Every nullity has parents, husky sometimes too, and normal as napkins, even when the warp is square and the weft is round; and the absence of money in an empty purse, the annoying nothing of the nebbish, the missing number in an otherwise winning lottery ticket, a fellmonger who sells pans, the unavailable elevator’s vertiginous shaft, the apparently adequate parking space, an inexplicable hiatus in some notorious continuum (puzzling as an armistice in peacetime), not to mention, as I nevertheless shall, those peculiar anomalies, the lady novelist, the vaginal orgasm, and the raisinless strawberry; or at bedtime that familiar dry wave dashing against the soft line of some snickering pillow: every one of these catacritical errors is as otherwise to the other as ostrich and angular are, prune and juice too, box and cox, sic et non, dear Mom and dearer Dad, and each erupts out of its own emptiness and with its own emptiness into its own emptiness like a cartoon volcano.
Into vacancy of one sort or other, but not always of the same sort, for the nothing of a nebbish is in the realm of values where the nothing of a blank bank balance also is (because you can overdraw on your account, but just try to get four more spoons of soup from an emptied bowl), while the hungry stomach is a chemical condition, the parking space an insured misjudgment, the raisinless strawberry a counterfactual innuendo, lady novelists merely amusing oddities like beauty marks or moles in indiscreet locations, and the losing lottery ticket an ordinary human disappointment; whereas many are made of consternations of an altogether different kind, since there have always been those who believed they might square the circle or defeat infinity in some way, while no one to my knowledge has attempted to pasteurize pain, or open a weather vane to bleed the sky, or warm cold comfort, or cast an ego like a fishing fly: crimes requiring a different punishment, a more discriminating blame—lashes across the bare bottom perhaps with a willowy metaphysical cane.
Plato complained that language falsified the Forms, and Aristotle warned everyone about the fix he would eventually be found in:
Now some [reasonings and refutations] do not really achieve this, though they seem to do so …; and of these the most prolific … is the argument that turns upon names only. It is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of them; and therefore we suppose that what follows in the names, follows in the things as well, just as people who calculate suppose in regard to their counters. But the two cases [name and things] are not alike.
(De Sophisticis Elenchis 164a4-10)
It is also impossible to replicate relations whenever they’re wanted (I can father my firstborn but once), or refasten properties like trousers or stamps, or mimic postures, or picture places upon our ease and inclination. It is equally hard to reenact responses by making heartfelt promises, to restore the past like dry skin, or reproduce whatever qualities might be in question (2 pigs, 3 sisters, 30,000 kroner); so we must bring in our names and numbers, our scales and tables, glottals, grammars, our languages and all our computations, and they—what do they bring?—they bring along all of their private paraphernalia; they bring their freak shows and their friends, their camp followers, babies, baggage, dogs—the poets Plato warned us of, speechifiers, preachers, lectures like this one—their brassy bands, their quarrels, their ambiguities like dirty pots and pans; they attract the criminal element; they pitch their tents in our yards (and you can’t bargain with King Zeno); they leave us the mess I’ve just made us wade through: a sodomous love of limits and a thirst for contradiction like a thirst for wine, a potpourri of worlds perceived by peering between subject and predicate like the shutters of a window (yet who can overcome the pronounced pushiness of the letter p or the pop of the pursed lip when producing it?); then in addition they encourage us to conceive the relations between material things as if they were elements in a valid argument, to imagine Perfect Beings and immaculate contraceptions, to confuse middle terms and causes, to entertain the quaint idea that the Universe is a grandfather’s clock, or hold onto the monstrous notion that it’s someone thinking, dreaming, screaming, or is the process of thought, dream, scream, itself, or tells a story, or exhibits a plan, or celebrates a value, or is fastened together by the mind the way words are clenched in the fist of any judgment, or that such judgments themselves may be logical pictures, or to believe that certain symbols may have the power—how amazing!—to represent their own representational skills, and in signs which are both other and the same as the signified, to picture the very act of that picturing itself.
But aren’t we right to seek in language the imprint of reality? Doesn’t it shape the syntax of our sentences? Surely the way we speak about the world is a response to it just as thoroughly as the world is a reflection of the way we speak? In a moment of uncustomary lucidity, Heidegger puts it this way:
Is the structure of a simple propositional statement (the combination of subject and predicate) the mirror image of the structure of the thing (of the union of substance with accidents)? Or could it be that even the structure of the thing as thus envisaged is a projection of the framework of the sentence?
What could be more obvious than that man transposes his propositional way of understanding things into the structure of the thing itself? Yet this view, seemingly critical yet actually rash and ill-considered, would have to explain first how such a transposition of propositional structure into the thing is supposed to be possible without the thing having already become visible. The question which comes first and functions as the standard, proposition structure or thing-structure, remains to this hour undecided. It even remains doubtful whether in this form the question is at all decidable.
(“The Origin of the Work of Art,”
in Poetry, Language and Thought, trans. by Albert Hofstadter.
New York: Harper and Row, 1971, p. 24)
But if we were making a world rather than trying to render one, wouldn’t all of our questions be answered? Kennst du das Land where all such tricks are fair? where the very sense of transcendence which is made possible by ontological projection and equivocation and type-token confusion and reification and hidden contradiction and rhetorical sleight-of-hand, is appropriate and functional; where Being, if it is so willed, can stick to things like glue or sprout like hair; where certain epistemologies are not merely possible but true; where the affective life is like the sea, only the peaks of the waves can be counted; where space and time are palpable and stored in sacks like sand; a realm where acts are truly caused or truly free or truly fated, and where certain values are happily realized or tragically lost; where the ancient dream of the rationalist—that somewhere in language there is a blueprint or a map of reality (where Eeyore’s meadow’s marked, and Piglet’s tree, as well as where the Woozle wasn’t)—that dream remains a dream because now language is the land—in fiction—where every fact has to have the structure of the sentence which states it, value too, and quality, and apprehension, since there is no out-of-doors in the world where language is the land, no bird in bush or grocery store—just think—no sex or motion, jail or war—just think of that!
2
A Five Finger Exercise
Let’s make a hand. That seems simple enough. Nothing should be easier. A hand. Then we can have the hand do whatever else we want done. The figure, in greeting, thrust forth a hand. There—the work’s complete. I told you nothing was easier. Well. The thrusting-forth of a hand, does that give us a hand? Your ear captured the word. You have it before you, and while the word is perfectly general regarding hands, you know it isn’t your hand that was just thrust forth in greeting, or your neighbor’s—no—or mine, or anyone’s you know. Yet what was thrust forth was not the word, but a hand. Was it an imaginary hand then? a day-dreamed hand? the visual relic of a hand mounted in the memory like a snapshot in a photo album? Once again: no. And it’s not a general blur made by the super-imposure of countless uninteresting images. No. Yet it’s not any specific hand, not the hand of a movie star whom you dream is fumbling with the buttons on your
blouse, not Rodin’s Praying Hands, not Las Manos de Orlac con Peter Lorre either.
The responses of epistemologists are too often irrelevant to reading, and we know they rarely listen. In this context, the word ‘hand’ doesn’t even bring along its definition. A person could understand the sentence perfectly well without being able to say that a hand was that part of the human arm below the wrist. Many people must suppose that the hand is attached to the arm rather than being part of it. In any case, our own hands hang beside us. We need to know no more. All hands resemble our example because resemblance is not an issue. We are aware that every actual hand has its own physiognomy, nevertheless these features have no function in the greeting in question. So we have fashioned a hand whose singularities are otherwise unspecified. If a rockslide kills my cat, who cares what kind of rocks they are?
It might be going too far to say that a noun names a network of possibilities, but it certainly involves one, activates one, makes one relevant. If you like you can argue that the word ‘hand’ is referring to what is common to all hands, but what is common to all hands is just this matrix, this set of slots: six cubbyholes called color, and within these many shades; at least five textures, not omitting slimy; a rich range of temperatures between the fever of sickness and the chill of death; several hundred sizes, equally many shapes, parts rather firmly attached and determined, including swollen knuckles; location of the member on the far hinge of the wrist, ditto; adornment from nail paint to gemwork, utility, behavior, expressiveness, cleanliness, beauty; in short, we are faced with a shoestore’s filing system, and must suspect that the word ‘shoe’ designates the store.
Shall we fill up some of the blanks? color in, and so control, contours? try to find a shoe that will fit, or a pair of woolen gloves not too scratchy for our sensitive hands? Why? Do we need to know more about a hand than—there’s one? The sentence which has been serving as our signal instance is entirely surrounded by logical space like parking lots around a bowling alley. In its case, any unspecified figure, any undeclared hand, although not just any greeting, will do (a wave won’t, a loud hello, a reverential bow). The sentence, as it stands, does not permit us to fill up its emptiness with conjecture. On the contrary.
Still, we are supposed to be in charge here, and if we want to describe, we damn well will. Yet occasions are actually hard to come by. Yesterday I shook hands with the President. Hey! Wow! And what shape were his hands in? I don’t like to shake hands with Fred. His hands are made of molasses. Myrtle’s, though, make my thumb sweet as maple sugar for hours after. We now and then describe events in newspapers (snow fell heavily on the southern sections of the city and on houses where there were numerous pets and several chimneys), and once in a while in ordinary conversation (you should have seen what she wasn’t wearing!), but by and large such descriptions, as well as sentences like The figure, in greeting, thrust forth a hand, are pretty well confined to fiction. And mail-order catalogues, of course. If you don’t think this is so, try to imagine the circumstances in which our example would be in no way out of the ordinary. It is a written sentence, not a spoken one—plain as pie. “This strange guy stuck out his hand, so I figured he was friendly” … that’s one conversational version. The point is that while God may have spoken the world like a cough or a curse, the hand we have here is as “all-in-print” as a ransom note.
And if we describe it, what parts shall we list? shall we mention the fingers of the hand? Not unless we want to find ourselves in ontological hot toddy. Consider the following examples: (1) the fingers of her hand were knuckled like bubbles in a pudding; (2) he received a loving letter of rejection; (3) the fleas of the dog fled; (4) the cock of the walk crowed; (5) the wife of the house felt unfulfilled; (6) the uniforms of the band were tacky. Each of these expressions has the same grammatical structure, but the kind of relation shown by the Noun-X of the Noun-Y form is different in each case. What then, exactly, does the structure show?
With the first—fingers—we have a standard case of part-to-whole, and in the second—that of loving rejection—we have another; however the message of a letter is not a part of the letter in the same coarsely physical fashion as its stamp. Anyway, there’s not temptation to suppose that the fingers belong to the hand the way fleas do to a dog. Quantities pose another problem, for instance, in (7): all of the wrapper was eaten, but none of the candy. “None of the candy” is the kind of deeply puzzling expression Bruno might have pondered long and fondly. Then there are the disquieting formulas: “none of the following,” and “none of the above.” What are you doing today? I am visiting none of my relatives. Next, in “the rapture of the deep” (8), a causal relation is indicated, while in “the odor of the rose” (9), the rose is simply a source.
Now some of these phrases can be rewritten without too much trouble. We can say, “the band’s uniforms,” or “the hand’s fingers,” or “the dog’s fleas,” but are we ready for “the house’s wife,” or “the none’s candy,” or “the walk’s cock”? Something is amiss. We can’t similarly rebend a bee’s knees or rejoint the Pope’s nose, though some kinds of ‘of’ can suffer a complete verbal reversal. It was Abraham Mendelssohn who said: “Formerly I was known as the son of my father; now I am simply known as the father of my son.”
Suppose we concluded that in every phrase of the form X-of-the-Y, the X was a poor relation to the Y which, in some vaguely menacing fashion, “possessed” it. Well, we would be wrong. It may be that the walk does indeed “have” the cock that’s strutting up and down on it the way a hill or a road has a king, but it is also clear that the cock is in charge of the walk, the king the hill. In the case of the wife, it is not obvious who possesses whom. Certainly the dog wants nothing to do with his fleas and will rejoice to learn they are fleeing him. Should we say “the dog of the fleas” then, since they made the original decision about their doubtful room and board? Again, the uniforms of the band belong to the band, but not quite as fingers are fastened to palms, because we can imagine the Dukhobor Drum and Bugle Corps, naked as saints, giving concerts across Canada. With regard to my knowledge of French (10), the language is an object which certainly does not possess my nasalless ineptitudes, and when we call a donkey a beast of burden (11), our emphasis and interest, and presumably our sympathy, is yet another burden to the beast. In the face of this fickleness (12)—of which (13) I have provided but a sliver-sized sample—what in the name of grammar (14) does the word ‘of’ do?
The grammar of our sentences is generally disappointing in this way, and if we wanted to build a world of words, perhaps we would be wise not to use the word ‘of’. However, is ‘to’ or ‘on’ or ‘at’ any better? Who was the ninnie who said it was easy? Some writers believe that the notational inadequacies of ordinary language have important philosophical consequences. The sound and shapes of syllables, they say, their variable dispositions in sentences, are mere appearances, while behind or beneath this phonetic din lies reality like trout asleep in a sunny stream. Appearance beguiles and bamboozles. As Wittgenstein wrote:
Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.
So the expression X-of-the-Y is not the form of a thought, but the form of a falsie.
To the same end, here are two mini-arguments offered us by Jerrold Katz.1
A
There is a fire in my kitchen.
My kitchen is in my house.
There is a fire in my house.
B
There is a pain in my foot.
My foot is in my shoe.
There is a pain in my shoe.
Katz sharpens his own point by becoming beguiled himself. Let me reformulate the argument:
C
The mice in my pantry give me a pain in the ass.
My pantry is in my house and my ass is in
my pants.
So the mice in my house give me a pain in my pants.
We might at first imagine that the mistake we are making is based upon the considerable differences between pains and pantries, rumps and mice, but Katz goes wrong when he supposes that both fire and kitchen are in my house in exactly the same way, just as my version assumes that the pantry and its residents are part of the same whole. My house has 3½ baths, not 8½ mice. If Katz had used mice in his example he might have noticed this.
Given a more precise notation, we might be able to distinguish between the various senses of ‘in’ or the various senses of ‘of’; and in order that we shall no longer be deceived by the ambiguities of surface and subsurface padding—the slit skirt and the billowing blouse—I propose the following thirteen new prepositions, spelled ob, oc, od, of, og, oj … and so on. Now, quite confidently and unambiguously, we can say what we mean:
(1) odor ob the rose
(2) cock oc the walk
(3) fleas od the dog
(4) none og the candy
(5) uniforms ol the band
(6) rapture om the deep
(7) fingers op her hand
(8) beast os burden
(9) face ot fickleness
(10) letter ow rejection
(11) wife oy the house
(12) knowledge oz French
with the original word ‘of’ left to insert between ‘name’ and ‘grammar’ where it belongs, and ‘oj’ to express the last relation oj which we were speaking.
Why is such a sensible suggestion so absurd? There are, I think, two principal reasons: (1) if we were to introduce enough fresh symbols to articulate the relations already implicit in our speech, the increase in vocabulary would weigh so heavily upon our tongues we’d never wag them, since the alleged inefficiency of our language is in fact efficiency itself; and (2) it is simply not true that these relations are hidden or disguised and that we need some special equipment—a map or a set of plans—to find them. Our prepositions do not pretend to name a specific sort of conjunction. They refer to a rather motley group of relations, and the rest of the sentence, as well as the context in which it appears, enables us to choose the kind of connection meant. Nor does our language pretend that ‘bank’ refers only to financial institutions and then fool us with curves and rivers.
World Within The Word Page 32