2023-03-29 18:11:01 by ambuda-bot
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GLOSSARY
element in terms of which the subject and object are compared
("Why is a woman like a hinge? Because she's a thing to adore";
M. E. W. Sherwood). It would appear that śleșa is at least compatible
with every figure except svabhāvokti and embodies more fully than
any other figure the universality of the poetic idea. It comes closer
than any other figure to the essence of poetry, variously expressed
as "vicchitti", "vaicitrya", "vakrôkti", etc. ('strikingness", "charming-
ness', 'circumlocution'), inasmuch as no expression containing a
śleşa can ever be regarded as a mere statement, an apodiction.
Theoretically, too, the idea of a pun, in which two different meanings
inhere in the same phonemic span, is an employment of language
which transcends the character of language, at once demonstrating
the limitations of non-poetic speech and using those limitations to
another purpose. Punning in Sanskrit is not the weak-kneed and
self-conscious crudity that it is in most Western languages. A pun
involving only one word or a single idea is an object of indifference
to the Sanskrit writer; it becomes interesting only when whole
ideas and complicated concepts are double-entendus. A person who
knows only English or Greek simply cannot appreciate the elegance
and refinement of punned verse as written in India, the reading of
which resembles nothing so much as a continuous re-awakening of
one's own apprehensive powers.
Puns are very sharply distinguished from the pointless word play
which deforms so much light verse in English and which, in Sanskrit,
is relegated to the category yamaka, or cadence. Ogden Nash, for
example, abounds in usages which depend upon the associative
power of partial or incomplete repetition ("In spite of her sniffle /
Isabel's chiffle"), or Thomas Hood's: "But from her grave in Mary-
bone / They've come and boned your Mary". These are not puns,
because the expression of the ideas is not simultaneous. All that
happens is that two ideas totally unrelated are here juxtaposed
through the extraneous (and even forced) similarity of the words
which carry them. They are nascent puns, if you like, or inchoate
puns which the author has left unclothed with their bare unrelatedness
showing. Simultaneity of expression is at once the formal criterion
and the condition of delectation of double-entendre. It is the one
feature which all writers are able to agree upon.
Formally, then, śleşa is most characteristically differentiated
from yamaka; but in terms of its content (the two ideas conjoined),
the figure which is most often taken as crucial is rūpaka (metaphor).
GLOSSARY
element in terms of which the subject and object are compared
("Why is a woman like a hinge? Because she's a thing to adore";
M. E. W. Sherwood). It would appear that śleșa is at least compatible
with every figure except svabhāvokti and embodies more fully than
any other figure the universality of the poetic idea. It comes closer
than any other figure to the essence of poetry, variously expressed
as "vicchitti", "vaicitrya", "vakrôkti", etc. ('strikingness", "charming-
ness', 'circumlocution'), inasmuch as no expression containing a
śleşa can ever be regarded as a mere statement, an apodiction.
Theoretically, too, the idea of a pun, in which two different meanings
inhere in the same phonemic span, is an employment of language
which transcends the character of language, at once demonstrating
the limitations of non-poetic speech and using those limitations to
another purpose. Punning in Sanskrit is not the weak-kneed and
self-conscious crudity that it is in most Western languages. A pun
involving only one word or a single idea is an object of indifference
to the Sanskrit writer; it becomes interesting only when whole
ideas and complicated concepts are double-entendus. A person who
knows only English or Greek simply cannot appreciate the elegance
and refinement of punned verse as written in India, the reading of
which resembles nothing so much as a continuous re-awakening of
one's own apprehensive powers.
Puns are very sharply distinguished from the pointless word play
which deforms so much light verse in English and which, in Sanskrit,
is relegated to the category yamaka, or cadence. Ogden Nash, for
example, abounds in usages which depend upon the associative
power of partial or incomplete repetition ("In spite of her sniffle /
Isabel's chiffle"), or Thomas Hood's: "But from her grave in Mary-
bone / They've come and boned your Mary". These are not puns,
because the expression of the ideas is not simultaneous. All that
happens is that two ideas totally unrelated are here juxtaposed
through the extraneous (and even forced) similarity of the words
which carry them. They are nascent puns, if you like, or inchoate
puns which the author has left unclothed with their bare unrelatedness
showing. Simultaneity of expression is at once the formal criterion
and the condition of delectation of double-entendre. It is the one
feature which all writers are able to agree upon.
Formally, then, śleşa is most characteristically differentiated
from yamaka; but in terms of its content (the two ideas conjoined),
the figure which is most often taken as crucial is rūpaka (metaphor).