Chiasmus = ‘X’
Guest Writer: Ken Fellows
At a retirement dinner in Philadelphia honoring a friend …an intense but respected hospital president …my toast to him included this bit of borrowed wisdom:
“People don’t care how much you know
Until they know how much you care.” (anon)
This language form …a syntactic ‘switcheroo’… is called a chiasmus. Even though its usage can be traced to ancient Sanskrit and Egyptian texts, Chinese writing, Hebrew poetry, and the Old and New Testaments, the term remains obscure. A number of wits and writers—Churchill, Shaw, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and George Carlin, among others –have used the chiasmus as an effective language tool in recent times.
The dictionary definition of chiasmus is: “a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases.” The letter ‘X’ in the Greek alphabet is “chi,” and the Greek word “kiasmos” means “crossing”—also “to mark with an X.” The term is well known to neuroanatomists: behind the eyes, the optic nerves going to the brain cross (right eye to left brain, left eye to right brain) at a junction called the “optic chiasmus.”
In literature, the clauses of a chiasmus are written parallel to each other, usually two lines connecting the keywords:
“Never let a fool kiss you
or a kiss fool you. (anon)
“One should eat to live,
not live to eat.”
Chiastic phrases can also be constructed by reversing letters and sounds:
“A magician pulls rabbits out of hats.
A research psychologist pulls habits out of rats.” (anon)
The best wits would be less witty without an occasional chiasmus or one of its variations.
When a young member of Parliament finished giving an address, he later asked Churchill what he could have done to put more fire into the speech, to which Sir Winston replied:
“What you should have done is
to have put the speech in the fire.”
There is also the ‘implied chiasmus’ –a word reversal in a well-known saying that stands alone:
“A hangover is the wrath of grapes.” (anon.)
“Time’s fun when you’re having flies. “(Kermit the Frog)
“Time flies like an arrow: fruit flies like a banana.” (Groucho)
“The waist is a terrible thing to mind.” (anon.)
These implied versions are double the fun –first recalling the original saying, then marveling at the creative transposition of words.
I’m including a painting, Brave Boat Harbor Reflection, of a reflected sky* ... in my mind, a chiasmus being not only a ‘cross-over’ but a ‘reflection’.... ‘same thing seen from varying perspectives.
Like a sumptuous dinner of rich food, listing chiastic examples becomes too much of a good thing. Since this blog tends to talk about our spiritual life, the conclusion of this exposition ends with a favorite chiasmus:
“I find Peale appalling
and Paul appealing.” (Adlai Stevenson)
Addendum: “Chiasmus” over the years has had other names: inverted parallelism, syntactical inversion, reverse parallelism, crisscross quotes, and turnarounds. William Safire suggested ‘contrapunctal phrases’, but it never caught on. Similarly, Hemingway invented “double dichos” (dicho, the Spanish word for ‘saying’). Chiasmus is the only enduring rubric.
Ken Fellows
Joanna joannaseibert.com