Re: [xmca] fetishism | word meaning

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a recurrent thought
when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed in the word." I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I always have this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far as it is taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later time, in some new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over again.
mike

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last message. I meant
> the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears below from
> Martin.
>
> In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the meaning that a
> word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the philological sense),
> but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues meaning, as it
> continues living, non-timelessly.
>
>
> On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:
>
>  On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
>>
>
>  For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over time; he didn't
>>
> study philology for nothing!
>
>
>  A word is dead
>>     When it is said
>>   Some say.
>> I say it just
>> Begins to live
>>  That day.
>>
>>      --Emily Dickinson
>>
>> I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that words do -- not
>> something they contain, convey, etc.
>>
>>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK  DE  19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
>  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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