Each entry in Gustav Flaubert’s (Madame Bovary) dictionary takes a common phrase and exposes the inanity of its usage. Under “duties”, he writes: “Demand them of others, free oneself from the same.” (Representational image via Pexels/Pixabay)
Words and phrases are slippery things. Nowadays, many are used in baffling ways: for example, “self-defence”, “rules-based international order”, “civilization” and “democracy”. In Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty may have scornfully proclaimed that when he used a word, it meant just what he chose it to mean—but, as Alice replied: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
Over the years, some writers have taken pains to point out how the meanings of words can shift to suit different ends. Take Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, published posthumously in 1911, which mocked the clichés and stereotypes used by French society under Napoleon III. In these notes and jottings, Flaubert satirized shallow, unthinking attitudes, especially of the bourgeois, which he had earlier made evident in Madame Bovary.
Each entry in Flaubert’s dictionary takes a common phrase and exposes the inanity of its usage. Under “duties”, he writes: “Demand them of others, free oneself from the same. Others have them towards us, but we have none towards them.” For “era”, he says: “Thunder against it. Complain that it lacks poetry. Call it an age of transition, of decadence.” Other aspects of his time that needed to be thundered against were newspapers, war and feudalism.
In the same vein, gibberish is merely “a foreign people’s way of speaking,” and imbeciles are “those who think differently from oneself”. What about censorship? Well, “it has its uses, say what you will”. As for illusions: “Pretend to have many, complain about having lost them.” When it comes to people and professions, “all journalists are ideologues,” an Orientalist is “a man who is well-travelled,” and imperialists are “honest, polite, peaceful, distinguished people”. But of course.
A few years before the publication of Flaubert’s gibes, there was Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, originally titled The Cynic’s Word Book, a collection of newspaper columns. Bierce’s aim, allied to Flaubert’s, was to provide a subversive take on the English language that highlighted the absurdities and contradictions in communication, politics, and society.
Bierce’s definitions are sharp-tongued, and can make one wince with the light they shine on everyday insincerity. He is an equal-opportunity offender, and no respecter of faiths. For him, a dictionary is “a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language” but his own lexicon “is a most useful work”.
In particular, his observations on politics and governance have stood the test of time. An alliance is, in international affairs, “the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third”. Politics itself is defined as “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles”. It is “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage”, while diplomacy is “the patriotic art of lying for one’s country”.
In the same vein, patriots are those “to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole”. They are “the dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors”. As for patriotism: “Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of anyone ambitious to illuminate his name.”
Such are the unedited thoughts of one for whom history is “an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools”. If you disagree, you may be an idiot: “A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”
If all else fails, there’s always gunpowder, which is “an agency employed by civilised nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted”. War, as Clausewitz said, is the continuation of policy by other means. This can lead to happiness: “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”
Many of these definitions still resonate because meanings change but human folly remains unchanging. Teju Cole has rightly pointed out in reference to such dictionaries that we use clichés as crutches, propping up our lazy, prejudiced, or hypocritical opinions as if they were profound or fresh insights. It’s time we exposed this duplicity with a resounding “Bravo!”
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