[Ads-l] Simile: Like bald men fighting over a comb (Thanks for help in 2018)

Mon May 27 14:19:04 UTC 2019

Thanks LH for the intriguing pointer to a parallel fictional timeline
in the mind of Ian McEwan.

Many thanks to Sue Watkins who off-list sent QI a link to a webpage
displaying an etching dated 1809 called "Two Bald Men Fighting Over a
Comb" by Karl Russ of Austria. (Presumably this title was originally
in Austrian German.)

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/145163/the-two-bald-men-fighting-over-a-comb

The Quote Investigator website now uses a content delivery network, so
copies of the QI website are geographically distributed. When I make a
change to the content of a webpage it takes time for the new
information to propagate to the caches around the world. If you
visited the webpage about the two bald men fighting over a comb you
may have seen an old version

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/05/23/comb/

The latest version includes a fable about two bald men finding a comb
ascribed to the ancient Roman fabulist Phaedrus. The two men did not
fight in the ancient fable.

The lead from Watkins caused me to search more diligently for
belligerent bald men in the 1700s, and I found that Eighteenth century
French writer Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian had published a pertinent
story. A tale of two bald men fighting over a piece of ivory appeared
in 1792. The winner of the fisticuffs unhappily determined that the
prize was a comb:

[ref] 1792, Ouvres de M. de Florian (Works by M. de Florian), Fables
de M. de Florian: De l'Académie Françoise de celles de Madrid,
Florence, etc. (M. de Florian's Fables: From the French Academy of
Madrid, Florence, etc.) by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, Livre 5,
Fable 7: Les deux Chauves, Quote Page 172, De l'imprimerie de P.
Didot, Paris, France, Chez Girod et Tessier, Paris, France. (Google
Books Full View) link [/ref]

https://books.google.com/books?id=2Ng5AAAAcAAJ&q=Virent#v=snippet&

[Begin excerpt]
Un jour deux chauves dans un coin
Virent briller certain morceau d'ivoire:
Chacun d'eux veut l'avoir; dispute et coups de poing.
Le vainqueur y perdit, comme vous pouvez croire,
Le peu de cheveux gris qui lui restoient encor
Un peigne étoit le beau trésor
Qu'il eut pour prix de sa victoire.
[End excerpt]

In 1860 W. R. Evans published a more elaborate fable titled "The Two
Bald Men" which he acknowledged was based on the tale from Florian:

[ref] 1860, A Century of Fables: In Verse, For the Most Part
Paraphrased or Imitated from Various Languages by W. R. Evans, Fable
30: The Two Bald Men (Imitated from Florian), Quote Page 41, Robert
Hardwicke, London, England. (Google Books Full View) link [/ref]

https://books.google.com/books?id=NlkCAAAAQAAJ&q=scavengers#v=snippet&

[Begin excerpt]
Two bald old scavengers, who saw a bit
Of ivory gleaming in the dust they swept,
Each strove at the same time to seize on it,
But neither could the other intercept.
In fact, their bald pates meeting with a bump,
They fell to fighting for the half-hid prize;
And while exchanging many a heavy thump.
One got a broken nose, one two black eyes.
This conquer'd, but he lost the only tuft
Of hair still left on his corporeal dome;
And when he clutch'd the prize for which they'd cuff'd,
Oh, mockery! it was a small-tooth'd comb!
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Sun, May 26, 2019 at 12:27 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Synchronicity moment: I had never heard this bon mot (or if I had, I hadn’t remembered) in either the Borges version or the Russian original, but I’m currently listening to Ian McEwan’s latest, _Machines Like Me_, which is set in an alternative U.K./world development in which Turing is alive and well and his scientific breakthroughs led (don’t ask) to the Argentine’s junta acquiring smart weapons that destroyed the British fleet, radically altering the outcome of the (actual) Falklands War. I just came to a bitter argument between the protagonist and his girlfriend about the morality of the (now lost) war from the British perspective:
>
> “It was a row over property, fed on each side by nationalistic stupidity. I summoned the Borges observation: two bald men fighting over a comb. She replied that a bald man might hand down a comb to his children. I was struggling to understand this when…”
>
> LH
>
> > On May 26, 2019, at 11:58 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Way back in July 2018 I asked for some help with a simile attributed
> > to Leo Tolstoy and Jorge Luis Borges. The topic was more complex than
> > I had anticipated. Now the QI website has an entry.
> >
> > Like Two Bald Men Fighting Over a Comb
> > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/05/23/comb/
> >
> > [Begin acknowledgement]
> > Great thanks to researcher Nigel Rees who discussed this topic in his
> > April 1992 newsletter and his recent Kindle book “The Best Guide to
> > Humorous Quotations”. Rees presented citations beginning in 1938 and
> > noted the ascription to Borges. Special thanks to Peter Reitan who
> > located an 1888 citation. Several people kindly offered to help QI
> > with the Russian text: Gerald Cohen, Jay Dillon, Ivan Van Laningham’s
> > friend, and imwitty. QI is responsible for all errors.
> > [End acknowledgement]
> >
> > Feedback welcome,
> > Garson
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 7:44 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
> > <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Perhaps a list member can provide a translation for a short passage
> >> that appears in a Russian school book titled Azbuka. I'd also like to
> >> obtain an accurate version of the Cyrillic text (the OCR text is poor
> >> quality). The passage mentions bald men fighting over a comb. It
> >> occurs on page 48 of an ABC book created by Leo Tolstoy and published
> >> in 1874. Here is a link:
> >>
> >> https://archive.org/stream/azbuka00tols#page/48/mode/2up
> >>
> >> Here is some background: I've been asked to trace the figurative
> >> language employed by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Here is a
> >> citation for his remark:
> >>
> >> [ref] 1983 February 9, The Miami News, Quote unquote (filler item),
> >> Quote Page 1, Column 1, Miami, Florida. (Newspapers_com)[/ref]
> >>
> >> [Begin excerpt]
> >> Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, 83, on the Falklands War: "The
> >> Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb."
> >> [End excerpt]
> >>
> >> The ABC book was revised and republished as Novaya Azbuka. Here is a
> >> citation and excerpt for an English rendition of the pertinent story
> >> published in 1899:
> >>
> >> [ref] 1899 Copyright, The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi: The Long
> >> Exile, Master and Man, The Kreutzer Sonata, Dramas, Section: From The
> >> New Speller (Novaya Azbuka), Story 12: The Book, Start Page 159, Quote
> >> Page 159 and 160, The Kelmscott Society Publishers, New York. (Google
> >> Books Full View) link [/ref]
> >>
> >> https://books.google.com/books?id=NlVgAAAAMAAJ&q=%22bald+men%22#v=snippet&
> >>
> >> [Begin excerpt]
> >> XII THE BOOK
> >>
> >> Two men together found a book in the street, and began to dispute as
> >> to the ownership of it.
> >> A third happened along and asked:--
> >> "Which of you can read?"
> >> "Neither of us."
> >> "Then why do you want the book? Your quarrel reminds me of two bald
> >> men who fought for possession of a comb, when neither had any hair on
> >> his head."
> >> [End excerpt]
> >>
> >> H. L Mencken referred to the tale in his massive 1942 compendium:
> >>
> >> [ref] 1942, A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles
> >> from Ancient and Modern Sources, Selected and Edited by H. L. Mencken
> >> (Henry Louis Mencken), Topic: Futility, Quote Page 441, Alfred A.
> >> Knopf. New York. (Verified on with hardcopy)[/ref]
> >>
> >> [Begin excerpt]
> >> Two baldhead men are fighting over a comb.
> >> RUSSIAN SAYING
> >> [End excerpt]
> >>
> >> Garson O'Toole
> >> QuoteInvestigator.com
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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