Words upon Words: The Anagrams of Ferdinand De Saussure

by Jean Starobinski

English, French (translation)

160 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 1971

About the author

Jean Starobinski studied classical literature, and then medicine at the University of Geneva, and graduated from that school with a doctorate in letters (docteur ès lettres) and in medicine. He taught French literature at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Basel and at the University of Geneva, where he also taught courses in the history of ideas and the history of medicine.

His existential and phenomenological literary criticism is sometimes grouped with the so-called "Geneva School". He has written landmark works on French literature of the 18th century – including works on the writers Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Voltaire – and also on authors of other periods (such as Michel de Montaigne). He has also written on contemporary poetry, art, and the problems of interpretation. His books have been translated in dozens of languages.

His knowledge of medicine and psychiatry brought him to study the history of melancholia (notably in the Trois Fureurs, 1974). He was the first scholar to publish work (in 1964) on Ferdinand de Saussure's study of anagrams.

Jean Starobinski is a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (a component of the Institut de France) and other French, European and American learned academies. He has honorary degrees (honoris causa) from numerous universities in Europe and America.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

a triumph of posthumous collaboration! starobinski sensitively arranges and concludes saussure's amazing but finally abandoned research into anagrams. by analyzing letter combinations in ancient poetry, saussure discovered dense networks of anagrammatic play which he called "hypograms"-- these led him to some wonderful questions about intention in composition, about consecutivity in poetry, and about whether or not texts in the compositionally experimental spirit of roussel or the oulipo might go back as far as the ancients, with hypograms abound in virgil, and encrypted invocations in lucretius. Were these hypograms representative of certain laws of composition in ancient poetry, similar to rhyme in european poetic traditions? Are anagrams only a natural occurence in language itself?--("One begins to wonder if one might not find definitive proof of all possible words in any text..."--Saussure) Or did the hypograms originate from Saussure's own obsession? These uncertainties tortured saussure, and led him to eventually abandon his research. for the curious reader, however, these same uncertainties can be rather delicious.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the years just before those in which he presented the material that was posthumously compiled into the hugely influential "Cours de linguistique generale", FdS spent several years exploring an odd idea about how classical Latin poetry (and, he sometimes thought, Latin writings in some other categories) was constructed: the sounds of key words, typically names, were distributed through the verses, he thought, in accordance with strict, though for all he knew completely unmotivated, principles.
This book presents a selection of his working-through and testing of his idea, with fairly sparse but helpful commentary from Starobinski.
It's fascinating for two connected reasons:
(1) FdS found evidence in support of his perception abundant in all the texts he examined, but at the same time, and increasingly as time went on, he was very conscious that he might be entirely wrong in believing that he had found a hidden poetic principle; what he found in the verses could be there quite by accident. So we see him diligently, doggedly, maybe even a bit obsessively, pursuing and reflecting on his discovery, while at the same time always troubled by the worry that he was essentially just imagining things. He also, no doubt in part because of that worry, kept his researches mostly private, sharing them only with a couple of trusted confidants. He finally lost confidence in the whole conjecture, and made no attempt to publish or publicise his uncertain findings.
(2) As mentioned, his next notable venture was developing the outline of a linguistic theory, delivered as a series of lectures over a few years, that became one of the most influential works for the "human sciences" in the 20th century, one whose direct influence today is probably much less prominent, but whose indirect influence, via the structuralists and post-structuralists, is still everywhere, witness the ubiquity in everyday chat of words like "narrative", "trope" and "deconstruction" (none of which, to be clear, derive from FdS, but all of which entered the discourse - there's another - via Saussure-influenced humanities/social sciences faculties).
So it's fun to think that the guy who changed the way the world thinks with the "Cours" had previously spent several years fixating on a crackpot theory with probably zero validity.
That sequence of events can be read any way you like (just ask Ferdinand) - it could be seen as a reason to be sceptical about all FdS's work, and perhaps also the work others wrote under his spell, or alternatively as testimony to his intellectual courage and strength in putting in the solid work and then evaluating it honestly. Either way, it's a pretty interesting read (as far as the Latin poetry and analysis goes, you can get the idea without knowing the language, and there's no need - or so I decided - to study all the details letter by letter once you've grasped the general principle).

[Gilles Dt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le critique et théoricien littéraire Jean Starobinski nous présente dans cet ouvrage la loi de couplaison ou loi anagrammatique repérée par Ferdinand de Saussure et à l'œuvre dans la poésie latine sans qu'aucun poète ne l'ai pourtant formulé. Un essai clair et concis qui retrace l'enquête linguistique saussurienne à l'ombre des Cours de linguistique générale. On y découvre un Ferdinand de Saussure aventureux.

[erich · Rating 4 out of 5]

i don't know where i'm going but i'm going insane