Home: Leila Rosen—English Teacher and Aesthetic Realism
Associate
The World Is In Idioms:
Report of an Aesthetic Realism Class
Taught by Ellen Reiss
Report by Leila Rosen
In Aesthetic Realism,
Eli Siegel explained the central purpose of every person's life: to like the
world on an aesthetic basis, as the oneness of opposites. This fact has in it the dignity of man,
present in every activity of our lives, including the most ordinary. This is what consultants and associates had
the privilege to study through a talk given by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss in an
Aesthetic Realism Class. Ms. Reiss
began:
In
thinking about how to study the Aesthetic Realism explanation of the self as
the oneness of opposites, and the desire to like the world, I felt it would be
valuable to look at an aspect of language, which comes from the self—the
meaning of idioms. Every idiom was come
to by people and says what the self is.
I have cared very much for words and
language, and through this class, which was so surprising and exciting, I had
new respect for the depth and wonder of the human self which came to language,
and for the way Eli Siegel, Aesthetic Realism and Ellen Reiss see it.
Ms. Reiss read this dictionary
definition of idiom: “A conventional
phrase or expression having a meaning different from the literal.” For example, Ms. Reiss said, “To call someone
a ‘heel’ is idiomatic.” She continued,
“The difference between idioms and other phrases, is that [the meaning of the
words together is different from their meaning individually]; they are a new
meaning based on a previous meaning.”
Using A Handbook of American
Idioms, Ms. Reiss discussed five idioms, showing how these common
expressions have mystery, and also poetry, and stand for man's desire to like
the world. “Every idiom is in some way
about the ethics and aesthetics of the world,” said Ms. Reiss, “and I think
mostly, they're quite musical. How they
were come to and what they say about the self is very important.”
Pointing out that there is a
difference between slang and idiom, Ms. Reiss explained: “An idiom has become a
solid part of a language, and slang, if it's been around for 75 years, may get
to be an idiom.” Many idioms are metaphors,
she said, and gave this example: “A heel is something that's the back of your
foot, [but] there was a first time someone was called a “heel.’ How did it happen?” “Heel” is defined in the
handbook as “a disloyal or traitorous fellow.”
“What does this say about the relation of the ethical world and the
physical world?,” she asked John Bowman. “That the self wants to make a relation
between them,” he said. “Do you think,”
Ms. Reiss asked, “the human mind says there is
a relation? There's some feeling that
ethics is of the world itself.” She
explained, “Someone felt—the word ‘rascal’ won't do; ‘scoundrel’ won't do—no,
it's ‘heel,’” which she said has a feeling of contempt and meanness in it. To show how, Ms. Reiss gave this example:
“That heel—he made me think I meant something to him. He was just after those fancy dinners I
bought him.” And pointing to the fact
that the heel is low, she asked, “In any society, would a person ever see
lowness as standing for great character of a very fine kind? It does seem that the world itself and how
it's made has a relation to ethics.”
Ms. Reiss spoke about the fact that
idioms are deeply of the very essence of a language. She said, “[It is felt that] you're at ease
with a language if you're able to use idioms gracefully.” While a person can be at ease with the idioms
in his or her native language, those of another language can be puzzling, even
though a person may otherwise be fluent in that language. With such respect for the depth of idioms in
the mind of man, she asked several persons in the class who speak English
fluently, though it is not their first language—whether they knew the meaing of
the idioms. “The purpose of doing this,”
she said, “[is so that] people who, in a way, know English very well can have a
sense of mystery.”
I was thrilled by this. As I studied several languages, and have
taught English to persons from many countries, I have had some of the sense of
mystery about idioms Ms. Reiss described.
I remember wondering, for instance, as I learned Spanish idioms in high
school, “How did those words come to
mean that?!” I love what Ellen Reiss explained in this
great class—that, with all their mystery, idioms are a way man has come to of
showing the ethics of the world through language.
She then looked at the idiom: “apple
pie order,” which means: “in neat and perfect condition.” “There's a rightness to it,” said Ms. Reiss,
and she showed it is because of how it puts opposites together: “How are you
going to express the feeling of neatness that is also full? You wouldn't say a graph was in ‘apple pie
order,’ because it doesn't have that richness.”
Then, she said, “There's something within that neatness—the way the
lushness of an apple is nice and tidy under that crust. It's a sign that the self wanted to be fair
to the world in a way that is full and neat.”
Eli Siegel explained that the sign of
sincerity in words—at their grandest, as in poetry, and at their most
everyday—is in their music. I’m grateful
to be able to see how this is true, not only in this class about idioms, but
also in the course The Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry, taught by Ms.
Reiss. “These terms last,” she said,
“because the sound is fortunate. ‘Apple
pie order’ is musical. ‘Blueberry pie order’ wouldn't do.” I love how she
showed that this idiom is a oneness of slowness and speed. “In ‘apple pie’,” she said, “the 2 ps are nice. They are
speedy and bumpy, but also confined in a good way. ‘Order’...is a richer sound
than ‘apple pie;’ [it] is slower but has a repeated sound, too. It is, in its way, mouthwatering.” The idiom “apple pie order,” Ms. Reiss said,
“is a way of showing lushness can be strict and strictness can be lush.”
The next idiom was “barking up the
wrong tree,” which means, “...on the wrong trail or track.” The phrase likely has to do with hunting,
said Ms. Reiss, “showing that dogs can be confused. It's charming, and also rather beautiful. The certainty and amissness of self are in
it. It means you can put a lot of effort into something and be dead wrong.”
A large reason this idiom is
beautiful, she explained, is its rhythm.
The first part—“barking up the”—is made of two trochees, each having one
accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable; and the last part, “wrong
tree” is a spondee, or, two accented syllables.
"[It has] insistence," said Ms. Reiss. “It does have in its sound a resonance—an
echoingness and a firmness. It [shows] a
person can be so sure and be so wrong.”
And she continued, “Someone said it for the first time. Then someone [else] thought it was a good
expression, and repeated it.”
“Then,” she said, “there's a lovely
expression: ‘Till the cows come home.’”
She asked Lorenzo Morelli of
The last idiom Ms. Reiss discussed,
which she said is “perhaps the most poetic of any I've read,” is “cry over
spilt milk: to weep about something which is unalterable or irreparable.” “This has not been a successful idiom in
terms of life,” she said, “because people have.” But she showed that it is beautiful in its
sound. To illustrate, she put the same
idea in other words: “There's no use crying over Chablis that went down the
drain.” What a different effect this
has! “’Spilt milk,’” she explained,
“has assonance”—which Eli Siegel defined as “the using of the sameness and
difference of sound in syllables for
poetic music and, therefore, poetic effect.”
In these two syllables—‘spilt milk’—she said, the ls are
liquid, and the is are very short.
“There is longing and the finite,” she said, “and the word ‘crying’ can
make for that.” Ms. Reiss noted that Mr.
Siegel had said another idiom using this word—“for crying out loud”—was
poetic. “’Cry’—is so longing,” she said,
“such a value term, and then ‘spilt milk’—is something that is definite, but
flows.”
“What I'm trying to present,” she
said, “are some notes on what the human self is through what selves have done
with language.” The existence and
lastingness of idioms, she showed so deeply, are evidence for the truth of this
great principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a
making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going
after in ourselves.” I hope that soon,
every person in the world can learn this principle in his or her own language,
and know the kind, beautiful way of seeing the self and the whole world which
is the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel.
© 2004 Leila Rosen
Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company