 |
||||
Justice and Punctuation |
| Dear Unknown Friends:
The impetus to our printing this bulletin now is the fact that a book about punctuation has been high on the bestseller lists, in both America and Britain. The book is Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss, and its popularity was a huge surprise, including to its author. Ms. Truss loves punctuation and is furious that she sees it misused at every turn. She writes with ferocity and jocularity. (The title comes from a joke about a panda, whose habits are described in a poorly punctuated wildlife manual.) She gives many examples of the horrific punctuation that is so prevalent. And she says that only a few people, “sticklers” like herself, even care, but that we “sticklers” should rise up and do something about it. Why Is It Popular? et
why has this book been selling in such numbers—and not only to
“sticklers,”
we can be sure? I think it is because, along with those who care about
punctuation, there are thousands who are ashamed that they don’t. In
fact,
I’d say that every person who has been careless about
punctuation
is deeply ashamed, for a reason Aesthetic Realism explains: because
punctuation
is no mere arbitrary, academically imposed system, but is a matter of
ethics.
It is a means of being just to words, ideas—and the world itself.
That’s why I am writing on the subject here. Eli Siegel loved punctuation, and I love it. He showed what no other critic, philosopher, or grammarian saw: that punctuation has to do with justice at its largest and most urgent; with human life at its deepest and most immediate; with reality in its wholeness; with beauty as such. Lynne Truss’s book has been able to evoke in many persons the repressed hope to be exact about punctuation. And the reason is in these sentences from Mr. Siegel’s1951 lecture Aesthetic Realism and Grammar: Ms. Truss sees drama in punctuation. Take this very likable passage on page 79 of the American edition (NY: Gotham Books, 2004), in which she describes the comma as a kind of “grammatical sheepdog”:
The Biggest Drama hat,
though, is the biggest drama, the fundamental drama, of punctuation? It
is outlined in the following Aesthetic Realism principle, stated by Eli
Siegel:
The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.In this statement is the means for people to be really interested in punctuation—and to use punctuation to see themselves, humanity, and reality better. (And I’m not speaking theoretically; I’ve taught grammar to college freshmen with that principle as the basis.) Junction and Separation or
example, the most important opposites in punctuating are junction
and
separation. Lynne Truss is writing about these in the passage on
the
“sheepdog” comma, which goes about “dividing” words and also “herding”
them together.
Let us take, for punctuation purposes, the principle I just quoted: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” The comma between world and art separates them; it says these are two distinct entities. (World art, without a comma, would be something else—a single idea.) Yet that comma between the two words doesn’t separate entirely: it tells us that the world and art are joined too, that they have to do with each other in a sentence which is still going on, and that we’ll find out what they have to do with each other as we continue reading the sentence. Then there is the colon between the sentence’s two clauses. It certainly divides them. Yet it also tells us (for this is a function of the colon) that there’s a deep equivalence between the two ideas—that’s how inseparable they are. “The world, art, and self explain each other”—then the colon says, What follows is what it means that they explain each other—“each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” In Our Lives very
mark of punctuation joins and separates at once in some fashion, and
each
differently. However, junction and separation are also the biggest
matters
in our personal lives. How fundamental junction and separation are with
us, Mr. Siegel describes in these great, kind sentences in Self and
World:
We are separate from the world, for we are ourselves. We are also joined to the world. And so much occurs about that separation and junction—including pretense, agony, bliss, hope, confusion. Here are a few examples of trouble about these opposites: There are separation and junction as people smile at others in social life yet have hidden, disparaging thoughts within themselves. There are separation and junction as a woman is embraced by a man yet feels, “He doesn’t know who I am, what goes on in my mind.” There are separation and junction as a person devours a piece of cake and feels that this makes up a bit for a world he dislikes; he joins the cake to himself as a means of feeling more separate from everything else. There have been terrible separation and junction in history as the leaders of a nation have attacked and manipulated people elsewhere in the world (junction), while being aloof from those persons’ feelings and disregardful of the facts, aloof from truth itself (separation). When we see that the comma, semicolon, period, and their grammatical companions are about joining and separating in a way that is beautiful and just, and that this is what we want to do in our own hours and days, we’ll not only love punctuation but use it to be fairer to everything. There Is Contempt ynne
Truss asks about punctuation, “Why is it so disregarded?” And she says,
“The obvious culprit is the recent history of education practice” (p.
13).
But the biggest culprit is the thing in the human self which Mr. Siegel
identified as the cause of all injustice: contempt, “the
addition to self through the lessening of something else.” What Ms.
Truss
and others don’t see is that justice to the structure of sentences is
part
of the large matter of justice as such. We can be uninterested in the
function
of semicolons for the same reason that we can be uninterested in
algebra;
or the history of art; or the feelings of a human being. The big
mistake
grammarians make is the mistake persons in every field make: they see
their
field and what it deserves as too apart from everything else. These
sentences
from Eli Siegel’s Self and World explain why punctuation “is so
disregarded”:
Contempt is a disproportion between self and world. And the feeling in it—“I matter much more than other things, so I can do whatever suits me with them”—makes us cold to people, even brutal. It can also make us feel we can fling apostrophes anywhere we please, or leave them out altogether. While contempt can make people disregardful of punctuation, it can also make people who care about punctuation be excessively disdainful of others. Part of the charm of Ms. Truss’s book is the no-holds-barred way she asserts her objection to bad punctuation. For example, she writes: That, of course, is funny and hyperbolic. And I share her critical feeling. But there is also in Eats, Shoots & Leaves a disgust with humanity and the world which is inexact and is too much a “victory of contempt.” Then, because the writer has a false superiority, she also is subject to the feeling of false inferiority (with which we punish ourselves for contempt). Here are some passages that show the superiority-inferiority mix-up:
What We Can Feel he
word Lynne Truss uses so often, stickler, has both superiority
and
inferiority with it. There’s inferiority because the word indicates
pettiness.
A person who insists on accurate punctuation would not see herself as a
stickler—would feel she was after something large and kind—if she felt
the following, for example: As I’m interested in how the semicolon
shows
that clauses are at once individual and related, I’m
using
it to ask how I am related to other people (including those who
don’t punctuate well). As I fight for the proper use of the apostrophe
to indicate the possessive, I’m using it to be interested in accuracy
about
possession or ownership as such—how have I wanted to possess things and
people?; how and by whom should the world itself be owned? Aesthetic
Realism
makes such seeing, such feeling, possible. And I love it for doing so!
In the following essay, written as an anonymous bulletin, Mr. Siegel uses his noted poem “One Question,” of 1924. This poem, with its amazing brevity, is beautiful. It puts together, in both its meaning and its musical sound, our self-assertion and our bewilderment. It is about the human self, to which Mr. Siegel was so grandly fair.
Finally an Attempt at an Answer [An unsigned bulletin by Eli Siegel] 
There are some editors and a few other people who think that punctuation is important. However that may be, we have found that punctuation is important as to the greatest of all questions: What is the self? what is my self? and what does it have to do with things that don’t seem to be myself—near and ever so far? Having arisen from a careful study of Eli Siegel’s poem “One Question,” which has been called the shortest poem in the world, I—
we were impelled to relate punctuation to the self. First, we thought of I, which is the grammatical term for myself, without any punctuation following whatever. This way: I The I seemed to be, without punctuation, in an unlimited land of unknownness and difference. If you do not punctuate any word, you leave it at the mercy of what went on before and what may be later. The I, then, without punctuation, is accompanied by anonymous, unending territory. Period, and More nd
then you can put a period after the I. This way:
I. You then feel that the I has been stopped, maybe in a manner that it didn’t want. The peace that comes to the I with the period after it, is certainly an offset to the unbounded anonymity present with no punctuation—still, the self doesn’t want to be summed up by a period. Now we come to what scholars call the comma situation. The comma situation, as you might surmise by now, is I accompanied by a comma. This is the way: I, This makes the I displeasingly tentative, kind of shiftless. It seems to be lost on the road between a bank and a restaurant, or between itself and another person or another thing. So this isn't all that I wants either. A tremendous dignity is given to the I when it is followed by a colon. This way: I: You feel it has something to say and has import. It is addressing other things and other things may be listening, or should be listening. Still, an I with a colon, while putting on an impressive show, doesn’t seem entirely happy. Nor is it happy followed by a semicolon; the semicolon is insulting; it has the shiftlessness of the comma with more pretense. It looks this way: I; There is too much semi in the I already, and it doesn’t want more semi with the semicolon. Drama and some comfort are added to the I followed by a question mark: I? Not knowing who you are is better than having the answers with the answers cold and displeasing. However, no question mark brought all happiness; question marks are good for questioning unhappiness and lessening unhappiness, but they bring no fully satisfying internal harvest on their own. And there is no doubt that I can be followed by an exclamation mark. If we are not astonishing to ourselves and occasionally to others, forces have not been just to us. At least this looks interesting: I! But
the success does not last. The pungency and surprise in the exclamation
mark grow less and fade somewhat.
There Are Theseo
have the I followed by a dash is insulting and a little frightening:
I— The I topples, even without punctuation, so why should it present itself as toppling through a dash accompanying it? The dash has some use, but it takes away from the firmness, the confident verticality, of the I as such. The most insulting punctuation mark you can give to the I is two marks of parenthesis. This way: (I) To have the I, which wants to insist on its own being, made an afterthought or a transitional incident by being in a parenthesis is galling, and even, perhaps, inaccurate. Brackets serve the same insulting purpose, with the addition of confining the I. The I looks as if it weren’t wholly invited to exist when within brackets. How sad our only self looks this way: [I] The Best Answer o
what to do? The best answer we have come to may not be immediately
gratifying
to many. In keeping, however, with the principle of opposites, there is
this, which looks a bit like a mathematical symbol. The I is in
parenthesis,
giving it tentativeness, enclosure, and specificity; however, within
the
parenthesis is also a question mark. This makes for what used to be
called
tension. The parenthesis and the interrogation mark are in a true
battle.
The parenthesis hugs the I while the question mark asks what it means.
In this way, the self as security and the self as seeking are both
honored.
We recommend, then, the following punctuation for the I: (I?) At least we have given the matter thought. *(NY: Definition Press, 1981), p. 91 |
|
| Aesthetic Realism is based on these principles, stated by Eli Siegel:
1. The deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis. 2. The greatest danger for a person is to have contempt for the world and what is in it .... Contempt can be defined as the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it. 3. All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves. |
 |
First Thursday of each month, 6:30 PM: Seminars with speakers from Aesthetic Realism faculty Third Saturday of each month, 8 PM: Aesthetic Realism Dramatic Presentations
The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known (TRO) is a biweekly periodical of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Subscriptions: 26 issues, US $18; 12 issues, US $9, Canada and Mexico $14, elsewhere $20. Make check or money order payable to Aesthetic Realism Foundation.
|
 |
AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION
