On 10/10/2016 9:01 AM, Adriano Palma wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6GbYdB1c
"Horse Feathers," perhaps, but was perhaps only because of years of reading Phil-Lit/Lit Ideas notes that the discrepancy between "sit" in the definitive Marianne Moore and the "suit" elsewhere caught me up. While Speranza concludes that "sit" in Moore's poem would be "nonsense" as does your Marx Brothers quip, I recalled something else I read about Moore. Her mother, a very powerful influence in her life taught Indians in Carlysle. It seemed to me the reviewer was jumbling Mrs Moore and Marianne Moore so Marianne may have taught Indians as well. In any case I wondered if "sit" might have been an inside joke with Shaw based on someone's joke about how Indians speak. Then when her poem was published an editor "corrected" it to read "suit." Just speculation on my part and perhaps more nonsense on the parts of Speranza and Palma. But this morning I've been reading an interesting review of Louis Begley's biography of Franz Kafka. I read Kafka, everything published in English, back in the 50s and found it so depressing I swore I'd never read him again, but Begley, and I've read elsewhere as well, relates how when Kafka was reading the beginning of THE TRIAL out-loud to his friends, they all laughed, Kafka included. When I read THE TRIAL I didn't laugh. Begley apparently writes that the unimaginative Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor has given generations of us the wrong idea about Kafka. And so I'm replenishing my library with Kafka, and Begley's biography, to see if I can find it in me to laugh.
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*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Moore's Implicature
J. Austin used to say, "Some like Witters, but Moore's MY man". Of course, had J. L. Austin knew of Marianne Moore, that should read: "Some like Witters, but Moore's MY woman." Only he was married to Mrs. Austin.
Helm quotes from Moore:
i. You suit me well.
and adds an asterisk:
ii. You suit* me well.
and brings implicature ("unless Speranza disagrees +> & I'm wrong and the Grice is right).
So let us consider this in some more detail. Grice loved poetry, especially of the ambiguous type (he spent half of the second William James Lecture on William Blake's line, "Never seek to tell thy love/love that never told can be/for the gentle wind does move/silently invisibly" -- Grice thinks that Blake's ambiguity in "love that never told can be", i.e. either cease to exist, or narrated, is 'deliberate', and "implicatural in nature"). But Moore is, shall we say (figuratively) a different animal. Helm is doing a meta-analysis, for he is relying on Fenton.
Helm is, of course, sincere. He writes about his addition of "*" to (i):
"my note. /Marianne Moore, Complete Poems /has "sit" in lieu of "suit."" -- rendering the line:
iii. You sit me well.
Helm adds:
"Fenton's text makes more sense, but Speranza may disagree."
Well, 'sense' is a bit of chimaera, figuratively. Sampson wrote a critique of Grice which he called, "Making sense", and was published by Oxford. Cohen, another anti-Griceist, wrote on "The diversity of meaning". In general, it's best to understand sense as an arrow or two arrows:
--> one sense
<-- the opposite sense
I suppose this applies to cars and bikes. For planes one has to add
<
/ (an arrow pointing upwards) a third sense
/
> (an arrow pointing downwards) a fourth sense.
If you sail, you need more senses. There's NE, for example (vide compass). Yet Grice says, "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity").
There was once a discussion about pizza vs. a box of pizza. Is 'sense' countable, or a mass noun? Helm, in talking of his reading making "MORE SENSE" implicates that 'sense' is like 'joy', rather than 'apple'. (It would be otiose to buy five apples and be told by the seller, "Buy more apple." It's different with apple sauce.
There was a vintage song called "Sitting pretty", so surely there is some sense to
iii. You sit me well.
i.e. you sit me pretty ("sitting pretty" is slang for 'not being invited to dance in a ball'). "Suit" brings all sorts of different implicatures. Yet, what does Fenton say? We appreciate that Helm cares to quote from him and Driver. Helm writes:
"Lest anyone dismiss the /Complete Poems /use of "sit," [as a Griceian otiosity] the volume I have edited by Clive Driver is putting itself forward as the definitive edition of Moore's poems with the note" that Helm quotes:
Driver notes:
"the text conforms as closely as is now possible to the author's final intentions."
i.e. Cliver Driver has read H. P. Grice and is referring to what Grice calls m-intentions, i.e. intentions to mean. Cfr. Owen Barfield on Speaker's meaning. Driver is also aware that the Grice is right and that Beardsley's 'intentional' fallacy is a misnomer since, well, it's not a fallacy (cfr. Moore's naturalistic fallacy, that Moore thought a fallacy but Grice didn't, and rightly so).
Driver drives us through the exegesis (ouch):
"Five of the poems written after the first printing of this volume have been included. Late authorized corrections, and earlier corrections authorized but not made, have been incorporated. Punctuation, hyphens, and line arrangements silently changed by editor, proofreader, or typesetter have been restored, Misleading editorial amplifications of the notes have been removed."
Helm concludes:
"And so, "sit"?"
Indeed.
"sit" is Anglo-Saxon, from Old English sittan "to occupy a seat, be seated, sit down, seat oneself; remain, continue; settle, encamp, occupy; lie in wait; besiege" (class V strong verb; past tense sæt, past participle seten), from Proto-Germanic *setjan (source also of Old Saxon sittian, Old Norse sitja, Danish sidde, Old Frisian sitta, Middle Dutch sitten, Dutch zitten, Old High German sizzan, German sitzen, Gothic sitan), from PIE root *sed- (1) "to sit" (see sedentary). With past tense sat, formerly also set, now restricted to dialect, and sate, now archaic; and past participle sat, formerly sitten. In reference to a legislative assembly, from 1510s. Meaning "to baby-sit" is recorded from 1966.
It's rare that Moore may mean "you baby-sit me well," but you never know. O. T. O. H. "suit," like "Moore", ain't Anglo-Saxon.
"suit," "be agreeable or convenient, fall in with the views of," 1570s, from suit (n. from Latin secutus, past participle of sequi "to attend, follow" (see sequel)), perhaps from the notion of "join a retinue clad in like clothes." Earlier "seek out" (mid-15c.); "be becoming" (mid-14c.). Meaning "make agreeable or convenient" is from 1590s. Meaning "provide with clothes" is from 1570s; that of "dress oneself" is from 1590s; with up (adv.) from 1945. Expression suit yourself attested by 1851. Related: Suited; suiting.
Moore may be having Witters's idea of 'sense,' where "You suit me well" makes sense (since it depicts a 'state of affairs') whereas "You sit me well" is nonsense (or "no-sense", as Grice prefers). But "You sit me well" is not necessarily no-sense. Moore may be having in mind an emphasis on the "well" ("You don't sit me ugly, but pretty, or well"). Note that the adverbial use of 'well' is very correct. Neither "You suit me good" nor "You sit me good" make much sense -- "if any," as McEvoy might want.
One may explore the conversational implicatures further: "You suit me well" seems like a compliment, and a serious one at that. Plus, the utterer (Moore) has the intention to communicate to her addressee (Shaw) that she is pleased. On the other hand, my favoured reading raises the question as to why Moore would need Shaw's help to sit her (bad or not) in the first place. But poetry, as Grice says, "is never about the first first place."
Cheers,
Speranza
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