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WARNING: Lots of questions at the end! I am reading Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex and came across this thought in his main character / narrator: Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.How do you feel about this? Would you agree that the words for emotions fall short to describe human experience? (in English or in your other languages). Is there any "train-car construction" that you definitely would create in order to describe a specific emotion you have experienced? Finally, would you agree that this is a sign that "language is patriarchal"?  I'm curious to read your answers, and I'll also post mine when I have a bit more time to think about it. Thank you.
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Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.
Wow! That's a provocative thought. The author invites us to take the language to a new level of subtlety, a new level of complexity and nuance and coloration approaching art or even music. An OED II sort of challenge.
The first word that springs to my mind, Marianna, is the word "bittersweet" -- which I thought was 2 words until I looked it up. Please see definition below.
"Bittersweet" is a conflicted word with mixed emotions like the mixed emotions described in your extract, the most paradoxical of which is "the happiness which attends disaster".
I assume Eugenide is thinking of something like the aftermath of 911 where the citizens of New York became a community as never before, where the worst brought out the best in perfect strangers, where evil inspired heroism and self-sacrifice.
Would evilgrace - grace in the face of evil - be a train-car construction for the emotions of 911, I wonder?
P.S. It occurs to me, Marianna, as an afterthought, that it is only in the crucible of disaster, in the harrowing pit of crisis, that true virtue is born.
This, I believe, is the symbolism of the phoenix rising from the ashes, of Christ's arms outstretched, as though rising in flight, on the cross.
Which reminds me that "crucible" and "cross" originate in the same root.*
bit·ter·sweet ( P ) Pronunciation Key (btr-swt) n.
A woody vine of the genus Celastrus, especially the North American species C. scandens and the eastern Asian species C. orbiculata, having small, round, yellow-orange fruits that open at maturity to expose red seeds. Also called staff tree.
See bittersweet nightshade.
A dark to deep reddish orange.
adj.
Bitter and sweet at the same time: bittersweet chocolate.
Producing or expressing a mixture of pain and pleasure: a movie with a bittersweet ending.
Dark to deep reddish-orange.
[After its roots, which are said to taste bitter, then sweet when chewed.]
* Edit: Oops, maybe not.
MW - Main Entry: crux
Pronunciation: 'kr&ks, 'kruks
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural crux·es also cru·ces /'krü-"sEz/
Etymology: Latin cruc-, crux cross, torture
1 : a puzzling or difficult problem : an unsolved question
2 : an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome <the crux of the problem>
Dictionary.com - cru·ci·ble ( P ) Pronunciation Key (krs-bl) n.
A vessel made of a refractory substance such as graphite or porcelain, used for melting and calcining materials at high temperatures.
A severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial. See Synonyms at trial.
A place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces: “Macroeconomics... was cast in the crucible of the Depression” (Peter Passell).
Metaphorically, at least, the meaning is identical. Perhaps that suggests a deeper association between "cross" and "crucible" than the Dictionaries recognize. Perhaps?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Middlesex is such an interesting book--its open line, reminds me of the worderful line that opened Ahab's Wife.
From Middlesex "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkable smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974."
(you could say everything else in the book leads up to understanding that introductory sentence)
I don't know that i agree that language is patriarcial, but i do think it is often inadiquate to describe feeling.
i think there are very few times that you feel true joy, or complete happiness, there are often co-mingling of emotions. and that to the mixture varies to much from human being to human being to ever have enough words to describe specifically one one person is feeling.
the book is filled with wonder words.. (and it fails, too, and talks about long handled wooded spatulas for pushing and retreiving bread from a stone oven, not of peels--but the ommission of the specific word was glaring only because of the detail paid to so many other words!
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I do agree, of Troy; although occasionally the storyline sags a bit for my taste, I am thoroughly enjoying Eugenides's language, characters and descriptions. Reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez's Hundred Years of Solitude. About the narrator's claim that language is ill-suited to convey emotion because it is patriarchal, I would disagree, if only because I am really weary of the facile link that is established between anything male and lack or simplicity of feeling. Sure, this is not the character's claim (that males feel more simply), but I still object to the idea that it is some patriarchal influence that has given us those entirely unsatisfactory (for him) words to describe feeling. As of Troy remarks, no individual human experience can ever be like any other, and so one common language to describe both is necessarily going to fall short somewhere, however it has arrived at the shape it has (linguistic processes of change, simplification, economy, transfer, etc.) And fortunately, more emotion-friendly "Germanic train-car constructions" can exist linguistically, cognitively and socially, as Eugenides proves with his own examples. No matter that we can't use a single word to describe "constant wonder at the uniqueness of each sunset"*: I am sure many of you can relate to a greater or lesser degree...  * and no, I don't think I would prefer one single word to describe it either!
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> claim that language is ill-suited to convey emotion because it is patriarchal
Our language is ill-suited, I think. Or at least the way in which we use our language. It's not 'emotions' we have anymore, for example, it's our 'mental states'! Ask five people today how they are going and if you get more than standard answers I'd be very surprised. We are at, any one instant, the sum of direct and indirect environmental forces, of our mood, our memories recalled, our mental and physical rhythms - all these things - but ask someone how they are and you are sure to get a hurried, 'Oh, fine, fine!'.
Our type of usage promotes the notion of discrete predicates going about making the world what it is. You might hold the extraordinary proliferation of objects throughout history as being responsible for this. We, as the sorcerer's apprentice, have now opened up pandora's box and are frantically rummaging. Where you fit in the 'patriarchy' is another story. Regarding emotional words, I think you can opt for the "Germanic train-car constructions" but using combined portmanteau words doesn't necessarily get you much closer to putting your finger on it (not that that is possible, right?). The German 'Kofferwörter' are actually, IMO, far more useful for succinctly describing technical issues - go figure.
I think the best you can do with emotional language is collect a host of excellent metaphors and calibrations to outline the abstract, to reign in what you're getting at. Once you know what you're are not talking about you have a much better idea of what you mean.:-)
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I think the best you can do with emotional language is collect a host of excellent metaphors and calibrations to outline the abstract, to reign in what you're getting at. Once you know what you're are not talking about you have a much better idea of what you mean.:-)Agreed, B-Y. That's the role poets used to fill in society a hundred years ago. Poets like Byron *, the celebrities of a by-gone age. But since the advent of television, and blockbuster movies, we expect all of our emotional experiences to be delivered to us in graphic form. And poetry doesn't even exist in public schools any more. Now our celebrities are admired more for their charisma than for their 'content'. * The U.S. actually has a "poet laureate", it seems. Does anyone know his name? [Perhaps here on AWADtalk, but in the country at large?] The current Poet Laureate-elect is [deleted]. He was born in New York in 1941 and has published six collections of his poetry, including Picnic, Lightning, and The Art of Drowning, and has another book coming out in September 2001. He's a Guggenheim fellow and a professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He was appointed Poet Laureate on June 21, 2001, and will formally begin his term in October.http://snipurl.com/gn5q* In fact, charisma is the message, not content. A hundred years ago and more, the only way you could experience a celebrity's 'charisma' was through his written word. The charisma was in his words, that is, in the mind of the artist, not in his visual image. Today charisma exists on the outside, not on the inside - a complete reversal of what was judged exalted in the human condition a hundred years ago. * Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Byron (of Rochdale), George (Gordon), 6th BaronThe most notorious Romantic poet and satirist. Byron was famous in his lifetime for his love affairs with women and Mediterranean boys. He created his own cult of personality, the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable in his past. "There's not a joy the world can give that it takes away / When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay, / 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, / But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past." Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/byron.htm
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I would hate to try to lift the dictionary that had a specific word for every shade of human emotion. Think of all the words that relate to happy but don't mean quite the same thing: glad, content, gay, joyful, pleased, ...
And then we would argue about half of them and never use the other half in speech.
Fortunately the flexibility (instability?) of English allows us to make portmanteau words and phrases as well as use metaphor and all the other poetic devices. I could speak of "awestruck-relief" or "the peaceful excitement of watching the moon rise" and whether or not you liked my writing style you would have a sense of what I mean.
Besides the very creation of specific words would simply limit expression in another direction.
Great topic for discussion Marianna.
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Carpal Tunnel
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re* In fact, charisma is the message, not content.
this is some sort of mantra with you, isn't it?
and yet, here, content not charisma is the order of day. It seems to bother you that this board is so out of touch with the main stream. you seem to do your best to reduce conversation here to the same drivel that predominates everywhere else. (the same drivel you ostensibly find so objectionable)
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you seem to do your best to reduce conversation here to the same drivel that predominates everywhere else. (the same drivel you ostensibly find so objectionable)Well, that's the very nub of it all, wouldn't you say, Of Troy? "Everywhere else" is also here - right here, in this public talk forum. This is not a private enclave for the self-aggrandizement of those who arrived here first. What gives you the right, apart from your Carpal Tunnelarity, to sermonize while I may not? Let the first be last, and the last be first. "What mayhem!", you say. "It has ever been thus."We had best be clear about that from the outset. This melancholy truth may be a bitter pill to swallow, especially for those zealous modern sensibilities that crave precision more than they covet accuracy. But the fact of the matter is that human affairs, by their very nature, cannot be made to conform to the scientific method--not, that is, unless they are first divested of their humanness. The scientific method is an admirable thing, when used for certain purposes. You can simultaneously drop a corpse and a sack of potatoes off the Tower of Pisa, and together they will illustrate a precise law of science. But such an experiment will not tell you much about the human life that once animated that plummeting body--its consciousness, its achievements, its failures, its progeny, its loves and hates, its petty anxieties and large presentiments, its moments of grace and transcendence. Physics will not tell you who that person was, or about the world within which he lived. All those things will have been edited out, until only mass and acceleration remain.
By such a calculus our bodies may indeed become indistinguishable from sacks of potatoes. But thankfully that is not the calculus of history. The genuinely interesting historical questions are irreducibly complex, in ways that exactly mirror the irreducible complexity of the human condition. Any author who asserts otherwise should be read skeptically--and, life being short, quickly.------------ Windows on American History It is hard for some Americans to accept the cultural diversity and the constant cultural upheaval that come with immigration. They fear that unless immigration is carefully controlled, the basic character of the nation may be altered beyond recognition and thereby undermined. For others, it is hard to imagine their country without a steady flow of immigrants and the cultural variety it brings. It has ever been thus. The current controversies over rates of immigration and their effects upon the composition of the nation are nothing new; the subject has always been controversial. Such debates do, however, have their significance, since they go to the heart of the open question of whether America is fundamentally a British or a European or a universalistic or a multicultural nation.
What is sometimes lost in the abstract character of these debates, however, and their tendency to focus on aggregate numbers and inchoate abstractions like "diversity," is a simpler meaning of immigration. Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem "The New Colossus," which appears on a bronze plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, is perhaps the best expression of it. Just as Emerson’s American Scholar disdained the "courtly muses of Europe," so Lazarus’s "mighty woman" refused to emulate the "storied pomp" of the conquering Colossus of Rhodes, preferring a humbler name: "Mother of Exiles." Her joy would not be in luring the powerful and well born, but in embracing the huddled masses and wretched refuse of the earth. To the proud spirit of the Old World she implored: "Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me." To generations upon generations of the homeless and tempest-tossed--Irish potato farmers, German political refugees, persecuted Russian Jews, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Cambodians, Kosovars--these have not been empty words.
Emma Lazarus came from a sophisticated and refined New York Jewish family. But the sentiments in her poem could have come straight from the biblical prophets and the Christian New Testament--the last shall be first, and the first shall be last; and the stone that was rejected shall become the cornerstone.The Different, But Necessary, Truths of History and ScienceAmerican Educator, Fall 2002 http://snipurl.com/gp67
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