A Differentiation of Tongues

With The Language of Adam Professor Fraser completes a trilogy, as he says, which might be called "The Modern World Begins." The other components are The War Against Poetry (1970) and The Dark Ages and the Age of Gold (1973).

The Language of Adam describes our enduring desire to overcome language barriers and so make a society in which all speak with one tongue. The modern age beginning in the Renaissance has been especially concerned with this effort, but it peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries. We remember that Adam spoke a language in which one word conveyed the root meaning of one thing, without the possibility of confusion. Fraser proceeds in seven interesting chapters to describe this attempt to return to that linguistic simplicity, historically and psychologically. He suggests how the attempt bears on the world we inhabit today, tracing projects for language reform in the wake of the; confusion of tongues laid on us with the;' destruction of the Tower of Babel. Plato's separation of the world known through the senses from the more real world known through the mind has dominated Western thought for centuries. Both worlds are dominated by the great mediator — language (logos, the word), and from the differentiation of tongues there appears to be no escape. But let that thought not oppress, suggests Fraser, for "the differentiation of tongues ... does not make for the dissolution of society, where society is a living organism, but for its coherence. In differences identity resides."

The chapters are teasingly entitled "The Legacy of Nimrod," "The Word Made Flesh," "The Enclosed Garden," "Mysticism and the Scientific Doom," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," "The Rage for Order," and "The City of God, How Broad, How Far."

In developing them Fraser calls upon 352 authors, ancient and modern, and 448 of their books and articles from Plato, Jerome, and Dante to Bacon, Bishop Wilkins, Comenius, to Jung, Freud, Don Cameron Allen, Noam Chomsky, and Archibald Hill.

One enjoying this volume to the fullest should come fresh from a layman's knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, Seneca, St. Thomas, William of Ockham, Augustine, Bacon, Spratt, Wilkins, and a passing acquaintance with the mystics and numerologists of the 16th century. But, reader, be of good cheer. Fraser traces attempts by philosophers and linguists in the Renaissance to repair the disorder of Babel and come again to a universal language, not only such as men do use in their most utilitarian and practical moments, stripped of eloquence and obfuscating flourishes, but language precise in sound and sense where the word defines the thing with absolute clarity. He then links this attempt to the purposes of scientists, mathematicians, and mystics in the 16th and 17th centuries, all of whom sought to discover the underlying rule of laws in their respective fields — attempts still vital in the 20th century. The climax of the movement, as he describes it, comes in Chapter VI "The Rage for Order," but the application in the final chapter "The City of God, How Broad, How Far" brings all together and comes full circle, accepting a both/and, rather than an either/or, approach to what promises to be a continuing balancing of opposites in scientific, linguistic, moral, religious, and psychological theory.

Fraser's style will have its advocates and opponents. The writing moves in short, heavily allusive sentences, averaging about 15 words apiece. Its staccato manner and pregnant content remind one of the gnomic phrases in Old English verse — where one ponders a statement, checks the allusion, elaborates it, then moves on. The book's coverage of the wisdom gained from 350 authors in many languages thus seems like a stitchery of reinforcing ideas. Yet the development of his thesis emerges clearly enough as his seamless garment (his favorite phrase) of argument unfolds.

Worth careful reading!

THE LANGUAGE OF ADAMBy Russell Fraser '47Columbia, 1977. 288 pp. $15

G. W. Stone, former president of the ModernLanguage Association, and editor of its journalPMLA, is professor of English and dean oflibraries emeritus at New York University.