DE RERUM NATURA¹

camera obscura [: of language]

punctus contra punctum
by
Kalpit Parikh

ॐ असतो मा सद्गमय ।
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ।
मृत्योर्माऽमृतं गमय ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Impressum

Published in કલા નગરી, kalā nagarī: "city of art"² by મન, man: "mind"³

Cataloging in Publication Data

Name: Kalpit Parikh, 2023— author
Title: camera obscura/ Kalpit Parikh
ASIN:
Subjects: 1. Signs & Symbols 2. Photography

Dedication

To AENEADUM GENETRIX: “MOTHER of Rome” ⁴

Contents

Translator's Acknowledgements

1. What is LANGUAGE?
2. What is NOT?
3. Notes
4. LATINUM
5. Index

Translator's Acknowledgements

What a chain of complicated processes, which must all take place in a perfectly definite succession, in order to the existence of a phenomenon apparently so simple as the imitation of a sound heard, an A!

William Thierry Preyer, Mental Development In The Child

IMAGO: “image”⁵

Narcissus by Caravaggio (1599)⁶

INCIPIO: “I begin”⁷

The camera obscura is that language [langage], as new as the project itself, which would make it possible to disguise nothing, to disclose all, down to the last detail, even at the risk of appearing impertinent, at the risk of being ridiculous and indecent. Only in this way might one find one’s way amidst the chaos of contradictory feelings, amidst ‘this bizarre and singular assemblage’ which nevertheless constitutes a self (Kofman 38).

What is LANGUAGE?

lan’guage (lăn'gwốj), n. [ME.  langage, F. langage, fr. L. lingua the tongue, hence speech, language; akin to E. tongue. See Tongue, cf. Lingual.]

1. The body of words and methods of combining words used and understood by a considerable community, esp. when fixed and elaborated by long usage; a tongue; as, the Latin language.

Wherever a language is alive, it grows. Lowell.

2. Any means of expressing or communicating feeling or thought. In the usual sense, language means a system of conventionalized signs; that is, words or gestures having fixed meanings. But not all intelligible expressions are fixed, nor are all used exclusively for communication, since language plays a large rôle in our thinking processes. Hence language may mean (1) expression that conveys ideas, (2) expression that symbolizes ideas. Bodily expression, whether gesture or articulation, and inscription, as printing, writing, etc., are its chief forms, but any systematic symbolism, in a more or less transferred sense, is called laignage; as, the language of art.

Identical reference or rational convention is thus the root and essence of the system of signs which we call language. B Bosanquet.

Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come. J.S. Mill.

3. Specif. : a The faculty of verbal expression and the use of words in human intercourse, or the words themselves in their grammatical relationships as given or preserved in literary embodiments. See AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUAGES, INFLECTIONAL LANGUAGES, ISOLATING LANGUAGES.

   We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone. Emerson

   b The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to man express their feelings or their wants.

4. The power, use, or manner of use of expression, esp. verbal expression; specif.: a Form or manner of expression; characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; style.

Others for language all their care express. Pope b. The vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or department of knowledge; as, medical language; the language of chemistry or theology. understand foreign languages. c Ability to speak or d The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers.

There was…language in their very gesture. Shak.

5. Talk; speaking; esp., censure; abuse. Obs.

6. A race, as distinguished by its speech. Rare.

All the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image. Dan. iii. 7.

7. A national division of an international order; as, the language of Aragon of the Hospitalers.

Syn. — LANGUAGE, SPEECH are often interchangeable. But SPEECH retains more explicitly than language the fundamental suggestion of articulate or vocal utterance: LANGUAGE has acquired a more generalized application: as. "The language of the age is never the language of poetry” (T. Gray); “ Thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeth thereto (MK. xiv. 70). See DICTION, CANT (Webster 1211).

What is NOT?

not (not), adv. [ME. not, noht, nought, the same word as E. naught. See NOUGHT, NAUGHT.] An adverbial particle expressing negation; —corresponding to the attributive no. As used with verbs, not immediately after or before a simple tense or form of an ordinary verb is now archaic and chiefly poetic; as, "that which satisfieth not;" "all that not harms distinctive womanhood." It is used commonly either with an auxiliary verb or with the substantive verb be, in both cases immediately following; as, “Thou shalt not steal.” When used with an infinitive or verbal noun in -ing,not precedes.

Not one word spoke he more than was need. Chaucer.

Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not. Job vii. 8.

May I do it, or may I not do it? Bp. Sanderson.

not but, only. Cf. NOBBUT. Obs. n. guilty, Law, the words of general issue, used to deny the whole declaration or indictment, in various actions, as of tresspass, trover, and criminal cases. — n. out. See CRICKET, game.—n. proved, or now more commonly, not proven, Scots Law, the verdict brought in by a jury who find that the charges made are not proved. It operates as an acquittal, in the same way as a verdict of not guilty. It has been erroneously explained as being a verdict casting suspicion upon the accused not operating as a bar to further prosecution (Webster 1471).

LATINUM

Excerpt From DE LINGUA LATINA, Book V: On the Science of the Origin of Words, Addressed to Cicero⁸

By MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO [Translation By Roland G. Kent]

1. In what way names were applied to things in Latin, I have undertaken to expound, in six books. Of these, I have already composed three before this one, and have addressed them to Septumius; in them I treat of the branch of learning which is called Etymology-. The considerations which might be raised against it, I have put in the first book; those adduced in its favour, in the second; those merely describing it, in the third. In the following books, addressed to you, I shall discuss the problem from what things names were applied in Latin, both those which are habitual with the ordinary folk, and those which are found in the poets.

2. Inasmuch as each and every word has two innate features, from what thing and to what thing the name is applied (therefore, when the question is raised from what thing pertinacia 'obstinacy' is, it is shown to be from pertendere' to persist' : to what thing it is applied, is told when it is explained that it is pertinacia 'obstinacy' in a matter in which there ought not to be persistence but there is, because it is perseverantia' steadfastness' if a person persists in that in which he ought to hold firm), that former part, where they examine why and whence words are, the Greeks call Etymology, that other part they call Semantics. Of these two matters I shall speak in the following books, not keeping them apart, but giving less attention to the second.

3. These relations are often rather obscure for the following reasons: Not every word that has been applied, still exists, because lapse of time has blotted out some. Not every word that is in use, has been applied without inaccuracy of some kind, nor does every word which has been applied correctly remain as it originally was; for many words are disguised by change of the letters. There are some whose origin is not from native words of our own language. Many words indicate one thing now, but formerly meant something else, as is the case with hostis 'enemy' : for in olden times by this word they meant a foreigner from a country independent of Roman laws, but now they give the name to him whom they then called perduellis 'enemy.'

4. I shall take as starting-point of my discussion that derivative or case-form of the words in which the origin can be more clearly seen. It is evident that we ought to operate in this way, because when we say inpos 'lacking power' in the nominative, it is less clear that it is from potentia 'power' than when wesay inpotem in the accusative ; and it becomes the more obscure, if you say pos ‘having power' rather than inpos; for pos seems to mean rather pons 'bridge' than potens ' powerful.'

5. There are few things which lapse of time does not distort, there are many which it removes. Whom you saw beautiful as a boy, him you see unsightly in his old age. The third generation does not see a person such as the first generation saw him. Therefore those that oblivion has taken away even from our ancestors, the painstaking of Mucius and Brutus, though it has pursued the runaways, cannot bring back. As for me, even if I cannot track them down, I shall not be the slower for this, but even for this I shall be the swifter in the chase, if I can. For there is no slight darkness in the wood where these things are to be caught, and there are no trodden paths to the place which we wish to attain, nor do there fail to be obstacles in the paths, which could hold back the hunter on his way.

6. Now he who has observed in how many ways the changing has taken place in those words, new and old, in which there is any and every manner of variation in popular usage, will find the examination of the origin of the words an easier task; for he will find that words have been changed, as I have shown in the preceding books, essentially on account of two sets of four causes. For the alterations come about by the loss or the addition of single letters and on account of the transposition or the change of them, and likewise by the lengthening or the shortening of syllables, and their addition or loss: since I have adequately shown by examples, in the preceding books, of what sort these phenomena are, I have thought that here 1 need only set a reminder of that previous discussion.

Notes

The Vairocanābhisaṁbodhi Sutra. Translated from the Chinese by Rolf W. Giebel. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō, vol. 18, no. 848.

Belsare, Malhar Bhikaji. ગુજરાતી-અંગ્રેજી ડિકશનરી [Etymological Gujarati-English Dictionary]. 2nd Edition, Asian Educational Services, 2002.

Caravaggio. "Narcissus." oil and chiaroscuro on canvas, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, 1599.

Preyer, William T. Mental Development in the Child. United States, D. Appleton, 1899.

Kofman, Sarah. Camera Obscura: Of Ideology. Cornell University Press, 1999.

Lewis, Charles T and Charles Short. Harper's Latin Dictionary: A New Latin Dictionary Founded on the Translation of Freund's Latin-German Lexicon, Ed. Edited by E.A. Andrews, American Book Company, 1907.

T. Lucretius Carus. Of The Nature of Things, In Six Books. Translated by Guernier, and others. Daniel Browne, 1743.

Varro. On the Latin Language with an English Translation by Roland G. Kent. Translated by Roland G. Kent, Harvard University Press, 1938.

Webster, Noah. Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language: Based on the International Dictionary of 1890 and 1900, Edited by William Torrey Harris, G. & C. Merriam Company, 1913.

Index

Σ*={Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language}⁹

Footnotes

1. OF THE NATURE of THINGS, IN SIX BOOKS (T. Lucretius Carus Frontispiece). ↩

2. કલા, Classical form of કળા An art (Belsare 227) + નગર a city (Belsare 301). ↩

3. તન-મન-ધન a. n. [See તન + મન + ધન] Lit. The body, the mind, and one’s wealth. Hence, 2. All that one loves; the highest object of one’s ambition (Belsare 577). ↩

4. MOTHER of Rome, Delight of Men and Gods, Swee Venus; who with vital Power doſt fill the Sea bearing the Ships, the fruitful Earth, all Things beneath the rolling Signs of Heaven (T. Lucretius Carus The Invocation); ↩

5. îmāgo inis, f. [cf. imitor], an imitation, copy of a thing, an image, likeness (i.e. a picture, statue, mask, an apparition, ghost, phantom; the latter only poet. and in post-Aug. prose; cf.: simulacrum. effgies, statua, sigillum) (Lewis 888): ↩

6. Caravaggio. "Narcissus." oil and chiaroscuro on canvas, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, 1599. ↩

7. incîpîo cepi, ceptum, 3 (archaic incepsit inceperit, Paul. ex Fest. p. 107 Müll.), v. a. and n. [in-capio; lit., to seize upon, lay hold of ; opp. to desinere; hence, with the accessory idea of action), to begin to do something, to take in hand (syn. incoho; in class. prose, viz. in Cic., only in the tempp. press., while coepi is used in the tempp. perff.); constr. usually with the inf, less freq. absol., with the acc., ab, or adv. of place or time (Lewis 921). ↩

8. Varro. On the Latin Language with an English Translation by Roland G. Kent. Translated by Roland G. Kent, Harvard University Press, 1938. ↩

9. The set of all words in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language: Based on the International Dictionary of 1890 and 1900. ↩