A Proverb a Day Keeps Boredom Away. - book review

By Anna T. Litovkina. Pecs-Szekszard, Hungary: IPF-Konyvek, 2000. x + 386 pp. Illus. 35.00 [pounds sterling] (pbk). No ISBN

Anna Litovkina, originally a specialist from Russia, now a Professor of Folklore in Hungary and an expert in paremiology and paremiography, has written a most enjoyable and erudite book about proverbs that should prove of great interest to British folklorists. Most of the material consists of proverbs current in American English, but the author has obviously also had many stimulating contacts with British scholars that have led her to embrace much British material as well.

There are three main divisions to the book--"markers," "words" and "topics"--and also an interesting section on origins with a suitably respectful reference to the importance of the Bible and especially the New Testament. The section on markers discusses rhyme and alliteration, oppositions, word repetition, paradox, metaphor, pithiness and aspects of the syntax of proverbs. The section on words deals with proverbs on such basic aspects of human existence as man and woman, numbers and time, God and the devil, and food, drink and hunger. There are particularly interesting items on animals, with the cat, the dog and the horse each having a grouping of its own. In each section, the use of proverbs in context by literary authors is illustrated by means of direct quotation, which shows both that the accurate and realistic depiction of everyday conversation must at times include the citing of proverbs and that even the most fluent of writers reaches for a cliche when faced with a creative block and a deadline. The section on "topics" covers very well the main areas of proverbs: notably work, money, family, risk and adversity. The proverbs about sexuality are interesting, but it is curious that the author has not provided more extensive and diverse examples than she does, for she is listed on the back cover as having also written Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child: Sexuality in Proverbs, Sayings and Idioms.

Much of the material is presented in such a way that the book can be used by students who are learning folklore or the more advanced and subtle aspects of the English language, and it contains exercises directed towards this end, a reminder that the trilingual author was a linguist before taking her doctorate in folklore. It is to be recommended to teachers, both of folklore and of English, and particularly to those teaching English as a foreign language to students whose English is already very good, but who are keen to take their understanding further and deeper.

Many of the American proverbs listed will already be familiar to the British reader but some feel (I may be quite wrong) American as in:

   The love light goes out when the gas bill comes in.
   When the horse is dead the cow gets fat.
   If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.

Perhaps the most entertaining examples of proverbs provided by Prof. Dr Litovkina are modern parodies of proverbs and anti-proverbs:

   Whom the mad destroy they first make gods.
   Logic is in the eye of the logician.
   The darkest hour is just before you're overdrawn.
   As it snows so shall ye sweep.
   A parking hog never fights.
   Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me.
   Talk is cheap until you call a lawyer.
   One bomb is worth a thousand words.
   It is better to have loved and lost than loved and married.

Litovkina's anti-proverbs and parodies come from many sources; some from professional humorists, some from graffiti and some no doubt from the "new" folklore of the photocopier and e-mail. It is to be doubted whether those anti-proverbs ascribed to particular writers originated with them any more than jokes originate with script-writers. Both these forms of modern folklore begin as a chance witticism tied to a particular context. Someone remembers it, takes it away, consciously or unconsciously polishes it and hands it on to someone else in an ascending spiral--a sort of mandarin's whispers. Eventually, in a perfected form freed of all context, it ends up in an anthology. Often authorship is then ascribed to a prominent person who used this piece of folklore in speech or in writing.

The number of anti-proverbs is growing faster than that of proverbs and so they are the "proverbial" folklore of the future. The existing stock of traditional proverbs is far greater, but in a society where slickness is more prized than wisdom, few new ones are being invented. Proverbs are about horses not computers, although the "Rubbish in, rubbish out" cited by Litovkina is a striking and hopeful exception. The smart anti-proverb, by contrast, is a growing form of modern folklore that is also a back-handed tribute to the vitality of the traditional material. It is impossible to understand the full cleverness of a parody or anti-proverb without knowing the original item that it mocks. Anti-proverbs are in a sense parasitic on proverbs, and it is the sheer size of the remaining stock of as yet untwisted and unparodied old proverbs that will ensure the rapid growth of the anti-proverb. However, since any one traditional proverb can give rise to many different anti-proverbs, eventually anti-proverbs could well come to outnumber those rooted in traditional wisdom, in a predictable leap from tradition to a diverse and playful post-modernity. We should be grateful to the young, but strikingly erudite, pioneer Anna Litovkina for alerting us to what is sure to prove to be the future of proverb studies. She has seen the future and it chirps.