Saturday, October 23, 2004

Agglutinating Banality (Jean Paulhan)

We forget a lot. Again I am a living proof.

Jean Paulhan was a great homme de lettre who is remembered today best as a defender of banality. Being banal is much more enjoyable than being great in anything he says. Being banal means that you are constantly amazed by great feats around you. A great explorer is not surprised to see what others achieve. It's not fun. It's much more fun to be surprised by unexpected accomplishments done by the others. "Personne ne peut etre a la fois interesse et interessant" (Entretiens a la radio avec Robert Mallet, 16).

Well, I began reading this book and soon realized that this was the same book that I had read 25 years ago as an undergraduate; only its title had been changed! The original title was Les incertitudes du langage (1970). Tant pis. But my memory being so bad I can enjoy the book as if it was a new-new book. One advantage for banality.

What I have totally forgotten is the fact that Paulhan was a professor of languages at "LanguesO," L'Ecole des langues orientales. As a former gold hunter in Madagascar, he could speak Malagasy fluently. He also spoke Malay and Javanese. He was a specialist of all these interesting agglutinative languages.

Another reason (mimetic, naturally) for me to pursue Malay!