La grosería homérica

[Perikles]

A París, a pesar de su lluvia perpetua, de sus tenderos sórdidos y la grosería homérica de sus cocheros ....

What does 'Homeric rudeness' mean? It makes no sense in English.

[aleCcowaN]

Legendaria y de grandes proporciones (como los muros ciclópeos de Micenas), similar a "de epopeya". Es posible que haya alguna asociación con carros de combate, leí la Ilíada cuando tenía once años y la película Troya, con su río hecho esclava y Aquiles reclamando a Ulises que siempre llegaba tarde a las reuniones, no ayuda a que recuerde la historia.

[Perikles]

Thanks - I guessed it meant 'legendary'. My dictionary gives

homérico-ca adjetivo Homeric

but 'Homeric' is far more specific, meaning 'pertaining to Homer' (according to the OED), so the dictionary is at fault.

[aleCcowaN]

It means "legendary" + "what the author wanted to suggest".

Your dictionary is right, that is the lexical meaning of homérico. It's the same with bíblico, pertaining to the Bible, but we can safely use it -the only condition is being an educated person- to mean a lot of things, for instance, some days ago we had here a hail storm de proporciones bíblicas (I got a piece in my West balcony that weighed 55 grams). Dantesco is the only word I know that has a dictionary definition for its figurative meaning -an unnecessary definition-.

You're reading literature. Word boundaries are explored there. Remember that lexical precision and deployment is a feature of English language (and Dutch, Norwegian, etc.). Feel free to experiment the unhindered flow of meaning of Spanish.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

It means "legendary" + "what the author wanted to suggest".

Your dictionary is right, that is the lexical meaning of homérico. It's the same with bíblico, pertaining to the Bible

But bíblico also has the lexical meaning of huge, vast, unbelievable, the kind of thing that might be recorded in the bible. I can understand that one. But grosería homérica is an oxymoron (or it would be in English) which I find awkward. Who knows what the intention was, if any?

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Perikles

But bíblico also has the lexical meaning of huge, vast, unbelievable, the kind of thing that might be recorded in the bible. I can understand that one. But grosería homérica is an oxymoron (or it would be in English) which I find awkward. Who knows what the intention was, if any?

Bíblico hasn't that meaning in DRAE -because it's unnecessary-. Bilingual dictionaries -that is English dictionaries, culturally speaking- may. Dictionaries in Spanish that want to boast of being complete and that mimic English dictionaries, they may also.

The literal render in English of grosería homérica may suggest you whatever it does, but it's pretty clear the general sense of it in Spanish and the "who knows what the intention was, if any" becomes dead wrong.

This discussion makes me remember my classmates and myself when we were 11, 12, 13 and 14 and we had to analyse text for school, and we loathed teachers and authors for not being clear or having to read an author and a book by another author explaining what the first one had said.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Originally Posted by Perikles

But grosería homérica is an oxymoron[...]

Aw, it surely isn't. Don't you remember homeric gods easily offended by nothing and deciding disproportionate punishments for those who didn't even know they'd offended anyone?
The "cocheros" of Paris seem to be equally arbitrary.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

Aw, it surely isn't. Don't you remember homeric gods easily offended by nothing and deciding disproportionate punishments for those who didn't even know they'd offended anyone?
The "cocheros" of Paris seem to be equally arbitrary.

Aw, surely it is. Of course I remember (I'm always reading Homer) but there are very few instances in the whole of Homer where somebody (and never an immortal) is described as coarse or vulgar in the manner which is meant for the "cocheros". (Parisians generally are the rudest people in the planet ) I just think the adjective homérico is unsatisfying.

[aleCcowaN]

I suddenly realise that Perikles is giving homérico the role of a qualifier or specifier when it has another function, sort of a classifier, mood setter, I can't define. I had no problem imagining the grosería homérica de los cocheros, because I dared to ask directions to janitors, newspaper vendors and policemen in Paris (C'est vraie qu'ils sont mechantes). Zeus tunante and Poseidón irascible y tempestuoso comes to mind.

EDIT: it makes no sense looking for something "coarse" in homérico, as grosería is enough. Homérico is not offered as a redundancy.

[Perikles]

There is nothing grosero about the lofty style involving upper-class heroes and gods, all of which are exceedingly well bred and well mannered. If you were looking for examples of rude or crude or primitive behaviour of the kind I would expect from, let's say, a taxi driver in modern Paris, then Homer would be the last place to look. There are times when 'legendary' and 'Homeric' seem to mean the same, and others when totally different.

I'm beginning to regret I asked...

Edit: Cross-posting with your edit. I'm not sure what you mean.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Perikles: The thing is, "homérica" here is not used as "legendary", but as "of huge proportion".

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

@Perikles: The thing is, "homérica" here is not used as "legendary", but as "of huge proportion".

Yes, thanks, I got that. There is that connotation to 'legendary' of being of amazing proportions, such that it is something which is worth writing a legend about.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Surely, but that's not what is implied for the purposes of the text. It's just evoking the whimsical nature of gods and characters in Homer's stories.
However, be sure that this author does not make mistakes. Reverence for classic writers or for Homer's gods is not alien to Márquez. The reduction to a frivolous feature is made on purpose to underline something in the text, perhaps the personality or attitude of the character about whom he's speaking.

Reading people like Márquez, Sábato, Cortázar, Fuentes, requires to let yourself loose and become some sort of language taster (like those wine tasters). Try putting aside your own word associations and taste the way they're offered in the text. Words will match easier if you give them a chance to be felt differently.

[JPablo]

Not trying to be ‘Homerically’ rude, cutting in, but here are my 2 cents, if that is of any help.

grosería homérica

Random House Unabridged gives,
Ho·mer·icadj.
1. of, pertaining to, or suggestive of Homer or his poetry.
2. of heroic dimensions; grand; imposing: Homeric feats of exploration.

Moliner gives,
homérico, -a
1 adj. Relacionado con Homero.Rapsoda, rapsodia.
2 (inf.) Se aplica hiperbólicamente a algo de lo que se quiere decir que fue extraordinario por lo ruidoso o aparatoso: ‘Una carcajada [o una juerga] homérica’. Épico, tremendo.

DRAE gives, (omits the hyperbolic definition given by Moliner)
homérico, ca.
(Del lat. Homerĭcus).
1. adj. Propio y característico de Homero como poeta, o que tiene semejanza con cualquiera de las dotes o cualidades por que se distinguen sus producciones.

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

I agree with Perikles in that “Homeric rudeness”, is quite an unusual oxymoron. It is a more “common” oxymoron in Spanish too, but probably Spaniards are more accustomed to these apparent contradictions. To say “spectacular rudeness” or “ostentatious rudeness” (or “epic rudeness” for that matter) in English probably may be “better” (I don’t know) but if I had to go with a translation I’d say “Homeric rudeness” just to be an “enfant terrible”, and create the kind of Bertold Brecht’s ‘extrañamiento’ or ‘distanciamiento’, that causes the reader to stop and think...

(First time I was at Gare du Nord, I met an American trying to get some questions answered, so, talking no French at all, the guy was utterly lost. My Spanglish at the time was less than rudimentary, but I felt compelled to assist him, and I was able to give an answer to his question...)

At any rate, I looked at CREA , and the only example there is the one Perikles gives,

A París, a pesar de su lluvia perpetua, de sus tenderos sórdidos y la grosería homérica de sus cocheros, había de recordarla siempre como la ciudad más hermosa del mundo, no porque en realidad lo fuera o no lo fuera, sino porque se quedó vinculada a la nostalgia de sus años más felices.
AÑO: 1985 AUTOR: García Márquez, Gabriel TÍTULO: El amor en los tiempos del cólera PAÍS: COLOMBIA TEMA: 07.Novela PUBLICACIÓN: Mondadori (Madrid), 1987

The clincher, to just answer the original question, may just be definition 2 given by Moliner, “epic, tremendous / excessive”

[aleCcowaN]

JPablo, it all boils to what I said several posts before: the same as "de epopeya". But that's not the problem; the problem is -and you are strangely doing the same- that there's no need to conciliate "grosería" with an adjetive meaning or suggesting or even logically agreeing with "grosero" in a literary work. No need nor expectation too. Thinking the opposite is the problem here.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by JPablo

The clincher, to just answer the original question, may just be definition 2 given by Moliner, “epic, tremendous / excessive”

Actually, yes, that was a help.

Thanks to everybody for the discussion, all very interesting. If I analyse the text at this speed, I'll finish it around year 2050.

[JPablo]

Well, glad to be of help.

As long as you can change biological avatar, and still keep your fond memories, 2050 seems a pretty realistic target...

And as Antonio Machado wrote, “despacito y buena letra, el hacer las cosas bien, importa más que el hacerlas”. Or as the old Spanish saw goes, “poco a poco hila vieja el copo”... or if you want the French equivalent, “petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid”, Italian, “piano piano si va lontano” and “softly, softly, catchee monkey”

If you want to ponder even longer here is one article it may interest you, regarding GGM.
http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero6/intertex.htm

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by JPablo

If you want to ponder even longer here is one article it may interest you, regarding GGM.
http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero6/intertex.htm

Thanks very much! I'll need to read that several times, but nice to know that homérico seems specific to GGM.

[aleCcowaN]

Not quite. Both CREA and CORDE have more than 350 instances of "homérico/a/os/as" *-and they were there before the beginning of this debate, every so often an homérico simpsónico one-. From those +350 cases, about 70% are specific or related to "Homer's" works or to the world "he" depicted, in every level; the other 30% are similar to García Márquez use of it, some more obvious, some even more intricate.

So this wasn't rara avis at all. The "meaning" was pretty straightforward from the very beginning (or at least the whole range of nuances). "Legendary", "epic", "de epopeya" are not the meaning but a new chance to understand what the author is saying. The link provided -with all its cluelessness- does nothing but confirm -by piling up examples- the author's intended use: desmesurado, with the addition of a uniqueness that deserves to be a part of an epic deed; that's what they have in common grosería, tamarindos and disparates.

What had this to do with well mannered (!?) gods, oxymora and shinola, will remain a mystery.

* by comparisson, BNC has 46 cases and COCA has 138 for "homeric"