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home :: books :: 2004-03-08-umbertoEcosLanguageOfAdam.html

Mon, 08 Mar 2004

Continuing on to the second essay in Umberto Eco's Serendipities - Language and Lunacy he speaks of dreams of restoring the language of Adam.

The blasphemy of Babel results in the Babel disaster - - a wound inflicted upon mankind that might, in some way, be healed.

Dante most likely believed that, in naming the animals, rather than speaking, Adam was laying down the rules of language, that Adam's language had a primordial affinity between words and objects, that the principles which permitted the creation of languages capable of reflecting the true essence of things, languages in which the essential mode of things were identical with how they are signified, disappeared at Babel.

Dante, aware that a natural language can be enriched through the creativity of single individuals, aimed to create the language of Adam in which to write his poetry. His goal was to discover the rules of language layed down by Adam and use those rules to create a contemporary language which might heal the wound of Babel.

(Note: the Bible clearly states that God brought before Adam all the beasts of the field and all the fowl of the air. What about fish?)

(Note: Genesis 10 speaks of the dispersal of the sons of Noah after the Flood resulting in "the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, ..." - before Babel - suggesting that the original Hebrew spoken by Adam was already lost after Noah.)

(Note: Greeks and Romans identified the structures of their languages with reason (e.g., Aristotle constructed his list of categories by setting out from the structures of Greek grammar). Nevertheless, the Greek culture continued to think of a universality of the Logos beyond the difference between various languages.)

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