MDMD2: The Learned English Dog

[Dave Monroe]

"All at once, out of the Murk, a dozen mirror'd Lanthorns have leapt
alight together, as into their Glare now strolls a somewhat dishevel'd
Norfolk Terrier, with a raffish Gleam in its eye,--" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 18)

Okay, the last (we ALL hope, I'm sure ...), but perhaps the most
immediately interesting set of excerpts from William Empson, The
Structure of Complex Words (Norfolk [!], CN: New Directions, 1951), Ch.
7, "The English Dog," pp. 158-74 ...

"It is the pastoral ideal, that there is a complete copy of the human
world among dogs.   I think there are two elements in the thought behind
this word, which can be distinguished roughly as rationalist and
humanist.
   "The eighteenth-century rationalist limited very sharply the impulses
or shades of feeling he was prepared to foster--not merely Enthusiasm
was cut out but [a] kind of richness of language ....  The feeling that
the dog blows the gaff on human nature somehow attached itself to the
ambition of the thinker to do the same, and this helped to make him
cheerful and goodhumoured.  His view of our nature started from a solid
rock-bottom, a dog-nature, which his analysis would certainly not break
in digging down to it; this made him feel that the game was safe, and
the field small enough to be knowable.  Whereas Shakespeare felt that
'there is no worst', and the corresponding depths to him were fearful
degrees of lunacy; 'fool' was his earth-touching word, not 'dog'.
   "... it is surprising that the eighteenth-century could make so much
of its more narrow material, could base so much poetry on a doggish
mock-heroic.  It was the simplicity of this feeling, on the other hand,
which let them prune down so far towards rationalizing their emotional
life without killing the tree.  But there was a danger of killing it.  A
surprising number of great writers went mad, and most of them feared to;
indeed, the more you respect reason the more you must fear the
irrational.  Thus another use was found for the Dog in the way it stood
for the Unconscious; for the source of the impulses that keep us sane,
and may mysteriously fail ....  Its process of thought is a mystery, but
the results are homely and intelligible; it makes what we do not know
about the roots of our own minds seem cheerful and not alarming....
   "The humanist application corresponds to the hearty use of these
words, as the rationalist one does to the patronizing use.  Of course
humanism was a complicated affair ...; I am using it for something
vaguely anti-Christian.... The fundamental novelty was an idea that 'Man
is no longer an abortive deity, born in sin, necessarily incomplete in
the world, but the most triumphant of the animals'....  The essential
here is that you can start building yourself into a man, and not hate
yourself, on the basis of being that kind of animal; the trouble about
Evolution was that one could not feel the same way about monkeys." (pp.
168-70)

"The important point about the noble animal is that he is a deeply
reassuring animal to contemplate.  The fact that he can be patronized as
no more than fundamental makes you think better of the race of man." (p.
173)

"... there is an obscure humor from the idea of the dog being sad too;
he seems gay, but no, he is always in a great mess.  At bottom he feels
the sadness of the thing, just as we do.  Perhaps there is a feeling
that this dog has the right Old Adam to build a New Man upon ...." (p.
174)

A complex word indeed, "dog."  But wait, there's more ...

"It is surely a striking reflection that a great deal of the thought of
a man like Dr. Johnson ... were not carried on by the official verbal
machinery but on colloquial phrases ....  You need to know, as well as
the serious opinions of a man in the society, how much weight he would
allow, when making a practical decision, to some odd little class of
joke phrases, such as excite, he would feel, sentiments obvious to any
agreeable person, and yet such as carry doctrines more really complex
than the whole structure of his official view of the world." (ibid.)

Well, that was rather more of a detour than I either expected or
desired, but I'm not so sure it was entirely a detour, either.  A
complex text, Mason & Dixon; a complex author,  Thomas Pynchon. Perhaps
a handful of posts left, inc. ones looking both backward and forward in
the text.  Will be back ...