ENGLISH PRACTICAL COURSE

(Third year, first term) Adina TUDOSESCU

INTRODUCTION Equally due to the general bias and specificity (as the main applied component of the curriculum), and to the inherent interdisciplinary perspective, the course compulsorily implies the integration of the following coordinates of design: - various activities targeted upon actualising, refining and/or supplementing certain areas of knowledge within the fields of (derivational) morphology, syntax and semantics by means of restructuring, reshaping, and resizing information in accordance to a strictly applied orientation, and thus creating a functional interface with theoretical disciplines; - a focus upon improving and diversifying the students training in translation practice, with the entailing beneficial effects upon the enriching of specialised language vocabulary in various domains; - exercising the abilities involved in the complex analysis of content and in text commentary, activating the deductive, intuitive and communicative skills, testing coherence and logical processes in ideation and argumentation, stimulating the creative potential. In close relationship with the last issue, the structure of the course will also include several topics (and guidelines) for essays and/or debates. OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE The characteristic of the course being the pre-eminently applied dimension, its central goal resides in enhancing linguistic performance at lexical-semantic, grammatical (phonetic, morphological, syntactic), and stylistic levels. In order to improve actualising abilities, both the systematic acquisition of new information, and the sustained activation, development and integration of already acquired knowledge are going to be envisaged. By means of the diverse thematic content and the selected texts, a certain benefit in terms of students general cultural background is also targeted. GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE UNITS AND MODULES The macro-structural organisation of the course consists of four broadly encompassing units (see Contents of the course). These units are all internally articulated in conformity to an iterative sequence of didactic modules (the text, vocabulary, grammar, translation, essay / debate modules), the methodological characteristic of which resides in their more often than not presupposing an integrative level in what concerns the basic skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing). Therefore, a unit will (in general) contain: a) a text of 1-2 pages constituting the nucleus of the unit, and representing the object of a complex analysis (lexical and grammatical aspects, relevant stylistic features, content commentary , which text will be preceded by introductory requirements featuring a thematically orienting role, and followed by a set of assignments meant to facilitate and guide the analysis; b) vocabulary study and practice; c) the grammar section (brief theoretical presentation / revision and exercises); d) 1-2 supplementary texts (of variable length), dealing with topics related to the one of the main text, and which can be used on various purposes (for translation tasks, as starting point for additional lexical-grammatical applications or for comments / debates, as further information and reading); e) indicated topics for essays / debates (which may be accompanied by suggested guidelines, landmarks or possibly necessary references); f) 1-2 texts for translation into English.

CONTENTS OF THE COURSE (First term) UNIT I: EARLY MEMORIES. THE FIRST QUESTIONS - A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote - A Message from the Pig-Man by John Barrington Wain - Grammar: Word-formation processes; Existential Sentences; Uses / levels of Negation UNIT II: EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (I) - Night-Sea Journey by John Barth (I) - The Human Drift by Jack London - Grammar: Free Relative Clauses; Finiteness / Non-Finiteness of Clauses UNIT III: EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (II) - Night-Sea Journey by John Barth (II) - Before Adam by Jack London - Grammar: Comparison of adjectives; Cleft Constructions UNIT IV: THE ETERNAL DUALITY. THE QUESTION WITH NO ANSWER - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Compensation by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Grammar: Numerals

UNIT I EARLY MEMORIES. THE FIRST QUESTIONS Preliminaries 1. Enumerate and briefly comment upon some of the various possible approaches to childhood (points of view, domains of analysis and/or study). 2. What makes childhood exert a real fascination upon us, and what makes it be of scientific interest? 3. Which of the numerous literary works devoted to childhood is the first to come to your mind, and why? A. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Imagine the kitchen of a big old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature, but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs in front of it. A woman with short white hair is standing at the kitchen window, her breath steaming the windowpane as she exclaims: Oh my, its fruitcake weather! The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are distant cousins, and we have lived together with other relatives here as long as I can remember. We are each others best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was once her best friend, and who died when she was still a child. Now she turns away from the window joyfully. I knew it before I got out of bed. Oh Buddy, fetch our buggy and help me find my hat. We have thirty cakes to bake! Its always the same: a morning arrives in November, and she announces: Its fruitcake weather, Buddy! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. Together, we take our buggy, an old baby carriage, out in the garden and into the grove of pecan-nut trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. We use it all year round now for jobs like hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, or as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange-and-white terrier. Queenie is trotting beside it now.
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Three hours later we are back in the kitchen shelling a buggyload of nuts which we have picked. The kitchen is growing dark as we work by the fireside. At last the buggy is empty, the bowl is full. We eat our supper and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Buying? What all were going to buy? Cherries and candied lemon peel, ginger and vanilla and canned pineapple, and raisins and walnuts and whisky and, oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings why, well need a pony to pull the buggy home! But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any, except for what we earn ourselves from various activities. Once we won the seventyninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know anything about football. Its just that we enter any contest we hear about. So one way or another, each year we save up a Fruitcake Fund. This we keep hidden in an old purse under the floor under my friends bed. This purse is seldom removed from this location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, when I am allowed ten cents to go to the cinema. My friend has never been to a cinema, nor does she want to. Id rather you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, people my age shouldnt waste their eyesight. When the Lord comes for me, let me see Him clear. Now, with supper finished, we retire to her little bedroom in a faraway part of the house. Silently, we take the purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the bed: dollar bills and coins. We count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations we have $ 12.73. According to mine, exactly $ 13. Oh, I do hope youre wrong, Buddy. We cant have anything to do with thirteen. The cakes will fall. Tell you what! To be on the safe side lets take a penny and toss it out the window! Of the ingredients that go into our fruitcakes, whisky is the most expensive, as well as the hardest to obtain State law forbids its sale. But everybody knows you can buy a bottle from Mr. Haha Jones. And the next day, having finished our other shopping, we set out for Mr. Hahas, a caf down by the river. They call him Haha because hes so gloomy, a man who never laughs. Footsteps, the door opens, our hearts turn over: its Mr. Haha Jones himself! And he is a giant and he doesnt smile. If you please, Mr. Haha, wed like a bottle of your finest whisky. And would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too, and asking which one of us is the drinking man. She: Its for my fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking. We pay him his two dollars. Then suddenly his face softens. And he is pouring the money back into our purse, with instructions to send him one of the fruitcakes instead. On the way home my friend remarks, Well, theres a lovely man! Well put an extra cup of raisins in his cake! The black stove glows with the heat. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it, lovely odors fill the kitchen and the house, drift out to the world in chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whisky, sit on window sills and shelves. Who are they for? Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends indeed the larger share are for persons weve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People like the President and his wife in Washington. Like the Baptist missionary who lectured here last winter. Or the driver of the six oclock bus from Mobile, who waves to us every day as he passes. The scrapbook we keep of thank-you notes on White House paper, and communications from places like California and Borneo, make us feel connected to the world beyond the kitchen. Now it is December. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone. Yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, and we feel like celebrating. My friend pours the last drops of Mr. Hahas whisky into her teacup and lets me have a taste. Even Queenie gets a drop. I giggle and spit it out, and suddenly were laughing and singing songs. I try to tap dance even Queenie has the party spirit. Enter two relatives. Very angry! Listen to what they have to say: A child of seven tasting whisky! You must be crazy! Shame! Scandal! Humiliation! Kneel, pray, beg the Lords pardon! Queenie sneaks under the stove, my friend looks down at her shoes, her chin quivers, she lifts her skirt and blows her nose and runs to her room. Long after the town has gone to sleep and the house is silent, she is weeping into her pillow. Please dont cry please. Dont cry. Youre too old for that. Its because Im too old. Old and
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funny. Not funny fun. More fun than anybody. Listen, if you dont stop crying, youll be so tired tomorrow we cant go cut a tree. Buddy, thats right! Tomorrow we go out in the woods and find our Christmas tree, the best weve ever had! A tree twice as big as a boy. And I know just the one way out in the back of the forest! And its true: the tree we cut down is indeed twice as tall as a boy, and so fine that people who pass us on the way home compliment us on it, and one woman, the richest in town, stops her car and offers us fifty cents cash for it. To which my friend says: Wouldnt take a dollar. And when the lady says we could find another like it, my friend says: I doubt it. Theres never two of anything. After making the holly wreaths for the windows, our next project is family gifts. When it comes to making each others gifts, my friend and I separate to work secretly. No matter what wed like to give each other, we always end up making kites. Which is fine with me, for we are champion kite-fliers. Christmas Eve afternoon we go to the butchers to buy Queenies traditional bone, which we wrap in funny paper and place high in the tree near the silver star. Queenie knows its there and sits at the foot of the tree staring up at it. Her excitement is equal to my own: I cannot sleep, and neither can my friend. Late that night my friend tells me, Buddy, I feel so bad. I wanted to give you a bike, but I couldnt. So I made you another kite. Know something? I made you a kite, too. Well now, isnt that the limit? And wont we have fun flying them? The next morning, after a marvellous breakfast, which were too impatient to eat, we get our presents. Well, Im disappointed, who wouldnt be? My best present is my kite, which is very beautiful blue with gold and green stars and my name painted on it. My friend loves her kite, too. Buddy, the wind is blowing And nothing will do till weve gone to a pasture below the house where Queenie has already run to bury her bone, and where a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too. There we fly our kites, like shy fish swimming into the wind. Were very happy, so happy that my friend announces: I could leave the world with today in my eyes! This is our last Christmas together. Im sent to a military school, and I have a new home, too. But it doesnt count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go. And there she stays, working in the kitchen, alone with Queenie, and then alone. For one day a letter comes from her Buddy dear, yesterday a horse kicked Queenie bad. Be thankful she didnt feel much. I wrapped her in a fine linen sheet and rode her in the buggy down to the pasture where she can be with all her bones. Enclosed please find ten cents. See a picture show and write me the story. For a few Novembers she continues to bake her fruitcakes, not as many, but some, always sending me what she likes to call The Best of the Batch! Then one November arrives when she cannot find it to exclaim: Oh my, its fruitcake weather! And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so only confirms what I know already, cutting me off from part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking to class on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven. Reading comprehension and comments
1. How would you explain the close friendship between the boy and the old woman? Comment also upon the general causes for childrens often getting along better with the elderly than with people of their parents generation or of their own age. 2. How do you imagine the relatives? 3. Identify the given hints regarding the family and social status of the two friends, and formulate some possible more precise accounts of their positions. 4. What seems to determine their condition? 5. In the eyes of the world, what do they have in common? 6. What do they really share? 7. Try and characterise the old woman, highlighting the most important clues that you have. 8. Why are we not told her name? 9. Why does the dog fit so naturally in the picture? 10. Is there any relationship between fruitcake weather and the Christmas spirit? 4

11. How do the habitual and the particular intertwine during the story, and how does this contribute to conferring an almost ritualistic significance to the two friends activities? 12. Do the last three paragraphs come as a complete surprise to the reader, or were there any foretelling elements (in terms of tone, atmosphere, and events)? 13. Comment upon the old womans words: Theres never two of anything. 14. Were the two friends really happy? Answer considering their lives from the following perspectives: seven-year-old Buddy; twenty-seven-year-old Buddy; the old woman; Queenie; the relatives and the rest of the country town; yourself.

B. Vocabulary study and practice

1. Look up the meaning(s) of the following words or phrases in a dictionary: Ns: buggy; grove; peel; ginger; spice; tap dance; humiliation; wreath; pasture; linen; batch Vs: to haul; to trot; to shell; to toss; to whirl; to drift; to dampen; to giggle; to spit; to sneak; to quiver As / Avs: gloomy; shy; loose; hence 2. There are some names of fruits in the text. List them, and then try to complete this lexical field. (Add all the English names of indigenous and exotic fruits that you know, also looking up in a Romanian-English dictionary for those the English names of which you do not know.) 3. Consider the verbs: a) fetch, bring, deliver and b) toss, throw, cast. Out of each group, the first one, and not the others, is used in the text. Can you tell why? (Take into account such distinctive features as: a) [ departing from a certain location, and coming back with something], [ bringing as part of a (catering) agreement]; b) [ in a rather careless way, lightly].) Which of the six verbs can collocate with any of the following: look, shadow, doubt, vote, anchor? Explain the meaning of the idioms: to cast pearls before swine; the die is cast. 4. What is the meaning of the sentence Well now, isnt that the limit?? Look for some other collocations / idioms containing limit (e.g. the sky is the limit), explain their meaning, and use them in sentences of your own.

C. Grammar
1. Word-formation processes 1.1. a) Identify all the compounds in the text, and group them in accordance to their type in a three-column list. (Pay attention! They are quite numerous.) b) Identify the word class of their components. c) Explain and illustrate the general rules of forming the plural of compounds.
1.1. Compounding (knowledge refreshing) Compounds are combinations of at least two free morphemes, the global meaning of which is more or less significantly different from the sum of the meanings of the components. The following types can be distinguished: welded (solid) e.g.: housekeeper; hyphenated e.g.: thunder-struck; open (separate words) e.g.: vacuum cleaner. The graphical aspect also acts as an indicator of morphological behaviour. Welded compounds form the plural by always normally adding the nominal plural marker -s (-es) in the end, irrespective of the word class of the components (e.g.: pullovers, pancakes). For the other two types the plural marker is attracted to the nominal component (or to the determined noun, if there are two or three nominals), irrespective of its position (e.g.: passers-by, brothers-in-law, book reviews). Hyphenated compounds containing no nouns add the plural marker in the end (e.g.: merry-go-rounds). Unlike welded compounds, hyphenated and open ones may evince redundancy of the plural marker when containing certain nouns that have an irregular plural (e.g.: fishermen vs. women candidates but: mouse-traps).

1.2. a) Identify all the cases of conversion (zero derivation) in the text. b) In each case, indicate the initial and the resulting word class. c) Add a few examples of your own, illustrating both full and partial conversion.
1.2. Conversion (knowledge refreshing) The process consists in changing the word class of a lexeme, without any change in form (full conversion) e.g.: bottle to bottle or with minor such changes (partial, marginal conversion) e.g.: to hate hatred, abstract to abstract (stress shift). The most productive types are V N, N V, A V conversions.

1.3. a) The causative verbs sweeten and dampen are formed from adjectives by adding a verbforming suffix. Can you paraphrase them? b) Consider also the following similar examples: widen, deafen, blacken. Add three more examples, and use all six of them in sentences of your own. 2. Existential Sentences 2.1. a) Identify the existential sentences in the text. b) Express the same meaning under the form of equivalent sentences of the standard type. 2.2. Supply your own examples of existential sentences, using various existential verbs. 2.3. Illustrate agreement by proximity in existential patterns, and cases of there undergoing raising. 5

2. Existential sentences (knowledge refreshing)

Such sentences express the notion of existence, and most frequently feature unstressed there as an empty, asemantic subject, followed by a form of the verb be, by the extraposed notional subject, and by some other constituents (most often a Locative Adverbial) e.g.: There was a car in front of the house. Existential there appears as a slot-filler when the deep subject is indefinite, and therefore in contradiction with the typical thematic (i.e. conveying given information) role of subject. Sentences consisting only in the empty subject + the existential V + the deep subject are called bare existential sentences (e.g.: There has been an accident.). Other verbs may also occur in existential sentences (especially in formal and literary styles): exist, occur, come, lie, stand, etc (e.g.: There exist similar archaeological sites in other parts of Europe, too.). Existential there occurs widely in subordinate clauses (e.g.: I do not know whether there is any solution to this problem.), or may undergo raising (e.g.: There appears to be a solution to this problem.)

3. Uses and levels of Negation 3.1. Analyse the following fragment in the text from the point of view of the use and the level of Negation: Its because Im too old. Old and funny, Not funny fun. 3.2. Find in the text a case of sentential metalinguistic negation.
3. Uses and levels of Negation (knowledge refreshing) There can be distinguished two main uses of negation (metalinguistic and logical), and at least two levels of negation (local and sentential), each level being accessible in both uses. The metalinguistic use is often based on an echoic reprise of a preceding affirmation, there being an evaluation or an analysis of the utterance itself, and negation acting as a metalanguage (with contrastive function) able to intervene on a sentence portion or on an entire sentence (e.g.: This is not astrology, it is astronomy! and It is not that money doesnt bring happiness, it is rather that happiness doesnt bring money!). The logical use lacks particular emphasis, and it corresponds in propositional logic to internal, contrary negation when applying locally , and to external, contradictory negation when applying sententially (e.g.: He was merciless. and They are not here.).

D. Supplementary text and assignments from A Message from the Pig-Man by John Barrington Wain He was never called Ekky now, because he was getting to be a real boy, nearly six, with grey flannel trousers that had a separate belt and werent kept up by elastic, and his name was Eric. But this was just one of those changes brought about naturally, by time, not a disturbing alteration; he understood that. His mother hadnt meant that kind of change when she had promised, Nothing will be changed. It was all going to go on as before, except that Dad wouldnt be there, and Donald would be there instead. He knew Donald, of course, and felt all right about his being in the house, though it seemed, when he lay in bed and thought about it, mad and pointless that Donalds coming should mean that Dad had to go. Why should it mean that? The house was quite big. He hadnt any brothers and sisters, and if he had had any he wouldnt have minded sharing his bedroom, even with a baby that wanted a lot of looking after, so long as it left the spare room free for Dad to sleep in. If he did that they wouldnt have a spare room, it was true, but, then, the spare room was nearly always empty; the last time anybody had used the spare room was years ago, when he had been much smaller last winter, in fact. And, even then, the visitor, the lady with the funny teeth, who laughed as she breathed in, instead of as she breathed out like everyone else, had only stayed two or three nights. Why did grown-ups do everything in such a mad, silly way? They often told him not to be silly, but they were silly themselves in a useless way, not laughing or singing or anything, just being silly and sad. It was so hard to read the signs; that was another thing. When they did give you something to go on, it was impossible to know how to take it. Dad had bought him a train just a few weeks ago, and taught him how to fit the lines together. That ought to have meant that he would stay; what sensible person would buy a train, and fit it all upreadytorun, even as a present for another person and then leave? Donald had been quite good about the train, Eric had to admit that; he had bought a bridge for it and a lot of rolling-stock. At first he had got the wrong kind of rolling-stock, with wheels too close together to fit on to the rails; but instead of playing the usual grown-ups trick of pulling a face and then not doing anything about it, he had gone back to the shop, straight away that same afternoon, and got the right kind. Perhaps that meant he was going to leave. But that didnt seem likely. Not the way Mum held on to him all the time, even holding him round the middle as if he needed keeping in one piece.
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All the same, he was not Ekky, now, he was Eric, and he was sensible and grown-up. Probably it was his own fault that everything seemed strange. He was not living up to his grey flannel trousers and perhaps that was it; being afraid of too many things, not asking questions that would probably turn out to have quite simple answers.
1. a) Characterise Erics universe when compared to Buddys. b) Consider their concerns, interests, way of judging things, attitudes towards the others, and comment upon the differences between them. c) Are they also outstandingly different from other children? d) Apart from being boys of about the same age, what do they have in common? e) Which of them appears to be the loneliest of the two? f) Read also the text in the reverse translation module of this unit, and integrate the third boy character within the analysis. g) How does the autobiographical element (dominant in Palers text, traceable in Capotes, and presumable in Wains) influence the verisimilitude of the characters?
Additional useful information: T. Capote (1924-1984) American writer A Christmas Memory was first published in 1966; J. B. Wain (1925-1994) English writer and literary critic A Message from the Pig-Man was first published in 1965; O. Paler (b. 1926) Romanian journalist and writer Viaa ca o corid was first published in 1987.

2. Identify and analyse the compounds in the text. 3. Translate the first paragraph of the text into Romanian.

E. Write an essay on the topic: Childhood a serene or tormented period? (2-3 pages).
Suggested guidelines: - the traditional idyllic view of the grown-ups: the lost paradise of simplicity, innocence, and happiness, the mythical realm of a better and purer mode of existence, a secret we all knew and forgot, a collection of blurred memories wrapped in melancholy and regrets - many childrens view: a (too) long period of unjust and unjustified inferiority, of absurd rules and arbitrary impositions from the part of most mature persons, a cruel competition with other children, too many unanswered questions, an endless waiting for finally growing up - various psychologists views: a difficult process of self-defining and adaptation, of hesitating formation of the ego, the most influential period in the development of the future profile, the most vulnerable stage of a still fragile psyche, which may amplify any event up to planting the seeds of unknown later consequences

F. Translate the following text into English: Pe la cinci ani, am descoperit eu nsumi c puteam s ignor, la nevoie, ceea ce nu-mi convenea din realitate. Tata m nvase s silabisesc slova tiprit i s numr pn la douzeci. Ca s se asigure c-mi continuam singur instrucia n lipsa lui, mi lsa o fascicul dintr-un roman de aventuri pe care-l citea el i mi ddea n grij puii de gin. Scrupulos din natere, mi luam n serios datoria. Nu m micam din curte toat ziua atunci, nu m lsam ispitit de ceilali copii care m chemau s cutm cuiburi pe miriti, de team s nu vin uliul, s dea iama prin puii notri. Stteam pe treptele casei, n vacarmul de lumin care sclda la amiaz curtea noastr sau la umbra porii nalte de scnduri, m luptam cu peripeiile din fascicul i, din cnd n cnd, m ridicam s numr puii. Dup ce m liniteam, citeam mai departe sau m jucam pe grmada de nisip de sub mrul btrn i rcoros din apropierea fntnii. ntr-o zi, ns, am avut o surpriz neplcut. Am numrat pe degete pn la douzeci, dar mai erau pui! Tata uitase s m avertizeze c puii notri sporiser peste limita cunotinelor mele aritmetice i c dup ce ajungeam la douzeci trebuia s-o iau de la nceput ca s-mi in evidena. Drept care am intrat n panic. Dac nu m nel, am i plns. Disperat, am ieit n uli s-i cer ajutor sorei mele care, mai independent dect mine i mai mare cu cinci ani, prefera s stea cu copiii de seama ei. Dar ulia era pustie. Am smuls cteva smocuri din iarba care cretea bezmetic i tnr pe marginea anului, am dus-o puilor ca s-i strng la un loc i am numrat din nou, atent. n zadar. Erau mai muli. M ntrebam ce s fac. Nu mi-a dat prin cap s-i socotesc separat pe cei care depeau nvtura mea, aa c pn la urm am apelat la alt soluie pentru a iei din impas. Am numrat douzeci de pui, iar pe ceilali i-am alungat din curte. n felul acesta, am pus realitatea de acord cu cunotinele mele i m-am apucat s silabisesc mai departe fascicula din romanul de aventuri, linitit, ba chiar mndru c m descurcasem. Octavian Paler Viaa ca o corid
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UNIT II EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (I) Preliminaries 1. Do you think the human brain is the only self-conscious entity in the universe? What do you know about animal psychology? 2. Enlarge upon the concept of cyclicity of existence. Does this infinite sequencing of coming into being and passing into nothingness have anything to do with evolutionary processes, be the nature of the latter either physical or biological? 3. Comment upon the hypothesis of multiple and hierarchically ordered space-time continuums. Argue for or against the possibility of an endless row of numberless universes within other universes, each having its own dimensional and temporal rank. Night-Sea Journey (abridged) from LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth (I) One way or another, no matter which theory of our journey is correct, its myself I address; to whom I rehearse as to a stranger our history and condition, and will disclose my secret hope though I sink for it. Is the journey my invention? Do the night, the sea, exist at all, I ask myself, apart from my experience of them? Do I myself exist, or is this a dream? Sometimes I wonder. And if I am, who am I? The Heritage I supposedly transport? But how can I be both vessel and contents? Such are the questions that beset my intervals of rest. My trouble is, I lack conviction. Many accounts of our situation seem plausible to me where and what we are, why we swim and whither. But implausible ones as well, perhaps especially those, I must admit as possibly correct. Even likely. If at times, in certain humours stroking in unison, say, with my neighbors and chanting with them Onward! Upward! I have supposed that we have after all a common Maker, Whose nature and motives we may not know, but Who engendered us in some mysterious wise and launched us forth toward some end known but to Him if (for a moodslength only) I have been able to entertain such notions, very popular in certain quarters, it is because our night-sea journey partakes of their absurdity. One might even say: I can believe them because they are absurd. Has that been said before? [] I have seen the best swimmers of my generation go under. Numberless the number of the dead! Thousands die as I think this thought, millions as I rest before returning to the swim. And scores, hundreds of millions have expired since we surged forth, brave in our innocence, upon our dreadful way. [] Yet these same reflective intervals that keep me afloat have led me into wonder, doubt, despair strange emotions for a swimmer! have led me, even, to suspect that our night-sea journey is without meaning. Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming. I know that there are those who seem actually to enjoy the night-sea; who claim to love swimming for its own sake, or sincerely believe that reaching the Shore, transmitting the Heritage (Whose Heritage, Id like to know? And to whom?) is worth the staggering cost. I do not. Swimming itself I find at best not actively unpleasant, more often tiresome, not infrequently a torment. Arguments from function and design dont impress me: granted that we can and do swim, that in a manner of speaking our long tails and streamlined heads are meant for swimming; it by no means follows for me, at least that we should swim, or otherwise endeavor to fulfill our destiny. Which is to say, Someone Elses destiny, since ours, so far as I can see, is merely to perish, one way or another, soon or late. The heartless zeal of our (departed) leaders, like the blind ambition and good cheer of my own youth, appalls me now; for the death of my comrades I am inconsolable. If the night-sea journey has justification, it is not for us swimmers ever to discover it. Oh, to be sure, Love! one heard on every side: Love it is that drives and sustains us! I translate: we dont know what drives and sustains us, only that we are most miserably driven and, imperfectly, sustained. Love is how we call our ignorance of what whips us. To reach the Shore, then: but what if the Shore exists in the fancies of us swimmers merely, who dream it to account for the dreadful fact that we swim, have always and only swum, and continue swimming without A.
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respite (myself excepted) until we die? Supposing even that there were a Shore that, as a cynical companion of mine once imagined, we rise from the drowned to discover all those vulgar superstitions and exalted metaphors to be literal truth: the giant Maker of us all, the Shores of Light beyond our night-sea journey! whatever would a swimmer do there? The fact is, when we imagine the Shore, what comes to mind is just the opposite of our condition: no more night, no more sea, no more journeying. In short, the blissful estate of the drowned. Ours not to stop and think; ours but to swim and sink. Because a moments thought reveals the pointlessness of swimming. [] The thoughtful swimmers choices, then, they say, are two: give over thrashing and go under for good, or embrace the absurdity; affirm in and for itself the night-sea journey; swim on with neither motive nor destination, for the sake of swimming, and compassionate moreover with your fellow swimmer, we being all at sea and equally in the dark. I find neither course acceptable. If not even the hypothetical Shore can justify a sea-full of drowned comrades, to speak of the swim-in-itself as somehow doing so strikes me as obscene. I continue to swim but only because blind habit, blind instinct, blind fear of drowning are still more strong than the horror of our journey. And if on occasion I have assisted a fellow-thrasher, joined in the cheers and songs, even passed along to others strokes of genius from the drowned great, its that I shrink by temperament from making myself conspicuous. To paddle off in ones own direction, assert ones independent right-ofway, overrun ones fellows without compunction, or dedicate oneself entirely to pleasures and diversions without regard for conscience I cant finally condemn those who journey in this wise; in half my moods I envy them and despise the weak vitality that keeps me from following their example. But in reasonabler moments I remind myself that its their very freedom and self-responsibility I reject, as more dramatically absurd, in our senseless circumstances, than tailing along in the conventional fashion. Suicides, rebels, affirmers of the paradox nay-sayers and yea-sayers alike to our fatal journey I finally shake my head at them. And splash sighing past their corpses, one by one, as past a hundred sorts of others; friends, enemies, brothers; fools, sages, brutes and nobodies, million upon million. I envy them all. [] You only swim once. Why bother, then? Except ye drown, ye shall not reach the Shore of Life. Poppycock. One of my late companions the same cynic with the curious fancy, among the first to drown entertained us with odd conjectures while we waited to begin our journey. A favorite theory of his was that the Father does exist, and did indeed make us and the sea we swim but not a-purpose or even consciously; He made us, as it were, despite Himself, as we make waves with every tail-thrash, and may be unaware of our existence. Another was that He knows were here but doesnt care what happens to us, inasmuch as He creates (voluntarily or not) other seas and swimmers at more or less regular intervals. [] No less outrageous, and offensive to traditional opinion, were the fellows speculations on the nature of our Maker: that He might well be no swimmer Himself at all, but some sort of monstrosity, perhaps even tailless; that He might be stupid, malicious, insensible, perverse, or asleep and dreaming; that the end for which He created and launched us forth, and which we flagellate ourselves to fathom, was perhaps immoral, even obscene. [] In other moods, however (he was as given to moods as I), his theorizing would become half-serious, so it seemed to me, especially upon the subjects of Fate and Immortality, to which our youthful conversations often turned. [] His objection to popular opinions of the hereafter, he would declare, was their claim to general validity. Why need believers hold that all the drowned rise to be judged at journeys end, and non-believers that drowning is final without exception? In his opinion (so hed vow at least), nearly everyones fate was permanent death; indeed he took a sour pleasure in supposing that every Maker made thousands of separate seas in His creative lifetime, each populated like ours with millions of swimmers, and that in almost every instance both sea and swimmers were utterly annihilated, whether accidentally or by malevolent design. (Nothing if not pluralistical, he imagined that there might be millions and billions of Fathers, perhaps in some night-sea of their own!) However and here he turned infidels against him with the faithful he professed to believe that in possibly a single night-sea per thousand, say, one of its quarter-billion swimmers (that is, one swimmer in two hundred fifty billions) achieved a
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qualified immortality. [] I could go on (he surely did) with his elaboration of these mad notions such as that swimmers in other night-seas neednt be of our kind; that Makers themselves might belong to different species, so to speak; that our particular Maker mightnt Himself be immortal, or that we might be not only His emissaries but His immortality, continuing His life and our own, transmogrified, beyond our individual deaths. Even this modified immortality (meaningless to me) he conceived as relative and contingent, subject to accidental or deliberate termination; his pet hypothesis was that Makers and swimmers each generate the other against all odds, their number being so great and that any given immortality-chain could terminate after any number of cycles, so that what was immortal (still speaking relatively) was only the cyclic process of incarnation, which itself might have a beginning and an end. Alternatively he liked to imagine cycles within cycles, either finite or infinite: for example, the night-sea, as it were, in which Makers swam and created nightseas and swimmers like ourselves, might be the creation of a larger Maker, Himself one of many, Who in turn et cetera. Time itself he regarded as relative to our experience, like magnitude: who knew but what, with each thrash of our tails, minuscule seas and swimmers, whole eternities, came to pass as ours, perhaps, and our Makers Makers, was elapsing between the strokes of some supertail, in a slower order of time? Naturally I hooted with the others at this nonsense. [] When he died in the initial slaughter, no one cared. And even now I dont subscribe to all his views but I no longer scoff. The horror of our history has purged me of opinions, as of vanity, confidence, spirit, charity, hope, vitality, everything except dull dread and a kind of melancholy, stunned persistence. Reading comprehension and comments
1. What makes the swimmer have doubts regarding the reality of its own existence? 2. Identify and comment upon the various individual or collective attitudes towards night-sea journeying that the swimmers adopt. 3. Are these modes of journeying similar in any way to those of another kind of journey? Which one? 4. Identify and depict some profiles of swimmers. 5. Which are the strange emotions for a swimmer, and which are the normal ones? Why? 6. How can you explain your expertise in discussing swimmer psychology? Are you a swimmer? 7. What makes the struggle of journeying so frightful and meaningless? 8. What do swimmers blindly hope for? Comment upon the various possible interpretations of the Shore. 9. Is there any relationship between immortality and death? Are they really in opposition? Explain how immortality can be regarded as a kind of death. 10. Why does this not seem to imply the reverse, too? Why is it that you only swim once? 11. What kind of limitation specific of individual existence determines the non-reversibility of the equation? 12. Is there any ambiguity in the name and description of the Maker? 13. How do you interpret the immortality-chain, and the cynics theory about other seas? 14. Comment upon the possible alternative readings of the entire fifth paragraph.

B. Vocabulary study and practice

1. Look up the meaning(s) of the following words or phrases in a dictionary: Ns: conviction, fatigue, zeal, sage, brute, poppycock, pet hypothesis Vs: to disclose, to beset, to stroke, to chant, to engender, to partake, to surge, to appal, to thrash, to fathom, to transmogrify, to hoot, to scoff, to stun As / Avs: outrageous, insensible, contingent 2. Find words in the text that mean: to strive, interruption, remorse, wicked. 3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: unwillingly, innocent, temporary, absolute. 4. The noun wise (= manner, way, modality) is still occasionally used but it is by far less frequent than its compounds. a) Supply your own examples to illustrate the meanings and uses of likewise and otherwise. b) What does a clockwise movement / rotation mean?

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5. a) Consider the following verbs: ask, claim, beseech, demand, require, out of which the first two appear in the text. Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features: [ imperatively], [ humbly], [ logical necessity], [ juridical implications], [ supported by arguments], etc. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. A transitive verb is a verb that obligatorily ... a direct object. 2. His ex-fiance ... him to come back to her. 3. The students ... for further and more detailed explanations. 4. The terrorists that had hijacked the plane ... for their imprisoned leader to be set free. 5. Chomsky ... that there are some innate principles subject to parametric variation.

C. Grammar
1. Free (Independent) Relative Clauses 1.1. a) Transform the following strings into structures having the same meaning, and featuring Free Relative Clauses: 1. You have enough money to buy all the supplies that you need. 2. The person committing these horrible murders must be caught and punished. 3. You may leave at any time that you choose. 4. The resort is no longer the place that it used to be. b) Specify the syntactic function of the resulting Free Relative Clauses, and the function of the relative pronoun introducing them. 1.2. Comment upon the structural relationship that establishes between Dependent Restrictive and Free Relative Clauses, also using the previous sentences as illustrations. Which is the most significant difference between the two classes? 1.3. Identify the Free Relative Clauses in the text, also specifying their syntactic function. (Optional: Identify the Free Relative Clauses and their syntactic functions in the previous unit text A Christmas Memory.)
1. Free Relative Clauses (knowledge refreshing) The main structural feature that distinguishes them from Dependent Relative Clauses is the absence of an expressed antecedent, i.e. of the Main Clause occurrence of the co-referential element that makes subordination by relativisation possible. There is sufficient syntactic evidence in support of the claim for the initial existence of the missing antecedent (e.g. the fact that the matrix verb evinces agreement with the deleted antecedent: Whatever were their discoveries are now lost for good.). Unlike Dependent Relative Clauses, which modify the antecedent, thus functioning as modifier of it, Free Relative Clauses replace this antecedent, taking over its syntactic function. Therefore, they evince an inventory of syntactic functions quite similar to the distribution of NPs: What killed the dinosaurs is still a mystery. Subject; This hut is where he used to hide. Predicative; Take whatever you want. Direct Object; We have to rely on whomever they send to us. Prepositional Object, etc. They are typically introduced by complex pronouns (whoever, what(so)ever, whichever, etc) or adverbs (wherever, whenever, etc). Nevertheless, simple pronouns may also introduce such clauses. Introducers perform various syntactic functions within the clauses: Search for whatever is still intact there. Subject; Whomever I ask tells me the same thing. Direct Object, etc.

2. Finiteness / Non-Finiteness of Clauses. THAT Clauses and Infinitive Clauses 2.1. Supply your own examples to illustrate the following: a Non-Finite Relative Clause; finite and non-finite Complement Clauses. 2.2. Identify three THAT Clauses and three Infinitive Clauses in the text. Specify their syntactic functions. 2.3. a) Turn the embedded clauses into THAT Clauses: 1. For the cashier to have run away with the money was unbelievable. 2. My neighbours are so uncivilised as to throw garbage out of the window. 3. That nice old lady turned out to be a spy. 4. The two young engineers seemed diligent. 5. All documents were supposed to be printed, copied and registered. 6. The conductor of the philharmonic considers Carson an excellent musician. 7. My colleagues want me to ask the professor for a two days postponing of the exam. 8. I saw him take the keys. b) Turn the embedded clauses into Infinitive Clauses and into THAT Clauses: 1. John mocking at her like that was extremely embarrassing for everybody present. 2. I was delighted at their successfully passing the exam. 3. The special squad had strict orders of searching the entire building for a possible bomb. c) Turn the embedded clauses into Gerunds: 1. Her idea of a quiet evening at home was to sit in her favourite armchair and read. 2. The tourists were worried that the weather was getting worse. 3. It is no use to complain to the manager. d) Turn the embedded clauses into Indirect Questions: 1. It is amazing that this old engine works so smoothly. 2. Nobody specified that the ideal candidate for this position should be male or female. 3. The problem of getting a new job or not is his main concern these days.
2. Finiteness / Non-Finiteness of Clauses (knowledge refreshing) The distinction between finite and non-finite clauses is mainly based on morphological criteria: any clause which does or can contain an inflected verb or auxiliary is a finite clause, the converse not being necessarily true (i.e., a clause containing an apparently uninflected or invariable verb is not necessarily non-finite). The reason for this is

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that some verb-forms generally treated as finite (e.g. the Subjunctive) lack the typical morphological characteristics of finite verbs. Nevertheless, the Indicative and Subjunctive forms share certain mopho-syntactic properties which differentiate them from non-finite forms (the tenseless / agreementless Infinitive, Gerund or Perfective Participle). These properties are: impossibility of subjectlessness for Indicative and Subjunctive clauses (e.g.: *I demand that leave. vs. I intend to leave / leaving.); the different case-marking of an overt subject Nominative for the two finite forms vs. Accusative (for the Infinitive) or, respectively, Accusative / Genitive (for the Gerund).

D. Supplementary text and assignments from The Human Drift by Jack London After he is gone? Will he then some day be gone, and this planet know him no more? Is it thither that the human drift in all its totality is trending? God Himself is silent on this point, though some of His prophets have given us vivid representations of that last day when the earth shall pass into nothingness. Nor does science, despite its radium speculations and its attempted analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us any other word than that man will pass. So far as mans knowledge goes, law is universal. Elements react under certain unchangeable conditions. One of these conditions is temperature. Whether it be in the test tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust himself to that future, because he cannot alter universal law, because he cannot alter his own construction nor the molecules that compose him. It would be well to ponder these lines of Herbert Spencers which follow, and which embody, possibly, the wildest vision the scientific mind has ever achieved: Motion as well as Matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the change in the distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally-co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes produce now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. And thus there is suggested the conception of a past during which there have been successive evolutions analogous to that which is now going on; a future during which successive other evolutions may go on ever the same in principle but never the same in concrete result. That is it the most we know alternate eras of evolution and dissolution. In the past there have been other evolutions similar to that one in which we live, and in the future there may be other similar evolutions that is all. The principle of all these evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice alike. Man was not; he was; and again he will not be. In eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular evolution of that solar satellite we call the Earth occupied but a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night. When the thermometer drops, man ceases with all his lusts and wrestlings and achievements; with all his race-adventures and race-tragedies; and with all his red killings, billions upon billions of human lives multiplied by as many billions more. This is the last word of Science, unless there be some further, unguessed word which Science will some day find and utter. In the meantime it sees no farther than the starry void, where the fleeting systems lapse like foam. Of what ledger-account is the tiny life of man in a vastness where stars snuff out like candles and great suns blaze for a time-tick of eternity and are gone? And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the earliest drifts of man, marked to-day by ruined cities of forgotten civilisation ruined cities, which, on excavation, are found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild hunters chased their prey long after the cave-man and the man of the
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squatting-place cracked the knuckle-bones of wild animals and vanished from the earth. There is nothing terrible about it. With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death, we can say: Behold! I have lived! And with another and greater one, we can lay ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the one taste of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement will be that we dreamed immortality, even though we failed to realise it.
1. a) Besides the thought of ones own death, which idea is equally (or even more difficult) to accept as an immutable truth? b) Does self-consciousness play any role in this? If yes, how? How does individual conscience turn into collective (self-) consciousness? c) Why do prophets and scientists try to reveal the future of our race? d) Analyse Spencers theory of Motion and Matter, and Londons comments about successive evolutionary cycles from the points of view of the more recent theories of the Big Bang and of relativity. e) Does the human race have its own evolutionary cycles? Which are they? Enlarge upon this issue. f) Comment upon the last sentence in the text. g) Which appear to be the commonly shared characteristics of physical, biological, and social cycles? Consider Barth, London and Boghians ideas for the last one, see the reverse translation module of this unit , as well as your own opinion. 2. Translate the last two paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

E. Write an essay on the topic: A possible scenario of human race extinction (2-3 pages).
Suggested guidelines: - If possible, try to avoid the already banal and eroded idea of a devastating nuclear war. - If you still want to stick to the idea of World War III, either employ other non-nuclear (e.g. biological, informatic, mind-controlling, etc) weapons, or focus upon the decay and extinction of the survivors. - If you have watched the Animal Planet series Future Is Wild, exploit the idea of evolutionary changes in other species, which may finally lead to the extinction of all mammals. - Various extraterrestrial interventions or cosmic Armageddons are not excluded. - Try and focus also upon a(n) (immediate) post-human picture of the Earth.

F. Translate the following text into English: Fr nceput i fr sfrit [] Asta e, murmura gndul fluid, dac ajungi s acoperi genunea dintre aceste dou presupuse capete, mai poi spera s nelegi cte ceva din aceast aventur a simurilor care este viaa Dar cine are rgaz pentru a cugeta smerit la nesfrirea care ne nconjoar? Uneori filosofii o fac pe apucate, de dragul ideilor repede convertibile n cri, care de fapt spun cu mult mai puin dect ale celor ce plantau mai nti seminele faptelor i pe urm descopereau dreapta cretere i nflorire a cugetului Ei nu ineau s fie infailibili, o luau ncet, pe jos, pe crare, dnd adevrurilor mireasma celor ce sunt, nu a celor ce poate vor fi Cugetau despre lume ca i cum lumea nsi se hrnea din cea ce ei deslueau i scoteau la lumina cuvntului, a nelegerii ncepeau, de bun seam, tot cu descifrarea acestui fr nceput i fr sfrit, ce poate fi asemnat cu o curgere, cu o micare perpetu. Poate c, lsndu-te purtat de fascinaia micrii, n adnca ei necuprindere, reueti a-i limpezi ct de ct ideea duratei eterne [] Ai spune c filosofia din asta s-a nscut, gndi mai departe Paul Damian. Din ncercarea de a explica micarea, adic devenirea Naterea i moartea ca procese ciclice i infinitul care curge naintea lor i dup ele Devenirea este primul gnd concret i, prin aceasta, primul concept Devenirea include apariia i trecerea. Sunt momentele ei. Devenirea este nelinitea fr oprire, care se stinge ntr-un rezultat linitit Deci, fr oprire, fr nceput i fr sfrit Cci dac lipeti nceputul i sfritul, separndu-le ca momente n sine, obii nimicul Nicolae Boghian Stare de ecou

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UNIT III EXISTENCE AND THE SELF. THE GREAT QUESTIONS (II) Preliminaries 1. Comment upon the competition between the self-preservation instinct and the preservationof-the-species one. 2. Is what we call Love imprinted in us as a genetically-predetermined instinct or have we, humans, developed a completely different, exclusively psychological and socialised instinct? What about self-destruction for reproduction / out of love in animals, and in humans? 3. What do you know about animal and human collective memory / memory of the species? A. Night-Sea Journey (abridged) from LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth (II) Perhaps, even, I am drowned already. Surely I was never meant for the rough-and-tumble of the swim; not impossibly I perished at the outset and have only imagined the night-sea journey from some final deep. In any case, Im no longer young, and it is we spent old swimmers, disabused of every illusion, who are most vulnerable to dreams. Sometimes I think I am my drowned friend. Out with it: Ive begun to believe, not only that She exists, but that She lies not far ahead, and stills the sea, and draws me Herward! [] I shake my head; the thing is too preposterous; it is myself I talk to, to keep my reason in this awful darkness. There is no She! There is no You! I rave to myself; its Death alone that hears and summons. To the drowned, all seas are calm [] Our moment came, we hurtled forth, pretending to glory in the adventure, thrashing, singing, cursing, strangling, rationalizing, rescuing, killing, inventing rules and stories and relationships, giving up, struggling on, but dying all, and still in darkness, until only a battered remnant was left to croak Onward! Upward! like a bitter echo. Then they too fell silent victims, I can only presume, of the last frightful wave and the moment came when I also, utterly desolate and spent, thrashed my last and gave myself over to the current, to sink or float as might be, but swim no more. Whereupon, marvelous to tell, in an instant the sea grew still! [] I am not deceived. This new emotion is Her doing; the desire that possesses me is Her bewitchment. Lucidity passes from me; in a moment Ill cry Love!, bury myself in Her side, and be transfigured. Which is to say, I die already; this fellow transported by passion is not I; I am he who abjures and rejects the night-sea journey! I I am all love. Come! She whispers, and I have no will. You who I may be about to become, whatever You are: with the last twitch of my real self I beg You to listen. It is not love that sustains me! No; though Her magic makes me burn to sing the contrary, and though I drown even now for the blasphemy, I will say truth. What has fetched me across this dreadful sea is a single hope, gift of my poor dead comrade: that You may be stronger-willed than I, and that by sheer force of concentration I may transmit to You, along with Your official Heritage, a private legacy of awful recollection and negative resolve. Mad as it may be, my dream is that some unimaginable embodiment of myself (or myself plus Her is thats how it must be) will come to find itself expressing, in however garbled or radical a translation, some reflection of these reflections. If against all odds this comes to pass, may You to whom, through whom I speak, do what I cannot: terminate this aimless, brutal business! Stop Your hearing against her song! Hate love! Still alive, afloat, afire. Farewell, then, my penultimate hope: that one may be sunk for direst blasphemy on the very shore of the Shore. Can it be (my old friend would smile) that only utterest nay-sayers survive the night? But even that were Sense and there is no sense, only senseless love, senseless death. Whoever echoes these reflections: be more courageous than their author! An end to night-sea journeys! Make no more! And forswear me when I shall forswear myself, deny myself, plunge into Her who summons, singing Love! Love! Love!
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Reading comprehension and comments

1. What are the metamorphoses that swimmers undergo during journeying? Do they seem familiar to us? 2. What is the significance of the swimmers repeated and ever more rapid changes of attitudes and convictions towards the journeys end? 3. Why and how is love related to death? 4. What kind of immortality is the thoughtful swimmer seeking for? 5. What are swimmers in fact? Identify the allegory and its overt and covert elements. 6. Can the concept of immortality be a solution to the burden of self-consciousness? 7. Which appears to be the greatest danger in an already doomed to death existence, and why?

B. Vocabulary study and practice

1. Look up the meaning(s) of the following words or phrases in a dictionary: Ns: rough-and-tumble, bewitchment, twitch Vs: to rave, to hurtle, to forswear As / Avs: preposterous, utterly, garbled 2. Find words in the text that mean: disappointed, to call, to deny, volition. 3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: to shout, indecision, to start, cowardly. 4. a) List all the a- adjectives / adverbs in both parts of the text, and explain their meaning. b) State the peculiarity of a- when compared to the majority of English prefixes. Mention the other two prefixes sharing the same property, and add some examples of them. c) List and illustrate other than those in the text -a derived lexemes. 5. Explain and illustrate in sentences of your own the difference between heritage and legacy. 6. a) Consider the following verbs: perish, destroy, ruin, smash, annihilate, disintegrate, out of which two appear in the first or the second part of the text. Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features: [ tearing into small pieces], [ health], [ reputation, career, etc], [ ceasing to exist], [ molecular decomposition], [ also used figuratively], etc. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. Numerous species have during the Ice Age. 2. The corrupted clerk tried to ... any evidence of his illegal activities. 3. The Nazis could by no means succeed in ... the underground resistance in the occupied countries. 4. Last Sunday the guests were ... by our team. 5. This bomb can ... everything ten miles round. 6. His applying for that position has ... my only chance to get a decent job.

C. Grammar
1. Comparison of adjectives 1.1. a) Do you notice any oddity in what concerns the formation of degrees of comparison in both parts of the text? b) What are the general rules for comparison of adjectives? Add illustrations. 1.2. a) How do -a adjectives form degrees of comparison (if they accept gradability)? b) What is the peculiarity of their syntactic behaviour? Add illustrations. 2. Cleft Constructions 2.1. Identify all the Cleft Constructions in the text, and explain their general mechanism of formation. (Pay attention! They are quite numerous.) 2.2. a) Enumerate and illustrate the types of cleaving that you know. b) What is the relationship between Dependent and/or Free Relative Clauses and the various types of Cleft Constructions? 2.3. Apply cleaving upon the following sentences in order to bring various elements under focal prominence: 1. Our cousin lacks any sense of decency. 2. His behaviour horrified his neighbours.
2. Cleft Constructions (knowledge refreshing) They are special constructions featuring either Restrictive or Free Relative Clauses, and they can be used on purpose of bringing under (thematic) focal prominence various sentential constituents, thus having important pragmatic values. The main types of patterns that can be distinguished are:1. the Wh-Cleft Construction (the focused element can be right to copular BE e.g.: What offended us was his extreme rudeness. or left to it e.g.: His extreme rudeness was what / the thing that offended us. ); 2. the IT-Cleft Construction (in case of which the focus is right to copular BE e.g.: It was his extreme rudeness (the thing) that offended us. ). Practically (almost) every element of the sentence can be brought under focal prominence by means of such constructions.

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D. Supplementary text and assignments from Before Adam by Jack London These are our ancestors, and their history is our history. Remember that as surely as we one day swung down out of the trees and walked upright, just as surely, on a far earlier day, did we crawl up out of the sea and achieve our first adventure on land. [] It was not till I was a young man, at college, that I got any clew to the significance of my dreams, and to the cause of them. Up to that time they had been meaningless and without apparent causation. But at college I discovered evolution and psychology, and learned the explanation of various strange mental states and experiences. For instance, there was the falling-through-space dream the commonest dream experience, one practically known, by first-hand experience, to all men. This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees. With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability of falling was an ever-present menace. Many lost their lives that way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground. Now a terrible fall, averted in such fashion, was productive of shock. Such shock was productive of molecular changes in the cerebral cells. These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of progeny, became, in short, racial memories. Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing off to sleep, fall through space and awake to sickening consciousness just before we strike, we are merely remembering what happened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the race. There is nothing strange in this, any more than there is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely a habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing, that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. True, the shock of their fall was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they could have progeny. You and I are descended from those that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in our dreams, never strike bottom. And now we come to disassociation of personality. We never have this sense of falling when we are wide awake. Our wake-a-day personality has no experience of it. Then and here the argument is irresistible it must be another and distinct personality that falls when we are asleep, and that has had experience of such falling that has, in short, a memory of past-day race experiences, just as our wake-a-day personality has a memory of our wake-aday experiences. It was at this stage in my reasoning that I began to see the light. And quickly the light burst upon me with dazzling brightness, illuminating and explaining all that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturally impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it was not my wake-a-day personality that took charge of me; it was another and distinct personality, possessing a new and totally different fund of experiences, and, to the point of my dreaming, possessing memories of those totally different experiences. What was this personality? When had it itself lived a wake-a-day life on this planet in order to collect this fund of strange experiences? These were questions that my dreams themselves answered. He lived in the long ago, when the world was young, in that period that we call the Mid-Pleistocene. He fell from the trees but did not strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at the roaring of the lions. He was pursued by beasts of prey, struck at by deadly snakes. He chattered with his kind in council, and he received rough usage at the hands of the Fire People in the day that he fled before them. But, I hear you objecting, why is it that these racial memories are not ours as well, seeing that we have a vague other-personality that falls through space while we sleep? And I may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it

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is a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this other-personality and these complete racial memories because I am a freak. But let me be more explicit. The commonest race memory we have is the falling-through-space dream. This other-personality is very vague. About the only memory it has is that of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct other-personalities. Many of us have the flying dream, the pursuing-monster dream, color dreams, suffocation dreams, and the reptile and vermin dreams. In short, while this otherpersonality is vestigial in all of us, in some of us it is almost obliterated, while in others of us it is more pronounced. Some of us have stronger and completer race memories than others. It is all a question of varying degree of possession of the other-personality. In myself, the degree of possession is enormous. My other-personality is almost equal in power with my own personality. And in this matter I am, as I said, a freak a freak of heredity. I do believe that it is the possession of this other-personality but not so strong a one as mine that has in some few others given rise to belief in personal reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible to such people, a most convincing hypothesis. When they have visions of scenes they have never seen in the flesh, memories of acts and events dating back in time, the simplest explanation is that they have lived before. But they make the mistake of ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their other-personality. They think it is their own personality, that they have only one personality; and from such a premise they can conclude only that they have lived previous lives. But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of myself roaming through the forests of the Younger World; and yet it is not myself that I see but one that is only remotely a part of me, as my father and my grandfather are parts of me less remote. This other-self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor of my progenitors in the early line of my race, himself the progeny of a line that long before his time developed fingers and toes and climbed up into the trees. [] For in this past I know of, man, as we to-day know him, did not exist. It was in the period of his becoming that I must have lived and had my being.
1. a) Comment upon the plausibility of the explanation given for the falling-through-space dream. In the light of more recent theories, which appear to be the weak, and which the strong points of the argumentation? (Consider the fact that Before Adam was first published in 1906.) b) Comment upon the habit instinct link in accordance with the racial memory theory. c) Besides of being grounded on rather materialistic than metaphysical arguments, what else can distinguish between racial memory and reincarnation? d) What do the motifs of the other widely spread dreams suggest? e) Make the necessary connections to integrate these views within the previous discussions about existence and evolutionary cycles. Is racial memory a sort of immortality? Is the Self really a unique and genuine, independent and unrepeatable entity, at the same time with which the world starts, and ceases to exist? f) Read also the text in the reverse translation module of this unit, and comment upon whether there can still be another kind of immortality. g) Can a self-conscious entity outstrip natures laws of creation? Is nature perfect? Why are we so sure that there must be a spring, and that it must burst out? 2. Identify the existential sentences and the THAT Clauses in the text. For the latter, also specify their syntactic function. 3. Translate the first six paragraphs of the text into Romanian.

E. Write a short essay (1-2 pages) about what you consider as a possible proof of natures imperfectness. F. Translate the following text into English: Orvas i observase nelinitea i Emil Sandra s-a convins atunci de-a binelea c frmntrile se aud, uneori fac chiar zgomot ca de cascad, vuiesc. i plcea acest meter pietrar, mai ales c i povestise cum lucrase el cu un btrn sculptor care, i la vrsta lui naintat, i punea tot felul de ntrebri unele chiar cu glas tare, atunci cnd l vedea intrnd n atelier Ce spui, Orvas? Dar nu ddea jos husa de pe piatr, dimpotriv, o acoperea i mai bine, s nu se vad nimic, cu toate c Orvas o vzuse n attea rnduri ceva nc nedefinit la care el tot lustruia. Sculptorul de care-i vorbea era adeptul lui Brncui, socotind c printr-o continu finisare se
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va ajunge nendoielnic la perfeciune. ntr-o diminea a avut loc drama pe care Orvas n-ar fi putut s-o uite niciodat: pasrea cu gtul lung mai lung dect ntregul ei corp fiindc sculptura imagina o pasre cu ciocul n vzduh, ntins n aa fel de parc ar fi voit nu s-i ia zborul, ci s ciuguleasc stelele, s-a spart. Adic i s-a frnt gtul. Gtul acela att de alungit i att de subire aproape ca un ac! i ct muncise! Se lsase pe podea i se uita pierdut la capul czut. Din ciocul psrii prea s se fi prelins atunci sngele. Niciodat Orvas, meterul pietrar, nu vzuse ntiprit pe faa vreunui om att de crunt durerea. S-a gndit la o soluie: e imposibil s nu se fi putut repara. Nu numai c exist attea materiale cu care se poate lipi piatra frnt sau sfrmat chiar n nenumrate buci, dar s-ar fi putut folosi pn i un fel de urub de oel! Sculptorul s-a uitat la el cu privirea aproape stins. Apoi a ipat: Nu nelegi, omule, c sculptura asta era vie? Atunci chiar c a neles meterul pietrar c artistul trise cu adevrat tot acel proces de creaie. S-a dus cu gndul la un om din satul su, nvtorul, a crui nevast nu fcea copii. A fost cu ea pe la toi doctorii i cnd i luase adio de la dorina lui cum se ntmpl n basme soia i-a nscut un bieel. Pentru el, de atunci, toate clipele au fost fericite. Pn cnd, dup civa ani, exact cnd copilul devenise de-a drepul fermector, s-a mbolnvit i a murit. O crim a naturii, bolborosea Orvas. Ce vrei s faci? l-a ntrebat pe Emil Sandra. La ce te gndeti? Emil Sandra i-a povestit ce-i trecea lui prin cap: ncepnd cu izvorul i ncheind tot cu izvorul, fiindc tocmai ameninarea aceea ia declanat lui hotrrea de a fixa ntmplarea ntr-o piatr, precum pe vremuri marile btlii n columne. Meterul pietrar l-a ascultat cu o atenie mrit din ce n ce, pn la ncordare, pe urm l-a luat pe dup umr avea minile puternice, muschiuloase i au ieit afar sub luna de toamn. I-a povestit ntmplarea de la Rotunda. O ntmplare care se petrecuse la Arge i care se asemna ntocmai cu aceasta de aici. Oamenii de la puul Rotunda ateptau clip de clip izbucnirea izvorului. Izvorul nu se arta, dar ei, spnd mai departe cu mainile lor pmntul de la rdcinile munilor, apropiau tot mai mult n contiina lor secunda aceea, ca o sgeat neagr despicnd rocile i prvlindu-le, mpinse de ape peste munca lor. ntr-o diminea povestea Orvas care lucra atunci chiar n subteran la zidirea canalului de aduciune cu piatr de pavaj galeria pruse s trosneasc din toate ncheieturile, ca de un cutremur. Din strfunduri se auzeau sunete nbuite, asemntoare zgomotului pe care-l fac nite cai n galop. Fonetul cretea aducnd cu el pe mii de frunze o adiere rece, din ce n ce mai rece tii cum e n galerie cnd ncepe curentul subteran! i oamenii i cutau privirile, dar nici unul nu-i mrturisea frica lsat, deodat, ca un nghe, i-n respiraie. Vasile Bran Rania grea a iubirii

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UNIT IV THE ETERNAL DUALITY. THE QUESTION WITH NO ANSWER Preliminaries 1. How would you interpret the title of this unit? Is there a certain (kind of) duality, which is eternal, or (the concept of) duality in itself and in general is eternal, and thus universal? Which could be the question with no answer? 2. Discuss the possibility of perfect internal homogeneity and non-further-sub-divisibility. Can there be a true monist entity? In other words, can something not be constructed out of some other, incorporated and interacting constitutive parts? (Before thinking of elementary particles, remember what happened to the concept of atom.) 3. Can the universal network of multi-branching hierarchies be ultimately interpreted as (if not reduced to) interacting systems of oppositions? Are all oppositions binary and polar? A.
from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Chapter 10. Henry Jekylls Full Statement of the Case I was born in the year 18 to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound mans dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in
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which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated? I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. [] I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature. [] I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil. I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.

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That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. [] At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse. Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. [] Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safely was complete. Think of it I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll. The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered. Reading comprehension and comments
1. Was Dr. Jekyll essentially different from ordinary people? Give arguments in favour of his normality. 2. Do you believe him when saying that both sides in him were dead earnest? 3. Consider Jekylls inclination towards undignified pleasures, and his conventionalist aspiration for public esteem and respectability. Which of them do you think had played a greater role in the emergence of his dangerous ideas and preoccupations? 4. Were these two opposite moral traits, however, the real cause of his downfall, or was there another, more profound flaw in his chain of reasoning? If yes, which could this be? 5. If Hyde was pure evil, while Jekyll was still a blending of good and bad traits, what has in fact the doctor succeeded in? Is dissociation of polarities possible? 6. Comment upon Dr, Jekylls description of Hyde as being natural and human, bearing a livelier image of the spirit, and seeming more express and single. 7. Contrast this position with Baudelaires, who considered that beauty is single, ugliness has a thousand faces. 8. Comment upon the authors use of the words pleasure and evil. What could the conclusion be? (Remember also that the story was first published in 1886, i.e. in the Victorian epoch.)

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B. Vocabulary study and practice

1. Look up the meaning(s) of the following words or phrases in a dictionary: Ns: trench, denizen, faggot, pang, recklessness, millrace Vs: to pluck, to blot, to subside, to linger, to slumber, to trim As / Avs: perennial, steadfastly, extraneous, vicarious 2. Find words in the text that mean: attitude, to hide, self-righteous, salvation, unaffected. 3. Find words in the text that mean the opposite of: coherent, blessed, benign, abruptly. 4. a) Consider the following verbs of linking: link, tie, bind, connect, concatenate, enchain, relate, correlate. Supply their componential definitions in terms of the following suggested semantic features: [ strengthening, consolidating], [ putting in chains], [ arresting attention], [ referring to hands], [ mental process], [ referring to scoring in games], [ books], [ sequencing], [ referring to deposits], [ interdependence, interaction], [ imposing or involving obligation], [ words, arguments, ideas], [ referring to regulations], [ referring to social or professional contacts], [ dressing of wounds], [ ordering], [ referring to coincidence], [ also used figuratively]. b) Fill in the blanks, using these verbs: 1. He was ... by his poverty to accept any job. 2. The suspect thought that nobody could ... him to the victim. 3. During the experiment, the exothermic phase of the reaction and the synthesis of the salt ... quickly. 4. The clerk wanted to help, but he was all ... up in regulations that ... in a spider-web of interdictions. 5. In a communicative string, words are ... together by means of syntactic rules. 6. Being a rigorous scientist, his arguments were logically ... and formed up a theory which has ... many minds ever since.

C. Grammar
1. Numerals 1.1. Identify the fractions and the multiplicative numerals in the text. 1.2. Refresh your knowledge regarding the various types of numerals (and numeratives) by consulting the already covered first year courses. 1.3. Extract from a technical source the main formulae of correspondence between the International System of Units and Measures and the still largely in use Anglo-Saxon System (FPS).

D. Supplementary text and assignments from Compensation by Ralph Waldo Emerson POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of climate and soil in political history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or scorpions. The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation
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with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and position a bad citizen, a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him? Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along in the dames classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she [] takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true. The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. [] This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governors life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. [] These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all his destiny. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. It is in the world, and the world was made by it. Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. [] Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. [] The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. [] The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem, how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc, from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end. The soul says, Eat the body would feast. The soul says, The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue
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the body would have the power over things to its own ends. [] Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, the sweet, without the other side, the bitter. This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back. Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know, that they do not touch him; but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, since to try it is to be mad, but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaids head but not the dragons tail, and thinks he can cut off that which he would have from that which he would not have.
1. a) How is duality viewed upon in Compensation? b) According to Emerson, can there be such a thing as pure evil? Why not? c) Enlarge upon the writers arguments. d) Does Emersons writing satisfy the classical requirement for philosophy to be the mother of all sciences? Can you demonstrate that it does? e) Comment upon the apparently shocking statement that All things are moral. f) Relate the last paragraph of the text to Stevensons story, underlining the similarity of ideas. Are there also some differences? Identify the latter. g) Read the texts in the reverse translation module of this unit, and correlate them with the thematic content of Stevenson and Emersons pieces of writing. h) Comment upon the multifarious nature of the female character in Vitralii incolore and upon Ciorans dilemma. 2. Translate the last paragraph of the text into Romanian.

E. As a preparation for an open oral debate, put down some ideas related to the topic: Does opposition trigger diversity? And does diversity mean war? F. Translate the following texts into English: Toate talentele i virtuile din lume nu-i ajut la nimic, dac n-ai o doz zdravn din compoziia femeii genetice. i eu am? Tu ai, ai tot, dar eti rea, ascunzi, striveti, stingi. Ce-o fi asta? manie, boal? alt boal? Una contrar? Un miez de adevr e, n ce spune. mi reazem capul de umrul lui. Eti agresiv i uneori agresivitatea capt o not vulgar. Cum aa? Te doresc, iubirea fr dorin e curat schizofrenie. S iubeti un om i s nu-l vrei pentru tine, s iubeti un om i s nu te vrei pentru el? Anomalie psihic. Agresiv? Nu, nfometat. Tu nu tii ce e foamea? Nu sunt lacom, pot tri cu te miri ce. Lingav, anorexic? Ce gust are pentru tine, viaa? gustul crilor, al baletului? Mnnci fr plcere, bei, dormi fr plcere. Nici n amor n-o gseti, nicieri? Ia nu-mi purta tu de grij! A ghicit. Crete o fibr rigid n mine. Fric de gesturi spectaculoase, impropriu spus spectaculoase, ptimae. De ce fric? Nu tiu unde m-ar duce, unde m-ar tr. S-ar vedea discrepana. Unde ai fost duminic? Hai, spune, i cu cine? cu logodnica? Nu zice nimic. Nu te caut? Dac ar intra peste noi, ce-ai face? Ai fugi pe fereastr? M scruteaz ager, ptrunztor. Cte fee ai tu? Capete mi-ai spus, dar fee? Eti de toate. De la madon la a, de la bacant la fecioar. Aa e, are dreptate, toate sunt, toate la un loc. Mai adaug: ba pe moarte, ba efigia vitalitii. Cum te-ai vindecat atunci? tii cum? Cui pe cui se scoate. Dumitru Popescu Vitralii incolore
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Pn astzi nc nimeni n-a putut spune ce e bine i ce e ru. i e sigur c n viitor va fi tot aa. Faptul impresionant nu consist n aceast relativitate, ci n imposibilitatea de a te dispensa de ntrebuinarea acestor expresii. Nu tiu ce e bine i ce e ru, dar calific aciunile n bune i rele. Dac m-ar ntreba cineva de ce numesc o aciune bun i alta rea, nu i-a putea rspunde. Este un proces instinctiv care m face s apreciez sub prisma criteriilor morale; cnd m gndesc ulterior la acea apreciere nu-i mai gsesc nici o justificare. Morala a devenit att de complex i de contradictorie, deoarece valorile ei nu se mai constituie n ordinea vieii, ci s-au cristalizat ntr-o regiune transcendent ei, pstrnd slabe legturi cu tendinele iraionale i vitale. Cum s ntemeiezi o moral? Mi-e att de scrb de acest cuvnt bine, este att de fad i de inexpresiv! Morala spune: lucrai pentru triumful binelui! Dar cum? Emil Cioran Eternitate i moral (din volumul Pe culmile disperrii)

BIBLIOGRAPHY a) Obligatory - Duescu-Coliban, T. (2005) Aspects of English Morphology. Nominal and Verbal Categories, Second Edition, (Edited by Janeta Lupu), Bucureti: Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine. - Lupu, J., Ionescu-Buzea, O. i Birtalan, A. (2007) English Practical Course for First Year Students, Bucureti: Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine. - erban, D. (2006) The Syntax of English Predications, Bucureti: Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine, p. 80-202. - erban, D. i Drguin, D. (2007) English Practical Course for Second Year Students, Bucureti: Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine. - Tudosescu, A. (2008) Elements of English Syntax and Semantics, Bucureti: Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine. b) Supplementary - Graver, B. D. (1986) Advanced English Practice, third edition, London and Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1980) A Grammar of Contemporary English, ninth impression, London: Longman. - Swan, M. (1995) Practical English Usage, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Vianu, L. (2006) English With A Key. Exerciii de retroversiune i traducere, Bucureti: Editura Teora. - Wellman, G. (1992) Wordbuilder, second edition, Oxford: Heinemann. - * * * (1994) (Coord. G. Niculescu) Dicionar tehnic englez-romn, second edition, vols. 1-2, Bucureti: Editura Tehnic. - * * * (1997) Prosper with English English for Science and Technology, Bucharest: The British Council and Cavallioti Publishing House. - * * * (1998) Collins Cobuild English Grammar, eighth impression, London: Harper Collins Publishers. - * * * (2001) Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, third edition, Birmingham: Harper Collins Publishers. c) Online resources - Ask.com, http://uk.ask.com/, [2008]. - Britannica Concise, http://concise.britannica.com, [2008]. - Cambridge Dictionaries Online, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/, [2008]. - Chambers Reference Online,
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?title=21stquery=%s, [2008].

- Columbia Encyclopaedia, http://www.bartleby.com/65/, [2008]. - Encarta, http://encarta.msn.com/, [2008].

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- The Free Dictionary by Farlex, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Dictionary.htm, [2008]. - The Idiom Connection: English Idioms and Quizzes, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6720/ and http://www.idiomconnection.com/, [2008]. - Merriam-Webster Online Search, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/, [2008]. - Merriam-Websters LearnersDictionary.com, http://www.learnersdictionary.com, [2008]. - OneLook Dictionary Search, http://www.onelook.com, [2008]. - Rogets Thesauri, http://www.bartleby.com/thesauri/, [2008]. - Semantic Rhyming Dictionary, http://www.rhymezone.com/, [2008]. - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:Quick_index, [2008]. - WordNet: A Lexical Database for English, http://wordnet.princeton.edu/, [2008]. - Wordsmyth, http://www.wordsmyth.net/, [2008]. - * * * (2007) ESL/EFL Grammar Resources, http://www.d-oliver.net/grammar.htm, [2008]. - * * * (2007) Online English Grammar, http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/index.cfm, [2008].

EVALUATION form for the first term: verification. Third year students in the partial attendance and distance learning sections will have to perform several tasks of individual work during the term, as an indispensable form of training and self-evaluation. These tasks consist in solving the exercises, and completing the various other assignments contained in all the units of the course, together with as many as possible corresponding or equivalent requirements included in the recommended and/or available sources. For students attending day classes, the tasks during the term will reside in the sequential fulfilment of all assignments and exercises included in the course, as well as in performing the various other class or homework activities weekly indicated and checked up by the leader of the seminar. The first term evaluation form for students in all three sections mainly consists of a final verification, the requirements of which are aimed at testing the suitable acquisition of the entire range of specific abilities that had been envisaged as objectives of the course.

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