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Re: ftor
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Re: [NABOKV-L] ftorDear All,
φθόρος as a synonym of φθορά does indeed mean "destruction, ruin," "death, esp.by some general visitation, as pestilence," "deterioration," "loss by deterioration", "damage," inter much alia, according to the Liddell and Scott (9th ed.). I think Mr. Kelly-Bootle is right in supposing that James Joyce and Nabokov did not read Greek, but Joyce played with the language in Ulysses (in the Aeolus episode and, with "thalassa," in the Telemachus, for example), and remembered the first line of the Odyssey and was able to write it in Greek, whereas I don't remember any similar details about Nabokov (apart from the "classically-inspired neologism" [Susan Elizabeth Sweeney] for sexually attractive little girls, and things like "Catagela" in Lolita, all of which could come to VN via dictionaries, not necessarily directly from the original texts).
Best,
Sergey Karpukhin
----- Original Message -----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] ftor
On 14/02/2010 20:22, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
Having no Greek, I'm afraid that my explanations concerning phtoros (the term was proposed in 1810 by Andre Ampere) may prove wrong and misleading. Perhaps ?????? means not "decay" but rather "demolition" or even "destruction." Fluorine is extremely poisonous.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Alexey: perhaps ?????? means/meant “decay” and “demolition” and “destruction!” Semantic spreading is what words do for a living! They sometimes come to mean their opposites (some 30,000 autoantonyms have been noted globally). Is this confusion between THE meaning and A meaning due to the Slavonic “indifference” to definite and indefinite articles? Latin has the same “problem,” but not the Greek!
Toxicity is a suck-it-and-see empirical property based on dosage not on etymology. Flourine may be extremely poisonous, but many countries flouridate their drinking water to reduce tooth decay (which leads to tooth demolition and destruction)!
We speakers of the great Indo-European language-family members all have some Greek; even more so we scientists! Hence Lancelot Hogben’s attempt to replace Latinate Esperanto with Helenist Interglossa.
I append a pleasant chunk of Ben Jonson’s Shadean tribute to Shakespeare, who (famously) had “small Latin and less Greek.” Note that Ben’s daft iambic rhymes are a tad less comically instrusive than Shade’s tetrametrics -- because they occur a tad less frequently.
James Joyce and Nabokov seem to have suffered a similar lack of Greek in their schooling. Both presumably read their Homer and Aristophanes in translation. It explains, they say, why Joyce’s masterwork is called Ulysses rather than Odysseus?
Stan Kelly-Bootle
My SHAKSPEARE rise ! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses :
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names : but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm !
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion : and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn ;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou ! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James !
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there !
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
(Jonson, Ben. The Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 3. London: Chatto & Windus, 1910. 287-9.)
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
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φθόρος as a synonym of φθορά does indeed mean "destruction, ruin," "death, esp.by some general visitation, as pestilence," "deterioration," "loss by deterioration", "damage," inter much alia, according to the Liddell and Scott (9th ed.). I think Mr. Kelly-Bootle is right in supposing that James Joyce and Nabokov did not read Greek, but Joyce played with the language in Ulysses (in the Aeolus episode and, with "thalassa," in the Telemachus, for example), and remembered the first line of the Odyssey and was able to write it in Greek, whereas I don't remember any similar details about Nabokov (apart from the "classically-inspired neologism" [Susan Elizabeth Sweeney] for sexually attractive little girls, and things like "Catagela" in Lolita, all of which could come to VN via dictionaries, not necessarily directly from the original texts).
Best,
Sergey Karpukhin
----- Original Message -----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] ftor
On 14/02/2010 20:22, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
Having no Greek, I'm afraid that my explanations concerning phtoros (the term was proposed in 1810 by Andre Ampere) may prove wrong and misleading. Perhaps ?????? means not "decay" but rather "demolition" or even "destruction." Fluorine is extremely poisonous.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Alexey: perhaps ?????? means/meant “decay” and “demolition” and “destruction!” Semantic spreading is what words do for a living! They sometimes come to mean their opposites (some 30,000 autoantonyms have been noted globally). Is this confusion between THE meaning and A meaning due to the Slavonic “indifference” to definite and indefinite articles? Latin has the same “problem,” but not the Greek!
Toxicity is a suck-it-and-see empirical property based on dosage not on etymology. Flourine may be extremely poisonous, but many countries flouridate their drinking water to reduce tooth decay (which leads to tooth demolition and destruction)!
We speakers of the great Indo-European language-family members all have some Greek; even more so we scientists! Hence Lancelot Hogben’s attempt to replace Latinate Esperanto with Helenist Interglossa.
I append a pleasant chunk of Ben Jonson’s Shadean tribute to Shakespeare, who (famously) had “small Latin and less Greek.” Note that Ben’s daft iambic rhymes are a tad less comically instrusive than Shade’s tetrametrics -- because they occur a tad less frequently.
James Joyce and Nabokov seem to have suffered a similar lack of Greek in their schooling. Both presumably read their Homer and Aristophanes in translation. It explains, they say, why Joyce’s masterwork is called Ulysses rather than Odysseus?
Stan Kelly-Bootle
My SHAKSPEARE rise ! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses :
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names : but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm !
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion : and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn ;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou ! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James !
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there !
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
(Jonson, Ben. The Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 3. London: Chatto & Windus, 1910. 287-9.)
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/