Notes and References

Notes and References CHAPTER ONE. CHIASMUS AND SAMUEL BUTLER: AN INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 1. It is not important per se that the inversion of two elements - rather than three, four, five, etc. - should be singled out as a feature of the definition. For a structure to qualify as an example of bilateral symmetry the strict requirement is that, whatever the order is in one half, it should be inverted in the other half. Thus abe-cba, abed-deba, and so forth, are examples of bilateral symmetry no less than ab-ba. The ab-ba structure, however, is the most important, and it is convenient to use the term 'chiasmus' to refer primarily to that variety. In order for us to know that an inversion of sequentially ordered elements is taking place, we need a minimum of two elements. The ab-ba structure is therefore the minimal version of bilateral symmetry. If more elements than two in each half of the two-part structure are inverted (abe-cba, etc.) this may be thought of as an added boon. But on no account should the definition of chiasmus demand that the inversion be of more than two elements.. If the order of two elements is inverted, then we already know that there is a tendency towards symmetry, and this is most certainly so if the two inverted elements are, in one sense or another, the most important elements of the structure (which, again, repetition automatically tends to make them). Whether the name chiasmus should be given also to structures such as abe-cba and abed-deba, or reserved for ab-ba structures, is a quibble over words. The essential question is whether a tendency towards symmetry is at work or not. It naturally is at work in meticulously inverted multi-element structures such as abe-cba (which may be considered a kind of palindrome on the sentence level). But it is equally at work in the minimal variant ab-ba, and this is the case whether a and b are the only elements in the structure, or the main elements - and often even when they are just two elements out of several. 2. I have given some examples of this type of thematic chiastic structuring in The Insecure World of Henry lames's Fiction: Intensity and Ambiguity (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press, 1982), chapter five, pp. 137-92. 3. One of the functions of the English passive, in the dynamics of textual progression, is to allow the writer to get round left-right restrictions. 4. Chiasmus is a figure of repetition. In sentences such as 'Jack loves Jill, and Jill (loves) Jack', repetition of the verb in the second half is optional, and the verb is often left as implied, without visible manifestation. But the two 276 Notes and References 277 elements 'Jill' and 'Jack' must be repeated, since it is precisely the two operations of repetition and inversion that bring the chiasmus into existence. 5. The Shrewsbury Edition o/the Works o/Samuel Butler, ed. Henry Festing Jones and A. T. Bartholomew, 20 vols (London: Jonathan Cape; and New York: E. P. Dutton, 1923---5) XII: The Authoress o/the Odyssey, p. xxi. (This edition is hereafter referred to as 'Shrewsbury', with volume and page numbers as appropriate.) Other people, in mediaeval or modern times have detected feminine influence both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Not so Butler. What he longed for was complementariness, and that longing would not have been satisfied by a theory of female authorship of both poems. One may still come across, however, the misconception that 'Butler thought Homer was a woman'. That misconception not only reveals ignorance of the facts, but also unfamiliarity with Butler's temperament and his way of thinking. That Butler would not at all have been satisfied with a theory of female authorship of both poems can be seen in, for instance, Shrewsbury, XII xx: he [Eustathius] was trying to prove too much, because by attributing both the finished poems to the result of Homer's having consulted the works of Phantasia, he must have detected the influence of woman in the Iliad as much as in the Odyssey, which of course will not do at all. Cf. also Ibid., p. 8. 6. I shall quote from the Shrewsbury Edition throughout, and give page references to that edition (the volume number is given only on the first reference to a particular work). But to make things easier for people who read Butler in other editions I shall also mention which chapter each example is taken from. 7. Samuel Butler's Notebooks, selections edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951) p. 58. I have decided to quote Butler's notes from this collection. It is widely available, and sufficiently extensive for my purposes. The original master copy of Butler's Notebooks, in 8 volumes, is in the Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. Keynes's and Hill's selection will hereafter be referred to as Notebooks. To save space I shall incorporate the titles of notes into the text of the quotation. Titles of notes will be given in italics, and separated from the rest of the note by a colon. 8. Critics often call Butler a 'controversialist'. See, for instance, Streatfeild, in Shrewsbury, III xi; John F. Harris, Samuel Butler Authorof'Erewhon': The Man and His Work (London: Grant Richards, 1916) p. 59 ('And Butler's mind was above everything a controversial mind'). For an excellent study of the subject, see Ruth M. Gounelas, 'Some Influences on the Work of Samuel Butler (1835-1902), (diss., Oxford, 1977) Part m, pp. 184-249 ('The 1890s: Butler as Controversialist'). 9. See ibid., pp. 172-3, and passim. William James's chiastic comment on sadness and crying appeared in his article 'What is an Emotion?', Mind, 1884, pp. 189-90. Cf. Gounelas, 'Some Influences', pp. 88-9. 10. Similarities between the pragmatistic beliefs of Butler and William James 278 Samuel Butler and the Meaning of Chiasmus should probably be explained to a large extent as resulting from the chiasticistic habits of thought that the two had in common. Several critics have, with varying degrees of insight, commented on Butler's and William James's pragmatism. Cf., for example, Clara G. Stillman, Samuel Butler: A Mid-Victorian Modern (New York: Viking, 1932) pp. 224--8; Adam John Bisanz, 'Samuel Butler: A Literary Venture into Atheism and Beyond', Orbis Litterarum (Copenhagen), XXIX iv (1974) 316--37, and 'Samuel Butler's "Colleges of Unreason''', Orbis Litterarum, XXVIII i (1973) 1-22; Lee E. Holt, Samuel Butler (New York: Twayne, 1964) pp. 51, 90, 94,152,159. 11. For a discussion of this see Michael C. Corballis and Ivan L. Beale, The Psychology of Left and Right (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1976) esp. 11, pp. 160-76. 12. Shrewsbury, VII 29. 13. See Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler: Author of 'Erewhon' (1835-1902). A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1920) I 264--5. (This memoir is hereafter referred to as 'Jones'.) 14. Cf. also Jones, I 151 ('Giles, who has brains, read it through, from end to end, twice .. .'), and II 125 ('Mrs, Beavington Atkinson did Narcissus the week before last, from end to end .. .'); Shrewsbury, XII 6 ('I read it [the Odyssey] through from end to end .. .'); letter to Robert Bridges, 3 Mar 1900 ('I shall read all your plays from end to end'), in Donald E. Stanford, 'Robert Bridges on His Poems and Plays: Unpublished Letters by Robert Bridges to Samuel Butler', Philological Quarterly, L ii (Apr 1971) 289. The expression 'end to end' is quite a favourite in Butler, at the expense of 'beginning to end'. 15. I wish to point out that here, as everywhere in this study, my interpretations are not necessarily offered as an alternative to those of other critics. My only interest is to find out in what way chiasticism was responsible for the end-product. For further interpretation of the equation illness-crime, see, for instance, Thomas L. Jeffers's brilliant study Samuel Butler Revalued (University Park, Penn., and London: Pennsylvania University Press, 1981) pp. 48ff. 16. Cf. Jones, I 233: 'Butler had first assumed that man is a mechanism, whence followed the inference about machines becoming animate.' Note Jones's use of the word 'inference'. Chiasticists have a logic of their own; a logic which is governed by the underlying rule of obligatory symmetry. Given one statement, chiasticists think that the truth of its enantiomorph follows automatically, and to proceed to the enantiomorph they call 'drawing the inference' (specifically the inference, not an inference - there is only one to be drawn in chiasticist logic). This is, of course, a logical fallacy. The enantiomorphic 'inference' can be drawn only if and when the reality under consideration is intrinsically symmetric. 17. The problem has been a preoccupation of philosophers through the ages. To some philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, the question of the nature of enantiomorphs was a subject that the philosopher consciously Notes and References 279 commented on, as it were, 'from the outside'. But it is also likely that to some philosophers an obsession with symmetry has been an unconscious underlying factor shaping their ideas and determining the direction of their thought. 18. Alternatively red. 19. Critics have realized this. Cf., for instance, Dieter Petzold, 'This Blessed Inconsistency: Bemerkungen zu den Paradoxien in Samuel Butler's "Erewhon"', Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift (Heidelberg), XXVII ii (1977) 196: 'Es ist ein kennzeichnendes Paradoxon dieses an Paradoxien so reichen Buches, dass man beiden entgegengesetzten Ansichten eine gewisse Berechtigung zuerkennen muss'; Holt, Samuel Butler, p.

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