“Saki” aperçu

 ~  horses drinking knee-deep   in duck-crowded ponds ~

[from a short sketch of 1911, by H.H.Munro]

The author, glancing down his nose

at the jumped-up American's  pathetic attempts

to horn in on “Saki”s fame

Like a duck in thunder (II)

Recently I had occasion to seek the origin and meaning of the phrase (in full) “like a dying duck in a thunderstorm”.   If you google that phrase, you’ll find plenty -- mostly pages and pages of ill-informed and inconclusive forum-discussion;  even if an authoritative answer lies buried there somewhere, it is not worth one’s while to sift through the debris.

So here is the entry from a standard reference-work, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, by Eric Partridge (first edition 1937; many subsequent updates), in its entirety:

To have a ludicrously forlorn, hopeless, and helpless appearance :  coll., orig. rural:  from ca. 1850 (Ware).

Now, as it happens, we can antedate that date;  and this, in a lexicographically most interesting way:  not with a simple antecedent Erstbeleg, but something more powerful though more roundabout.

~

Back when I was an editor at Merriam-Webster dictionaries, I had full responsibility for the two technical disciplines of Etymology and of Pronunciation, but none at all for the company’s meat and drink, which was defining;  let alone for deciding which new words were to be entered in the flagship Collegiate ™ dictionary, which was lightly revised each year, and wholly reedited each decade.  That privilege fell to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Mish -- an intelligent and well-educated man, and not without a certain wry humor;  but as regards the humors, he rather took after his atrabilious and phlegmatic predecessor, Doctor Johnson, whose sour frowning portrait hung over his desk, exactly matching the successor’s habitual mood.  I used to despair at the chef-rédacteur’s obstinate sluggishness against admitting culturally key new words -- they’d make it in eventually, but only after the kairos had long passed -- and occasionally would champion some one particular word for inclusion, loading the files with attestations for the definer to refer to next time around.

One such, at the height of Gorbachev, was glasnost.   Many were the citations I supplied, to no avail.  However (one might argue) you can always pile up stats for some particular term, no matter how specialized, by drawing from specialized sources:  which would prove nothing.  The Collegiate is not for the specialist, but for the general educated public;  and glasnost is, after all, in origin  Russian:  the Collegiate is quite rightly chary of letting in too many foreign terms (like Erstbeleg -- common in the lexicographic literature, but unknown outside it).  So, how to show that the word had passed into English common currency?

In support of the suggestion that glasnost be included, I submitted slips attesting such derivata as glasnostic, with fully English morphology (and phonology:  the stress shifts to another vowel, which additionally is detensed).  Now, that was a nonce form, unworthy of inclusion on its own;  but it did witness the fact that, by then, glasnost had already passed into the everyday Wortschatz of American English, for a confection like “glasnostic” presupposes the antecedent currency of the base.

~

And so, back to our duck.

Consider the following passage from Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit:

‘What,’ he asked of Mr Pecksniff, happening to catch his eye in its descent;  for until now  it had been piously upraised, with something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric storm …

Now,  this circumlocuitous, scarcely lapidary, obscure expression, is (as the annotator notes, in the Penguin edition) nothing more nor less than a winking allusion to the set expression (alliterative, assonant, and striking in its imagery) a dying duck in a thunderstorm.  Moreover, the allusion could not possibly work unless that expression were antecedently quite familiar to the reader, since -- much more than the morphological presupposition of glasnost by glasnostic-- there is a significant gap (lexical, though not semantic) between the original and the pastiche.   The case is often to be met with in literature -- more usually in a droll setting, as here, though we do find  “like the cat in the adage” in MacBeth, an allusion  (one requiring rather a lot of the groundlings, one should have thought) to the Latin catus amat piscis, sed non vult tingere plantas (a cat likes fish, but doesn’t like to get its paws wet).

The key point here is that the first half of Martin Chuzzlewit  (where our passage appears) was initially serialized  in 1843,  thus antedating the Ware/Partridge date.  And if the proverb had occurred literatim, it would antedate matters no further.  But as it stands, we can deduce that the adage was already in wide circulation among Dickens’ anticipated readership, well before 1843:  else he could not have counted on them to get the reference:  and without that, the passage falls flat.

[Psychostylistic footnote]  It is the very paradoxical absurdity of the original adage, that tempts Dickens to toy with it.  For after all, ducks do just fine in thunderstorms, much better than do squirrels (or the proverbial “drowned rat”) -- rain being, as the expression has it, “nice weather for ducks”.   In just such a fashion does Wodehouse (through his character Bertie Wooster) play, in novel after novel, with the speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that ends “like quills upon the fretful porpentine”.  Or, at a humbler level, such dimestore wit as hasta la pasta (for hasta la vista).

(For our own discourse upon said porpentine, click here.)

For final proof, if proof be needed, this witness from Washington Irving’s fine finger-exercise of a story of 1824, “The Stout Gentleman”:

Rain pattered against the casements.  … There were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable cristfallen cock … Everything was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

-- Washington Irving, from Tales of a Traveller

.

Scaups at Play

(deep/down/diving …(

(b-

Bbbbb-bb-lllll- ……………   ((  o      o        o       .   .     .       .         .

??

??????

????!!!!!!!!!!!!

(p)pOP!   uP !!!

(such fun …)

Meteorology à la mode du docteur Justice

Today’s nowcast:

Rain, rain, rain.

This is a happy day for ducks,    an unhappy day for squirrels.

This makes us both happy and sad.

A Zoögraphy of WDJ

    BENEDICITE, omnes bestiae et pecora

Many of you may have wondered -- What’s with all the animals already ? ! ?  Cantor, topology, passe encore;  but like -- penguins?  freakin’ woodchucks?? -- What’s up with that?

Hey it’s the same at work.  I spend my days at a cluttered desk in a tiny pod, Saving American Lives (yeh okay occasionally Canadian too, to stretch a point), and these scary guys who can kill with a paper-clip (with even conceptualizing a paper-clip) walk by (the spookiest ones  in civvies), and what they see perched on every bookshelf  is a plush menagerie -- mostly penguins, but other friends as well:  an Army hamster who sings “Caissons” when you press his paw, in a hamster voice; Bob the Grunting Hedgehog (squeeze him and see); and various silent animals (they could speak if they so desired, but they have taken Trappist vows) -- microscopic teddy-bears; Miss Mice.   I don’t ask for them, they just materialize.  (You and I were born in this same way.)

But the point I wish to make here, before a worldwide audience of mostly astronauts and research scientists and professor-types, is that this apparent furry confusion is actually intellectually structured -- the zoösphere is a noösphere.  (Say, that’s rather good.  Reckon I’ll copyright that.   ©2011 Dr. J Worldwide Universal Enterprises.)

Now, some of you -- well, you yourselves are too young, the time is not ripe:  but some of your grandchildren may wish to distinguish themselves in the burgeoning field of Justice Studies ®:  and for the sake of such of these, why not offer this handy cheat-sheet, the key to the symbolism of all the animals on this site.  I mean, I could stuff it in a time-capsule  and bury it by the old oak, but this is simpler

And so -- Time for the March of the Animals !

(1)  Ducks. 

These, as I conceive them -- and as I actually hear them quacking -- are like the choirs of angels, who spend their being in continuous joyous praise of the Lord.  St. Francis drops by to preach to them from time to time;  they are in ecstasy.

(2) Penguins

Much more complex.  These don’t need to be preached to -- they have already received their Word, though we know not what that Word is.  The situation is precisely comparable to that of the Men and the Jinn -- parallel creations, seldom interacting, each the recipient of Revelation, which  in each case  some accept and some reject.

(3) Woodchucks

These lie more distant from any theology.  They are clueless, humbly doing their best (as do we all).  They are not consciously aware of their Maker, in any focussed sense;  their state of mind is comparable to that masterfully portrayed by Hugh Lofting in Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake (1948), where an antediluvian turtle tells the story of Noah’s Ark. 

(Bibliophilic footnote:  The original hardcover volume is difficult to acquire.  I ordered it several times from various used-booksellers, only to receive the wrong title every time but one.  Conceivably I own the last extant copy on Earth.  And I would not part with it at any price.  … --- … -- Well, hey, okay, but bidding begins at a million.  We accept payment in Swiss francs or in bullion.)

(4) Kittehs.

These already have their own World, even their own Scripture, to which we would not presume to add.

(5) Doggehs.

Kittehs  no like doggehs.

(6) Bunnehs.

Vulnerable, infantile innocence.  Loveable but too lowly for St. Francis to really preach to.  He does bless them, though.

(7) Turtles

I like turtles.

(8) Elephants

Elephants denote wisdom, epitomized in Ganesha.

Another magnificent elephant-friend is Babar, who embodies every virtue you can imagine.   He is the pachydermal counterpart of Doctor Dolittle -- immensely knowledgeable and capable, yet gentle (and rotund).

(9) Capybaras

These are rather depressed at being known only as the “world’s largest rodent”;  cf. Gregor Samsa.   Their role on this blog is based on that of the sheep in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Hilbert Space” (not sure if that’s the right title, have to look that one up), only I figured it’d be funnier with capybaras.

(10)  B-b-b-BUGS....

Of the Great Chain of Being, Tillyard wrote:

Its main function was to point morals for the benefit of man.  The ant was a wonderful creation, but the chief thing was that he was there for the sluggard to go to.

-- The Elizabethan World Picture (1942)

(11)  Mr. Mouse

Mice are made by our Creator  to nourish the owls, and to point moral examples for our edification.

[Philological footnote:

Zoögraphy, pronounced zoh-OG-ra-fee.  It means ‘map of the animal landscape’.
Noösphere, pronounced NO-us-feer.  It means 'the mental world as a structured whole, transcending any individual mind'.]

[Update 9 August 2014]

(12)  Pangolins.

awl .... sweeeeeepeeeeeeee .........

I have never written a line about these lovelies, but they are so-o-o-o  sweet ...

[Thanks go out to Snarla  for mailing me that image.]

The Meaning of Life

No solution, just an observation.

When fleeing the sabretooth, chowing down on mastodon, making love, or proving the Riemann hypothesis -- the question does not arise.  The problem comes in when you have the leisure of a philosopher.

Yet nor do the dear ducks wonder,  for all the leisure they have.

An Ente-logical Proof of the Existence of God

=>  Ducks ! <=

[Note that the Label for this post  is not “satire”  but “epiphany”.

 I find this proof completely convincing.
It is known to some scholars as the Ocular-Oracular Proof.]

~

(For additional epiphany, click here: )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzOXzZWUik

Monostich (VIII)

~

~      ~

Ducks sitting plump in the sunlight,  sleeping and sunning, looking like duck decoys.

~      ~

~

“Before I have done with you, you shall thank God for the very  ducks on the pond.”

-- Innocent Smith, in G.K. Chesterton, Manalive (1912)

But the Baby Bear’s Porridge was Ju-u-ust Right…

Our Canadian Colleague comments, concerning a recent post (“Why is there Something rather than Nothing, Grandpa?”):

>> patterns not specifically tailored to the cerebral convolutions ... of ... the humble woodchuck.

>I think you are disagreeing here with most of the Christian theologians who have ever lived. Surely God created the universe just for us, so everything in it ought to make sense?

Now as it happens, I am at present reading a book that addresses this very issue -- but by a physicist, not a theologian (though he is a Christian):  Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma:  Why Is the Universe  Just Right for Life? (2006).   The enigma in question refers to the program of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle.   This exists in various strengths, such as the Weak Anthropic Principle -- basically “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here -- and if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to know it” -- and the Strong Anthropic Principle -- in short, that the universe was fine-tuned so as to bring forth -- Hi Mom! --  intelligent life -- with no doubt many variants in-between, such as the “Feeling off my feed but should soon be right as rain” Anthropic Principle.   Since book-length discussions of these are easily available, I won’t comment further.

*

The alert reader will have noticed, however, that so far I have sidestepped the challenge issuing from the hyperborean forests.

Before replying publically, I passed this note to my Spiritual Advisor, Dr. Massey:

Now in fact, I am unable to conceive that the universe was created "just for us" -- certainly not just for H. sapiens;  *possibly* for all rational species, of which there may be a great many.    This view is not heresy, I hope?

To my immense relief, he thus replied:

No heresy there. Certainly, we must, by revelation, hold that only humans are created in the Imago Dei (I'm here, btw, using the nominative of the technical term, but after the preposition "in" in Latin, it would have been "in imagine Dei". I had originally typed just that, but thought better of it.)
In fact, a fairly straightforward reading of Genesis 1 would conclude that God did not create the universe for Man, but rather out of sheer goodness. Man was given an important caretaker role over that creation, but it wasn't made *for* him. Further, scripture attests a speaking animal in Numbers 22.

This keeps happening:  By a process of mediation and reasoning, I arrive at a conclusion that seems potentially alarming, only to discover that it is a doctrine tolerated or even advocated by the Holy Mother Church.

Even better, the learnèd doctor goes on:

In fact, a rereading of the delightful passage in Numbers 22 reveals that animals are experiencing the supernatural world on a level we humans are not. Balaam's ass, to be sure, cannot speak until the LORD "opened his mouth." But Balaam is not able to see the Angel of the LORD until God "opened his eyes."

Surely, after having his eyes opened, we do not conclude that Balaam is not really seeing the Angel. In the same way, we are not permitted to conclude that it is not really the donkey speaking. (In answer to some commentaries that say that God was merely speaking through the dumb animal.)

The Angel further points out that he would have spared the donkey and killed Balaam if they had come any closer.

So animals are, according to scripture, walking around and quite normally and naturally seeing what is invisible to us. And what do they see? They see a world filled with the servants and angels of God all around.

I have often noticed this phenomenon myself, particularly among the ducks.

*

A viewpoint somewhat more congenial to the thesis fathered above upon Christian theologians, may be found in Islam.  Although the Qur’an is overall strongly theocentric, in the matter of Adam  it is more anthropocentric than is the Torah.  For in Sura 2:31-33 we learn that God taught Adam the names of things, then stumped the angels and had Adam himself instruct the angels in the names;  and in verse 34, God orders the angels, “Bow down to Adam”:  which they did, but Iblis (Satan) refused, and thus became a kafir (unbeliever).

As for whether the cosmos itself was specifically made for mankind, 2:29 says only “It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth.”  This says nothing about other galaxies, let alone the cosmos as a whole, let alone Riemannian manifolds and E8.