Expat Living: "Dictating language to so and so"

Lincoln Steffens

"I've seen the furniture,

and it lurks (on the horizen)."

- ad blurb written for IKEA,

while riding a train through Sweden

(Image from Wikipedia)

Today's the day that I get to be 'lazy' and just post my latest from the Korea Herald, a column written in response to a reader who didn't like my previous article there on "Mucking up the English language" and accused me of speaking like a tyrant.

I know the guy from the Milton List. He's one of those old unreconstructed Marxists from the 1950s whose readings of what I and others post on that literary listserve are similar to what you'll see below in the quote that I provide from his 'critique' of my previous column:

Dictating language to so and so

I take delight in reporting a most passionate response to my recent column, "Mucking up the English language." Fellow Milton scholar Professor C. Cox has troubled himself to quote me briefly and comment upon my words:

"Horace Jeffery Hodges (in his column) wrote: '. . . Licentiousness, regrettably, is not liberty,' which as Lincoln Steffens magnificently argued, is not just not true, it is viciously untrue. This false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty, and not (as Milton argued) necessity [and liberty] is the true plea of the Tyrant."

Thank you, Professor Cox. I take heart in having attentive readers and appreciate the gallant corrective, but you have neglected the context, which begins: "Lest pedants once again correct me on a point that I know full well . . ."

I myself would hardly be earning my own keep as official pundit pedant if I failed to draw attention to the unorthodox capitalization of "Licentiousness," "Liberty," and "Tyrant." Professor Cox is either reverting to seventeenth-century orthographic conventions, as perchance befits a Milton scholar, or he is committing the fallacy of misplaced abstraction, perhaps reading my frivolous remark as some Grand Pronouncement.

Or possibly, in hastening to correct me, the good man has simply erred in capitalizing these three common nouns. Well, hasten slowly, sir, so as not to sow the wind, for a stitch in time saves nine, else your white canvas doublet will sully! But not too slowly, either, for indolence begets indigence. Let me word it so:

So ...

I s'pose you know
It's best to sow
Than be a lazy so and so!

Though even the lazy sow and sow
If forced to, though.
I s'pose that's so.

When I say "sow,"
I don't mean "sew"!
If I meant so,
I'd tell you "sew"!

It's just, you know,
We'd better sow
To be in dough -- don't you think so?

Although, of those who sew and sew,
I s'pose also
It's also so.

I trust that I have made myself as vehemently clear as professor Cox has made himself. Vehement, that is; not clear.

For instance, I am not quite certain what the professor means by referring to the "false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty." By "false contrast," does he mean that licentiousness and liberty are not altogether opposite in meaning? If so, I agree, for licentiousness even derives from a Latin word for freedom: licentia. Or does he mean, instead, that licentiousness and liberty are identical in meaning, having no contrast at all? I would find that problematic, for licentiousness entails the flaunting of rules, whereas liberty covers rather a broader range of meanings, including the freedom that one gains through following rules.

Similarly puzzling in its manner of expression is the professor's larger assertion that the "false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty . . . is the true plea of the Tyrant." In identifying a "false contrast" as a "true plea," professor Cox might appear to be asserting a contradiction, but I think that I understand his meaning. The expression "true plea of the Tyrant" should be read as "true Tyrant's plea." The professor means that I expressed myself with the voice of a genuine tyrant when I wrote these words:

"Licentiousness, regrettably, is not liberty, and trapped in this prison house of language, I reflect upon my own linguistic crime of passion and perceive that I stand guilty of the very thing for which I have accused Larkin."

Professor Cox is right. I have been tyrannical in judging myself so harshly. I deserve amnesty, and as tyrant, I hereby declare myself pardoned.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com -- Ed.

Well, judge for yourself my putative tyrannical character. I expect that Professor Cox will.

Meanwhile, can someone direct me to where Lincoln Steffens argued so magnificently about licentiousness and liberty?