"Devil's Dictionary" definitions Quiz

Answer: Happiness

This definition gives you a taste of the others. Not very comfortable, is he?

Bierce died in 1913. Or did he? He went to Mexico that year (at the age of 71!) to fight alongside Pancho Villa. No-one actually knows what happened to him. It's nice to think that he just lives on somewhere, looking cynically over our oh-so-civilised shoulders and, in the manner of the above definition, sneering.

Answer: Presidency

Political corruption was one of Bierce's hobby-horses, probably because, unlike today's state of affairs, contemporary political conditions in North America invited such treatment from a satirist. Here's a sample, from his "Fantastic Fables":

A Boss who had gone to Canada was taunted by a Citizen of Montreal with having fled to avoid prosecution.

'You do me a grave injustice,' said the Boss, parting with a pair of tears. 'I came to Canada solely because of its political attractions; its Government is the most corrupt in the world.'

'Pray forgive me,' said the Citizen of Montreal.

They fell upon each other's neck, and at the conclusion of that touching rite the Boss had two watches.

Answer: Yesterday

He supplies this poem to further elucidate:

"But yesterday I should have thought me blest
To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
Of middle life and look adown the bleak
And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
Where solemn shadows all the land invest
And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
To stay the shadow on the dial's face
At manhood's noonmark! Now, in God His name
I chide aloud the little interspace
Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.

Baruch Arnegriff

It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at different times by seven doctors."

This is about as whimsical and elegiac as Bierce gets. There, did you enjoy it? Now put your hankies away again....

Answer: Gunpowder

Compare his definition of "cannon": "An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries".

Answer: Once

Compare his definition of "more": "The comparative degree of 'too much'".

Answer: White

Bierce wrote a bunch of cock-eyed versions of Aesop fables, called "Aesop Emendatus". Here's an example:

DOG AND REFLECTION

A Dog passing over a stream on a plank saw his reflection in the water.

'You ugly brute!' he cried; 'how dare you look at me in that insolent way.'

He made a grab in the water, and, getting hold of what he supposed was the other dog's lip, lifted out a fine piece of meat which a butcher's boy had dropped into the stream.

Answer: Friendless

Ambrose Bierce - self-pitying? Never!

Answer: Nominee

Here's Bierce's politicised version of "Dog and Reflection":

A State Official carrying off the Dome of the Capitol met the Ghost of his predecessor, who had come out of his political grave to warn him that God saw him. As the place of meeting was lonely and the time midnight, the State Official set down the Dome of the Capitol, and commanded the supposed traveller to throw up his hands. The Ghost replied that he had not eaten them, and while he was explaining the situation another State Official silently added the dome to his own collection.

Answer: Vanity

Bierce utilises a poem by Hannibal Hunsiker to elucidate:

They say that hens do cackle loudest when
There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
And there are hens, professing to have made
A study of mankind, who say that men
Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
They're not entirely different from the hen.
Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
His blazing breeches and high-towering cap --
Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
Is that in battle he will never hurt you?

Answer: Emotion

Bierce's short stories fill one largish volume. They're well worth ploughing through. A large number of them are set in the American Civil War, in which Bierce fought when he was young. He's not the greatest author who ever lived, but I believe he is firmly established as king of his own niche: a mixture of bitterness and world-weary cynicism. His stories are always concentrated, hard-hitting, uncompromising and at least ostensibly quite unsubtle. Check out these ones, some of which have an especially sharp sting in the tail: "The Man and the Snake", "Chickamauga", "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Ridge" and "The Boarded Window", all from the collection "In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians". The beginning of the third of his four-story collection "The Parenticide Club" is often quoted: "Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time." Most of his stuff is available on Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/

(If you don't like self-advertising, look away now.... Check out my quiz on Jane Austen's juvenilia for an astonishing prefiguration of this line.)

Answer: Monday

Judging by his definitions, Bierce was, if not a determined atheist, then at least determinedly irreverent:

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

Or:

Palace: A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress.

And two adjacent entries:

Koran: A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures. [Just how tongue-in-cheek can you get?]

Krishna: A form under which the pretended god Vishnu became incarnate. A very likely story indeed.

Answer: Un-American

As for his satirical attitude towards his countrymen, see "Majesty: The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America." (To which list one might, if one were maliciously enough disposed, add "The Bush dynasty".)

Answer: Distance

His definition of "poor" is apposite: "Persons who are unable to pay their taxes. For example Vanderbilt." For "Vanderbilt", insert any modern multi-billionare who gets away with paying no taxes through some convenient tax dodge, while his companies declare obscene profit margins. Nothing changes, does it?

Answer: Life

The definition continues: 'We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

"Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"
Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view
And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
"Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.

Han Soper'

Answer: Tenacity

Bierce continues: "It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics." Obviously he lived in a time when politics was no more than a cesspit of avarice and an opportunity for self-advancement.

His definition has obviously been rendered obsolete by the moral rectitude and single-minded devotion to public service and the common good that characterises the modern politician.

Answer: Callous

Bierce adduces an example from the ancients:

When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he was observed to be deeply moved. 'What!' said one of his disciples, 'you weep at the death of an enemy?' 'Ah, 'tis true,' replied the great Stoic; 'but you should see me smile at the death of a friend.'

Answer: Kill

And vaguely on the topic of things homicidal:

Accord: Harmony.
Accordion: An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

[Note to accordionists: Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger! Shoot Bierce - if you can find him!]

His definition of homicide itself is: "The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers."

Answer: Success

My favourite definition of all is that of "politeness":

"Apologising to a man for standing in the way, when he sends a bullet through you that he intended for someone else."

Now, if you've been cheating by looking one of the various online versions of the "Devil's Dictionary", you won't find this one. Odd, isn't it? Here's the story:

In 1911 Bierce issued his "Collected Works", including the "Devil's Dictionary". He'd amassed these definitions over his preceding decades as a journalist and newspaper editor. Trouble is, he only published about a third of them in the "Dictionary". It wasn't until 1965 that Ernest Jerome Hopkins discovered the others. They are now published in Penguin as "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary". And just when you thought the world had run out of cynicism...

Answer: Brute

Was Bierce talking about himself? He married Molly Day in 1871; after a tempestuous marriage they separated in 1888 and divorced in 1905. (His two sons died in tragic circumstances, one being killed in a duel and the other dying of pneumonia.)

Check out also his definition of "Desertion": "An aversion to fighting as exhibited by abandoning an army or a wife."

Answer: Justice

And sometimes the steward of justice gets his due reward, as Bierce reveals in a retelling of the Aesop fable of the Lion and the Mouse:

A Judge was awakened by the noise of a lawyer prosecuting a Thief. Rising in wrath he was about to sentence the Thief to life imprisonment when the latter said:

'I beg that you will set me free, and I will some day requite your kindness.'

Pleased and flattered to be bribed, although by nothing but an empty promise, the Judge let him go. Soon afterward he found that it was more than an empty promise, for, having become a Thief, he was himself set free by the other, who had become a Judge.

And some more irreverent definitions:

"Lawful: Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction."

"Lawyer: One skilled in circumvention of the law."

"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage."

(He isn't exactly overawed by the legal system, is he?)

Answer: Really

See also "Literally: Figuratively, as: 'the pond was literally full of fish'; 'the ground was literally alive with snakes,' etc." Or "Genuine: Real, veritable, as A genuine counterfeit, Genuine hypocrisy etc." Both of these, again, from the "Enlarged Devil's Dictionary".

Answer: Accident

Bierce's amended version of the Lion and the Mouse is:

A Lion who had caught a Mouse was about to kill him, when the Mouse said:

'If you will spare my life, I will do as much for you some day.'

The Lion, good-naturedly let him go. It happened shortly afterwards that the Lion was caught by some hunters and bound with cords. The Mouse, passing that way, and seeing that his benefactor was helpless, gnawed off his tail.

Answer: Idiot

Another of Bierce's definitions is for "Story". He tells several, of which the first one is:

One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.

'Mr. Pollard,' said he, 'my book, The Biography of a Dead Cow, is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship. Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century. Do you think that fair criticism?'

'I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it.'

Answer: Quotient

Bierce has a profound scepticism of commercial as well as legal and governmental probity, as his definition of "commerce" shows: "A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E." One of his fantastic fables, "The Taken Hand", is as follows:

A successful Man of Business, having occasion to write to a Thief, expressed a wish to see him and shake hands.

'No,' replied the Thief, 'there are some things which I will not take - among them your hand.'

'You must use a little strategy,' said a Philosopher to whom the Successful Man of Business had reported the Thief's haughty reply. 'Leave your hand out some night, and he will take it.'

So one night the Successful Man of Business left his hand out of his neighbour's pocket, and the Thief took it with avidity.

Answer: Zeal

And: " A passion that goeth before a sprawl."

Just for the record, Bierce's definition of the clarinet contains a famous comment: "An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets." Note to clarinettists - don't shoot me, shoot Bierce - if you can find him! Oboists will be pleased to note that the definition of oboe ("An ill wind that nobody blows good") can't be laid at Bierce's door. As to whose it can be laid at: take your pick from those presented at http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001110

Bierce's definition of "dictionary" reads: "A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work." That's quite a loud twinkle in Ambrose's eye!