Clockwork Language - Glossary of Nadsat

The phrase “As queer as a clockwork orange,” which inspired the title of Anthony Burgess' famous novel, is first of all “good old East-London slang,” as the author explains in an interview conducted after the success of Stanley Kubrick's film based on his novel. (If you've missed it, you can find it here!).

Intending to bring together “the organic, the lively, the sweet, in other words 'life' – the orange –, and the mechanical, the cold, the discipline,” the writer added “an extra meaning” to it, thereby giving life to a “sour-sweet word.”

“Anybody who knows cockney slang would know the term, anybody who doesn't can give a meaning to it,” comments Burgess. In the same way, the writer crafts new meanings for his novel by giving to some Russian words “a Joycean* twist into English.”

The Nadsat Language is Burgess' creation for his “little squib of a book”

* Burgess was a renown Joyce scholar and Joyce passionate.

Glossary of Nadsat Language

Words that do not appear to be of Russian origin are distinguished by asterisks.

*appy polly loggy – apology

baboochka – old woman
*baddiwad – bad
banda – band
bezoomny – mad
biblio – library
bitva – battle
Bog – God
bolnoy – sick
bolshy – big, great
brat, bratty –

Deconstructing Capitalism

Every morning, the first glance I throw out of my window meets a kind of sun. It does not matter if it is cloudy, rainy or foggy.. this sun always shines. Under this sun many other signs and advertisements keep their place in front and above my window. But this sun in particular, reminds me of the big eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg in the commercial panel mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s novel, The Great Gatsby.

“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window.”— with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it ——” and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’” 

Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night. 

“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson. 

“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.

From The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1925

Read the Image, See the Words.

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.

This is the aim set by the writer Joseph Conrad in the Preface to his novel The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897), which became the manifesto of what is defined as literary impressionism. The concept in itself joins together the visual and literary aspects of narration; the highly vivid impact of the writer's visual imagery, in fact, makes it easy to correlate his written word with equally vivid paintings.

It might be predictable to try and find connections between Conrad's works and and the works of the painters belonging to the Impressionist movement, which developed in France during the 1870s. Nevertheless, reading some passages of The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', made me think about the work of a painter (whom I already had the chance to praise in this blog), who chronologically belonged to a previous artistic era: Joseph M. W. Turner.

Let's consider his famous Slaves Throwing Overboard the Dead and the Dying – Typhoon coming on (aka The Slave Ship, 1840). 

 

The canvas represents a sunset and, in the background, a ship at the mercy of a rough sea. Intense oranges and reds are used to depict the sky at the horizon, while different shades of white and grey are used for the rest of it; the sea is mainly yellow, and the waves are rendered by means of agitated black brush strokes. In the foreground the viewer can see what remains of the bodies of "the dead and the dying", eaten by fishes and sea fowls.

Similarly, in Conrad's The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', the raging of a sea storm—central episode to the whole narration—is described in a way which seems to reflect the painting in all its dramatic vividness.

[The sky] arched high above the ship vibrating and pale, like an immense dome of steel, resonant with the deep voice of freshening gales. The sunshine gleamed cold on the white curls of black waves. […] [The ship] drove to and fro in the unceasing endeavour to fight her way through the invisible violence of the winds. (p. 40)

The terrible storm, that torments the seamen for several days, also causes most of their belongings to fall into the water:

They could see their chests, pillows, blankets, clothing, come out floating upon the sea. […] The straw beds swam high, the blankets, spread out, undulated; while the chests, waterlogged and with a heavy list, pitched heavily like dismasted hulks, before they sank; Archie's big coat passed with outspread arms, resembling a drowned seaman floating with his head under water. (p. 47)

Less harsh than the sight of the dead bodies at sea as in Turner's painting, but still an equally effective and expressive image.

There could undoubtedly be many other similar comparison to be carried out, but I think that this one is already enough to demonstrate both Conrad's and Turner's ability to make one hear, feel, and before all see. 

Sara

* Conrad, Joseph, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and Other Stories, London, Penguin Classics, 2007.