Twice-Molded Symbols: Mary as Air
I have not had time for much translating recently, but I have time for a short post about an interesting note I found in my research.
At its most basic, semiotics--the study of signs and symbols--splits a symbol into two: the signified and the signifier. If I say "my love is a rose," then rose becomes a symbol for love: rose is the signifier (the object that stands for something else, that signifies something else), while love is the signified (what the symbol stands for, what it signifies). We could divide further: we could separate the signifier object in itself from the object as symbol. Thus the simple rose and the symbol love-rose would be distinct. We could also bring in the perspective of the one interpreting a symbol: the uninitiated sees the fish in the catacombs as just an odd drawing, while the initiated can rightly interpret it as the Christ-fish. Drawing on the original meaning of the Greek symbolon (συμβολον) as a piece of ceramic, shattered in two, whose pieces match (like a split-heart necklace), we could perhaps use this terminology: the object is the symbol-clay that, when the signified (symbol-mold) is applied, becomes the full ceramic symbol.
Symbol-clay is drawn from many fonts. The most basic is nature itself: the wind, the moon, the sun, the font (that is, a spring of water), the sea, the root, the seed, etc. The foundational layer of nature is shared by all, worldwide and timewide; when the symbol-clay becomes more particular (say, an oak tree, a pomegranate, a lemur), then it is limited in range. More particular symbol-clay like these can only be used by those who have encountered them: someone who has never seen or heard of a lemur can't use it as symbol-clay, while the Malagasy can. The wide spreading of information--first via travels and printing, now via the Internet--makes it easier to encounter symbol-clay from outside your own physical and social environment. The actions of natural objects--the hart drinking at the stream--can likewise be symbol-clay, with the same restrictions.
Men and their actions and works can also be symbol-clay. The basic facts of biology, the elements of male and female biology, are shared among cultures; once we come to social roles, different cultures and environments make different symbol-clay available, and in different ways. A "king" or "knight" can mean something quite different in different cultures: the court's view of, say, a chivalrous knight or a samurai loyal to his daimyo will be far different from the view of the peasants the samurai tests his sword on. The most basic tools and crafts--the knife, the axe, the sword, the basket, the wheel--will be shared among most cultures; the valiha, the quipu, the lestovka are culture-limited. Individuals too--a Lincoln, a Moses, a Confucius--can be symbol-clay.
All these sources of symbol-clay can also be sources of symbol-molds, though abstractions can be symbol-molds as well. (It is rare--if not impossible--for symbol-clay to be abstract: clay, after all, is fleshy stuff.) The culture-limitations of symbol-clay sources applies to symbol-molds as well.
The more limited the symbol-clay, and the more limited the information-spread at the time of the symbol's molding, the more surprising it can be to meet the same symbol-clay in two distinct cultures. It can be even more so if the symbol-mold is shared as well.
The interesting example I ran across is from the simplest stratum of symbol-clay: our daily breath. The symbol-mold is a person, but a person known among much of the world for over a millennium.
First, the ancient source:
"And again, just as a breath of air fills a person’s nostrils with life, so the breath of every right-believing Christian bears you on his lips. For we do not draw life from breathing the air to the same degree that we draw safety from the protection of your name; so the text of Scripture is fulfilled in Christ and in you, which says, ‘You are the breath of our nostrils; we shall live in your protection, and in breathing you.’ (Lam 4:20 [LXX])."
Who is the author--St. Germanos of Constantinople (634-740)--speaking to? The same person Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was speaking of:
The connection was not made by me; St. Germanos' translator, Brian E. Daley, makes it in a footnote.
Again, this concurrence should not be terribly shocking: Mary has been venerated in many places around the world for over a millennium, and air has been known since man's first breath (or, perhaps, since he first ran short of breath). Yet the connection of these two--a common symbol-mold and an extraordinarily common symbol-clay--is not common; Daley doesn't think it likely that Hopkins had read Germanos (though it is certainly not impossible), as would be more probable if this connection seemed more strange and shocking, but it is still a surprising concurrence.
Let's end with Hopkins' ending prayer:
Nota Bene: The text from St. Germanos is from his Homily I on the Dormition §10, found in On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies, tr. Brian E. Daley, Popular Patristics Series 18 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 167; the footnote mentioned is n. 14 on that page. The text from Hopkins is from his aptly-titled poem, "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe," ll. 1-2, 13-17, 24, 34-37, 114-126, as found in The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner and N.H. MacKenzie, 4th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). 93-97.
Text ©2023 Brandon P. Otto. Licensed via CC BY-NC. Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.
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