grgr (18): german mania for name-giving

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

"or has he by way of the language caught the german mania for name-giving, 
dividing the creation finer and finer, analyzing, setting namer more hopelessly 
apart from named, even to bringing in the mathematics of combination, tacking 
together established nouns to get new ones, the insanely, endlessly diddling 
play of a chemist whose molecules are words...." (p. 391)

 
 well, don't have a quotable source around, but i read more than once that this 
 peculiarities of the german language, all these heideggerian nouns ending on 
 "-heit", "-keit"  or "-ung", did emerge in the context of the classic german 
 mysticism, especially in the works of meister eckhart (1260-1328)&, later on, 
 jacob böhme (1575-1624). if this is correct (- anyone?), the emergence of this 
 mania would not have been caused by an outer culture of death but by the inner 
 experience of - g.o.d. does pynchon say - "setting namer more hopelessly apart 
 from named" - that these mystics were, while developing their specific 
 language, moving away from god?! not knowing böhme well enough, i can only say 
 that my experience with the language of meister eckhart is a different one. 
 interesting also that some of the formulations - "mathematics of combination" & 
 "play of a chemist whose molecules are words" - do sound quite like qbl.

 kfl (- resisting the temptation to pick out a whitman poem for illustrating the 
 american mania for name-giving ...)