Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen

Autumn-Foliage-Strike-Fun

 

 

It's often said that the Greeks have a word for everything, but, as a matter of fact, that's not true [1].

 

Fortunately, however, when the Greeks fail us, the Germans are usually ready and willing to step up to the mark with a compound noun ... [2]

 

Thus, when Maria was unable to supply a term for the pleasure of kicking through autumn leaves - something that I enjoy as much now at sixty as I did at six years of age - I immediately consulted with my friend in Berlin and she was happy to text the following: Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen ... [3]

 

There's something profoundly impressive about the German ability to capture in a single word a relatively complex idea or emotion that would take an English speaker a whole sentence to explain; no wonder Heidegger insisted that German is uniquely qualified for the task of thinking [4] (he wasn't simply trying to piss off certain French intellectuals).    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have even used this idiomatic expression myself on Torpedo the Ark; see the post of 27 September 2020, for example, in which I briefly discuss the 1930 stage play by Zoe Akins from which the phrase derives: click here.

[2] See Ben Schott, Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition (Blue Rider Press, 2013); an amusing dictionary of neologisms that capture the idiosyncrasies of life as only the German language can.  

 

[3] It's pronounced: hairbst-laowb-tritt-fair-gnuu-ghen.   

 

[4] Whilst Heidegger never actually said that if you want to think you have to do so exclusively in German, he did argue that German, like ancient Greek, but unlike Latin - the language of metaphysical philosophy - is particularly suited to thinking because it's phenomenologically well grounded. 

      See Heidegger's famous interview with Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wollf from Der Spiegel (conducted on 23 September, 1966; published posthumously on 31 May, 1976): click here to read the English translation by William J. Richardson under the title 'Only a God Can Save Us'.