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
