Herring-Hawker's Cry

Fun etymologies Thursday →

superfluidity:

enormousair:

2. I’ve heard this etymology contested before. What does superfluidity have to say about it?

I think it’s pretty clear that the Greek word tragoidia comes from elements meaning “goat” and “song” but there is endless debate about why it should mean that.

Tragedians would typically submit three tragedies and one satyr play for competition. We seem to have only one example of a satyr play (the Cyclops of Euripides) but Aristotle tells us that tragedy developed out of the satyr play, and was slow to become serious in tone. Some scholars have thought that the precursor to tragedy was performed by singers dressed as “goat-like” satyrs, who were associated with Dionysus, but in all the depictions they seem to be more like horses. It isn’t even clear that Aristotle’s analysis is correct, but he has the advantage of being much closer in time and having access to many, many more plays than we do.

A third-century inscription tells us that Thespis (said to be the first dramatist and the namesake of all thespians) performed a play in 534 and won a goat as a prize. Some scholars have suggested that tragedy originated out of songs performed at goat sacrifices.

The Greeks were very fond of making up elaborate stories about the origins of things, and their etymologies are dubious or ridiculous most of the time. It is extremely interesting to me however that an Athenian word and an Athenian institution such as tragedy, which was developed relatively late, has such an obscure origin. It doesn’t even seem clear how Dionysus fits into the scheme at all, even though it is generally agreed that he was closely associated with it at some point. The Athenians themselves lamented that tragedy had “nothing to do with Dionysus” anymore.

Yes! Thanks, superflu. (I can’t emphasize enough how much I love the fact that we have a resident classicist here.) Yeah, my post was dashed off and inaccurate. I wasn’t objecting to trag’s identification of the word’s root elements, but just alluding to the ongoing debate about the ambiguous connections between goats and tragedy. I find it wonderful that we call our highest art “goat-song.”

“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however they may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way to open the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all of the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.”

— Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld in The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966, p. 31. Originally published 1938. (via amiquote) (via msodradek)

Posted March 5, 2010 at 12:41pm | 16 notes

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sealmaiden:

Anders Zorn

An Irish Girl, 1894 - Etching

(source)

Posted March 5, 2010 at 12:37pm | 153 notes

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When Christianity is assumed to be an “answer” that makes the world intelligible, it reflects an accommodated church committed to assuring Christians that the way things are is the way things have to be. Such answers cannot help but turn Christianity into an explanation. For me, learning to be a Christian has meant learning to live without answers. Indeed, to learn to live in this way is what makes being a Christian so wonderful. Faith is but a name for learning how to go on without knowing the answers. That is to put the matter too simply, but at least such a claim might suggest why I find that being a Christian, makes life so damned interesting.

— Stanley Hauerwas (via azspot)

Posted March 5, 2010 at 12:19pm | 6 notes

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If I could take a bite of the whole earth
And get a taste of it,
I’d be happier for a moment….
But I don’t always want to be happy.
One must be unhappy now and then
Just to be able to be natural….

Not every day is fair,
And even when there’s drought, you look for rain.
That’s why I take the happy with the sad
Naturally, like someone not surprised
There are mountains and plains,
Rocks and grass….

One must be natural and easy,
Take the happy with the sad,
Feel as one who looks,
Think as one who walks,
And, when it’s time to die, remember the day dies too,
And the sunset is beautiful, and beautiful too the enduring night….
That’s how it is, and so be it….

— 

Fernando Pessoa, writing as Alberto Caeiro, “XXI. If I could take a bite of the whole earth,” The Keeper of Sheep, tr. Honig & Brown (Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), 33.

Thanks to tragos for the Tumblr complit staff pick.

Posted March 4, 2010 at 5:59pm | 15 notes

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I have never derived the least joy from my legs. In fact I strongly object to the bipedal condition. The fatter and wiser I grew the more I abominated the task of grappling with long drawers, trousers and pyjama pants. Had I been able to bear the stink and stickiness of my own unwashed body I would have slept with all my clothes on and had valets—preferably with some experience in the tailoring of corpses—change me, say, once a week. But then, I also loathe the proximity of valets and the vile touch of their hands. The last one I had was at least clean but he regarded the act of dressing his master as a battle of wits, he was doing his best to turn the wrong outside into the right inside and I undoing his endeavors by working my right foot into my left trouser leg. Our complicated exertions, which to an onlooker might have seemed some sort of exotic wrestling match, would take us from one room to another and end by my sitting on the floor, exhausted and hot, with the bottom of my trousers mis-clothing my heaving abdomen.

Finally, in my sixties, I found the right person to dress and undress me: an old illusionist who is able to go behind a screen in the guise of a cossack and instantly come out at the other end as Uncle Sam. He is tasteless and rude and altogether not a nice person, but he has taught me many a subtle trick such as folding trousers properly and I think I shall keep him despite the fantastic wages the rascal asks.

(Nabokov, The Original of Laura (Knopf, 2009), 255-61. Editorial brackets around added punctuation/spelling corrections removed.)

Posted March 4, 2010 at 11:44am | 11 notes

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