A Levi-Straussian Analysis of Our Own Mortality

 One of the core ideas of Structuralism as it was elaborated by the great French philosopher/anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) was the overthrow of the idea that in regards to a story or a myth, there is one correct version of the story that can be taken as normative. Instead, all variations of the story or myth are considered part of a "space" of the story, with the story being not a single narrative but the space encompassing the variations.

The canonical example he gave was the Oedipus myth. In college one is apt to learn the version of Euripides, and this is the version that Freud took as normative in his discussion of human psychology. But this version is only one of many versions with many variations, including Oedipus' own birth, as well as his ultimate fate, and many other plot points. Lévi-Strauss famously made a chart of these variations in order to illustrate the "space" of the myth of Oedipus.

I didn't really get this concept fully until I listened to a Youtube recording of a lecture he gave at Berkeley in 1984, towards the end of his active career. In this lecture, which I've linked here, Lévi-Strauss describes the work of an anthropologist from a century earlier who traveled in the remote river valleys of British Columbia collecting myths from the tribals groups. These groups has long lived in loose contact with each over the millennia. The anthropologist (whose name escapes me) noticed that the groups had essentially the same myth, but with variations of the plot. In one version, the main character journeys to the mountains. In another he goes down to the sea, etc. 

Lévi-Strauss asserted that just as the tribal groups had dispersed so as to fill all of the inhabitable valleys over time, so too the myth common to them had developed variations to fill out the space of variations within the story. There was no "true" version. All of the versions and variations together were the myth. The variations were not incidental. What was varied was in fact the key to understanding the story. Understanding this is necessary to understanding the core of Structuralism (and by extension, Post-Strucutalism).

I thought about this aspect of Structuralism while reflecting on the Ave Maria prayer. Of course there are small variations of the prayer, line by line, in any language. But what is more fascinating to me is the variational space created by the languages together as a set. The fact that the prayer was "originally" in Latin (dating at least from the early 11th century) is not important in the Structuralist sense. The Latin version as it exists today is only one of the variations within the space.

When comparing the Ave Maria in different languages line by line, by far the greatest variation occurs in the first words, in which one greets Mary:

English: Hail Mary

Latin: Ave Maria (Hail Mary)

Portuguese: Ave Maria (Hail Mary)

Greek: Χαίρε Μαρία (Hail Mary)

Polish: Zdrowaś Maryjo (Hail Mary)

Italian: Ave o Maria (Hail O Mary)

French: Je vous salue Marie (I greet/salute you Mary)

Spanish: Dios te salve Maria (God save thee Mary)

German: Gegrüßet seist du, Maria (Greeted be thou, Mary)

Irish: Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire (Welcome [to thee], o Mary)

Here I've translated to either thou (familiar) or you (formal, polite) as appropriate. In some languages, the distinction cannot be made from the greeting itself, while in others it is implicit. Among these my personal favorite is German, as it uses not only the familiar pronoun but the subjunctive of the verb sein (to be).  The Spanish also uses the subjunctive mood in the greeting.

The French verb saluer and the Spanish verb salvar both obvious descend form the Latin salvare, from which comes the common greeting salve, which is used to greet Mary is the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) prayer. The common French greeting salut comes from the same root (I think), and our English word salute likewise.

At the other end of the spectrum in the Rosary is the entire second stanza,

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners, 

Now and in the hour of our death.

In nearly every case of the languages above, the wording is as close as possible to the English version given here. The only exception is a slight variation in the Greek version, where Mary is not called "Mother of God" but Θεοτόκε, which is the vocative form of the noun theotokos, meaning roughly "God-birther," which is the most common epithet of Mary among the Greek Christians, and by extension in many of the Orthodox churches. The Orthodox actually have their own variation of the Hail Mary, but I'll discuss that a different time.

There is something comforting to me that all of the versions end with a reference to one's own death. The words our death are invariably the last words in the prayer in all versions. They bring a great big thud to the prayer that stars off soaring with an invocation to the mother of God. This is perhaps the central point of the prayer. To remember our own inevitable death and look forward to Mary's help at that moment, whether it is only minutes away, or many years from now. It invokes Mary to be present not only as death approaches, but when death is imminent.

Thus in praying the Rosary, one contemplates (by vocalization) one's inevitable demise at least 50 times a day. Without this the prayer would not be half as powerful. It is the ultimate sobriety, the ultimate realism of life. 

By the way from the above, you can probably tell which language I'm trying to add as my tenth way of reciting the Rosary.  I needed a Celtic language in the mix. Irish Gaelic is very challenging and intimidating to the beginner but thankfully I began learning it over 25 years ago, so the spelling and pronunciation seem somewhat natural to me at this point.