Quote:
Originally Posted by Anais9000
Yes, but you see, the inversion is always interpreted to mean the same thing as the original. "The loss is all a training of the soul." Actually, there are two possible texts, and two possible interpretations; unfortunately, both intepretations apply to one of the texts -- Tennyson's.
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And, by the way, Patricia, after taking all this time to look up other people's opinions, do you have one of your own?
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Since you ask,
I'm not an expert on Butler but my feeling is that if he wrote the inversion then that is what should appear. And I am convinced that he wrote the inverted version (based on the Daniel F Howard edition, which is a near-facsimile.)
I'm afraid that I'm not entirely convinced by your arguments that the Tennyson and the Butler mean the same. The Tennyson prioritises
love, whereas the Butler version makes it clear that
loss is the more important - perhaps even a ubiquitous part of the human condition.
Moreover, there is textual evidence for Butler's use of other inversions or subversions of popular sayings, e.g.:
'An honest God's the noblest work of man'.
(Further Extracts from the Notebooks, p.26)
and
'Genius ... has been described as an supreme capacity for taking trouble. ... It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them in it for so long as the genius persists. (Notebooks:
Genius, I)
From this, I conclude that inversion is a stylistic technique of Butler, used to subvert popular expectation and, possibly - in an indirect manner - , popular morality. Given that one message in
The Way of All Flesh is that conventional morality is constrictive and life-denying; this is further evidence for the inverted version. For me, it has the effect of pulling up the reader, and making him/her question the popular 'received wisdom' of the day.
So, all these reasons have convinced me that the inversion used by PG, recent editions, (and me), was both what Butler wrote and that he had a reason for writing it.
I don't know where the misprinted version first entered the text and can't say whether it was Streatfeild or an over-zealous subsequent editor or typesetter. I could make some attempt to trace the publication history but don't really feel inclined to do so.
It's not the only time this has happened. Perhaps you know the story of the numerous apparent misprints in
Ulysses which really annoyed Joyce:
'It appears that the famous telegram from Simon Dedalus to Stephen did not read when delivered to him in Paris, ''Mother dying come home father,'' but ''Nother dying come home father.'' Hence it was, as Stephen recalls, a ''curiosity to show.'' The typesetters could not believe their eyes in this instance, nor in another when the black horn fan held by the ''whoremistress'' Bella Cohen asks, ''Have you forgotten me?'' and is answered, ''Nes. Yo.'' They changed it to ''Yes. No.''
(Richard Ellman, "Finally, the Last Word on 'Ulysses': The Ideal Text, and Portable Too" New York Times, 15 June 1986.)