“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

—Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carrol (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

At Volokh Conspiracy, David Post channels Humpty in his attack on a  New York Times Op-Ed by Caroline Alexander.

Alexander sharply criticizes the choice of a line from Virgil’s Aeneid as the memorial inscription at the planned 9/11 memorial in New York. “No day shall erase you from the memory of time,” an “eloquent translation,” she admits, of Virgil’s “Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet sevo.” She describes the context of the quotation — the death of two Trojan warriors, Nisus and Euralthus. In context, she says, the verse expresses the “central sentiment that the young men were fortunate to die together” — a sentiment that is “grotesque” and “disastrous” when applied to “civilians killed indiscriminately in an act of terrorism.”

His issue is less her provision of context to the quote, but what he sees as her dismissive and condescending approach toward the fools who seized upon the quote without consideration of its context.

Oh, please! My objection is not to her illuminating the context from which the quote is drawn. That’s an interesting little point; I adore Virgil, and the Aeneid — Robert Fagles’ magnificent recent translation of the latter is one of the four or five best books I’ve read in the last decade or two — and I’m always interested in learning more about the work.

But the arrogance of it: “You Philistines who haven’t read the Aeneid (in the original Latin, of course) couldn’t possibly understand the true meaning of these words you’re inscribing at the memorial. That, I’m afraid, is reserved to those of who can “winnow out what may be right from what is clearly wrong.”

And so David concludes:

Sorry, but Caroline Alexander does not get to decide for the rest of us what those words on the inscription “mean.” Neither, actually, does Virgil (though he’s got a helluva better claim on it than she does). The words mean what we decide they mean. This notion that they’re somehow frozen forever in time, attached to Virgil’s tale, is ridiculous and the worst form of elitism. (Emphasis added.)

There is certainly an element of cultural elitism attached to Alexander’s critique, though it’s unclear when the possession of knowledge or the attaintment of education became grounds for such a pejorative attack.  I hesitate to guess at the number of New Yorkers who have read Virgil’s Aeneid, either in the original Latin or Robert Fagles’ translation, but I’ll engage in wild speculation and say that most won’t be familiar with the context of the quote.  It doesn’t make them bad people, but it doesn’t make those familiar with the work bad people either.

The question raised by David’s point is whether Virgil’s words, now in society’s possession, belong to him or us.  Are we entitled to take this string of letters and spaces, make them mean what we decide they mean, use them as our own for whatever purpose or meaning we decide to attribute to them, as if Virgil never wrote them?

Putting words on paper is an act of communication, seeking to express a purposeful thought to others.  When speaking to one person, the words are best communicated in a way that will be received and understood by their recipient.  When speaking to larger, more amorphous groups, there will invariably be some who misunderstand or misread the meaning of the words.

They will take their own meaning from the words, based upon their own understanding, experience, education, depth of thought, and all the things that go into making them reasonably sentient beings.  That will be their reality, and they will attribute their meaning to the writer of the words.  Rarely does the reader say, this is what I understood you to say, though it may not have been you intended when you wrote the words.

Is there a right side to this argument?  Absolutely.  If the idea or feeling conveyed is attributed to Virgil, then it is Virgil’s meaning, and Virgil’s alone, that defines the sentence within its context.  We have no right, neither moral nor intellectual authority, to lay claim to Virgil’s words but superimpose our contextual-less meaning atop them.  It’s not ours to do.  Forget such legal trivialities as copyright, and instead honor the source of the words and the gravitas of their author.

Had I written the same words, even if I had the competence to write them in Latin, I can assure you that no one would be suggesting they be used as the inscription for the 9/11 memorial.  The words might be no different, but I’m not Virgil.  My words wouldn’t have been given a second thought.

On the other hand, the content of my posts, my blawg, are mine, and mine alone, to define.  With surprising frequency, commenters inform me what I mean.  They correct my explanation by asserting their own, despite the fact that the words come from my head through my fingers to my post.  They tell me I’m wrong, that my words mean what they decide they mean.

In contrast to David’s arrogance of elitism, there is the arrogance of ignorance.  As a blank slate, ignorance offers much to commend it to those who want to impose their own views upon the thoughts created by others.  Someone does the heavy lifting of putting words together, organize and express ideas, and then others, like parasites, take it and use it, twist it, consume it, for their own.  As long as they’re ignorant, there is no constraint by context or understanding, and they’re free to do to the words and ideas anything they want, satisfied that their meaning is every bit as valid as the person who created the words and ideas.

Anyone can own a string of letters and spaces.  Anyone can impose their chosen meaning on them.  You just can’t attribute them to someone else without accepting the meaning of the originator as conclusive.  Call me an intellectual elitist, but the writer owns his words.