[Ads-l] "... there's just one of them"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Somehow I did not see the contemporaneous replies by Stephen Goranson
and Ben Zimmer. The only new piece of information in my previous
message is a precise 1928 citation for Rebecca West's remark.

Garson

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 10:09 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm sure Garson can do better, but the earliest attribution I find is for
> the "ample" version given below:
>
> "A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned
> things is ample."
>
> --Rebecca West, quoted by M. H. Abrams, _The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic
> Theory and the Critical Tradition_ (Oxford, 1953), p. 100.
>
> Paperback edition (1971):
> https://books.google.com/books?id=SSOGjRMvIGYC&pg=PA100
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 5:27 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
>
> > According to
> >
> > http://mindworkshop.blogspot.com/2005/11/
> >
> > We ended the workshop by considering the question: Who is Rebecca West?
> > She is credited with the irritated response to the "mind as a mirror of
> > nature" that "one of the damn things is enough" (p. 74).
> >
> > The quote that "one of the damn things is enough" also appears on p. 3 of
> > Goodman's Languages of Art, but as a part of the phrase: "Art is not a copy
> > of the real world. One of the damn things is enough". Goodman says in a
> > footnote that the phrase appears in an "essay on Virginia Woolf" but that
> > he has "been unable to locate the source".
> >
> > Rebecca West was an English critic<http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rwest.htm>.
> > I think Brandom has managed to track down the source of Goodman's quote.
> > But searching the web, I only find the less elegant quote "A copy of the
> > universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample"
> > attributed to West.
> >
> > As far as I can tell, none of the quotes attributed to Rebecca West makes
> > any claims about the "mind as a mirror of nature" as Brandom claims--she's
> > talking about art.
> >
> >
> > <http://mindworkshop.blogspot.com/2005/11/>S. Goranson
> >
> > http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society <...> on behalf of GEOFFREY NUNBERG <
> > nunbergg at GMAIL.COM>
> > Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2018 1:41 AM
> > To: ...
> > Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "... there's just one of them"
> >
> > Puts me in mind of the remark that Chomsky attributes to Rebecca West,
> > who, asked about possible worlds, replied, “One of the damn thing is
> > enough.” Hard to say which is more implausible, Rebecca West being asked
> > about possible worlds, or her having an opinion on the matter. (Chomsky’s
> > citing her would come  in there somewhere, if it hadn’t actually happened.)
> > But somebody surely said it. If it hasn’t already been done, some quote
> > sleuth might want to  track this one down.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org