Spot on, Martin, that's the kind of post I enjoy.
I guess an attractive Anglicisation of 'Dummheit' would be the slangy
'dumbhead'.(-edness)
Cheers
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin J. Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: Back on Planet Earth
> Lots of very interesting things have been said, but the rather alexandrian
> debate about etymology promoted by Erminia might have been avoided if
> Candice's point about the original German had been considered from the
> start, since it is not unrelated to our own beloved English tongue (though
> it be to some belated denizens of the Roman Empire, to borrow a well-aimed
> shaft by David, a contemptible Johnny-Come-Lately). The German is "dumm"
(I
> assume, not having read the Heiner Müller interview but encouraged by the
> title of Musil's _Über die Dummheit_, also referred to by Alison, who has
> inspired me to reread it) and has the same meanings as the present-day
> English word "dumb" (being at an earlier stage "tumb"), to wit both
> incapable of (rational) speech and lacking in understanding.
Etymologically,
> thus not necessarily decisively (point well taken, Robin) but in fact
rather
> intriguingly, this has the same root as "dunkel" = dark, the sense of
> "impervious to understanding" being a probable determinant ~ we may think
of
> the +darkness+ of some poetry or of the unconscious springs of our
feelings.
> But, as Musil remarks in his mordant and illuminating talk, reason and
> feeling are so dialectically intermingled that "Dummheit" may be
attributed
> to either strand +and+ on occasion imply the reverse; thus there is a kind
> of simple Dummheit that "is really often an artist", which is evidenced by
> responses to a psychological association test like"Winter: Consists of
snow"
> or "Father: He threw me down the stairs once", and in contrast to this
> "honest dumbness" a pretentious "higher" dumbness which he calls
> "Bildungskrankheit", not a mental illness yet the most dangerous malady
of
> the spiritual culture ("Geist"), something that David was attacking, I
> believe, in several recent contributions, a sort of convoluted
> imperviousness to truthfulness (get thee behind me, Pilate!) Musil of
course
> says much, much more in a far more complex yet lucid manner than I can
> suggest here; this, and everything he wrote, is worth reading.
> This may be misplaced romanticism, and therefore +dumb+, but I've
sometimes
> found "poor dispossessed sized by stupidity" (sic: an interesting slip
twixt
> cup and lip)on the streets have a vein of shrewd and humourous wit (in all
> senses) often lacking in the "successful" reigning in the world Erminia
> apparently rates so highly.
> Martin
>
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