Anonymuncule (pronounced uh-non-uh-monk-u-elle)
An
insignificant, anonymous writer
1859: A
portmanueau word, the construct being anony(mous) + (ho)muncule. Homnuncle was from the Latin homunculus (a little man), a diminutive
of homō (man). Anonymous entered English circa 1600 and was
from the Late Latin anonymus, from the
Ancient Greek ᾰ̓νώνῠμος (anṓnumos) (without name), the construct
being ᾰ̓ν- (an-) (“not; without; lacking” in the
sense of the negating “un-”) + ὄνῠμᾰ (ónuma), an Aeolic & Doric dialectal form of ὄνομᾰ (ónoma) (name). The construct
of the English form was an- + -onym
+ -ous. The
an- prefix was an alternative form of on-, from the Middle English an-, from the Old English an- & on- (on-), from the Proto-Germanic ana- (on). It was used to
create words having the sense opposite to the word (or stem) to which the
prefix is attached; it was used with stems beginning either with vowels or
"h". The element -onym (word;
name) came from the international scientific vocabulary, reflecting a New Latin
combining form, from Ancient Greek ὄνυμα
(ónuma). The –ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from the Old French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus
(full, full of); a doublet of -ose in
an unstressed position. It was used to
form adjectives from nouns to denote (1) possession of (2) presence of a
quality in any degree, commonly in abundance or (3) relation or pertinence to. In chemistry, it has a specific technical
application, used in the nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a
specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent
compound whose name ends in the suffix -ic.
For example, sulphuric acid (H2SO4) has more
oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H2SO3). The
Latin homunculus (plural homunculi) enjoyed an interesting history. In medieval medicine, it was used in the
sense of “a miniature man”, a creature once claimed by the spermists (once a
genuine medical speciality) to be present in human sperm while in modern
medicine the word was resurrected for the cortical homunculus, an image of a
person with the size of the body parts distorted to represent how much area of
the cerebral cortex of the brain is devoted to it (ie a “nerve map” of the human
body that exists on the parietal lobe of the human brain). Anonymuncule is a noun; the noun plural is anonymuncules.
Like astrology, alchemy once enjoyed a position
of orthodoxy among scientists and it was the alchemists who first popularized homunculus,
the miniature, fully formed human, a concept with roots in both folklore and preformationism
(in biology. the theory that all organisms start their existence already in a
predetermined form upon conception and this form does not change in the course
of their lifetime (as opposed to epigenesis (the theory that an organism
develops by differentiation from an unstructured egg rather than by simple
enlarging of something preformed)). It
was Paracelsus (the Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher
of the German Renaissance Theophrastus von Hohenheim (circa 1493-1541)) who
seems to have been the first to use the word in a scientific paper, it
appearing in his De homunculis (circa
1529–1532), and De natura rerum
(1537). As the alchemists explained, a homunculus
(an artificial humanlike being) could be created through alchemy and in De natura rerum Paracelsus detailed his method.
A writer
disparaged as an anonymuncule differs from one who publishes their work anonymously
or under a pseudonym, the Chicago Tribune in 1871 explaining the true anonymuncule
was a “little
creature who must not be confounded with the anonymous writers, who supply
narratives or current events, and discuss public measures with freedom, but
deal largely in generalities, and very little in personalities.” That was harsh but captures the place the
species enjoy in the literary hierarchy (and it’s a most hierarchal place). Anonymuncules
historically those writers who publish anonymously or under pseudonyms, without
achieving renown or even recognition and there’s often the implication they are
“mean & shifty types” who “hide behind their anonymity”.
Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics (1996), before and after the lifting of the veil.
Some
however have good and even honourable reasons for hiding behind their anonymity
although there is also sometime mere commercial opportunism. When former Time columnist Joe Klein (born 1946)
published Primary Colors: A Novel of
Politics (1996), the author was listed as “anonymous”, a choice made to
avoid the political and professional risks associated with openly critiquing a
sitting president and his administration. Primary
Colors was a (very) thinly veiled satire of Bill Clinton’s (b 1946; US
president 1993-2001) 1992 presidential campaign and offered an insider's view
of campaign life, showing both the allure and moral compromises involved. By remaining anonymous, Klein felt more able candidly
to discuss the ethical dilemmas and personal shortcomings of his characters,
something that would have been difficult has his identity been disclosed, the
conflicts of interest as a working political journalist obvious. Critically and commercially, the approach
seems greatly to have helped the roman à clef (a work of fiction based on real
people and events) gain immediate notoriety, the speculation about the author’s
identity lying at the core of the book’s mystique. Others have valued anonymity because their
conflicts of interest are insoluble. Remarkably,
Alfred Deakin (1856-1919; prime minister of Australia 1903-1904, 1905-1908 &
1909-1910) even while serving as prime-minister, wrote political commentaries
for London newspapers including the National Review & Morning Post and,
more remarkably still, some of his pieces were not uncritical of both his
administration and his own performance in office. Modern politicians should be encouraged to pursue
this side-gig; it might teach them truthfulness and encourage them more widely to
practice it.
For others,
it can be a form of pre-emptive self defense.
The French philosopher Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778) wrote
under a nom de plume because he held (and expressed) views which often didn’t
please kings, bishops and others in power and this at a time when such conduct
was likely to attract persecution worse than censorship or disapprobation. Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880) adopted the pseudonym
George Eliot in an attempt to ensure her works would be taken seriously, avoiding
the stigma associated with female authorship at the time. George Eliot’s style of writing was however
that of a certain sort of novelist and those women who wrote in a different manner
were an accepted part of the literary scene and although Jane Austen’s name
never appeared on her published works, when Sense
and Sensibility (1811) appeared its author was listed as “A Lady”.
Although a success, all her subsequent novels were billed as: “By the author of
Sense and Sensibility”, Austen's name never appearing on her books
during her lifetime. Ted Kaczynski (1942-2023),
the terrorist and author of the Unabomber
Manifesto (1995) had his own reasons (wholly logical but evil) for wanting
his test to be read but his identity as the writer to remain secret.
Nazi poetry circle at the Berghof: Left to right, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), Martin Bormann (1900–1945), Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945)), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, 1936. Of much, all were guilty as sin but von Schirach would survive to die in his bed at 67.
The "poet manqué" is a somewhat related term. A poet
manqué is an aspiring poet who never produced a single book of verse (although
it’s used also of an oeuvre so awful it should never have been published and the
poetry of someone Baldur von Schirach comes to mind. The adjective manqué entered English in the
1770s and was used originally in the sense of “unfulfilled due to the vagary of circumstance, some inherent flaw or a
constitutional lack”. Because it’s
so often a literary device, in English, the adjective does often retain many
grammatical features from French, used postpositively and taking the forms
manquée when modifying a feminine noun, manqués for a plural noun, and manquées
for a feminine plural noun. That’s
because when used in a literary context (“poet manqué”, “novelist manqué” et
all) users like it to remain inherently and obviously “French” and thus it’s spelled
often with its diacritic (the accent aigu
(acute accent): “é”) although when used casually (to suggest “having failed,
missed, or fallen short, especially because of circumstances or a defect of
character”) as “fly-half manqué”, “racing driver manqué” etc), the spelling manque”
is sometimes used.
Manqué (that
might have been but is not) was from the French manqué, past participle form of the sixteenth century manquer (to lack, to be lacking in; to
miss), from the Italian mancare, from
manco, from the Latin mancus (maimed, defective), from the
primitive Indo-European man-ko- (maimed
in the hand), from the root man- (hand). Although it’s not certain, the modern slang
adjective “manky” (bad, inferior, defective (the comparative mankier, the superlative
mankiest)), in use since the late 1950s, may be related. Since the 1950s, the use in the English-speaking
world (outside of North America) has extended to “unpleasantly dirty and
disgusting” with a specific use by those stationed in Antarctica where it means
“being or having bad weather”. The
related forms are the noun mankiness and the adverb mankily. Although it’s not an official part of avian
taxonomy, bird-watchers (birders) in the UK decided “manky mallard” was perfect
to describe a mallard bred from wild mallards and domestic ducks (they are
distinguished by variable and uneven plumage patterns). However, it’s more likely manky is from the
UK slang mank which was originally from Polari mank and used to mean “disgusting, repulsive”.
No poet manqué: In January 2017, Lindsay Lohan posted to Instagram a poem for her 5.2 million followers, the verse a lament of the excesses of IS (the Islamic State), whetting the appetite for the memoir which might one day appear (hopefully "naming names"). The critical reaction to the poem was mixed but the iambic pentameter in the second stanza attracted favorable comment:
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