[lit-ideas] "Bless you": a performative?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 22:28:14 EDT
P. A. Smith quotes from Monty Python:
Chaplain: Let us praise God. Oh Lord...
Congregation: Oh Lord...
Chaplain: Oooh you are so big...
Congregation: Oooh you are so big...
C. Bruce comments:
On the other hand, there is 'negative theology'
---
An interesting fact remains that it seems 'bless' is a unique, English,
conception. As the OED has it,
"'bless' ...
not found elsewhere in Teutonic."
-- by which I suppose they mean that you cannot really _translate_ "bless"
into _any_ other language using a cognate (Geary's "Bleed'em"'s a bit on the
rough side).
The OED adds:
"The etymological meaning was thus â??to mark (or affect in some way) with
blood (or sacrifice)"
So, indeed,
"Blood you!" Speranza would have us saying.
Meaning, I guess: "Come a little bit closer,
cause you my kind of Sacrifice. So naive
and gullible." But what does bless MEAN?
And don't tell me "blood". (Geary).
The OED adds:
"to consecrate".
But I'm not sure the Romans consecrated with blood ('profanum'/sacrum) --
and I'm less sure about the Greeks.
One would think that the Goths consecrated with blood, and I'm surprised
that Ulfilas does not use 'bless', apparently.
So the source of it all must indeed be something having to do with a _human_
element (as is blood).
From then on it's all (to use Horn's word), etymythology:
OED:
"the sense-development of the word was greatly influenced by its having been
chosen at the Eng. conversion to render L. benedicere, and Gr. eulogein,
which started from a primitive sense of â??speak well of or to, eulogize,
praise,â??
"
It is this confusion that relates to Smith's Monty Python, "Praise the lord"
-- with praise meaning 'speak well'.
Again, '-dicere' seems like a _human_ thing to do (so this _use_ of 'bless'
is also anthropocentric, even more so than the 'consecrate' use of the
'bleed').
The OED then adds:
"[These usages] were themselves influenced by being chosen to translate Heb.
brk, primarily â??to bend,â?? hence â??to bend the knee, worship, praise, bless
God, invoke blessings on, bless as a deity.â??"
But this is slightly confusing. First, as J. Krueger will note, the OED
reads, "'primarily 'to bend'". In Semitic languages, the root "brk" (break?)
may
have other uses of which _bend_ seems just _one_.
It's also slightly not so logically fair on the part of the OED to define
Hebrew "brk" (which is used to define 'bless') as "bless". Enough to have Geary
ask,
"But .. what does 'bless' mean?"
The OED remarks:
"A series of associations, heathen, Jewish, and Christian, blend in the Eng.
uses of 'bless'".
Again, 'heathen' is highly subjective, if not biased (cf. wiccan). Perhaps
the uses of the Anglo-Saxons (of 'bleed', and 'bless') were already influenced
by a primitive Indo-European mythology already impregnated with
Judaeo-Christian elements?
"At a very early date the popular etymological consciousness began to
associate this verb with the n. bliss â??benignity, blitheness, joy,
happiness,â??
which affected the use 'bless'"
I suppose this added confusion relates to its 'performative' aspect. It is
as if saying "bless you" you are _performing_ the act of saying 'be joyful'.
I wonder if speakers of this list who speak lingo's other than English can
provide what she thinks is equivalent to 'bless'?
Cheers,
JL
Linguist, etc.
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