on evil euphemisms
ON EVIL EUPHEMISMS
G. K. Chesterton
Published in “G. K. Chesterton: Stories, Essays, & Poems”, (Everyman’s Library - 913), J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1946 reprint of 1935 edition, p208-211. Originally appeared in “Come to think of It”, 1930.
Somebody has sent me a book on Companionate Marriage; so called because the people involved are not married and will very rapidly cease to be companions. I have no intention of discussing here that somewhat crude colonial project. I will merely say that it is here accompanied with sub-titles and other statements about the rising generation and the revolt of youth. And it seems to me exceedingly funny that, just when the rising generation boasts of not being sentimental, when it talks of being very scientific and sociological—at that very moment everybody seems to have forgotten altogether what was the social use of marriage and to be thinking wholly and solely of the sentimental. The practical purposes mentioned as the first two reasons for marriage, in the Anglican marriage service, seem to have gone completely out of sight for some people, who talk as if there were nothing but a rather wild version of the third, which may relatively be called romantic. And this, if you please, is supposed to be an emancipation from Victorian sentiment and romance.
But I only mention this matter as one of many, and one which illustrates a still more curious contradiction in this modern claim. We are perpetually being told that this rising generation is very frank and free, and that its whole social ideal is frankness and freedom. Now I am not at all afraid of frankness. What I am afraid of is fickleness. And there is a truth in the old proverbial connection between what is fickle and what is false. There is in the very titles and terminology of all this sort of thing a pervading element of falsehood. Everything is to be called something that it is not; as in the characteristic example of Companionate Marriage. Everything is to be recommended to the public by some sort of synonym which is really a pseudonym. It is a talent that goes with the time of electioneering and advertisement and newspaper headlines; but whatever else such a time may be, it certainly is not specially a time of truth.
In short, these friends of frankness depend almost entirely on Euphemism. They introduce their horrible heresies under new and carefully complimentary names; as the Furies were called the Eumenides. The names are always flattery; the names are also nonsense. The name of Birth-Control, for instance, is sheer nonsense. Everybody has always exercised birth-control; even when they were so paradoxical as to permit the process to end in a birth. Everybody has always known about birth-control, even if it took the wild and unthinkable form of self-control. The question at issue concerns different forms of birth-prevention; and I am not going to debate it here. But if I did debate it, I would call it by its name. The same is true of an older piece of sentiment indulged in by the frank and free: the expression ‘Free Love.’ That also is a Euphemism; that is, it is a refusal of people to say what they mean. In that sense, it is impossible to prevent LOVE being free, but the moral problem challenged concerns not the passions, but the will. There are a great many other examples of this sort of polite fiction; these respectable disguises adopted by those who are always railing against respectability. In the immediate future there will probably be more still. There really seems no necessary limit to the process; and however far the anarchy of ethics may go, it may always be accompanied with this curious and pompous ceremonial. The sensitive youth of the future will never be called upon to accept Forgery as Forgery. It will be easy enough to call it Homoeography or Script-Assimilation or something else that would suggest, to the simple or the superficial, that nothing was involved but a sort of socializing or unification of individual handwriting. We should not, like the more honest Mr. Fagin, teach little boys to pick pockets; for Mr. Fagin becomes far less honest when he becomes Professor Faginski, the great sociologist, of the University of Jena. But we should call it by some name implying the transference of something; I cannot at the moment remember the Greek either for pocket or pocket-handkerchief. As for the social justification of murder, that has already begun; and earnest thinkers had better begin at once to think about a nice inoffensive name for it. The case for murder, on modern relative and evolutionary ethics, is quite overwhelming. There is hardly one of us who does not, in looking round his or her social circle, recognize some chatty person or energetic social character whose disappearance, without undue fuss or farewell, would be a bright event for us all. Nor is it true that such a person is dangerous only because he wields unjust legal or social powers. The problem is often purely psychological, and not in the least legal; and no legal emancipations would solve it. Nothing would solve it but the introduction of that new form of liberty which we may agree to call, perhaps, the practice of Social Subtraction. Or, if we like, we can model the new name on the other names I have mentioned. We may call it Life-Control or Free Death; or anything else that has as little to do with the point of it as Companionate Marriage has to do with either marriage or companionship.
Anyhow, I respectfully refuse to be impressed by the claim to candour and realism put forward just now for men, women, and movements. It seems to me obvious that this is not really the age of audacity but merely of advertisement; which may rather be described as caution kicking up a fuss. Much of the mistake arises from the double sense of the word publicity. For publicity also is a thoroughly typical euphemism or evasive term. Publicity does not mean revealing public life in the interests of public spirit. It means merely flattering private enterprises in the interests of private persons. It means paying compliments in public; but not offering criticisms in public. We should all be very much surprised if we walked out of the front door one morning and saw a hoarding on one side of the road saying: ‘Use Miggle’s Milk; It Is All Cream,’ and a hoarding on the other side of the road inscribed: ‘Don’t Use Miggle’s Milk; It’s Nearly All Water.’ The modern world would be much upset if I were allowed to set up a flaming sky-sign proclaiming my precise opinion of the Colonial Port Wine praised in the flaming sign opposite. All this advertisement may have something to do with the freedom of trade; but it has nothing to with the freedom of truth. Publicity must be praise and praise must to some extent be euphemism. It must put the matter in a milder and more inoffensive form that it might be put, however much that mildness may seem to shout through megaphones or flare in headlines. And just as this sort of loud evasion is used in favour of bad wine and bad milk, so it is used in favour of bad morals. When somebody wishes to wage a social war against what all normal people have regarded as a social decency, the very first thing he does is to find some artificial term that shall sound relatively decent. He has no more of the real courage that would pit vice against virtue than the ordinary advertiser has the courage to advertise ale as arsenic. His intelligence, such as it is, is entirely a commercial intelligence and to that extent entirely conventional. He is a shop-keeper who dresses the shop-window; he is certainly the very reverse of a rebel or a rioter who breaks the shop-window. If only for this reason, I remain cold and decline the due reverence to Companionate Marriage and the book which speaks so reverentially about the Revolt of Youth. For this sort of revolt strikes me as nothing except revolting; and certainly not particularly realistic. With the passions which are natural to youth we all sympathize; with the pain that often arises from loyalty and duty we all sympathize still more; but nobody need sympathize with publicity experts picking pleasant expressions for unpleasant things; and I for one prefer the coarse language of our fathers.
[Transcribed by Anthony Caetano]
on evil euphemisms
ON EVIL EUPHEMISMS
G. K. Chesterton
Published in “G. K. Chesterton: Stories, Essays, & Poems”, (Everyman’s Library - 913), J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1946 reprint of 1935 edition, p208-211. Originally appeared in “Come to think of It”, 1930.
Somebody has sent me a book on Companionate Marriage; so called because the people involved are not married and will very rapidly cease to be companions. I have no intention of discussing here that somewhat crude colonial project. I will merely say that it is here accompanied with sub-titles and other statements about the rising generation and the revolt of youth. And it seems to me exceedingly funny that, just when the rising generation boasts of not being sentimental, when it talks of being very scientific and sociological—at that very moment everybody seems to have forgotten altogether what was the social use of marriage and to be thinking wholly and solely of the sentimental. The practical purposes mentioned as the first two reasons for marriage, in the Anglican marriage service, seem to have gone completely out of sight for some people, who talk as if there were nothing but a rather wild version of the third, which may relatively be called romantic. And this, if you please, is supposed to be an emancipation from Victorian sentiment and romance.
But I only mention this matter as one of many, and one which illustrates a still more curious contradiction in this modern claim. We are perpetually being told that this rising generation is very frank and free, and that its whole social ideal is frankness and freedom. Now I am not at all afraid of frankness. What I am afraid of is fickleness. And there is a truth in the old proverbial connection between what is fickle and what is false. There is in the very titles and terminology of all this sort of thing a pervading element of falsehood. Everything is to be called something that it is not; as in the characteristic example of Companionate Marriage. Everything is to be recommended to the public by some sort of synonym which is really a pseudonym. It is a talent that goes with the time of electioneering and advertisement and newspaper headlines; but whatever else such a time may be, it certainly is not specially a time of truth.
In short, these friends of frankness depend almost entirely on Euphemism. They introduce their horrible heresies under new and carefully complimentary names; as the Furies were called the Eumenides. The names are always flattery; the names are also nonsense. The name of Birth-Control, for instance, is sheer nonsense. Everybody has always exercised birth-control; even when they were so paradoxical as to permit the process to end in a birth. Everybody has always known about birth-control, even if it took the wild and unthinkable form of self-control. The question at issue concerns different forms of birth-prevention; and I am not going to debate it here. But if I did debate it, I would call it by its name. The same is true of an older piece of sentiment indulged in by the frank and free: the expression ‘Free Love.’ That also is a Euphemism; that is, it is a refusal of people to say what they mean. In that sense, it is impossible to prevent LOVE being free, but the moral problem challenged concerns not the passions, but the will. There are a great many other examples of this sort of polite fiction; these respectable disguises adopted by those who are always railing against respectability. In the immediate future there will probably be more still. There really seems no necessary limit to the process; and however far the anarchy of ethics may go, it may always be accompanied with this curious and pompous ceremonial. The sensitive youth of the future will never be called upon to accept Forgery as Forgery. It will be easy enough to call it Homoeography or Script-Assimilation or something else that would suggest, to the simple or the superficial, that nothing was involved but a sort of socializing or unification of individual handwriting. We should not, like the more honest Mr. Fagin, teach little boys to pick pockets; for Mr. Fagin becomes far less honest when he becomes Professor Faginski, the great sociologist, of the University of Jena. But we should call it by some name implying the transference of something; I cannot at the moment remember the Greek either for pocket or pocket-handkerchief. As for the social justification of murder, that has already begun; and earnest thinkers had better begin at once to think about a nice inoffensive name for it. The case for murder, on modern relative and evolutionary ethics, is quite overwhelming. There is hardly one of us who does not, in looking round his or her social circle, recognize some chatty person or energetic social character whose disappearance, without undue fuss or farewell, would be a bright event for us all. Nor is it true that such a person is dangerous only because he wields unjust legal or social powers. The problem is often purely psychological, and not in the least legal; and no legal emancipations would solve it. Nothing would solve it but the introduction of that new form of liberty which we may agree to call, perhaps, the practice of Social Subtraction. Or, if we like, we can model the new name on the other names I have mentioned. We may call it Life-Control or Free Death; or anything else that has as little to do with the point of it as Companionate Marriage has to do with either marriage or companionship.
sui malvagi eufemismi
SUI MALVAGI EUFEMISMI
G. K. Chesterton
Pubblicato in “G. K. Chesterton: Stories, Essays, & Poems”, (Everyman’s Library - 913), J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, ristampa 1946 dell’edizione 1935, pp208-211. Apparso originariamente in “Come to think of It”, 1930.
Qualcuno mi ha mandato un libro sul Matrimonio Compagnesco; così chiamato perché le persone coinvolte non sono sposate e assai rapidamente cesseranno di essere compagni. Non ho intenzione di discutere qui quel progetto coloniale alquanto rozzo. Dirò soltanto che qui è accompagnato da sottotitoli e altre dichiarazioni sulla generazione che avanza e la rivolta della gioventù. E mi sembra straordinariamente buffo che, proprio quando la generazione che avanza si vanta di non essere sentimentale, quando parla di essere molto scientifica e sociologica—proprio in quel momento tutti sembrano aver dimenticato del tutto quale fosse l’uso sociale del matrimonio e pensare unicamente ed esclusivamente al sentimentale. Gli scopi pratici menzionati come le prime due ragioni del matrimonio, nel rito matrimoniale anglicano, sembrano essere del tutto usciti di vista per certune persone, che ne parlano come se non vi fosse nulla se non una versione piuttosto sfrenata della terza, che si può relativamente dire romantica. E questo, per favore, si suppone sia un’emancipazione dal sentimentalismo vittoriano e dal Romanticismo.
Ma menziono questa faccenda soltanto come una fra molte, e come una che illustra una contraddizione ancora più curiosa in questa pretesa moderna. Ci viene perpetuamente detto che questa generazione che avanza è molto franca e libera, e che il suo intero ideale sociale è la franchezza e la Libertà. Ora, io non ho affatto paura della franchezza. Ciò di cui ho paura è la volubilità. E c’è una verità nell’antico nesso proverbiale fra ciò che è volubile e ciò che è falso. Vi è nei titoli stessi e nella terminologia di tutta questa sorta di cose un elemento pervasivo di falsità. Ogni cosa va chiamata con qualcosa che essa non è; come nell’esempio caratteristico del Matrimonio Compagnesco. Ogni cosa va raccomandata al pubblico con una sorta di sinonimo che è in realtà uno pseudonimo. È un talento che va di pari passo col tempo delle campagne elettorali e della pubblicità e dei titoli di giornale; ma qualunque altra cosa un simile tempo possa essere, di certo non è specialmente un tempo di verità.
In breve, questi amici della franchezza dipendono quasi interamente dall’Eufemismo. Introducono le loro orribili eresie sotto nomi nuovi e accuratamente lusinghieri; come le Furie erano chiamate le Eumenidi. I nomi sono sempre adulazione; i nomi sono anche insensatezza. Il nome di Controllo delle Nascite, per esempio, è pura insensatezza. Tutti hanno sempre esercitato il controllo delle nascite; anche quando erano tanto paradossali da permettere che il processo si concludesse in una nascita. Tutti hanno sempre conosciuto il controllo delle nascite, anche se prese la forma selvaggia e impensabile dell’autocontrollo. La questione in gioco riguarda differenti forme di prevenzione delle nascite; e non ho intenzione di dibatterne qui. Ma se la dibattessi, la chiamerei col suo nome. Lo stesso vale per un più antico pezzo di sentimentalismo cui indulgono i franchi e liberi: l’espressione ‘Libero Amore.’ Anche quello è un Eufemismo; vale a dire, è un rifiuto della gente di dire ciò che intende. In quel senso, è impossibile impedire all’AMORE di essere libero, ma il problema morale posto in causa riguarda non le passioni, ma la volontà. Vi è un gran numero di altri esempi di questa sorta di finzione garbata; questi rispettabili travestimenti adottati da chi si scaglia sempre contro la rispettabilità. Nell’immediato futuro ve ne saranno probabilmente ancora di più. Non sembra esservi in realtà limite necessario al processo; e per quanto lontano possa spingersi l’anarchia dell’etica, essa potrà sempre essere accompagnata da questo curioso e pomposo cerimoniale. Il sensibile giovane del futuro non sarà mai chiamato ad accettare la Falsificazione come Falsificazione. Sarà facile abbastanza chiamarla Omeografia o Assimilazione della Scrittura o qualcos’altro che suggerisca, al semplice o al superficiale, che nulla vi è in gioco se non una sorta di socializzazione o unificazione della grafia individuale. Non dovremmo, come il più onesto signor Fagin, insegnare ai ragazzini a borseggiare; poiché il signor Fagin diventa assai meno onesto quando diventa il professor Faginski, il grande sociologo, dell’Università di Jena. Ma dovremmo chiamarlo con qualche nome che implichi il trasferimento di qualcosa; non riesco al momento a ricordare il greco né per tasca né per fazzoletto da tasca. Quanto alla giustificazione sociale dell’omicidio, essa è già cominciata; e i pensatori seri farebbero meglio a cominciare subito a pensare a un bel nome inoffensivo per esso. Il caso a favore dell’omicidio, secondo l’etica moderna, relativista ed evoluzionista, è del tutto schiacciante. Non c’è quasi uno di noi che non riconosca, guardandosi attorno nella propria cerchia sociale, qualche persona chiacchierona o qualche energico carattere mondano la cui scomparsa, senza troppo trambusto o congedo, sarebbe un lieto evento per tutti noi. Né è vero che una simile persona sia pericolosa soltanto perché brandisce ingiusti poteri legali o sociali. Il problema è spesso puramente psicologico, e per nulla legale; e nessuna emancipazione legale lo risolverebbe. Nulla lo risolverebbe se non l’introduzione di quella nuova forma di libertà che potremo convenire di chiamare, forse, la pratica della Sottrazione Sociale. Oppure, se ci piace, possiamo modellare il nuovo nome sugli altri nomi che ho menzionato. Possiamo chiamarlo Controllo della Vita o Libera Morte; o qualunque altra cosa che abbia tanto poco a che fare col suo punto quanto il Matrimonio Compagnesco ha a che fare col matrimonio o con la compagnia.
Anyhow, I respectfully refuse to be impressed by the claim to candour and realism put forward just now for men, women, and movements. It seems to me obvious that this is not really the age of audacity but merely of advertisement; which may rather be described as caution kicking up a fuss. Much of the mistake arises from the double sense of the word publicity. For publicity also is a thoroughly typical euphemism or evasive term. Publicity does not mean revealing public life in the interests of public spirit. It means merely flattering private enterprises in the interests of private persons. It means paying compliments in public; but not offering criticisms in public. We should all be very much surprised if we walked out of the front door one morning and saw a hoarding on one side of the road saying: ‘Use Miggle’s Milk; It Is All Cream,’ and a hoarding on the other side of the road inscribed: ‘Don’t Use Miggle’s Milk; It’s Nearly All Water.’ The modern world would be much upset if I were allowed to set up a flaming sky-sign proclaiming my precise opinion of the Colonial Port Wine praised in the flaming sign opposite. All this advertisement may have something to do with the freedom of trade; but it has nothing to with the freedom of truth. Publicity must be praise and praise must to some extent be euphemism. It must put the matter in a milder and more inoffensive form that it might be put, however much that mildness may seem to shout through megaphones or flare in headlines. And just as this sort of loud evasion is used in favour of bad wine and bad milk, so it is used in favour of bad morals. When somebody wishes to wage a social war against what all normal people have regarded as a social decency, the very first thing he does is to find some artificial term that shall sound relatively decent. He has no more of the real courage that would pit vice against virtue than the ordinary advertiser has the courage to advertise ale as arsenic. His intelligence, such as it is, is entirely a commercial intelligence and to that extent entirely conventional. He is a shop-keeper who dresses the shop-window; he is certainly the very reverse of a rebel or a rioter who breaks the shop-window. If only for this reason, I remain cold and decline the due reverence to Companionate Marriage and the book which speaks so reverentially about the Revolt of Youth. For this sort of revolt strikes me as nothing except revolting; and certainly not particularly realistic. With the passions which are natural to youth we all sympathize; with the pain that often arises from loyalty and duty we all sympathize still more; but nobody need sympathize with publicity experts picking pleasant expressions for unpleasant things; and I for one prefer the coarse language of our fathers.
[Transcribed by Anthony Caetano]
Comunque sia, mi rifiuto rispettosamente di lasciarmi impressionare dalla pretesa di candore e di realismo avanzata proprio ora per uomini, donne e movimenti. Mi pare evidente che questa non sia davvero l’epoca dell’audacia ma soltanto della pubblicità; che si potrebbe piuttosto descrivere come la prudenza che fa un gran baccano. Gran parte dell’equivoco nasce dal doppio senso della parola pubblicità. Poiché anche la pubblicità è un eufemismo affatto tipico, un termine elusivo. Pubblicità non significa svelare la vita pubblica nell’interesse dello spirito pubblico. Significa soltanto adulare imprese private nell’interesse di persone private. Significa fare complimenti in pubblico; ma non muovere critiche in pubblico. Resteremmo tutti assai sorpresi se, uscendo dalla porta di casa una mattina, vedessimo un cartellone su un lato della strada che dice: ‘Usate il Latte di Miggle; È Tutta Panna’, e un cartellone sull’altro lato della strada con su scritto: ‘Non Usate il Latte di Miggle; È Quasi Tutt’Acqua.’ Il mondo moderno resterebbe assai turbato se mi si permettesse di erigere un’insegna luminosa fiammeggiante che proclami la mia precisa opinione sul Vino di Porto Coloniale lodato nell’insegna fiammeggiante di fronte. Tutta questa pubblicità potrà avere qualcosa a che fare con la libertà di commercio; ma non ha nulla a che fare con la libertà della verità. La pubblicità dev’essere lode, e la lode dev’essere in qualche misura eufemismo. Deve porre la cosa in una forma più mite e più inoffensiva di quanto si potrebbe, per quanto quella mitezza possa sembrare gridare a megafoni o divampare in titoloni. E proprio come questa sorta di rumorosa evasione è impiegata a favore del cattivo vino e del cattivo latte, così è impiegata a favore della cattiva morale. Quando qualcuno vuol muovere una guerra sociale contro ciò che tutte le persone normali hanno considerato come una decenza sociale, la primissima cosa che fa è trovare qualche termine artificiale che suoni relativamente decente. Egli non ha del vero coraggio che opporrebbe il vizio alla virtù più di quanto l’inserzionista comune abbia il coraggio di reclamizzare la birra come arsenico. La sua intelligenza, tale quale è, è interamente un’intelligenza commerciale e in tal misura del tutto convenzionale. Egli è un bottegaio che allestisce la vetrina; è di certo tutto il contrario di un ribelle o di un rivoltoso che infrange la vetrina. Se non altro per questa ragione, resto freddo e rifiuto la debita riverenza al Matrimonio di Prova e al libro che parla con tanta reverenza della Rivolta della Gioventù. Poiché questa sorta di rivolta mi colpisce come nient’altro che rivoltante; e di certo non particolarmente realistica. Con le passioni che sono naturali alla gioventù noi tutti simpatizziamo; col dolore che spesso nasce dalla lealtà e dal dovere simpatizziamo ancor di più; ma nessuno ha da simpatizzare con gli esperti di pubblicità che scelgono espressioni piacevoli per cose spiacevoli; e io, per parte mia, preferisco il linguaggio ruvido dei nostri padri.
[Trascritto da Anthony Caetano]