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Abstract
Various scholars have argued that the rise of modern information technology over the past century has coincided with a steady decline of traditional methods of learning and interpretation, and has contributed to the general sense of “worldlessness” or anomie. In the words of Paul Ricoeur, “we are overwhelmed by a flood of words, by polemics, by the assault of the virtual, which today create a kind of opaque zone.” Philology, the ancient discipline that grew in the past two centuries to encompass literary study, linguistics, and intellectual history, was originally conceived as a return to the past with the aim of retrieving the knowledge of bygone times. While the recent revival of interest in philology recognizes its importance to the humanities, it remains unnamed as such. The aim of my exploration of the history and practices of philology is to suggest how it can reinstate the presence of the past. With its attentiveness to language—undertaken in the silent spaces of private study, archive, and library—philology not only confirms the presence of the dead but also enacts a more fundamental return to “world.”
Acknowledgment
These ideas were presented in nuce as “The Grace of Philology,” at the First Biennial BABEL Working Group Conference, in Austin, Texas, USA, in 2010, not long after the death of my mother. I am grateful to Dan Remein and Anna Klosowska for their constancy.
This essay is dedicated to my mother, D.M.
Notes
1. This minuteuse approach was favored by British philologists, while German scholars began to consider philology to be a more broadly historical field; for an overview, see Turner, Philology, 168–78; and De la Combe, “Classical Philology,” 68.
2. This essay might also be read as a response (rather than a reply) to Gumbrecht, Production of Presence, xiii.
3. Boeckh, On Interpretation, 10. This is an abridgment of the introduction to Boeckh’s masterwork Encyklopädie und Methodologie (1877).
4. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History, 120–22.
5. Bonnet, Philologie, 37.
6. Farge, Allure, 54.
7. “L’histoire est une résurrection,” Jules Michelet, cited in Péguy, Pensees, 77.
8. Although influenced by Vico, Michelet never attempted to expound his own philosophy of history: Fevre, “Pour une autre histoire,” 228, n. 1.
9. Kramer and Maza, eds., Western Historical Thought, 190–91.
10. Hamacher, “Thesis no. 71,” 37.
11. Smelik, “The Witch of Endor.” Samuel was summoned out of the gloomy silent country of Sheol: Van Imschoot, Théologie, 2.52–63.
12. Müller, Lectures, 24.
13. Turner, Philology, 373.
14. Lloyd-Jones, Blood for the Ghosts: The title refers to the journey of Aeneas to the underworld, as recorded in Virgil, Aeneid, Book 6.
15. Ricoeur, Reality, 6; Lévinas, Humanism, 38–44. In contrast, Derrida felt that the trace is like a secret that “points back to the other or to something else,” perhaps like old family secrets that are fatally hidden away, never to be revealed in spite of arousing our passionate interest: Derrida, “Passions,” 34. The trace haunts the text, although it is unknowable and ghostly, calling for a theologia negativa.
16. Sandys, History, 5.
17. Rosenzweig, New Thinking, 79.
18. On the libraries and museum of Alexandria, see Fox, Classical World, 251–53. See also Peters, Harvest, 116, and 208–18; and Lesky, History, 785–87.
19. Schwartz, “Philologien,” 89–90.
20. Walter Benjamin warned philologists of this; see Gurd, ed., Introduction to Philology and Its Histories, 10. Paul De Man similarly spoke of philologists hiding behind “the screen of received ideas that often passes... for humanistic knowledge.” Cited in Balfour, “Philosophy of Philology,” 198. Postmodern feminist criticism has challenged the supposition of cultural neutrality in philology by pointing to self-inscription in authorship and criticism; see Hinkle, “Postmodern,” 435. On the emphasis on the special value of gynocentric scholarship, see Hallett, “Feminist,” 57. The pioneering figure in the sociology of knowledge and ideology-critique was Karl Mannheim; see Kettler, “Karl Mannheim’s Sociological Theory,” 410. Mannheim developed an analysis of the “historical-sociological structure of the intellectual process”—that we do not live in a “supra-temporal vacuum.” Mannheim, “The Problem,” 73.
21. Boeckh, On Interpretation, 14; and Sandys, History, 4.
22. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, History, vii.
23. There is no complete edition of the fragments. Portions have been edited separately, for example, Varro, Antiquitatem (1898); see also, Buchwald, Tusculum Lexikon, 516–17.
24. Pépin, “Théologie,” 265–94; and Sandys, History, 177.
25. For useful notes on Varro’s life and work, see Biagio Conti, Latin, 212–20. For strangely hesitant comments, see Dumézil, Archaic, vol. 1, 97–101.
26. Kirkham, “A Life’s Work,” 6–7.
27. McLaughlin, “Petrarch,” 26.
28. Sandys, History, 5–7.
29. Turner, Philology, 36–39.
30. Cited in Trinkaus, Scope, 21.
31. Cyriacus of Ancona’s Journeys, 56 and figures.
32. Belozerskya, To Wake the Dead.
33. Parenty, Isaac Casaubon.
34. Grafton, Worlds, 296.
35. Parenty, Isaac Casaubon, 335.
36. Ibid., 231.
37. Bonnet, Philologie, 52.
38. Grafton, Worlds Made by Words, 566–78.
39. Vico postulated that “ideas and language accelerated at the same rate.” Vico, New Science, 77.
40. Ibid., 65.
41. Erich Auerbach, 17.
42. For a foundational treatise on Vico’s ideas, see Berlin, Vico and Herder, 52. For an analysis of Vico’s philological approach, see ibid., 30–31.
43. Wolf, Darstellung, 30.
44. “The question is... how is such a complex tradition historically possible?” De la Combe, “Classical Philology,” 77.
45. Mabillon, De re diplomatica; and Du Cange, Glossarium.
46. Rosenzweig made this comment in a letter to Victor Ehrenberg, October 19, 1924; see Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, 136.
47. Deissman, Philology, 126.
48. Heinrici was careful to distinguish, for example, the teaching of Feindesliebe as a new departure from the widespread reliance on jus talionis as a model for just response in ancient law. See Heinrici, Die Bergpredigt, 50–51.
49. Ibid., 2.
50. Horstmann, “L’Herméneutique,” 334.
51. Kahler, Inward Turn, 67.
52. Altschul, “What Is Philology?” 152.
53. Ibid., 151–52.
54. Maas, Textual Criticism, 12–14.
55. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History, xvi.
56. Schwartz, “Philologen,” 88. On the debate on the relative significance of philology vis-à-vis philosophy, see De la Combe, “Classical Philology,” 72.
57. Altschul, “What Is Philology?” 161; and Auerbach, “Philology and Weltliteratur,” 1–17.
58. Kundera, The Curtain. Cf. Part Two: Die Weltliteratur.
59. Kundera, The Curtain, 12–13 and 19.
60. Auerbach, Mimesis. On Auerbach in Istanbul, see Erich Auerbach, 10.
61. Auerbach, “Philology and Weltliteratur,” 6.
62. Ibid., 10, 9.
63. Borrowing a phrase of Zbigniew Herbert: “What emerges from fog and rain, what is reflected in a drop of water?” Herbert, Collected Prose, 189.
64. Horace, Non usitata, Odes, vol. 2, 20. This translation is based on the notes in an old school edition: Horace: Quinti Horatii, 237. According to the editor Villeneuve, the poet suggests that he will be transformed into a swan that will fly away to other regions of earth and thus escape the otherworld. Villeneuve thought this image was somewhat precious. Horace, Odes, vol. 1, 85–86. For a recent edition and (prose) translation, see Horace, Odes, 138–39.
65. “Ordo est: Ego vates biformis ferar per liquidum aethera, non usitatâ, nec tenui pennâ, id est, non vulgari nec fragili, sed sublimi ac nunquam dissolubili penna, id est fama in ore mortalium versabor, & in coelum sublatus vehar.” Carminum libri II, Ode XX ad Maecenatem, see Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus a Joh, n. 1, 116.
66. In a similar vein, Hamacher writes in “Thesis no. 14,” 27: “Poetry is prima philologia.” Poetry is philology coming-to-be.
67. On the concept of secondarité, see Sonnet, “La Bible,” 177–93.
68. Ricoeur, Symbolism, 349.
69. Boeckh, On Interpretation, 8.
70. Ricoeur, Reality of the Historical Past, 7–8.
71. Boeckh, On Interpretation, 10.
72. Horstmann, “L’Herméneutique,” 338.
73. Ghellinck, Patristique, 2.126–127.
74. Kratz, “Eyes,”381–402.
75. Wellhausen, Einleitung, 102; cited in Kratz, “Eyes and Spectacles,” 384.
76. In his lecture course in 1948 Lévinas addressed the theme of “Parole et silence,” noting the “misére et grandeur du langage.” See Lévinas, Parole et silence, 69–104; and on his view of language as a “disobedient servant,” see 70.
77. Lévinas, Parole et silence, 78, 80. Taken together, these reflections could almost be a commentary on the prologue of the Gospel of John; see Lévinas, Parole et silence, 90.
78. Porter, John, His Gospel, 43 and 47. John’s conception of the Word is connected to the broader Greek logos tradition such as the logos-doctrine of Philo. Zwollo, “Plotinus,” 235–62.
79. For Heraclitus, this could be an enigmatic but wise discourse, as that of the Oracle of Delphi: Heraclitus, Fragments, cf. fragment 93, 56–57, and commentary, 143. See also Freeman, Ancilla, 31. According to Heraclitus, men often reveal their failure to understand logos, see Fleischer, Anfänge, 46.
80. Hölderlin’s knowledge of classical Greece was extensive, in keeping with the cultural world of the Weimarer Klassik; see Schadewaldt, “Hölderlin,” 681.
81. Herbert, “Labyrinth on the Sea,” 395–551. This edition does not contain the illustrations.
82. Raviolo, “Zbigniew Herbert,” 463.
83. Masson, “Versets,” 34.
84. Brient, “Hans Blumenberg,” 515.
85. Hamacher, “Thesis no. 82,” 42.
86. Die Lebendigkeit, “livingness,” is a term in the thought of Husserl and Heidegger; and Herrmann, Hermeneutics, xviii.