Why did the ancients evoke two intertwining strands when they spoke about language? This was a trope not only used in Ancient Greece and Rome, but well before that by Indo-European poets. This metaphor can be found in the oldest literary texts of every language that belongs to the Indo-European family. My blog is therefore not only about classical antiquity (8th century BC to the 5th century CE) but also Vedic India ( c. 1500 – c. 500 BC). No less than 2,5 millennia ago the motif of poetry as textile was already widespread. People spoke about ‘old thread’ to refer to a poet’s use of traditional expressions, whilst ‘new thread’ stood for an attempt to innovate.

Source: Pixabay

Contemporary scholars who study such ancient metaphors use the term ‘combination’. To combine elements means joining them together, or merging them, whilst they remain individually distinct. The combination of speech elements includes letters combined into words, words combined into sentences, or the mixing of various speech styles.  As ancient poets skilfully combined old and new elements to compose formulaic poetry, their craft was oriented along two axes. One of those was the axis of narration and innovation, based on a poet’s improvisation, the other consisted of items selected among the richness of existing formulas. This combination was visualised as ‘intertwining’. Twine is a thread or string that consists of two or more strands of material twisted together. What emerged was not only an image of language as thread, but language as twine.  An image was created of a ‘man-made’ intertwining of two strands – long before the discovery of DNA.

Source: Ship built under the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula in the 1st century AD on Lake Nemi, Wikipedia

The leading motif of ‘intertwining’ did not only allow for a textile understanding of language, of speech as a kind of ‘weaving’. Language was also imagined as plaiting and carpentry. All three techniques are based on the intertwining of elements. Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan all feature the image of poetry as carpentry – ‘to carpenter poems’. In Latin, the verb texō refers to weaving, but is sometimes applied to the building of ships, the building of a basilica. Texō evokes a continuum of meaning from weaving, to plaiting, to carpentry, or simply building as adjusting pieces of wood or stones, to speaking, and to language.  What is central to all of them is intertwining. This intertwining also characterises the organisation of speech and thought. ‘Poetry’ is derived from the Greek poieō, ‘make’. It is a ‘making’ without any reference to a specific technique. It is a metaphor anchored in ‘the warm flesh of words’ (la chair chaude des mots). In one of the oldest literary sources, from the 2^nd millennium BC, the topic of a poet’s originality is addressed: ‘the richest… words, I carve with my mouth’.  This blog’s portrait of language, its design and architecture, evokes a materiality, a shape imagined as both flesh and twine. It is a starting point to begin to think about language’s organic shapes.

Source: Reconstruction within the ruins of the domestic basilica at the Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza Armerina, 4th century, Wikipedia

References

Andrés-Toledo, M.Á. (2016). Indo-Iranian weavers of old and new hymns. In Fanfani, G., Harlow, M. & Nosch, M.L (Eds.) Spinning tales and the song of the loom. The use of textiles, clothing and cloth production as metaphor, symbol and narrative device in Green and Latin literature, (pp. 17-23). Oxbow Books.

pp. 17

Guilleux, N. (2016). Of metaphorical matrices and their networks: Generally speaking, and in the field of textile activities. In Fanfani, G., Harlow, M. & Nosch, M.L (Eds.) Spinning tales and the song of the loom. The use of textiles, clothing and cloth production as metaphor, symbol and narrative device in Green and Latin literature, (pp. 1-16).Oxbow Books.

pp. 12, 13, 14

Queneau, R. (1958). Le chien à la mandoline. Paris: Verviers. Collection “Temps Mêlés”.

Sources images

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/dna-biological-helix-analysis-6517209

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nemi_Ship_Hull_1930.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica#/media/File:RP08546_(7831627328).jpg