naming calls

[Thomas Tompion]

This bit of Patrick O'Brian has got me puzzled. I need your expert help; I expect I'm missing something obvious.

You need to know that:

1. We are on a British warship around 1800, on the high seas, returning to Britain.
2. The Captain, Jack, and his friend, Stephen, are anxious that their girls, whom they hope to marry soon, may have found other men. Jack has just said that pretty girls get tired of waiting for seamen to return home, and marry parsons instead.
3. Stephen, who is of a scientific bent, and despises superstition in Jack (who won't set sail on a Friday, for instance), is trying to calm his turbulence of spirit in response to Jack's remark.

'That was the unluckiest stroke,' he said to himself, thinking of Jack's they marry parsons. 'Absit, o absit omen,' for the deepest of his private superstitions, or ancestral pieties, was naming calls.

No further context is helpful, I think. Stephen goes of for a game of chess on deck immediately after, and I've explained the conversation which preceded this passage.

The italics are as in the original. I'd be grateful if someone could explain what is meant by naming calls.

 

[dn88]

From what I have managed to discover, I conclude that it's a sort of old superstition that saying a "true name" of a thing or a person makes a connection to that thing/person. Which further means that you are able to summon that thing/person by calling their "true name".

Quoted from Wikipedia:

A true name is a name of a thing or being that expresses, or is somehow identical with, its true nature. The notion that language, or some specific sacred language, refers to things by their true names has been central to magic, religious invocation and mysticism (mantras) since antiquity.

Maybe that helps for now (or, at least, gives us a starting point). I hope I'm not too wrong.

dn88

 

[Matching Mole]

Stephen, for all his criticism of Jack's superstitiousness, is indulging in a bit of magical thinking himself, albeit perhaps under the guise of modern philosophy. The unluckiest stroke is Jack remarking about girls marrying parsons. Absit omen: "may this be no omen", may the speaking of Jack's words not bring it into being (that the girls will "marry parsons") because "naming calls"; to name a thing calls it into existence.

I believe the phrase comes from the philosopher Heidegger, whose main obsession was the question of existence, although it may be possible that he got the phrase from an earlier source:

The naming calls. Calling brings closer what it calls. However this bringing closer does not fetch what is called only in order to set it down in closest proximity to what is present, to find a place for it there. The call does indeed call. Thus it brings the presence of what was previously uncalled into a nearness.

Wikipedia says of Heidegger: "Philosophers are divided in their opinion of Heidegger: some regard him as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, while others view his writing as bombastic nonsense." I vote bombastic nonsense!

 

[konungursvia]

I interpret it as follows: "calls" is not a noun here, so he is not talking about naming them; but rather, it is a fragment like verbum sat (a word [to the wise] suffices), i.e. it is a reference to a saying, along the lines that naming an entity calls it forth, meaning that verbalizing a situation actually ushers it in.

 

[KHS]

After reading what everyone else has written, it seems as if "naming calls" is a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say something out loud, it lends power to the possibility that it will come true.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

Stephen, for all his criticism of Jack's superstitiousness, is indulging in a bit of magical thinking himself, albeit perhaps under the guise of modern philosophy. The unluckiest stroke is Jack remarking about girls marrying parsons. Absit omen: "may this be no omen", may the speaking of Jack's words not bring it into being (that the girls will "marry parsons") because "naming calls"; to name a thing calls it into existence.

I believe the phrase comes from the philosopher Heidegger, whose main obsession was the question of existence, although it may be possible that he got the phrase from an earlier source:

The naming calls. Calling brings closer what it calls. However this bringing closer does not fetch what is called only in order to set it down in closest proximity to what is present, to find a place for it there. The call does indeed call. Thus it brings the presence of what was previously uncalled into a nearness.

Wikipedia says of Heidegger: "Philosophers are divided in their opinion of Heidegger: some regard him as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, while others view his writing as bombastic nonsense." I vote bombastic nonsense!

Thank you very much for this, Mole. O'Brian is remarkably careful about anachronisms of language, and Heidigger was born in 1889, so unless O'B has made an uncharacteristic error, the expression is earlier. I can see that the idea is that by specifying the omen you might feel that you laid aside the threat - and that this is itself superstitious and goes against the grain for Stephen. I'm still not sure what he means by a call here - the grammar only allows it to be a noun, surely. I think Heidigger was concerned with the influence of a name on someone's identity. The naming in naming calls (in the O'Brian) is, I suspect, the business of speaking of them aloud, of uttering the word 'Omen'.

 

[konungursvia]

Stephen, for all his criticism of Jack's superstitiousness, is indulging in a bit of magical thinking himself, albeit perhaps under the guise of modern philosophy. The unluckiest stroke is Jack remarking about girls marrying parsons. Absit omen: "may this be no omen", may the speaking of Jack's words not bring it into being (that the girls will "marry parsons&quot because "naming calls"; to name a thing calls it into existence.

I believe the phrase comes from the philosopher Heidegger, whose main obsession was the question of existence, although it may be possible that he got the phrase from an earlier source:

The naming calls. Calling brings closer what it calls. However this bringing closer does not fetch what is called only in order to set it down in closest proximity to what is present, to find a place for it there. The call does indeed call. Thus it brings the presence of what was previously uncalled into a nearness.

Wikipedia says of Heidegger: "Philosophers are divided in their opinion of Heidegger: some regard him as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, while others view his writing as bombastic nonsense." I vote bombastic nonsense!

I think Heidegger is clever, not a fool, and is relevant here: however, they don't let us talk about philosophy in this thread, I don't know why. Nor about Heidegger's German terms: Sein and Seiende.

In order to keep this relevant, this does have to do with the question of whether naming things makes them real. It tends to do so in anthropological, social being, but not in material things. Thus naming calls things into reality, by spreading the immaterial concept among all those whose belief makes the entity real.

 

[Matching Mole]

Thank you very much for this, Mole. O'Brian is remarkably careful about anachronisms of language, and Heidigger was born in 1889, so unless O'B has made an uncharacteristic error, the expression is earlier. I can see that the idea is that by specifying the omen you might feel that you laid aside the threat - and that this is itself superstitious and goes against the grain for Stephen. I'm still not sure what he means by a call here - the grammar only allows it to be a noun, surely. I think Heidigger was concerned with the influence of a name on someone's identity. The naming in naming calls (in the O'Brian) is, I suspect, the business of speaking of them aloud, of uttering the word 'Omen'.

I don't know anything about the book, and I had assumed the action took place in the 20th C. However, I get the impression that Heidegger had got the phrase from an earlier source; he studied Aristotle extensively, for example. It also occurred to me that the reference may be biblical, but I don't think it is. Of course, we cannot discount the possibility that O'Brian did commit an anachronism; the most careful of writers have been known to do so.

I think the the last sentence is peculiar, but I can't agree that "calls" is a noun here, I stand by my interpretation of the phrase as to mean "naming does calling". It's possible this is why the author put it in italics.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

I don't know anything about the book, and I had assumed the action took place in the 20th C. However, I get the impression that Heidegger had got the phrase from an earlier source; he studied Aristotle extensively, for example. It also occurred to me that the reference may be biblical, but I don't think it is. Of course, we cannot discount the possibility that O'Brian did commit an anachronism; the most careful of writers have been known to do so.

I think the the last sentence is peculiar, but I can't agree that "calls" is a noun here, I stand by my interpretation of the phrase as to mean "naming does calling". It's possible this is why the author put it in italics.

I agree that we can't discount the possibility that it's an anachronism, but I think that unlikely - he was extraordinary careful and knowledgeable. I did say that the action took place around 1800, but that may have got lost in a mass of words. I might have added that O'Brian was Irish and writes in what seems like his idea of a nautical BE around the time of Nelson.

You may be right about the phrase meaning naming means calling; my reason for thinking that it was an activity, something one does, one names calls, was O'Brian's insistence on it being one of his private superstitions, or ancestral pieties - this sounds to me more like an action than an old saw: I admit it could be either.

 

[JeffJo]

As others have mentioned, it appears to be basically the idea of 'speak of the devil.' If you name the devil, you call him, according to the old superstition.

There appears to be intentional irony in O'Brian's writing, after the mention of parsons. Stephen is apparently responding, to the idea of his girl marrying a parson, with a phrase that implies: 'don't speak of the devil.'

 

[Thomas Tompion]

As others have mentioned, it appears to be basically the idea of 'speak of the devil.' If you name the devil, you call him, according to the old superstition.

There appears to be intentional irony in O'Brian's writing, after the mention of parsons. Stephen is apparently responding, to the idea of his girl marrying a parson, with a phrase that implies: 'don't speak of the devil.'

O'Brian's writing if full of the most delicious ironies, and the idea here is that Stephen, the rational man, is saying 'absit omen', may this not be an omen - i.e. acknowledging the potential power of omens and superstitions. I don't think this actually involves talking of the devil, but even the opposite principle - by granting the possibility of this terrible fate (his girl having married a parson) you reduce its probability. If you knew the girl (in India she kept chained tigers to protect her house) you'd see there was another irony in the fact of Stephen's worrying about such a thing.

I think the superstitious amongst us may be used to the idea that if we talk about cancer we increase the probability that we may get it, and this may cause them to miss the rational man's (superstitious) embracing of the opposite principle.

 

[panjandrum]

I'm not into the philosophical nuances here, which may be why they seem irrelevant.
Naming calls - surely calls is a verb? It's the same form as "love hurts" or "crime pays". Stephen is convinced that naming something may call it into being.

 

[JeffJo]

It may be correct that 'calls' is a verb. The sentence can be read that way, merely by inserting 'that' in front of 'naming.' The word 'that' is often dropped.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

I'm not into the philosophical nuances here, which may be why they seem irrelevant.
Naming calls - surely calls is a verb? It's the same form as "love hurts" or "crime pays". Stephen is convinced that naming something may call it into being.

I agree that it's an attractive theory, Panj., and that I haven't put forward a viable alternative, BUT we need to explain:
1. Why then Stephen talks about the omen.
2. and why, when he does so, O'Brian tells us he does so because naming calls (in your interpretation).

Stephen doesn't want his girl to have married a parson, and if he had this deep superstition he, a highly intelligent person, would have gone out of the way not to say what he has just said. His saying it cannot surely be explained by the fact that he believes that by saying it he will bring about the issue he is trying superstitiously to avoid.

This is the crux of my problem with the expression, and with your proposed solution to the problem.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

One way out which occurs to me is that it's not Stephen's talking about the omen which constitutes the naming, but rather Jack's talking about the possibility of the girls having married parsons. That would explain why Stephen had to lay the omen, and get us out of the problems I raised in my previous post to this.

That solves the problem for me. Thank you all very much indeed.

 

[panjandrum]

Like I said never mind the philosophical stuff - I jumped from "Jack's they marry parsons" right over the Latin bits to "naming calls".

It is somewhat odd that Stephen of the scientific bent, the despiser of superstition, should invoke absit omen (may no ominous significance attach to the words) and indeed that he should have any private superstitions or ancentral pieties.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

Like I said never mind the philosophical stuff - I jumped from "Jack's they marry parsons" right over the Latin bits to "naming calls".

It is somewhat odd that Stephen of the scientific bent, the despiser of superstition, should invoke absit omen (may no ominous significance attach to the words) and indeed that he should have any private superstitions or ancentral pieties.

Yes, Panj. I agree it's the best way.

One of the great things about the books is that the people aren't one-dimensional.

 

[nichec]

But I like the irony of it, the fact that however xxx we are, we always have the tendency to go for the opposite from time to time (example: TT is the kindest man I have ever met, but he can be really mean sometimes )

You and your complicated threads, TT

This is what I think:

Stephen thought "that was the unluckiest stroke" because Jake just mentioned that "pretty girls get tired of waiting for seamen to return home, and marry parsons instead", which happened to hit him right on his deepest fear--the fact that deep down inside, he believed in naming calls. (I believe it's much easier to be a superstitious-superstitious person than a somehow-rational-but-still-superstitious person, just think about the inner struggle and the fear to be seen through! )

 

[konungursvia]

I'm not into the philosophical nuances here, which may be why they seem irrelevant.
Naming calls - surely calls is a verb? It's the same form as "love hurts" or "crime pays". Stephen is convinced that naming something may call it into being.

Yes, I agree... and this is what I said this morning, several posts above! The OP seems not to have noticed.

 

[panjandrum]

This thread has done its job and is beginning to become another literary discussion, far from the original topic of naming calls.

Hence it has been closed.