Words of the Month - Doublets

        In its enthusiasm for other languages’ words, English sometimes adopts a foreign word multiple times over the centuries, ending up with multiple English words that come from the same root.  These words are a type of  doublets: words in the same language derived by different routes of transmission from the same source.  I covered some of these words in a previous post, and since then have collected some more examples to share with you.

        Usually these word pairs end up with different meanings, as for example…

        In the early fourteenth century we borrowed channel from French (which took it from Latin canalis).  It meant in French, as it was borrowed into English, “the bed of a flow of water.”  About a century later, we went back to French to borrow the same word again, this time in its more Latin form of canal, to refer to “tubular passages in the body”.  There is no reason we couldn’t have simply given the first word a second meaning with the growing science of anatomy, but presumably the scientists felt then, as they tend to do to this day, that to sound scientific, a word must sound Latinate.

        Another early fourteenth century word from French is reward (“to give something, especially as compensation”), which came specifically from an Old North French word.  In the mid-fourteenth century we borrowed again, from the then more current form of French, and got regard (“to consider”).  The French word from which we borrowed them both meant “to take notice of,” so you can see how they are related.

        Chase and catch are doublets, funny as that seems.  English borrowed them from variant forms of Old French cacier, “to hunt.”  Catching actually came first, borrowed in about 1200, while chasing was borrowed about a hundred years later.

        English borrowed the word freebooter from Dutch vrijbuiter in the 1560s, when buccaneers were common, especially in the West Indies, and piracy was pursued as both a viable career choice and foreign policy.  In the seventeenth century a book by Dutch freebooter John Oexmelin was popular enough to be translated into French and Spanish, and, in 1684, into English.  All these translations melded the Spanish version of the word (including an extra i) and the French version (including a gratuitous s), and gave us a new English word, filibuster.  (The verb for the legislative strategy doesn’t seem to have occurred before the end of the nineteenth century.)

        Also from Dutch, in the early fifteenth century, English borrowed bulwark, “a fortification or rampart.”  French borrowed the word, too, around the same time, but garbled it a little, as they had no w in their alphabet.  They also, apparently, tore down their bulwarks and laid out broad streets on the sites, but called these tree-lined promenades by their version of same word: boulevard.  English borrowed this French version, along with its new meaning, in 1769.

        In the late thirteenth century, English borrowed the Old French word cloque, as cloak, so called because it was bell-shaped (sort of).  A hundred years later, we borrowed the word again, but this time influenced by the Dutch version and giving us clock, which also, of course, had bells.  And in 1882 we borrowed the word again, only by this time the French form had altered in the intervening years, giving us cloche, a ball-jar (and by 1907 also a bell-shaped woman’s hat).

        Sometimes the word pairs are close synonyms, as…

        The word poor entered English in about 1200, from Old French, which had developed from the Latin root pauper.  And you can see where this is going.  English borrowed the Latin word directly in about 1510, where it was originally a legal term for someone who was not required to pay legal fees due to their impoverished state.  And that word had come into English in the early fifteenth century, from a related Old French word from the same Latin root.

        We really wouldn’t have needed more than one of those words, but when has English ever been satisfied with a single word when there are synonyms to be had?

        The thing to remember about these double-borrowings is that sometimes, as in the case of channel/canal, people deliberately choose another variant of a word we already have.  But often speakers are completely unaware of the relationship between two words with different meanings.  Of course knowing the relationship gains you nothing in terms of sense or usage, but it does gain you the satisfaction of knowing something nifty about the history of our language.

[Pictures: The freebooter Captain Jack Vincent, wood block print for the 1726 edition of History of the Most Notorious Pyrates by Charles Johnson (Image from Sea Thieves);

Florentine merchant in a cloak, wood block print from Habiti antichi et moderni by Cesare Vecelio, 1598 (Image from Biblioteca Casanatense);

Cloche hat styles, illustration from Sears Roebuck catalogue, 1924.]

Grabados en Madera

        In 1934 the work of seven of Costa Rica’s leading printmakers was collected in a portfolio  entitled Grabados en Madera (Woodcuts) by the Imprenta Nacional in San Jose.  I don’t know anything about the Costa Rican printmaking scene of the 1930s, so I have no idea whether these men were all working together, or were each doing their own thing, but certainly they all seem to share a very similar aesthetic.  Of course, it’s possible that the similarity reflects the publisher’s taste as much as anything, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that artists in a small area would be influencing each other, and would all be influenced by the same sorts of movements in the world.  Here are a few pieces from the collection.

        The first print here, by Manuel de la Cruz Gonzalez, is particularly appealing to me.  The man is wonderfully detailed, without really having any detail.  Somehow the few,
simple strokes manage to convey exactly the right set to the shoulders, leaning posture of the body, folds of the trousers, and planes of the face.  The black background and bold wheel are very dramatic, while the face is amazingly subtle.

        This church by Teodorico Quiros is particularly woody.  You can see the wood grain in the printing, and the slightly rough edges, and somehow the relatively thin lines of the border and background hills seem to accentuate that Quiros is carving on a flat plank.  I especially like the patterns on the steeple.

        Carlos Salazar Herrera did some prints with more detail than this one of people in the plaza, but I am always fascinated by how so much can be depicted with so little.  The people are very simplified, just white blobs and lines on a black background, but we have all we need to picture the scene.  I especially like the legs of the man standing on the right.  The person cross-legged beneath the tree in the background is a particularly impressive hieroglyphic, while the mule coming directly towards the viewer is also surprisingly successful.  (Surprising to me, anyway!  Salazar Herrera was probably perfectly confident about it.)

        This final scene of buildings, by Gilbert Laporte, is somewhat unusual for these prints, in having a white background.  It’s also got an interesting composition with so very much blank sky.  I especially like the details of the tower and dome, and the way the electric wires go right ahead and cut across the picture without embarrassment.

[Pictures: Afilador (Grinder), woodcut by Manuel de la Cruz Gonzalez, 1934;

Iglesia de Orosi (Church of Orosi), woodcut by Teodorico Quiros, 1934;

En La Plaza (In the Plaza), woodcut by Carlos Salazar Herrera, 1934;

Avenida Segunda (Second Avenue), woodcut by Gilbert Laporte, 1934
(All images from Annex Galleries).]

The Happy Little Elephant

        I’d like to share with you one of my early literary masterpieces, a short story entitled The Happy Little Elephant.  Here it is:

        Once upon a time there was a fuzzy little elephant, who had a gray trunk and tail and ears.  She was a Happy little elephant, she lived in the woods all by herself.  the end.

        I wrote and illustrated this epic in first grade (age 6), and must give major thanks to my mother for saving it so that I could have the data-driven benefit of this early sample of writing and illustration.  (Also so I could have the amusement.)  I’ve found that it’s helpful to share this story with third and fourth graders when I do classroom visits about writing.  I ask the children, “What is this story missing?”  It’s got setting: the forest.  It’s got character: the little elephant, about whom we actually learn quite a bit.  I could perhaps even argue that it’s got theme: the value of solitude.  But what it’s missing, as students can gleefully point out after a little reflection, is conflict.  Had I introduced a tropical storm, loneliness, hunger, poachers, or a lost left sock, I might have had the makings of a real-page-turner.  That is, if I’d managed to go on to a second page.  But without conflict, there is simply no plot.  To keep a plot going, you have to keep adding conflict.  No fictional elephant should ever be as content as mine until the final page.  (To be fair, my elephant isn’t content until the final page, either…)

        This probably reveals something about my own predilections: I suppose it’s true that to this day I love character and setting, but still don’t care for too much conflict!  But the lesson that any avid reader and developing writer soon learns is that a story can’t be about the perfect way things ought to be.  It can only be about getting there.  And that makes sense, because it so happens that our world is not yet perfect, but we can always be the kinds of characters in our own settings who work on getting there.

[Picture: Title page and illustration of The Happy Little Elephant by AEGN, 1976 or 7.]

What's New in the Studio - Philosophers

        Here is one of my newest pieces, based on Rembrandt’s The Philosopher in Contemplation, but with some twists of my own.  First of all, I’ve acknowledged that both the people in the room are philosophers instead of assuming that only the man is actually relevant.  But more importantly, I’m imagining these as the sort of “philosophers” who may be making the Philosophers Stone, and are undoubtedly studying alchemy, sorcery, magical creatures, and so on.  The man is putting the finishing touches on his clockwork robot, while the woman is tending to the dragon egg in the fire.  A couple of salamanders are sporting in the fire, too, and above it flitter pyrallises.  In the warmth of the hearth bask a small dragon and a large cat.  I’ve also included a griffin, a jinni, and some sort of little imp or brownie, who clearly also has a scholarly bent.  He has his own tiny doorway to the room, and of course it’s natural to wonder what might be behind the odd door behind the man’s chair.  The dragon lair, perhaps?  A tunnel to an underground grotto?  The laboratory?  A brick oven for making really large pizzas?

        My initial temptation was to fill the picture with lots more creatures, too.  The more the merrier, I figured.  But then I decided if it was just cluttered up it would lose the charm of being a more “plausible” scenario.  I mean, dragon, griffin, and jinni?… Fine.  But dragon, griffin, jinni, unicorn, niffler, tarasque, and chupacabra?… Let’s not be ridiculous!

        My primary challenge was to try to capture the wonderful light of Rembrandt’s original, at which I did not succeed so well as I had hoped.  Still, I think it’s a lot of fun, and makes a nice place to start some excellent imaginings.

[Picture: The Philosophers at Home, rubber block print by AEGN, 2018 (sold out).]

Gearhart's Sky

        Here’s a pleasing wood block print by Frances Hammel Gearhart (USA, 1869-1958).  The RISD Museum, where I saw this piece, explains, “Frances Hammel Gearhart was first influenced by Japanese prints in about 1910, when she visited exhibitions in California that included the work of Hokusai…  She then began to teach herself to make woodblock prints, likely receiving some training from her sisters, who… had studied with artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow.  Dow promoted Japanese printmaking techniques and the use of water-based inks, and he encouraged his students to use these methods to record and interpret the American landscape.”  I like that Gearhart is at least somewhat self-taught.  Given that in Japan printmaking was taught by a long, strict, arduous apprenticeship with an emphasis on getting everything perfect according to tradition, it’s interesting that an artist like Gearhart could figure out for herself a technique that, while certainly not as technically perfect as a traditional Japanese print, is nevertheless very beautiful.  I also like the idea of adapting the Japanese style to capture the artist’s own native landscapes.  It looks to me like Gearhart used four blocks: sky, background, foreground inked with multiple colors, and black key block.  I especially love the sky, with its carved clouds and its painted texture.

[Picture: High Skies, polychrome woodblock print by Frances Hammel Gearhart, 1922 (Photo taken by AEGN at RISD Museum).]

Lucifer in Starlight

        This sonnet by George Meredith (UK, 1828-1909) is mythic.

On a starr’d night Prince Lucifer uprose.

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend

Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen’d,

Where sinners hugg’d their spectre of repose.

Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.

And now upon his western wing he lean’d,

Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careen’d,

Now the black planet shadow’d Arctic snows.

Soaring through wider zones that prick’d his scars

With memory of the old revolt from Awe,

He reach’d a middle height, and at the stars,

Which are the brain of heaven, he look’d, and sank.

Around the ancient track march’d, rank on rank,

The army of unalterable law.

        Meredith gives us an epic image of the dark angel so huge that he passes from Africa to the Arctic in a single line of verse, like a dark planet.  The image of Lucifer’s shadow sweeping across the globe is paired with the mention of sleeping sinners, so that I imagine unconscious people turning uneasily as he passes without knowing why.  The personification of Lucifer with scars that prick at the reminder of his past choices and defeat is pure mythology, akin to images of Greek or Norse gods, with human emotions at epic scale.  Another interesting image is “the stars, which are the brain of heaven.”  I’m not even sure exactly what it means, but it suggests all sorts of interesting possibilities.

        Yes, there is a certain theology embedded in this poem, but I don’t think Meredith was trying to propound theology.  As I said, I think this is about storytelling: a narrative that points at truths not by stating moral laws or philosophies but by illustrating a vignette that fires the imagination with its fantastical images.

[Picture: His steep flight in many an Aerie wheele, wood engraving by Gustave Doré for Paradise Lost (Book III), 1866 (Image from Wikimedia Commons).]

Elizabeth I

        Today is the birthday of Queen Elizabeth I of England (she would be 485 years old), born a princess who never expected to become queen, and who was lucky even to survive the tumultuous politics of her childhood and adolescence.  She undoubtedly enjoyed good luck throughout her life, but she was also intelligent, exceptionally well-educated, and shrewd enough to know the value of good publicity.  Those around her also knew the value of flattery, with the result that her long reign provided opportunities for her image to appear all over the place in the relatively cheap and easy form of wood block printing.

        The first example is a later portrait after her death, which I find pleasingly bold, but the others are all from books published during Elizabeth’s reign.  A guide to falconry features Elizabeth in its illustrations.  She is not named in the picture titles, but I think was intended to be recognizable to to all, not only with her features and dress, but her servants wearing the Tudor rose on their doublets.  Presumably Elizabeth’s presence in the book would have added cachet, implying that the author’s methods of falconry were those followed by the very highest in the land.  This is a very attractive woodcut, with the beautiful horse, lithe dogs, and a lovely landscape in the background.

        The author of The Compound of Alchymy was not so subtle.  His dedication to Elizabeth, including this nice little portrait of her enthroned in the initial letter E, is fully fulsome.  He lays it on thick… But despite claiming that his book contains “the right & perfect meanes to make the Philosophers Stone,” he clearly didn’t make any for Elizabeth, who died twelve years later.  I do like the portrait, though, with nice detail in its very small space, and charming curlicues.

        The alchemist Rabbards lavishly invokes God’s wondrous providence in making Elizabeth queen, but the publishers of A Booke of Christian Prayers go one better.  They put a full-page portrait of Elizabeth at prayer on the frontispiece where, apparently, a Catholic book of prayers would traditionally have had a picture of the Virgin Mary.  Elizabeth, following her father’s lead, was head of the church in England, and this book aimed to make that crystal clear.  (Actually, she was technically “Governor” since some bishops felt that a woman could
not be “Head.”)  Interesting details include the sword on the ground, along with another object I can’t make out.  I’m sure there’s symbolism there, but I don’t know what it is.  It’s a wonderfully detailed woodcut altogether, with shading almost as detailed as an engraving, and elaborate patterns decorating Elizabeth’s dress, the curtains, the back wall, and more.

        Elizabeth was not without her vanity, and I assume these portraits pleased her.  They please me, anyway!

[Pictures: Elizabetha Regina, woodcut by anonymous artist, 18th century (Image from The British Museum);

To flye at the Hearon, woodcut from The Booke of Faulconrie or Hauking by George Turberville,   1575 (Image from The British Library);

Elizabeth enthroned, woodcut from dedication of The compound of alchymy, by Ripley and Rabbards, printed by Thomas Orwin, 1591 (Image from Beineke Library, Yale);

Elizabeth Regina at prayer, woodcut (possibly by Levina Teerlinc) from A Booke of Christian Prayers printed by Richard and John Daye, 1578 (Image from Booktryst).]

The Book of Arnold

        We recently had the opportunity to see the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” which had funny moments, and dark moments, and an awful lot of obscene moments, and of course lots of entertaining song and dance…  But to my surprise it turned out to be largely about the power of story to improve the world, and that’s a message I’m always interested in exploring.  At the beginning, Elder Arnold Cunningham’s storytelling proclivities are not particularly productive, but eventually he begins to realize that his stories have the power to help people, to make them think about their experiences in new ways, to change their perspectives and their relationships, and to make their world better.  At that point, he’s no longer “lying;” he’s composing “fiction” (or perhaps “fan fic.”)  After all, most people don’t believe his stories literally; as one villager explains witheringly, “It’s a metaphor!”  Cunningham’s stories teach people, in a message LeGuin would approve, that the way things are is not inevitable.  His stories give role models for new modes of relationship, and offer the hope that creativity can be brought to bear even when all other hope seems lost.

        The stories that Cunningham tells, claiming them to be gospel, are utterly nutty mash-ups of the actual Book of Mormon with hobbits and Mordor, Darth Vader and the Death Star, the Starship Enterprise and many unfortunate frogs.  Significantly, though, they aren’t merely hilarious (or merely crude); they are made up out of a desperate desire to help desperate people, and to help those people make sense of and deal with their reality.  And that is, at its heart, one of the deepest purposes that fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, can have.

        “This book will change your life” could be true of many books.  For some people it’s The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, for others perhaps it’s To Kill a Mockingbird or The Lorax, or The Phantom Tollbooth.  Whatever it is, if you’re a reader, you remember that feeling: that awe and wonder as your mind blossoms into bright new light and the world is never quite the same again.  The musical The Book of Mormon claims that any story that can do that is enough gospel for anyone, and while I don’t agree that any and all fiction should be equated with divine revelation, I do agree that there is a valid point here.  Story has a power - sometimes even a divine power - to change lives and to change the world.  And that’s certainly worth singing and dancing about!

[Picture: Darth Vader and Death Star, linoleum block print by Peter Santa-Maria (Image from his Etsy shop ATTACKPETER).]