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KulakRevolt  2yr ago (anarchonomicon.substack.com)   3671 thread views

Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence: We used to be a Civilization

anarchonomicon.substack.com

A piece I wrote on one of the most fascinating and incredible thriftstore finds I've ever stumbled upon.

The Edwardians and Victorians were not like us, they believed in a nobility of their political class that's almost impossible to understand or relate to, and that believe, that attribution of nobility is tied up with something even more mysterious: their belief in the fundamental nobility of rhetoric.

Still not sure entirely how I feel about this, or how sure I am of my conclusions but this has had me spellbound in fascination and so I wrote about it.

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if we need translations of Shakespeare and Milton and Pope, we will lose that unbroken heritage, our children will be unable to regain it.

Words just don't mean what they used to in Shakespeare's time. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just how language changes. Example:

“Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment,” which seems to mean that you should let other people criticize you but refrain from judging them—strange advice. But by “take censure” Shakespeare meant “evaluate,” so that Polonius is really saying “assess” other men but don’t jump to conclusions about them.

Why stop at Shakespeare? He wasn't the first to write in English, after all. Perhaps we should ground our language in the classic work of the Gawain poet.

Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye

To clanly clos in golde so clere,

Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye,

Ne proved I never her precios pere.

Sure, you need to learn a few words, but it's already just about comprehensible.

Because Shakespeare has long been widely considered the greatest author not just in English but in any language. We anglophone peoples are blessed to speak the same modern English he wrote in, why would we wish to destroy that heritage when we could pass it to our children?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rJpQmhAUJlc

Except it's not the same language, because when he says "take each man's censure" it means something totally different. I'd have a better chance at understanding "Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye/Ne proved I never her precios pere.".

The heritage you want to pass on, of reading original Shakespeare and understanding everything he wrote, has been gone for hundreds of years.

the greatest author not just in English but in any language.

I don't think this is a widely held view, except perhaps among those who only speak English.

The heritage you want to pass on, of reading original Shakespeare and understanding everything he wrote, has been gone for hundreds of years.

It seems to have been alive and well in American culture until quite recently.

As far as Shakespeare being the greatest author of all time, I think he certainly makes everyone's shortlist regardless of where they're from. I would certainly rank him above the top writers in the other major European languages (Cervantes for Spanish, Goethe for German, etc.), but I can't speak to the best of the other major literary traditions except that Du Fu probably gives him a run for his money.

Soundbites and references to Shakespeare have been alive and well and in fact continue to be alive and well.

Garber also discusses the role Shakespearean rhetoric has played in American political culture since the founding. Quotes from Shakespeare have always been ubiquitous in American politics. They were used in the earliest days of the American republic. They are used with equal frequency today.

As for actually understanding everything that he wrote beyond the soundbites that remain comprehensible in The Year of Our Lord 2023, you cannot do that today without studying English as Shakespeare spoke it.

There's certainly a place for historical linguistics in our understanding of literature, but if you mean that the educated, literate reader of English needs to take a full course on Early Modern English to understand Shakespeare in the original, rather than simply referring to the footnotes that accompany any modern edition of his plays at moments of confusion, then I disagree. I will however allow that by my standards very few American English-speakers post-1960 count as being educated.

Moreover, it is entirely possible for individual works in archaic language to be understood even when anything else written in that stage of the language would not, so long as those works are continually read and reread, commented on, and taught by succeeding generations. I don't think it's fair to say that modern Christians reading the King James Bible don't understand its meaning if they don't know how to conjugate for thou or that Chinese people don't understand Tang Dynasty poetry because they are reading the characters using modern pronunciation where they no longer rhyme. The most extreme example of this is Hebrew, which was able to be revived as a spoken language solely because of an unbroken chain of literary transmission in the form of preserved religious texts.

If you're reading Shakespeare with footnotes, then the conversation is totally moot - I could read Chinese if you supply the proper footnotes.

I don't think it's fair to say that modern Christians reading the King James Bible don't understand its meaning

I guarantee you that there are parts of the KJV that people do not understand correctly (see the "censure" example above). "Thou" (which is not a verb and doesn't conjugate) has nothing to do with it. Words simply do not mean what they used to.

The most extreme example of this is Hebrew, which was able to be revived as a spoken language solely because of an unbroken chain of literary transmission in the form of preserved religious texts.

That's because people would literally learn Hebrew as a foreign language to understand the Torah. Yiddish speakers didn't just read every other word and fill in the gaps with the footnotes. There are no footnotes. This is exactly the opposite of the approach you are talking about with Shakespeare.

While Shakespeare didn't include footnotes, he also was writing plays, not novels -- moderns will have no problem understand what is going on most of the time watching a competent performance, despite the original language.

I do not believe that moderns will understand that "censure" means something totally different, no matter how competent the actors are.

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