[lit-ideas] Re: Lit-Ideas: A Survey
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 18:23:38 EST
In a message dated 3/4/2009 5:54:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
JL:
> Talking of lurkers -- what if God is one?
As long as he just lurks, who cares.
----
Dunno 'baht dat.
The word 'lurk', in Norwegian loerkung brings echoes of perception to me*.
(* -- I'm doing research on the late Stephen Stracker -- most of his papers
are now nicely desposited in UBC and his PhD was on 'perception': "The Eye of
the Storm", and "The Eye Creates the Other").
Norwegian 'lurka', to sneak away.
The verb 'lurk' in English, is misleading. The final '-k' is a
frequentative. Cfr. f-ck, 'talk'. In Low German, 'lurken' is to shuffle along.
The
nonfrequentative stem is 'lour'.
English literature is rich with references to lurking. A notable one is in
Havelock (circa 1300, verse, 68):
Hwan he felede hise foos, He made hem lurken, and crepen in wros.
i.e. When he felt his foes, he made them lurk.
Chaucer too, with all his "Frenchness" was appealed by the word. In his less
known English rendering of "Le romance de la rose" (1366 -codex Islington,
verse 465) he waxes poetic:
There lurked and there coured she,
Fer pover thing, wher-so it be,
Is shamfast, and despysed ay.
And he uses 'figuratively' in his better known "Troilo e Cressida"
O soul lurking in is woe,
vnneste,
Flee forth out of mine heart and let it breast.
In the Scottish "Legend of the Saints" (1375) it is said of St. Cecile:
Valaryane..fand e bischope sanct urbane lurkand ymong pure men
mekly.
i.e. Verlaine [the French poet] found a bishop saint urbane lurking
among pure men meekly.
In his epoch-making, Confessio Amantis, Gower relies on the subtlety of the
concept, II, verse 355:
And thus lurkende upon his stelthe
In his await so longe he lai.
i.e. And thus lurking upon his stealth
in his wait so long he lay.
--- The word was considered literary for a while. When Cook visited
Australia, etc. he had occasion to use the verb again:
"The natives were seen lurking about the beach."
Voy (1772, VI). -- this is otiose in Stracker's philosophy:
'you may see them lurk but you may not see them pee'.
But Rabbie noticed the philosophical complications here:
‘Their groves o' sweet myrtles’
Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly unseen.
Song (1795)
Lurk became a favourite Victorianism:
"That young nobleman has been seen lurking about here very much of late."
Jerrold, St Giles (1851)
which again raises the question, 'SEEN
lurking?' -- this commands a Gricean analysis: the narrator SEES that the
young
gentleman is lurking -- but the naked virgin does not.
In this respect, it's Bowen in his rendering of Virgil's Ecloga III (1887)
that exactly hits in in the nail as to the philosophical perplexity of the
verb:
Run!
For a cold snake lurks
in the grasses yonder unseen.
--- As Straker would ask: the evidence being ???
The idea of lurking is a challenge to Kant's 'Noumainon': To lurk is,
indeed, as Eddington puts it, 'to escape observation.'
The re-introduction of the term as 'computer slang' was due to the NY Times
(1983):
Some computer owners..observe others' conversations... Sometimes they even
type ‘lurking’ so you know they're there.
--- Indeed Yost called this a 'performative of sorts' ("Can I ask you a
question", "I'm lurking", "I do not think therefore I do not exist")
1991 M. HEIM in M. Benedikt Cyberspace (1993) 76 People do not just observe
one another, they become ‘lurkers’. -- again this allows for Gricean
analysis. To observe one another, knowing that one is being observed.
1992 N.Y. Times 1 Dec. C14/6 [He] estimates that there are five or six
lurkers for each poster on a bulletin board.
--- Problem here is that in lists like these, I would lurk too
because as a newbie I would have no idea what they're talking about. It's very
rare
that they have 'tidy' conversations where they are asking for other people's
opinions.
1995 .net Feb. 58/1 "The few US newsgroups I'd lurked on in the past had
always been unbearably tedious."
1999 Dogs Today Oct. 103 (advt.) Want to discuss something featured in the
mag? Send an email...Even if you're too shy to join injust lurking can be great
fun.
1998 Courier-Jrnl. (Louisville, Kentucky) 21 Dec. D6/5 Long-time lurkers who
decide to join the conversation are said to be ‘delurking’.
Now, if God were to delurk, would he speak Hebrew?
Cheers,
JL
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