[lit-ideas] "Dropping from Heaven's encyclic rim"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:24:41 EDT
So we are a bunch of cyclicalists.
Ritchie:
"My current weakness is encyclopedia Britannica. I just bought my third
set, which will allow me perhaps to say a thing or two about the transition
from
the eleventh to the thirteenth edition."
Helm: "By coincidence, I have an 11th Ed. And I also have the 3 vols. that
presumably comprise the additions that along with the 11th
make up the 13th Edition. In fact, those 3 vols, entitled
"13th Ed," led me to believe that there was no integrated
13th Ed; that is, that the 13th Ed consisted of an
11th Ed plus the 3 vol. addendum. Pray tell, what three
volumes do you have? I was once tempted by an earlier edition, perhaps the
ninth or the tenth but resisted. I do have a 1990 15th, but I have
never become reconciled to Mortimer Adler's innovations."
Interesting. Here some more about that misreading of GALEN which took me
some time (the last hour) to swallow. "Egkuklios" -- 'encyclical' indeed! Odd
how a mistake should spread in a language like that when people like Holyday
got it right all the time.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
---
From the OED
'encyclical' f. late (i.e. non-classical) Latin encyclicus (see 'encylcic =
al).
"Used as transl. of Gr. , i.e. general (education).
I'm confused. If 'paideia' is FEMININE, as I think it is, how come the
qualifying phrase is 'egkuklios' and NOT 'egkuklia' -- or is this one of those
two-form adjectives, for masc/fem. and neuter?
1616-61 B[illy] Holyday. Persius 301
The learning, which they call encyclical.
I love Browning. Mrs. Browning (aka 'The Portuguese' on account of her dark
looks). Trust her to use 'cyclical' as a 'nonce-use' meaning 'encircling' --
cited in the OED:
Dropping from Heaven's encyclic rim.
1850 Mrs. Browning. Vis. Poets I. 202
-- This almost reminds me of Grice when he quotes from Austin:
"One one occasion, [P. H.] Nowell-Smith [The 'Trinity' (Coll.) philosopher]
(cast in the role of straight man) offered as an example of
non-understandable English an extract from a sonnet of Donne:
"From the round earth's imagined corners,
Angels, your trumpets blow."
"Austin said, 'It is perfectly clear what _that_ means; it means, 'Angels,
blow your trumpets from what pesons less cautious than I would call the four
corners of the earth'". (Grice, 'Reply to Richards').
So, how would _you_ Geary, expand on Mrs. Browning polite couplet?
Cheers
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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