In a message dated 3/1/2016 12:14:03 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx quotes from "The Waning of the Middle Ages":
"The contrast between silence and
sound, darkness and light,
like that between summer and winter,
was more strongly marked than it is in our lives."
"The modern town hardly knows silence or darkness in their purity, nor the
effect of a solitary light or a single distant cry."
Mmm. Perhaps we could find further implicatures. What Huizigna explicates
in Dutch is two utterances:
i. Gelijk de tegenstelling van zomer en winter sterker was dan in ons
leven, zoo was het die van licht en duister, van stilte en gedruisch.
ii. De moderne stad kent nauwelijks meer het zuivere donker en de zuivere
stilte, het effekt van een enkel lichtje of een enkelen verren roep.
Let's consider the first:
i. Gelijk de tegenstelling van zomer en winter sterker was dan in ons
leven, zoo was het die van licht en duister, van stilte en gedruisch. De
moderne
stad kent nauwelijks meer het zuivere donker en de zuivere stilte, het
effekt van een enkel lichtje of een enkelen verren roep.
"The contrast between silence and
sound, darkness and light,
like that between summer and winter,
was more strongly marked than it is in our lives."
How does he know? What evidence does he have?
Note that in the Dutch, he starts by the contrast 'tegenstelling' that
interests him most, between 'zomer' and 'winter', since he is after all writing
about 'autumn'.
Literally, (i) translates as
ib. Like the opposition of summer to winter stronger was than in our lives,
so was that of light and dark, of stillness and sound.
It was perhaps good that Huizinga focused on what he focused because the
Italians managed to coin something to mean 'light' and 'dark' at the same
time: 'chiaroscuro':
"Chiaroscuro", as the name implies, is a portmanteau, and best translates
as "light-dark". Huizinga suggests it couldn't have been medieval.
But that would be simplificatory, for the more technical use of
"chiaroscuro" traditionally ascribed to the famous Athenian painter
Apollodoros.
Geary comments: "I can't think while they call him famous -- as I call Elvis
Presley famous -- when no paintining by Apollodorus survives."
As for (ii)
(ii) De moderne stad kent
nauwelijks meer het zuivere
donker en de zuivere stilte,
het effekt van een enkel lichtje of een enkelen verren roep.
"The modern town hardly knows silence or darkness in their purity, nor the
effect of a solitary light or a single distant cry."
"Hardly" invites the right implicature. Huizinga is NOT denying that the
'moderne stadt', as Groningen was, does NOT know silence or darkness in its
puritiy. Only that the modern town "HARDLY" knows silence and darklness in
their purity. The implicature seems to be that the 'moderne stadt' DOES know
it, if hardly -- which is a good thing.
Note that Huizing's Dutch repeats 'enkel', for both light and cry. The
'moderne stadt' hardly knows (i.e. knows, but hardly) the effect of one 'enkel'
light or one 'enekelen' cry.
So I think that, as far as the Dutch is concerned, there is no need to
explore the implicatural distinction betwenn a light being solitary or a cry
being single. He is using one same single word in Dutch.
Since the essay was published in Duch (and has Netherlands in the subtitle)
and not French (while it also has France in its subtitle), Huizinga's
implicature seems to be that France is good, while The Netherlands are good;
and I know many Netherlander friends who would agree!
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
