ADINA TUDOSESCU

ENGLISH PRACTICAL COURSE

FOR THIRD YEAR STUDENTS

© Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine, 2007

Editură acreditată de Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării prin Consiliul Naţional al Cercetării Ştiinţifice

din Învăţământul Superior

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Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României TUDOSESCU, ADINA English practical course for third year students / Adina Tudosescu, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine, 2007 Bibliogr. ISBN: 978-973-725-954-7

UNIVERSITATEA SPIRU HARET FACULTATEA DE LIMBI ŞI LITERATURI STRAINE

ADINA TUDOSESCU

ENGLISH PRACTICAL COURSE

FOR THIRD YEAR STUDENTS

EDITURA FUNDAŢIEI ROMÂNIA DE MÂINE Bucureşti, 2007

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CONTENTS

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PREFACE

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PART ONE

ENGLISH PRACTICAL COURSE THIRD YEAR, FIRST TERM

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INTRODUCTION General presentation of the course Equally due to the general bias and specificity (as the main applied

component of the curriculum), and to the inherent interdisciplinary perspective, the course compulsorily implies the integration of the following coordinates of design:

– various activities that are targeted upon actualising, refining and/or supplementing certain areas of knowledge within the fields of (derivational) morphology, syntax and semantics by means of restructuring, reshaping, and resizing information in accordance to a strictly applied orientation, and thus creating a functional interface with theoretical disciplines;

– a focus upon improving and diversifying the students’ training in translation practice, with the entailing beneficial effects upon the enriching of specialised language vocabulary in various domains;

– exercising the abilities involved in complex analysis of content and in text commentary;

– activating the deductive, intuitive and communicative skills; – testing the students’ coherence and logical processes in ideation

and argumentation, stimulating the creative potential. In close relationship with the last issue, the structure of the course

will also include several topics (and guidelines) for essays and/or debates.

Objectives of the course The characteristic of the course being the pre-eminently applied dimension, its central goal resides in enhancing linguistic performance at lexical-semantic, grammatical (phonetic, morphological, syntactic), and stylistic levels.

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In order to improve actualising abilities, both systematic acquisition of new information, and sustained activation, development and integration of already acquired knowledge are going to be envisaged. By means of the diverse thematic content and the selected texts, a certain benefit in terms of students’ general cultural background is also targeted.

Outline of the units and modules The macro-structural organisation of the course consists of four

broadly encompassing units (see Contents). These units are all internally articulated in conformity to an

iterative sequence of didactic modules (the text, vocabulary, grammar, translation, essay / debate modules), the methodological characteristic of which resides in their more often than not presupposing an integrative level in what concerns the basic skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing).

Therefore, a unit will (in general) contain: a) a text of 1½-2 pages – constituting the nucleus of the unit, and

representing the object of a complex analysis (lexical and grammatical aspects, relevant stylistic features, content commentary) –, which will be preceded by introductory requirements featuring a thematically orienting role, and followed by a set of assignments meant to facilitate and guide the analysis;

b) vocabulary study and practice; c) the grammar section (brief theoretical presentation / revision

and exercises); d) 1-2 supplementary texts (of variable length), dealing with

topics related to the one of the main text, and which can be used on various purposes (for translation tasks, as starting point for additional lexical-grammatical applications or for comments / debates, as further information and reading);

e) indicated topics for essays/debates (which may be accompanied by suggested guidelines, landmarks or – possibly necessary – references);

f) 1-2 texts for translation into English.

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UNIT I

EARLY MEMORIES. THE FIRST QUESTIONS

1. Preliminaries 1. Enumerate and briefly comment upon some of the various

possible approaches to childhood (points of view, domains of analysis and/or study).

2. What makes childhood exert a real fascination upon us, and what makes it be of scientific interest?

3. Which of the numerous literary works devoted to childhood is the first to come to your mind, and why?

1.A. A Christmas Memory

by Truman Capote (adapted and abridged)

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Imagine the kitchen of a big old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature, but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs in front of it.

A woman with short white hair is standing at the kitchen window, her breath steaming the windowpane as she exclaims: “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are distant cousins, and we have lived together with other relatives here as long as I can remember. We are each other’s best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was once her best friend, and who died when she was still a child. Now she turns away from the window joyfully. “I knew it before I got out of bed. Oh Buddy, fetch our buggy and help me find my hat. We have thirty cakes to bake!”

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It’s always the same: a morning arrives in November, and she announces: “It’s fruitcake weather, Buddy! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat.”

Together, we take our buggy, an old baby carriage, out in the garden and into the grove of pecan-nut trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. We use it all year round now for jobs like hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, or as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange-and-white terrier. Queenie is trotting beside it now.

Three hours later we are back in the kitchen shelling a buggyload of nuts which we have picked. The kitchen is growing dark as we work by the fireside. At last the buggy is empty, the bowl is full. We eat our supper and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying.

“Buying? What all we’re going to buy? Cherries and candied lemon peel, ginger and vanilla and canned pineapple, and raisins and walnuts and whisky and, oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings why, we’ll need a pony to pull the buggy home!”

But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any, except for what we earn ourselves from various activities. Once we won the seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know anything about football. It’s just that we enter any contest we hear about. So one way or another, each year we save up a Fruitcake Fund. This we keep hidden in an old purse under the floor under my friend’s bed. This purse is seldom removed from this location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, when I am allowed ten cents to go to the cinema. My friend has never been to a cinema, nor does she want to. “I’d rather you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, people my age shouldn’t waste their eyesight. When the Lord comes for me, let me see Him clear.”

Now, with supper finished, we retire to her little bedroom in a faraway part of the house. Silently, we take the purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the bed: dollar bills and coins. We count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations we have $ 12.73. According to mine, exactly $ 13. “Oh, I do hope you’re wrong, Buddy. We can’t have anything to do with thirteen. The cakes will fall.

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Tell you what! To be on the safe side let’s take a penny and toss it out the window!”

Of the ingredients that go into our fruitcakes, whisky is the most expensive, as well as the hardest to obtain – State law forbids its sale. But everybody knows you can buy a bottle from Mr. Haha Jones. And the next day, having finished our other shopping, we set out for Mr. Haha’s, a café down by the river. They call him ‘Haha’ because he’s so gloomy, a man who never laughs. Footsteps, the door opens, our hearts turn over: it’s Mr. Haha Jones himself! And he is a giant and he doesn’t smile. “If you please, Mr. Haha, we’d like a bottle of your finest whisky.” And would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too, and asking which one of us is the drinking man. She: “It’s for my fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking.” We pay him his two dollars. Then suddenly his face softens. And he is pouring the money back into our purse, with instructions to send him one of the fruitcakes instead. On the way home my friend remarks, “Well, there’s a lovely man! We’ll put an extra cup of raisins in his cake!”

The black stove glows with the heat. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it, lovely odors fill the kitchen and the house, drift out to the world in chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whisky, sit on window sills and shelves. Who are they for?

Friends. Not necessarily neighbour friends – indeed the larger share are for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People like the President and his wife in Washington. Like the Baptist missionary who lectured here last winter. Or the driver of the six o’clock bus from Mobile, who waves to us every day as he passes. The scrapbook we keep of thank-you notes on White House paper, and communications from places like California and Borneo, make us feel connected to the world beyond the kitchen.

Now it is December. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone. Yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, and we feel like celebrating. My friend pours the last drops of Mr. Haha’s whisky into her teacup and lets me have a taste. Even Queenie gets a drop. I giggle and spit it out, and suddenly we’re laughing and singing songs. I try to tap dance – even Queenie has the party spirit. Enter two relatives. Very

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angry! Listen to what they have to say: “A child of seven tasting whisky! You must be crazy! Shame! Scandal! Humiliation! Kneel, pray, beg the Lord’s pardon!” Queenie sneaks under the stove, my friend looks down at her shoes, her chin quivers, she lifts her skirt and blows her nose and runs to her room. Long after the town has gone to sleep and the house is silent, she is weeping into her pillow. “Please don’t cry – please. Don’t cry. You’re too old for that.” “It’s because I’m too old. Old and funny.” “Not funny – fun. More fun than anybody. Listen, if you don’t stop crying, you’ll be so tired tomorrow we can’t go cut a tree.” “Buddy, that’s right! Tomorrow we go out in the woods and find our Christmas tree, the best we’ve ever had! A tree twice as big as a boy. And I know just the one – way out in the back of the forest!”

And it’s true: the tree we cut down is indeed ‘twice as tall as a boy’, and so fine that people who pass us on the way home compliment us on it, and one woman, the richest in town, stops her car and offers us fifty cents cash for it. To which my friend says: “Wouldn’t take a dollar.” And when the lady says we could find another like it, my friend says: “I doubt it. There’s never two of anything.”

After making the holly wreaths for the windows, our next project is family gifts. When it comes to making each other’s gifts, my friend and I separate to work secretly. No matter what we’d like to give each other, we always end up making kites. Which is fine with me, for we are champion kite-fliers. Christmas Eve afternoon we go to the butcher’s to buy Queenie’s traditional bone, which we wrap in funny paper and place high in the tree near the silver star. Queenie knows it’s there and sits at the foot of the tree staring up at it. Her excitement is equal to my own: I cannot sleep, and neither can my friend. Late that night my friend tells me, “Buddy, I feel so bad. I wanted to give you a bike, but I couldn’t. So I made you another kite.” “Know something? I made you a kite, too.” “Well now, isn’t that the limit? And won’t we have fun flying them?”

The next morning, after a marvellous breakfast, which we’re too impatient to eat, we get our presents. Well, I’m disappointed, who wouldn’t be? My best present is my kite, which is very beautiful – blue with gold and green stars and my name painted on it. My friend loves her kite, too. “Buddy, the wind is blowing…” And nothing will do till we’ve gone to a pasture below the house where Queenie has already run to bury her bone, and where a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too.

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There we fly our kites, like shy fish swimming into the wind. We’re very happy, so happy that my friend announces: “I could leave the world with today in my eyes!”

This is our last Christmas together. I’m sent to a military school, and I have a new home, too. But it doesn’t count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go. And there she stays, working in the kitchen, alone with Queenie, and then alone. For one day a letter comes from her – “Buddy dear, yesterday a horse kicked Queenie bad. Be thankful she didn’t feel much. I wrapped her in a fine linen sheet and rode her in the buggy down to the pasture where she can be with all her bones. Enclosed please find ten cents. See a picture show and write me the story.”

For a few Novembers she continues to bake her fruitcakes, not as many, but some, always sending me what she likes to call – “The Best of the Batch!”

Then one November arrives when she cannot find it to exclaim: “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!” And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so only confirms what I know already, cutting me off from part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking to class on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven.

1.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. How would you explain the close friendship between the boy

and the old woman? Comment also upon the general causes for children’s often getting along better with the elderly than with people of their parents’ generation or of their own age.

2. How do you imagine the relatives? 3. Identify the given hints regarding the family and social status of

the two friends, and formulate some possible more precise accounts of their positions.

4. What seems to determine their condition? 5. “In the eyes of the world”, what do they have in common? 6. What do they really share? 7. Try and characterise the old woman, highlighting the most

important clues that you have.

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8. Why are we not told her name? 9. Why does the dog fit so naturally in the picture? 10. Is there any relationship between “fruitcake weather” and the

Christmas spirit? 11. How do the habitual and the particular intertwine during the

story, and how does this contribute to conferring an almost ritualistic significance to the two friends’ activities?

12. Do the last three paragraphs come as a complete surprise to the reader, or were there any foretelling elements (in terms of tone, atmosphere, and events)?

13. Comment upon the old woman’s words: “There’s never two of anything”.

14. Were the two friends really happy? Answer considering their lives from the following perspectives: seven-year-old Buddy; twenty-seven-year-old Buddy; the old woman; Queenie; the relatives and the rest of the country town; yourself.

1.B. Vocabulary study and practice

1.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning(s) of the following

words or phrases: Ns: buggy; grove; peel; ginger; spice; tap dance; humiliation;

wreath; pasture; linen; batch Vs: to haul; to trot; to shell; to toss; to whirl; to drift; to dampen;

to giggle; to spit; to sneak; to quiver As / Avs: gloomy; shy; loose; hence

1.B.2. There are some names of fruits in the text. List them, and then try to complete this lexical field.

(Add all the English names of indigenous and exotic fruits that you know, also looking up in a Romanian-English dictionary for those the English names of which you do not know.)

1.B.3. Consider the verbs: α) fetch, bring, deliver and β) toss, throw, cast.

a) Out of each group, the first one, and not the others, is used in the text. Can you tell why?

(Take into account such distinctive features as:

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– [± departing from a certain location, and coming back with something], [± bringing as part of a (catering) agreement]; – [± in a rather careless way, lightly].) b) Which of the six verbs can collocate with any of the

following: look, shadow, doubt, vote, anchor? c) Explain the meaning of the idioms: – to cast pearls before swine; – the die is cast.

1.B.4. What is the meaning of the sentence “Well now, isn’t that the limit?”?

Look for some other collocations / idioms containing limit (e.g. the sky is the limit), explain their meaning, and use them in sentences of your own.

1.C. Grammar

1.C.1. Word-formation processes 1.C.1.1. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Identify all the compounds in the text, and group them in

accordance to their type in a three-column list. (Pay attention! They are quite numerous.)

b) Identify the word class of their components. c) Explain and illustrate the general rules of forming the

plural of compounds. Compounding (knowledge refreshing) Compounds are combinations of at least two free morphemes, the

global meaning of which is more or less significantly different from the sum of the meanings of the components.

The following types can be distinguished: welded (solid) – e.g.: housekeeper; hyphenated – e.g.: thunder-struck; open (separate words) – e.g.: vacuum cleaner.

The graphical aspect also acts as an indicator of morphological behaviour.

Welded compounds form the plural by always normally adding the nominal plural marker -s (-es) in the end, irrespective of the word class of the components (e.g.: pullovers, pancakes).

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For the other two types the plural marker is attracted to the nominal component (or to the determined noun, if there are two or three nominals), irrespective of its position (e.g.: passers-by, brothers-in-law, book reviews).

Hyphenated compounds containing no nouns add the plural marker in the end (e.g.: merry-go-rounds).

Unlike welded compounds, hyphenated and open ones may evince redundancy of the plural marker when containing certain nouns that have an irregular plural (e.g.: fishermen vs. women candidates but: mouse-traps).

1.C.1.2. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Identify all the cases of conversion (zero derivation) in the text. b) In each case, indicate the initial and the resulting word class. c) Add a few examples of your own, illustrating both full and

partial conversion. Conversion (knowledge refreshing) The process consists in changing the word class of a lexeme,

without any change in form (full conversion) – e.g.: bottle → to bottle – or with minor such changes (partial, marginal conversion) – e.g.: to hate → hatred, abstract → to abstract (stress shift).

The most productive types are V → N, N → V, A → V conversions.

1.C.1.3. The causative verbs sweeten and dampen are formed from adjectives by adding a verb-forming suffix.

a) Can you paraphrase them? b) Consider also the following similar examples: widen, deafen,

blacken. Add three more examples, and use all six of them in sentences of your own.

1.C.2. Existential Sentences 1.C.2.1. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Identify the existential sentences in the text. b) Express the same meaning under the form of equivalent

sentences of the standard type.

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1.C.2.2. Supply your own examples of existential sentences, using various existential verbs.

1.C.2.3. Illustrate agreement by proximity in existential patterns, and cases of there undergoing raising.

Existential sentences (knowledge refreshing) Such sentences express the notion of existence, and most

frequently feature unstressed there as an empty, asemantic subject, followed by a form of the verb be, by the extraposed ‘notional’ subject, and by some other constituents (most often a Locative Adverbial) – e.g.: There was a car in front of the house.

Existential there appears as a slot-filler when the deep subject is indefinite, and therefore in contradiction with the typical thematic (i.e. conveying given information) role of subject.

Sentences consisting only in the empty subject + the existential V + the deep subject are called ‘bare existential sentences’ (e.g.: There has been an accident.).

Other verbs may also occur in existential sentences (especially in formal and literary styles): exist, occur, come, lie, stand etc. (e.g.: There exist similar archaeological sites in other parts of Europe, too.).

Existential there occurs widely in subordinate clauses (e.g.: I do not know whether there is any solution to this problem.), or may undergo raising (e.g.: There appears to be a solution to this problem.)

1.C.3. Uses and levels of Negation 1.C.3.1. Analyse the following fragment in the text from the

point of view of the use and the level of Negation: “It’s because I’m too old. Old and funny”, “Not funny – fun.”

1.C.3.2. Find in the text an instance of sentential metalinguistic negation.

Uses and levels of Negation (knowledge refreshing) There can be distinguished two main uses of negation

(metalinguistic and logical), and at least two levels of negation (local and sentential), each level being accessible in both uses.

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The metalinguistic use is often based on an echoic reprise of a preceding affirmation, there being an evaluation or an analysis of the utterance itself. In this use, negation acts as a metalinguistic factor (with contrastive function), and it may have scope over a sentence portion or over an entire sentence (e.g.: This man is not a physician, he is a physicist! and You were supposed to whisper, not to yell!).

The logical use is characterised by a lack of particular emphasis, and it can also apply locally or sententially. In propositional logic, it therefore corresponds either to the ‘internal’, ‘contrary’ negation or to the ‘external’, ‘contradictory’ negation (e.g.: He was merciless. and They are not here.).

1.D. Supplementary text and assignments

from A Message from the Pig-Man

by John Barrington Wain He was never called Ekky now, because he was getting to be a

real boy, nearly six, with grey flannel trousers that had a separate belt and weren’t kept up by elastic, and his name was Eric. But this was just one of those changes brought about naturally, by time, not a disturbing alteration; he understood that. His mother hadn’t meant that kind of change when she had promised, ‘Nothing will be changed.’ It was all going to go on as before, except that Dad wouldn’t be there, and Donald would be there instead. He knew Donald, of course, and felt all right about his being in the house, though it seemed, when he lay in bed and thought about it, mad and pointless that Donald’s coming should mean that Dad had to go. Why should it mean that? The house was quite big. He hadn’t any brothers and sisters, and if he had had any he wouldn’t have minded sharing his bedroom, even with a baby that wanted a lot of looking after, so long as it left the spare room free for Dad to sleep in. If he did that they wouldn’t have a spare room, it was true, but, then, the spare room was nearly always empty; the last time anybody had used the spare room was years ago, when he had been much smaller – last winter, in fact. And, even then, the visitor, the lady with the funny teeth, who laughed as she breathed in, instead of as she breathed out like everyone else, had only stayed two or three nights. Why did grown-ups

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do everything in such a mad, silly way? They often told him not to be silly, but they were silly themselves in a useless way, not laughing or singing or anything, just being silly and sad.

It was so hard to read the signs; that was another thing. When they did give you something to go on, it was impossible to know how to take it. Dad had bought him a train just a few weeks ago, and taught him how to fit the lines together. That ought to have meant that he would stay; what sensible person would buy a train, and fit it all up-ready-to-run, even as a present for another person – and then leave? Donald had been quite good about the train, Eric had to admit that; he had bought a bridge for it and a lot of rolling-stock. At first he had got the wrong kind of rolling-stock, with wheels too close together to fit on to the rails; but instead of playing the usual grown-ups’ trick of pulling a face and then not doing anything about it, he had gone back to the shop, straight away that same afternoon, and got the right kind. Perhaps that meant he was going to leave. But that didn’t seem likely. Not the way Mum held on to him all the time, even holding him round the middle as if he needed keeping in one piece.

All the same, he was not Ekky, now, he was Eric, and he was sensible and grown-up. Probably it was his own fault that everything seemed strange. He was not living up to his grey flannel trousers – and perhaps that was it; being afraid of too many things, not asking questions that would probably turn out to have quite simple answers.

1.D.1. Reading comprehension and comments a) Characterise Eric’s universe when compared to Buddy’s. b) Consider the two boys’ concerns, interests, ways of judging

things, attitudes towards the others, and comment upon the differences between them.

c) Are they also outstandingly different from other children? d) Apart from being boys of about the same age, what do they

have in common? e) Which of them appears to be the loneliest of the two? f) Read also the text in the translation module closing this unit,

and integrate the third boy character within the analysis.

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g) How does the autobiographical element (dominant in Paler’s text, traceable in Capote’s, and presumable in Wain’s) influence the verisimilitude of the characters?

Additional useful information: – T. Capote (1924-1984) – American writer – A Christmas

Memory was first published in 1966; – J. B. Wain (1925-1994) – English writer and literary critic – A

Message from the Pig-Man was first published in 1965; – O. Paler (1926-2007) – Romanian journalist and writer – Viaţa

ca o coridă was first published in 1987.

1.D.2. Identify and analyse the compounds in the text.

1.D.3. Translate the first paragraph of the text into Romanian. 1.E. Write an essay on the topic: Childhood – a serene or

tormented period? (2-3 pages). Suggested guidelines: – the traditional idyllic view of the grown-ups: the lost paradise of

simplicity, innocence, and happiness, the mythical realm of a better and purer mode of existence, a secret we all knew and forgot, a collection of blurred memories wrapped in melancholy and regrets

– many children’s view: a (too) long period of unjust and unjustified inferiority, of absurd rules and arbitrary impositions from the part of most mature persons, a cruel competition with other children, too many unanswered questions, an endless waiting for finally growing up

– various psychologists’ views: a difficult process of self-defining and adaptation, of hesitating formation of the ego, the most influential period in the development of the future profile, the most vulnerable stage of a still fragile psyche, which may amplify any event up to planting the seeds of unknown later consequences

1.F. Translate the following text into English:

Pe la cinci ani, am descoperit eu însumi că puteam să ignor, la

nevoie, ceea ce nu-mi convenea din realitate. Tata mă învăţase să silabisesc slova tipărită şi să număr până la douăzeci. Ca să se asigure că-

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mi continuam singur instrucţia în lipsa lui, îmi lăsa o fasciculă dintr-un roman de aventuri pe care-l citea el şi îmi dădea în grijă puii de găină. Scrupulos din naştere, îmi luam în serios datoria. Nu mă mişcam din curte toată ziua atunci, nu mă lăsam ispitit de ceilalţi copii care mă chemau să căutăm cuiburi pe mirişti, de teamă să nu vină uliul, să dea iama prin puii noştri. Stăteam pe treptele casei, în vacarmul de lumină care scălda la amiază curtea noastră sau la umbra porţii înalte de scânduri, mă luptam cu peripeţiile din fasciculă şi, din când în când, mă ridicam să număr puii. După ce mă linişteam, citeam mai departe sau mă jucam pe grămada de nisip de sub mărul bătrân şi răcoros din apropierea fântânii.

Într-o zi, însă, am avut o surpriză neplăcută. Am numărat pe degete până la douăzeci, dar mai erau pui! Tata uitase să mă avertizeze că puii noştri sporiseră peste limita cunoştinţelor mele aritmetice şi că după ce ajungeam la douăzeci trebuia s-o iau de la început ca să-mi ţin evidenţa. Drept care am intrat în panică. Dacă nu mă înşel, am şi plâns. Disperat, am ieşit în uliţă să-i cer ajutor sorei mele care, mai independentă decât mine şi mai mare cu cinci ani, prefera să stea cu copiii de seama ei. Dar uliţa era pustie. Am smuls câteva smocuri din iarba care creştea bezmetică şi tânără pe marginea şanţului, am dus-o puilor ca să-i strâng la un loc şi am numărat din nou, atent. În zadar. Erau mai mulţi. Mă întrebam ce să fac. Nu mi-a dat prin cap să-i socotesc separat pe cei care depăşeau învăţătura mea, aşa că până la urmă am apelat la altă soluţie pentru a ieşi din impas. Am numărat douăzeci de pui, iar pe ceilalţi i-am alungat din curte. În felul acesta, am pus realitatea de acord cu cunoştinţele mele şi m-am apucat să silabisesc mai departe fascicula din romanul de aventuri, liniştit, ba chiar mândru că mă descurcasem.

Octavian Paler – Viaţa ca o coridă

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UNIT II

EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (I)

2. Preliminaries 1. Do you think the human brain is the only self-conscious entity

in the universe? What do you know about animal psychology? 2. Enlarge upon the concept of cyclicity of existence. Does this

infinite sequencing of coming into being and passing into nothingness have anything to do with evolutionary processes, be the nature of the latter either physical or biological?

3. Comment upon the hypothesis of multiple and hierarchically ordered space-time continuums. Argue for or against the possibility of an endless row of numberless universes within other universes, each having its own dimensional and temporal rank.

2.A. from LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth

Night-Sea Journey (I) (adapted and abridged)

One way or another, no matter which theory of our journey is

correct, it’s myself I address; to whom I rehearse as to a stranger our history and condition, and will disclose my secret hope though I sink for it.

Is the journey my invention? Do the night, the sea, exist at all, I ask myself, apart from my experience of them? Do I myself exist, or is this a dream? Sometimes I wonder. And if I am, who am I? The Heritage I supposedly transport? But how can I be both vessel and contents? Such are the questions that beset my intervals of rest. My trouble is I lack conviction. Many accounts of our situation seem plausible to me – where and what we are, why we swim and whither. But implausible ones as well, perhaps especially those, I must admit as possibly correct. Even likely. If at times, in certain humours – stroking

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in unison, say, with my neighbors and chanting with them ‘Onward! Upward!’ – I have supposed that we have after all a common Maker, Whose nature and motives we may not know, but Who engendered us in some mysterious wise and launched us forth toward some end known but to Him – if (for a moodslength only) I have been able to entertain such notions, very popular in certain quarters, it is because our night-sea journey partakes of their absurdity. One might even say: I can believe them because they are absurd. Has that been said before? […]

I have seen the best swimmers of my generation go under. Numberless the number of the dead! Thousands die as I think this thought, millions as I rest before returning to the swim. And scores, hundreds of millions have expired since we surged forth, brave in our innocence, upon our dreadful way. […] Yet these same reflective intervals that keep me afloat have led me into wonder, doubt, despair – strange emotions for a swimmer! – have led me, even, to suspect… that our night-sea journey is without meaning. Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming. I know that there are those who seem actually to enjoy the night-sea; who claim to love swimming for its own sake, or sincerely believe that ‘reaching the Shore’, ‘transmitting the Heritage’ (Whose Heritage, I’d like to know? And to whom?) is worth the staggering cost. I do not. Swimming itself I find at best not actively unpleasant, more often tiresome, not infrequently a torment. Arguments from function and design don’t impress me: granted that we can and do swim, that in a manner of speaking our long tails and streamlined heads are ‘meant for’ swimming; it by no means follows – for me, at least – that we should swim, or otherwise endeavor to ‘fulfill our destiny’. Which is to say, Someone Else’s destiny, since ours, so far as I can see, is merely to perish, one way or another, soon or late. The heartless zeal of our (departed) leaders, like the blind ambition and good cheer of my own youth, appalls me now; for the death of my comrades I am inconsolable. If the night-sea journey has justification, it is not for us swimmers ever to discover it. Oh, to be sure, ‘Love!’ one heard on every side: ‘Love it is that drives and sustains us!’ I translate: we don’t know what drives and sustains us, only that we are most miserably driven and, imperfectly, sustained. Love is how we call our ignorance of what whips

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us. ‘To reach the Shore’, then: but what if the Shore exists in the fancies of us swimmers merely, who dream it to account for the dreadful fact that we swim, have always and only swum, and continue swimming without respite (myself excepted) until we die? Supposing even that there were a Shore – that, as a cynical companion of mine once imagined, we rise from the drowned to discover all those vulgar superstitions and exalted metaphors to be literal truth: the giant Maker of us all, the Shores of Light beyond our night-sea journey! – whatever would a swimmer do there? The fact is, when we imagine the Shore, what comes to mind is just the opposite of our condition: no more night, no more sea, no more journeying. In short, the blissful estate of the drowned.

‘Ours not to stop and think; ours but to swim and sink…’. Because a moment’s thought reveals the pointlessness of swimming. […] The thoughtful swimmer’s choices, then, they say, are two: give over thrashing and go under for good, or embrace the absurdity; affirm in and for itself the night-sea journey; swim on with neither motive nor destination, for the sake of swimming, and compassionate moreover with your fellow swimmer, we being all at sea and equally in the dark. I find neither course acceptable. If not even the hypothetical Shore can justify a sea-full of drowned comrades, to speak of the swim-in-itself as somehow doing so strikes me as obscene. I continue to swim – but only because blind habit, blind instinct, blind fear of drowning are still more strong than the horror of our journey. And if on occasion I have assisted a fellow-thrasher, joined in the cheers and songs, even passed along to others strokes of genius from the drowned great, it’s that I shrink by temperament from making myself conspicuous. To paddle off in one’s own direction, assert one’s independent right-of-way, overrun one’s fellows without compunction, or dedicate oneself entirely to pleasures and diversions without regard for conscience – I can’t finally condemn those who journey in this wise; in half my moods I envy them and despise the weak vitality that keeps me from following their example. But in reasonabler moments I remind myself that it’s their very freedom and self-responsibility I reject, as more dramatically absurd, in our senseless circumstances, than tailing along in the conventional fashion. Suicides, rebels, affirmers of the paradox – nay-sayers and yea-sayers alike to our fatal journey – I finally shake my head at them. And splash

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sighing past their corpses, one by one, as past a hundred sorts of others; friends, enemies, brothers; fools, sages, brutes – and nobodies, million upon million. I envy them all. […] ‘You only swim once.’ Why bother, then? ‘Except ye drown, ye shall not reach the Shore of Life.’ Poppycock.

One of my late companions – the same cynic with the curious fancy, among the first to drown – entertained us with odd conjectures while we waited to begin our journey. A favorite theory of his was that the Father does exist, and did indeed make us and the sea we swim – but not a-purpose or even consciously; He made us, as it were, despite Himself, as we make waves with every tail-thrash, and may be unaware of our existence. Another was that He knows we’re here but doesn’t care what happens to us, inasmuch as He creates (voluntarily or not) other seas and swimmers at more or less regular intervals. […] No less outrageous, and offensive to traditional opinion, were the fellow’s speculations on the nature of our Maker: that He might well be no swimmer Himself at all, but some sort of monstrosity, perhaps even tailless; that He might be stupid, malicious, insensible, perverse, or asleep and dreaming; that the end for which He created and launched us forth, and which we flagellate ourselves to fathom, was perhaps immoral, even obscene. […] In other moods, however (he was as given to moods as I), his theorizing would become half-serious, so it seemed to me, especially upon the subjects of Fate and Immortality, to which our youthful conversations often turned. […] His objection to popular opinions of the hereafter, he would declare, was their claim to general validity. Why need believers hold that all the drowned rise to be judged at journey’s end, and non-believers that drowning is final without exception? In his opinion (so he’d vow at least), nearly everyone’s fate was permanent death; indeed he took a sour pleasure in supposing that every ‘Maker’ made thousands of separate seas in His creative lifetime, each populated like ours with millions of swimmers, and that in almost every instance both sea and swimmers were utterly annihilated, whether accidentally or by malevolent design. (Nothing if not pluralistical, he imagined that there might be millions and billions of ‘Fathers’, perhaps in some night-sea of their own!) However – and here he turned infidels against him with the faithful – he professed to believe that in possibly a single night-sea per thousand, say, one of its quarter-billion swimmers

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(that is, one swimmer in two hundred fifty billions) achieved a qualified immortality. […] I could go on (he surely did) with his elaboration of these mad notions – such as that swimmers in other night-seas needn’t be of our kind; that Makers themselves might belong to different species, so to speak; that our particular Maker mightn’t Himself be immortal, or that we might be not only His emissaries but His ‘immortality’, continuing His life and our own, transmogrified, beyond our individual deaths. Even this modified immortality (meaningless to me) he conceived as relative and contingent, subject to accidental or deliberate termination; his pet hypothesis was that Makers and swimmers each generate the other – against all odds, their number being so great – and that any given ‘immortality-chain’ could terminate after any number of cycles, so that what was ‘immortal’ (still speaking relatively) was only the cyclic process of incarnation, which itself might have a beginning and an end. Alternatively he liked to imagine cycles within cycles, either finite or infinite: for example, the ‘night-sea’, as it were, in which Makers ‘swam’ and created night-seas and swimmers like ourselves, might be the creation of a larger Maker, Himself one of many, Who in turn et cetera. Time itself he regarded as relative to our experience, like magnitude: who knew but what, with each thrash of our tails, minuscule seas and swimmers, whole eternities, came to pass – as ours, perhaps, and our Maker’s Maker’s, was elapsing between the strokes of some supertail, in a slower order of time?

Naturally I hooted with the others at this nonsense. […] When he died in the initial slaughter, no one cared. And even now I don’t subscribe to all his views – but I no longer scoff. The horror of our history has purged me of opinions, as of vanity, confidence, spirit, charity, hope, vitality, everything – except dull dread and a kind of melancholy, stunned persistence.

2.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. What makes the swimmer have doubts regarding the reality of

‘its’ own existence? 2. Identify and comment upon the various individual or collective

attitudes towards ‘night-sea journeying’ that the swimmers adopt. 3. Are these modes of journeying similar in any way to those of

another kind of ‘journey’? Which one?

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4. Identify and depict some profiles of swimmers. 5. Which are the ‘strange emotions’ for a swimmer, and which are

the ‘normal’ ones? Why? 6. How can you explain your expertise in discussing swimmer

psychology? Are you a swimmer? 7. What makes the struggle of journeying so frightful and so

meaningless? 8. What do swimmers blindly hope for? Comment upon the

various possible interpretations of the Shore. 9. Is there any relationship between immortality and death? Are

they really in opposition? Explain how immortality can be regarded as a kind of death.

10. Why does this not seem to imply the reverse, too? Why is it that ‘you only swim once’?

11. What kind of limitation – specific of individual existence – determines the non-reversibility of the equation?

12. Is there any ambiguity in the name and description of the Maker?

13. How do you interpret the ‘immortality-chain’, and the cynic’s theory about other ‘seas’?

14. Comment upon the possible alternative readings of the entire fifth paragraph.

2.B. Vocabulary study and practice

2.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning(s) of the following

words or phrases: Ns: conviction, fatigue, zeal, sage, brute, poppycock, pet

hypothesis Vs: to disclose, to beset, to stroke, to chant, to engender, to

partake, to surge, to appal, to thrash, to fathom, to transmogrify, to hoot, to scoff, to stun

As / Avs: outrageous, insensible, contingent

2.B.2. Find words in the text that mean: to strive, interruption, remorse, wicked.

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2.B.3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: unwillingly, innocent, temporary, absolute.

2.B.4. The noun wise (= manner, way, modality) is still occasionally used but it is by far less frequent than its compounds.

a) Supply your own examples to illustrate the meanings and uses of likewise and otherwise.

b) What does a clockwise movement / rotation mean?

2.B.5. Consider the following verbs: ask, claim, beseech, demand, require, out of which the first two appear in the text.

a) Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features:

[± imperatively], [± compelling], [± humbly], [± imploring], [± urgently], [± logical necessity], [± stating something as an assertion of truth], [± supported by arguments], [± juridical implications] etc. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. A transitive verb is a verb that obligatorily ... a direct object. 2. His ex-fiancée ... him to come back to her. 3. The students ... for further and more detailed explanations. 4. The terrorists that had hijacked the plane ... for their imprisoned leader to be set free. 5. Chomsky ... that there are some innate principles subject to parametric variation.

2.C. Grammar 2.C.1. Free (Independent) Relative Clauses 2.C.1.1. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Transform the following strings into structures having the

same meaning, and featuring Free Relative Clauses: 1. You have enough money to buy all the supplies that you need. 2. The person committing these horrible murders must be caught

and punished. 3. You may leave at any time that you choose. 4. The resort is no longer the place that it used to be.

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5. The thing that really makes a difference is having these dedicated machines right here at the construction site.

b) Specify the syntactic function of the resulting Free Relative Clauses, and the function of the relative pronoun introducing them.

2.C.1.2. Comment upon the structural relations that establish

between Dependent Restrictive and Free Relative Clauses, also using the previous sentences as illustrations.

Which is the most significant difference between the two classes?

2.C.1.3. Identify the Free Relative Clauses in the text, also

specifying their syntactic function. (Optionally: Identify the Free Relative Clauses – and their

syntactic functions – in the previous unit text A Christmas Memory.) Free Relative Clauses (knowledge refreshing) The main structural feature that distinguishes them from

Dependent Relative Clauses is the absence of an expressed antecedent, i.e. of the Main Clause occurrence of the co-referential element that makes subordination by relativisation possible.

There is sufficient syntactic evidence in support of the claim for the initial existence of the missing antecedent (e.g. the fact that the matrix verb evinces agreement with the deleted antecedent: Whatever were their discoveries are now lost for good.).

Unlike Dependent Relative Clauses, which modify the antecedent, thus functioning as modifier of it, Free Relative Clauses replace this antecedent, taking over its syntactic function.

Therefore, they evince an inventory of syntactic functions quite similar to the distribution of NPs: What killed the dinosaurs is still a mystery. – Subject; This hut is where he used to hide. – Predicative; Take whatever you want. – Direct Object; We have to rely on whomever they send to us. – Prepositional Object etc.

They are typically introduced by complex pronouns (whoever, what(so)ever, whichever etc.) or adverbs (wherever, whenever etc.). Nevertheless, simple pronouns may also introduce such clauses.

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Introducers perform various syntactic functions within the clauses: Search for whatever is still intact there. – Subject; Whomever I ask tells me the same thing. – Direct Object etc.

2.C.2. Finiteness / Non-Finiteness of Clauses. THAT Clauses and Infinitive Clauses

2.C.2.1. Supply your own examples to illustrate the following: a) a Non-Finite Relative Clause; b) finite and non-finite Complement Clauses.

2.C.2.2. Identify three THAT Clauses and three Infinitive Clauses in the text. Specify their syntactic functions.

2.C.2.3. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Turn the embedded clauses into THAT Clauses: 1. For the cashier to have run away with the money was

unbelievable. 2. My neighbours are so uncivilised as to throw garbage out of the window. 3. That nice old lady turned out to be a spy. 4. The two young engineers seemed diligent. 5. All documents were supposed to be printed, copied and

registered. 6. The conductor of the philharmonic considers Carson an

excellent musician. 7. My colleagues want me to ask the professor for a two days’ postponing of the exam. 8. I saw him take the keys. b) Turn the embedded clauses into Infinitive Clauses and into

THAT Clauses: 1. John mocking at her like that was extremely embarrassing for

everybody present. 2. I was delighted at their successfully passing the exam. 3. The special squad had strict orders of searching the entire

building for a possible bomb. c) Turn the embedded clauses into Gerunds: 1. Her idea of a quiet evening at home was to sit in her favourite

armchair and read.

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2. The tourists were worried that the weather was getting worse. 3. It is no use to complain to the manager. d) Turn the embedded clauses into Indirect Questions: 1. It is amazing that this old engine works so smoothly. 2. Nobody specified that the ideal candidate for this position

should be male or female. 3. The problem of getting a new job or not is his main concern

these days. Finiteness / Non-Finiteness of Clauses (knowledge refreshing) The distinction between finite and non-finite clauses is mainly

based on morphological criteria: any clause which does or can contain an inflected verb or auxiliary is a finite clause, the converse not being necessarily true (i.e., a clause containing an apparently uninflected or invariable verb is not necessarily non-finite).

The reason for this is that some verb-forms generally treated as finite (e.g. the Subjunctive) lack the typical morphological characteristics of finite verbs.

Nevertheless, the Indicative and Subjunctive forms share certain mophosyntactic properties which differentiate them from non-finite forms (the tenseless / agreementless Infinitive, Gerund or Perfective Participle).

These properties are: – impossibility of subjectlessness for Indicative and Subjunctive

clauses (e.g.: *I demand that leave. vs. I intend to leave / leaving.); – the different case-marking of an overt subject – Nominative for

the two finite forms versus Accusative (for the Infinitive) or, respectively, Accusative / Genitive (for the Gerund).

2.D. Supplementary text and assignments

from The Human Drift by Jack London

After he is gone? Will he then some day be gone, and this planet

know him no more? Is it thither that the human drift in all its totality is trending? God Himself is silent on this point, though some of His prophets have given us vivid representations of that last day when the

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earth shall pass into nothingness. Nor does science, despite its radium speculations and its attempted analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us any other word than that man will pass. So far as man’s knowledge goes, law is universal. Elements react under certain unchangeable conditions. One of these conditions is temperature. Whether it be in the test tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust himself to that future, because he cannot alter universal law, because he cannot alter his own construction nor the molecules that compose him.

It would be well to ponder these lines of Herbert Spencer’s which follow, and which embody, possibly, the wildest vision the scientific mind has ever achieved: “Motion as well as Matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the change in the distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally-co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes – produce now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion – alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. And thus there is suggested the conception of a past during which there have been successive evolutions analogous to that which is now going on; a future during which successive other evolutions may go on – ever the same in principle but never the same in concrete result.”

That is it – the most we know – alternate eras of evolution and dissolution. In the past there have been other evolutions similar to that one in which we live, and in the future there may be other similar evolutions – that is all. The principle of all these evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice alike. Man was not; he was; and again he will not be. In eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the

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particular evolution of that solar satellite we call the “Earth” occupied but a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night. When the thermometer drops, man ceases – with all his lusts and wrestlings and achievements; with all his race-adventures and race-tragedies; and with all his red killings, billions upon billions of human lives multiplied by as many billions more. This is the last word of Science, unless there be some further, unguessed word which Science will some day find and utter. In the meantime it sees no farther than the starry void, where the “fleeting systems lapse like foam”. Of what ledger-account is the tiny life of man in a vastness where stars snuff out like candles and great suns blaze for a time-tick of eternity and are gone?

And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the earliest drifts of man, marked today by ruined cities of forgotten civilisation – ruined cities, which, on excavation, are found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild hunters chased their prey long after the cave-man and the man of the squatting-place cracked the knuckle-bones of wild animals and vanished from the earth. There is nothing terrible about it. With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death, we can say: “Behold! I have lived!” And with another and greater one, we can lay ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the one taste of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement will be that we dreamed immortality, even though we failed to realise it.

2.D.1. Reading comprehension and comments a) Besides the thought of one’s own death, which idea is equally

(or even more difficult) to accept as an immutable truth? b) Does self-consciousness play any role in this? If yes, how?

How does individual conscience turn into collective (self-) consciousness?

c) Why do prophets and scientists try to reveal the future of our race?

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d) Analyse Spencer’s theory of Motion and Matter, and London’s comments about successive evolutionary cycles from the points of view of the more recent theories of the Big Bang and of relativity.

e) Does the human race have its own evolutionary cycles? Which are they? Enlarge upon this issue.

f) Comment upon the last sentence in the text. g) Which appear to be the commonly shared characteristics of

physical, biological, and social cycles? Consider Barth, London and Boghian’s ideas – for the last one, see the text in the translation module closing this unit –, as well as your own opinion.

2.D.2. Translate the last two paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

2.E. Write an essay on the topic: A possible scenario of human

race extinction (2-3 pages). Suggested guidelines: – If possible, try to avoid the already banal and eroded idea of a

devastating nuclear war. – If you still want to stick to the idea of World War III, either

employ other non-nuclear (e.g. biological, informatic, mind-controlling etc.) weapons, or focus upon the decay and extinction of the survivors.

– If you have watched the Animal Planet series “Future Is Wild”, exploit the idea of evolutionary changes in other species, which may finally lead to the extinction of all mammals.

– Various extraterrestrial interventions or cosmic Armageddons are not excluded.

– Try and focus also upon a(n) (immediate) post-human picture of the Earth.

2.F. Translate the following text into English:

Fără început şi fără sfârşit… […] Asta e, murmura gândul fluid,

dacă ajungi să acoperi genunea dintre aceste două presupuse capete, mai poţi spera să înţelegi câte ceva din această aventură a simţurilor care este viaţa… Dar cine are răgaz pentru a cugeta smerit la nesfârşirea care

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ne înconjoară? Uneori filosofii o fac pe apucate, de dragul ideilor repede convertibile în cărţi, care de fapt spun cu mult mai puţin decât ale celor ce plantau mai întâi seminţele faptelor şi pe urmă descopereau dreapta creştere şi înflorire a cugetului… Ei nu ţineau să fie infailibili, o luau încet, pe jos, pe cărare, dînd adevărurilor mireasma celor ce sunt, nu a celor ce poate vor fi… Cugetau despre lume ca şi cum lumea însăşi se hrănea din cea ce ei desluşeau şi scoteau la lumina cuvântului, a înţelegerii… Începeau, de bună seamă, tot cu descifrarea acestui fără început şi fără sfârşit, ce poate fi asemănat cu o curgere, cu o mişcare perpetuă. Poate că, lăsându-te purtat de fascinaţia mişcării, în adânca ei necuprindere, reuşeşti a-ţi limpezi cât de cât ideea duratei eterne… […]

Ai spune că filosofia din asta s-a născut, gândi mai departe Paul Damian. Din încercarea de a explica mişcarea, adică devenirea… Naşterea şi moartea ca procese ciclice şi infinitul care curge înaintea lor şi după ele… Devenirea este primul gând concret şi, prin aceasta, primul concept… Devenirea include apariţia şi trecerea. Sunt momentele ei. Devenirea este neliniştea fără oprire, care se stinge într-un rezultat liniştit… Deci, fără oprire, fără început şi fără sfârşit… Căci dacă lipeşti începutul şi sfârşitul, separându-le ca momente în sine, obţii nimicul…

Nicolae Boghian – Stare de ecou

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UNIT III

EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (II)

3. Preliminaries 1. Comment upon the competition between the self-preservation

instinct and the preservation-of-the-species one. 2. Is what we call Love imprinted in us as a genetically-

predetermined instinct or have we, humans, developed a completely different, exclusively psychological and socialised ‘instinct’? What about self-destruction for reproduction / out of love in animals, and in humans?

3. What do you know about animal and human collective memory / memory of the species?

3.A. from LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth

Night-Sea Journey (II) (adapted and abridged)

Perhaps, even, I am drowned already. Surely I was never meant

for the rough-and-tumble of the swim; not impossibly I perished at the outset and have only imagined the night-sea journey from some final deep. In any case, I’m no longer young, and it is we spent old swimmers, disabused of every illusion, who are most vulnerable to dreams. Sometimes I think I am my drowned friend. Out with it: I’ve begun to believe, not only that She exists, but that She lies not far ahead, and stills the sea, and draws me Herward! […] I shake my head; the thing is too preposterous; it is myself I talk to, to keep my reason in this awful darkness. There is no She! There is no You! I rave to myself; it’s Death alone that hears and summons. To the drowned, all seas are calm… […]

Our moment came, we hurtled forth, pretending to glory in the adventure, thrashing, singing, cursing, strangling, rationalizing,

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rescuing, killing, inventing rules and stories and relationships, giving up, struggling on, but dying all, and still in darkness, until only a battered remnant was left to croak ‘Onward! Upward!’ like a bitter echo. Then they too fell silent – victims, I can only presume, of the last frightful wave – and the moment came when I also, utterly desolate and spent, thrashed my last and gave myself over to the current, to sink or float as might be, but swim no more. Whereupon, marvelous to tell, in an instant the sea grew still! […]

I am not deceived. This new emotion is Her doing; the desire that possesses me is Her bewitchment. Lucidity passes from me; in a moment I’ll cry ‘Love!’, bury myself in Her side, and be ‘transfigured’. Which is to say, I die already; this fellow transported by passion is not I; I am he who abjures and rejects the night-sea journey! I… I am all love. ‘Come!’ She whispers, and I have no will.

You who I may be about to become, whatever You are: with the last twitch of my real self I beg You to listen. It is not love that sustains me! No; though Her magic makes me burn to sing the contrary, and though I drown even now for the blasphemy, I will say truth. What has fetched me across this dreadful sea is a single hope, gift of my poor dead comrade: that You may be stronger-willed than I, and that by sheer force of concentration I may transmit to You, along with Your official Heritage, a private legacy of awful recollection and negative resolve. Mad as it may be, my dream is that some unimaginable embodiment of myself (or myself plus Her is that’s how it must be) will come to find itself expressing, in however garbled or radical a translation, some reflection of these reflections. If against all odds this comes to pass, may You to whom, through whom I speak, do what I cannot: terminate this aimless, brutal business! Stop Your hearing against her song! Hate love!

Still alive, afloat, afire. Farewell, then, my penultimate hope: that one may be sunk for direst blasphemy on the very shore of the Shore. Can it be (my old friend would smile) that only utterest nay-sayers survive the night? But even that were Sense and there is no sense, only senseless love, senseless death. Whoever echoes these reflections: be more courageous than their author! An end to night-sea journeys! Make no more! And forswear me when I shall forswear myself, deny myself, plunge into Her who summons, singing… ‘Love! Love! Love!’

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3.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. What are the metamorphoses that swimmers undergo during

‘journeying’? Do they seem familiar to us? 2. What is the significance of the swimmer’s repeated and ever

more rapid changes of attitudes and convictions towards the journey’s end?

3. Why and how is love related to death? 4. What kind of immortality is the thoughtful swimmer seeking for? 5. What are swimmers in fact? Identify the allegory and its overt

and covert elements. 6. Can the concept of immortality be a solution to the burden of

self-consciousness? 7. Which appears to be the greatest danger in an already doomed

to death existence, and why?

3.B. Vocabulary study and practice

3.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning(s) of the following words or phrases:

Ns: rough-and-tumble, bewitchment, twitch Vs: to rave, to hurtle, to forswear As / Avs: preposterous, utterly, garbled

3.B.2. Find words in the text that mean: disappointed, to call, to deny, volition.

3.B.3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: to shout, indecision, to start, cowardly.

3.B.4. Fulfil the following tasks: a) List all the a– adjectives / adverbs in both parts of the text,

and explain their meaning. b) State the peculiarity of a– when compared to the majority

of English prefixes. Mention the other two prefixes sharing the same property,

and add some examples of them. c) List and illustrate other than those in the text -a derived

lexemes.

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3.B.5. Explain and illustrate in sentences of your own the difference between heritage and legacy.

3.B.6. Consider the following verbs: perish, destroy, ruin, smash, annihilate, disintegrate, out of which two appear in the first or the second part of the text.

a) Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features:

[± tearing into small pieces], [± health], [± reputation, career, chances etc.], [± ceasing to exist], [± molecular decomposition], [± also used figuratively] etc. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. Numerous species have … during the Ice Age. 2. The corrupted clerk tried to ... any evidence of his illegal

activities. 3. The Nazis could by no means succeed in ... the underground

resistance in the occupied countries. 4. Last Sunday the guests were ... by our team. 5. This bomb can ... everything ten miles round. 6. His applying for that position has ... my only chance to get a

decent job.

3.C. Grammar 3.C.1. Comparison of adjectives 3.C.1.1. Answer the following questions: a) Do you notice any oddity in what concerns the formation of

degrees of comparison in both parts of the text? b) What are the general rules for thecomparison of adjectives? Add illustrations.

3.C.1.2. Answer the following questions: a) How do -a adjectives form degrees of comparison (if they

accept gradability)? b) What is the peculiarity of their syntactic behaviour? Add illustrations.

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Comparison of adjectives (knowledge refreshing) The English adjectives accepting gradability can form degrees of

comparison synthetically (i.e. by using inflections – suffixes) or analytically (i.e. periphrastically, by using additional words).

N.B.: There are some adjectives, however, which do not accept either of the two ways of forming degrees of comparison, solely evincing their “initial” form. This is due to the fact that the adjectives in question render non-gradable properties. The unique form can have the intrinsic ‘positive’, ‘comparative’ or ‘superlative’ meaning (e.g.: dead, superior, maximum).

1) Synthetic comparison applies to monosyllabic adjectives and to some of the disyllabic ones (see 3) further), and it resides in adding the suffix -er for Comparative, and, respectively, the suffix -est for Superlative Relative (e.g.: fat – fatter – the fattest; clear – clearer – the clearest).

The addition of -er and -est triggers the following spelling modifications:

a) the final ‘y’ preceded by a consonant turns to ‘i’ (e.g.: dry – drier – the driest);

b) the final consonant preceded by a short, stressed vowel doubles (e.g.: big – bigger – the biggest);

c) the final, silent ‘e’ is dropped (e.g.: late – later – the latest). 2) Analytic comparison applies to all polysyllabic adjectives and

to numerous disyllabic adjectives (see 3) further), and it resides in adding more for Comparative the most for Superlative Relative (e.g.: interesting – more interesting – the most interesting).

3) In general, disyllabic adjectives pertaining to the old, Saxon fund of the language and ending in -y, -er or -le evince synthetic comparison (e.g.: happy – happier – the happiest, clever – cleverer – the cleverest, gentle – gentler – the gentlest), while newer in language and/or ending in other terminations disyllabic adjectives form their degrees of comparison analytically (e.g.: vivid – more vivid – the most vivid, callous – more callous – the most callous).

There are, however, disyllabic adjectives (for instance, old fund adjectives ending in -ow), which tend to accept both types of comparison (e.g.: narrow – narrower / more narrow – the narrowest / the most narrow). A statistically-based generalisation that seems to hold

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would be: the higher the frequency in language of the disyllabic adjective in question, the more likely it is to develop synthetic comparison.

Occasionally and contextually, analytic comparison may atypically occur with di– or even monosyllabic adjectives that normally inflect (e.g.: more dear, most happy).

4) A restricted group of adjectives evinces irregular comparison: a) good – better – the best; b) bad / ill – worse – the worst; c) far – farther – the farthest (place) – further – the furthest (place, time); d) near – nearer – the nearest (place) – the next (order); e) late – later – the latest (time) – latter – the last (order); f) old – older – the oldest (people, things) – elder – the eldest (people); g) many / much – more – the most; h) little1 – less – the least (amount) little2 / small – smaller – the smallest (size).

3.C.2. Cleft Constructions 3.C.2.1. Identify all the Cleft Constructions in the text, and

explain their general mechanism of formation. (Pay attention! They are quite numerous.)

3.C.2.2. Fulfil the following tasks: a) Enumerate and illustrate the types of cleaving that you

know. b) Comment upon the relationship that exists between

Dependent and/or Free Relative Clauses and the various types of Cleft Constructions.

3.C.2.3. Apply cleaving upon the following sentences in order to bring various elements under focal prominence:

1. Our cousin lacks any sense of decency. 2. His behaviour horrified his neighbours. 3. The senior students need some new computers.

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4. This naughty boy has smashed all your CDs. 5. The second driver noticed the slippery portion in the street in

time. Cleft Constructions (knowledge refreshing) They are special constructions featuring either Restrictive or Free

Relative Clauses, and they have pragmatic relevance, since they can be used on purpose of bringing under (thematic) focal prominence various sentential constituents.

The main types of patterns that can be distinguished are: 1) the Wh- Cleft Construction (the focused element can be right to

copular BE – e.g.: What offended us was his extreme rudeness. – or left to it – e.g.: His extreme rudeness was what / the thing that offended us.);

2) the IT- Cleft Construction (in case of which the focus is right to copular BE – e.g.: It was his extreme rudeness (the thing) that offended us.).

Practically (almost) every element of the sentence can be brought under focal prominence by means of such constructions.

3.D. Supplementary text and assignments

from Before Adam by Jack London “These are our ancestors, and their history is our history.

Remember that as surely as we one day swung down out of the trees and walked upright, just as surely, on a far earlier day, did we crawl up out of the sea and achieve our first adventure on land.”

[…] It was not till I was a young man, at college, that I got any clew to the significance of my dreams, and to the cause of them. Up to that time they had been meaningless and without apparent causation. But at college I discovered evolution and psychology, and learned the explanation of various strange mental states and experiences. For instance, there was the falling-through-space dream – the commonest dream experience, one practically known, by first-hand experience, to all men.

This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees. With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability of falling was an ever-present menace. Many lost their lives

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that way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground. Now a terrible fall, averted in such fashion, was productive of shock. Such shock was productive of molecular changes in the cerebral cells. These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of progeny, became, in short, racial memories.

Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing off to sleep, fall through space and awake to sickening consciousness just before we strike, we are merely remembering what happened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the race.

There is nothing strange in this, any more than there is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely a habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing, that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. True, the shock of their fall was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they could have progeny. You and I are descended from those that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in our dreams, never strike bottom.

And now we come to disassociation of personality. We never have this sense of falling when we are wide awake. Our wake-a-day personality has no experience of it. Then – and here the argument is irresistible – it must be another and distinct personality that falls when we are asleep, and that has had experience of such falling – that has, in short, a memory of past-day race experiences, just as our wake-a-day personality has a memory of our wake-a-day experiences.

It was at this stage in my reasoning that I began to see the light. And quickly the light burst upon me with dazzling brightness, illuminating and explaining all that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturally impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it was not my wake-a-day personality that took charge of me; it was another and distinct personality, possessing a new and totally different fund of experiences, and, to the point of my dreaming, possessing memories of those totally different experiences.

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What was this personality? When had it itself lived a wake-a-day life on this planet in order to collect this fund of strange experiences? These were questions that my dreams themselves answered. He lived in the long ago, when the world was young, in that period that we call the Mid-Pleistocene. He fell from the trees but did not strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at the roaring of the lions. He was pursued by beasts of prey, struck at by deadly snakes. He chattered with his kind in council, and he received rough usage at the hands of the Fire People in the day that he fled before them.

But, I hear you objecting, why is it that these racial memories are not ours as well, seeing that we have a vague other-personality that falls through space while we sleep? And I may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this other-personality and these complete racial memories because I am a freak. But let me be more explicit. The commonest race memory we have is the falling-through-space dream. This other-personality is very vague. About the only memory it has is that of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct other-personalities. Many of us have the flying dream, the pursuing-monster dream, color dreams, suffocation dreams, and the reptile and vermin dreams. In short, while this other-personality is vestigial in all of us, in some of us it is almost obliterated, while in others of us it is more pronounced. Some of us have stronger and completer race memories than others. It is all a question of varying degree of possession of the other-personality. In myself, the degree of possession is enormous. My other-personality is almost equal in power with my own personality. And in this matter I am, as I said, a freak – a freak of heredity.

I do believe that it is the possession of this other-personality – but not so strong a one as mine – that has in some few others given rise to belief in personal reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible to such people, a most convincing hypothesis. When they have visions of scenes they have never seen in the flesh, memories of acts and events dating back in time, the simplest explanation is that they have lived before. But they make the mistake of ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their other-personality. They think it is their own

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personality, that they have only one personality; and from such a premise they can conclude only that they have lived previous lives.

But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of myself roaming through the forests of the Younger World; and yet it is not myself that I see but one that is only remotely a part of me, as my father and my grandfather are parts of me less remote. This other-self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor of my progenitors in the early line of my race, himself the progeny of a line that long before his time developed fingers and toes and climbed up into the trees. […]

For in this past I know of, man, as we today know him, did not exist. It was in the period of his becoming that I must have lived and had my being.

3.D.1. Reading comprehension and comments a) Comment upon the plausibility of the explanation given for the

falling-through-space dream. In the light of more recent theories, which appear to be the weak, and which the strong points of the argumentation? (Consider the fact that Before Adam was first published in 1906.)

b) Comment upon the habit – instinct link in accordance with the racial memory theory.

c) Besides of being grounded on rather materialistic than metaphysical arguments, what else can distinguish between racial memory and reincarnation?

d) What do the motifs of the other widely spread dreams suggest? e) Make the necessary connections to integrate these views within

the previous discussions about existence and evolutionary cycles. Is racial memory a sort of immortality? Is the Self really a unique and genuine, independent and unrepeatable entity, at the same time with which the world starts, and ceases to exist?

f) Read also the text in the translation module closing this unit, and comment upon whether there can still be another kind of immortality.

g) Can a self-conscious entity outstrip nature’s laws of creation? Is nature perfect? Why are we so sure that there must be a spring, and that it must burst out?

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3.D.2. Identify the existential sentences and the THAT Clauses in the text. For the latter, also specify their syntactic function.

3.D.3. Translate the first six paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

3.E. Write a short essay (1-2 pages) about what you consider as a

possible proof of nature’s imperfectness.

3.F. Translate the following text into English: Orvas îi observase neliniştea şi Emil Sandra s-a convins atunci de-

a binelea că frământările se aud, uneori fac chiar zgomot ca de cascadă, vuiesc. Îi plăcea acest meşter pietrar, mai ales că îi povestise cum lucrase el cu un bătrân sculptor care, şi la vârsta lui înaintată, îşi punea tot felul de întrebări – unele chiar cu glas tare, atunci când îl vedea intrând în atelier “Ce spui, Orvas?” Dar nu dădea jos husa de pe piatră, dimpotrivă, o acoperea şi mai bine, să nu se vadă nimic, cu toate că Orvas o văzuse în atâtea rânduri – ceva încă nedefinit la care el tot lustruia. Sculptorul de care-i vorbea era adeptul lui Brâncuşi, socotind că printr-o continuă finisare se va ajunge neîndoielnic la perfecţiune. Într-o dimineaţă a avut loc drama pe care Orvas n-ar fi putut s-o uite niciodată: pasărea cu gâtul lung – mai lung decât întregul ei corp – fiindcă sculptura imagina o pasăre cu ciocul în văzduh, întins în aşa fel de parcă ar fi voit nu să-şi ia zborul, ci să ciugulească stelele, s-a spart. Adică i s-a frânt gâtul. Gâtul acela atât de alungit şi atât de subţire aproape ca un ac! Şi cât muncise! Se lăsase pe podea şi se uita pierdut la capul căzut. Din ciocul păsării părea să se fi prelins atunci sângele. Niciodată Orvas, meşterul pietrar, nu văzuse întipărită pe faţa vreunui om atât de crunt durerea. S-a gândit la o soluţie: e imposibil să nu se fi putut repara. Nu numai că există atâtea materiale cu care se poate lipi piatra frântă sau sfărâmată chiar în nenumărate bucăţi, dar s-ar fi putut folosi până şi un fel de şurub de oţel! Sculptorul s-a uitat la el cu privirea aproape stinsă. Apoi a ţipat: “Nu înţelegi, omule, că sculptura asta era vie?” Atunci chiar că a înţeles meşterul pietrar că artistul trăise cu adevărat tot acel proces de creaţie. S-a dus cu gândul la un om din satul său, învăţătorul, a cărui nevastă nu făcea copii. A fost cu ea pe la toţi doctorii şi când îşi luase adio de la dorinţa lui – cum se întâmplă în

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basme – soţia i-a născut un băieţel. Pentru el, de atunci, toate clipele au fost fericite. Până când, după câţiva ani, exact când copilul devenise de-a dreptul fermecător, s-a îmbolnăvit şi a murit. “O crimă a naturii”, bolborosea Orvas.

“Ce vrei să faci?” – l-a întrebat pe Emil Sandra. “La ce te gândeşti?” Emil Sandra i-a povestit ce-i trecea lui prin cap: începând cu izvorul şi încheind tot cu izvorul, fiindcă tocmai ameninţarea aceea i-a declanşat lui hotărârea de a fixa întâmplarea într-o piatră, precum pe vremuri marile bătălii în columne. Meşterul pietrar l-a ascultat cu o atenţie mărită din ce în ce, până la încordare, pe urmă l-a luat pe după umăr – avea mâinile puternice, muşchiuloase – şi au ieşit afară sub luna de toamnă. I-a povestit întâmplarea de la Rotunda. O întâmplare care se petrecuse la Argeş şi care se asemăna întocmai cu aceasta de aici. Oamenii de la puţul Rotunda aşteptau clipă de clipă izbucnirea izvorului. Izvorul nu se arăta, dar ei, săpând mai departe cu maşinile lor pământul de la rădăcinile munţilor, apropiau tot mai mult în conştiinţa lor secunda aceea, ca o săgeată neagră despicând rocile şi prăvălindu-le, împinse de ape peste munca lor. Într-o dimineaţă – povestea Orvas care lucra atunci chiar în subteran la zidirea canalului de aducţiune cu piatră de pavaj – galeria păruse să trosnească din toate încheieturile, ca de un cutremur. Din străfunduri se auzeau sunete înăbuşite, asemănătoare zgomotului pe care-l fac nişte cai în galop. Foşnetul creştea aducând cu el pe mii de frunze o adiere rece, din ce în ce mai rece – ştii cum e în galerie când începe curentul subteran! – şi oamenii îşi căutau privirile, dar niciunul nu-şi mărturisea frica lăsată, deodată, ca un îngheţ, şi-n respiraţie.

Vasile Băran – Raniţa grea a iubirii

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UNIT IV

THE ETERNAL DUALITY. THE QUESTION WITH NO ANSWER

4. Preliminaries 1. How would you interpret the title of this unit? Is there a certain

(kind of) duality, which is eternal, or (the concept of) duality in itself and in general is eternal, and thus universal? Which could be the question with no answer?

2. Discuss the possibility of perfect internal homogeneity and non-further-sub-divisibility. Can there be a true monist entity? In other words, can something not be ‘constructed’ out of some other incorporated and interacting constitutive parts? (Before thinking of elementary particles, remember what happened to the concept of atom.)

3. Can the universal network of multi-branching hierarchies be ultimately interpreted as (if not reduced to) interacting systems of oppositions? Are all oppositions binary and polar?

4.A. from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson Chapter 10. Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case

(adapted and abridged) I was born in the year 18 – to a large fortune, endowed besides

with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my

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pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacte nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be

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relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together – that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?

I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. […]

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the

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bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.

I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature. […]

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.

I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.

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That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. […] At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.

Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. […] Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safely was complete. Think of it – I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.

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Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.

4.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. Was Dr. Jekyll essentially different from ordinary people? Give

arguments in favour of his normality. 2. Do you believe him when saying that both sides in him were

‘dead earnest’? 3. Consider Jekyll’s inclination towards ‘undignified’ pleasures,

and his conventionalist aspiration for public esteem and respectability. Which of them do you think had played a greater role in the emergence of his dangerous ideas and preoccupations?

4. Were these two opposite moral traits, however, the real cause of his downfall, or was there another, more profound flaw in his chain of reasoning? If yes, which could this be?

5. If Hyde was pure evil, while Jekyll was still a blending of good and bad traits, what has in fact the doctor succeeded in? Is dissociation of polarities possible?

6. Comment upon Dr, Jekyll’s description of Hyde as being ‘natural and human’, bearing ‘a livelier image of the spirit’, and seeming ‘more express and single’.

7. Contrast this position with Baudelaire’s, who considered that “beauty is single, ugliness has a thousand faces”.

8. Comment upon the author’s use of the words ‘pleasure’ and ‘evil’. What could the conclusion be? (Remember also that the story was first published in 1886, i.e. in the Victorian epoch.)

4.B. Vocabulary study and practice

4.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning(s) of the following

words or phrases: Ns: trench, denizen, faggot, pang, recklessness, millrace

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Vs: to pluck, to blot, to subside, to linger, to slumber, to trim As / Avs: perennial, steadfastly, extraneous, vicarious

4.B.2. Find words in the text that mean: attitude, to hide, self-righteous, salvation, unaffected.

4.B.3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: coherent, blessed, benign, abruptly.

4.B.4. Consider the following verbs of linking: link, tie, bind, connect, concatenate, enchain, relate, correlate.

a) Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features:

[± strengthening, consolidating], [± putting in chains], [± arresting attention], [± mental process], [± referring to hands], [± referring to scoring in games], [± books], [± referring to deposits], [± sequencing], [± interdependence, interaction], [± ordering], [± referring to social or professional contacts], [± referring to regulations], [± referring to coincidence], [± imposing or involving obligation], [± words, arguments, ideas], [± dressing of wounds], [± also used figuratively]. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. He was ... by his poverty to accept any job. 2. The suspect thought that nobody could ... him to the victim. 3. During the experiment, the exothermic phase of the reaction

and the synthesis of the salt ... quickly. 4. The clerk wanted to help, but he was all ... up in regulations that ... in a spider-web of interdictions. 5. In a communicative string, words are ... together by means of

syntactic rules. 6. Being a rigorous scientist, his arguments were logically ... and formed up a theory which has ... many minds ever since.

4.C. Grammar 4.C.1. Numerals

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4.C.1.1. Identify the fractions and the multiplicative numerals in the text.

4.C.1.2. Refresh your knowledge regarding the various types of numerals (and numeratives) by consulting the already covered first year courses and/or other resources.

4.C.1.3. Extract from a technical source the main formulae of correspondence between the International System of Units and Measures and the still largely in use Anglo-Saxon System (FPS).

4.D. Supplementary text and assignments

from Compensation by Ralph Waldo Emerson POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature;

in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality; in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short.

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The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of climate and soil in political history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or scorpions.

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and position a bad citizen, – a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him? – Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along in the dame’s classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she […] takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true.

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. […] This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will

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appear. If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. […] These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all his destiny.

The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. “It is in the world, and the world was made by it.” Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. […] Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. […] The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already

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blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. […]

The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem, – how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright etc. from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end. The soul says, ‘Eat’ the body would feast. The soul says, ‘The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul’ the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, ‘Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue’ the body would have the power over things to its own ends. […] Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature – the sweet, without the other side, the bitter. This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. “Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.” Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know, that they do not touch him; – but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, – since to try it is to be mad, – but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid’s head but not the dragon’s tail, and thinks he can cut off that which he would have from that which he would not have.

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4.D.1. Reading comprehension and comments a) How is duality viewed upon in Compensation? b) According to Emerson, can there be such a thing as pure evil?

Why not? c) Enlarge upon the writer’s arguments. d) Does Emerson’s writing satisfy the classical requirement for

philosophy to be the ‘mother of all sciences’? Can you demonstrate that it does?

e) Comment upon the apparently shocking statement that “All things are moral”.

f) Relate the last paragraph of the text to Stevenson’s story, underlining the similarity of ideas. Are there also some differences? Identify the latter.

g) Read the texts in the translation module closing this unit, and correlate them with the thematic content of Stevenson and Emerson’s pieces of writing.

h) Comment upon the multifarious nature of the female character in Vitralii incolore and upon Cioran’s dilemma.

4.D.2. Translate the last paragraph of the text into Romanian. 4.E. As a preparation for an open oral debate, put down some

ideas related to the topic: Does opposition trigger diversity? And does diversity mean war?

4.F. Translate the following texts into English:

Toate talentele şi virtuţile din lume nu-ţi ajută la nimic, dacă n-ai

o doză zdravănă din compoziţia femeii genetice. Şi eu am? Tu ai, ai tot, dar eşti rea, ascunzi, striveşti, stingi. Ce-o fi asta? manie, boală? altă boală? Una contrară? Un miez de adevăr e, în ce spune. Îmi reazem capul de umărul lui. Eşti agresiv şi uneori agresivitatea capătă o notă vulgară. Cum aşa? Te doresc, iubirea fără dorinţă e curată schizofrenie. Să iubeşti un om şi să nu-l vrei pentru tine, să iubeşti un om şi să nu te vrei pentru el? Anomalie psihică. Agresiv? Nu, înfometat. Tu nu ştii ce e foamea? Nu sunt lacomă, pot trăi cu te miri ce. Lingavă, anorexică? Ce gust are pentru tine, viaţa? gustul cărţilor, al baletului? Mănânci fără

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plăcere, bei, dormi fără plăcere. Nici în amor n-o găseşti, nicăieri? Ia nu-mi purta tu de grijă! A ghicit. Creşte o fibră rigidă în mine. Frică de gesturi spectaculoase, impropriu spus spectaculoase, pătimaşe. De ce frică? Nu ştiu unde m-ar duce, unde m-ar târî. S-ar vedea discrepanţa. Unde ai fost duminică? Hai, spune, şi cu cine? cu logodnica? Nu zice nimic. Nu te caută? Dacă ar intra peste noi, ce-ai face? Ai fugi pe fereastră? Mă scrutează ager, pătrunzător. Câte feţe ai tu? Capete mi-ai spus, dar feţe? Eşti de toate. De la madonă la ţaţă, de la bacantă la fecioară. Aşa e, are dreptate, toate sunt, toate la un loc. Mai adaugă: ba pe moarte, ba efigia vitalităţii. Cum te-ai vindecat atunci? Ştii cum? Cui pe cui se scoate.

Dumitru Popescu – Vitralii incolore

Până astăzi încă nimeni n-a putut spune ce e bine şi ce e rău. Şi e

sigur că în viitor va fi tot aşa. Faptul impresionant nu consistă în această relativitate, ci în imposibilitatea de a te dispensa de întrebuinţarea acestor expresii. Nu ştiu ce e bine şi ce e rău, dar calific acţiunile în bune şi rele. Dacă m-ar întreba cineva de ce numesc o acţiune bună şi alta rea, nu i-aş putea răspunde. Este un proces instinctiv care mă face să apreciez sub prisma criteriilor morale; când mă gândesc ulterior la acea apreciere nu-i mai găsesc nicio justificare. Morala a devenit atât de complexă şi de contradictorie, deoarece valorile ei nu se mai constituie în ordinea vieţii, ci s-au cristalizat într-o regiune transcendentă ei, păstrînd slabe legături cu tendinţele iraţionale şi vitale. Cum să întemeiezi o morală? Mi-e atât de scârbă de acest cuvânt «bine», este atât de fad şi de inexpresiv! Morala spune: lucraţi pentru triumful binelui! Dar cum?

Emil Cioran – Eternitate şi morală

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Obligatory

Duţescu-Coliban, T. (2005) Aspects of English Morphology. Nominal and Verbal Categories, Second Edition, (Edited by Janeta Lupu), Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

Lupu, J., Ionescu-Buzea, O. şi Birtalan, A. (2007) English Practical Course for First Year Students, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

Şerban, D. (2006) The Syntax of English Predications, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine, p. 80-202.

Şerban, D. şi Drǎguşin, D. (2007) English Practical Course for Second Year Students, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

Tudosescu, A. (2007) Elements of English Syntax and Semantics, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

Supplementary

Graver, B. D. (1986) Advanced English Practice, third edition, London and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1980) A Grammar of Contemporary English, ninth impression, London: Longman.

Swan, M. (1995) Practical English Usage, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vianu, L. (2006) English With A Key. Exerciţii de retroversiune şi traducere, Bucureşti: Editura Teora.

Wellman, G. (1992) Wordbuilder, second edition, Oxford: Heinemann. *

* * (1994) (Coord. G. Niculescu) Dicţionar tehnic englez-român, second

edition, vols. 1-2, Bucureşti: Editura Tehnică. *

* * (1997) Prosper with English – English for Science and Technology,

Bucharest: The British Council and Cavallioti Publishing House. *

* * (1998) Collins Cobuild English Grammar, eighth impression, London:

Harper Collins Publishers. *

* * (2001) Collins Cobuild – English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, third

edition, Birmingham: Harper Collins Publishers.

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Online resources Ask.com, http://uk.ask.com/, [2007]. Britannica Concise, http://concise.britannica.com, [2007]. Cambridge Dictionaries Online, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/, [2007]. Chambers Reference Online, http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/index.

shtml, [2007]. Columbia Encyclopaedia, http://www.bartleby.com/65/, [2007]. Encarta, http://encarta.msn.com/, [2007]. The Free Dictionary by Farlex, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Dictionary.

htm, [2007]. The Idiom Connection: English Idioms and Quizzes, http://www.geocities.com/

Athens/Aegean/6720/ and http://www.idiomconnection.com/, [2007]. Merriam-Webster Online Search, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/, [2007]. Merriam-Webster’s LearnersDictionary.com, http://www.learnersdictionary. com,

[2007]. OneLook Dictionary Search, http://www.onelook.com, [2007]. Roget’s Thesauri, http://www.bartleby.com/thesauri/, [2007]. Semantic Rhyming Dictionary, http://www.rhymezone.com/, [2007]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:Quick_

index, [2007]. WordNet: A Lexical Database for English, http://wordnet.princeton.edu/,

[2007]. Wordsmyth, http://www.wordsmyth.net/, [2007]. *

* * (2007) ESL/EFL Grammar Resources, http://www.d-oliver.net/grammar.

htm, [2007]. *

* * (2007) Online English Grammar, http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/

index.cfm, [2007].

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PART TWO

ENGLISH PRACTICAL COURSE THIRD YEAR, SECOND TERM

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INTRODUCTION

General presentation of the course Standing as the second part of a unitary one-year course, the

cluster of learning units to be covered during the second term naturally pursue much the same coordinates of design as the ones shaping and structuring the contents of the first term, and namely:

– various activities that are targeted upon actualising, refining and/or supplementing certain areas of knowledge within the fields of (derivational) morphology, syntax and semantics by means of restructuring, reshaping, and resizing information in accordance to a strictly applied orientation, and thus creating a functional interface with theoretical disciplines;

– a focus upon improving and diversifying the students’ training in translation practice, with the entailing beneficial effects upon the enriching of specialised language vocabulary in various domains;

– exercising the abilities involved in complex analysis of content and in text commentary;

– activating the deductive, intuitive and communicative skills; – testing the students’ coherence and logical processes in ideation

and argumentation, stimulating the creative potential. In close relationship with the last issue, the structure of the

course will also include: – elements (and exercises) of academic writing; – topics (and guidelines) for essays and/or debates. Objectives of the course The characteristic of the course being the pre-eminently applied

dimension, its central goal resides in enhancing linguistic performance at lexical-semantic, grammatical (phonetic, morphological, syntactic), and stylistic levels.

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In order to improve actualising abilities, both systematic acquisition of new information, and sustained activation, development and integration of already acquired knowledge are going to be envisaged.

By means of the diverse thematic content and the selected texts, a certain benefit in terms of students’ general cultural background is also targeted.

Outline of the units and modules The macro-structural organisation of the course consists of three

broadly encompassing units (see Contents). These units are all internally articulated in conformity to an

iterative sequence of didactic modules (the text, vocabulary, grammar, translation, essay / debate modules), the methodological characteristic of which resides in their more often than not presupposing an integrative level in what concerns the basic skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing).

Therefore, a unit will (in general) contain: a) a text of 1½-2 pages – constituting the nucleus of the unit, and

representing the object of a complex analysis (lexical and grammatical aspects, relevant stylistic features, content commentary –, which text will be preceded by introductory requirements featuring a thematically orienting role, and followed by a set of assignments meant to facilitate and guide the analysis;

b) vocabulary study and practice; c) the grammar section (brief theoretical presentation / revision

and/or exercises); d) 1-2 supplementary texts (of variable length), dealing with

topics related to the one of the main text, and which can be used on various purposes (for translation tasks, as starting point for additional lexical-grammatical applications or for comments / debates, as further information and reading);

e) indicated topics for essays/debates (which may be accompanied by suggested guidelines, landmarks or – possibly necessary – references);

f) 1-2 texts for translation into English.

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g) N.B.: The last two units scheduled within this second term will also include a special section devoted to the presentation and acquisition of some basic elements (viz. principles and techniques) in academic writing, with the suitable diminishing of volume and complexity in the other components.

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UNIT V

THE SUPERNATURAL. ANSWERS FROM BEYOND REALITY

5. Preliminaries 1. Comment upon the multi-faceted nature of what is generically

referred to as ‘the supernatural’, and upon the richness and significance of its associated cultural dimension (beliefs and practices).

2. Would you also include religion, and the formidable impact it had upon the development of human civilisation, within a more encompassing analysis of the concept, and its implications?

3. Enlarge upon the psychological and social causes of the recourse to supernatural explanations.

5.A. from The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

(adapted and abridged) The day had been warm and sunny; and, in the cool of the

evening, the whole family went out to drive. They did not return home till nine o’clock, when they had a light supper. The conversation in no way turned upon ghosts, so there were not even those primary conditions of receptive expectation which so often precede the presentation of psychical phenomena. […] No mention at all was made of the supernatural, nor was Sir Simon de Canterville alluded to in any way. At eleven o’clock the family retired, and by half-past all the lights were out. Some time after, Mr. Otis was awakened by a curious noise in the corridor, outside his room. It sounded like the clank of metal, and seemed to be coming nearer every moment. […] He put on his slippers, took a small oblong phial out of his dressing-case, and opened the door. Right in front of him he saw, in the wan moonlight, an old man of terrible aspect. His eyes were as red burning coals; long grey hair fell over his shoulders in matted coils; his garments, which were of antique

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cut, were soiled and ragged, and from his wrists and ankles hung heavy manacles and rusty gyves.

‘My dear sir,’ said Mr. Otis, ‘I really must insist on your oiling those chains, and have brought you for that purpose a small bottle of the Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator. […] I shall leave it here for you by the bedroom candles, and will be happy to supply you with more should you require it.’ With these words the United States Minister laid the bottle down on a marble table, and, closing his door, retired to rest.

For a moment the Canterville ghost stood quite motionless in natural indignation; then, dashing the bottle violently upon the polished floor, he fled down the corridor, uttering hollow groans, and emitting a ghastly green light. Just, however, as he reached the top of the great oak staircase, a door was flung open, two little white-robed figures appeared, and a large pillow whizzed past his head! There was evidently no time to be lost, so, hastily adopting the Fourth Dimension of Space as a means of escape, he vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet.

On reaching a small secret chamber in the left wing, he leaned up against a moonbeam to recover his breath, and began to try and realise his position. Never, in a brilliant and uninterrupted career of three hundred years, had he been so grossly insulted. […] All his great achievements came back to him again, from the butler who had shot himself in the pantry because he had seen a green hand tapping at the window pane, to the beautiful Lady Stutfield, who was always obliged to wear a black velvet band round her throat to hide the mark of five fingers burnt upon her white skin, and who drowned herself at last in the carp pond at the end of the King’s Walk. […] And after all this, some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance, and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought.

The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not been accepted. ‘I have no wish,’ he said, ‘to do the ghost any personal injury, and I must say that, considering the length of time he has been in the house, I

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don’t think it is at all polite to throw pillows at him’ – a very just remark, at which, I am sorry to say, the twins burst into shouts of laughter. ‘Upon the other hand,’ he continued, ‘if he really declines to use the Rising Sun Lubricator, we shall have to take his chains from him. It would be quite impossible to sleep, with such a noise going on outside the bedrooms.’

For the rest of the week, however, they were undisturbed, the only thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of comment.

Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American Reformed Episcopalian Church, they found it a bright emerald-green. These kaleidoscopic changes naturally amused the party very much, and bets on the subject were freely made every evening. The only person who did not enter into the joke was little Virginia, who, for some unexplained reason, was always a good deal distressed at the sight of the blood-stain, and very nearly cried the morning it was emerald-green.

The second appearance of the ghost was on Sunday night. Shortly after they had gone to bed they were suddenly alarmed by a fearful crash in the hall. Rushing downstairs, they found that a large suit of old armour had become detached from its stand, and had fallen on the stone floor, while, seated in a high-backed chair, was the Canterville ghost, rubbing his knees with an expression of acute agony on his face. The twins, having brought their pea-shooters with them, at once discharged two pellets on him, with that accuracy of aim which can only be attained by long and careful practice on a writing-master, while the United States Minister covered him with his revolver, and called upon him, in accordance with Californian etiquette, to hold up his hands! The ghost started up with a wild shriek of rage, and swept through them like a mist, extinguishing Washington Otis’ candle as he passed, and so leaving them all in total darkness. On reaching the top of the staircase he recovered himself, and determined to give his celebrated peal of demoniac laughter. This he had on more than one occasion found

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extremely useful. It was said to have turned Lord Raker’s wig grey in a single night, and had certainly made three of Lady Canterville’s French governesses give warning before their month was up. He accordingly laughed his most horrible laugh, till the old vaulted roof rang and rang again, but hardly had the fearful echo died away when a door opened, and Mrs. Otis came out in a light blue dressing-gown. ‘I am afraid you are far from well,’ she said, ‘and have brought you a bottle of Dr. Dobell’s tincture. If it is indigestion, you will find it a most excellent remedy.’ The ghost glared at her in fury. […] The sound of approaching footsteps, however, made him hesitate in his fell purpose, so he contented himself with becoming faintly phosphorescent, and vanished with a deep churchyard groan, just as the twins had come up to him.

On reaching his room he entirely broke down, and became a prey to the most violent agitation. The vulgarity of the twins, and the gross materialism of Mrs. Otis, were naturally extremely annoying, but what really distressed him most was that he had been unable to wear the suit of mail. He had hoped that even modern Americans would be thrilled by the sight of a Spectre In Armour, if for no more sensible reason, at least out of respect for their national poet Longfellow over whose graceful and attractive poetry he himself had whiled away many a weary hour when the Cantervilles were up in town. […]

For some days after this he was extremely ill, and hardly stirred out of his room at all, except to keep the blood-stain in proper repair. […] The terrible excitement of the last four weeks was beginning to have its effect. His nerves were completely shattered, and he startled at the slightest noise. For five days he kept his room, and at last made up his mind to give up the point of the blood-stain on the library floor. If the Otis family did not want it, they clearly did not deserve it. They were evidently people on a low, material plane of existence, and quite incapable of appreciating the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena. The question of phantasmic apparitions, and the development of astral bodies, was of course quite a different matter, and really not under his control. It was his solemn duty to appear in the corridor once a week, and to gibber from the large oriel window on the first and third Wednesdays in every month, and he did not see how he could honourably escape from his obligations. It is quite true that his life had

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been very evil, but, upon the other hand, he was most conscientious in all things connected with the supernatural.

For the next three Saturdays, accordingly, he traversed the corridor as usual between midnight and three o’clock, taking every possible precaution against being either heard or seen. He removed his boots, trod as lightly as possible on the old worm-eaten boards, wore a large black velvet cloak, and was careful to use the Rising Sun Lubricator for oiling his chains. I am bound to acknowledge that it was with a good deal of difficulty that he brought himself to adopt this last mode of protection. However, one night, while the family were at dinner, he slipped into Mr. Otis’s bedroom and carried off the bottle. He felt a little humiliated at first, but afterwards was sensible enough to see that there was a great deal to be said for the invention, and, to a certain degree, it served his purpose. Still, in spite of everything, he was not left unmolested. Strings were continually being stretched across the corridor, over which he tripped in the dark, and on one occasion […] he met with a severe fall, through treading on a butter-slide, which the twins had constructed from the entrance of the Tapestry Chamber to the top of the oak staircase. […]

A few days after […], as she was running past the Tapestry Chamber, the door of which happened to be open, Virginia fancied she saw someone inside, and thinking it was her mother’s maid, who sometimes used to bring her work there, looked in to ask her to mend her habit. To her immense surprise, however, it was the Canterville Ghost himself! He was sitting by the window, watching the ruined gold of the yellowing trees fly through the air, and the red leaves dancing madly down the long avenue. His head was leaning on his hand, and his whole attitude was one of extreme depression. Indeed, so forlorn, and so much out of repair did he look, that little Virginia, whose first idea had been to run away and lock herself in her room, was filled with pity, and determined to try and comfort him. […]

‘I am so sorry for you,’ she said, ‘but my brothers are going back to Eton tomorrow, and then, if you behave yourself, no one will annoy you.’

‘It is absurd asking me to behave myself,’ he answered, looking round in astonishment at the pretty little girl who had ventured to address him, ‘quite absurd. I must rattle my chains, and groan through

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keyholes, and walk about at night, if that is what you mean. It is my only reason for existing.’

‘It is no reason at all for existing, and you know you have been very wicked. Mrs. Umney told us, the first day we arrived here, that you had killed your wife.’

‘Well, I quite admit it,’ said the Ghost petulantly, ‘but it was a purely family matter, and concerned no one else.’

‘It is very wrong to kill anyone,’ said Virginia, who at times had a sweet Puritan gravity, caught from some old New England ancestor.

‘Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery. […] However, it is no matter now, for it is all over, and I don’t think it was very nice of her brothers to starve me to death, though I did kill her.’

‘Starve you to death? Oh, Mr. Ghost, I mean Sir Simon, are you hungry? I have a sandwich in my case. Would you like it?’

‘No, thank you, I never eat anything now; but it is very kind of you, all the same, and you are much nicer than the rest of your horrid, rude, vulgar, dishonest family.’

‘Stop!’ cried Virginia stamping her foot, ‘it is you who are rude, and horrid, and vulgar, and as for dishonesty, you know you stole the paints out of my box to try and furbish up that ridiculous blood-stain in the library. First you took all my reds, including the vermilion, and I couldn’t do any more sunsets then you took the emerald-green and the chrome-yellow, and finally I had nothing left but indigo and Chinese white, and could only do moonlight scenes, which are always depressing to look at, and not at all easy to paint. I never told on you, though I was very much annoyed, and it was most ridiculous, the whole thing; for who ever heard of emerald-green blood?’

‘Well, really,’ said the Ghost, rather meekly, ‘what was I to do? It is a very difficult thing to get real blood nowadays, and, as your brother began it all with his Paragon Detergent, I certainly saw no reason why I should not have your paints. As for colour, that is always a matter of taste: the Cantervilles have blue blood, for instance, the very bluest in England; but I know you Americans don’t care for things of this kind.’

‘You know nothing about it, and the best thing you can do is to emigrate and improve your mind. My father will be only too happy to

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give you a free passage, and though there is a heavy duty on spirits of every kind, there will be no difficulty about the Custom House, as the officers are all Democrats. Once in New York, you are sure to be a great success. I know lots of people there who would give a hundred thousand dollars to have a grandfather, and much more than that to have a family ghost.’

‘I don’t think I should like America.’ ‘I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities,’ said

Virginia satirically. ‘No ruins! no curiosities!’ answered the Ghost; ‘you have your

navy and your manners.’ ‘Good evening; I will go and ask papa to get the twins an extra

week’s holiday.’ ‘Please don’t go, Miss Virginia,’ he cried; ‘I am so lonely and so

unhappy, and I really don’t know what to do. I want to go to sleep and I cannot.’

‘That’s quite absurd! You have merely to go to bed and blow out the candle. It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping. Why, even babies know how to do that, and they are not very clever.’

‘I have not slept for three hundred years,’ he said sadly, and Virginia’s beautiful blue eyes opened in wonder; ‘for three hundred years I have not slept, and I am so tired.’

5.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. What is the role of the initial mentioning of the fact that ‘those

primary conditions of receptive expectation’ were not met? 2. What is the author’s attitude toward commonplaces and

clichés? Consider both the universe of British aristocracy and the life and ways of modern Americans.

3. Has the contrast and cultural clash between these two categories become a cliché in itself?

4. Are there any elements in the story that not only support this idea, but also give a hint about Wilde’s being aware of this aspect, and including it among the targets of his irony?

5. Enlarge upon the psychological and social archetypes and clichés employed in the story.

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6. Which of the archetypal characters eventually turns out to be profoundly atypical?

7. Wilde is perhaps best known for his love of paradoxes. Think of the normal antagonism – a commonplace in itself – between traditionalism and adaptability, consider also your answer to the previous question, and identify the paradoxical situation, if any.

8. Comment upon the rich cultural tradition related to ghosts or other forms of spiritual persistence after death. How is this kind of immortality perceived and considered?

5.B. Vocabulary study and practice

5.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning(s) of the following

words or phrases: Ns: clank, coil, manacle, gyve, wainscot, pea-shooter, pellet, peal,

wig, oriel, free passage, heavy duty Vs: to allude, to groan, to whiz, to glare, to gibber, to rattle, to

furbish As/Avs: oblong, wan, fell, weary, sensuous, forlorn, petulant, horrid

5.B.2. There are several colours and shades mentioned in the text. In relation to this, fulfil the following tasks:

a) Supply your own taxonomy of the colours and shades that you know.

b) Enrich the result after consulting dictionaries and/or other sources. (Be sure you include the colours and shades in the text).

c) Support the hyponymy and incompatibility relations within the hierarchy by supplying the accompanying componential analysis for each item.

(Remember the fact that the field of colour terms is not only an extremely suitable for componential and taxonomic analyses conceptual field, but also one of the most frequently studied and illustrated logico-semantic domains).

5.B.3. After you have fulfilled the tasks in 5.B.2., try your

ability to construct hierarchies by supplying a tentative taxonomic classification of supernatural beings.

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(Ground the relative position that you confer to each item upon the confrontation of associated clusters of distinctive features, as the latter culturally appear to characterise each such imaginary creature).

5.C. Grammar

5.C.1. Gender

5.C.1.1. Refresh your knowledge regarding gender marking and gender-related problems of collocability in English by consulting the already covered first year courses or other resources.

5.C.2. Adverbial Clauses

5.C.2.1. Refresh your knowledge about Adverbials and Adverbial Clauses by consulting the already covered courses or any other resources.

5.C.2.2. Identify the Adverbial Clauses in the text, and specify their type.

(Optional: Perform the same task, considering the Adverbial Clauses in one of the previously covered texts).

5.D. Supplementary texts and assignments

α) from The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis

‘Follow me!’ She said to the Monk in a low and solemn voice.

‘All is ready!’ His limbs trembled, while He obeyed her. She led him through various narrow passages; and on every side as they past along, the beams of the Lamp displayed none but the most revolting objects; Skulls, Bones, Graves, and Images whose eyes seemed to glare on them with horror and surprize. At length they reached a spacious Cavern, whose lofty roof the eye sought in vain to discover. A profound obscurity hovered through the void. Damp vapours struck cold to the Friar’s heart; and He listened sadly to the blast while it howled along the lonely Vaults. Here Matilda stopped. She turned to Ambrosio. His cheeks and lips were pale with apprehension. By a glance of mingled scorn and anger She reproved his pusillanimity, but She spoke not. She

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placed the Lamp upon the ground, near the Basket. She motioned that Ambrosio should be silent, and began the mysterious rites. She drew a circle round him, another round herself, and then taking a small Phial from the Basket, poured a few drops upon the ground before her. She bent over the place, muttered some indistinct sentences, and immediately a pale sulphurous flame arose from the ground. It increased by degrees, and at length spread its waves over the whole surface, the circles alone excepted in which stood Matilda and the Monk. It then ascended the huge Columns of unhewn stone, glided along the roof, and formed the Cavern into an immense chamber totally covered with blue trembling fire. It emitted no heat. On the contrary, the extreme chillness of the place seemed to augment with every moment. Matilda continued her incantations. At intervals She took various articles from the Basket, the nature and name of most of which were unknown to the Friar. But among the few which He distinguished, He particularly observed three human fingers, and an Agnus Dei which She broke in pieces. She threw them all into the flames which burned before her, and they were instantly consumed.

The Monk beheld her with anxious curiosity. Suddenly She uttered a loud and piercing shriek. She appeared to be seized with an access of delirium; She tore her hair, beat her bosom, used the most frantic gestures, and drawing the poignard from her girdle plunged it into her left arm. The blood gushed out plentifully, and as She stood on the brink of the circle, She took care that it should fall on the outside. The flames retired from the spot on which the blood was pouring. A volume of dark clouds rose slowly from the ensanguined earth, and ascended gradually, till it reached the vault of the Cavern. At the same time a clap of thunder was heard: the echo pealed fearfully along the subterraneous passages, and the ground shook beneath the feet of the Enchantress.

It was now that Ambrosio repented of his rashness. The solemn singularity of the charm had prepared him for something strange and horrible. He waited with fear for the Spirit’s appearance, whose coming was announced by thunder and earthquakes. He looked wildly round him, expecting that some dreadful Apparition would meet his eyes, the sight of which would drive him mad. A cold shivering seized his body,

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and He sank upon one knee, unable to support himself. ‘He comes!’ exclaimed Matilda in a joyful accent.

Ambrosio starled, and expected the Daemon with terror. What was his surprize, when the Thunder ceasing to roll, a full strain of melodious Music sounded in the air. At the same time the cloud dispersed, and He beheld a Figure more beautiful than Fancy’s pencil ever drew. It was a Youth seemingly scarce eighteen, the perfection of whose form and face was unrivalled. He was perfectly naked: a bright Star sparkled upon his forehead; two crimson wings extended themselves from his shoulders; and his silken locks were confined by a band of many-coloured fires, which played round his head, formed themselves into a variety of figures, and shone with a brilliance far surpassing that of precious Stones. Circlets of Diamonds were fastened round his arms and ankles, and in his right hand He bore a silver branch, imitating Myrtle. His form shone with dazzling glory: He was surrounded by clouds of rose-coloured light, and, at the moment that He appeared, a refreshing air breathed perfumes through the Cavern.

Enchanted at a vision so contrary to his expectations, Ambrosio gazed upon the Spirit with delight and wonder. Yet however beautiful the Figure, He could not but remark a wildness in the Daemon’s eyes, and a mysterious melancholy impressed upon his features, betraying the Fallen Angel, and inspiring the Spectators with secret awe. The Music ceased. Matilda addressed herself to the Spirit: She spoke in a language unintelligible to the Monk, and was answered in the same. She seemed to insist upon something which the Daemon was unwilling to grant. He frequently darted upon Ambrosio angry glances, and at such times the Friar’s heart sank within him. Matilda appeared to grow incensed. She spoke in a loud and commanding tone, and her gestures declared that She was threatening him with her vengeance. Her menaces had the desired effect: the Spirit sank upon his knee, and with a submissive air presented to her the branch of Myrtle. No sooner had She received it, than the Music was again heard. A thick cloud spread itself over the Apparition. The blue flames disappeared, and total obscurity reigned through the Cave.

The Abbot moved not from his place. His faculties were all bound up in pleasure, anxiety, and surprize. At length the darkness dispersing, He perceived Matilda standing near him in her religious habit, with the

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Myrtle in her hand. No traces of the incantation, and the Vaults were only illuminated by the faint rays of the sepulchral Lamp.

‘I have succeeded,’ said Matilda, ‘though with more difficulty than I expected. Lucifer, whom I summoned to my assistance, was at first unwilling to obey my commands. To enforce his compliance I was constrained to have recourse to my strongest charms. They have produced the desired effect, but I have engaged never more to invoke his agency in your favour. Beware then, how you employ an opportunity which never will return. My magic arts will now be of no use to you. In future you can only hope for supernatural aid by invoking the Daemons yourself, and accepting the conditions of their service. This you will never do: You want strength of mind to force them to obedience, and unless you pay their established price, they will not be your voluntary Servants’.

5.D.1.α. Reading comprehension and comments a) Identify and comment upon the typical Gothic elements in the

text. b) Enumerate and enlarge upon the most widely spread

descriptions of daemons in folklore, religious literature and fiction. c) Discuss the reasons for the Faustian pact motif appearing as a

cultural invariant. 5.D.2.α. Translate the fourth paragraph of the text into

Romanian.

β) A Night at a Cottage by Richard Hughes (adapted and abridged)

On the evening that I am considering I passed by some ten or

twenty cosy barns and sheds without finding one to my liking: for Worcestershire lanes are devious and muddy, and it was nearly dark when I found an empty cottage set back from the road in a little bedraggled garden. There had been heavy rain earlier in the day, and the straggling fruit trees still wept over it. But the roof looked sound, there seemed no reason why it should not be fairly dry inside – as dry, at any rate, as I was likely to find anywhere.

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I decided: and with a long look up the road, and a long look down the road, I drew an iron bar from the lining of my coat and forced the door, which was only held by a padlock and two staples. Inside, the darkness was damp and heavy; I struck a match, and with its haloed light I saw the black mouth of a passage somewhere ahead of me; and then it spluttered out, so I closed the door carefully, though I had little reason to fear passers-by at such a dismal hour in so remote a lane; and lighting another match, I crept down this passage to a little room at the far end, where the air was a bit clearer, for all that the window was boarded across. Moreover, there was a little rusted stove in this room; and thinking it too dark for anyone to see the smoke, I ripped up part of the wainscot with my knife, and soon was boiling my tea over a bright small fire, and drying some of the day’s rain out of my steamy clothes. Presently I piled the stove with wood to its top bar, and settling my boots where they would best dry, I stretched my body out to sleep.

I cannot have slept very long, for when I woke the fire was still burning brightly. It is not easy to sleep for long together on the level boards of a floor, for the limbs grow numb, and any movement wakes. I turned over, and was about to go to sleep again, when I was startled to hear footsteps in the passage. As I have said, the window was boarded, and there was no other door from the little room – no cupboard even – in which to hide. It occurred to me rather grimly that there was nothing to do but to sit up and face the music, and that would probably mean being haled back to Worcester jail, which I had left two bare days before, and where, for various reasons, I had no anxiety to be seen again.

The stranger did not hurry himself, but presently walked slowly down the passage, attracted by the light of the fire; and when he came in he did not seem to notice me where I lay huddled in a corner, but walked straight over to the stove and warmed his hands at it. He was dripping wet, wetter than I should have thought it possible for a man to get, even on such a rainy night; and his clothes were old and worn. The water dripped from him on to the floor; he wore no hat, and the straight hair over his eyes dripped water that sizzled spitefully on the embers.

It occurred to me at once that he was no lawful citizen, but another wanderer like myself: a gentleman of the road; so I gave him a sort of greeting, and we were presently in conversation. He complained

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much of the cold and wet, and huddled himself over the fire, his teeth chattering and face an ill white. “No”, I said, “it is no decent weather for the road, this. But I wonder this cottage isn’t more frequented, for it’s a tidy little bit of cottage.” Outside the pale dead sunflowers and the giant weeds stirred in the rain. “Time was”, he answered, “there wasn’t a tighter little cot in the county, not a prettier garden. A regular little parlour she was. But now no folk’ll live in it, and there’s a very few tramps’ll stop here either.”

There were none of the rags and tins and broken food about that you find in place where many beggars are used to stay. “Why’s that?” I asked. He gave a very troubled sigh before answering. “Ghosts”, he said, “ghosts. Him that lived here. It is a mighty sad tale, and I’ll not tell it to you; but the upshot of it was that he drowned himself, down to the millpond. All slimy he was, and floating, when they pulled him out of it. There are folks who have seen him floating on the pond, and folks have seen him set round the corner of the school, waiting for his childer. Seems as if he had forgotten, like how they were all gone dead, the way he drowned himself. But there are some who say he walks up and down this cottage, up and down; like when the small-pox had them, and they couldn’t sleep but if they heard his feet going up and down by their doors. Drowned himself down the pond, he did, and now he walks.”

The stranger sighed again, and I could hear the water squelch in his boots as he moved himself. “But it doesn’t do for the likes of us to get superstitious”, I answered. “It wouldn’t do for us to get seeing ghosts, or many’s the wet night we’d be lying in the roadway.” “No”, he said; “no, it wouldn’t do at all. I never had belief in Walks myself.” I laughed. “Nor I that”, I said. “I never see ghosts, whoever may.”

He looked at me again in his queer melancholy fashion. “No”, he said, “expect you don’t ever. Some folks don’t. It’s hard enough for poor fellows to have no money to their lodging, apart from ghosts scaring them.” “It’s the coppers, not spooks, that make me sleep uneasy”, I said. “What with coppers, and meddlesome minded folk, it isn’t easy to get a night’s rest nowadays.”

The water was still oozing from his clothes all about the floor, and a dank smell went up from him. “God! man”, I cried, “can’t you ever get dry?”

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“Dry?” He made a little coughing laughter. “Dry? I shan’t ever get dry, be it wet or fine, winter or summer. See that!” He thrust his muddy hands up to the wrist into the fire, glowering over it fiercely and madly. But I caught up my two boots and ran crying out into the night.

5.D.1.β. Reading comprehension and comments a) Compare the ghost in this story with the Canterville ghost. b) Consider the setting and the circumstances. Are the ‘primary

conditions of receptive expectation’ met in this case? c) Nevertheless, is there any denial-of-expectation element that

secures the final surprise? d) Read also the text in the translation module closing this unit,

characterise Leslie and Keats’ spirits, and make an attempt to sketch a “ghost typology”.

5.D.2.β. Translate the first two paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

5.E. As a preparation for an open oral debate, put down some

ideas related to the topic: The paradox – between reality and game of the intellect.

5.F. Translate the following text into English:

Pe vremuri auzeam că sufletele răposaţilor dau de ştire cui vor ele

că sunt acolo bătând uşor în lemnul mobilelor. Am încercat şi eu, dar nu e aşa de uşor. Deseori am senzaţia perfectă că am mâinile şi trupul întregi ca odinioară. Dar cu mâinile acestea n-am reuşit să mişc, la noi în odaie, nici măcar o firimitură de pâine de pe podea. Îi căzuse nevesti-mi în timp ce mânca, lacrimile şiroindu-i pe obraz. Privea firimitura cu o curioasă insistenţă şi, dacă ar fi văzut-o dintr-o dată cum se mişcă şi se plimbă pe podea, ar fi înţeles că eu eram cel care o împingea. Dar nu am reuşit s-o fac.

Când sunt stăpânit de asemenea gânduri, simt în jurul meu o mulţime de fiinţe care ar vrea să mă ajute.

– Degeaba încerci cu mâinile, mi-a şoptit clar una dintre acestea. Concentrează-ţi gândul asupra acţiunii fizice pe care vrei s-o provoci, mi-a spus.

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– Hai, lasă firimitura aia, a intervenit atunci altcineva, asta-i o treabă prea grea. Fiecare lucru, la timpul lui. Deocamdată, mulţumeşte-te cu ceva pocnituri în uşa dulapului!

– Măcar de-aş reuşi, zisei, mi-ar plăcea grozav. – Foarte bine! Atunci fii atent la ce-ţi spun eu. Să vedem… Uită-

te la lemnul acestui dulap. E făcut din… – E de brad, îl întrerupsei eu, nu aveam bani să cumpăr unul mai

bun! – Asta nu ne priveşte. E făcut din materie, înţelegi? Din acea

materie pe care noi, dintr-un anumit punct de vedere, n-o mai avem. – Din multe puncte de vedere, după părerea mea, îi spusei. – Nu tocmai! răspunse el, cu tărie. Mai târziu vei înţelege că între

fiinţa ta cea de-acum şi cea de dinainte e doar o uşoară deosebire. Oricum, mai întâi de toate gândeşte-te că închipuirea ta e mai uşoară, mai fluidă decât substanţa din care e alcătuită această mobilă şi că gândul tău poate trece prin acest miez al lemnului ca vântul care trece printre spicele de grâu şi le încovoaie, fără ca ochiul să-l poată vedea.

– Hm! Nu e chiar aşa uşor! făcui eu. – Ba nicidecum! Plimbă-ţi gândul printre milioanele de molecule

din care e făcută această scândură de lemn, fă-o cu tărie, cu energie, în sus şi în jos, în toate direcţiile. Inerţia i se va tulbura şi, pentru o clipă, echilibrul său va simţi intervenţia acestei noi energii.

În acea clipă, simţii că în grupul nostru mai intra cineva. – Lăsaţi băiatul în pace! zise acesta. De ce îl împingeţi să înveţe

astfel de jocuri? Sunt atâtea alte lucruri mai folositoare pe care va trebui să le deprindă încet-încet.

– Ei, şi totuşi… vă rog, ţineam atât de mult să-i dau Patriciei un mic semn de viaţă din parte-mi, protestai eu. […]

Dar fusese destul acel gest de protest al meu, ca odaia cu dulapul şi cu nevastă-mea să dispară din ochii mei şi ca eu să mă trezesc singur, doar cu acela care intrase în vorbă ultimul.

– Nu e cazul să-ţi sperii nevasta cu ciocăniturile tale prosteşti, îmi zise.

– Ei poftim! Bătăile mele prosteşti! N-ai văzut cum se jeluie? Ce n-ar da ea să primească un semn de viaţă de la mine.

– Şi-ar face cruce şi ar scuipa ca de frica dracului! râse el. – Nu cred! Tocmai acum, când mă strigă toată ziua: Leslie! Leslie!

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– Las-o să se răcorească. N-are niciun rost să te învârţi zi şi noapte pe lângă ea. Te va uita. Tu vei avea cu totul altceva de făcut acum.

– Nu vreau să mă uite! Când eram cu ea, nu se uita de loc la mine, îmi şi făcea în ciudă: purta pălărie şi mănuşi!

– Acum ştii că a ţinut la tine. Ar trebui să-ţi fie destul. – Dar cine eşti tu, de te interesezi atât de mine? – Eu sunt Keats, adică cel al cărui nume a fost scris în apă… – A, da, cel din colţ, de pe aleea mea, cel cu dafinul înflorit? Ţi-

am văzut numele scris pe piatră. Şi… e multă vreme de când… ? – Doar atâta ştii despre mine, de dafinul meu? – Da, am sosit aici de puţin timp, nu te-am întâlnit până acum.

Râvneam la copacul tău, plin de flori; mi-am dorit întotdeauna o grădiniţă cu verdeaţă. De când eram mic, mă căţăram pe gardurile grădinilor sau îmi băgam nasul în crăpăturile din zid, să pot privi toate acele frumuseţi pe care nu le puteam avea şi care mă umpleau şi de bucurie, şi de tristeţe. Am scris şi versuri pe tema asta, zisei.

– Da, ştiu. Te cunosc de mult, îmi spuse Keats. – Tu pe mine? Cum asta? Nu-mi aduc aminte să ne fi cunoscut. – Tu n-ai cum s-o ştii, fiindcă eu m-am apucat să-ţi bat prin

dulapuri, în timp ce scriai. – A, adică tu erai pe atunci… – Sigur, din când în când mă aplec să citesc prin caietele poeţilor;

îmi place. Poezia ta cu tristeţea nu e rea.

Luki Galaction – Doamna de pe podul de fier

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UNIT VI

SCIENCE. ANSWERS FROM REALITY

6. Preliminaries 1. Comment upon the covert dichotomy (or, at least, distinction)

between ‘science’ (≈ exact sciences) and humanist disciplines. Focus upon the causes of this psychological patterning.

2. Comment upon the significance of the dissociation that resulted in the modern ascend of the syntagm ‘science and technology’.

6.A. The Five Frontiers of Space by Edward C. Stone

NASA was formed at the dawn of the Space Age as part of the U.S.

investment to create a space-faring capability. Today the United States is indeed a space-faring nation, and it is hard to imagine a future in which it does not remain so. Even if there was no longer a NASA, we would continue to develop and deploy more advanced global positioning, communications, weather, reconnaissance, and systems in space.

Given that the United States is and will be a space-faring nation, what is the role of NASA in space today? Although the Space Age began 46 years ago, it is still the newest realm of human activity. There remains much to learn. A primary role for NASA is to expand the frontiers of this new realm in order to foster increasing activity and broader involvement. Expanding the frontiers of space also serves the national interest by providing opportunities for international partnerships.

There are five frontiers to this new realm of human activity: 1. The physical frontier – going where robotic systems or humans

have not been. 2. The knowledge frontier – discovering and understanding

natural phenomena.

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3. The engineering/technology frontier – developing the innovative engineering and technology required to expand the other frontiers.

4. The human frontier – addressing the physiological, psychological, and other aspects of effective human activity in space.

5. The applications frontier – developing and demonstrating new uses of space.

These frontiers are immense, so choices must be made. Among the criteria for such choices is the extent to which a program or project significantly expands one or more of these frontiers, thereby contributing to the achievement of a long-term goal.

The actual rate of learning or pushing the frontiers is another important measure of the value of individual programs. This is an important criterion for choosing a program. It is also important in deciding to discontinue an activity when the important questions have been answered and the rate of learning has become only incremental or is no longer commensurate with the cost and risk.

In general, space science has long-range goals and roadmaps that are periodically revisited in the light of new knowledge, new capabilities, expected rate of learning, and estimated cost and risk. It also has processes for identifying the best ideas for addressing those goals. Therefore the following focuses on human space-flight.

The human exploration of Mars would clearly expand the physical frontier for human space-flight and could serve as a long-range goal in determining the value of specific investments in the human space-flight program. With proper planning and preparation, the human exploration of Mars would also expand the science frontier. This should be an international goal with a general time frame but not a commitment to a specific date.

Sending humans to Mars would require significantly expanding the engineering / technology and the human frontiers while continuing the scientific exploration of Mars with precursor robotic missions. In the near term this suggests that the human frontier should be a high priority for the International Space Station. The capabilities and use of the International Space Station should be optimized to achieve timely and significant progress in understanding the most important factors affecting human effectiveness and safety during long exposures in space. There will also be opportunities for the International Space Station to contribute to the science and applications frontiers.

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One of the challenges for human space-flight is choosing programs that will significantly increase the rate of learning associated with expanding the frontiers critical to human space-flight so that it is commensurate with the investment and the risk. An effective way to increase the rate of learning is to proceed with a series of smaller steps rather than with the occasional, much larger step represented by a single system designed to address many different and often competing objectives. Each step should focus on an aspect of the engineering and technology or human frontier that is crucial to making a human mission to Mars feasible, affordable, and safe. The exact steps will evolve as we learn, but the overall direction will be guided by the long-term goal of the human exploration of Mars.

Expanding the frontiers means learning by going new places and trying new things. Doing what has not been done before will entail risk, but that will be acceptable if we are learning what is critical to expanding the frontiers, rather than only incrementally improving what we already know and do. That does not mean, however, that institutionally driven risks are acceptable.

Addressing challenging engineering / technology issues on reasonable time scales (e.g. 5 years) will motivate students and attract the talented workforce needed to tackle hard problems. This is important because there are now many more challenging opportunities in engineering and science than there were at the beginning of the Space Age. As a result, there is much more competition for the brightest and best, and the human space-flight program must offer a higher rate of learning to attract a new generation of technical staff.

Experience with the space science program also suggests that if the human space-flight program was structured to produce more learning, additional funding would follow because the value to the long-range goal of human presence on Mars would be apparent and the progress visible. The challenge for the human space-flight program in the next two decades is to take the steps on the frontiers of space that will make human exploration of Mars not just a dream but inevitable.

(in: Issues and Opportunities Regarding the U.S. Space Program – A Summary Report of The Workshop on

National Space Policy – March, 2004)

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6.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. Can you integrate the contextual valence and meanings of the

term ‘frontier’, as employed in this text, within an ampler cultural circumscribing of the concept? Do you consider it a matter of linguistic coincidence that it occurs here?

2. What do you know about ‘the spirit of the Frontier’, and its role in shaping the becoming of America?

3. What do you know about ‘the race for the Moon’ in the sixties? 4. What do you know about the present-day exploration of Mars?

6.B. Vocabulary study and practice 6.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning of any unknown

word or phrase.

6.B.2. Afterwards, try and find their synonyms and/or opposites among the words and phrases that you had already known.

6.C. Supplementary text and assignments

Earliest Fire Sheds Light on Hominids

by Nadja Neumann Ancient Hearths Unveiled As Nearly 800 Millennia Old

You could travel back 790,000 years and still find someone to light your fire: archaeologists have collected evidence that early humans mastered fire much earlier than previously thought.

There is already good evidence for hearths that are 250,000 years old, and it was widely believed that the first controlled handling of fire occurred 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.

But an analysis of burned remains carried out by Naama Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and her team now proves that fire was tamed at least 300,000 years earlier than that.

The researchers have spent the past 15 years unearthing and sorting sediments at a site called Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel. The site is of particular interest to archaeologists because it was an old

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crossroads between Asia and Eurasia. It is also waterlogged, which means that any ancient remains are extremely well conserved.

The team sorted flint and wood from the 790,000-year-old site into burned and unburned material. They found that burned material made up less than 2% of the total and was concentrated at specific locations in the site, suggesting the fires that created it were started and controlled by early humans.

Goren-Inbar sees the study as a breakthrough in terms of understanding the evolution of hominids: the fact that they were using fire so early tells scientists a great deal about their abilities and behaviour at the time.

Hearth Desire As well as providing protection against wild animals, fire would

have enabled hominids to cook their food, stay warm during the winter and possibly improve their weapons.

Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London, UK, suggests that the use of fire would have enriched the hominids’ social lives too. People may have gathered around campfires, staying awake longer and interacting more than before.

He also points out that this first use of fire correlates with the time that hominids are thought to have entered colder areas such as Europe and Northern China, suggesting that fire helped hominids to explore environments that were previously too hostile.

Goren-Inbar’s analysis suggests that, as well as using fire, inhabitants of the site in Israel were collecting plant food, hunting and processing meat.

The team plans further analysis of the site’s material to determine which species of hominid was responsible for the fires. Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and Homo sapiens were all around at the time, and all were able to walk upright, had large brains and were already using tools made of stone.

(in: Nature News Service / April, 30, 2004 / Macmillan Magazines Ltd © 2004)

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6.C.1. Reading comprehension and comments a) What do you think of the continuous “back-shift” re-dating that

contemporary anthropological discoveries bring about? b) Comment upon the cultural symbolism of fire.

6.C.2. Translate the text into Romanian.

6.D. Proofread and revise one of your first term essays from the ulterior perspective offered by the guidelines

in academic writing included in this unit.

6.E. Translate the following texts into English: Ştiinţa este ca o ştafetă în care fiecare alergător preia torţa de la

cei care l-au precedat imediat, pentru a o duce mai departe. Toate achiziţiile ştiinţei sunt mereu reconsiderate şi inserate în noul context şi în noul limbaj pe care ştiinţa le elaborează. Această situaţie a determinat pe unii să afirme că ştiinţa nu aparţine culturii, deoarece în ştiinţă totul se perimează. Ce valoare culturală ar putea avea un concept, un rezultat, o teorie, un model al căror destin este de a fi înlocuite de altele, pentru ca acestea din urmă să aibă aceeaşi soartă? Numai că înlocuirea unor concepte, modele sau teorii ştiinţifice nu se manifestă în sensul renunţării la ele ca la nişte obiecte inutile, pe care le aruncăm în lada de gunoi, ci în sensul inserării lor într-un cadru mai cuprinzător, într-un context nou, în care le citim mereu şi mereu altfel. S-a perimat teorema lui Pitagora sau conceptul de număr prim? S-a perimat teoria gravitaţională a lui Newton? Numai lectura lor se îmbogăţeşte şi se precizează mereu. Transformarea necontenită a limbajului ştiinţei poate da uneori impresia că anumite fapte mai vechi au fost uitate; ele pot deveni, într-adevăr, de nerecunoscut la prima vedere, dar o privire mai atentă ne va dezvălui o legătură organică cu etapele anterioare. Adevărul este că destul de multe fapte rezistă şi acum în forma lor din urmă cu două mii de ani; o bună parte din matematica şcolară intră în această categorie.

Solomon Marcus – Invenţie şi descoperire

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Într-adevăr, cultura contemporană, precumpănitor ştiinţifică, pare să fi ajuns astăzi în impasul la care sfârşise cultura teologică a Evului Mediu: trebuie să explice cu mijloace perfecte o lume imperfectă. Teologia se bloca în problema „Theodiceii”, anume cum poate face un Creator, desăvârşit şi bun, o lume totuşi plină de rele, iar tentativele de-a răspunde la o asemenea problemă duseseră la gnosticism şi „erezii”, în Antichitate, spre a zgudui apoi din temelii lumea creştină. Ceea ce s-a întâmplat cu logosul divin începe să se întâmple cu logosul matematic în lumea contemporană. Să fie matematicienii teologii lumii noastre?

Nu sunt chiar ei, căci păstrează, dincolo de blocări, sau stimulaţi tocmai de ele, o suverană inventivitate. Dar s-ar putea ca teologii zilelor noastre să fie creatorii formalismelor de tot felul, inspiraţi de matema-ticieni. Iar aşa cum teologii de altă dată, nemulţumiţi de imperfecţiunile realului, se refugiau adesea în lumea ierarhiilor îngereşti, teologii contemporani fac şi ei un fel de angelologie, trăgându-se tot mai mult înspre făpturile desăvârşite ale tehnicii, puse pe lume de ştiinţa nouă. Dacă realitatea, societatea, limbile sunt imperfecte, cu atât mai rău pentru ele – par teologii cei noi a spune.

Constantin Noica – Scrisori despre logica lui Hermes

6.F. Guidelines in academic writing 6.F.1. Essays I When writing a short or medium-sized essay, the following

fundamental principles are to be observed: 1) lexical and grammatical accuracy; 2) articulated internal organisation (in terms of structure, function

and cohesion); 3) stylistic appropriateness. 1) In order to be lexically and grammatically accurate: – check up in a dictionary the spelling and the meaning(s) of any

word (collocation) which is not quite familiar to you; – avoid repetitions and/or stylistically inappropriate choice of

words, idioms etc. – see also 3) – by carefully making use of synonyms or equivalent expressions, an ability which also presupposes a steady process of enriching your vocabulary (reading, lexical exercises etc.);

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– verify your grammar, proofreading the written text, and, whenever necessary, consulting the literature on the morphological or syntactic aspect in question;

– it is also advisable to avoid very long complex sentences, and to pay a special attention to such issues as the use and sequence of tenses, irregular forms, agreement, asemantic (expletive) subjects, anaphors etc., these being the areas of the highest risk of errors;

– check punctuation. 2) The general organisation of a piece of academic writing (an

essay, a report, various other types of assignments) is grounded on the three basic elements of structure (the introduction, the development, the conclusion), which are mapped onto the units of content (sentences and paragraphs), in order to convey various descriptive, narrative, analytic, argumentative etc. functions – see further –, the overall cohesion being secured by logical and formal connectives.

– The introduction contains the initial (brief) formulation of the topic. This statement of the problem (and, possibly, the comments on the way it is to be treated) represent what is sometimes called “the thesis”.

– The development is the main body of the presentation, analysis or discussion, in other words the detailed approach to the thesis. It consists of a logically ordered set of main ideas, each of which is variably detailed, but obligatorily accompanied by the minimally necessary illustrations and/or arguments, comments.

N. B.: Do not deal with more than one main idea within one and the same unit of content (paragraph).

– The conclusion is a summary of the main points tackled in the development, in support of a final reiteration of the thesis.

Each part of the writing employs particular language structures and uses, in accordance with the specific purpose of communication (or ‘function’): describing, defining, exemplifying, classifying, analysing, comparing, arguing etc.

Each function is rendered as sentences and paragraphs, these material units of content being linked or joined together by connectives (or ‘transitions’), viz. words or phrases that indicate a logical relationship, and thus support the cohesion of the writing.

Connectives generally group within three basic types:

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a) ‘the AND type’; b) ‘the OR type’; c) ‘the BUT type’. a) The discussion, argument, or comment in the development of

the topic may be a straightforward one, in which case ideas sequentially accumulate, and the logical relationship requires ‘AND type’ connectives.

These ones may indicate: – listing (1. enumeration: first(ly), second(ly), first and foremost,

last but not least, next, lastly, finally, to begin with, and to conclude etc.; 2. addition: reinforcement – also, further, moreover, in addition etc. – or equation – equally, likewise, similarly etc.);

– transition (regarding, as for, as far as … is / are concerned etc.);

– summation (therefore, thus, to conclude etc.); – apposition (i.e., in particular, in other words etc.); – result (accordingly, hence, consequently etc.); – inference (in that case, otherwise etc.). b) Sometimes alternative solutions, views are also employed,

there being a need for connectives of the ‘OR type’. (After the alternative has been considered, the main line of argument is to be resumed).

These connectives may signal: – reformulation (better, rather etc.); – replacement (alternatively, on the other hand etc.). c) As usually required by the desideratum of an objective survey,

the opposite position, arguments etc are to be considered or referred to. This triggers the involvement of the ‘BUT type’ connectives. (Similarly, there has to be an ulterior return to the main thesis, for the sake of consistency.)

This type indicates: – contrast (conversely, on the contrary, instead etc.); – concession (however, nevertheless, still, despite that, even if etc.). Summing up, the general organisation of the piece of writing will

be as follows: introduction → [a] supporting information → [a] main development (also [b] alternatives,

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[c] opposite arguments) → [a] conclusion. 3) Stylistic appropriateness resides in the correct choice

(considering the type and topic of assignment, the targeted audience etc.) of the cluster of multi-levelled linguistic characteristics that corresponds to a certain stylistic register (or ‘degree of formality’).

Some authors list five such degrees (‘styles’): – frozen (used in print or declamation); – formal (detaching the emittent from the receiver); – consultative (background information is supplied, the

vocabulary is carefully chosen); – casual (shared information is presupposed, relaxed speech); – intimate (indicates a close relationship). Newmark (1988) distinguishes eight levels of formality. For

illustrating them, we supply his example: – Officialese level: The consumption of any nutrients whatsoever

is categorically prohibited in this establishment. – Officialese level: The consumption of nutrients is prohibited in

this establishment. – Formal level: You are requested not to consume food in this

establishment. – Neutral level: Eating is not allowed here. – Informal level: Please don’t eat here. – Colloquial level: You can’t feed your face here. – Slang level: Lay off the nosh! – Taboo level: Lay off the f---– nosh! A second scale refers to degrees of language simplicity versus

complexity, and it has six levels: – simple; – popular; – neutral; – educated; – technical; – opaque technical. The third scale captures emotional tone, and it has four levels: – intense; – warm; – cool or factual;

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– cold understatement. Despite this variety of style classification and criteria, the central

recommendation remains to avoid lower stylistic registers in writing, and in academic essays in particular.

In terms of characterising features at various linguistic levels of analysis, this roughly means:

– a carefully chosen vocabulary (a choice for more Latin etymons, specific terminology, fewer idiomatic expressions etc.);

– frequent unrestrictive use of Simple Present; – explicit connectors; – no contracted forms or elliptical constructions; – frequent passive, existential, and impersonal constructions; – non-agentive inanimate / abstract subjects; – more numerous and complex relationships of subordination etc. N. B.: An elevated vocabulary does not presuppose the excessive

use of (unnecessary) rare or highly specialised words.

6.F.2. Written assignments and exercises 6.F.2.1. Write a short essay (1-1½ p.) on the topic Religious

education in schools, identifying and specifying the elements of internal organisation. Verify and outline the observing of the three principles.

6.F.2.2. Render one and the same idea in different stylistic registers (e.g. formal, neutral, and informal).

6.F.3. Essays II According to a widely accepted general classification, the

following main types of essays are to be distinguished: 1) narrative; 2) descriptive; 3) discursive (analytic and argumentative), each type posing certain specific problems. Thus, narrative essays require a special attention in terms of point

of view, temporal sequencing of events, and amount of comments (if any).

As far as descriptive essays are concerned, the key aspects regard spatial displaying, and identification of perceptually (and/or emotionally) relevant / salient features / properties.

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In both cases, various mental associations and logical processes (parallelisms, analogies, comparisons, contrasts) can be also employed.

Analytic and argumentative essays equally make extensive use of the basic discursive tools, viz. definition, exemplification, and classification.

Definitions can be more or less accurate and/or expanded, depending upon (situational) context, amount of available information, purpose, degree of complexity / technicality of the concept to be defined etc. In everyday usage, functional enough (though imperfect) definitions seem to be usually centred upon what is most salient in perceptual terms.

For instance, a tree may be more often defined in terms of its branches and leaves, although these can be optional at different periods in the life of the tree, than in terms of trunk or root, in spite of the fact that a tree must have them in order to be a tree.

It appears therefore that more or less rigorously versus suitably chosen distinctive features play in all cases and situations an important role in the logical processes associated with defining.

The principles according to which these features are organised and exploited in providing scientific or simply “tidy” definitions can be summed up under the form of two main requirements that any definition has to meet: the identification of the 1) genus proximus and the specification of 2) differentia specifica.

These two components practically constitute the minimally necessary parts of a definition.

In semantic terms, their interdependence can be interpreteded as the intersection between the vertical, hierarchical relation of hyponymy, and the horizontal, contrastive relation of incompatibility.

This is to say that one has to determine the immediately superior (inclusive) category to which the concept to be defined belongs, and the opposing feature(s) securing its distinction from other items subordinated to the same dominating category.

e.g.: A laptop is a portable [2] computer [1]. It appears evident that defining is a process in close relationship

with classifying. e.g.: Being a portable computer, the laptop is an electronic device, which also incorporates some mechanical parts.

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Definitions are also to be supported by exemplifications, i.e. by the providing of actualisations of the concept, of its particular instantiations.

e.g.: Examples of cutlery, i.e. of tools for preparing and eating food, are: the spoon, the knife etc. Frequent mistakes in defining consist in: – supplying an example instead of a definition; – omitting either general class or distinctive characteristic; – providing circular definitions. e.g.: *Means of transport are for instance cars, trains etc. *A biologist studies plants and animals. *A biologist is a university graduate. *Syntax is (the science) about syntax. Mistakes in exemplification may consist in choosing an atypical

representative, while errors in classification usually reside in resorting to a higher than the immediately dominant category.

e.g.: *…games, as for instance skeet… *The spider is an animal.

6.F.4. Written assignments and exercises 6.F.4.1. Define and illustrate: illness, sky-scraper, pollution. 6.F.4.2. Comment upon your most frequent mistakes in

defining, classifying, and illustrating.

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UNIT VII

LAW, CULTURE, AND CONVENTIONS. ANSWERS FROM THE OTHERS

7. Preliminaries 1. Comment upon the relationship between law and convention. Is

law a convention that has become compulsory? How can this transformation come to be? Which is the place / role of culture in this?

2. How would you interpret the title of this last unit? Think of the other titles, too.

7.A. How a Lawless ‘Data Haven’ Is Using Law to Protect Itself by Gary Slapper

When is a state not a state? When it is a playground on stilts in 30 ft of water, some might say, looking out at Sealand, the world’s newest self-proclaimed state, off the Suffolk coast.

The Government has apparently allowed itself to be painted into a corner over an intriguing issue of international law. A story that began in an apparently risible way in September 1967, and was nothing much more than a minor item of local news about a small eccentric family, has metamorphosed into an international incident.

For at the very time when Parliament has just passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which allows private computer information to be monitored where serious crime or breaches of national security are involved, a putative state without any such laws or concerns is threatening the interests of the Government off the port of Felixtowe.

During the Second World War Britain established an artificial island on the high seas. It was equipped with radar and heavy armaments and was occupied by 200 servicemen. Their task was to guard the approaches to the Thames Estuary where convoys of shipping were assembled.

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After the war the island was abandoned. Then in the winter of 1966, a former major, Roy Bates, took possession of the outpost known as Roughs Tower. On September 2, 1967, Bates and his family hoisted their own flag and later declared the existence of the Principality of Sealand.

The island was outside the then existing three-mile territorial waters of Britain. The juridical status of the Principality of Sealand is now the subject of heated legal and political controversy.

A group of American business entrepreneurs, led by Sean Hastings, 31, is setting up the world’s first offshore “data haven” on the island. The computer experts come from the Anguilla-based firm HavenCo Ltd and are keen to launch the only place in the world that can offer almost complete anonymity and privacy to anyone who wants to conduct e-business beyond the gaze of the authorities. Clearly, this matter is of grave concern to the police, the Inland Revenue and the intelligence services. The son of Roy Bates, Prince Michael, 47, has been reported as saying: “It is about freedom and liberty and making it easier for people to do business in private and to express themselves freely.”

The commonly accepted criteria among jurists for determining whether an entity is a state are taken from the jus gentium – the law of nations. This law is derived from the Institutes of Justinian, the major treatise written by the command of the Roman Emperor Justinian and published in AD 533. One thorny problem for the Government is that according to the three major criteria of statehood, Sealand does appear to have a good claim.

The requirements are: a national territory; a people coming together as a nation; and a sovereign state authority. It does not matter that it is only 932 sq yd in size because there is no minimum area legally articulated for something to be a state. Vatican City is classified as a state even though it is minuscule. Neither is there a requirement that the population rises above a certain minimum. Nor is it an argument that the structure was created by the Government as it was legally terra nullis – abandoned land – when it was taken over. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, signed in 1933, itemises the same criteria as the jus gentium, plus the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Sealand appears also to have

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satisfied this criterion. If Sealand is an independent state, it could legitimately claim its own coastal waters and regulate its own airspace. The Government is also in difficulties over this because on two occasions it has appeared to endorse the idea that Sealand is both beyond its jurisdiction and has the status of a state.

In 1968 the Royal Navy expressed concern over Bates’ presence on Sealand and sent in some boats. Bates fired warning shots at them and was then prosecuted in a Crown Court. He argued that the newly named Sealand was beyond British jurisdiction and this was accepted by the trial judge.

Then in 1978, three years after Sealand declared itself a sovereign principality, Dutch and German businessmen came over with a business proposition. However, while they were there, they took the fortress and Prince Michael prisoner. He was freed in a counter-attack from the air by King Roy and the businessmen were taken as PoWs. When Germany asked Britain to intervene, it was told that the fortress was beyond British jurisdiction.

Students of the relationship between law and realpolitik will be watching developments here closely. The spectacle of a new state with no laws appealing to international law to protect it against an ancient state overflowing with laws cannot help but be intriguing.

(The Times – August, 8, 2000) 7.A.1. Reading comprehension and comments 1. If you were a statesman, would you support or at least approve

such an initiative as the one in the story? As an ordinary citizen, what do you think?

2. Comment upon whether there should be a limit that actions performed in the name of principles like free initiative and entrepreneurship cannot exceed or not.

3. Democracy is usually defined as the freedom to think or do whatever one wishes to, provided that one does not by this interfere or restrict the same freedom in others. Can a radical interpretation of this principle come instead to affect the indirect exponents of the others, like the state and its institutions?

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7.B. Vocabulary study and practice

7.B.1. Look up in a dictionary the meaning of any unknown word or phrase.

7.B.2. Afterwards, try and find their synonyms and/or opposites among the words and phrases that you had already known.

7.B.3. The verb assemble is used in the text in one of its possible (but all closely related) meanings. Consider also other verbs in the semantic field of actions of joining an combining, like: mingle, mix, shuffle, blend, amalgamate, merge, fuse.

a) Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features:

[± dissolving], [± chemical combination], [± tobacco, drinks, colours], [± melting], [± obtaining an alloy], [± sinking], [± cement], [± images], [± companies, banks], [± cards], [± also used figuratively] etc. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. The view is splendid; only Nature can … such colours. 2. Brass is obtained in this furnace, by … copper with zinc. 3. He doesn’t like anybody to … when he and his friends are

having their poker game, and he always … the cards almost solemnly. 4. Our board is not against the idea of … with a larger company,

but we cannot accept taking over. 5. To … hydrargyrum does not mean simply … this chemical

element with another, but obtaining a new substance, a compound evincing completely different properties.

7.C. Supplementary texts and assignments

α) from Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley For some time past Mary’s grave blue eyes had been fixed upon

him. “What have you been writing lately?” she asked. It would be nice to have a little literary conversation. “Oh, verse and prose,” said Denis – “just verse and prose.”

“Prose?” Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. “You’ve been writing prose?” “Yes.” “Not a novel?” “Yes.” “My poor Denis!”

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exclaimed Mr. Scogan. “What about?” Denis felt rather uncomfortable. “Oh, about the usual things, you know.” “Of course,” Mr. Scogan groaned. “I’ll describe the plot for you. Little Percy, the hero, was never good at games, but he was always clever. He passes through the usual public school and the usual university and comes to London, where he lives among the artists. He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous Future.”

Denis blushed scarlet. Mr. Scogan had described the plan of his novel with an accuracy that was appalling. He made an effort to laugh. “You’re entirely wrong,” he said. “My novel is not in the least like that.” It was a heroic lie. Luckily, he reflected, only two chapters were written. He would tear them up that very evening when he unpacked.

Mr. Scogan paid no attention to his denial, but went on: “Why will you young men continue to write about things that are so entirely uninteresting as the mentality of adolescents and artists? Professional anthropologists might find it interesting to turn sometimes from the beliefs of the Blackfellow to the philosophical preoccupations of the undergraduate. But you can’t expect an ordinary adult man, like myself, to be much moved by the story of his spiritual troubles. And after all, even in England, even in Germany and Russia, there are more adults than adolescents. As for the artist, he is preoccupied with problems that are so utterly unlike those of the ordinary adult man – problems of pure aesthetics which don’t so much as present themselves to people like myself – that a description of his mental processes is as boring to the ordinary reader as a piece of pure mathematics. A serious book about artists regarded as artists is unreadable; and a book about artists regarded as lovers, husbands, dipsomaniacs, heroes, and the like is really not worth writing again. Jean-Christophe is the stock artist of literature, just as Professor Radium of “Comic Cuts” is its stock man of science.”

“I’m sorry to hear I’m as uninteresting as all that,” said Gombauld. “Not at all, my dear Gombauld,” Mr. Scogan hastened to explain. “As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I’ve no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you’re a bore.”

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“I entirely disagree with you,” exclaimed Mary. She was somehow always out of breath when she talked. And her speech was punctuated by little gasps. “I’ve known a great many artists, and I’ve always found their mentality very interesting. Especially in Paris. Tschuplitski, for example – I saw a great deal of Tschuplitski in Paris this spring...”

“Ah, but then you’re an exception, Mary, you’re an exception,” said Mr. Scogan. “You are a femme superieure.” A flush of pleasure turned Mary’s face into a harvest moon.

7.C.1.α. Reading comprehension and comments Comment upon how conventional iterativity can come to

transform the questions of existence, and existence itself, into banality and boredom.

7.C.2.α. Translate the first three paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

β) from A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE by David Hume Of the Effects of Custom Nothing has a greater effect both to encrease and diminish our

passions, to convert pleasure into pain, and pain into pleasure, than custom and repetition. Custom has two original effects upon the mind, in bestowing a facility in the performance of any action or the conception of any object; and afterwards a tendency or inclination towards it; and from these we may account for all its other effects, however extraordinary.

When the soul applies itself to the performance of any action, or the conception of any object, to which it is not accustomed, there is a certain unpliableness in the faculties, and a difficulty of the spirit’s moving in their new direction. As this difficulty excites the spirits, it is the source of wonder, surprize, and of all the emotions, which arise from novelty; and is in itself very agreeable, like every thing, which inlivens the mind to a moderate degree. But though surprize be agreeable in itself, yet as it puts the spirits in agitation, it not only augments our agreeable affections, but also our painful, according to the foregoing principle, that every emotion, which precedes or attends a passion, is easily converted into it. Hence every thing, that is new, is

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most affecting, and gives us either more pleasure or pain, than what, strictly speaking, naturally belongs to it. When it often returns upon us, the novelty wears off; the passions subside; the hurry of the spirits is over; and we survey the objects with greater tranquillity.

By degrees the repetition produces a facility of the human mind, and an infallible source of pleasure, where the facility goes not beyond a certain degree. And here it is remarkable that the pleasure, which arises from a moderate facility, has not the same tendency with that which arises from novelty, to augment the painful, as well as the agreeable affections. The pleasure of facility does not so much consist in any ferment of the spirits, as in their orderly motion; which will sometimes be so powerful as even to convert pain into pleasure, and give us a relish in time what at first was most harsh and disagreeable. But again, as facility converts pain into pleasure, so it often converts pleasure into pain, when it is too great, and renders the actions of the mind so faint and languid, that they are no longer able to interest and support it. And indeed, scarce any other objects become disagreeable through custom; but such as are naturally attended with some emotion or affection, which is destroyed by the too frequent repetition. One can consider the clouds, and heavens, and trees, and stones, however frequently repeated, without ever feeling any aversion. But when the fair sex, or music, or good cheer, or any thing, that naturally ought to be agreeable, becomes indifferent, it easily produces the opposite affection. Custom not only gives a facility to perform any action, but likewise an inclination and tendency towards it, where it is not entirely disagreeable, and can never be the object of inclination. And this is the reason why custom encreases all active habits, but diminishes passive, according to the observation of a late eminent philosopher. The facility takes off from the force of the passive habits by rendering the motion of the spirits faint and languid. But as in the active, the spirits are sufficiently supported of themselves, the tendency of the mind gives them new force, and bends them more strongly to the action.

7.C.1.β. Reading comprehension and comments Comment upon the antagonism between the effects of habitude

upon sustained activities, on the one hand, and upon emotions, on the other hand.

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7.C.2.β. Translate the first paragraph of the text into Romanian.

7.D. Proofread and revise another one of your first term essays

from the ulterior perspective offered by the guidelines in academic writing included in these two last units.

7.E. Translate the following text into English:

În pădure are faima unui ins de vază, cum şi-o fi creat această faimă

iară nu pot pricepe, şi toate animalele se dau bine pe lângă mine, ca mai apropiat lui, ca să afle ce mai face Maestrul. Ce-a mai zis Maestrul, ce-a mai mâncat, ce-a mai rumegat? Maestrul a binevoit să facă aprecieri asupra vremii? Cum mai e vremea, după opinia Maestrului? Şi tot felul de nerozii de astea. (E şi pădurea asta o nătăfleaţă!) Închipuiţi-vă câte lucruri interesante trebuie să scornesc, pentru a ţine sus steagul (al Maestrului, na), să fiu gata în orice clipă să dau câte un răspuns de să rămână lupii, vulpile, coţofenele, mâţele-n coadă.

– Nu se mai găseşte zmeură cu frişcă. (Aceasta e chiar o opinie a Ursului). Dar pornind de la această constatare a sa, pe care o spun la început, ca aperitiv, încep să torn la minciuni, care mai de care mai gogonate. Nu numai că nu se mai găseşte, dar nici n-o să se mai găsească vreodată. V-aţi lins pe bot, adio zmeură cu frişcă, pentru că, anul viitor, pădurea o să fie tăiată, transformată în butuci şi mutată la oraş. Şi asta n-ar fi nimic, am mai văzut noi păduri tăiate, dacă mai întâi nu s-ar face recensământul tuturor dobitoacelor, cu însemnarea exactă a locului unde se află fiecare, în aşa fel încât, atunci când se purcede la transferul pădurii, pleci cu copacul tău cel mai apropiat. De ce, de ce? întrebau alarmate vulpile mai ales. Simplu ca bună-ziua. Pentru a se crea, acolo la oraş, un microclimat. Ca pădurea să nu rămână singură, şi ca totul să fie ca mai-nainte. Cum „ca mai-nainte”? întreabă veveriţele. Ca acum. Păi cum ca acum, dacă spui ca mai-nainte, nu vezi că n-ai logică?

– Vreţi să spuneţi că Maestrul ar fi lipsit de logica cea mai elementară, asta vreţi să insinuaţi?

– Susţine Maestrul toate bazaconiile astea? – Nu numai că le susţine, dar e în stare să se şi supere dacă aude

că nu-i crezut pe cuvânt. Ştiţi cum a fost anul trecut, când zicea să vă

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faceţi provizii de apă, că n-o să plouă trei luni şi toate dobitoacele s-au pus pe săpat fântâni şi după aceea a plouat trei luni încontinuu.

– Nu-i bun exemplul, pentru că nu s-a nimerit. – Putea să se nimerească şi mai rău. (Astea le-am dat iar ca vorbe

ale Maestrului.) Cea mai frumoasă teorie a Ursului (de fapt a mea, dar nu puteam

s-o dau ca originală, căci eu nu am încă un nume şi deocamdată, vreo câţiva ani, sunt obligat să lucrez în colectiv) a fost aceea că pământul nu se învârteşte, cum susţin unii, ci merge drept. Pământul acesta e un fel de potecă prin univers şi cine a mai pomenit poteci învârtindu-se? În schimb luna, care e mai mică, merge drept, dar din când în când face un cot, în aşa fel încât se poate spune că merge în formă de L, asta pentru că e îndrăgostită de el, de Pământ, adică, dar el o ţine drept, pe poteca lui şi de-asta nu se întâlnesc niciodată, şi de-asta ne merge nouă rău, pentru că trăim sub o nefericire cosmică.

La chestia asta, toţi pesimiştii din pădure m-au pupat, şarpele n-a pierdut ocazia de-a strecura puţin venin: – Eu niciodată n-am dat doi bani pe lună-lumina.

Iată ce fac eu toată ziua, cum trebuie să-mi storc creierii ca să-i ţin sus steagul (iar scapă cratiţa, de-astă dată pot să jur că intenţionat). Şi de-asta el, când iese din vizuină, e celebru gata şi toţi se reped să-l salute, considerând un noroc al lor de-a intra cu fundul în mărăcini când trece el.

Dar are şi părţi bune. Habar n-are pe ce lume trăieşte. Crede că tot ce zboară pe sus, cu talangă sau fără, se mănâncă şi, în adâncul sufletului său, zace o dragoste de viaţă şi de semeni cât în şapte. N-ar fi în stare să calce o furnică, toate fiarele care i se plâng găsesc o vorbă bună, chit că este invariabil aceeaşi: mor, mor, mor!

Marin Sorescu – Viziunea vizuinii

7.F. Guidelines in academic writing 7.F.1. Scientific papers, reports, studies The basic framework of a scientific paper follows the same main

principles of internal structuring that were presented when discussing essays, the major difference consisting in the necessity to order the

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elements of information strictly pyramidally, i.e. from the most encompassing issue to the most particular aspect.

This is due to the fact that the considerable increase in the amount of information triggers a more evident graduality of the latter in terms of generality vs. specificity.

A research paper usually consists in: 1. Preliminaries (title, acknowledgements, contents, list of figures

/ tables); 2. Introduction (abstract, statement of the problem); 3. Main body (review of the literature, design and methods of the

investigation, presentation of the investigation, results); 4. Conclusion (summary of the investigation and results); 5. Extras (bibliography, appendices).

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Şerban, D. şi Drǎguşin, D. (2007) English Practical Course for Second Year Students, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

Tudosescu, A. (2007) Elements of English Syntax and Semantics, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei România de Mâine.

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