes, but still only “seemed” fatter, for in the realm of becoming there can be only belief, right opinion, not true knowledge.)
But note also: “teks- . . . to fabricate, especially with an ax, also to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls”
If Arachne is the female principle of the text, Daedalus is the male, and Joseph, the cuckolded carpenter, is its patron saint. The tekton constructs a labyrinth, a garden of forking paths, semantic dead ends, blind alleys of irony and ambiguity and downright contradiction. The interpreter of texts is always the explorer Jason, with this difference, that he has no Ariadne to help him.
The text is also a flimsy construct of wooden ideas and feelings cemented together by a muddy language:
I must arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: . . .
Or the words of a text are the foundation stones on which there rises the superstructure of meaning; but the foundation is not sure:
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. . . .
Eliot, “Burnt Norton.”
In any event, the text is an edifice. More precisely, it is a dwelling, home, or house; but whether it is a House of Mirth or a House of Horrors, the House of Being or a Prison House we cannot tell, so heavily does our mortality weigh upon us.
PERSPECTIVE
From spek-, to observe; Lat. specere, to look at, whence DESPISE, PROSPECT,
A perspective is a point of view, a standpoint, a place from which to take in the view, or prospect. It is the ground on which I stand in order to see. One’s standpoint is one’s finite self, subject to the conditions of time, space, substance, and causality. The standpoint from which I look is located by the date of my birth and the place where I was born: Aristotle saw differently from the way Darwin saw; an Australian aborigine sees differently from a Parisian. It is also located by my genetic pool (my “substance”); and by the historical and social circumstances in which I live--by my economic status, tradition, education, beliefs, childhood traumas, and other factors: men do not see the way women do, and rich people do not see in the same way poor people do, and high school dropouts do not see the way Ph.D.’s see. There is no standpoint that is not prejudiced, partial, myopic, astigmatic. There is no such thing as an innocent eye. My perspective, then, is constituted by or is the same thing as the sum of my prejudices .
The stand of ground which I occupy is not one that I take, for I have no choice in the matter. It is a ground to which, onto which, I am thrown by the mere fact of my having been born. And that ground is not the immaculate Grund of Pure Reason. It is the mud of experienced existence, the soilure of living in the world. There is no transcending the mud. Dust thou art, and dirty thou shalt remain, to the end of thy days.
SCOPE
From Gk. skopos, watcher, goal, aim; whence also BISHOP, EPISCOPAL
The homoscopic (or homeoscopic) way looks for similarities among apparent differences. It readily accepts the notion that the human soul is rather like a chariot drawn by two horses, the one noble and the other base; it understands the assertion that a certain gentleman’s beloved is somehow like a red, red rose; it discerns the presence of the sacred in apparently wholly natural and historical processes. In folk tales and legends it finds expressions of a universal collective unconscious; and it can read in simple convex and concave figures representations of the male and female genitalia, respectively.
The heteroscopic way looks for differences among similarities. It is literal rather than analogical or anagogical or metaphorical or metonymic or symbolic in its use of language, and it likes one word to mean one thing, and one thing only. Heteroscopy doesn’t think that the poetry of George Herbert is rather like that of John Donne, that Mozart sounds something like Haydn, or that a cubist painting by Braque resembles one by Picasso.
The meroscopic way looks for parts, ingredients, units, atomic constituents, building blocks, “emes” (phonemes, mythemes); for the bricks or the cells or the trees.
The holoscopic way looks for wholes, patterns, gestalts, systems, processes; for the wall or the organism or the forest.
Analytical chemists, particle physicists, taxonomists, semanticists, and other Democriteans, Aristotelians, Cartesians, and Lévi-Straussians typically combine the heteroscopic and meroscopic ways of looking to find the smallest constituent element that makes a difference:
The second [rule] was to divide up each of the difficulties which I examined into as many parts as possible. . . .
The third was to carry on my reflections in due order, commencing with objects that were the most simple and easy to understand, in order to rise little by little . . . to knowledge of the most complex. . . . (Descartes, Discourse, Part II)
“Atom,” that is, “the uncuttable,” the nondivisible.
Gestalt psychologists, holistic therapists, environmentalists, poets, mystics, so-called archaic peoples, and other Heracliteans, Platonists, Coleridgeans and Whiteheadians typically combine homoscopic and holoscopic ways of looking to find those myths and rituals that inform the lives of all persons at all times and in all places, or that One or Whole of which each individual is a part, or that organic system of which each part is a living cell, or that ongoing Process which is the only Reality we are able to know.
METHOD
From Gk. methodos, a “going after,” pursuit (as of knowledge); from met(a)-, after + hodos, journey
A method is the path or route one takes, or the way (Lat. via) one wends, or along which one wanders. An algorithmic method is a precisely defined path which must be followed step by step, and leads to the capture of the prey or prize, or to the destination or goal. Once the path is known and mapped, others can follow it. A heuristic method is one in which neither the route nor the goal is known, or known well, or known before the journey is undertaken; but when the--or a--destination is reached or the--or a--prize taken, it is recognized as such, and celebrated with the cry of ”Eureka” (from Gk. heureka, ”I have found [it]”; the root is the same as ”heuristic”).
The former--the algorithmic--is the method of mathematicians, computer programmers, and--before Kuhn--normal science. The latter is the method of everybody else. Marxists, Freudians, semioticians, Cliometricians, Comteans, and structuralists (amongst others) would like to believe that they use algorithmic methods--that is, that they are practicing a science--but that is a belief that may be doubted.
To pass the time Socrates and Plato played catch with their students, whereas Aristotle took his students on hikes to the seashore and the mountains. From the founding of Aristotle’s Peripatetic school to Heidegger’s “Conversations on a Country Road,” walking has been thought to be conducive to thinking.
The way of the algorithmic method is to move as efficiently as possible from point to point by way of a series of straight lines and angles.
The way of the heuristic method is to wander intuitively from here to an unknown there, to double back because something here is a reminder of something back there, a something not ignored or dismissed but left back there to return to as time and occasion and memory permit. Heuristic is not eager to get to the end of the journey, to the proof or conclusion or result, for it takes delight in the very process of moving, muscles warm in the vernal heat, noting with equal pleasure and gratitude the flowers and feces along the way.
The way is not only a path or route but a use as well.
“How do I hold these chop sticks?”
“How do I connect the printer to the computer?”
“How do I address the President of the United States?”
Whether as path or as use, the way must be shown to the one who doesn’t know it by the one who does. The apprentice must learn the way from the master. The apprentice must “apprehend”--impossible task!--the way. Hath the mind hands?
There are many ways, but not all of them are right. One can misuse chopsticks and interpretive systems.
For those who do not know the right way, or knowing it have strayed from it, there are authorities who know what it is and who point it out.
Dicit ei Jesus: Ego sum via [hodos], et veritas, et vita. Joan.x.6
And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. John 10:4-6.
And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. Isaiah 30:21
The fourth of the Four Noble Truths taught by the Enlightened One is the Noble Eightfold Path.
The scriptures of the Taoists is entitled Tao Te Ching. “Tao” (or “Dao”) means “the Way.
PRINCIPLE
From per-, meaning forward or through, but with many variations. Lat. princeps, “he who takes first place,” whence PRINCE; Lat. pretium, worth, value, whence APPRECIATE, DEPRECIATE
Every method, or journey, begins at the beginning, with the first step, and this is the chief or principal step. Principles are self-evident, and cannot be proved by appeal to higher or more basic ideas or values: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator . . . “ The Zetetic, the Seeker, sets forth on his quest, or stroll, from the place where he is--from his principles, which is to say his prejudices.
“We must begin with things known to us.” --Aristotle, Eth.I.4.
“We must begin wherever we are. . . . It [is] impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely. Wherever we are: in a text where we believe ourselves to be.” --Derrida
METAPHOR
From Greek metapherein, to transfer; from the root bher1, to carry; also to bear children, hence BURDEN, BIRTH
The modern interest in matters linguistical has spawned a weighty load of studies of metaphor. Certainly the topic is fertile intellectual ground, and has attracted the attention of some of our most fecund thinkers. What is nearly intolerable, however, is that, despite all the effort devoted to the study of metaphor, the fruit of this labor is stillborn, as it seems to me. For I can find no consensus, no freight of useful meaning pregnant with insight that can be carried over into or engender other endeavors. The holoscopic and homoscopic Ricoeur believes that the symbol gives birth--no, rise--to thought, that there is in certain uses of language a “surplus of meaning,” and metaphor tells us something new about the world. The heteroscopic and meroscopic Donald Davidson does not, for in his view a metaphor has no special cognitive content or meaning other than what it “literally” says. (Like many of the recent generation of French intellectuals and their American epigones, Ricoeur dwells in the exosphere of the intellect. He will not readily suffer anything so gross as an example to sully his mind. This atmosphere is not suspirable by empiricists and pragmatists, however, and we suffocate and die.)
I am not equipped to bear the onus of adjudicating the many conflicting claims, and anything I had to say would probably be a miscarriage of the truth. So I shall say no more of metaphor.
ALLEGORY
From the Greek allegorein, to speak in other (terms), to speak figuratively, from allos, other, and agoreuein, to speak in the agora, that is, to speak in public; whence ALIEN, ALTERNATE, ADULTERATE (from allos); CRAM, CATEGORY (from ger-1, to gather)
There are four kinds of plots. In a plot of spectacle the incidents are arranged so as to be visually exciting, the denouement being the most exciting of all. Examples are a display of fireworks or any James Bond movie.
In a plot of action the incidents represent the successive stages of “X’s attempt to . . . “: Oedipus’s attempt to find the killer of Laius; the attempt by Edmund, bastard son of Gloucester, to acquire wealth and honor. Most--all?--detective novels have plots of action.
In a plot of character the episodes depict events that are significant in the shaping of the protagonist. Whereas in a plot of action the protagonist is active, in a plot of character the protagonist is typically passive. Events befall him or her. The protagonist is typically a youth, and in the denouement the youth makes a decision that expresses his or her character, as that character has been formed by the youth’s experiences. The genre is the Bildungsroman, and the classic instance in English is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
In a plot of thought the incidents are arranged so as to illustrate a more or less elaborate system of ideas. “Allegory” is the name of a plot of thought. “What comes next” is determined by the system of ideas. In his allegory the Catholic Dante employs symbols (see below), and the protagonist’s journey (a common device in allegory) is vertical. The several episodes contribute to the hero’s edification, and the denouement is the ecstasy of the intellect in the beatific vision. The Protestant Bunyan employs personification, not symbolism, and the hero’s journey is horizontal. Bunyan was less interested in theological understanding than in moral perfection, and the several personifications are typically of helps or hindrances to the straightening and strengthening of Christian’s will. (Over the Gate to the City is written, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of life. . . .”)
SYMBOL
From the Greek sumballein, to throw together, compare; whence PARLOR, PROBLEM
The word is simply the Greek term for a device and practice common in the Mediterranean basin from at least as early as 3500 BCE. The device was typically a piece of soft clay inscribed or stamped with a figure agreed on by two parties distant from one another. It was “a ‘mark,’ ‘sign,’ or ‘tally’ as a material indication of identification or agreement. . . . Agreed symbola between Athens and her tribute-paying allies . . . [were] used for sealing purposes to prevent fraud in the conveyance of the tribute.” In a related sense the “tally” was a safe-conduct pass: “The need for these arose when, for trading and other reasons, individuals travelled abroad and needed the protection from personal injury and distraint . . . which traditional guest-friendship . . . could not give” (The Oxford Classical Dictionary). The need for a sensible, perceptible representative of something as invisible as an agreement or an identity arose out of practical financial, legal, and political concerns.
Centuries later a very different set of needs and concerns transformed the concept of symbol.
I set it down as true that, understood as the literary practice of, say, Dante, the Metaphysical poets, and Eliot, “symbolism” did not exist--and could not have existed--before 325 CE. Prior to that year, thinking in the civilized world was governed by the Laws of Thought, three in number: 1) the Law of Contradiction, that nothing can be both P and not-P; 2) the Law of Excluded Middle, that anything must be either P or not-P; 3) the Law of Identity, that if anything is P, then it is P.
In 325 CE, at Nicea, the party of Athanasius defeated the party of Arius. Thereafter orthodox Christology declared in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man, begotten, not made, of one substance (not of a similar substance or being, homoiousion, but of one substance, the same being, homoousion) with the Father, yet who was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of a mortal woman. At Nicea the perfectly sensible Laws of Thought were consciously, deliberately, rebelliously declared to be null and void, and were replaced by the scandalon (Gk., snare, trap, stumbling block) that there had appeared in history a P that was also not-P, that this P was both P and not-P, and that this P was P and something else. In 325 CE an itinerant Jewish rabbi and miracle worker became the first symbol. The trajectory of Western civilization was significantly altered by the elision of an iota.
All symbols are incarnations, and have an ontological--not merely linguistic--relation to what they symbolize. In the artificial world of the Commedia, Virgil is both the historical person who wrote the Aeneid and the incarnation of human wisdom; Beatrice is both the young woman who inspired Dante and the incarnation of divine wisdom, of revelation. In the view of the mad master of the Pequod, Moby Dick is both a whale and the embodiment of evil.
“In the view of.” It is not self-evident that a symbol is a symbol. Its status as a symbol must be assented to by a leap of faith, so what is a symbol for me may not be a symbol for you.
As the creeds suggest, a symbol cannot be invented or made but must be begotten, must grow. Once it has come into the world it can be found--”Eureka!”--and understood as a symbol: “Familiar in sea traditions by the 1830’s, Mocha Dick (or, at least, a white whale) is alleged to have sunk three ships, [and] to have stove in three others” (Feidelson, in the Introduction to Moby Dick [1964]).
Symbols are mortal. Treaties can be broken, contracts can be breached, safe-conduct can be withdrawn. They are kept alive only in and by a community that continually renews its faith in the symbol, whether that is a community of worshipers, or a community of readers (Fish).
In both his life and art Eliot was an Anglo-Catholic. Auden too was an Anglican, but in his art--at least in his later work--he is a left-wing Protestant, and eschews the use of symbols.
For obvious reasons, both Judaism and Islam are unreceptive to symbolism: (Ex. 20:4: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.) The first internationally recognized Jewish painter was Mark Chagall (1887-1985). The glory of Islam is its architectural dercoration and its calligraphy.
INTERPRET
From Latin interpres, interpreter, negotiator
A Latin Dictionary for Schools (LDS) in “Table of Roots” gives its root as prat- or plat- meaning flat, plain, spread [out], and lists middleman, mediator, broker, factor as other synonyms. .
An interpreter is one who mediates between two plains or fields, that is, one who mediates between the two different crops grown on the fields. An interpreter is one who knows how many bushels of rye are worth how many bushels of barley, how many sheep are worth a cow. A text is produce, livestock, and its value is its meaning, its meaning is its value, what it’s worth. The interpreter knows that value because he is an experienced factor or broker: “This is what it sold for last year.”
Poetry then is a crop, a commodity: soybeans down an eighth, pork bellies down three-eighths, but the future of poetry is immense. Critical Inquiry, or the Chicago Board of Trade.
“This is what it sold for last year.” That is, “This is, according to the OED, what it meant in the seventeenth century.” Better yet, “This is, according to Marx (or Freud or Jung or Lacan or whoever), what it really means.” A “strong” interpretation (H. Bloom) is always to be preferred to a weak.
“Strong,” from strenk-, tight, narrow; whence, from a variamt, STRANGULATE; and from a second variant (Gk. stranx, drop) “that which can be squeezed out.”
The meaning of a text is not what the author intended (the labor theory of value), but what it can be sold for, what the interpreter can sqeeze out of it (its surplus value). The surplus value always accrues to the capitalist-interpreter, and enhances his reputation and increases his net financial worth.
(Q. “What do Mr. Justice Bork, E.D. Hirsch, and Pat Robertson have in common?” A. “They all believe in the intention of the author.”)
The interpres divum is Mercury, the divine messenger, sent by Jove, Jupiter, Zeus pater. In Greek the name of the divine messenger is Hermes, whence “hermeneutics.” The interpres divum speaks to mortals the mind or will or intent of the Immortals. The closest thing we have to the Immortals are Homer and Thucydides and Plato and Giotto and Bach, Mohammed and the quartet known only as J,E,D, and P, the unknown authors of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the crops/texts they grew and siloed for us.
But also ”per-. To traffic in, sell. Latin interpres, go-between, negotiator. INTERPRET. Greek pernemi, I sell, whence porne, prostitute: PORNOGRAPHY.
The name of the literary reviewer is always Pandarus, his occupation that of pimp, one who touts le plaisir du texte. A text is a woman’s body, and to read it is to know it, to have carnal knowledge of it. The literary critic rejoices, it may be, in the polymorphous perversity of the text’s ambiguities and contradictions (Whitman, Empson, Derrida), or else probes the corpus for the G-spot of its veritable meaning (Freud, Hirsch).
GUILT
Middle English, gult, gilt; Old English, gylt
There is no forebear in Greek or Latin for “guilt.”
Guilt has four moments: there must be a law; there must be knowledge of the law; there must be freedom to obey or disobey the law; the law must be broken. While it is not an ingredient in the formation of guilt, the idea of punishment cannot be separated from the idea of guilt.
I recognize three kinds of guilt. “Civil guilt” arises from the breaking of a law that was set in place by a legislative body. Civil guilt covers everything from a parking ticket to homicide and acts of terrorism. “Tragic guilt” arises when a person acts in ignorance of the consequences of his action, and brings pain and suffering to persons he holds dear, including himself. I call this tragic guilt because it is the basic pattern of Greek tragedy. Hippolytus. was a devotee of the chaste Artemis, but in his devotion to her he scanted his devotion to Aphrodite. In revenge she colluded with Poseidon, and together they arranged for Hippolytus to be dragged to his death by his horses. Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek forces assembled against Troy, but the armada was prevented from sailing by contrary winds. Agamemnon was told that in order for the fleet to sail he would have to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia; and being a man he subordinated the domestic values of family and kinship to the political and military values of governance and rule, and did as he was told. On his return from Troy his wife, Clytemnestra, subordinated the masculine values to the feminine, took revenge for her daughter’s death, and slaughtered Agamemnon in his bath. Oedipus did not blind himself because he felt guilty for killing his father and marrying his mother, and needed to perform an act of expiation for his crime. He put out his eyes, rather, so that he could not see his neighbors looking at him, pointing their fingers at him, and saying, “That is the man who killed his father and married his mother.” Greek culture was a shame culture.
It was only when the teachings of a small,. obscure Jewish sect began to seep into the consciousness of the Mediterranean Basin that there could arise “religious or existential” guilt.. There is only one God, said this sect, not two as in Gnosticism or many as in Greek and Roman polytheism, and He has set forth his law. And when held up against this law it is clear that all have sinned--that is, have broken the law--have come short of the glory of the one God, and therefore are guilty under the law and are deserving of punishment. In “tragic guilt” the protagonist typically acts in ignorance of the situation; in “religious guilt” the protagonist may know what the law is but acts in defiance of it and of its Author. Dante’s Hell is full of defiant ones; Macbeth, Claudius, and Edmund know that what they are doing is breaking the law; and Milton’s Satan (or Lucifer) is almost admirable in his rebellion. In an extreme version of the sect’s teaching, simply to exist is to be guilty. The sect also taught, however, that God has provided a means for circumventing the punishment.
TEXT
From a root teks-, “to weave”; whence TEXT, TISSUE, TOIL(S) (“a trap”), SUBTLE
So the Latin texo, I weave; textilis, woven, wrought; a web or fabric; textor, weaver; textum, that which is woven, a web.
In Greek tekton, carpenter, builder: ARCHITECT; tekhne, art, craft, skill:TECHNOLOGY; technique
The poet is a textor, and works at the weaver’s trade. What she produces is a textile, web, or tissue. The greatest textor of the ancient world was Arachne, whose confidence in her tekhne was so great as to move her to challenge Athena/Minerva herself. In her textile the Goddess celebrated the immortals, and showed the dreadful fate of four humans who braved the gods.
Arachne also texed the gods, but showed how they deceived poor mortal girls--Europa, Asterie, Danae, and of course Leda. The beauty of Arachne’s textile infuriated the Goddess, so she tore it from the loom, then took Arachne’s shuttle and beat her on the head, not until the girl was dead but until she hung herself. Showing a strange sort of compassion the Goddess restored Arachne to life, but metamorphosed into an insect, she and her descendants condemned forever to hang from the thread they spin out of their own guts. Sylvia Plath, or Daddy Long-Legs.
Yeats varied the image a little:
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been nought.”
The last thing the weaver does is tie off the loose threads. So: ned-. to bind, tie. . . . nodus, a knot: NODE, DÉNOUEMENT.
“Kritikism” (from skeri-, to cut, separate, sift; in Greek krinein, to separate, decide, judge) also understands the text as a weaving. It cuts here and there in the fabric to find the thread of the argument, to discover just how the weaver put the textile together. A poet (from kwei-, to pile up, build, make; in Greek poiein, to make) is a maker, and a poem is a made thing, not unlike a pot or a pair of shoes (except, of course, that it has no “use”).
After Descartes and Kant shifted concern from ontology to epistemology, literary theorists shifted their interests from the poem as a made thing to the mental faculties--imagination, fancy, judgment--that were necessary to write and/or judge poetry. In more recent times, after Peirce, Frege, and Wittgenstein shifted concern from epistemology to logic and language, literary theorists turned their attention to the meaning of poetry.
To describe the poet as a maker and the poem as something made is as unfashionable now as the wearing of a codpiece or a peplos.
It may be unfashionable, but it is still enjoyable, and perhaps even profitable, to think of the text as a made thing. As such the text is a web, toils, a “trap for contemplation;” or it is a snare to be used by the sly inquisitor or devious prosecuting attorney: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
But it is also a fabric or tissue, a mere fabrication, a tissue of lies, because it is Maya, the veil of appearance drawn over the Really Real, not even as real as shadows thrown on the wall of a cave. It is the imitation of an imitation, the distorted image of my face that I see in a glass, or mirror, darkly. The hope is gone, however, of ever looking upon the sun, or seeing face to face; for Art, the Mirror of Nature, is as clouded as St. Paul’s glass. It is at two removes from the The--The Good, The True, The Beautiful. As Stevens knew, the The is an illusion:
It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter
The fox ran out of his hole.
(Yes, but still only “seemed” fatter, for in the realm of becoming there can be only belief, right opinion, not true knowledge.)
But note also: “teks- . . . to fabricate, especially with an ax, also to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls”
If Arachne is the female principle of the text, Daedalus is the male, and Joseph, the cuckolded carpenter, is its patron saint. The tekton constructs a labyrinth, a garden of forking paths, semantic dead ends, blind alleys of irony and ambiguity and downright contradiction. The interpreter of texts is always the explorer Jason, with this difference, that he has no Ariadne to help him.
The text is also a flimsy construct of wooden ideas and feelings cemented together by a muddy language:
I must arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: . . .
Or the words of a text are the foundation stones on which there rises the superstructure of meaning; but the foundation is not sure:
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. . . .
Eliot, “Burnt Norton.”
In any event, the text is an edifice. More precisely, it is a dwelling, home, or house; but whether it is a House of Mirth or a House of Horrors, the House of Being or a Prison House we cannot tell, so heavily does our mortality weigh upon us.
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