[lit-ideas] Re: death
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 18:49:41 EDT
In a message dated 5/5/2009 4:47:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Maybe JLS can refresh us with a discussion of
Borges's story "The Zahir," which has relevance
here. Maybe Dawkins and Hitchens are asking us to
sell our sense of mystery for a Zahir?
----
I should try, but not to much avail. In Burgin's book of conversations
with Borges, Borges notes that he 'took the word from _Modern Egyptians_, or
perhaps from Burton'. He says he built the story around a Buenos Aires
idiom, I would think, one of the many hyperboles of ordinary speech (that Grice
would analyse via conversational implicature). In this case, Borges says,
the word is
'inolvidable'
"unforgettable" -- in every way. Borges Sr. was a lecturer of Jamesian
psychology in the University of Buenos Aires (Department of Modern Languages,
on Calle Pellegrini I'm so familiar with), so I'm sure the ultimate source
was a Lockean account of memory as it interacts with questions of
'identity'.
While the OED gives no hits, wiki does:
"In Arabic, zahir ( ظاهر ) is an active participle
with meanings denoting apparent, visible, obvious,
manifest, surface, exoteric, exterior, literal,
superficial, etc. Al-Zahir is a name of God, the
Manifest, paired with al-Batin, the Concealed."
Cheers,
JLS
Donal McEvoy: another example of contingency or accident would be not
David
Ritchie's example of his wife's acquaintance, but Wittgenstein's brother:
he
lacked an arm. Surely that was accidental.
**************Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now.
(http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006)
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