MDMD2: The Forms of You

[Dave Monroe]

"Resolutely a-beam, pronouncing the forms of You
consciously, as if borrowing them from another
Tongue.' (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 16)

Another quick one, esp. demonstrative of Pynchon's
attention to historical and cultural detail.  Recall,
no matter how fallen therefrom, Jeremiah Dixon came
from a Quaker family ...

>From Richard Bauman, Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism
of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century
Quakers (New York: Cambridge UP, 1983), Ch. 4, "Christ
respects no man's person: the plain language and the
rhetoric of impoliteness," pp. 43-62 ...

   "The best known of the Quaker speech testimonies
was that which rejected the use of 'you' in the second
pesron singular, insisting instead upon 'thou' and
'thee.'  The most superficial justification for this
usage, though inherently accurate and logical, was
that the use of 'you' to designate the singular was
simply ungrammatical, and in this sense not true: 'I
is a particular, Thee is a particular, Thou is a
particular, single, pure proper unto one.  We is many,
Ye is many, They is many, and You more than one'
(Farnsworth, [The Pure Language of the Spirit of
Truth,] 1655).
   "The argument was advanced in a number of
tracts.... The burden of the argument ... consisted in
the main of evidence from other languages ... to
support the contention that the singula and plural
forms should be distinguished.... it was not
inherently a strong argument.  It disregarded
completely the formal and honorific use of the
second-person plural form for the singular in other
languages they cited in support of their case ....
   "The force of the Quaker argument on the basis of
grammar was undermined even by teh Quakers themselves
....  If all earthly languages are no more than dust,
one might ask, why argue in linguistic terms?
   "But the Quakers were interseted in more than
linguitic purity for it own sake; their arguments in
defense of their pronominal usage ran deeper that mere
grammar.  Certainly a more importnt factor in their
own eyes was the evidence of the Bible.  According to
their reading of the scriptures, the equivalents of
'thou' and 'thee' were employd by Christ and the
primitive Christians as well as in parts of the Old
Testament ....  In this light the generalization of
'you' was a late corruption, attributed to popes and
emperors imitating their heathens' homage to their
gods ... and thus to be done away with together with
the rest of the empty customs of the world.  Once
again, it mattered not at all that 'you' had become
customary as a singular form ...; one's duty was to be
faithful to truth, not to custom ....
   "Most important, however, as with titles and hat
honor, was that the form employed to designate the
second person singular was intimately bound up with
questions of social rank and etiquette.  The use of
'you' to a singleindividual communicated deference,
honor, courtesy; 'thou' imparted intimacy or
condescension when used to a close equal or
subordinate, but contempt when addressed to a more
distant equal or superior--either that or
boorishnes....  Thus, by refusing to use 'you' to a
sigle inividual because it represented a form of
worlly honor, and using 'thou' intead, th Quakers
provoked the hostility of others, who took their
behavior as a sign of contempt ....  Besides being
grammatically untrue, the use of 'you' in the singular
constitute a for of worldly honor, hich was rendered
all the moe odious by the circumstance that those who
insisted on the use of the honorific 'you' to
themselves addresses God, to whom honor was truly due,
as 'thou' in thier prayers ....
   "From this vantage point the use of thou' to a
single person became a means of attacking the fleshly
pride that demanded honor and deference....  The
honorific form was deliberately rejected to exert a
humbling effect upon the person addressed, a reminder
of the vanity of worldly honor.  [George] Fox
[1624-1691] expressed the principle clearly: 'This
"thou' and "thee" was a fearful cut to proud flesh and
self-honour' ...." (pp. 54-55)

Well, I guess that wasn't so quick after all.  Gotta
sign off for now, but, coming up, civility, truth,
letter-writing, demographics, dialects, enclosures,
landscaping, learned dogs, calculus, Mesmerism,
oracles, metempychosis, sutured selves, singing, fops,
macaronis AND Lunarians, koans, Scheherazade, marvels
and the exhibition thereof, stripes, cock-fights,
melancholy, sea lore, insurance, Fender-Belly Bodine,
and, er, anything else I can get to that I haven't
mentioned yet.  Give me a coupla days here ...


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