A discussion of literature by Jorge Mario Bergoglio (as was) includes this nice bit on his compatriot:
When I think of literature, I am reminded of what the great Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges used to tell his students, namely that the most important thing is simply to read, to enter into direct contact with literature, to immerse oneself in the living text in front of us, rather than to fixate on ideas and critical comments. Borges explained this idea to his students by saying that at first they may understand very little of what they are reading, but in any case they are hearing “another person’s voice”. This is a definition of literature that I like very much: listening to another person’s voice. We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us!
That resonates with me as well; I enjoy a good analysis of a literary text, but the primary pleasure and benefit is that of simply listening to it.
Re “Jorge Mario Bergoglio (as was)”,
I’m unclear about “as was”.
Wiktionary says “(British English)
As it was; in a former state or
condition.” Which tells me little
in this case. Is it an informal way
of saying “Rest in Peace”?
That was what he went by before he became known as Pope Francis.
Thank you, Y! I had forgotten that
that was the Pope’s original name.
am i right to think “as was” is usually either equivalent to “née” (“jackie bouvier as was”) or used for the pre-ennoblement or pre-ascension name of an aristocrat known by their current fief / title / regnal name (“karl eitel friedrich zephyrinus ludwig von hohenzollern-sigmaringen* as was”)?
.
* example chosen solely for the “zephyrinus”; better known as the uncle-in-law of marie of romania.
I usaully say (what’s the point of remembering this all without saying it once in a while?) “Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga in madenhood Joseph-Désiré Mobutu” where в девичестве “in maidenhood” is one of Russian variations.
Tangentially relevant: I know a few transgender people whom I also knew before their transition, so I had occasion to ask what pronoun to use when talking about events back then. I was informed that it’s good style to use their current pronouns even though it may confuse a listener (who may only have know them under the previous set). Hypothetical: They did military service in a country that doesn’t enlist women.
“As was” is also used of corporate entities; analogous to rozele’s intuition regarding individuals, I suspect most often “CORPNAME as was” shows a change of name is concomitant to a change of state — mergers, splits, gain/loss of function — but not always: sometimes a mere rebranding or, at the other extreme, a thing that has ceased to be.
Wow, it looks like I opened a can of worms
and sent the discussion totally off-topic!
Aplogies to OP. (Who knew that “as was” was so complicated?)
A college friend was editor of the Review of Metaphysics when he was in grad school many years ago. He told me they had a tricky problem of etiquette, very much like this one. They had accepted an article on Phenomenology (I think it was) from a Polish cardinal, but while it was going through the editorial process he had been elected pope. How to describe him in the little blurb at the beginning of the article? I don’t recall the solution, which was probably rather dull, but I do recall we came up with a wide range of alternatives, including:
1. “Karol Wojtyla is the Pope.” (short and sweet)
2. “Karol Wojtyla is the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, God’s Regent on Earth”, etc. etc. giving all his official titles, which would probably fill half a page.
3. Not the whole blurb, but something that could be included in it: “Karol Wojtyla wishes to assure the reader that he was not infallible when he wrote this article.” (And yes, I know that even after he was elected, he was not even hypothetically infallible when writing papers on metaphysics.)
There were more, but I’ve forgotten them. It’s been quite a few years.
Which reminds me. An article on an obscure (at least to me) point of mathematics quoted an “elegant proof” by “T. J. Kaczynski” (the Unabomber), with a footnote “Better known for other work”. I plan to put the same footnote in something I’m writing that refers to the very handy reference work A Lexicon to Herodotus, edited by J. E. Powell. The E is for Enoch.
Excellent!
The notion that Dr. Wojytla might continue to use that name rather than his religious name while publishing on phenomenology is not necessarily all that different from e.g. the situation of certain married women who continue to use their maiden name professionally (e.g. because of established prior reputation in their field and to promote continuity in that reputation) while using their married name in social contexts. I guess the short-but-sweet “Dr. Wojytla is an independent scholar” was not considered? I don’t know if he at some point pre-pontificate had had some formal academic-sounding administrative title at some seminary in Poland (even if he didn’t actually teach there) which might sound good in an academic-publishing context.
In Canada, when you speak of the doings of judges before they ascended to the bench, the usual terminology is : “as he/she then was”.
“Five years ago, their lawyer, John Smith (as he then was) argued vehemently for their innocence.”
The Emperor Emeritus of Japan has published several academic articles.
In Ichthyology, you can trace the career he is more famous for from changes in his name and affiliation:
– In 1988: Prince Akihito (The Crown Prince’s Palace, Motoakasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 107, Japan)
– In 2000 and 2003: Akihito (The Imperial Residence, 1-1 Chiyoda, Chiyoda-ku, 100-0001, Tokyo, Japan)
– In 2021: Akihito (Emperor Emeritus’ Residence, 1-14-1 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 100-0074, Japan)
A quick check on Google Scholar suggests this is how he’s always listed in his articles as an ichthyologist, not only in Ichthyology but also in Gene and in the Japanese Journal of Ichthyology.
Conversely, when he has published essays (surely not peer-reviewed) on the history of science in Japan, his day job (“His Majesty The Emperor of Japan”) was explicitly listed at least as an affiliation (by Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B and by Science), or more strangely even as the author’s name (by Nature).
@Michael Hendry:
Exceedingly dull. The article (Wojtyla 1979) simply has “Karol Wotyla” as the author and “Krakow” in lieu of an affiliation.
An editorial footnote explains the article took three years to publish because the author had requested withholding it until the English translation of his book was published. I suppose it is standard in such a case to list the author with the affiliation he had at the time of acceptance, even though they subsequently changed jobs.
It’s not fully clear to me why they didn’t list “Archdiocese of Krakow” as his affiliation. In my discipline (economics), authors routinely publish papers and list their employer even if it is not a research institution, but rather a government department or a private company. But I presume such choices are very field-specific
Conversely, when he has published essays (surely not peer-reviewed) on the history of science in Japan, his day job (“His Majesty The Emperor of Japan”) was explicitly listed at least as an affiliation (by Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B and by Science), or more strangely even as the author’s name (by Nature).
Interesting. “Surely not peer-reviewed” reminds me of something King Arthur said about the trial of Guenever in The Once and Future King, by T. H. White: “…as for doing it by purgation, it would be impossible to find the necessary number of peers for a Queen .”
But if you mean reviewed by his academic peers, I’d think those august journals would have essays on the history of science reviewed by historians of science.
I reckon international law nowadays aligns with my own republican principles and considers every head of state a legitimate peer of the Emperor of Japan in the Arthurian sense. Yet I acknowledge it would have been more entertaining to follow medieval principles and have his papers peer-reviewed by the Pope.
Much less entertaining, what I meant is that his published papers on the history of science in Japan don’t look like articles that would be peer-reviewed by historians of science, but rather like invited essays (or in Nature‘s case, an excerpt from a speech) that wouldn’t be peer-reviewed even if they were written by a purely academic grandee: say, the head of a scholarly association rather than a sovereign state.
Accordingly, his essay in Science describes him not only as the Emperor of Japan but also as a published ichthyologist—not a historian of science.
When Borges formed these sentences and—I presume—dictated them to his amanuensis or his wife in the mid 70s, for publication in Borges oral (1970), he had been blind for twenty years. And I understand that during these twenty years, he knew many books primarily through the human voice, as his mother, his secretary, his friends, his wife read to him. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at these readings—I imagine that Borges must have offered many lively and insightful comments on how things should be read.
Thank you, Giacomo Ponzetto, makes sense. I haven’t seen enough of Science or Nature to know they publish essays like that.
And thank you, Xerib, for providing Borges’s original text. Calling the author’s voice the most important thing is striking and (as Brigoglio might say) challenging. Would they say the same thing about letters, or conversation, even the cashier telling you the total? If not, how do you draw the line? Would Brigoglio say that in literature with Catholic themes, the author’s voice is more important than the message? Would Borges say it about books (he didn’t limit it to literature) that supported or opposed Perón? How would the authors feel about being read that way?
And if you don’t understand a book much, are you really in a position to enjoy or get the benefit of the voice? I have grave doubts.
in muriel rukeyser’s fascinating biography of thomas hariot, i just ran into a variation on one of our themes: walter raleigh referring to “Northumberland that now is”, to distinguish the (then) current holder of the title from his father, who i assume might’ve been referred to as “northumberland as was”. the persistence of the office/title, as opposed to the persistence of the person.
Which is one of the themes of The Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar (see this post).