Adynaton
With adynaton (from Greek ἀδύνατος / ον (adynatos / on): impossible ), plural : Adynata is referred to a statement that will tell where someone that something can be done in any case, it indirectly expresses.
For example, the parable of the eye of a needle says: “A camel is more likely to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man enters the kingdom of God.” ( Matthew 19:24 EU ) Expressed directly, the same statement would mean: “A rich man comes never into the kingdom of God. ”The word“ never ”is thus indirectly expressed by“ a camel would rather go through the eye of a needle ”.
This linguistic “trick” is called Adynaton : paraphrase of “never, by no means” by something that you know is impossible.
Rhetorical figure
The Adynaton is a rhetorical figure that emphasizes the meaning or strength of assertion of a statement through the (explicit or implicit) probability comparison with something impossible, according to the scheme: "The world is sooner to end than that ...". The Adynaton comes from ancient Greek poetry and is originally mostly used in connection with an oath , later weakened as an affirmation. In the formal execution, according to Maurach § 158 d, (explicit) comparative adynata must be distinguished from non (only implicitly) comparative adynata.
Examples
The oldest evidence is the non-comparative Adynaton in Homer , Iliad I 233 ff .:
- But I announce to you, and with a mighty oath I swear it: | By the scepter here, which never leaves or branches Generated again since it broke away from the trunk in the mountains, | And never green again ... (Translator JJC Donner, 1864)
A classic example of the comparative form is Virgil , Bucolica I 59-63:
- Deer are more likely to graze in the ether | and the surf left naked the fish on the beach, | rather, as both directions get mixed up, distant | either drink the Parthians from the Arar or Germania from the Tigris, | than his face disappears from our hearts.
Further exemplary, distinctive Adynaton series can be found in the Dirae handed down with the appendix Vergiliana and, increased to the paradoxical enjoyment of a complete Adynaton poem, in the late antique poem Aurea concordi ... by the poet Eucheria (text and translation by Helene Homeyer , p. 185-187). The medieval, v. a. Carolingian poetry generalizes the Adynaton to the topos of the inverted world , which is used in a parodistic or moralizing way (see Curtius, Chapter 5, § 7).
literature
- Ernst Robert Curtius : European literature and the Latin Middle Ages . 4th edition Francke Verlag, Bern and Munich 1963, Chapter 5 § 7.
- Helmut Glück (Ed.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler-Lexikon Sprache. 3rd revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 .
- Helene Homeyer (ed.): Poets of antiquity and the early Middle Ages . Bilingual text output. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 1979.
- Heinrich Lausberg : Handbook of literary rhetoric . 3rd edition Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1990, §§ 899; 1180, 1; 1218; 1243.
- Gregor Maurach : Latin poet language . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1995, § 158 d.
- Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 8th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-23108-5 .
