BARON GREENPICKLE

German as a language specializes in absurdly comical names. Some Romance names may provoke a grin, but Italian over-flamboyance and Spanish goofiness are nothing compared to the German monopoly on the denominatively ludicrous.

Take, zum Beispiel, a glorious reference buried on page 134 of Princeton's Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540-1680, to a certain Baron Ferdinand Hoffman von Grünpichl und Strechau. Besides providing sorely needed respite from a succession of unimaginatively named artists, the good baron provides a good laugh by virtue of his apparent place of origin: Grünpichl. I don't know about you, but that immediately puts me in mind of Greenpickle and, well, that's good enough for me. 

Of course I'm still working on the actual etymology of Grünpichl. Duden.de defines picheln as "(in kleiner Runde) über längere Zeit Alkohol trinken," which I find amusing. Of course a pre-16th century place name probably has a very different origin.

BY THE NUMEROS: FREQUENCY DICTIONARIES

Since I've been on a history kick I haven't spent as much time on foreign language material. So, just to keep the neurons idling, I've started decking out my bathroom mirror with lists of Spanish words culled from A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish from Routledge. Once I memorize the couple hundred or so I couldn't recall, I know that I'll have the first (by Routledge's reckoning) five thousand down pat. That's a fun thought.

Anyway, I think this sort of rote memorization is a good supplement for direct reading immersion (which remains the best all-around way to absorb and retain foreign vocabulary), but it's only valuable in so far as a). it's used as a supplement and b). (I think) it's more useful to fill in vocabulary gaps once the learner's at a more advanced level.

But now for Routledge's dictionary in particular:

A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish brings together frequency, alphabetical and thematic lists, combines them with English definitions and Spanish phrases for each entry, and wraps the whole thing up with a pretty bow. It's quite well-done. Basically, it does its job, and it does it well. Which is more than you can say for the bulk of language reference material out there. I look forward to going through their German, French and Portuguese editions. Unfortunately they don't have an Italian edition as of yet, but they do have Russian and Arabic.

CAN YOU SAY "WATER" IN MARTIAN?

par Chesley Bonestell

The indispensable Language Hat has brought another internet gem to my attention: Edmund Griffith's "Remarks on the Etymology of Literary Martian." It's a highly amusing mock-philological essay on various fictional "Martian" languages in literature, ranging from Aleksandr Bogdanov to C.S. Lewis. Griffith cheekily points out different real-world languages authors have used as reference points for their own constructions (C.S. Lewis = Old Icelandic), and maintains an endearing, faux-academic register throughout that tickled this reader's funny bone.

Griffiths' website includes an Infrequently Questioned Answers page that's also worth a peek.

COLLECTING BUGS LIKE IT'S 1941

 A good friend of mine shared a little book from 1941 (first print 1936) endearingly entitled How to Know the Insects by Harry Edwin Jaques (who obligingly specifies the pronunciation of his name with a phonetic spelling on the title page: "Ja' - kwis").

In addition to providing a handy introduction to entomology, this miniature masterpiece features a homely guide to the manufacture and use of what Jaques calls "killing bottles." For those collectors who, Jaques says, "fear the deadliness of cyanide," there are other more benign options available: "killing agents such as chloroform, ether, gasoline, benzine, and carbon tetrachloride."

The book's 140-odd pages are fairly evenly divided between quaint 1930s wisdom on collecting/mounting techniques and information on the insects themselves (it's full subtitle is: An Illustrated Key to the More Common Families of Insects, With Suggestions for Collecting, Mounting and Studying Them). The whole is delightfully complemented with naturalistic line-drawings such as exhibit A at right: a hexagenia limbata, or giant mayfly.

 Actually, the book (which is available in full on the Internet Archive if anyone's interested) is worth taking a look at just for the drawings, which I can't find credited. But it takes a true prodigy to produce something of this unparalleled sublimity:

ROBINSON CRUSOE, SUFI MYSTIC

Peter Adamson's aforementioned History of Philosophy podcast just introduced me to a particularly delightful gem: Ibn Tufail's Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a sort of 12th century Islamic gospel of sufist autodidactism.

It apparently involves a feral child (either released in a basket à la Moses or "spontaneously generated" from the earth, the story allows for either) growing up on a deserted island under the tutelage of a recently bereaved mother gazelle. After learning rudimentary anatomy in an ill-fated attempt to cure his ailing gazelle mother with open-chest surgery, the child (Hayy) derives a number of complicated Aristotelian principles from his everyday observations. He explores the island just  long enough for Tufail to propound philosophical theories filched from Avicenna, then retreats to a cave, contemplates, and eventually emerges to experience a vaguely-described ecstatic union with God.

So basically, it's the Jungle Book as Sufi mystical tract and Aristotelian treatise. Prime Choplogic material.

The first Latin translation — entitled Philosophus autodidactus — caused something of a sensation when it appeared in the 17th century. Besides presaging a number of later isolation narratives (most famously Defoe's Crusoe and Kipling's Jungle Book), the text informed Locke's tabula rasa concept and laid the groundwork for much of the "nurture"-oriented epistemology of the Enlightenment. It also makes me wonder if Hesse was purely inspired by Buddhist imagery when he wrote Siddhartha.

The only other Sufi text I've read is Farid ud-Din Attar's enchanting narrative poem the Conference of the Birds. The only real parallel that I can identify here (not having actually read Tufail's little exercise in proto-bildungsroman, mind) is the eventual ecstatic union with God.

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT ANY GAPS

Buster Keaton fan folks.

For a while now I've been enjoying the incredible podcast made available by Peter Adamson at The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.

It's thorough, well-narrated, replete with corny jokes, and the creator is a die-hard Buster Keaton fan. What's not to like? I'm on episode 134 right now, going through Islamic philosophy (about which I know nothing). Think the podcast itself is around the 237-episode mark. He's also apparently launched a side project on Indian philosophy. So check it out pronto.

CHEESE

Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II ushered in the era of Annales school longue durée historical writing. It essentially tries to encompass the geological, historical, demographic, sociological, political and biological entirety of the Mediterranean in the 16th century by referring to then current resources as well as others across time. It's awesome.

In a book of such infamously biblical scope, it is fitting that it would house some biblically bizarre anecdotes. Braudel supposedly quotes the "Bishop of Catanzaro in June, 1549":

 On the morning of Easter Day, some priests would go to the sea front, where there were many flocks, and were in the habit of celebrating mass on an altar made up of formes of cheese, afterwards blessing the cheese and the flocks and giving communion to the shepherds. The priest was then given all the cheese used to make the altar.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate any additional information or even confirmation of this Monty Python-esque episode (Braudel's only note is "Buschbell, (article: reference mislaid) p. 7, note 1," which doesn't help much.

THAT NIGHTEE TEEM BEGIN CHOP CHOP

Jonathan Spence's The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds explores different Western literary perspectives on China from Marco Polo to Italo Calvino. The initial chapters especially merit reading — those from the perspective of missionary wives provide a fascinating glimpse into isolated communities — but the latter half of the book strikes one as a rushed job. 

The final chapter (handicapped by the sheer number of possible sources in the 20th century?) almost seems to devolve into a "merely" literary consideration of Borges, Kafka and Calvino, which compares unfavorably to the examination of Western perspectives on China developed in earlier chapters. 

But none of that matters if one looks at page 133, in the middle of a discussion on U.S. perspectives/portrayals of nineteenth century Chinese immigration. Spence refers to an anonymous piece "published in Harper's in 1869" which deftly translates Longfellow's Excelsior into Pidgin English.

Longfellow's first hackneyed stanza:

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device
     Excelsior!

Then cf.:

That nightee teem he come chop-chop
One young man walkee, no can stop;
Colo maskee, icee maskee;
He got flag; chop b'long welly culio, see — 
     Topside Galah!

This improves on the original so much you can almost forgive Longfellow for penning the original which inspired it. The Harper's piece (in Volume 39) is up on the Internet Archive. Here's the piece, though (click to embiggen):

AMERICAN GEEZER

Prominent men have prominent corncobs.

I recently finished William Manchester's euripidean biography of Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar. At times Manchester seems to suffer from MacArthur's own predilection for over-purple prose (the description of the reclusive, musically-inclined Arthur MacArthur IV as a "fugitive from his father's relentless love" elicited some giggles from this reader),  but it's still a ripping good yarn for all that.

Manchester's succinct synopsis of the "Orwellian" Korean War is particularly fun:

A former ally of the United States, the Soviet Union, was championing a captive state, North Korea, in a conflict in which the South Korean foe was being supported by the United Nations, to which the Russians belonged, while the Soviets, meanwhile, were demanding the right to participate in treaty negotiations with a former enemy of the Americans and the Russians — Japan — which would bring peace between Japan, which was becoming the base for anti-Pyongyang forces, and the United States, now the Soviets' archenemy. To crown is all, the grand alliance fighting the puny North Koreans seemed to face imminent defeat.

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I'd also like to give my sincerest apologies to the cybervoid for my extended hiatus from the blog. I know you've missed me. Regular updates should come.