Author: Adriel

Word by Word

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If your composition for English class was marked down for using “it’s” as a possessive, you could argue that Shakespeare and Austen used it that way, irregardless of what Mrs. Grundy told you.  Did I write “irregardless”?  Of course it is a word, because English speakers use it, but more commonly they speak it.  Kory Stamper, formerly an editor at Merriam-Webster, points out that “irregardless” is something of an intensifier.  This, and the tale other remarkable stories of words and dictionaries is told by Stamper in Word by Word, the Secret Life of Dictionaries (2017, Pantheon). 

Mrs. Grundy, as the Merriam-Webster points out is a prudish scold (and a good example of an eponym, she being an inordinately proper character in a 1798 play).  Her attitude about language would be prescriptive, but Kory Stamper is decidedly on the side of descriptive dictionaries.  Words mean whatever a speakers of the language understand them to mean.  Of course, there are levels of usage, or what sociolinguists call register. Stamper and the Merriam-Webster acknowledge that “irregardless” is not for use is formal discourse.  But word it is, and Stamper apparently would never correct you for using it.

She does not spare the scolds who believe in pointing out to us who might not know that “decimate” really means to destroy a tenth when, in fact, it usually doesn’t.  This is etymological fallacy.  The “falacists” may know that the word originally was used to describe a cruel punishment in the Roman military (a technique practiced by modern day tyrants as well).  Since it has come to mean “to destroy” then what it means is what people take it to mean.  Simple as that.  I might add the word “defenestration” which most of time is used to mean the removal of persons from an organization, a house cleaning.  The original house cleaning was tossing a couple of priests out the window in 1618 (they survived). Yes the word stems from fenestra (L.) or “window” but who really uses it that way?  And who even uses it?

For those who show their supposed erudition by telling us that “posh” means port-out-starboard-home, well, I can only say:  please stop.  It is not etymological fallacy, it is just a falsehood.  The same applies to the folk etymology for “mind your P’s and Q’s.  No pub tender (who is actually called a “publican”) has ever asked his intoxicated guests to tally up their own bills. For the truth of these false etymologies, you’ll have to look it up because if I get started I will turn into a grammar scold myself.

Kory Stamper spent years in dealing with lexophiles who complain about the dictionary’s sins of omission or commission. Her stories of these (and they must be legion) are worth triple the price of the book.  My own complaint is that “lexophile” ain’t in the dictionary, at least not in the M-W online version.  It suggests “logophile.”  But people use lexophile (and also lexophilia) so I insist it is a word, and also it is I. Or I could say it is me, because that too is commonly used as well as understood although Sister Theresa Mary scolded me for it.  Word by Word, the Secret Life of Dictionaries, Kory Stamper, 2017, Pantheon Books). 

Elite Universities and the Underprivileged

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On a college visit to Earlham College, a Quaker College in Indiana:  The Earlham president gave a presentation on how Earlham’s idea differs from the old European model of preparing students for the life of the elite.  The telos of Earlham is to prepare students for democracy.  In this brief essay https://aeon.co/essays/how-elite-education-promotes-diversity-without-difference from Aeon, the author says that elite universities do admit some (very few) low-income students but that they are the “privileged poor” who had some special advantages in their upbringing.  And then the elite universities train them to be more like their elite classmates.  (She doesn’t mention Charles Murray’s point that these places also are engaged in genetic elitism, breeding the one-percenters with one-percenters in the making.)  She argues that colleges that admit more  truly underprivileged students are better for democracy and provide better service to diverse communities.We need more Earlham colleges and Berea colleges.  In order to Make America Great Again!  Just sayin.  

The Odyssey

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In 2018, Norton Co. published a new, and remarkable, version of Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by the Classics scholar Emily Wilson. Written in highly readable blank verse, this translation had all the mystery adventure, and bloodletting that the ancient Greeks must have enjoyed. My friend, Lou D, talked me into reading it and lent me the copy. He did me a great favor because it was a great read. Prof. Wilson’s introduction, notes, and chapter summaries helped with the unfamiliar territory. In the Introduction, Wilson argues against the commonly held idea that “Homer” was a composite of the various bards who gave public performance recitations of the tale for ages. Rather, she believes that the writing shows unmistakable characteristics of deliberate and thoughtful writing of a single genius. I am not sure. I know that highly educated people of the ancient world had highly developed memory skills and could recite long poems and other works. The work itself is not so tightly constructed that it seems to be deliberately and carefully edited and revised. Still, I think Prof. Wilson’s introduction is as admirable as her translation. There is a worthy discussion of the setting and time frame of the poem. Probably Homer had set the tale in the hazy past of the Mycenean age. She does take time to write about what every modern reader must feel about the work, that is, the feeling of shock and revulsion at the murderous violence of the hero and his son. One passage she points out is one that struck me as astounding. In recounting his bravery, Odysseus, says cavalierly that he and his crew stopped at one town, slaughtered the males and took the women as slaves.

           I sacked the town and killed the men.  We took their wives and shared their riches equally among us.

Then Odysseus goes on with has tale as if that episode was routine. A day in the life of a Greek hero. Personally, I was most shocked by the treatment of his household slaves. The women who had slept with the vile crowd of suitors were rounded up and made to drag out the corpses and clean up the bloody mess. Following that, as thanks, they were marched outside and hung. I have read several scholars who point out that Homer wanted his audience to understand the horrors of war and violence and the futility of the pursuit of honors after death. The tale of Odysseus has a famous passage where the hero visits the spirit of Achilles. Odysseus wants to know why it is not the ultimate success to become the great hero of the Greek victory over Troy and why be bitter over death. Achilles replies:

“Odysseus, you must not comfort me for death.   I would prefer to be a workman,  hired by a poor man on a peasant farm,  than rule as king of all the dead.

For me, all the slaughter, revenge, and misogeny looms too large to dismiss as a cultural relic and that Odysseus was well, complicated. Let’s hope such heroes stay in the ancient past. The Odyssey, by Homer. Translated by Emily Wilson. Norton, 2018.

Making a Post-Modern Age

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I audited the course by Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan, on the development of the “The Modern and the Post-Modern” on Coursera.  (Audited here means watched the lectures but did not register or do the assignments.)  Roth discusses the development of the central themes of the world as it moved away from classicism or should I say neo-classicism of the 16th and 17th centuries.  The romantic era of Rousseau and Marx and Hegel leads to an anti-establishment post-modern world of Nietzsche and a more self-reflective realism of painters like Delacroix and Manet. Ushering in the Modern is the search for intensity and the rejection of social norms of Baudelaire (he shoots a clock during a street protest).  Nietzsche rejects even conventional morality as a notion of self-imposed restraint of personal power and he rejects the idea  of God as a mere figure of shame the people use to impose a false and inhibiting morality.  Dr. Roth concentrates on Europe, but clearly the same development can be seen in America.  There was Jefferson, the Enlightenment paragon breaking from classical thought and religion and embracing science and empiricism.  On the continent, Darwin looks closely at natural processes and describes the fundamentals of biology, while in America Twain and Crane and John Singer Sargent are depicting a realistic world of the life as natural as we come.  Roth’s final lectures are on the art world.  The romantic Delacroix depicts life and revolution as glorious and emotional, depicting the mid-19th century turmoil in France that Marx called “The Beautiful Revolution.”  Courbet turned to realism, pushing back against both classicism and romanticism.  He paints with the influence of the new art of photography.  He wanted to show the real, quotidian life of ordinary people and, famously rather outrageously, paints highly sexualized nudes and the banned girly-parts close up “The Origin of the World.”  Edouard Manet ushered in the Impressionism movement depicting the impression of light of the picture and the observer.  People interacting with the modern world of the railroad.  In Manet’s Olympia the unashamed courtesan stares directly at you, the observer, while in his “Bar at the Folie-Bergere he shows the barmaid staring away from the patron. While she serves a patron, she stands at the bar among all the objects for sale, which include herself and perhaps all of us watching.

Ulysses S. Grant

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An amazing book, Grant, by Ron Chernow tells the remarkable story of President Grant.  Grant rose from being a cashiered army officer struggling in penury to become the victor over the rebellion and then one of the greatest American presidents.  After his service he was adored by his country and admired throughout the world.  An uncommonly decent man.  What may have been his battle even more difficult than the war was the aftermath of the war.  Grant spent his presidency struggling against the violent South which waged a vicious campaign against the freed slaves.  “Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant’s presidency.  It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia.  The Klan’s ruthless reign is a dark, buried chapter in American history.  The Civil War is far better known than its brutal aftermath.” (p. 857).  Grant, Ron Chernow, Penguin Random House, 2017. 

Akka Mahadevi

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Mahadevi was a 12th century Hindu poet whose dispute with her authoritarian husband sparked a public exposure that tops Lady Godiva’s ride.  Godiva rode through Coventry in the buff to protest her husband’s cruel taxes on the poor.  The story also created the legend of “peeping tom” a  tailor who dared to look.  Mahadevi was bolder and apparently didn’t care who looked as she walked naked through India talking philosophy.  In one poem she is critical of the virtue of modesty.