| 词组 | palimpsest |
| 释义 | palimpsest In late classical and medieval times, the Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us, parchment and vellum were both scarce and costly. These materials were sometimes recycled; books that had become neglected or outdated would be disassembled, the writing on them removed by various means, and the sheets used for writing new texts on. Later scholars discovered that the original texts on these reused sheets could be read and recovered; important texts of classical authors such as Cicero, Livy, and Plautus survive in palimpsests. The word palimpsest for this sort of reused sheet of writing material came into English in the first quarter of the 19th century—just about the time, apparently, that scholars were beginning to recover old texts from them. The earliest citation in the OED is dated 1825; it mentions the pioneer in deciphering erased texts, Angelo Mai (spelled Mayo in the citation). The word had hardly been in the language twenty years before it began to be used figuratively. Keeping in mind that an actual palimpsest is a piece of writing material that has been erased and written on again, we can understand many of the figurative uses of the word. Sometimes writing, erasing, and rewriting is the underlying idea: • This was the first of a very long series of those bizarre 'revisions' and 'corrections' that, in the end, were to make the history of the revolution an almost illegible palimpsest —Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, 1949 • The traces of scholarly tradition are always present in the fictional context that employs them, present "under erasure," as Derrida would suggest, making the text a palimpsest that both hides and reveals all its previous sources —Shari Benstock, PMLA, March 1983 Most often it is the notion of the layers that prevails: • The style he has invented for his purpose works on the principle of a palimpsest: one meaning, one set of images, is written over another —Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle, 1931 • ... Canada, like any country, is a palimpsest, an overlay of classes and generations —Margaret Atwood, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 10 Mar. 1985 • He had become aware too that at any given moment the mind is a palimpsest of perceptions, conscious and unconscious —Arthur Mizener, The Saddest Story, 1971 We even find palimpsest stretched from layers written and layers seen to the realm of what is heard: • There is also the additional problem raised by the casting of Rod Steiger as Fields.... I find it hard to forget that this face and this voice are Steiger's, which gives me a kind of audiovisual palimpsest — John Simon, New York, 5 Apr. 1976 • Today's pop record is a palimpsest of noninstrumental sounds —Richard R. Lingeman, N.Y. Times Mag., 27 Nov. 1966 The palimpsest is clearly a metaphor with a strong appeal to the more intellectual sort of writer. The trouble with an appealing metaphor is that it can be slipped into a context where the reader has a hard time connecting the word to even its obvious figurative meaning: • The great difficulty for the reader is that Pilling's commentary is like a palimpsest; one needs the text open in front of one in order to follow his exposition —Phyllis Grosskurth, Times Literary Supp., 28 Nov. 1981 • But by the use of the "madwoman" and other palimpsests, they were able to refute and reinterpret his mandates —Valerie Miner, Christian Science Monitor, 11 Feb. 1980 • Talking shaped our faces, turned them into palimpsests, mobile and restless, waiting to pounce —Anatole Broyard, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 24 Jan. 1982 • ... a visitor can read the history of the city in the palimpsest of shop signs —Nancy Harmon Jenkins, N.Y. Times Mag., 3 Nov. 1985 We suggest that if you are tempted to use this hard word, you keep the original palimpsest—written, erased, written over, with the older layer dimly visible under the newer—firmly in mind. You will be less likely to puzzle your readers if you do. |
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