Giving Classical Mythology a Kick

         The Kickstarter campaign for my next book, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, is 74% funded, and it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect me to be able to think about anything else right now.  I’m so grateful to the backers who jumped right in to get me off to a strong start… but now we enter the knuckle-biting stage!  Yes, I’m optimistic that we’ll make it, but I won’t stop stressing until it’s 100%.  So until then, let me share some more teasers and tidbits.

        To recap, this book will be a collection of short stories, poems, and art, all of which are inspired by, riffing on, or jumping off from traditional fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  Today I’m digging a little deeper into the classical myths that have inspired pieces in my current draft.

        Here’s the funny thing about it: unlike fairy tales, I never really liked Greek and Roman mythology.  Primarily this was because all the gods and heroes just seem so unpleasant: always wrangling and jockeying to score status points, not to mention raping and murdering with impunity, while innocent humans are always the collateral damage.  How can you respect such a petty, vindictive bunch, let alone worshipping them?  But perhaps my dislike of these classical myths is precisely why I’ve ended up exploring and reimagining a number of them.  How would the stories change if I changed the way I thought of the characters and their motives?  How can I salvage a more interesting, meaningful message by holding the stories in a different light?  In the case of Persephone, for example, I’ve written both a story and a poem, but each one looks at a completely different angle of the myth, and takes it in a completely different direction to re-imagine it with a completely different message.

        Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Pandora’s Box (short story, art)

Persephone in the Underworld (short story, poem, art)

Medusa (poem, art)

Pygmalion and Galatea (short story)

The Theban Sphinx (poem, art)

Potnia Theron “Mistress of the Animals” (art)

Siren (short story)

Cyclops (art)

        That’s just where things stand as of today.  They’ll all have art eventually; the illustration for the siren’s story is sketched but not yet transferred to rubber and carved, and I haven’t started anything yet for Pygmalion.  Then there’s the weird sci fi idea I’ve been mulling for a while now about the Trojan Horse.  Perhaps that will get written in time for inclusion in the book — or perhaps there will be something else I haven’t thought of yet at all.  Who knows?

        How do you feel about these famous myths?  Do you have favorites — or least favorites?  They’re such a foundational part of European/Western culture that whether you like them or not, they’re in the air all around us.  Even though I don’t always care for the original myths, it turns out that I’ve really enjoyed reckoning with some of them, and allowing my imagination to see where they can take me, and where I can take them.  When Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is finally completed and out in the world, I hope that my new twists will inspire you to rethink these myths and what they can tell us.

        To check out all the details about this project, please visit the Kickstarter campaign.  And if you should feel inspired to back this project, I’d be very grateful indeed!

[Pictures: Queen of the Underworld teaser, details of story and rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam, 2025 (See original at NydamPrints.com);

Apotropaic, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

Once Upon a Time There Was a Kickstarter...

         Here we go again!  I’ve launched another Kickstarter campaign for another book!  Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns will be the same format as my last book (Bittersweetness & Light), which means it’s a collection of my short stories, poems, and relief block print artwork.  All the stories in this book (and I consider poems and artwork as telling stories, too) are inspired by and riffing on traditional European fairy tales, classical mythology, and a smattering of other myths and folklore.  Sometimes I stay close to the traditional roots, and sometimes I use them as a jumping off point to head in a completely different direction.  But why start with these well-known stories?  Myths and fairy tales are popular, powerful, sticky stories that catch in our imaginations and stay with us for generation after generation.  Although they may not always be taken very seriously as literature these days, the fact is that folklore has always been one of the most important ways people have wrestled with what it means to be alive in the world.  They help us grapple with big issues and explain to ourselves why things are the way they are, and how things should be.  Folklore includes the way culture is embodied in stories, and the way stories express what it means to be human.

        I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales (you can read some prior posts about Some Favorite Fairy Tales and Grimms’ Fairy Tale Collections) but there’s no denying that some of them are strange and dark and problematic.  There are stories I fell in love with that fill me with delight and fuel my imagination of wondrous things, but there are also stories that disturb and depress me with their oppressive, cynical, outdated messages.  In either case, though, they can get me thinking about the things I believe are true.  And they can get me questioning how a story that doesn’t seem right to me might be reimagined into something that does ring more true.  What else might be going on before, after, and around the edges?  How else might events be interpreted?  What if one little thing were changed - or a larger thing?  What if it were all set in a different time or place?  Why might these strange or disturbing things have happened?  Who else might be living in this world and watching events unfold?  How can I glean out the unexpected sparks of magic while overturning those elements that I reject?  After all, another reason these stories have stayed popular for so long is that they’re multi-layered and multi-faceted.  Every time you look at them from a different angle, you see something new.

        Want some examples of what will be appearing in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns?  Here are a few teasers…

Pandora’s Box - What’s so bad about curiosity, anyway?

Baba Yaga - Maybe it takes a flock to raise a witch.

The Green Girl Thinks of Home

Scheherazade - Prayer for the first night.

        I’ve been responding to these magical stories for a long time, and now I’m pulling it all together and offering it as a collection of wonder and delight.  It’ll be printed in full color inside and out, a little larger than an ordinary paperback to give the artwork more room.  It won’t be as explicitly focused on hope and joy as my last book, but it’s still me here, so yes, I still try to hold up the power of kindness and look for ways to foster hope and joy.  Fairy tales can be dark and myths can be cruel, but these stories are ultimately how we remind ourselves that straw can be spun into gold, riddles can be answered, curses can be broken, and glass mountains can be climbed.

        If this sounds like something that might be of interest to you, nip on over to my Kickstarter campaign and find out all the details.  I’d love to have you join me in bringing these old stories to new life!

[Picture: Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, working cover design by AEGNydam, 2025.]

Words of the Month - Lipstick of the Spheres?

         What do cosmetics have to do with the cosmos?  They share a Greek root, but took very different paths into modern English.  The Greek kosmos meant “an orderly arrangement,” and the verb form of the same word was used in different senses including arranging troops for battle, establishing governments, and also adorning and arranging women’s dress, hair, and appearance.  It’s easy to see how that last sense got us to our modern cosmetics.

        Meanwhile, the sense of an organized system gave the word kosmos the meaning of  “the universe.”  Pythagorus was credited with being the first to use the word to mean “the starry firmament,” and it was first used in Middle English in about 1200.  However, our modern sense of cosmos as “the universe as a model of order” didn’t really take off in English until the mid 1800s, when it was used in English

translations of Alexander von Humboldt’s masterwork Kosmos.

        Between Pythagorus and Humboldt, meanwhile, the meaning of kosmos was expanding to include Earth in addition to the heavens.  It was then sometimes used in Christian writings to refer to “the inhabited earth” or “the worldly life, as opposed to the afterlife/heaven.”  That shift in meaning tied in with the word cosmopolite, which came from the Latinized Greek for “citizen of the world.”  That word entered English around 1610, but not until about 200 years later do we get the adjective cosmopolitan, meaning “free from local prejudices,” and around 1840 it could also be applied to groups and mean “composed of people from many nations, multi-ethnic.”

        As for the cocktail cosmopolitan, that was apparently invented in the 1970s, but, just like the word cosmos, it took a celebrity to popularize it.  In this case, rather than Pythagorus or Humboldt, we have the television show “Sex and the City” to thank, in the 1990s.  And that, I might argue, brings us back full circle to the connection with adorning and arranging women’s appearance.

[Pictures: Young Woman Applying Rouge, color woodblock by Hishiguchi Goyô, 1920 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Cosmogony, woodcut by Victor Delhez, 1926 (Image from Armstrong Fine Art);

In Cafe II, linocut by Marta Wakula-Mac (Image from Saatchi Art).]

Daughter-in-Law C. Yoshida (and Granddaughter A.)

         I’m not finished with the Yoshida family yet.  Today I’m focusing on Hiroshi and Fujio’s daughter-in-law, wife of their younger son Hodaka.  Chizuko Yoshida (Japan, 1924-2017) joined three art associations when she was in her twenties.  One was a painting society founded by Hiroshi Yoshida, a second was a group for women oil painters founded by Fujio Yoshida, and the third was an avant-garde association in which Chizuko became interested in the push and pull between Western modernism and traditional Japanese aesthetics.  After she married Hodaka in 1953, around the time she was switching from painting to printmaking, she was influential in getting him involved in modernism, which also eventually influenced the work of Fujio and of Hodaka’s brother Tōshi.

        By way of choosing which pieces to share today, I wanted to post my favorites, but I also wanted to show the sweep of Chizuko’s various styles over time, which meant including some pieces I don’t actually care for.  So I’ve started with two pieces from the 1950’s, the first being one that I like a bit more, and the second being one that’s more representative of her early woodblock work, which tends to look to me like a lot of random stuff thrown together.

        Next, here’s a piece from the 1960s, during which Chizuko was doing a lot of work with embossing.  These don’t excite me, although I do feel the allure of embossing - especially since that’s one thing that rubber blocks and the back of a wooden spoon just can’t do.  You can see, though, that Chizuko was doing her own version of op art, which you can compare with some of the pieces I shared from her husband and her brother-in-law.

        These final two pieces date from the 1970s and are the ones I find most attractive.  I’m very partial to collections of natural forms that evoke both science and art.  However, to get that scientific detail of all different species of shells and butterflies, Chizuko used a combination of photoetching and woodblock printing, a combination Hodaka was also using extensively (although he was depicting primarily manmade, architectural images, rather than natural ones).  So even though I like these as art, I’m much less interested in them from a printmaking perspective, because photoetching sort of skips the actual physical creation part, which I love.  On the other hand, I wanted to include them as representative of some of Chizuko’s later work.  (Chizuko made a whole series of butterfly pieces over a long period, and I can certainly see why they’re popular.)  I also really like that today’s first piece and last piece, made more than 25 years apart, both represent blue butterflies.

        Finally, I want to include a piece by Chizuko and Hodaka’s daughter Ayomi Yoshida (Japan, b. 1958) who is also an artist.  Ayomi doesn’t get a whole post of her own because I don’t for the most part care for her work, (and later she also got into “deconstructing” block printing by making installations of blocks and chips, which interests me only to the extent that it irritates me as a waste of a wonderful medium!)  However, Ayomi certainly belongs in any discussion of this famous printmaking family, so I include one piece from 1989 that’s pretty cool.  All the gouges are pretty much the same - one tool, same direction, same size - but the arrangement and colors turn it into light on water.  You can see an op art influence in this, too.

        So, seven artists over 4 generations in one family - and each of them pushing and pulling to find their own voice and style.  It must be both encouraging and constraining to be surrounded by so much artistic inspiration, advice, support, and opinion.

[Pictures: Butterfly B, woodblock print by Chizuko Yoshida, 1953 (Image from Asian Art Museum);

Night in the Desert, woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1959 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Blue Line, woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1960s (Image from MFA Boston);

Reef, Shell C, photoetching and woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1976 (Image from The British Museum);

Valley of Butterflies, photoetching and woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1979 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Touches 2W -C.V.B., woodblock print by Ayomi Yoshida, 1989 (Image from Art Institute Chicago).]

Little Brother H. Yoshida

         Today I’m back to the Yoshida family of artists to share some work by Hodaka Yoshida (Japan, 1926-1995).  As the second son, Hodaka was not expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and style.  Indeed, he was not supposed to be an artist at all - but he rebelled and became an artist, in a modernist and abstract style quite unlike the family tradition.  (To review what Hodaka wasn’t doing, you can check my post on Big Brother Tōshi Yoshida.)

        Hodaka began making woodblock prints in 1950, and an early example is this first one, which surprises me by how much I like it!  I especially like the way the colors layer.  It’s clearly a landscape of sorts, although obviously quite abstract.  Then in 1955 Hodaka encountered Pre-Columbian art, which inspired him to head in a whole new direction.  You can really see this in today’s second piece, which is very clearly copying Mayan motifs, but Hodaka also did lots of pieces that were influenced by this style without being so direct.  One example might be today’s fourth piece, made a few years later.

        At the same time, Hodaka was also experimenting with applying a graphic arts filter to more traditional subjects, such as this view of a teahouse, reduced to simplified geometric shapes arranged dramatically across the paper.  Three of the prints I’m sharing today (2,3, and 5) were all made in 1956, so it was apparently my favorite year in his work!

        In the 1960s Hodaka encountered pop art, and began experimenting with media such as silkscreen, photo-transfer, and collage.  Eventually in his later years he settled into a combination of wood blocks with photo-etching.  Art historians point to all this as new, edgy, important work, but as I have little interest in it, I’ll leave Hodaka there.

        In fact, I’ll finish up back in 1956 with this piece that may be my absolute favorite of his that I found.  Although it doesn’t look as Pre-Columbian as some of the others, the influence is right there in the title: “Ancient People, Maya.”  But whatever its inspiration, with its quilt-like mix of patterns, geometry, and softness, its soothing colors, and its interesting layering, I find this one deeply pleasing.

        A confluence of circumstances allowed and encouraged Hodaka to explore his own artistic direction.  In his childhood he was surrounded by artists but not expected to conform to them, then he launched his art career just as government control of the arts gave way to freedom.  He met and married another artist whose connections to avant-garde circles encouraged further experimentation.  (We’ll see what she was doing in the next post!)  In the end, Hodaka’s abstract work ended up influencing both his older brother Tōshi and his mother Fujio.

        What do you think?  Do you prefer the Yoshida family traditional work, or this more modern art?

[Pictures: Woods, color woodblock print by Hodaka Yoshida, 1954 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Crafty God, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from Scholten Japanese Art);

Teahouse, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from National Gallery of Art);

Ancestor, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1958 (Image from Scholten Japanese Art);

Ancient People, Maya, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from Egenole Gallery).]

Big Brother T. Yoshida

         My last post was about the artist Fujio Yoshida, who was married to the artist Hiroshi Yoshida.  Today’s post will be about their elder son, Tōshi Yoshida (Japan, 1911-1995).  Tōshi’s artistic beginnings seem to have been influenced primarily by his grandmother, who encouraged him to draw animals, but eventually he was apprenticed in his father’s workshop.  This meant his job was to carry on the family’s artistic style, as defined by his father, rather than to follow his own preferences.  That he may not have been entirely happy with this is evidenced by the fact that as soon as Hiroshi died in 1950, Tōshi went off into a radically different style, highly stylized and even abstract.  However, eventually he worked the rebellion out of his system and returned to detailed realism, but with a focus on animals as subjects.  So after my cursory look at his biography and work, I see three phases in Tōshi’s woodblock prints.  Here are a couple of examples of each.

        First, the early work in which Tōshi followed in his father’s shin-hanga footsteps.  These two pieces are beautiful examples of the style that combines traditional Japanese woodblock techniques and sensibilities with western-art-trained perspective and light effects.  They are serene, meticulous, and controlled, which reflects the controlled environment in which they were made: not only a dutiful son, but living under a dictatorship that censored art.

        Second, the wild and crazy middle work beginning in the 1950s, in which Tōshi turned to  total abstraction, then also strange, stylized magical landscapes.  Many of his abstract works could be considered op art, before it had become a movement or the term was coined.  In this example the layers of finely carved lines create dazzling and disorienting interference patterns, while the central figures (which evoke early Chinese characters to my western eyes) provide a focus.  I like the landscapes even more, and this one evokes a huge mysterious monument towering over a desert outcropping.  This one begs for stories, while suggesting all the unknowns of lost civilizations and alien worlds.

        Third, the return to representationalism and the celebration of the animals Tōshi saw and loved on his extensive travels.  He particularly liked African animals, and many of his prints do include scenic backgrounds, but I chose this one for its drama.  You can see the meticulous realism combined with the use of those traditional Japanese printmaking techniques in the carving of the fur and the shading of the background.  And finally I include a very different example from Tōshi’s later prints because A) I think it’s just really cool, and B) I notice the way the sky echoes those op art lines from his abstract period while the silhouetted deer ground this scene in his return to realism.

        Tōshi Yoshida’s life looks to me like a trajectory of an artist struggling at times to find his own voice, while making absolutely stunning work at every step along the way.  Tune in next time to see some pieces by his little brother, whose artistic development followed a very different path.

[Pictures: Half Moon Bridge, woodblock print by Tōshi Yoshida, 1941 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Iidabashi, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1939 (Image from The British Museum);

Misty Dance, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1957 (Image from The British Museum);

Illusion, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1966 (Image from The British Museum);

Black Panther, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1987 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Mendocino, Sunrise, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1985 (Image from The British Museum).]

F. Yoshida's Flowers

         Fujio Yoshida (Japan, 1887-1987) came from a family of artists, but was the first woman in the family to work as an artist.  I saw a couple of her color woodblock prints of flowers at the Harvard Art Museums last year, and enjoyed them.  They obviously have a lot in common with the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, with whom Yoshida was an almost exact contemporary.  I don’t know of any statement of direct influence, but given that Yoshida travelled to the United States for shows at just around the time O’Keeffe was exhibiting her earliest enlarged flower paintings, it seems very likely that Yoshida would be aware of them.  However, it was not until 1949 that Yoshida began making her own abstract flower paintings, for which she would place flowers inside a glass fishbowl in order to magnify them.

        The woodblock prints came in 1953.  These pieces are certainly not as large as O’Keeffe’s canvases, but they are larger than life, and share the same sense of abstraction.  At first glance they could be purely abstract, but then you can see how they’re actually zoomed-in views.  It’s interesting to see the traditional Japanese printmaking methods used for such a different style of art.

        I don’t like the dull colors of this narcissus as much, but I do appreciate that it’s an interesting choice, especially compared to the particularly bright greens of the ladyslipper orchid.  I also like that Yoshida has chosen to show the flower from the back, rather than the stereotypical front view.

        I’ve featured woodblock prints by some other member of the Yoshida family in previous posts.  You can see a street scene by her husband Hiroshi here.  Hiroshi had been adopted by her father to be the successor of the family’s art tradition, because of course it couldn’t be a girl.  But after her father died Hiroshi enrolled her in art school and they held joint exhibitions together.  You can see one of his Sailboats here, and Garden in Summer here.  The couple had two sons, both of whom also became artists.  You can see a strange alien city by Tōshi Yoshida here.

        As for Fujio herself, I like how different these flower details are from anything her artistic father or husband had done, although her second son’s abstract work was apparently an influence on her.  Anyway, I love O’Keefe’s flowers, and I like these, as well.

[Pictures: Ladyslipper Orchid, woodblock print by Fujio Yoshida, 1954;

Flowering Kale, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1953;

Narcissus, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1954 (All images from Harvard Art Museums).]

You Can Hear Me Now

         I’ve had a recent spate of videos released, which I can now share with you for your edutainment - assuming you would consider yourself educated and/or entertained by the sight and sound of me reading and talking about my work.  At the very least, it’s a chance for me to share some events with my peeps all around the world, instead of being available only to the local crowd.

        1. In July I was invited to be a guest on the television program “For the Love of Words.”  Host (and poet) John Holgerson interviewed me, followed by my reading quite a number of poems, including some that will be in my next book.  Of course there are a few points I would have made more eloquently or more clearly if I’d written a script in advance (and there’s one spot where they kept in two takes of a comment, so it sounds like I’m repeating

myself!), but it was a great experience and I’m honored to have been invited to participate.  You can watch the program on Easton Community Access Television here.

        2. The Needham Channel did a lovely piece on Needham’s Poet Laureate program.  Producer Yuxiao Yuan gave us the full Ken Burns treatment.  She met with me twice for a long interview and lots of footage, and I was really impressed by how much thought and effort Yuxiao put into this 6 minute “documentary.”  You can watch that piece on the Needham Channel here.

        3. Strong Women-Strange Worlds got a bit behind on posting their videos (it’s an all-volunteer organization and Life has a way of throwing curveballs), so my last two events were only recently posted on-line, even though they took place a while ago.

            A. During the Holiday Extravaganza back in December I participated in “Speed-Date a Book” and presented a pitch for On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  I had fun channeling my inner David Attenborough - not to mention having to build a jungle in front of my computer.  Watch here to see whether my book can win a date with you!  (I’m actually the first author to go, but if you want to skip the intro, start at the 3 minute mark.  Or watch the whole thing - it’s fun!)

            B. In February I read from “The Home for Dispossessed Familiars” from Bittersweetness & Light.  If you’d like to hear my 7-minute teaser snippet from that story, check it out here.  In this event I’m the last author to read.  By all means listen to the whole thing and find a wide variety of other cool books, but if you want to skip to my segment, go to 43:15.  (By the way, go ahead and Follow/Subscribe to the SW-SW YouTube channel.  It costs you nothing, and it helps a small but worthy organization get traction on the internet.)

        In addition to all those videos, I’ve also had a few other things published on-line in the past couple of months.

        4. My haiku “Mud Season” was posted on Haiku Newton’s web site, along with all the other winning Haiku from this year.  You can read them all here.

        5. As Poet Laureate of Needham, I wrote a poem for the town: “Home, Needham 2025.”  I presented it to the Select Board in July, and will present it to a wider audience some time in the fall.  In the meantime, it’s posted on the library’s web site, here.

        6. My poem “The Green Girl Thinks of Home” was published in New Myths in June, much to my delight.  I already shared it in my post What’s Black and White and Green, but just to gather everything together in one place, here’s that New Myths link again.

        7. The Needham Hometown Weekly published a press release on July 24 about my solo show “Poems and Prints” that’s hanging now at Gorse Mill Gallery.  (I mentioned that exhibition, too, in a prior post, which you can see here.)  A lovely reporter attended my reception on Sunday, so here (added later) is the piece they published on August 14.

        With all this press and publicity I’ve had to face the paradoxical truth about myself that while I always appreciate and get excited about these opportunities to spread the word, I simultaneously cringe in horror at the thought of being in the spotlight.  I guess it’s lucky for me that I’m so small-time that the spotlight isn’t very bright anyway!  Still, I do hope that you find something in all these bits and pieces that resonates with you about the positive power of poetry, art, and stories.  If you do, please let me know, because that’s what makes it worthwhile despite the discomfort of the publicity!

[Pictures: various stills of various filming by various people, compiled by AEGNydam, 2025.  Follow the links to get specific credits.]

The Range of Gibbings

         Robert Gibbings (Ireland, 1889-1958) was very influential in reviving wood engraving as an artistic medium in the twentieth century.  He worked as an illustrator, author, and publisher, so he was instrumental in defining how relief printing was used throughout a formative period of twentieth century art and design.  The thing about his work that strikes me is the variety of styles he uses over the course of his career.  Early on he was influenced by cubism and modernism, which you can see in this most excellent castle.  There’s definitely something cubist about the perspective and the shading of the blocks that make up the architecture.

        He also developed something he called a “vanishing line” technique, in which many edges and outlines are missing.  This is a style that fascinates me, in large part because I find myself utterly unable to do it.  It requires far more faith in one’s own artistic ability, in the possibilities of graphic design, and in the eyes of the beholder than I have ever been able to summon.  This woman is certainly not the most extreme example, but it’s one of my favorites.  Is she contemplating the next move in a chess game, or is she staring at some other sort of “Problem” to be solved?  With so many details elided I can’t tell for sure, but it’s amazing to me how much we do see in this image, even though it isn’t really there: the whole shape of the woman’s head and body.

        By contrast, this scene of a mill is quite realistic, without any hint of cubism.  Nevertheless, you can see Gibbings’s ability to leave out a lot of details and outlines.  I particularly love how the smaller branches of the trees are dashed lines, and the shaded area between the two wings of the mill is entirely black.  I admire how little carving it takes to pick out an entire scene in small details of white, and I love the serenity of a place that’s been conjured out of so little.

        This last piece is from much later in Gibbings’s career, and by now his style is full of fine textures and little details for an entirely different look.  He was particularly successful writing and illustrating travel memoirs, and this detailed style served well to share scenes from his travels all around the world.  (All this travel was possible because he wasn’t much concerned with family responsibility!  But for today I’m just here to share the relief prints.)

        I’ve featured a few other pieces by Gibbings in past posts, and it’s well worth revisiting Sea Creatures, Under Snow, and Year of the Snake to see more pieces that demonstrate the wide range of styles that strikes me so much about his work.

[Pictures: Castle at Saumur, wood engraving by Robert Gibbings, c. 1925 (Image from V&A);

The Problem, woodcut by Gibbings, 1921 (Image from V&A);

The Mill, wood engraving by Gibbings, 1920s (Image from V&A);

Standing Stones, wood engraving by Gibbings, 1951 (Image from V&A).]

Words of the Month - Tautological Pleonasm

         Have you ever used an ATM machine, drunk chai tea, or visited the River Avon?  Congratulations; you have benefitted from pleonasm, also known as tautology, in the English language.  Pleonasm and tautology both mean "redundancy in linguistic expression."  The etymology of both is from Greek, pleonasm from “to be in excess” and tautology from “the same word or idea.”  (Note that tautology in logic is slightly different from language tautology.)  This redundancy can include foolish or needlessly repetitive-sounding phrases such as “burning fire,” but today I want to highlight some examples that have found their way into common and generally accepted English usage.  (Although some of these are still prone to fierce criticism from grammar pedants.)

   free gift, safe haven, convicted felon - In all of these cases the adjective is wholly redundant since its sense is already included in the noun alone.

   tuna fish - This may technically be redundant because a tuna is a fish, but to me the noun phrase tuna fish refers to the meat, as in a sandwich or casserole, while the word tuna by itself is more likely to refer to the whole animal, somewhat in the same way that English differentiates beef from cow and venison from deer.

        Pleonasm is especially prone to cropping up in the case of acronyms.  Once an acronym becomes the standard term for a thing and people stop saying all the words that go into it, we often find ourselves putting the base word back on for context and clarity.  That’s the case for

   PIN number (Personal Identification Number)

   ATM machine (Automatic Teller Machine)

   DC Comics (Detective Comics)

   ISBN number (International Standard Book Number)

   HIV virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)

   Please RSVP (Répondez S’il Vous Plaît, in which the s’il vous plaît is French for Please)

   RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome) - This was coined in 2001, tongue-in-cheek.

        The case of “please RSVP” brings up the point that tautologies often arise in the process of linguistic borrowing, when a phrase is really only redundant if you speak both languages involved.  Examples include

   with au jus - in which au means with in French.  My college dining hall used to have this on the menu and I always thought it was funny, but another way to think about it is that perhaps the phrase “au jus” is not really French here.  Maybe it’s simply become an English word for a particular kind of sauce, in which case adding “with” is perfectly proper.

   tsetse fly - in which tsetse means fly in Tswana

   the hoi polloi - in which hoi means the in Greek

   chai tea, head of cabbage, and chestnut - You can read more about these three tautological foods in my prior post C Food Special.

   the alfalfa, alchemy, elixir, algebra, alcove, and many others - Putting the article in front of these words is pleonasm, because they were all borrowed from Arabic with the Arabic article al- attached to them, meaning they all start with the already.  (Read more in my prior post about Arabic Origins.)

        Another place invisible linguistic-borrowing pleonasm often crops up is in place names.

   River Avon - in which avon means river in Welsh

   Sahara Desert - in which sahara comes from the Arabic for desert, (and also Gobi Desert, in which gobi is from Mongolian for desert)

   the La Brea Tar Pits - in which la brea means the tar in Spanish

   Torpenhow Hill - This one is a very popular illustration since it’s a quadruple redundancy, from Old English torr, Celtic penn, Old English hoh or Norse how, and Old English hill, each of the four elements meaning some variation of “hill,” or “rocky outcropping.”  The one caveat to this story is that while the village of Torpenhow is in fact on a hill, there is not any geographic place actually called “Torpenhow Hill.”  So our redundancy is merely triple.

        I find all of these examples fun, but the point that seems most significant to me is that considering them redundant could depend on what meanings speakers actually assign to the elements in question.  Tsetse fly, for example, is really not redundant because “tsetse fly” is simply the English name for a particular kind of fly, and the fact that its etymology involves another more general word for fly in Tswana is neither known to English speakers nor relevant.  On the other hand, I would argue that free gift is indeed a stupid phrase!  Do you have any particular loves or hates among these words?

[Pictures: Skipjack Tuna with Cherry Buds, wood block print by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1830s (Image from The Met);

Desert Storm, wood engraving by Paul Landacre, 1932 (Image from Bonhams).]