Chapter 255 Ergen

The slang is the language of the people in the dark. Thought, in its darkest depths, churns and churns, and social philosophy cannot but ponder the most bitterly in the face of this riddle-like vulgarity, battered and recalcitrant.There are obvious penalties here.Every syllable is branded.The words of the usual language appear here as if scorched and scorched by the executioner's iron.Some still seem to be smoking.Certain sentences will give you the impression of seeing a bandit suddenly strip off his clothes, revealing a shoulder branded with a lily.People almost refuse to express their thoughts in these legally deprecated words.The metaphor used there is sometimes so bold that one feels it has passed through the iron shackles.

But in spite of all these circumstances, and precisely because of all these circumstances, such strange vulgarism should have a place in the square cabinet where there is no prejudice against rusty copper coins and gold medals, and they are all stored, that is, in the sphere of so-called literature. its unique status.This slang, whether you agree with it or not, has its grammar and rhyme.It's a language.If we can see the influence of Mandelran in the ugliness of some words, we can also feel that Villon has said it in the excellence of some metonymy. This timeless and very famous poem: Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

It's just a slang poem. "Antan" (from "ante annum"), which is a word in the slang of the Kingdom of Tuen, means "last year" and by extension means "once upon a time".Thirty-five years ago, at the time of the great convict departure in 1827, one could still read this phrase in a cell in Bisset Gaol, written by a king of Thune who was sent to serve his sentence in a galley The famous quote engraved on the wall: "Les dabs d'antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coesre." This sentence means "the former kings always went to hold the ordination ceremony." In the king's thinking, Blessing is torture.

The word "Decarade", which means a heavy cart to set off at a gallop, is said to be derived from Villon, which is fitting.This word makes people think of the sparks under the four iron hooves, and compares La Fontaine's beautiful poem: Compressed in a clever onomatopoeia. From the point of view of pure literature, there are few richer and more exotic research subjects than slang.It is a whole language within a language, a sickly burl, an unhealthy graft that produces a tumor, a parasite with its roots on an old Gallic trunk and its grotesque leaves covering the whole half of the language. plant.This may be called the first aspect of slang, the popular aspect.But to those who study languages ​​with the seriousness they deserve—that is to say, as geologists study the earth—slang appears like a veritable alluvium.As we dig down, in shades and shades, we find Provençal, Spanish, Italian, Oriental (languages ​​of the Mediterranean ports), English and German, with the three branches of Romance languages ​​French Romance, Italian Romance and Romance Romance, with Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic.Deep and bizarre structure.This is the building that all the poor people built together underground.Every cursed tribe lays its layer of earth, every pain throws its stone, every heart leaves its pinch of sand.Countless vicious, humble, impatient souls who disappeared into the universe after spending their lives still almost remain among us in their original image, appearing in front of our eyes with the strange shape of a single word.

Want to talk in Spanish?There is a great deal of old Gothic slang here.For example, "boffette" (bellows), from "bofeton"; "vantane" and later "vanterne" (window), from "vantana"; "gat" (cat), from "gato"; "acite" (oil), From "aceyte".Would you like to speak from the Italian side?For example, "spade" (sword), from "spada"; "carvel" (ship), from "caravella".Want to talk in English?For example, "bichot" (bishop), from "bishop"; "raille" (spy), from "rascal", "rascalion" (rogue); "pilche" (case), from "pilcher" (sheath).Would you like to speak in German?For example, "caleur" (waiter), from "kellner"; "hers" (master), from "herzog" (duke).Would you like to speak from the Latin side?For example, "frangir" (to break), from "frangere"; "affurer" (to steal), from "fur"; "cadene" (chain), from "catena".There is one word which appears with great power and mysterious authority in all the languages ​​of the Continent, and that is the word "magnus," by which Scots forms its "mac" (matriarch), as in "Mac -Far-lane", "Mac-Callummore" (it should be noted that "mac" is interpreted as "son" in Celtic); slang used it to form "meck", which later became "meg", that is "God".Want to speak from the Basque side?For example, "gahisto" (ghost) comes from "gaztoa" (evil); "sorgabon" (good night) comes from "gabon" (good evening).Want to talk from Celtic?For example, "blavin" (handkerchief), from "blavet" (fountain); "menesse" (woman, with a hint of malice), from "meinec" (covered with diamonds); "barant" (stream), from "baranton" (spring water); "goffeur" (locksmith), from "goff" (blacksmith); "guedouze" (death), from "guenn-du" (white and black).Do you want to know these things in the end?The ecu is called "maltaise" in slang, a word that comes from recollections of coins that once passed on Maltese galleys.

Besides the sources just indicated in terms of linguistics, slang has other, more natural sources, which spring directly from the consciousness of men. First, the direct creation of words.This is difficult to understand in the language.Use some words to describe some vivid things, neither the method nor the reason.This is the most primitive cornerstone of any human language, we might as well call it the core of language.Black talk is full of words of this kind, words that are spontaneous, invented, from nowhere or by whom, without origin, evidence, or derivation, solitary, crude, and sometimes Hateful, yet strangely expressive and vital word.Executioner (taule), forest (sabri), fear, flight (taf), servant (larbin), general, governor, minister (pharos), devil (ra-bouin).There is nothing stranger than words that cover and reveal.Some words, like "rabouin," are vulgar and frightening, making you imagine Cyclops grimacing.

Second, metaphors.A language that is both fully expressive and fully concealable is characterized by the addition of metaphors.A metaphor is a kind of riddle, a hiding place for attempted robbers and prisoners plotting to escape.No language is more metaphorical than slang. "Devisser le coco" (twist neck), "tortiller" (eat), "etre gerbe" (trial), "un rat" (a bread thief), "il lansquine" (rain), these are very The figurative old words bear the imprint of its time to some extent. It compares the long slanted lines of rainwater to the slanted spear shafts of the spear team, and expresses the popular metonymy "under the knife" in one word. inside.Sometimes, in the passage of slang from the first stage to the second, certain words pass from their barbaric primitive state to metaphor. A "ghost" ceased to be a "rabouin" and became a "boulanger," that is, someone who sent things into the stove.This is more witty, but less grand, like Racine after Corneille, and Euripides after Aeschylus.Certain sentences in slang that span both eras have a rough and metaphorical character, like ghosts in a concave-convex mirror. "Les sorgueurs vont sollicer des gails a Ia lune" (The thief will steal the horse at night), which gives the impression of seeing ghosts, not knowing what to see.

Third, emergency measures.Slang survives by language.It makes use of it according to its own whim, it takes whatever it pleases in language, and often distorts it crudely when necessary.At times, it uses altered common words, intermingled with pure slang terminology, to form vivid phrases, where we sense a mixture of the first two elements—immediate creation and metaphor: “Le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri." (The dog is biting, I suspect the Parisian stagecoach has gone into the woods.) "Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere, la fee est bative." (The boss Silly, the lady boss is cunning, the girl is pretty.) There is also the most common case where slang words are indiscriminately taken from suffixes such as "aille", "orgue", "iergue" or "uche" in order to confuse people's ears. Pick one and add a very ugly tail to some words used in everyday language.For example: "Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche?" (Do you think the hind legs are good?) This is a sentence that Cartouche said to a jailer, and he wanted to ask whether the prison escape money he gave was what he wanted. .In recent years, the suffix "mar" has only been added.

Slang is an often corrosive colloquialism, and thus prone to corruption itself.Besides, it always has to cover up, and when it feels that it has been found out, it changes its face again.Contrary to all plants, it dies when it sees the sun.Therefore, slang is always in constant corruption and regeneration, it works secretly, swiftly, and never stops.It has traveled further in ten years than ordinary language has traveled in ten centuries.Thus "larton" (bread) became "lartif," "gail" (horse) became "gaye," "fertanche" (wheat straw) became "fertille," and "momignard" (child) became "mo-macque." , "siques" (rags) became "frusques," "chique" (church) became "egrugeoir," and "colabre" (neck) became "colas." "Ghost" was originally "gahisto", then "rabouin", then "boulanger" (baker); priest was "ratichon", then "sanglier" (wild boar); dagger was "vingt-deux" (22), followed by "surin", followed by "lingre"; the policeman was "railles" (rake), later changed to "roussins" (tall horse), and then changed to "rousses" (red-haired woman ), then "marchands de lacets" (vendors of cotton gauze ribbons), then "coqueurs," then "cognes"; " (little Charlie), then "atigeur," then "becquillard."In the seventeenth century, "fighting" was "se donner du tabac" (mutual respect for snuff), and in the nineteenth century it became "se chiquer la gueule" (biting the dog's mouth).Twenty different versions have been altered between these two extremes.Katouche's slang was almost Hebrew to Rathner.The words of the language, like the speakers of the language, are never resting, always evading.

However, at some point, old slang words will reappear as new ones as they come and go.It has some strongholds to save itself.The Great Temple preserves the slang of the seventeenth century; Bisset, when it was a prison, also preserves the slang of the Kingdom of Thune.In those slang words one can hear the suffix "anche" used by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Thurn. "Boyanches-tu"? (Do you drink?) "il croyanche" (Thaksin).But eternal change remains a law. A man of philosophy who spends some time studying this ever-disappearing language falls into painful but rewarding contemplation.No research effort can be more productive or instructive than this.Every metaphor and every etymology in slang is a lesson.Among those people, "fighting" is interpreted as "pretend", he "fights" sickness, and cunning is their strength.

For them, the concept of "person" is inseparable from the concept of "shadow".Night is "sorgue" and man is "orgue".Man is a derivative of night. They have become accustomed to see society as a killing environment, as a deadly force.They speak of their liberty as one speaks of their health.A man who is arrested is a "sick man" and a man who has been sentenced is a "dead man". The prisoner, buried within four stone walls, feared nothing more than the icy solitude he called the dungeon "castus."In such a dismal place, the life of the outside world always presents itself in its gayest form.The prisoner dragged his ankles, and you might think that all he missed was being able to walk?No, what he misses is that feet can dance, and if he could saw through the fetters, his first thought would be "he can dance now," and so he called the saw "the dance in the village."A "person's name" is a "centre," a deep resemblance.The gangster had two heads, the one that directed his actions to carry him through his life, and the one that remained on his shoulders to the day of his death, and he called the head that instigated him the "Seminary" to atone for his crimes The head of the tree is called "stump".When a man reaches the point where nothing but rags and evil thoughts remain, and he has degenerated both materially and spiritually to the double meaning of the word "rascal", he is on the verge of crime. The sharp knife has two edges: poor and vicious, but the slang does not say "a scoundrel", it says "a sharpened one".What is a hard labor prison?Is the damned pit of fire and hell.Convicts are called "bundles of firewood".Finally, what name did the gangsters give the prison? "School".A whole system of punishments can be derived from this word. Do you know where most of the songs in the penitentiary, the so-called "lir onfa" in the special vocabulary, came from?Please listen to me: Once upon a time in Paris, at Petit Châtelet, there was a long dungeon.The dungeon clings to the Seine, eight feet below the water.It has no windows or ventilation holes, the only opening is a door.People can go in, but the air cannot.The dungeon was topped by a stone vault, and the floor was ten inches of mud.The ground was originally paved with stone slabs, but due to the seepage of water, the stone slabs were all rotten, and there were cracks everywhere.At a height of eight feet from the ground, there is a thick long beam extending from one end of the tunnel to the other. From this huge beam, a three-foot-long iron chain hangs down at regular intervals. iron flail.This dungeon was to guard the convicts on the galley until the day they were sent to Toulon.These prisoners, one by one, were pushed under the beam to accept the iron iron waiting for them, waddling in the dark.Those chains, like hanging arms, and those shackles, like open palms, strangled the necks of poor people.After the rivets were set, they stayed there.The chain is too short for them to lie down.They stayed in that dungeon, in such a dark hole, under such a beam, almost hanging, struggling to reach the bread or jug, with the cupola on their head, half a bar The legs are soaked in the mud, and the feces are dripping down the two legs. Weary and limp, like a death sentence torn apart by four horses, the hips are bent, the knees are bent, and the two hands cling to the chain, so that they can take a breath. They can sleep standing up, but they have to be woken up by iron shackles at any time, and some people don't wake up anymore.To eat, they have to use their heels to push the bread that others have thrown in the mud down their thighs and into their hands.How long will they be like this?One month, two months, sometimes six months, one stayed for a whole year.Here is the reception room of the galley.He stole one of the king's hares and went there to wait.What do they do in this tomb hell?Do what people can do in the grave, they wait to die, and do what people can do in hell, they sing.For where hope ceases, there must be singing.On the waters of Malta, when a galley rolls by, one always hears the song first, and the rake second.Surwangchan, the poor man who was forbidden to hunt, stayed in the dungeon of this small Chatret. He said: "The rhyme was what supported me at that time."Almost all songs sung in slang are produced in this dungeon.The mournful refrain "Timaloumisaine, timoulamison" on board the Montgomery galley was sung from that dungeon at the Grand Châtelet in Paris.Most of these songs are sad, some are cheerful, and one is tender: stage. Don't waste your energy.You can't kill the everlasting remnant of this one thing in the human heart: love. In this world of ambiguous behavior, everyone keeps secrets from each other.Secretly, this is mass stuff.For the poor, the secret is the unity that forms the basis of solidarity.To leak a secret is to deprive each member of this barbaric community of something of himself.In the powerful language of slang, "to expose" is to "eat that piece."It is as if the whistleblower took something for himself from the mass reality, a piece of each man to fatten himself. What is a slap?The vulgar metaphor replies: "Just look at thirty-six candles." The slang here joins the opinion: "Chandelle, camoufle." So everyday parlance uses "camouflet" as a synonym for "slap in the face."And so slang, aided by metaphor—that incalculable ballistic—is raised from the hut to the academy of letters by a sort of permeation from below, where, according to Praye, "I ignite my camoufle' (candle)", and Voltaire wrote that "Lonlevie-Rapommel could have received a hundred 'camouflets' (slaps)". Dig into the slang, and you can find something every step of the way.A deep study of this strange language can lead one to the subtle intersection of normal society and that accursed society. The thief, too, has his cannon fodder, the material to steal, you, me, anyone; "le pan-tre." (Pan: everyone.) The slang is the convict in language. May the vitality of people's thinking descend deeply to the bottom, let the dark forces of doom drag and bind it there, and let an unknown tool be bound in the abyss, and you will be at a loss. O the painstaking efforts of the poor! well!Is there no one to save the souls of men in darkness?Is the fate of these people to wait forever in the same place for the liberator of the spirit, the great god who rides the winged horse and the half-horse half-hawk, the warrior who descends from the sky with the twilight and wings, the Does Brilliant represent a future parachutist?Will it forever cry out fruitlessly to the glory of the ideal?It will be trapped in that dark cave forever, listening anxiously to the sound of the devil's approaching, looking at the ferocious and stern head, the swallowing chin, the tiger's claws, the snake's body, and the abdomen, rising and falling from time to time, Tossing and sinking in bad water?Should it just stay there, without a gleam of light, without hope, letting disasters come, letting monsters find out, only to be terrified, with disheveled hair, wrists and arms, like a miserable, white, naked Anne in the darkness? Like Dromeda, forever chained to a rock of darkness?