[lit-ideas] Re: What cannot be explained do not explain
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:57:20 +0000 (UTC)
Never explain, never complain.>
This reminds me: did JLS ever tell us whether that long example he gave about
Christmas and weather and something was drawn from Wodehouse or was his own?
This could be explained, and the lack of explanation complained about. So never
say never.
D
On Thursday, 23 April 2015, 11:54, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Never explain, never complain.
In a message dated 4/23/2015 3:06:06 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx quotes line 15 from Nissim Ezekiel, "There is a place
to
which I often go"
What cannot be explained, do not explain.>
and asks:
How do we know what "cannot be explained" unless we first try to explain
it?
First note the comma (There was an essay on this in a recent book review
supplement of the New York Times -- Let us consider the comma, I think the
title went):
I have omitted the comma in the subject line. Ezekiel doesn't. I think the
comma makes for a complicated syntactic parsing, whereas
i. What cannot be explained do not explain.
does not. (i) is, even, without the "!", an imperative:
ii. Do NOT explain what can NOT be explained.
McEvoy asks:
How do we know what "cannot be explained" unless we first try to explain
it?
Here, a distinction which Grice calls 'fine' and which he makes is best
made to apply. It's what Grice calls the reason-rhyme distinction.
Note that this is line 15. And it ends in the rhyme, '/ein/. Ezekiel had
played with that ending in line 11 already, and 12:
11 But residues of meaning still remain,
12 As darkest myths meander through the pain
13 Towards a final formula of light.
14 I, too, reject this clarity of sight.
15 What cannot be explained, do not explain.
Note there is a stop, even if not a full stop (the use of 'stop' here is
taken from the highway code), after 'sight', so that we may consider that
there is a change of 'reason', but since there is no change of 'rhyme' -- the
/ein/ of 'remain', 'pain', and 'explain', we may assume that Ezekiel is
'staying on topic'. Now, what is the topic? There is the paradoxical side to
it that McEvoy points to:
How do we know what "cannot be explained" unless we first try to explain
it?
But this can be easily taken as a rhetorical question even if it ain't. For
nobody every said that we 'do' 'know'. So the implicature can be
cancelled, as per rhetorical questions:
-- We don't. I.e. we do NOT know that what cannot be explained we ought not
to explain.
Cfr. Is the Pope Catholic? (Geary's answer to this rhetorical question is
the subject of a mini-poetical essay)
So it's best to deal with Ezekiel's utterer's meaning in terms of the full
stanza
But residues of meaning still remain,
As darkest myths meander through the pain
Towards a final formula of light.
I, too, reject this clarity of sight.
What cannot be explained, do not explain.
Starting a stanza (or a conversation, or a sentence, as a matter of fact),
as Chomsky says in "Syntactic Structures" is rude. Grice's example is "She
was poor but she was poor." "To begin a conversational contribution with
"But she was poor" can only mesmerise your interlocutor."
The phrase 'residues of meaning' is an obvious reference to Schiffer, a
tutee of Strawson at Magdalen, and his second book "Remants of meaning" (the
book's cover jacket features a painting also called "Remnants of meaning"
and painted on commission). His first book was "Meaning".
While the rhyme /ein/ dominates the stanza, there's the 'light' and the
'sight', third and fourth lines. Ezekiel gives a 'from--to' formula, as it
were. We go, thru the 'pain', towards the 'light'. I don't think he gives a
reason why he rejects this clarify of sight. It must be an obvious reference
to D. Lewis, who once criticised Grice for being too clear: "Clarity is not
enough". One of Grice's conversational maxims is "be clear" -- the
Desideratum of Clarity. He later changed that to "perspicuity" (as 'being
clearer'
in terms of "its etymological roots".
It's only THEN that Ezekiel concludes alla Witters:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Indeed, there is a tercetto for this:
WITTERS, on a sunny Cambridge afternoon: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann,
darüber muss man schweigen.
LORD RUSSELL: Witters, can you speak ENGLISH when with Englishmen? I think
it's otherwise VERY RUDE.
Plumpton Ramsey (trying to mediate). He Kant. In any case, it's clear
enough: whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.
LORD RUSSELL (hardly convinced, and echoing McEvoy, "How do we know what
"cannot be explained" unless we first try to explain it?"): But how do we
know whereof one cannot speak unless we first try to whereof speak?
RAMSEY: Trust me, Bertie [and pointing to WITTERS]: he tried (implicature:
and failed).
WITTERS (as he leaves the pair in puzzlement). But you can always whistle
it along! (He leaves the scene in a whistle).
Cheers,
Speranza
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