Simple Forms by André Jolles

Author:André Jolles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

VI. HOW ARE RIDDLES MADE? – SPECIAL LANGUAGE – VERBAL GESTURE OF THE RIDDLE

Thus we come to the third question: How does encryption occur? And this brings us to the true form of the riddle.

If what is encrypted is conditioned and defined by the meaning of what is concealed, by the secret of the Bund, then it must be conceived in the language of the Bund. We could say: the test consists above all in establishing whether the outsider understands the language of the initiated.

Let us recall the idea of the catechism. Catechism – the word is derived from the Greek verb ἠχέω, ēcheō (‘to sound or resound’) – is related to the riddle, yet it differs from it in that it lacks the riddle’s spontaneity. Catechism likewise enables entry into a community and the achievement of initiation, but here the questions are not solved from within: the answer is learned by the catechumen. Once again we see knowledge as something to be possessed. We saw earlier how knowledge is completed in myth, how it is produced in an act of cognition. Knowledge as a possession, however, can not only be encrypted; it can also be learned. The riddle stories express something similar. In the story of the ‘grateful dead’, the guesser always hears the answer from another person: he learns it.

Meanwhile, catechism shows that initiation demands that particular words be taken in a particular sense, that when we speak of baptism we not only mean water, but water subsumed within God’s command and connected with God’s word …

We find something similar in the riddle, but in a much stronger form. When we hear:

Ein Baum steht in der ganzen Welt,

der zweiundfünfzig Nester hält,

in jedem Neste sieben Jungen,

doch sämtlich sind sie ohne Zungen –

There is a tree in the wide world,

that counts nests five-and-twenty,

in every nest, seven young,

yet all of them are lacking tongues –

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.