GRZEGORZ SZPILA

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN SALMAN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS

Paremic allusion can be described in a similar way to phrase-ological alłusion, the latter being defined as "an implicit mental refer-ence to the image of a phraseological unit which is represented in dis-course by one or more explicit image-bearing components, hinting atthe image" (lr{aciscione, 2001: 100). Paremic allusion is the operationof making a link between the full form of a proverb and its discoursalindicators. Salient formal elements are usually selected as proverbialmarkers. Such markers do not have to be present in the surface struc-ture ofthe proverb, nor represented by surface units. Since proverbsusually contain more image-bearing constituents than idioms andsince proverbs usually operate with images richer than those con-tained in idioms there is a greater choice of elements which can be se-lected to function as hints at the intendęd proverb. It cannot always becertain whether we are dealing with phraseological or paremic allu-sion in a text, as the number and character of textual markers may ei-ther point to allusion or indicate another Ępe of modification that idi_oms or paremias undergo in discourse. Paremic allusion is most sub-tle in those cases in which the proverb's form and consequently itsmeaning are recalled irrespectively of other meanings constituted bythe respective discoursal or textual markers. In most cases, however,the allusion is fairly obvious and establishing the meaning is depend-ent on the evoked paremia. It needs to be added that predicate trans-formations of proverbs may also be treated as allusions themselves,like other transformations (Moon, 1998: 1 3 I ). In this paper I will treatsuch truncated forms as independent units, and at the same time as al-lusions to proverbs (see below).

The choice of Salman Rushdie's novels for an analysis of pare-mic allusions is conditioned by at least trvo factors. Firstly, I considerthe writer to be highly phraseological. That is, I see him to be a writer,following Mrazović's classification (l998)' who uses phraseologicalmaterial extremely frequently (more than 500 phraseological units asphraseological types n The Ground Beneąth Her Feet alone)' Sec-ondly, Salman Rushdie subjects the stock of fixed expressions to all

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manner of formal and semantic transformations (cf. Szpila, 2003:150; 2004: 30) to achieve a number of diverse communicative andstylistic purposes. It is difficult to decide when we can speak of aphraseological novel as there is no clear-cut criteria for considering anovel phraseological or not, and it is equally hard to say whether apiece of writing is paremic or not and to what extent. To the best ofmy knowledge and calculation, in all his nine novęls to date SalmanRushdie uSeS over 100 diffęręnt proveńs' most of them only once,but some more than once. Of these novels Grimus seems to be mostproverbial as it contains 25 different proverb Ępes used 29 times al-together. From all thę nine novels under scrutiny I have selected 45instances of paremic allusions: The Ground Beneath Her Feet - 17;The Sątanic Verses '9, Grimus - 6; Shąme _ 5; Midnight's Childrenand The Moor's Last Sigh - 4; Fury- 3; Shalimar the Clown - 2,Haroun and the Sea of Stories - 1, which makes more than 30Yo ofall proverbial instances in his novels. Only these 45 selected paremicuses will be the subject of my analysis.

Although in each case reference is made to a particular proverb,it can be debatable, as already mentioned, whether thę reference is anallusion or another modification, different types of which proverbsundergo oftentimes in Rushdie's novels. This męans that it is not al-ways possible to decide indubitably if the reader is ręfeired to the in-tended proverb by dint of allusion or a different kind of formal or sę-mantic operation on the paremic structure. The definition acceptedhere says the proverb is represented in a text by its most conspicuouscomponents which the writer considęrs suitable to evoke associativełinks to the fullproverb, and the main idea behind allusion is clearlythe successful operation of linking the proverb components with itsfulI form. Therefore it stands to reason that the easiest way to estab-lish such a link is on the basis of key elements of the lexical plane ofthe proverb, which are, ideally speaking, automatically tied to theproveń. It should happen more often with proverbs which lend them-selves easily to lexical decomposition and of which elements maystand for the whole proverb. Such proverbs include as well the mostpopular proveńs, whose full forms and single elements are both eas-ily identified as proverbial in character in the sense that they arelinked in our mental lexicons with particular proverbs. ln other cases,viz. when proverbs are less popular, and/or thought ofas less knownto the reader, andlor cannot be easily decomposed into meaningfulelements, and/or whose elements may not be singly identified with

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS

the proverb, it may be more difficult to successfully establish a pare-mic link betweęn the text exponents of an allusion and ttrę full formof a proverb. The most advancęd paremic allusion would be, how-ever, an instance of refening to the full form of the proverb with noobvious text markers of paremic allusion, that is when the writer sug-gests the proverb through the referęnce to the image and meaningrathęr than to the lęxical contents of the proverb. Naturally, the refer-ence will suggest itself in a more obvious manner when the proverb iscommonly known.

The most Ępical reference to a provett happens when the prov-erb in question is matched with the corresponding form of an institu-tionalized idiom. In Rushdie's novels we find that the proverbs 1l lsthe ląst strqw that breal<s the cąmel's back (Midnight's Children, p.224, 240; Shame, p. 138; The Sątąnic Verses, p. 232,25l) and Adrowning mąn will catch ąt ą strąw (Shame, p. 64,268, The Moor'sLast Sigh, p. 213, Shalimąr the Clown, p. 20Ą never appear in theirfull forms but always in the form of the corresponding phraseologicalunits: the last straw and to catch at straws, respectively. These tworepresent truncations of the two proverbs: the two most conspicuousproverb components are chosen first to represent the most importantmeanings of the proverb and secondly possibly to refer further to thefullness of the proverbs' meanings. It may be true that for the readerthere remains no allusion to the full form of the proverb and that theintended meaning is arrived at without any paremic reference what-soever; diachronically, however, there is a link between the two, and,as said before, I treat such institutionalized forms as paremic allu-sions. At the same time this type of allusion is the least complex evenif not identified by the reader. Interestingly enough, Rushdie himselfis clearly aware of the existence of the link between the form he usesand the original ttrat he refers to and in some cases he providesenough context to incontestably establish a proverbial link. By way ofexample, let us consider the following fragments fuom Shame:

(1) Yet she clutched at herself for shame, holding on to herself inthat rushing sea as if she were a straw; and felt around her neckthe remnants of a length of muslin. (Shame,p.64).

This is a fragment from the passage in which the character BilquisrescuęS herself from a bomb blast in her father's cinema' She ispushed into a street where she ręalizes she has lost her clothes, afterwhich she tries to spare herself blushes by concealing her naked-

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nęSS. In this fragment therę is a metaphorical comparison between asea and a throng of people in the Delhi streets. This particular paral-lel allows us to see "a straw" from this fragment as part of the prov-ęrb rather than the idiom (in addition, in the idiom the noun is in theplural).

(2) Raza Hyder, unmanned by wife-sewn veils, clings to such opti-mistic straws . (Shame, p. 268)

Hęre the reference may be made directly to the idiom, with thevełb cling replacing the commonly used verbs'. clutch and grasp.If,though, we look at a larger context, we see that the character RazaHyder is metaphońcally drowning' his career is over, his end is ap-proaching, but we see him hoping desperately that his fortunęs willchange. This very broad contęxt may point at the associative link be-tween the proverb and "clinging to straws".

Almost idęntical contexts are provided in The Moor's Last SighandGrimus:

(3) So she was drowning, she was clutching at straws as she hadalways clutched at men, and cheesy Jimmy was thę last straw onoffer. (The Moor's Last Sigh,p.2l3)

(4) You are the straw, Flapping Eagle, he said, and I am the drown-ing man. (Grimus,p.74)

In example (3) as well the metaphor is established between the actof drowning and the desperate behaviour of lna, one of the novel'scharacters. Additionally, on the lexical plane, there is a referencemade to the "drowning man" of the proverb (both elements of theproverb are foregrounded). The identification of the semantics ofthe adduced fragments must be along the allusive lines; and the al-lusion to something outside the text is more than apparent. Boththese examples highlight the proverb as a point of lexical, structuraland semantic reference.

(5) He stood before her bed in the dark, leaning forward slightly andclutching at his straw hat's brim with both his trembling hands.(Shalimar the Clown, p. Ż0Ę.

The example above is a perfect example of paremic allusion that,to the inattentive eye, may go unnoticed. This passage is pań of alarge fragment in which Max Ophlus, one of the four major charac-

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ters in the novel, pays his former lover Boonyi a visit, the woman nolonger young, no longer easy on the eye, no longer charming. Max isshocked to see her in her new physicality during the enforced encoun-ter. He is clearly scared, his hands are trembling, and he does notknow what Boonyi has to say to him. The quoted sentence showsMax at the mercy of Boonyi. If we look at the sentence in search of ahidden paremic allusion wę can see the phrase "clutching at his strawhat's brim", which puts us in mind of the proverb A drowning manwill clutch at ą Strąw. Here this is considerably modified (a straw be-comes an adjective and modifier), the proverb and the image bearingcomponents are hidden as if behind a perfectly normal and meaning-ful phrase. Seeing an allusion in this sentence adds to the meaning ofthe scenę: Max clutches at a straw, which is, ironically because liter-ally, a hat, and made of straw to boot, which makes his position verymiserable indeed in the eyes of the reader.

In the case of It is the ląst strąw that brealrs the camel's bąckRushdie seems to have given o'the last straw" of the expression somuch meaning that thęre is clearly no need to make any reference tothe proverb, which shows also how completely institutionalized theconesponding idiom is and how independent proverb componentscan be. Let us compare the following examples:

(6) But (as history so often demonstrates) the moment of onę'sgreatest triumph also contains the seed of onę's final downfall,and so it proved, because Evie's persecution of the cats was, asfar as the Brass Monkey was concemed, absolutely the laststraw. (Midnight's Children, p. 224).

(7) Was it not possible that my mutilated finger had been (as myannouncement of my voices had nearly been), for my long-suffering parents, the last straw? (Midnight's Children,p.ŻaQ.

(8) For poor Saladin, fresh from his beating in the police van, thisnew assault was the last straw. (The Satanic Verses,p. 165)

(9) Mrs Qureishi told Mirza Saeed thę bad news with many shrieksand howls, and for the confused zamindar it was the last straw.(The Satanic Vers es, p. Ż32)

(10) The arrival of a fully developed devil, a homed goat-man, was,in the light of the foregoing, something very like the last, or at

any rate the penultimate, straw. (The Satanic Verses,p.25l)

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(11) And thę horror of it is: all who poSSeSS the secret wish in the endto give it up, it weighing them down likę a last straw at last' andthe camel's back bęnds and passes through the eye ofthe needle.(Grimus,p.20)

(12) Ormus Cama's second full-page press advertisement, Wat Isthe Wole Catastrophe?, in which he publicly expressed his fearthat some soft of apocallpse might be imminent, some sort ofscience fiction encounter between variant and incompatible ver-sions of the world, was the last straw. (The Ground Beneath HerFeet,p.426)

In each case, "the last straw" is ascribed a specific reference inthe text, be that the persecution ofthe cats by Evie Burns (example 6),the mutilated finger of Saleem's in Midnight's Children (example 7),the physiotherapist's assault (example 8), the bad news in The SatanicVerses (example 9), the arrival of a fully developed devil (example10), the secręt in Grimus (example l l), or ormus Cama'S writing inThe Ground Beneath Her Feet (example 12).

Only in one case, in Shame, p. 138, would the last straw be morelikely associated with the proverb than with the idiom, and this hap-pens due to the presence of other markers of paremic allusion in theimmediate linguistic context:

(13) [...] that what happened happened because twelve years of un-loved humiliation take their toll, even on an idiot, and there isalways a point at which something breaks, even though the laststraw cannot be identified with any certainĘ: was it GoodNews's marriage worries? (Shame,p. 138)

Here the schema of the proverb is retained although the reference ofthe particularized elements - breaks and the last straw - cannot beestablished beyond doubt.

The nominal phrase A word to the wise may also be described interms of systemic allusion of the same type. ln The Ground BeneathHer Feet and The Satanic Verses Rushdie uses this truncation:

(14) A waming shot across the bows. A word to the wise. (TheGround Beneath Her Feet,p. 381)

(15) Gibreel also got his share of voices: superb Byronic aristocratsboasting of having 'conquered Everest', sneering guttersnipes,unctuous best-friend voices mingling warning and mock-

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cornmiseration, a word to the wise, how stupid can you, don'tyou know yet what she's, anything in trousers, you poor moron,take it from a pal. (The Satanic Verses,p.444).

Compare as well:

(16) New Broomstick Needed to Sweep Out Witches. (The SatanicVerses, p. 280)t

We may also ask ourselves whether to treat 'hot judge by ap-pearances" here as an institutionalized idiom alluding to the proverbAppearances are deceptive. Rushdie makes use of this n The SatąnicVerses:

(17) 'A lickle pneumonia is all you got.' She introduced herself as hisphysiotherapist, Hyacinth Phillips. And added, 'l neverjudge bya person by appearances. No, sir. Don't you go thinking I do.'(The Satanic Verses, p. 1 64)

Rushdie sees in proverb fragments great semantic potential as heattributes to them specific meanings in the same way the aforemen-tioned phrases takę their meanings from the original paremias. Againmetaphoric meanings are at work here, the fragments in question canbę understood no doubt without any reference to the original prov-erbs, though it is questionable whether they can be fully appreciated.

We can summarize the above by saying that in some cases Rush-die uses the truncated forms independently of their original forms.They function independently, and the interpretation of the relevantpaSSagęS does not hinge on familiarity with the proverbs' full form onthe part of thę readęr. In other cases, the writer makes more or lessexplicit refęrences to the proverb, and in such cases we should rathertreat the forms in question as more obvious allusions to proverbs. Thewriter helps the reader to ęstablish paremic links by providing a lin-guistic co-text (the presence of other components of the proverb,examples 1,3,4 and 11) or by so creating the semantics of thepassagę that the allusion to the proverb's full form is somewhat moresubstantiated (examples 2 and 5).It also shows that Rushdie is awareof the systemic allusions between the truncated forms and their ońgi-nals. He demonstates a varieĘ of techniques using allusions: eitherleaving the truncated forms to be interpreted by the reader as theystand but also allowing him to freely make a paremic connection or,by providing specific clues, directing the reader to the proverb. lnęither case Salman Rushdie uSeS a short form, which is an

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Salman Rushdie uses a short form, which is an economical way ofpacking the multiple meaning and multiple imagery of proverbs intosingle elements. The use of allusive elements allows the writer to cre-ate his own individual style, part and parcel of which is a highly idio-syncratic use of phraseological units. Thę choice of truncated formshelps Rushdie to easily embed thęm in the immediate linguistic con-text. This naturally refers as węll to the othęr instances of allusion dis-cussed below.

The group discussed above includes proverbs which have institu-tionalized idiomatic equivalents. Other instances of allusion analyzedin this paper are proverbs without correspondingly accepted truncatedclauses or groups of lexemes. The following examples, however,pose another problem already męntionęd above. There is a questionof where to draw a line between an allusion and any form of trunca-tion, which is the commonest operation and lęaves a few componentelements of the proverb visibłe in the text. Let us look at the follow-ing example:

(18) 'I hoped you would take the hint I have been dropping by my re-fusal to answer your persistent questions, but since you have notI must tell you straight that you're here on a wild-goose chase.As Don Quixote would say, you're looking for this year's birdsin last year's nests [. ..]. (The Moor's Last Sight,p. 393)

Helsing, a character of The Moor's Last Sigh, refers MoroesZogoiby to the proverb of Cervantes's En los nidos de atailo no haypójaros hogafio, which in English is There are no birds in last year'snests.Is this an allusion to the proverb or a structural transformation(deletion and insertion)? Are we distracted or assisted by the refer-ence to Cervantęs via the reference to Don Quixote in establishing theparemic allusion? Do we understand the sentencę to be referring toCervantęs's character, and by doing so personalize the statement, or,just the opposite, is the reference directed towards the proverb, andDon Quixote only helps us to prove that the association with theproverb is correct? Does Rushdie produce an expression "to look forthis year's birds in last year's nests'' to mean more or less to be on ąwild goose chase? The understanding of the expression is naturallypossible only by understanding the meaning of the proverb, so heręan association of this type is requisite. However' it does not nęcęssar-ily entitle us to call this use an allusion. The reader does not have toevęn retrięve much of the lexical content of the proverb, the proverb

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is as if there. So we can say that this is a proverb in its truncated form

- a proverb changed into a predicate' or we can say that the wńter ex-tracts the noun phrase "birds in last year's nests", which would meanin the context of the quoted passage 'things/people that we expect tofind but whicb/who no longer exist'. Definitely this is not an institu-tionalized idiom, the meaning is construed in the context of the bookand owes all of its semantics to the proverb. In its elliptic form it isthen an alłusion to the proverb and therefore tręated as paremic allu-sion in my analysis.2

Perhaps similarly we should treat the following examples:

(19) You have lived in the wood all your life and so you cannot seethe trees. (The Ground Beneath Her Feet,p.26Ż)

(20) You chose socialism, union made your bed, now you're lying init. (Fury,p. 14a)

The meanings of these excerpts are clear to the reader via theproverbs they allude to. The proverbs: You cannot see the wood

for the trees utd As you make your bed, you must lie upon it have tobe recallęd for the complete understanding of the references. Theseexamples clearly cannot go unnoticed as the fragments contain a lotof lexical material which are fully or partially incompatible with therest of the text and the reader has to rely on the proverbs for com-prehension.

Generally, each usę of the proverb which we call an allusion willmanifest a different Ępe of elemęnt selection and structure change.As we observed before proverbs can bę transformed into legitimatephrases in thęir own right. In other cases' proverbs are signalled bysingle words. The words can be selected because they are felt by thewńter to be key components and thereforę known to the reader, inwhich case the allusion will bę a swift operation on his part.

On the other hand, the choice of components that evoke allusionmay be dętermined by a lexical co-text or thę semantics of the text.Let us consider the following passage:

(21) 'Talk about pot and kettle,' he said. 'Question of mote andbeam.' (The Satanic Verses,p.278)

This comment by a character in The Satanic Verses must be inter-preted after the two proverbs have been recalled. Jumpy Joshi's re-ply to Mishal Suffan's comment on the former's bad behaviour

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calrnot be understood without the paremic context. The image-beańng components stand, however, so conspicuously incompatiblewith the context that the reader should know that he must interpret itsomehow and his interpretation should be via allusion to: The potcalls the kettle black and You can see a mote in another's eye butcannot see a beam in your own, respectively. The lexical compo-nents are selected carefully and so purposefully that they can easilypoint at the contrasting elements of the proverbs.

Similarly in example (22). Both (21) and (22) show how e1o-

quent proverb components can be.

(22) Pot and kettle, replied the voice. Mote and beam. (Grimus, p.

el)

Another example in which it is necessary on the part of the reader tosee the allusion involved is (23):

(23) [...] because blood will have blood, an eye demands an eye, andhow many eyes had her father covertly put out, by direct actionor indirect, one, or a hundred, or ten thousand, or a hundredthousand |...]. (Shalimąr the Cloltłl' p. 335)

Rushdie refers here to the proverb An eye.fbr an eye, and a toothfora tooth by alluding to the first part of the proverb (commonly usedto stand for the whole paremia) by dint of a novel phrase built onthe basis of the original components and their meanings. In the ex-ample above the meaning of the proverb is fully retained, but thisobviously metaphorical structure has to be interpreted with the helpof the proverb. The paremic interpretation of the phrase is facilitatedby the paremic co-text, that is the reference to another proverbBlood will hąve blood, with which An eye.for ąn eye overlaps se-mantically. On the other hand, Rushdie makes the allusion lessstriking by means of the word play employed in the same sentence,viz. he wants to have the reader interpret the allusive elements liter-ally. Interestingly, the literal interpretation of "many eyes" shouldbe clearly abandoned as well for the sake of further metonimiza-tions.

Let us look at some other examples of this type of allusion:

(24) By the time the man had conquered his lightring-struck shynessand stammered out the news of the declaration of war betweenEngland and Germany 1...1. Qhe Moor's Last Sigh,p.69)

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS

(25) Yeah. And mańe the moon is made of cheese, Standish SuITęn-ders to Sarcasm' Hey' look. Up in the sĘ, above the Pheasantry.Wasn't that a flying pig? (The Ground Beneath Her Feet, p.Ż93)

The allusion in the first fragment is similar to that of example (5) inthat the syntactic structurę of the sentence Status is transfomed intoa modifier: the proveń Lightning never strikes in the same placetwi c e b ecomes I i ghtn ing -s t ru c k to des cribe somebody' s (Abraham'sZogoiby's) shyness. [n order to understand this adjective-modifiernonce form the reader has to go directly to the proverb in question.At the same time Rushdię plays on the meaning of the proverb asthe use of lightning-struck stggests that misfortune may befall oneand the samę person more than once.'

In the other example above, the interpretation is facilitated, if notmade possible, by Plgs might fly tf they had wings/Pigs may fly, butthey are unlikely birds. From these paremias we can deduce themeaning of "a flying pig", which acquires an independent meaning,that of 'something impossible, unlikely, implausible, etc.'

The last two examples show that certain passages cannot be un-derstood without relevant references to the proverb. They also showthat allusion itself may be part of a more complex network of wordplay and semantic alteration of proverb meaning.

Therę are instancęs of paremic allusion in which the recovery ofthe very proverb is not - I would claim - necessary in the interpreta-tive process. What this means is that the allusive elements are inter-pretable in themselves and the reader does not have to establish anyassociative links between them and the paremia in question. The casein point is thę following passage:

(26) Appearances deceive; the cover is not the best guide to the book.(The Satanic Verses, p. 257 .

Though the reference to the proverb is palpable and immediate, alsoprompted by another proverb preceding it, I would claim that the sec-ond part of the sentęnce could be interpreted without thę reference.The non-literal character ofthe sentence is ęvident - it has to be un-derstood metaphorically but its meaning can be dęcoded without thęknowledge of the proverb. Rushdie hęre uses what can be called aparemic paraphrase, that is wording a particular proverb differently

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though retaining the main figurative image. The following fragmentshows a similar, yet not identical case:

(27) I opened my mouth; he indicated that I should close it. "Seenand not heard," he stated. "Keep your tmp shut is best policy."(The Ground Beneath Her Feet,p.70)

It is patently obvious that it contains a referencę to the proverbChildren should be seen and not heard'. the form and meaning ofPiloo Doodhwala's statement. The only reason why this is similar tothe previous example is the fact that it is debatable whether thiscould be understood without thę assistance of the proverb. Simi-larly, it would be interesting to find out if this fiagment would everbe read without its connection to the proverb. I would claim, how-ever, that it is likely that the fragment "seen and not heard" will beinterpreted correctly. It has to bę bome in mind though that even ifthe meaning is deciphered the force of the statement is not properlyassessed as the proverb Children should be seen and not heard car-ries with it a clear allusion to a certain type of attitude and is indica-tive of a certain type of behaviour and a specific time in history.Rushdie uses here his strategy of providing paremic context to easethe process of identification of the allusion. Namely, hę makes useof the paremic structure "X is the best policy", which is best repre-sented by HonesĘ is the best policy, a1so found in the same novelby Rushdie (p.2l3). This Ępe of allusion will be discussed againlater in this paper.

Example (28) shows another paremic reference. The proverb,4p-pearances are deceptive (or Neverjudge by ąppearances) is wordeddifferently so that there is really no need to recall the proverb, towhich Rushdie probably alludes. Another example of paremic para-phrase is then:

(28) Don't be fooled by appearances, he greets Ormus, handing hima Scotch and soda without troubling to ask, adding: It's mostlyphoney. You'll find I'm pretĘ much a rogue. (The Ground Be-neath Her Feet,p.259)

However' in other cases it may be obvious that the writęr makęsan allusion to the proverb as in the following fragment.

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS 39t

(29) lt appearances are anything to judge by, said Flapping Eeagle,bending over the outstretched limb' l am doubły lucĘ this eve-ning.(Grimus, p. 136)

Here / presupposes the existence of the proverb, the message ofwhich the character of the novel refers to. In such cases, it seemsnecessary to take the proverb into account in analysing a particularfragment.

lt sęems that paremic paraphrase, which ideally functions inde-pendently, but relates to particular proverbs, is used in order to soundproverbial but at the same time in order not to look so.

In the examples discussed above the reference to the proverb isunmistakęn t}rough the interpretation of the relevant fiagments doesnot entirely dęend on the reference to the paremia. The understand-ing of the allusion though helps to reveal all the additional meaningswhich the presence of the proverb entails.

Last but not least, among all the proverb references made byRushdie we can distinguish yet another type of paremic allusion.These paremic references manifest themselves in such passageswhich only hint at proverbs, and they can be equally well treated in-dependently of the latter. Here the reader's intuition, his imaginationand capability of making associative links all play a significant role inthe interpretation of the relevant fragments. By way of exemplifica-tion, let us consider the following four excerpts:

(30) How does a dictator fall? Raddi Bekar Phisaddi lift journałisticembargoes. Certain fatal connections are hinted at in pńnt: thedead turkeys of pinkie Aurangzeb' Good Nęws Hyder's wed-ding-day fiasco and the stiff neck of Talvar Ulhaq, thęoriesabout the dead boys in the slums make the news at last. 'Thepeople are like dry wood,' Raza Hyder says. 'These sparks willstart a fire.' (Shame,p.26l)

(31) Yes, and words are not deeds, Solanka allowed, moving offfret-fully. Though words can become deeds. If said in the right placeand at the right time, they can move mountains and change theworld. (Fury,p.66)

(32) Mistake not flamboyance for genius, or glistering garbage forgold,. (The Ground Beneath Her Feet,p.232)

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(33) Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closerto God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantĘ im-proves children's academic performance, exercise kills, tyrannyis just a part of our culture l. . .). Qhe Ground Beneath Her Feet,p.352-3s3)

In both the first two cases the readęr may have a feeling that thęcharacters are speaking in proverbial terms. In example (30), RazaHyder's observation resembles that of the old adage: Of a smallspark a great fire. We can say that this instance of proverb use isagain a paremic paraphrase similar to that in example (26). In thesęcond example above, Solanka's thoughts can be likened to thewisdom of Actions speak louder thąn words.It is almost impossibleto decide whether Rushdie speaks simply in metaphors in example(30) and formulates thę character's obseruations about the relationsbetween actions and words in example (31) in his own way, withoutthinking about the particular proverb. The fact that in both casesRushdie somewhat plays with the proverbs, in example (30) bymetaphońsing the whole context and in example (3l) by allowingfor a personal opinion about the proverb to be formulated, naturallydoes not make thę allusions impossible' on the other hand, thoseidiosyncratic contexts may be indicative of Rushdie making allu-sions, as we stop to consider the respective fragments in greater de-tail. Moreover, in both contexts the use of proverbs through paremicallusion is justified by the function of the paremic reference, also bytheir very position in the text. That is, in example (30) the characterHyder "uses" the proverb to predict the outcome of certain actionsin the same way as proverbs may prove to be useful. Also in thesame excerpt, the final position of the reference may help see Hy-der's statement as proverbial in character. In example (31) the prov-erb would be a starting point for Solanka's considerations. A largercontext also justifies the interpretation of the relevant fragment interms of paremic allusion. Solanka comments on his cab driver'sswearing at the whole world and his wishing it to be cleansed byMuslims, and Jews to be effectively dealt with. Solanka fears thatthe drivęr's swear words might become a grim reality, in which caseactions would speak louder than words, and would be definitely bet-ter seen, noticed, talked about but at the same time impossible totakę back. Reflecting upon the proverb's message' Solanka, how-

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS 393

ever, agrees that words can be equally powerful if appropriately,1

useo.Example (32) hints at the proverb All that glitters is not gold pri-

marily lexically and semantically. The proverb imagery correspondsto the metaphorical image of the sentence: useless garbage that glis-tens mustn't be taken for something valuable. The semantics of this isidentical with the semantics of All that glitters is not gold. Even somelexical items help the reader to make an associative link. Neverthe-less, the clarity of the metaphoricalness renden this sentence inter-pretable without the reference to the proverb.

ln example (33) one cannot but see the reference to An apple aday keeps a doctor away.The meaning of the quotation is again fairlyindependent of the proverb though the allusion gives the mere state-ment thę force of a pragmatically useful dictum. Rushdie makes hisstatement as powerful as the proveń allows it to be.

By the same token we can wonder if paremic allusion underliesthe following examples:

(3a) But before blood has its day, I shall take wing [...] and retum,briefly, to the affairs of my inner world [. ..]. (Midnight's Chil-dren,p.226)

(35) I opened my mouth; he indicated that I should close it. "Seenand not heard," he stated. "Keep your trap shut is best policy."(The Ground Beneąth Her Feet,p.70)

As far as I am concemed, as a reader of both novels, the first putsme in mind of Evety dog has his day. The meaning of "blood has itsday" can be understood in the context of the whole chapter called"Alpha and Omega" in Midnight's Children as prophetically refeningto Saleem Sinai's forfunes. Blood hęre should be understood not so

much literally as metonymically hinting at misfortunes as such, whichare representęd in this particular chapter by Evie BumS'S bloodynose.

In example (35), the paremic interpretation of "Keep your trapshut is best policy", as referring structurally and also semantically tothe proverb HonesĘ is the best policy, is supported by the presence ofanother paremic allusion in the same sentence (see example (27) forcomment). Here the character in The Ground Beneąth Her Feet,Pt-1oo Doodhwala, instructs Lhmeed in very proverbial terms on howthe latter should behave when confronting adults, hoping that the

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child will be everything but disobedient having received authoritativeguidance. The reference to the proverb makes Piloo Doodhwala'spronouncement brook no argument.s

To finish off the enumeration of Rushdie's allusions to proverbs,let us look at no less interesting an excerpt fromThe Ground BeneathHer Feet:

(36) One might suggest simply that Omus Cama's worship of thecity has quickly been reciprocated; it has become the ciĘ's wor-ship of him. And where this city leads, this Rome, all theworld's cities quickly follow. (The Ground Beneath Her Feet,p.387)

This fragment in which New York is likened to Rome is certainlybased on cultural associations with the latter city. New York is whatRome once was, the epicentre of the world, whose example is fol-lowed in every comer of the globe. The excerpt can be easily under-stood without refening to any proverbial undeftones, the associationsare plentiful enough for the reader to comprehend the comparison.One, however, cannot stop wondering to what extent Rushdie oper-ates here with paremic allusion. Rome is not infrequently present inproverbs; selected connotations of the cĘ are deployed to emphasizeceftain features, for instance, setting examples and being emulated bythe rest of the world, which are all related to the power Rome oncehad over thę world and which New York is claimed to have now. Inthis case the above fragment may allude to Allroads lead to Rome assuggested by the lexis or even All things are to be bought at Rome, asit does stress the importance of Rome. If Rushdie alludes to neither orany other proverb here, he definitely refers to the same set of associa-tions which underlie the proverbs mentioned above.

As can be noticed paremic allusion is an elusive operation be-cause it is difficult to set up the necessary as well as sufficient criteriawhich would help us classify a particular proverbial reference as allu-sive in character or as a different type of paremic modification.Moreover, nor is it likely that all seemingly proverbial passageswould be categońzed as allusive in nature. It has not been my objec-tivę to establish such criteria, but only to show to what extent the se-lected examples can be called allusive. Nevertheless, it has to bestressed that allusion is one of thę most ęlusive operations performedon proverbs (cf. Pajdzńska,1993: 174 ft)

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS 39s

There remains the question of why paremic allusion is used inRushdie's novels. Using allusion in his use of proverbial wisdomRushdie by all means plays with language and his reader at the sametime. Proverbs in their rich wording and rich images allow him to usetheir elements as their signs, which means that some elements are se-lected because they can represent proverbs metonymically. And eventhough certain specific elements are carefully chosen to stand for par-ticular single elements, the reference to the whole proverb and itsmessage is unavoidable. Proverbs allow Rushdie to select those oftheir elements which could be further made use of in the constructionof the linguistic fabric of his novels. As many examples show (nota-

bly 1-16), allusive components hint at paremias but at the same timebecome individually, literally or not, meaningful, and thus becomębuilding blocks for diflbrent images in the text. Paremic allusionclearly shows that many proverbs are compositional and that theircomponent elements may have a life of their own.

The use of paremic allusion may also suggest that Rushdie doesnot use whole proverbs in order to eschew sounding too common-place. I would claim, however, that this may not be his primary objec-tive: firstly, because he uses complete proverbs as well as other modi-fications equally frequently; secondly, the usę of a whole proverbdoes not mean that the author automatically sounds trite, his style islinguistically unoriginal and his wording hackneyed. The use of prov-erbs as well as other fixed expressions has to be seen in a larger con-text of the author's use of language, the description of which is, how-ever, beyond the scope ofthis paper.

Due to the use of paremic allusion, Rushdie's style can be calledindirect insofar as paremic allusion is indirect. Surprisingly so as

proverbs in the main are themselves indirect ways of communicatingall manner of things. We can also say that the authoritativeness ofproverbs is suspended in allusion, suspended till the intended proverbis evoked and the full meaning is comprehended. Paremic allusionnaturally rules out all possible universal quantifiers and quotationmarkers, so it would seem that proverbial statements become morepersonal and subjective. This is so only on the surface. The identifica-tion of the allusion erases the initial feeling of individuality on thepart of the narrator or any character. What is individual is definitelyRushdie's mode of suspending the moment of identification and alsohis skilfulness at marking his individual literary style with idiosyn-cratic paremic allusions.

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Rushdie plays with the reader as well. By employing allusion heexpects him to decipher the hidden proverb. [n the process of decod-ing the allusion the reader arrives at the intended meanings, the un-derstanding of which, as has been demonstrated above, is more oftenthan not vital in comprehending the text. [n all the cases discussedabove the proverbs alluded to are paremias known to a native speakerof English, so thę identification of the original forms should not beproblematic for an average reader. Difficulties might arise had Rush-die usęd less known, obsolete or archaic proverbs or hidden the allu-sion so much that associative links become invisible. Rushdie doesnot use unknown, uncofilmon proverbs in his novel, nor does hechoose such for allusive purposes, and therefore he does not run theńsk of being unintelligible. Although some of thę examples adducedcan be understood without referring to proverbs, the whole richnessof the text is exposed after tlre allusions havę been identified.

Paremic allusion is a category that cannot be unambiguously de-scribed (cf. Pajdzińska, 1993: 174 tr). This is a Category that is veryheteroganeous, and this fact differentiates it from other operations onthe structure of a proverb, which seem to lend themselves to moreregular analyses. Nevertheless, it is extremely useful in creatingmeanings as it allows for morę flexibilĘ on the part of the writer. Itis especially demanding on the part of the reader, who faces thęsometimes arduous but always exciting task of unearthing differentlevels of text semantics. Finally, it is a stylistic tool in the hands of awriter, a tool which allows him to exert an extremely idiosyncratic in-fluence on his prose.

Notesl These observations somewhat confirm Moon's findings about the function of

systemic nominalizations as allusions to existing proverbs. Moon observes (1998:113) that some proverbs hardly ever occur as intact full forms but as nominaliza-tions. on thebasis of Rushdie's novels we cou|d claim thę same: that some prov_eńs surface only as nominalisations: cf. the last straw and a new broon. It is wortlrdebating whether in the following fragment thę allusion is made to the proverb Abarking dog never bites or whether it is a pure modification of the idiom all bark andno bite: And Aires-uncle, you should lock up that crazy dog, by the way, I'vegot a pet-name for him thathe really deserves: call him Jaw-jaw, that all-bark-no-bite mutt. (The Moor's Lasł Sigh, p.58)

'So this allusion can be seen as pań ofall the references to Spain that can bedetected tn The Moor's Last Sigh (cf Cantor, 2003)

PAREMIC ALLUSIONS IN RUSHDIE'S NOVELS 39',l

3Rushdie uses the same proverb once again n Fury, p. 173 and plays with its

meaning as well.aThere is possibly another allusion to the same proverb in Haroun ancl the Sea

of Stories (p.125): 'But it's not as simple as that,'he told himself, because the danceof the Shadow Warrior showed him that silence had its own grace and beauty (ustas speech could be graceless and ugly); and that Actions could become as noble asWords [...].

'Th" .u*. could be said about the proverb FamiliariĘ breec|s contempt,which lends its syntactic and logico-semantic structure to such formulations as:"Success breeds excess'' (The Ground Beneąth Her Feet, p. 5Ż6) or "Murder breedsdeath'' (Midnight's Children, p. 27I). And the paremia one picture is wolłh a thou-sand words may be behind the following: One Pathan; one Punjabi Muslim is worthten of those babus-in-arms (Midnight's Children, p. 339).The meaning of Give athief/fool enough rope and he'll hang himself is, to my mind, alluded to in Shame,p.179: "Give people democracy and look what they do with it". This sentence, how-ever, relies more on the proverb meaning than the fragments mentioned above.

Bibliography

Cantor, Paul A. (2003). "Rushdie's Use of Spanish History in The Moor's lnstSigh".In Bloom, H. (ed.), Salman Rushdie,Phlladelphia: Chelsea House Pub-lishers, pp. 121-143.

Mrazović, P. (1998). "Phraseologismen als LTbersetzungsproblem in literarischenTexten". ln Eismann, W. (ed.), Europhras '95. Europciische Phraseologie imVergleich: Gemeinsames Erbe und kulturelle Vielfalt, Bochum: N. Brock-meyer, pp. 557-568.

Moon, R. (1998). Fixed Expressions and ldioms in English. Oxford: ClarendonPress.

Naciscione A. (2001). Phraseological Units in Discourse: Towards Applied Stllis-tlcs, Riga: Lawian Academy of Culture.

Pajdzińska' A. (1993). Fra1eologiłny jako tworz7łuo wspóhzesnej polszczyzny.Lublin : Agencja Wydawniczo-Handlowa.

Szpila' G. (2003). "Who Cooks Rushdie's Phraseological Geese?'', StylistyktłXII: 149-161.

Szpila, G. (2004). "Phraseology in a Literary Text: Forms and Functions". InLeśniewska' J.; Witalisz, E. (eds.)' The Legacy of History. English andAmercian Studies and the Signfficance of the Past. Vol. 2. Languageand Culture' Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press, pp. 30-40'

S ulman R ushdie's Novels

Rushdie S. (199 1). Haroun and the Sea of Sto rie. London: Granta Books.Rushdie S. (1995). Shame.London: Vintage.Rushdie S. (1995). Mfulnight's Children. London: Vintage.Rushdie S. (1996). Grimus. London:Vintage.Rushdie S. (1996). The Moor's I'ttsl Slgł. London: Vintage.

\

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Rushdie S. (1998). Satanic Verses. London: Vintage.Rushdie S. (2000). The Ground Beneath Her Feet. New York: Picador.Rushdie s. (2mo). Fłry. New York: Random House.Rushdie S. (2005). Shalimar the Clown.I-nndon: Jonathan Cape.

Grzegorz SzpilaInstytut Filologii AngielskiejUniwersytet JagiellonskiAl. Mickiewicza 93I-120 KrakowPolandE-mail : grzegsz@lingua.fi lg.uj. edu.pl