[lit-ideas] "Something's Rotten in Sardonia"
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:26:40 -0500
Country Home and Beauty
John McCreery, a Japan-based anthropologist writes about me:
>This [excellent post by Speranza which has elicited among other things, a
>reply by our Memphis resident]
>on top of [la vita e bella] have made my day.
John.
Well, much obliged.
Geary takes his time to play with me.
>*Ah, there's the rub. JL thinks I understand him. He forgets I'm a
>refrigeration repairman. As Virgil Dewey said in his opinion piece in the
> Onion:
>
>http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/im_just_a_simple_country
This confuses me, I'm _also_ *just* a country. What has that to do with love
and life? I hate when people call Buenos Aerean city slickers. Just hate it.
Buenos Aires comprises the vast pampa around it, where I was born, partially
bred (not on bread, precisely) and come back for the Loeb of my week.
So the opposition is between 'town and country'. Memphis is a town, so how
could you identify with 'just a simple country'. Mind, Tennessee is not even a
country, it's a state. It may have countryside.
One of the disgraces of the English language that the Anglo-Argentines (yes,
Anglicans) inflicted on the smooth colonial patois is
???????????????? "the camp"
--- this is thought to be a strict transliteration of "el campo". So, "I'm
going for a long weekend to the camp" would translate "al campo", which is
metonymic for the more pretentious non-U 'estancia'. Farmers do not go on
mentioning the name of their farms or estancias. They just say 'camp'. The
equivalent non-colonial English would be, "I'm going to the country" (I'm
reading Atonement), not a mention of the name of the house, The Tallis House,
or the Home County, Surrey, where it is located.
>That is to say, I understand my stuff as you do yours. OK?
No Old Kinderhook. I do not understand my stuff. Otherwise I would not even be
sharing it with you! Each post where I mention your name it's a cri de coeur
for reflection, cooperation, time of sharing, intimacy of thought,
reconsideration of views. I don't care about your refrigeration stuff and
wouldn't like to be controversial there, since lives depend on your
decompressing the shortage to ground, etc. But with philosophy, life does NOT
depend on our correct understanding of Aristotle's enthelecheias. If I instill
some humour, be grateful. Kant didn't and he made it to the history of
philosophy -- while I'm building a Mudd name in lit-ideas (Our new Finnish
moderator said, "I agree with Andreas Ramos. Nobody can engage in a
conversation with someone who has four contributions a day". He should meet my
neighbour! I guess they are more laconic in Finland.
I suppose Geary is right that I should be more sardonic. But he should provide
a map. Sardinia? I never liked the smell of it. As Malvolio used to say,
"Something's rotten in Sardonia".
>Now that
> that's settled, let's get on to what I do understand in your posts. I
> understand that you have a fine tuned sense of humour (please note
> the Anglican (heretical) "u" inserted in your honour -- and yet again!).
Thanks. With honour, you can stick it up the thesaurus, because when I use
honor, I'm using the italic (i.e. Roman, italianate, 'honor' -- as in 'honoris
causa'. I think Chaucer went to far when instilling the 'u'. Same with theatre
versus theater. The correct Latinate is theater. And if you think of it, humor.
Webster was one of the main causes of Loeb. Love him with all my heart. He was
a native of Hertford, Connecticut, and I never fail to visit his bust (he had
only one) in Central Park, New York City.
> Now then, humor is one thing, accuracy another. Just how acrid are you?
> Not very. Why not? Accuracy is a virtue according to WalterO and Plato.
> Get more caustic, I say. Thomas Aquinas says: "Matrimony rhymes
> with Acrimony -- a coincidence? I don't think so." Surely you wouldn't try
> to contradict Aquinas.
This confuses, as it uses technical vocabulary. I thought 'acrid' was Southern
drawl for 'accurate', but apparently it's not. It's not acid either. Caustic is
something Geary will promote since he is into acids, for the more serious
compressors. I'm surprised Aquinas found that the Latin for matrimony and
acrimony rhyme, for they don't in Latin, and it sheds a doubt as to whether you
are reading the right translation. Try the 103 volumes of Patrologia Latina,
ed. by the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris.
"You have impregnated your audience with your
> implicatures, time now to marry them."
Marry an implicature? He cannot mean marry them audience, because audience is
singular, and refers to audio, i.e. ear, and though I have heard your sweet
Irish voice, (and you mine, and with piano background, too), not everyone here
can recognise people as _audience_ only. For instance. I have a feeling I would
recognise Palma if in an international airport, he goes,
?????????? "Hey, Speranza, it's palma here!"
For I only know one Palma.
And of course, L. K. ("I'm L. K. and I think we've met"). I'm not sure I could
recognise the dialect of McEvoy if he tries his mother dialect. And Ritchie's
Cockney will probably do. There's this story of an American businessman
planning a meeting with a Cockney. A time was looked for for a forthcoming
meeting on the phone.
???????????????? "I'll fight"
said the Cockney. It took some desimplicaturation (a la S. Chapman -- she wrote
a book on the 'non-intended implicatures of accent) on the part of the American
to get that right into
??????????????? "Half eight"
i.e. 7:30, or 8:30, as the case may be.
------
"No more sweet words. Tell these
> folks exactly how you feel. Use phrases like "asshole motherfucker" -- you
> must learn to speak the local lingo. Your humor is too refined, too clever,
> too funny. Where are the mud pies, I want to know.
>
>
I like a sweet word. If I had a child I would say that to the child every
night, "Sweet dreams". Words have to be sweet _and_ winged ('pteroenta'). When
one British sculptor shot two woodcock with one shot, 'Epea pteroenta' were
compiled by the Earl of Leicester on his honour. Not to mention Horne Tuke's
book, "The diversions of Purley".
"Motherfucker I understand. But what about fatherfucker. I always thought
motherfucker was what J. D. Atlas, the Gricean at Passadena, in his new book --
he has 4 already -- calls the natural semantic indeterminacy of implicature.
Surely, the statement of fact:
????????? You are a mother fucker.
Has to be provided, a la Palma, a sub-Chomskyan structure (it's like the Mekano
piece) in terms of autophoric self-reference:
????????? You are a fucker of your _own_ mother.
This logic is mainly African-American I understand, and may be a relic of
hypotactical expressions hard to translate into the Romance languages. In
Spanish it just doesn't make sense to call a person a 'lover' of the mother.
It's almost tautological.
??????? In terms of logical form, the indeterminacy of 'motherfucker' comes out
of its possible logical form being given in Russellian non-relational terms:
??????? "For every mother, or for at least one mother, not necessarily your
own, you fuck her".
This I claim is vague.
Geary will object that you wouldn't, "in the lingo" call a 'fucker' someone who
just fucks once. But I'm not sure. "Singer" is another case in point. I would
call Julie Krueger a fine soprano, even if I only heard her once ("For Auld
Lang Syne, My Love, ...").
Yost noticed that the ITB lady was engaged in a pragmatic self-contradiction:
???? A: Can I ask you this question?
???? B: No.
makes B sound stupid, so it's a Catch 22 with the lady, as it's usually with
the homeless and underpriviledged.
Analogically, it's impossible to conceive of a (biological) mother who hasn't
been fucked (see Aquinas, "Matrimonium est conceptio pudenda spermatozoa
dignitas novus baby").
So, "motherfucker", what's the big deal?
Geary may say the deal is that paternity (or fatherhood) if a less of a
universal anthropological criterion. Borges saw this in "Brodie's Report".
Natives are always ready to identify one's mother, but not the impregnator of
semen some 9 months before birth. It's too distant a notion to keep track with.
So, "You motherfucker you" may be a reminder that for each mother who is loved,
there is a loving father -- usually around the corner (up the storey-building,
sleeping).
Geary waxes historical:
"Regarding the Achaeans, the Spartans, the Peloponnesians, the Thracians,
> the Thessalonians, the Lesbians, the Salamis and the Baloneys, all I can say
> is "so what else is new?" You and Lawrence are Loebites and that's as it
> should be. Me? I'm American all the way. Something Helm wouldn't
> understand, but God does.
>
>
Yes, but Loeb was Jewish _and_ American, and for one, thought that he should
fight for his alma mater (Harvard). He was American to the backbone even though
he is buried in Vienna and forgot his New Yorker lingo as he grew classical.
Plus, he mother a Hun.
And there's lots of news regarding the tribes you mention. You should get hold
of ONE Loeb (yesterday I got Apollonius Rhodius, the Argonautica in just one
volume) and it's amazing the indexing so accurate and the flowing of
interesting comment from the Classics. There's ALWAYS something new. Even if
it's your marginal comments to something old.
Personally, I feel an immense pleasure reading Apollodorus and finding that I
do not need to read the local Buenos Aires poets instead! As Seaton says in?
his preface to Rhodius, "Rhodius comes from an age where Homer was admired;
admired, not necessarily imitated. The stuff of their poetry and things were
only the heroic and remote, under the philosophy that there is really nothing
new under the sun."
Geary will say that there is always something new under the (Saint Tropez) sun,
but that's not the classical point I'm making. The sun leads us to the glitter
and the gold.
When Consuelo Vanderbilt (something new under the sun, vis a vis Thucydides)
was taken to England, she was much offended that the stupid Brits would say,
????????????? "Consuelo, allow me to tell you that you don't look or sound
American at all"
????????????? "Fuck you, asshole"
she would reply. Eventually she married a lord (Marlborough). What a lady!
-----
"There are obviously many topics you've raised on which you should be taken
> you to task, but it's late ..."
And your grammar is wrong. Can can there be many topics that I have raised on
which I should be taken ME to task? And how far away is Tusk. Tsk, Tsk, that's
a silly excuse. I am obliged, though. Your saying (or writing) it's late
indicates or complicates (my new neologism for implicates -- I'm reading
"Atonement") that Tusk is a foreign country.
"and I have several jobs to do tomorrow"
Tomorrow is another day. And there's always tomorrow. Another lame excuse I am
obliged for, though. Two lames make a straight duck, right?
"-- another
> way of saying that I can't just lollygag around Loebian pools or spend all
> day cleaning my guns like some people can. There's a world out there that
> must be kept working. Yay, me!
>
> OK, then. God bless and etc. Keep the faith, as they say -- your
> heretical faith, that is, for which you will end up burning in hell --
> thanks you, Henry VIII -- another one of your beloved Brits. And keep those
> posts coming. Damn the Andreas, full posting ahead.
>"
Well, we'll see. I suppose I should refresh (or brush up, as they say) my
Finnish now. I hope he is heretical like me.
I was thinking of the motto for war in the subject-line. Geary will rewrite
'beauty' as 'pussy', qua epitome of the furry little pet. Cfr. Don Quixote and
the damsel in distress as chivalry ideal for a man o war.
Country is sometimes associated with 'cunt' -- the term in Atonement. As when
Shakespeare says, "Country matters", in Hamlet. Meaning, the coney, the rabbit.
So that leaves us home -- which is perfectly assexual, except in Cole Porter,
?????????? and the majestic chords
??????????????????????? Eb???????? dim.???? minor +
???????????????????? You'd?? be?? so???? nice
?????????????????????????? to cum home to
?????????????????? It'll be so nice, by the fire!
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
??? Will Complicaturise for Deplicature
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