Two Kinds of Paradox
Two Kinds of Paradox
G.K. Chesterton (1911)
[From the Illustrated London News, 11 March 1911. Reprinted in Lawrence J. Clipper (ed.), The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton XXIX: The Illustrated London News 1911—1913 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp 51-54.]
There is nothing that needs more fastidious care than our choice of nonsense. Sense is like daylight or daily air, and may come from any quarter or in any quantity. But nonsense is an art. Like an art, it is rarely successful, and yet entirely simple when it is successful. Like an art, it depends on the smallest word, and a misprint can spoil it. And like an art, when it is not in the service of heaven it is almost always in the service of hell. Numberless imitators of Lewis Carroll or of Edward Lear have tried to write nonsense and failed; falling back (one may hope) upon writing sense. But certainly, as the great Gilbert said, wherever there has been nonsense it has been precious nonsense. Les Précieuses Ridicules might be translated, perhaps, in two ways. No one doubts that serious artists are absurd; but it might also be maintained that absurdity is always a serious art.
I have suffered as much as any man from the public insult of the misprint. I have seen my love of books described as a love of boots. I have seen the word “cosmic” invariably printed as “comic”; and have merely reflected that the two are much the same. As to Nationalists and Rationalists, I have come to the conclusion that no human handwriting or typewriting can clearly distinguish them; and I now placidly permit them to be interchanged, though the first represents everything I love and the second everything I loathe. But there is one kind of misprint I should still find it hard to forgive. I could not pardon a blunder in the printing of “Jabberwock.” I insist on absolute literalism in that really fine poem of Lear,—“TheDong with the Luminous Nose.” To spoil these new nonsense words would be like shooting a great musician improvising on the piano. The sounds could never be recovered again. “And as in uffish thought he stood.” If the printer had printed it “affish” I doubt if the first edition would have sold. “Over the Great Gromboolian Plain.” Suppose I had seen it printed “Gromhoolian.” Perhaps I should never have known, as I know now, that Edward Lear was a yet greater man than Lewis Carroll.
The first principle, then, may be considered clear. Let mistakes be made in ordinary books—that is, in scientific works, established biographies, histories, and so on. Do not let us be hard on misprints when they occur merely in time-tables or atlases or works of science. In works like those of Professor Haeckel, for example, it is sometimes quite difficult to discover which are the misprints and which are the intentional assertions. But in anything artistic, anything which avowedly strays beyond reason, there we must demand the exactitude of art. If a thing is admittedly not possible, then the next best thing it can do is to be beautiful. If a thing is nonsensical, it ought to be perfectly nonsensical.
This, which applies to the nonsensical borderland of words, as in Lear and Carroll, applies also to the nonsensical borderland of thoughts, as in Oscar Wilde or Bernard Shaw. There also the difficulty is not to find nonsense, but to find any precious nonsense. Many accuse Mr. Shaw and others of merely saying anything opposite to the current view. But if these critics have detected such a scheme of success, why do they not merely profit by it? If they have got the key, let them use it. If they know the trick, let them do it. If a man can achieve prominence and prosperity merely by saying that the sun shines at night and the stars by day, that every man has four legs and every horse two—surely the path to success is open, for there must be many such things to say. But the truth is that, while we can all wallow in commonplaces (a thoroughly healthy thing, like a mud bath), we must all be particular in our selection of paradoxes. Here, for once, taste is really important.
For there are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death. I see everywhere among the young men who have imitated Mr. Shaw a strange tendency to utter epigrams which deny the possibility of further life and thought. A paradox may be a thing unusual, menacing, even ugly— like a rhinoceros. But, as a live rhinoceros ought to produce more rhinoceri, so a live paradox ought to produce more paradoxes. Nonsense ought to be suggestive; but nowadays it is abortive. The new epigrams are not even fantastic finger-posts on the wild road: they are tablets, each set into a brick wall at the end of a blind alley. So far as they concern thought at all, they cry to men, “Think no more,” as the voice said “Sleep no more” to Macbeth. These rhetoricians never speak except to move the closure. Even when they are really witty (as in the case of Mr. Shaw), they commonly commit the one crime that cannot be forgiven among free men. They say the last word.
I will give such instances as happen to lie before me. I see on my table a book of aphorisms by a young Socialist writer, Mr. Holbrook Jackson; it is called “Platitudes in the Making,” and curiously illustrates this difference between the paradox that starts thought and the paradox that prevents thought. Of course, the writer has read too much Nietzsche and Shaw, and too little of less groping and more gripping thinkers. But he says many really good things of his own, and they illustrate perfectly what I mean here about the suggestive and the destructive nonsense.
Thus in one place he says. “Suffer fools gladly: they may be right.” That strikes me as good; but here I mean specially that it strikes me as fruitful and free. You can do something with the idea, it opens an avenue. One can go searching among one´s more solid acquaintances and relatives for the fires of a concealed infallibility. One may fancy one sees the star of immortal youth in the somewhat empty eye of Uncle George; one may faintly follow some deep rhythm of nature in the endless repetitions with which Miss Bootle tells a story; and in the grunts and gasps of the Major next door may hear, as it were, the cry of a strangled god. It can never narrow our minds, it can never arrest our life, to suppose that a particular fool is not such a fool as he looks. It must be all to the increase of charity, and charity is the imagination of the heart.
I turn the next page, and come on what I call the barren paradox. Under the head of “Advices,” Mr. Jackson writes, “Don’t think—do.” This is exactly like saying “Don’t eat—digest.” All doing that is not mechanical or accidental involves thinking; only the modern world seems to have forgotten that there can be such a thing as decisive and dramatic thinking. Everything that comes from the will must pass through the mind, though it may pass quickly. The only sort of thing the strong man can “do” without thinking is something like falling over a doormat. This is not even making the mind jump; it is simply making it stop. I take another couple of cases at random. “The object of life is life.” That affects me as ultimately true; always presuming the author is liberal enough to include eternal life. But even if it is nonsense, it is thoughtful nonsense.
On another page I read, “Truth is one’s own conception of things.” That is thoughtless nonsense. A man would never have had any conception of things at all unless he had thought they were things and there was some truth about them. Here we have the black nonsense, like black magic, that shuts down the brain. “A lie is that which you do not believe.” That is a lie; so perhaps Mr. Jackson does not believe it
Two Kinds of Paradox
Two Kinds of Paradox
G.K. Chesterton (1911)
[From the Illustrated London News, 11 March 1911. Reprinted in Lawrence J. Clipper (ed.), The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton XXIX: The Illustrated London News 1911—1913 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp 51-54.]
There is nothing that needs more fastidious care than our choice of nonsense. Sense is like daylight or daily air, and may come from any quarter or in any quantity. But nonsense is an art. Like an art, it is rarely successful, and yet entirely simple when it is successful. Like an art, it depends on the smallest word, and a misprint can spoil it. And like an art, when it is not in the service of heaven it is almost always in the service of hell. Numberless imitators of Lewis Carroll or of Edward Lear have tried to write nonsense and failed; falling back (one may hope) upon writing sense. But certainly, as the great Gilbert said, wherever there has been nonsense it has been precious nonsense. Les Précieuses Ridicules might be translated, perhaps, in two ways. No one doubts that serious artists are absurd; but it might also be maintained that absurdity is always a serious art.
I have suffered as much as any man from the public insult of the misprint. I have seen my love of books described as a love of boots. I have seen the word “cosmic” invariably printed as “comic”; and have merely reflected that the two are much the same. As to Nationalists and Rationalists, I have come to the conclusion that no human handwriting or typewriting can clearly distinguish them; and I now placidly permit them to be interchanged, though the first represents everything I love and the second everything I loathe. But there is one kind of misprint I should still find it hard to forgive. I could not pardon a blunder in the printing of “Jabberwock.” I insist on absolute literalism in that really fine poem of Lear,—“TheDong with the Luminous Nose.” To spoil these new nonsense words would be like shooting a great musician improvising on the piano. The sounds could never be recovered again. “And as in uffish thought he stood.” If the printer had printed it “affish” I doubt if the first edition would have sold. “Over the Great Gromboolian Plain.” Suppose I had seen it printed “Gromhoolian.” Perhaps I should never have known, as I know now, that Edward Lear was a yet greater man than Lewis Carroll.
The first principle, then, may be considered clear. Let mistakes be made in ordinary books—that is, in scientific works, established biographies, histories, and so on. Do not let us be hard on misprints when they occur merely in time-tables or atlases or works of science. In works like those of Professor Haeckel, for example, it is sometimes quite difficult to discover which are the misprints and which are the intentional assertions. But in anything artistic, anything which avowedly strays beyond reason, there we must demand the exactitude of art. If a thing is admittedly not possible, then the next best thing it can do is to be beautiful. If a thing is nonsensical, it ought to be perfectly nonsensical.
This, which applies to the nonsensical borderland of words, as in Lear and Carroll, applies also to the nonsensical borderland of thoughts, as in Oscar Wilde or Bernard Shaw. There also the difficulty is not to find nonsense, but to find any precious nonsense. Many accuse Mr. Shaw and others of merely saying anything opposite to the current view. But if these critics have detected such a scheme of success, why do they not merely profit by it? If they have got the key, let them use it. If they know the trick, let them do it. If a man can achieve prominence and prosperity merely by saying that the sun shines at night and the stars by day, that every man has four legs and every horse two—surely the path to success is open, for there must be many such things to say. But the truth is that, while we can all wallow in commonplaces (a thoroughly healthy thing, like a mud bath), we must all be particular in our selection of paradoxes. Here, for once, taste is really important.
For there are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death. I see everywhere among the young men who have imitated Mr. Shaw a strange tendency to utter epigrams which deny the possibility of further life and thought. A paradox may be a thing unusual, menacing, even ugly— like a rhinoceros. But, as a live rhinoceros ought to produce more rhinoceri, so a live paradox ought to produce more paradoxes. Nonsense ought to be suggestive; but nowadays it is abortive. The new epigrams are not even fantastic finger-posts on the wild road: they are tablets, each set into a brick wall at the end of a blind alley. So far as they concern thought at all, they cry to men, “Think no more,” as the voice said “Sleep no more” to Macbeth. These rhetoricians never speak except to move the closure. Even when they are really witty (as in the case of Mr. Shaw), they commonly commit the one crime that cannot be forgiven among free men. They say the last word.
Due specie di paradosso
Due specie di paradosso
G.K. Chesterton (1911)
[Da The Illustrated London News, 11 marzo 1911. Ristampato in Lawrence J. Clipper (a cura di), The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton XXIX: The Illustrated London News 1911—1913 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp 51-54.]
Non vi è nulla che richieda cura più scrupolosa della nostra scelta del nonsenso. Il senso è come la luce del giorno o l’aria quotidiana, e può venire da ogni parte o in ogni quantità. Ma il nonsenso è un’arte. Come un’arte, di rado riesce, eppure è del tutto semplice quando riesce. Come un’arte, dipende dalla più piccola parola, e un refuso può rovinarlo. E come un’arte, quando non è al servizio del cielo è quasi sempre al servizio dell’inferno. Innumerevoli imitatori di Lewis Carroll o di Edward Lear hanno tentato di scrivere nonsenso e hanno fallito, ripiegando (c’è da sperare) sullo scrivere sensatezze. Ma certamente, come disse il grande Gilbert, ovunque vi sia stato del nonsenso è stato prezioso nonsenso. Les Précieuses Ridicules potrebbe forse tradursi in due modi. Nessuno dubita che gli artisti seri siano assurdi; ma si potrebbe anche sostenere che l’assurdità è sempre un’arte seria.
Ho sofferto quanto ogni altro per il pubblico insulto del refuso. Ho visto il mio amore per i libri descritto come un amore per gli stivali. Ho visto la parola «cosmic» immancabilmente stampata «comic»; e mi sono limitato a riflettere che le due cose sono molto simili. Quanto ai Nazionalisti e ai Razionalisti, sono giunto alla conclusione che nessuna calligrafia o dattilografia umana può distinguerli con chiarezza; e ora placidamente permetto che vengano scambiati, benché il primo rappresenti tutto ciò che amo e il secondo tutto ciò che aborro. Ma vi è una specie di refuso che troverei ancora difficile perdonare. Non potrei perdonare un errore nella stampa di «Jabberwock». Esigo un assoluto letteralismo in quella davvero bella poesia di Lear: «The Dong with the Luminous Nose». Guastare queste nuove parole di nonsenso sarebbe come sparare a un grande musicista che improvvisa al pianoforte. I suoni non si potrebbero mai più recuperare. «And as in uffish thought he stood». Se lo stampatore l’avesse stampato «affish», dubito che la prima edizione si sarebbe venduta. «Over the Great Gromboolian Plain». Supponiamo che l’avessi visto stampato «Gromhoolian». Forse non avrei mai saputo, come ora so, che Edward Lear fu un uomo ancor più grande di Lewis Carroll.
Il primo principio, dunque, può considerarsi chiaro. Che gli errori si facciano pure nei libri ordinari, cioè nelle opere scientifiche, nelle biografie accreditate, nelle storie e così via. Non siamo severi coi refusi quando ricorrono soltanto negli orari o negli atlanti o nelle opere di scienza. In opere come quelle del Professor Haeckel, per esempio, talvolta è assai difficile scoprire quali siano i refusi e quali le affermazioni intenzionali. Ma in qualcosa di artistico, in qualcosa che dichiaratamente si allontana dalla ragione, lì dobbiamo esigere l’esattezza dell’arte. Se una cosa è pacificamente impossibile, allora la cosa migliore che possa fare è essere bella. Se una cosa è insensata, dovrebbe essere perfettamente insensata.
Questo, che vale per la terra di confine insensata delle parole, come in Lear e Carroll, vale anche per la terra di confine insensata dei pensieri, come in Oscar Wilde o Bernard Shaw. Anche lì la difficoltà non è trovare del nonsenso, ma trovarne di prezioso. Molti accusano Mr. Shaw e altri di dire semplicemente qualunque cosa contraria all’opinione corrente. Ma se questi critici hanno scoperto un simile schema di successo, perché non se ne avvantaggiano semplicemente? Se hanno la chiave, che la usino. Se conoscono il trucco, che lo facciano. Se un uomo può raggiungere fama e prosperità dicendo semplicemente che il sole splende di notte e le stelle di giorno, che ogni uomo ha quattro gambe e ogni cavallo due, allora certo la via del successo è aperta, poiché vi devono essere molte cose simili da dire. Ma la verità è che, mentre tutti possiamo sguazzare nei luoghi comuni (cosa del tutto salutare, come un bagno di fango), dobbiamo tutti essere scrupolosi nella scelta dei nostri paradossi. Qui, per una volta, il gusto è davvero importante.
Poiché vi sono due specie di paradossi. Non sono tanto i buoni e i cattivi, e nemmeno i veri e i falsi. Sono piuttosto i fecondi e gli sterili; i paradossi che producono vita e i paradossi che si limitano ad annunciare la morte. Quasi tutti i paradossi moderni si limitano ad annunciare la morte. Vedo ovunque, fra i giovani che hanno imitato Mr. Shaw, una strana tendenza a pronunciare epigrammi che negano la possibilità di ulteriore vita e pensiero. Un paradosso può essere una cosa insolita, minacciosa, perfino brutta, come un rinoceronte. Ma, come un rinoceronte vivo dovrebbe produrre altri rinoceronti, così un paradosso vivo dovrebbe produrre altri paradossi. Il nonsenso dovrebbe essere suggestivo; ma oggigiorno è abortivo. I nuovi epigrammi non sono neppure fantastici indicatori sulla selvaggia strada: sono lapidi, ciascuna murata in un muro di mattoni in fondo a un vicolo cieco. Per quel poco che riguardano il pensiero, gridano agli uomini: «Non pensate più», come la voce disse «Non dormire più» a Macbeth. Questi retori non parlano mai se non per mettere ai voti la chiusura del dibattito. Perfino quando sono davvero arguti (come nel caso di Mr. Shaw), commettono comunemente l’unico delitto che non può essere perdonato fra gli uomini liberi. Dicono l’ultima parola.
I will give such instances as happen to lie before me. I see on my table a book of aphorisms by a young Socialist writer, Mr. Holbrook Jackson; it is called “Platitudes in the Making,” and curiously illustrates this difference between the paradox that starts thought and the paradox that prevents thought. Of course, the writer has read too much Nietzsche and Shaw, and too little of less groping and more gripping thinkers. But he says many really good things of his own, and they illustrate perfectly what I mean here about the suggestive and the destructive nonsense.
Thus in one place he says. “Suffer fools gladly: they may be right.” That strikes me as good; but here I mean specially that it strikes me as fruitful and free. You can do something with the idea, it opens an avenue. One can go searching among one´s more solid acquaintances and relatives for the fires of a concealed infallibility. One may fancy one sees the star of immortal youth in the somewhat empty eye of Uncle George; one may faintly follow some deep rhythm of nature in the endless repetitions with which Miss Bootle tells a story; and in the grunts and gasps of the Major next door may hear, as it were, the cry of a strangled god. It can never narrow our minds, it can never arrest our life, to suppose that a particular fool is not such a fool as he looks. It must be all to the increase of charity, and charity is the imagination of the heart.
I turn the next page, and come on what I call the barren paradox. Under the head of “Advices,” Mr. Jackson writes, “Don’t think—do.” This is exactly like saying “Don’t eat—digest.” All doing that is not mechanical or accidental involves thinking; only the modern world seems to have forgotten that there can be such a thing as decisive and dramatic thinking. Everything that comes from the will must pass through the mind, though it may pass quickly. The only sort of thing the strong man can “do” without thinking is something like falling over a doormat. This is not even making the mind jump; it is simply making it stop. I take another couple of cases at random. “The object of life is life.” That affects me as ultimately true; always presuming the author is liberal enough to include eternal life. But even if it is nonsense, it is thoughtful nonsense.
On another page I read, “Truth is one’s own conception of things.” That is thoughtless nonsense. A man would never have had any conception of things at all unless he had thought they were things and there was some truth about them. Here we have the black nonsense, like black magic, that shuts down the brain. “A lie is that which you do not believe.” That is a lie; so perhaps Mr. Jackson does not believe it
Porterò quegli esempi che mi capita di avere sott’occhio. Vedo sul mio tavolo un libro di aforismi di un giovane scrittore socialista, il signor Holbrook Jackson; s’intitola “Platitudes in the Making”, e illustra curiosamente questa differenza tra il paradosso che avvia il pensiero e il paradosso che il pensiero lo impedisce. Beninteso, l’autore ha letto troppo Nietzsche e Shaw, e troppo poco pensatori meno brancolanti e più afferranti. Ma dice molte cose davvero buone di suo, e queste illustrano alla perfezione ciò che qui intendo circa l’assurdità suggestiva e quella distruttiva.
Così in un punto dice: “Sopportate i folli di buon grado: potrebbero aver ragione”. Mi pare buono; ma qui intendo specialmente che mi colpisce come fecondo e libero. Con quell’idea puoi fare qualcosa, essa apre un viale. Si può andare cercando fra le proprie più solide conoscenze e i propri parenti i fuochi di un’infallibilità nascosta. Si può immaginare di scorgere la stella dell’eterna giovinezza nell’occhio alquanto vacuo dello zio Giorgio; si può seguire fiocamente qualche profondo ritmo della natura nelle infinite ripetizioni con cui la signorina Bootle racconta una storia; e nei grugniti e negli ansiti del maggiore della porta accanto si può udire, per così dire, il grido di un dio strangolato. Non può mai restringere le nostre menti, non può mai arrestare la nostra vita, supporre che un particolare folle non sia poi così folle come sembra. Deve andare tutto a incremento della carità, e la carità è l’immaginazione del cuore.
Volto la pagina seguente, e m’imbatto in ciò che chiamo il paradosso sterile. Sotto il titolo di “Consigli”, il signor Jackson scrive: “Non pensare: fa’”. È esattamente come dire “Non mangiare: digerisci”. Ogni fare che non sia meccanico o accidentale implica pensiero; solo il mondo moderno sembra aver dimenticato che può esistere una cosa come il pensiero decisivo e drammatico. Tutto ciò che viene dalla volontà deve passare per la mente, per quanto possa passarvi in fretta. L’unica cosa che l’uomo forte possa “fare” senza pensare è qualcosa come inciampare in uno zerbino. Questo non è nemmeno far saltare la mente; è semplicemente farla fermare. Prendo un altro paio di casi a caso. “Lo scopo della vita è la vita”. Ciò mi tocca come in ultima analisi vero; sempre a patto che l’autore sia abbastanza liberale da includervi la vita eterna. Ma anche se è assurdità, è un’assurdità pensosa.
In un’altra pagina leggo: “La verità è la propria concezione delle cose”. Questa è assurdità sconsiderata. Un uomo non avrebbe mai avuto alcuna concezione delle cose se non avesse pensato che erano cose e che vi era una qualche verità su di esse. Qui abbiamo l’assurdità nera, come la nera magia, che spegne il cervello. “Una menzogna è ciò che tu non credi”. Questa è una menzogna; sicché forse il signor Jackson non la crede