Words and Stuff
Johnny Grimond
I was rather surprised the other day to come across an article about palindromes in art. Palindromes, I had always assumed, were creatures of reading and writing: ‘words, verses or sentences that read the same backwards or forwards’, says the dictionary. Yet ‘palindrome’ derives from a Greek word meaning ‘running back again’, so why shouldn’t painters and musicians have the fun of creating something that meets that test?
Palindromes have been around a long time; some would say since the beginning, when Eve heard the fateful introduction, ‘Madam, I’m Adam.’ The ancient Greeks enjoyed them. Sotades, a gender-indifferent Thracian who wrote verses commending sodomy, is credited with inventing the palindrome.
Greek palindromes endure to this day, one of the most popular being ‘Νιψον ανομηματα μη μοναν οψιν’, meaning ‘Wash my transgressions, not only my face’. This is inscribed on fonts in basilicas, churches and abbeys from Istanbul (Hagia Sophia) to Paris, Orleans, London, Nottingham and East Anglia. The Romans liked palindromes too. Typical was ‘ Si bene te tua laus taxat, sua laute tenebis’, which means ‘If your praise values you well, you’ll maintain its affairs splendidly’. This is satisfyingly long, and seems at first to say something interesting, but actually it’s rubbish. That goes for many palindromes, especially long ones.
It also applies to the ingenious Sator square, in which the palindrome ‘ Sator arepo tenet opera rotas’ can be read forwards, backwards, upwards or downwards, thus:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
These possibly mystical words are often translated as ‘Arepo the sower holds the wheels [of the plough] with effort’. If that invites the question ‘So what?’, it hasn’t put off the engravers of Herculaneum, Corinium (Cirencester), Siena (the Duomo) or places in Lancashire, Portugal and Sweden.
Modern palindromes tend to be more jokey. Typical is ‘Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.’ This scores well on length, syntax and meaning, but lacks the wit of ‘As I pee, sir, I see Pisa!’ and the neatness of ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’, forever put into the mouth of Napoleon.
Palindromes in art can come about when prints or casts are made, producing a mirror image. In the latest issue of the Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, David Faithfull says artists have long been interested in such positives and negatives, pointing to Leonardo’s reverse sketchbooks and Shakespeare’s ability to write back to front.
That artistic curiosity continued in the 20th century, when Marcel Duchamp started to play with visual puns. With The Large Glass (1915-23), says Faithfull, Duchamp created a visual palindrome by enabling the viewer to see both sides of the work at once and thus all the elements of each diametrically opposing view. Haydn did something even more obviously palindromic in his Symphony No 47, whose minuet and trio each have two parts, one of which is the same as the other, except written backwards.
Artists’ and musicians’ palindromes may actually be more interesting than writers’. Written palindromes need to be longer than ‘radar’ or ‘Won’t it now?’ to be fun but, if too long, they’re tedious. The winning (126-word) entry in a New Statesman competition, representing a schoolmaster’s notes, was said to be entertaining; but it’s unlikely that the 65,000-word palindrome that is claimed to be the longest yet written is worth reading. I’d sooner have Haydn.