Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Words and Things

Costa Arms 

Many of the most stimulating books I have ever read were written more than a millennium ago, but in thinking about old books, and especially in trying to teach them to undergraduates, I often found they benefit from some introductory explication.  This essay will have a modest topic—words and things and some of the relationships between words and things.  I want to start with a book written by Saint Augustine at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries.  Augustine’s book has a simple and possibly misleading title, De doctrina christiana, On Christian Doctrine.  A better title might be Teaching in a Christian Manner.  Its subject, to use a very fancy word, is hermeneutics, or the interpretive principles that should inform reading, in this instance the study of the Bible.  You might describe it is as a preparatory handbook for people trying to read, understand, and teach the Bible.  But its general principles are relevant even to my light-hearted subject: rebus puzzles.

 

This little book of  Augustine’s theories was produced in his role as a Christian theologian—meaning, for him as a student of the Bible—but it has been admired by students of linguistics in general.  The terms “semiotics” is a catch-all term for the various kinds of sign systems with which we are familiar, among which  human language is obviously prominent.  With regard to sign systems in general, Augustine makes a distinction between natural and conventional signs.  His book begins with the assertion that all teaching (doctrina) is necessarily about one of two subjects: things and signs, res and signa in Latin.  By very rough analogy you might think of res/things as the world of science, and of signa/signs as the humanities.  He makes a second binary distinction.  There are two categories of signs, natural signs and conventional signs.  There is no smoke without fire—that is, smoke “signals” fire in all places in the world.  It is a natural sign of fire.  But the word fire which, signals the same reality as smoke does, is a word in the English language, its meaning agreed to by convention among English-speakers but by no means “naturally” obvious to those who do not speak English.   Other words “for” fire include ignis, pyr, fuego, ogień, brand, and so forth, but they “mean” fire only within the delimited range of conventionally agreed upon shared languages.  Despite what many Americans seem to think, simply raising the decibel level of English to a shout does not make it universally comprehensible.  Nobody "naturally” knows what the word “fire” signifies.

 

                       “Gift” is a pleasant word in English.  In German the 
lexically identical word means “poison”.  So if somebody gives 
you a gift, hope it is in Birmingham rather than Berlin.  For 
there are many distinct human languages.  The common 
domestic animal we call in English a dog is called a chien 
in French, a perro in Spanish, and a hund in German.  There 
is no universally understood word for dog, not even “bow-
wow”—though there is an actual “bow-wow theory” that
posits the origins of human language in the imitation of
birdsong and animal noises!  Human language is a sign 
system.  

 

                  But as someone interested in pictorial as well as linguistic signs, my mind just now turns to a genre of signs in which the pictorial and the verbal are intentionally  yoked.  I refer to rebus constructions.  The word rebus is in Latin the dative or ablative plural of res (meaning things).  So a rebus is a verbal construction in, by, or with things  The following is a dictionary definition of a rebus: “a representation of words or syllables by pictures of objects or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound; also, a riddle made up of such pictures or symbols”

 

Of course, rebus puzzles are founded not merely in language, but in particular languages.  Many old aristocratic families in Europe, who often had Latin mottoes, also constructed rebuses as well.  Some of these will seem far-fetched to us now.  But in theory a rebus can be constructed in any written tongue.  In English many common words are homophones—that is, words which, whatever variations they may display in their written forms are indistinguishable in their pronunciation: for example, the first person singular pronoun (I) and the ocular organ (eye).  If you wish, you may add the now mainly obsolete expression of assent or agreement, as in “the ayes have it.”

 

On the south coast of Long Island is the old town of Islip.  Its European settlers arrived early, and it claims its civic foundation in 1683.  In Old England the Islips were a many-branched family, and there is at least one village of that name I have visited (in Oxfordshire) and some others recorded on maps.  The Islip family had several notable branches.  I believe that an Islip was one of the last abbots of Westminster Abbey before the dissolution, for example.  Today the people who live on Long Island are more likely to call the place “Iz-Lip” rather than “I-Slip,” but check out the official town coat of arms.  You do need to know that as a technical botanical term the word slip denotes to a small plant cutting, or leafy twig, especially one made for purposes of grafting. 

                                               



 

There is endless fascination, most of it pretty light-hearted, in rebus constructions, which might fairly be described as visual puns, and this thought can bring me to my slightly digressive conclusion.   The words name, nomen, and noun are first cousins, and many rebus constructions exploit the relationship.  According to the poet Pope puns are the lowest form of humor, but some very witty people have not hesitated to play around with their own names in serious ways.  The heraldic shield at the top of this essay is that of the very extensive clan of Mediterranean families called “Costa,” a word with several meanings in several Romance languages.  But the primary meaning in Latin is rib.  The possibly strange marks on the shield are meant to signify the residual bones of cleanly picked beef or pork ribs!  The name was frequently adopted by or forced upon Spanish and Portuguese conversos—Jewish families converting to Christianity by election or by coercion!  The English “metaphysical” poets of the seventeenth century are so-called because of the sometimes extravagant “wit” of their linguistic formulations.  The greatest of them, John Donne, in what one might call a “rebus-adjacent” poem wrote one of his deepest theological meditations in a deceptively simple three-stanza poem built upon his own surname as past participle, with an implicit pun on the Latin word perfectus. meaning complete, finished, or done.

 

John Donne: A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

New France & New Year

Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal

 

            Primo, our heartiest New Year greeting to all.  We have just returned from the journey advertised in my “Christmas” post, a brief visit to the Montreal branch of our family—son Luke, daughter in law Melanie, and grandkids John Henry and Hazel.  Most clichés concerning grandchildren happen to be true.  They are delightful, and they grow very fast.  If they live at a distance from you, you probably don’t see them often enough.  So our reunion was joyous.  The holiday was quite white, deeply chill, and marvelously mellow, its chief achievements being gastronomy, the completion of an impossible jigsaw puzzle from piece one to piece one thousand, and attendance at one or two (I being one of the slacking oners) festival eucharists at Christ Church Cathedral.  There was a nearly Dickensian richness to our festivities, but mainly without the Dickensian schmaltz.  It is hardly more than four hundred miles from our house to theirs, but age and infirmity conspire to make the journey a real trial for me, and therefore something of an accomplishment.  I have pointed out before in these pages the linguistic spoor that links French travail (labor, work) and English travail (taxing difficulty, the pains of a birthing mother).  In earlier epochs almost all journeys required hard traveling.  But in earlier times grandchildren generally lived close by.

 


French Canada is not far away, but it is always surprising to me.  The kids, who are of course in local schools are now naturally bilingual.  Unsurprisingly, our recent American election has generated some awkward international results, and the presumption of some major international politicians is often enough to shock us. Being a good neighbor is not always easy, and being a neighbor to the United States has its special challenges.  Somewhat more than a century past the revolutionary Mexican President Porfirio Diaz thus lamented his country’s situation: “Poor Mexico!  So far from God, so close to the United States!”  In our day Donald Trump, whose activities as a troll qualify him for a prime residential lot beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, has taken as his target the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau; but his crude hauteur may seem a model of moderation when compared with the behavior of some Renaissance potentates, secular and religious alike.  Naturally certain episodes from history invade my historical mind.  Consider for a moment the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) brokered by Pope Alexander VI between the kings of Spain and Portugal.  (Tordesillas is a little place in north-central Spain not far from Valladolid.)  The treaty established a longitudinal line running from the top of the globe to its bottom, 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This line divided the known world into two areas, with Spain claiming ownership of all non-Christian lands west of the line, and Portugal claiming all non-Christian lands east of the line. 

 

The principal maritime powers in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century were Spain and Portugal, both of which had been busy claiming insular properties newly discovered or at least newly colonized in the North Atlantic Ocean.  The Western coast of Africa was already somewhat known territory to Iberian sailors when Columbus (a naval agent of the Spanish monarchy) threw a spanner into the works by coming across what he assumed to be India but was in actual fact the huge land mass comprising the continents of North and South America.

 

The Pope thought that it was important for the peace of Christendom that the rivalry between the Iberians be regulated; so with staggering presumption he proposed that all the “new” territories being found in the “New World” be equably divided between them for the purposes of pacific commerce and of course evangelism.  

 

This may have been the most stupendous real estate transaction ever effected.   Quite apart from the absurdity of assuming a freehold claim to two vast continents, the arrangement had what seems in retrospect one glaring peculiarity: the peculiarity of Brazil.  Because of the way Brazil’s upper eastern bulge extends far into the South Atlantic, it was counted among the new provinces of Portugal rather than of Spain.  I doubt that the principals realized Brazil was also destined to make up roughly half of the total land mass of South America.  This scheme, though satisfactory to the Iberian potentates, failed to satisfy some other important Europeans who, by chance, did not live in Spain or Portugal.  Needless to say, what the large populations who already lived in the Americas thought was not an issue of discussion. And it is only natural that the Pope’s tidy plan failed to satisfy a number of important players in Europe who had been left out of it.

 

And in fact the histories of European expansion in the northern sections of the New World would be determined not primarily by a contest between the Iberians but by a later one between France and England.  Competition in land claims among the European powers was brisk but such claims could in the long run be secured only by significant colonization and credible military backing.  France’s plausible land claims in North America were enormous, including Newfoundland and Labrador, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River. This land they called New France. 

 

But the French colonial experience in terms of Francophone settlement in America never approached the level of French territorial claims.  Tentative Francophone settlement was effectively limited to a few places in southern Illinois and, especially, Mississippi River and coastal sites surrounding New Orleans.  Actual French-speakers are few in contemporary Louisiana, and the number is declining rapidly.  The contrast with Spanish speakers is dramatic.  It is significant that the huge American land purchase of 1803 (more than eight hundred thousand square miles of land) is called the Louisiana Purchase despite the fact that the area called “Louisiana” is a small fraction of the land purchased.  Maybe this was history’s second greatest land deal.  And since there was an actual exchange for money—however paltry in retrospect—it plausibly can be described as a land deal rather than a land-grab!


 

We tend perhaps to think of our early American history from too narrow a view, but our national formation was in part an episode in the large and complex picture of the intense European rivalries working their way out on the North American Continent.  The major work of one of America’s greatest early historians, Francis Parkman, the erudite and eloquent author of France and England in North America (1892), is as exciting a read today as when it was published in the nineteenth century.  And Parkman is in print in the Library of America.