“As Was Said of Old”

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“There’s an old proverb that says just about anything you want it to.” —Anonymous

“Solomon made a book of proverbs, but a book of proverbs never made a Solomon.”

—English proverb

CLEMSON, SC—(Weekly Hubris)—7/26/10—I suppose the empty nest had something to do with it but, after our daughter graduated from the University of South Carolina and moved to New York, I started feeling guilty about all the great advice I’d never given her. So I bought a collection of epigrams entitled As the Saying Goes, and distilled a list of what I claimed were “Pop’s Proverbs.”

The Chinese say, “The palest ink trumps the best memory,” so I placed that one first to encourage writing. Among other things, I advised her to plow around the stumps of Manhattan, to forgive herself over and over, and not to wait for people to love her. I reminded her that civility costs nothing, that there’s an exception to most rules, that the end usually does not justify the means, and that pretty is as pretty does.

She wrote back in the palest ink saying thank you, but she’d assimilated most everything I’d collected long before she left home. Apparently, “Pop” had conveyed the wisdom through his actions, making the precepts redundant. As Anja put it, “Pop had planted seeds rather than scattering pearls under foot.”

Still, a well-turned maxim has an enduring charm. Something must be working because many English proverbs have their roots in cultures long dead, yet these survivors show no signs of root rot. Wolfgang Mieder, the dean of American paremiology, has said that the average American is familiar with about 300 proverbs.

And what exactly are they? Think of the experience of a million people compacted over a thousand years into a linguistic diamond. This figure may help to explain the rarity and staying power of the form. It may also explain why Ben Franklin, one of America’s finest aphorists, preferred, “A drop of reason to a flood of words.” (Of course, D.H. Lawrence thought Franklin a “snuff-colored” simpleton for trying to reduce complex moral opinions to a sentence, but then Lawrence never edited an almanac, either.)

I expect the Bible is what most Americans think of when proverbs are mentioned. Solomon wrote some 3,000 and, even though the disciples urged Jesus to speak “plainly,” his parables are scattered with metaphorical gems like “a house divided cannot stand.”

Occasionally, collectors abbreviate a biblical proverb, and their pruning changes its meaning. The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams includes, “Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.” (Proverbs 6:30)  When I read this, I assumed Solomon was defending one who robs the rich and gives to the poor. But, if one reads the next verse, omitted in the Penguin edition, the sense is strongly qualified: “Yet if [the thief] is caught, he must pay back seven times more—he must give up everything he has.” Suddenly the only thing wrong with robbing the rich is getting caught, and Solomon resembles the Sheriff of Nottingham.

As an occasional Bible reader, I’ve long admired Ezekiel for confronting Moses’s misguided proverb in Deuteronomy: “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the sons even to the . . . fourth generation.” Nonsense, says Ezekiel, the wickedness of the wicked shall befall the wicked, not his innocent offspring. I’ve often wondered what this later prophet, with his emphasis on personal responsibility, would have thought of God’s only son dying for another’s sins. Unfortunately, on this plane, we’ll never know.

In the Bible and elsewhere, the realities of the moralist are often subtly expressed. Many writers of “wisdom literature” urge us to trust the deity, but most know how some shorn lambs have shivered to death in places like Auschwitz. As a result, Americans are advised to “trust God but keep your gunpowder dry.”

The Arabs append, “. . . but tie your camels tight.”

Gamblers warn, “. . . but cut the cards.”

Hindus caution, “. . . but row away from the rocks.”

Jews, still reeling from the Diaspora, urge, “Hope for a miracle but do not depend on one.”

And Russians delete miracles altogether, bluntly stating, “Trust but verify.”

It’s interesting to me the way proverbs of one generation correct the oversights of another. For centuries, Germans told their nubile girls, “Children, church, and kitchen,” for those were the provinces of women. Translated into English, the adage became, “A woman’s place is in the home.” Questions about church, should they arise, would be answered by a husband when he came home.

In the American South, the proverb deteriorated into, “Keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant,” figuring poverty and pregnancy would keep women from temptation. After they were worn out by childbearing, there would be plenty of time for the church. In the late 20th century, however, women rose up collectively and said, “Enough!  A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate.” This modern variation is even more effective on a t-shirt when “the Senate” is printed on the back. One day soon, “the Oval Office” may join it.

Other modern adaptations of the genre include the “incomplete proverb” finished by some suspiciously jaded eight-year old, who writes, “A penny saved? Is not much.”

Then there’s the “literal foreign proverb,” such as, “One finger cannot open the anus.”

There’s the “mean-spirited proverb”: “Kick a blind man—why do any less than God has done?”

There’s the “mal-appropriate proverb”: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the ointment.”

There’s the “virtual proverb,” such as, “Too many clicks spoil the browse.”

There’s the “paired proverb,” such as, “All that glitters is not gold [English] because all is not butter that comes from a cow [Yiddish].”

There’s the “commercial proverb”: “Different Volks for different folks.”

There’s the “engorged proverb” used to illustrate the efficacy of brevity: compare, “Rectitude is its own remuneration,” to, “Virtue is its own reward.”

There’s the “comic proverb” such as Stephen Wright’s, “If you had everything, where would you put it?”

There’s the “inverted proverb”: “Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”

Finally, there’s the “updated proverb”: instead of “carrying coals to Newcastle,” we in South Carolina “haul grits to Charleston.”

To those who say that the era of the proverb has passed, I offer two examples in closing. The world would be a very different place today if George W. Bush had taken two Arab proverbs to heart before invading Iraq in 2003: “It takes one crazy man to block the well, but the whole village to remove the stones.” And, “The local devils are better than angels from abroad.”