Not P but Moby-Dick (39)

[Michael Bailey]

As you probably know, the medical “theory of humors” (bilious, phlegmatic,
sanguine, etc - i think Chinese medicine has something like that, doesn’t
it?) fell out of fashion gradually but some of its terminology is still
used as a metaphor even now & is prevalent in a lot of older literature as
a catalog of personality traits.

Somehow “humor” began to mean funny - this article
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-word-humor/

states that was because of

“[Elizabethan-era] plays were generally comedies and the characters, each
harping away at his particular personality trait, were laugh-provoking,”
writes Isaac Asimov. “For that reason, the word *humorous *has come to mean
‘funny.'”

Herman Melville lived at a time when both meanings were available.

Also - peripherally - Ishmael tells the story on “some saint’s eve” since
Lima, Peru was a Catholic city where there would be a lot of holidays for
different saints’ days.
So the mood would be light (probably)

Finally, “interlude” references the Latin root “lude”which means “play”

This would suggest that the “humor” for whose sake he is preserving the
style is the modern sense of the word, invoking both specifically
“jollity”* - and a generic idea of “humor,” or as Mark said, “mood.”

* “high times indeed” (-;




On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 11:00 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> OK. All five previous translations I have at hand got it wrong here, as
> well as about the word "humorist" that appeared earlier.
>
> Thanks, Mark and Ian.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 8:52 AM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Yes, with the nuance of the narrator entertaining himself, in this case,
> > with slightly exaggerated formality.
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 3:03 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Mood, basically....
> >>
> >> On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 3:31 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
> >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> > From Chapter 54:
> >> >
> >> > For my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once
> >> narrated it
> >> > at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint’s eve,
> >> > smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those
> >> fine
> >> > cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer
> terms
> >> > with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put,
> and
> >> > which are duly answered at the time.
> >> >
> >> > What does "For my humor’s sake" mean here?
> >> > --
> >> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >> >
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>