Perish the thought!

One of my favorite book titles of all time is How To Do Things With Words, the by the philosopher of language, J.L. Austin. From this book (or, better, from the class I took where we read it), I learned that language exists to do things. The most basic thing we can do with language is to describe how the world is. For example, when I wrote “one of my favorite book titles of all time is How To Do Things With Words,” I was describing something I believe is true. But language does so much more.

It is such an amazing capability of human language that we can also use it to imagine or hope for a world different from the how the world is. It would be a lie if I said, “The United States is not fractured by political trouble,” but it is importantly not a lie to say, “I wish the United States were not fractured by political trouble.” Using language, I can can express my hopes and desires.

We can also use language to order people and things around, of course. I can say, “Stop being so fractious!” In meaning, this is, at times not so far from expressing hopes and desires; I wouldn’t normally tell you to do something you’re already doing (but you be you).

Different languages express hoping and commanding in very different ways, often using prefixes or verb form changes of various types. English doesn’t have a lot of such machinations; much of it has been smoothed off by centuries and centuries of use. Sometimes, though, old forms peek out.

Which brings us to 370 MONROE in the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp. Here’s the first verse, with one line highlighted:

Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou, from hence, my all shall be.
Perish, ev’ry fond ambition,
All I’ve sought or hoped or known;
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and Heav’n is still my own.

What’s going on with “Perish, ev’ry fond ambition”? In form, it looks like a command, an imperative, telling every “fond ambition” to die. Die, ambition, die! Maybe that’s the case. But I suspect there’s something else going on.

In English, especially in certain formulaic, sometimes ritualistic, forms, we can have a verb or verb phrase followed by a noun phrase to express a wish, hope, or desire. Consider:

1. So be it. (May it be so)

2. So help me God. (May God help me)

3. Long live the King! (May the King live long)

4. Blessed be the Lord! (May the Lord be blessed)

and especially:

4. Perish the thought! (May the thought perish)

This idea that “Perish, ev’ry fond ambition” means “May every fond ambition perish” is strengthened by looking at the rest of the verses, which express a number of hopes, wishes, and other things not as they are:

Let the world despise and leave me;
They have left my Savior, too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
Thou art not, like them, untrue.
And while Thou shall smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love and might,
Foes may hate and friends disown me;
Show Thy face, and all is bright.

Man may trouble and distress me,
’Twill but drive me to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press me;
Heav’n will bring me sweeter rest.
O, ’tis not in grief to harm me,
While Thy love is left to me!
O ’twere not in joy to charm me,
Were that joy unmixed with Thee.

So, perhaps, we should remove the comma: “Perish ev’ry fond ambition.” We’ll have to wait for the new edition to see!

Appendix

Gentle discussions with Micah Walter and Erik Schwab have convinced me that this is a “optative” or “subjunctive” expression and not an “imperative” one. They might disagree with what I’ve written. So be it; bless their hearts.

The chapter on the optative by Nina Dobrushina, Johan van der Auwera, and Valentin Goussev in The World Atlas of Language Structures Online is a somewhat technical, but fascinating, look at how different world languages encode a speaker’s wishes using verbal inflection, something that barely occurs in English. Examples above come from the Wikipedia article on the English subjunctive, and an article on the optative on ThoughtCo.

The earlist printing of “Jesus, I my cross have taken” does retain a comma after “Perish”.