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I recently got the Blu-ray of Godard’s Hail Mary (Je vous salue, Marie) and watched it for the first time in almost forty years, once straight and once with the commentary track (and please allow me to vent my frustration about commentators who spend most of their time on bloviating and generalities rather than focusing on what is happening onscreen). Back when I saw it in the theater I was young and foolish and too proudly rationalist to be able to accept its premise of a virgin birth, not to mention that any Godard movie has to be seen more than once to be appreciated; now, with more Godard under my belt and more intellectual humility, I can enjoy its extraordinary beauty and its intellectual and psychological musings, and those musings bring us to the topic of this post.

Godard is surely the most literary of major directors — not in the sense of making movies out of books, which he rarely does, but in the sense of dealing with ideas in a literary way. Virtually all of his movies have characters quote from books, sometimes in extenso and sometimes reading from the book itself, and he will occasionally break up the action with his own ruminations (as in the famous coffee-cup scene from 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle). For this reason, you would think that analyses of the movies would routinely discuss the books he draws from, just as the Annotated Alice or Lolita describe the literary references used in those classics. But alas, the people who write about movies tend to care much more about camera angles and acting techniques than about literature and literary references, so a basic feature of the films goes more or less ignored.

I will provide some examples from Hail Mary, with brief explanations of their relevance to the film, in the hope that someone will pick up the baton and do a Books in Godard parallel to Eric Karpeles’s wonderful Paintings in Proust.
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Jack Morava sent me this delightful link:

Math teacher Ben Orlin writes and draws the (aptly named) blog Math With Drawings and is the author of a new book, Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language. To mark its publication, he devised this entertaining accompanying quiz.

A sample:

2. If you see someone write “0.33333,” how do you interpret this?

(a) They clearly meant 1/3.

(b) They clearly meant 33,333/100,000.

(c) Looks like a fifth-iteration address in a generalized Cantor set. But I can’t tell the specifics without more context.

(d) It’s a coded message to my android brain. To escape the time loop, we must follow Commander Riker’s plan and decompress the main shuttle bay.

And at the end, you get to see what your results mean, e.g.:

Mostly B’s: Your style is HYPERLITERAL.

You delight in the pedantry of mathematical culture. This is a language of precision, every symbol’s meaning honed to a sharpened point—and you love wielding those sharp points to poke and prod speakers less precise than yourself.

In short, you’re a linguistic troll. Your literary equivalent is David Foster Wallace.

As a former math major, of course I was tickled (I ended up “normcore,” but I refuse to be equated with Dan Brown); I’ll bet the book is a good read. Thanks, Jack!

Wolfgang Mieder’s “«Laissez faire à Georges» and «Let George do it»: A Case of Paremiological Polygenesis” (Paremia 22 [2013]:17-29) is an astonishing example of coincidence, the kind of thing that should be kept at the tip of one’s brain to confute those who take resemblance for proof of origin. The abstract:

While polygenesis appears to be a rare phenomenon with proverbs, the French proverb «Laissez faire à Georges» from the end of the fifteenth century and the American proverb «Let George do it» from the last quarter of the nineteenth century do in fact have two different origins. This is shown by numerous references from French and Anglo-American proverb collections and dictionaries. Even though some paremiographers and lexicographers continue to insist on a monogenetic relationship between the two proverbs, the argument for two separate origins has steadily gained acceptance. The two «Georges» of the proverbs have no relationship to each other, and it would have made little sense for the old French idiom with its relationship to Georges d’Amboise to have been adopted by the Anglo-American world. Clearly the American proverb is based on another George, namely the generic name given to emancipated slaves who were employed as African American porters on the Pullman railroad cars during the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond. While the French proverb has long been out of use, the American proverb is still in use today.

Anatoly Vorobey, from whom I got the link, compares the Russian use of Pushkin as the universal doer, and confesses that he only just learned that the English noun saw ‘saying, proverb’ has nothing to do with the homophonous noun meaning ‘tool with a toothed blade’ but is related to the verb say (it is, in fact, a doublet of saga).

I may have mentioned that my wife and I are rereading Barchester Towers, and in Ch. XXXIV (“Oxford—The Master and Tutor of Lazarus”) there occurs this passage:

“But perhaps Mr. Slope may have no objection to see his patron on a rock,” said the suspicious tutor.

“What could he get by that?” asked Mr. Arabin.

“It is impossible to see the doubles of such a man,” said Mr. Staple.

Does anyone have any idea what Trollope means by “the doubles”?

Ben Yagoda has an enlightening Not One-Off Britishisms post about the pronunciation of the word primer:

I’m not speaking about the preliminary coat of paint but the word defined by Merriam-Webster as “a small book for teaching children to read; a small introductory book on a subject; a short informative piece of writing.” The dictionary gives the American pronunciation as rhyming with “dimmer,” and British as rhyming with “climber.” (Which is how both countries pronounce the paint thing.) […]

As explained by Anne Curzan and Rebecca Kruth in their radio feature “That’s What They Say,”

The “primmer” pronunciation came into English from the Latin term “primarius” which meant “first.” This word can be traced back in written forms of English to the late 1300s. It originally referred to a Christian prayer book for laypeople (as opposed to clergy) that was often used to teach reading. By the 1500s, there are versions of these books that are only used to teach children to read.

In Britain, they go on, the “prye-mer” pronunciation emerged in the nineteenth century and became the dominant one in the twentieth, but “primmer” held on in the U.S.

Until recently, that is. On Facebook, I asked people how they pronounced the word and the results were illuminating. For the most part, it broke down by age: most of the people over 60 said “primmer,” and most under 60, “prye-mer.” The only non-American who responded was an English woman who has lived in the U.S. for some decades, and who said, “I don’t recall ever hearing ‘primmer.’” Of course, the word doesn’t come up that much.

I, of course (being a Yank well over 60), say “primmer,” and once upon a time I had the itch to correct people who pronounced it as if it were a coat of paint, but happily long years of promoting descriptivist attitudes (in myself as well as among the general public) have quelled the urge. Let the young folks say it as they like, and if it makes me twitch, well, it’s good not to sit still all the time.
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I was recently listening to an interview (in French) with an actress who used the expression quand même in just about every sentence, and it almost seemed as if it had a different meaning each time she used it, so I decided to find out what was going on and googled up this useful site:

Used extensively—and almost exclusively—in spoken French, the expression quand même has a multitude of meanings.

1) To disregard an impediment
The original meaning is also the simplest: quand même is an adverbial phrase meaning something like “still” or “anyway” when you can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t want to do something. […]

2) Acknowledgement of an impediment
Related to the first meaning, quand même can indicate unexpected, contradictory, or adverse conditions. […]

3) Triumph over an impediment
Quand même can succinctly reference the overcoming of adversity. […]

4) Emphasis
Informally, quand même can be used for emphasis. […]

5) Interjection
Quand même can indicate a strong reaction like surprise, disbelief, or outrage. I think this is the trickiest to understand, and hesitate to use it for fear of being misunderstood. […]

6) Rhetorical question / Disbelief
Quand même with a future construction indicates that whatever you’re thinking about doing is probably not a good idea. […]

7) Acknowledgement
Recognition of effort or a saving grace. […]

Those summaries aren’t much use without examples; fortunately, the site has loads of them, which I have elided with ellipses. Perhaps my favorite is the slogan on a 1914 poster:

France toujours ! France quand même !

Unrelated, but this MetaFilter post says:

Stuck in a World of Twin Languages and 600 Pronouns tells the story of a dimension-hopping linguist trying to understand and survive a language spoken by intelligent and/or cybernetic palm trees. Each chapter brings new orthographic and societal horrors. And yes, there’s a tonal variant, since creator ZeWei has experience making songs with conlangs.

Someone who likes videos more than I do might want to check it out. (And if you think it’s so good I should watch it despite my reluctance, let me know!)

The Athletic section of the NY Times is doing a series of articles I can’t resist. It began last Monday with Villans, Cherries, Toffees and Tractor Boys: The origins of English football club nicknames (archived), which begins:

What’s in a nickname? That is a question The Athletic will be answering this week as we trace the origins of football clubs’ monikers in England, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the rest of the world.

They start with Arsenal, whose nickname “the Gunners” comes (as every schoolboy knows) from “the club being formed by a group of 15 workers from the Royal Arsenal munitions factory in Woolwich,” and proceed through the rest of the Premier League (I did not know Nottingham Forest was called, inter alia, the Garibaldis); then they drop down to the lower leagues, my favorites of which are of course Stockport County and Luton Town, both called the Hatters.

The second entry, on French nicknames (archived), is full of boring color names (Les Noirs et Blancs, Les Bleus et Blancs, Les Rouges et Blancs, and for variety Les Verts), but there are some pretty good ones: LOSC Lille are Les Dogues (The Mastiffs), and Montpellier Herault SC are La Paillade (the name of a district in Montpellier). Much better are the German ones (archived): Bayern Munich are Die Rekordmeister, FC Hollywood, and Bestia Negra (for beating Real Madrid more often than any other side from outside Spain), Augsburg are Die Fuggerstadter, Bochum are Die Unabsteigbaren (the undescendables, because they held onto their Bundesliga status for 22 seasons), Bayer Leverkusen are Die Werkself (the factory eleven), Borussia Monchengladbach are Die Fohlen (the Foals), and Freiburg are Die Breisgau-Brasilianer (the Breisgau Brazilians, because they were accomplished and watchable in the ’90s).
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It occurred to me to wonder why we use hubris rather than hybris as the anglicization of Greek ὕβρις, so of course I went to the OED. Alas, the entry is from 1933 and doesn’t address the issue, but it does say “compare hybris n.” So it turns out there’s a word hybris (entry also from 1933), whose definition is “=hubris n.”! Why on earth are there two separate entries? For what it’s worth, here are the first citations for each, though I’m sure they can be antedated:

1884 Boys of good family, who have always been toadied, and never been checked, who are full of health and high spirits, develop what Academic slang knows as hubris, a kind of high-flown insolence.
Daily News 28 October (Ware)

1920 During one of these the oppressor, possessed of place and power, imagined in his hybris, that he might extend his arm across the ocean.
Public Opinion 27 August 195/2

The etymology of the Greek word has been considered mysterious; a new suggestion by Romain Garnier and Benoît Sagot (in their paper A shared substrate between Greek and Italic) was quoted by PlasticPaddy in this comment:

5.1.2 Gr. ὕβρις ‘arrogance, haughtiness, etc.’

Gr. ὕβρις [f.] ‘arrogance, haughtiness, exorbitance, violence, offence, abuse’, at-
tested from Homer on, is mentioned by Chantraine et al. (2009: 1110) as being
without etymology and by Beekes (2010: 1524–1525) as having “no certain explanation”. Yet Chantraine indicates that “some Hellenists have probably thought of comparing this word with ὑπέρ, which would be semantically satisfactory but remains impossible.”

We believe this comparison actually holds. We start from the PIE adverb *(h₁)upér-i ‘above’ (cf. Ved. upári ‘id.’ and Ger. über < Com. Germ. *uβeri ‘id.’). Applying the Verner-like lenition followed by the systematic barytonesis, such an adverb would yield Substr. *úβeri. Once borrowed as Com. Gr. *húberi, this adverb could have served as the basis for the Hom. Gr. present participle ὑβρίζων, -οντος ‘who exhibits an overbearing spirit or demeanour’ after dactylisation, whence Classical Gr. ὑβρίζω ‘to outrage, insult, maltreat’. In turn, this participle could have yielded a derived noun ὑβριστής ‘arrogant person’. Gr. ὑβρίζων, -οντος would also have served as the basis for the back-formed noun ὕβρις.

Not convincing, but worth knowing about — thanks, PP!

Anatoly Vorobey wrote me as follows (I’ve added italics and a link):

I was looking up a sound change in Jespersen’s A Modern English Grammar, specifically the rounding of a after w: the way words like swap, war, watch, etc. switched from the vowel of bat to the vowel of bot. Apparently happened in the 17th-18th centuries post Shakespeare (he rhymes watch/match etc.) Before [k],[g] the change didn’t happen (whack etc.), and also before [m], but here Jespersen says:

In swam the only pronunciation known in England is [swæm], but in America [swɔm] may also be heard; this is the regular phonetic development, while [swæm] must be due to the analogy of other preterites: began, drank, etc.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard swam pronounced as “swom” by Americans or otherwise – have you ever heard any such thing?

I most certainly have not, and I was intrigued enough to post the question: have you heard [swɔm] for swam, or do you know of its existence?

I don’t usually post press releases, but this one from “Deep Vellum & Dalkey Archive” demonstrates such daring and ambition (in a realm that concerns me intimately) that I have to share it:

With the groundbreaking success of Mircea Cartarescu’s SOLENOID—a “towering work” (Dustin Illingworth, New York Times)—Miquel de Palol’s THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TWILIGHTS—“equal parts unwieldy and extraordinary” (Ben Hooyman, Los Angeles Review of Books)—and Luis Goytisolo’s ANTAGONY— “brilliant…daring” (Colm Tóibín, New York Review of Books)—Deep Vellum, together with the rejuvenated Dalkey Archive Press that merged with Deep Vellum in 2021, has demonstrated its affection for daring work of astonishing literary ambition. In the span of mere months, we published two groundbreaking novels written by living legends and annual Nobel contenders. But those books merely set the stage for what’s in store for 2025 and 2026 (and beyond!): the publication of translated works more ambitious than any that have been published by more traditional houses in decades past.

Starting in 2024, Max Lawton will share his vision and talent with Deep Vellum to translate, edit, and shepherd into English some of the world’s most exciting fiction and to cement the press’ reputation as the champion of maximalist literature in the Anglosphere––of the badass avant-garde masterpieces that would otherwise not be translated or published.

These masterpieces have come to Deep Vellum and to Lawton thanks to Andrei, a friend of the press and the founding steward of The Untranslated blog, the seminal reference for great books not yet available to English-speaking audiences. Andrei, a Russian-speaking book blogger from Eastern Europe, launched The Untranslated in 2013. He has described the idea for the blog as having come from reading Gravity’s Rainbow as an undergrad and wondering if there were similar works in other languages. As a PhD student of comparative literature, he became fascinated by the short reviews of untranslated books in the magazine World Literature Today––by the idea that you could tell the world about a book before it was translated. Andrei therefore dedicated his blog to reviewing significant literary works unavailable in English translation. Last year, he celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Untranslated, the ultimate Anglophone source for reviews of innovative literary works written in or translated into the eight languages other than English that Andrei can read. Deep Vellum owes a debt of gratitude to Andrei for discovering and championing all of these books; he was also instrumental in encouraging Lawton to undertake their translations.

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