'Be what you would seem to be'

Anyone care to parse the following?

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"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is�'Be what you would seem to be'�or, if you'd like it put more simply�'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' "
�Alice in Wonderland (1865)

Is this pure word porridge, or a nearly incomprehensibly hypotactic but nevertheless grammatical sentence?

I think it works but I don't have the time right now to sort it out. Might could use the odd comma or two. Don't think any hyphens would help.

Is this pure word porridge, or a nearly incomprehensibly hypotactic but nevertheless grammatical sentence?

You might want to read Carroll's Symbolic Logic. He enjoyed these sort of nonsensical syllogisms. The quotation from Alice, also seems to be poking fun at the British English penchant for double negatives being a sort of augmented positive, (e.g., "this is something I am not unfamiliar with").

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... The quotation from Alice, also seems to be poking fun at the British English penchant for double negatives being a sort of augmented positive, (e.g., "this is something I am not unfamiliar with").

I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.

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... The quotation from Alice, also seems to be poking fun at the British English penchant for double negatives being a sort of augmented positive, (e.g., "this is something I am not unfamiliar with").

I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.

I could. I couldn't fail to disagree with him less but I don't.

I don't think.

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I don't think.

As you say.

do you exist?
(re i don't think)

Yes. I think. I just don't know who the "I" is that is doing the thinking.
What is "I-ness"? For that matter, What is "you-ness"?

Descartes presumed the "I". He could have also said, "I think therefore I ain't" and would have been equally wrong.

To make a semantically logical statement you must first define your terms.

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Is this pure word porridge, or a nearly incomprehensibly hypotactic but nevertheless grammatical sentence?

You might want to read Carroll's Symbolic Logic. He enjoyed these sort of nonsensical syllogisms. The quotation from Alice, also seems to be poking fun at the British English penchant for double negatives being a sort of augmented positive, (e.g., "this is something I am not unfamiliar with").

One of the fun things about reading Douglas Adams' work is coming across his many homages to Carroll's writing. This passage for example, has an echo in one of my favourite bits of Life, The Universe and Everything

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That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least
benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

>That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

The problem with this is that it is almost impossible to tell whether the girl is smart or not without drawing a complicated diagram of some sort; nor is it easy to figure out whether the author wanted to meet her or not. Yes, it's cute, just like "I couldn't fail to disagree with you less" and others of that ilk. But I submit to you that it is not communication, since the purpose of communication is to inform, not to obfuscate.

Cute gets old quickly, while beauty remains for an eternity. I'll take beautiful writing over cute writing every time.

Perhaps it is just I. Then again perhaps not.

WITBOTOTWOTMD? YCSHIBW.

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But I submit to you that it is not communication, since the purpose of communication is to inform, not to obfuscate.

I submit to you that you are taking it way too seriously, since the passage in question was designed to amuse, nothing more.

Have to say I'm with Ted on this one. An example such as the above (the Douglas Adams one, I mean) is fine, for me, to look at. But reading, and trying to decode/decipher/relate an entire book or even chapter is w-a-y more trouble than I want to go to, thanks.

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Have to say I'm with Ted on this one. An example such as the above (the Douglas Adams one, I mean) is fine, for me, to look at. But reading, and trying to decode/decipher/relate an entire book or even chapter is w-a-y more trouble than I want to go to, thanks.

Perhaps for the humour-deprived (at least two of whom have seen fit to respond so far), I should have included the next bit of the book. That may have made clear that what Adams wrote was, what do you call it, oh yes, that's it, A JOKE!!

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Zaphod took a moment or two to find his way through this
labyrinthine string of negatives and emerged at the other end
with surprise.

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That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

Please correct me if I am an imbecile, but, doesn't this just mean: "She is the least stupid young girl I have had the displeasure of meeting"? That's not that obfusatory, is it? Just a kind of damnation with the faintest imaginable praise. It reminds me of a word introduced to this board not so long ago:

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charientism noun. in rhetoric. , a charientism is a figure wherein a taunting expression is softened by a jest; an insult veiled in grace; the Greeks called it charientismus.

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That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

Please correct me if I am an imbecile, but, doesn't this just mean: "She is the least stupid young girl I have had the displeasure of meeting"? That's not that obfusatory, is it? Just a kind of damnation with the faintest imaginable praise.

The character in question was utterly incapable of uttering any complimentary remarks about anyone or anything. This was as close as he could come.

>The character in question was utterly incapable of uttering any complimentary remarks about anyone or anything. This was as close as he could come.

Ah, then it all makes sense.

Now what about this:

"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

:/

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That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

Please correct me if I am an imbecile, but, doesn't this just mean: "She is the least stupid young girl I have had the displeasure of meeting"? That's not that obfusatory, is it? Just a kind of damnation with the faintest imaginable praise.

The character in question was utterly incapable of uttering any complimentary remarks about anyone or anything. This was as close as he could come.

It's one thing to understand the sentence while reading it. Understanding it while having it fly by one's ears is quite different.

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That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

Please correct me if I am an imbecile, but, doesn't this just mean: "She is the least stupid young girl I have had the displeasure of meeting"? That's not that obfusatory, is it? Just a kind of damnation with the faintest imaginable praise.

The character in question was utterly incapable of uttering any complimentary remarks about anyone or anything. This was as close as he could come.

It's one thing to understand the sentence while reading it. Understanding it while having it fly by one's ears is quite different.

That was the real skill of Adams' writing, though. The books were quite different from the radio series. I have the entire series of both, and am as sure as I can be that the above paragraph from the book is NOT in the radio series. The scripts for the radio series were designed to be as funny to listen to as the books were to read, but they were certainly not identical. There are many instances where my eager expectation of hearing some favourite lines from the books was disappointed. Also now I find myself remembering a certain line, and scouring my books for them, only to realise that they must have been from the radio series.

I will also repeat my inital reason for posting the Adams quote. It was to show the influence of Carroll on Adams writing. Both used the ridiculously elaborate sentence structures to entertain. Apparently, their intent seems to have been lost on some readers. This point was clear to me from the post, and I thought it was pretty certain that Mr. Adams put the ref. in as yes, a joke. MY point was that I dislike Carroll's (and pretty much anybody's) obfuscatory writing, thus I am not familiar line by line with his work, thus I probably wouldn't get a reference to it by Adams or anybody, and I don't want to have to stop enjoying the reading, break off the story line in my head, and start wondering what a certain sentence or paragraph might be a reference to. That's all.

I think I might have made sense of this sentence. Tell me what you think:

The sentence in its original form:

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Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

Step 1. Make it a little less incomprehensible by adding some hyphens:

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Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what-you-were-or-might-have-been was not otherwise than what-you-had-been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

Step 2. Turn double negatives into positives.

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Always imagine yourself to be what it might appear to others that what-you-were-or-might-have-been was not what-you-had-been.

Now the sentence can be rephrased into a rather dubious piece of advice, but one which follows logically from the moral the Duchess has reworded "more simply": "Be what you would seem to be" :

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Try to be the sum of others' impressions of you.

Does that make any sense?

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Anyone care to parse the following?

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�or, if you'd like it put more simply�'

It's a typical Lewis Carrol trick to let 'put it more simply ' be followed by something totally absurd.
You puzzle it out put first?

Ah ,I see you just tried. Ouf! Could you not get it as simple as the Dutchess makes it seem to be? ( asked the totally undemanding person)

After looking up the text I think L.C. departed from a total logical sentence like "Never imagine yourself to be different from what others
think you were or might have been would it not have been otherwise....

And then added and shifted words to make it impossible.
A shifting and adding and leaving out game.

Something like that. (Maybe)

Maybe you're right, but there is a reason I'm disinclined to pass over it as word porridge: It is easy for ordinary mortals to write a sentence that is both grammatical and nearly incomprehensible. You just take an ordinary but longish sentence, then ratchet up the parataxis and double-negatives to a sub-incomprehensible level. The difficulty is in the reading.

Even of that I'm not so sure. I guess it is just as hard to make such a sentence as it is to read it. I only guessed it was done this way. Maybe the mathematics' and knitting department ( specialists , of course: mathematical and knitting specialists)
would know the better of this.

Of Troy and ParkinT? A sentence with a purl and a slipped knit and another purl and I don't know. I think guessing how it was done is easier than really doing it. Lewis Carrol was a great and playful mathematician. For him it must have been an easy game.

Methinks the key is in the first directive. 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise' then stop there. The rest of the blurb takes you back to the beginning.

Always be that X which does not appear to be a Y to others (where X is "what you were or might have been", and Y is "what you had been").

How's that?

I substituted the x and y's for Cats and Dogs.

>I substituted the x and y's for Cats and Dogs.

Huh?

Maybe it's raining cats and dogs in New Zealand. I liked this thread Hydra, even if the phrase seems to stay L.C.'s forever.

It made the mental gymnastics easier for me

I just thought that both LC and DA used these obfuscatory sentences to pass on information about the speaker not because the content of the sentence, esp in LC, was important.

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Maybe it's raining cats and dogs in New Zealand.

It very often is.

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Maybe it's raining cats and dogs in New Zealand.

It very often is.

You speak from experience? It certainly doesn't rain much in my part of the country.

>You speak from experience? It certainly doesn't rain much in my part of the country.

I lived in Auckland for 5 years, and the weather there is schizophrenic. I think the song "Four Season's In One Day" isn't being poetical, just describing the weather.