BMCR 2008.11.11, Davide Del Bello, Forgotten Paths. Etymology

Davide Del Bello, Forgotten Paths. Etymology and the Allegorical
Mindset.  Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press,
2007.  Pp. xvi, 187.  ISBN 978-0-8132-1484-9.  $64.95.

Reviewed by Dunstan Lowe, University of Reading ([email protected])
Word count:  984 words
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Table of Contents
(http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0617/2006021104.html)

This could never have been a simple book. Although modern definitions
separate them completely, allegory and etymology are both ways of
reading for hidden meaning: from antiquity to the present, those who
read texts for allegory and language for etymology have (in different
ways) seen themselves as hierophants of truths hidden from the
majority. An intellectual history of both practices together must
therefore lead into extremely abstract territory. Del Bello aims to
restore a lost appreciation for the long and varied tradition of
etymologizing, most of which is given scant attention because (by the
criteria of modern linguists) it is largely wrong. He argues that such
etymology, or rather 'etymegoreia' (in Proclus' coinage),[[1]] has
borne a close affinity with allegory and deserves some of the attention
which that concept currently enjoys among historians of literature and
of the philosophy of language.

This book is not, therefore, about literary allegories themselves, but
about a diverse series of opinions through the history of Western
literature agreeing that etymology enables 'allegorical' insights into
language and reading. It does involve a number of etymologies, in the
form of exemplum or anecdote. The overall structure is methodical: the
first chapter outlines the history of modern scientific etymology, then
the rest arrange various key authors in a diachronic history of
etymological hermeneutics. This book is really for aficionados of
etymology-based intellectual inquiry, from pre-modern to post-modern,
and not for beginners. There has been some Foucauldian 'genealogising'
of etymology by historians of humanism, as the bibliography indicates
(although Struever 1983 is for some reason not cited).[[2]] Classicists
may be interested most by its Theory-oriented discussions of Plato,
Varro and Isidore of Seville, and by its argument that classical
etymology laid the foundations for 'an etymologico-allegorical modus
operandi' connecting later etymological enigmatists from Giambattista
Vico to Derrida.

Vico formed the core of this book; the title comes from an article
previously published by the author entitled 'Forgotten Paths: The
Making of Vico's Etymology'.[[3]] Chapter One summarises the modern
history of etymology and reviews the scholarship in etymological
theory; Chapter Two uses Proclus' term etymegoreia to begin a
definition of the terms and concepts of etymology and allegory. Chapter
Three, subtitled 'Greek and Alexandrian Etymologizing', discusses the
Cratylus and looks briefly at Philo. Chapter Four assesses 'The Roman
Contribution', a.k.a. Varro, arguing that he transformed etymology by
suggesting a 'quartus gradus' of metaphysical insight, and presenting
it as a way of mapping diverse and fundamental aspects of one's
culture. Five addresses Isidore, Six the Renaissance. Chapter Seven
somewhat unusually puts Vico together with de Man and Derrida,
comparing the constructivist and the poststructuralists as
representatives of two very different views of etymology. Vico still
saw etymology as showing 'natural' principles of human thought. The big
'differance' is of course that the postmodern successors de Man and
Derrida use etymology as an arena for semantic play, and in their hands
it does not reveal the special mutual meanings of key terms which
underpin the Western world of language, but instead voids them. Chapter
Eight, 'Alternative Routes', is a brief conclusion suggesting that more
work should be done to reinforce the 'thin and discontinuous' timeline
of allegorical etymegoreia. It introduces Eve Sweetser's From Etymology
to Pragmatics[[4]] in a highly technical reiteration of the idea that
etymology carries connotations beyond the merely linguistic.

On rare occasions Del Bello seems over-ready to defend the credibility
of pre-scientific etymology. 'Two immediate objections can be raised
against Cavazza and Baxter' (p. 54), who argue that the Socrates of the
Cratylus is making fun of etymology: these are that etymology could not
be attacked if it was not yet recognised as a discipline, and that the
dialogue has a 'dialogic, heuristic thrust' (p. 58) which does not make
a systematic case. It seems unnecessary to riposte so strenuously.
Also, few would deny that 'allegorical' etymologising tells us much
about the minds and milieux that produced them, a far more interesting
point of inquiry than whether or not we agree with them. There is
therefore no need to confuse different terms of value by once or twice
defending the etymologies themselves (e.g. Vico's identification of
lex, law, as originally meaning 'collection of acorns', in order to
link it directly with ilex) by saying that many etymologies remain
speculative (p. 154).

This book presents its material with admirable eloquence and
imagination. Ranging as widely as Del Bello does through the most
involved and difficult ancient and modern texts on semiotics and
semantics, it is perhaps natural that he should sometimes prefer
rhetorical gesture over clarity. Metaphors mix freely towards the ends
of chapters, e.g. on p. 41-42:


'In the post-Cartesian debate, allegory becomes either a predictable
two-level device that hides truth beneath a figurative, mystifying
veil...or a potent, but annihilating, mechanism that parodies its own
linguistic trappings and bemoans an unbridgeable gap from an
unattainable "Other".'


There is also a slight tendency, in the collation of so much scholarly
literature, to speak through the words of others rather than respond to
them (especially on p. 117, where a full 56 words from Charles
Trinkhaus conclude a paragraph), suggesting that the book originated as
a PhD thesis, although it is in the main a highly engaged contribution
to current debates. There are some typos (especially in non-English
quotations), imprecisions in translation, and invented words.[[5]] Six
of the plates are clear, but that of Palatino's rebus-poem dove son gli
occhi is illegible. There is a good index,[[6]] in which the
subheadings under 'Etymology' capture all of its charms: 'faulty; folk;
obscure; popular; scholarly; uncertain'.

Although few will find it an easy read, this monograph does great
service to the history of etymology by recasting it as a linguistic
variant of allegory progressively transformed by science, and will be
prized by many philosophers of language for undertaking a challenging
intellectual journey through a diverse range of authors who are rarely
read together.

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Notes:


1.   Proclus, In Cratylum 88. Although Del Bello employs the term
frequently, the word is almost a hapax legomenon (although, curiously,
it also appears to be the Greek title of John Grisham's novel A Time To
Kill).

2.   Nancy Struever, 'Fables of Power', Representations 4 (1983)
173-185.

3.   Davide Del Bello, Semiotica 113 (1997) 171-88.

4.   Eve Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and
Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure (Cambridge 1990).

5.   Some accents are missing or misplaced in French and German
quotations; Greek text is usually transcribed but sometimes
transliterated. There are a several misprints, especially in the Greek
(e.g. three times on p. 64 alone).  Owing to the large amount quoted,
most errors occur in the Latin (e.g. p. 82, p. 83 n. 30, p. 86, twice
in p. 107 n. 43), notably 'fluius' for 'fluuius' four times on p. 88,
'sancta crucis' for 'sanctae crucis' on the inside rear of the
dustjacket, and 'impatrare' for 'impetrare' both on p. 164 and in the
index. Several Latin translations are misleading, e.g. p. 92: 'uis nos
facere omnia cogit' means not 'to do everything force compels us' but
'force compels us to do everything'; p. 105: the rendering 'in (its?)
interpretation' should not involve parentheses, since the Latin clearly
reads in interpretatione sua. Odd coinages: p. 20 rapproachment; p. 59
perseverant; p. 94 etiologic; p. 164 divinate.

6.   Perhaps too good: because they are only mentioned in passing,
Benveniste, Bopp and Bre/al are in the index but not the bibliography.