Apples and Oranges, Ravens and Writing Desks

How to Compare Stuff

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?” the Mad Hatter famously asks a disoriented Alice when she stumbles upon his tea party in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll initially wrote the riddle without an answer, but that didn’t stop people from trying to find one: “Poe wrote on both” (Sam Loyd), “there is a b in both and an n in neither” (Aldous Huxley), and “because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front” (Carroll himself, retroactively).

The punch line of the riddle is its very nonsensicality, but at the heart of the riddle is comparison — in order to answer the answerless question, you need to think about the characteristics of a raven, the characteristics of a writing desk, and where they overlap. Here at Eidolon, we are no strangers to comparison; it constitutes the bulk of our work. Of course, comparison also exists in the publishing world at large, as we see every day. Doesn’t the Greek debt crisis kind of remind you of the Peloponnesian War? The United States’ domination can’t last, because it’s basically the new Roman Empire. Donald Trump wants Muslims to wear special identification badges, just like Adolf Hitler wanted for Jews. Such comparisons showcase the full range of good, bad, and Internet-ugly.

Comparison is hard. We do it all the time anyway, so we should talk more about how to do it. To be fair, the conversation is quite lively in academic circles, and there’s a wealth of theoretical texts that Comparative Literature majors are required to read in college. But in the spirit of Eidolon’s mission to make Classics accessible to a wider audience, I’m going to try to tackle the comparative method in a language that is like, you know, close to my heart. And I do think it is important that, with a view to figuring out why the ancient world matters to the modern world, we reappraise how they work together — in respect to both the possibilities and the limitations. Otherwise, we might as well be comparing ravens and writing desks.

Before I discuss the comparative method in detail, I want to take a moment to bring up why this is a pertinent issue in the first place. Our January E(i)ditorial is entitled “The Mistakes (Almost) Everyone Makes When Writing for Eidolon,” and in it Donna Zuckerberg mentions that the most common problem we encounter is a writer not having “figured out why it matters that something from the ancient world resembles something from the modern world.” Recently, I’ve taken to labeling this phenomenon comparopia, because it strikes me as a form of nearsightedness: you can see the comparison that lies immediately before you, but the long-range significance of said comparison (the big picture, so to speak) remains hazy.

Finding similarities between X and Y is cool, even fun. And I don’t mean to knock fun — if anything, I think we underestimate its importance. But I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed whenever I come across a comparison that stubbornly refuses to push the envelope, remaining content to say that X and Y are both fruits, round, etc. There’s nothing wrong with such comparisons per se, but one question always lingers: “so what?” So what if X and Y are both round fruits? What’s at stake with that claim?

At best, they skip over the potential power, even danger of comparison. At worst, they do an extreme disservice to the cultures they’re dealing with, and professionals and non-professionals alike have a certain responsibility when treating the lives of other people. Classicists are particularly beholden because they are at least chronologically and usually geographically distanced from their subject; in other words, they always work on the lives of other people. Furthermore, if you attempt a comparison that pushes you out of your comfort zone — as genuine comparison is wont to do — then you may find yourself wading into an area over which you don’t have that much authority, necessitating extra caution. So my least favorite comparisons resort to mass generalizations of both cultures, and in the end, make interesting arguments about neither.

Some generalization is necessary for a publication like Eidolon because of the constraints we place on our writers — 2500 words can fly by fast. But Eidolon has been fortunate enough to work with many good writers who negotiated, with grace, the narrow gap between efficiency and deficiency, so we know that mass generalizations are not inevitable. I’ll return to this dilemma and offer some suggestions for generalizing just the right amount toward the end of this article. For now, I want to leave you with this summation: it’s not enough that ancient phenomenon X is similar to modern phenomenon Y (and vice versa).

What can X teach us about Y, and what can Y teach us about X? Some writers go as far as to pose this question, which is a great start, but not everyone succeeds in answering it, and indeed a number seem to forget about it entirely while in the throes of writing. There is, I think, an assumption that if only you can pinpoint the similarities and/or differences, the lessons will unfold more or less naturally. But an apple doesn’t teach me anything about an orange just by sort-of-not-really looking like one. Certainly, the act of comparing may present us with valuable resources, but there’s more work to be done.

This leads me to the second point that I wish to make in order to elucidate the problem: you shouldn't necessarily compare two things just because you can. To put it differently, there’s no intrinsic reason for comparing; comparison happens in the mind. The consequence is that comparison is only useful to a certain degree and not in all cases — a writer should be looking for reasons to compare rather than relying on a lack of reasons not to. And if you accept that the possible presence of similarities and/or differences (which don’t even exist a priori) does not, in and of itself, warrant a comparison, I bet you’ll be forced to consider the stakes involved.

Last summer, I participated in a month-long seminar entitled “Globalized Classics,” hosted by the August Böckh Antike Zentrum at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. A seminar on philologies (plural) took up the first two weeks, followed by a selection of classes on topics ranging from the Rig Veda to ancient medicine. My personal choice was “Wisdom Literature in East and West,” led by Glenn Most, a renowned classicist, and Michael Puett, a professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations whose “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory” is Harvard University’s third most popular course. The students were a mix of classicists (including myself), comparatists, a few people working on China, a religion scholar, and a linguist. We were set to read wisdom literature — hymns, lyric poetry, and the like — from Classical Greece, Early China, and the ancient Near East; and so we had at the helm experts in the first two categories and were united in common ignorance for the third.

Classical Greece, Early China, and the ancient Near East make for an interesting set of comparanda because of how they influenced each other, and how they didn’t. We have some evidence of contact between Greece and the Near East — namely, through sailors and scribes. In contrast, if the Chinese and the Greeks ever exchanged tips for scientific innovation, we don’t know about it. As far as we are aware, this relationship can only be one of parallel.

What are the implications of this, the mere act of getting our ducks in a row and indicating the ways in which they are similar, the points at which they differ? One of the most important is that we can destabilize the ancient world — in other words, take the oddly privileged position that Greece and Rome, together, occupy in our societies (plural) and imaginations and start sprinkling grains of salt. Decapitate the caput mundi. I say this as a classicist employed at a nonprofit organization for classical education who genuinely enjoys and believes in the work she does, because I nonetheless find the nonchalance with which we place the classics on a marble pedestal disconcerting.

But wait, you may want to say, the Greeks and the Romans were rather fantastic. Look at all they accomplished by way of history, literature, science, and philosophy! While you would be right that the Greeks and the Romans did many, many great things, they were also prejudiced, cruel, weird, and ultimately flawed people, and we need to be able to look at them critically if we want a shot in hell at being productive. (Not to mention that we can’t separate our evaluation of their greatness from the very bias that I just brought up.) Additionally, we should realize that handing them such cultural capital has helped reinforce certain assumptions about race, class, and gender that have significantly hurt people, and we’re dealing with the debris even today.

And we undoubtedly do pedestal-place — maybe not all of us all the time, but the idea that Greece and Rome were these civilizations that attained a thence unattainable level of awesomeness has seeped deeply into our collective psyche. I want to emphasize that I know many classicists who not only don’t buy into the common narrative but also have worked tirelessly to counter this perception. But you don’t have to be from what we have crudely termed “Western Civilization” to understand the Greco-Roman world’s disproportionate influence, and the areas around the globe that have managed to stay free from its delusion of grandeur serve as a nice reminder that other civilizations exist too, that they have their own classics too.

This takes me back to the triangulation (a word that I didn’t know prior to Globalized Classics, by the way) of Classical Greece, Early China, and the ancient Near East. As we examined their wisdom literature over the course of two weeks, we found no shortage of differences, even experiencing culture shock. But we also found similarities. For similarities between Greece and the Near East, we had a possible, albeit not obvious, explanation available: their history of communication and cultural exchange. The problem was similarities between Greece and China, two civilizations with no such history.

An important realization I had during this class, courtesy of a fellow student, was that both case studies had the effect of destabilizing the ancient world. We had to debate the consequences when there was a historical connection, and also when there wasn’t. If a Greek idea was reflected in the Near Eastern material, that raised the possibility that the Greeks got it from someone else. And if a Greek idea was reflected in the Chinese material, that raised the possibility that someone else thought of the same thing, and they didn’t have to know the Greeks to do it. Either way, the Greek miracle became a tad less miraculous. That’s something comparison can do; in fact, that’s something we have to compare to do.

Furthermore, it soon became clear that causation wasn’t always the telos of our comparisons. To be honest, it almost never was. Donna Zuckerberg says in our January E(i)ditorial that another common problem is “narrowing your scope because you’re worried that someone may have made your point already.” I’d like to build on this and propose that many writers are driven by the need to “prove” something, and when it comes to comparisons between the ancient and modern world, a logical goal is to say that ancient phenomenon X caused or influenced modern phenomenon Y. After all, wouldn’t it be neat to be the one who definitively proves that important ancient author A was the inspiration behind eminent modern novel B? The catch? Chances are, you’re not going to prove that definitively, or at all.

But it doesn’t matter, as long as you can find another way in which the comparison does matter. For example, what if juxtaposing important ancient author A with eminent modern novel B helps us notice things we hadn’t before, by virtue of placing us in new territory? A different context can render the familiar unfamiliar, opening up more ways of thinking about the matter at hand. Destabilizing the ancient world, I noted, is one of the most important implications of comparison, and it’s the one I happened to choose to focus on here because it felt particularly relevant. I don’t doubt that many others exist, and they are all worth keeping in mind when comparing.

Now that I’ve (hopefully) established the stakes, let’s talk about comparison qua methodology — i.e., how to compare stuff. I should caveat that this section isn’t meant to be a comprehensive, one-size-fits-all manual. I accept that there are many ways to compare, and the most appropriate path will depend on the comparanda. In a recent article for the London Review of Books, “Frameworks of Comparison,” Benedict Anderson offers four astute reflections, especially that “one has to decide, in any given work, whether one is mainly after similarities or differences” and that “it is good to think about one’s own circumstances, class position, gender, level and type of education, age, mother language etc. when doing comparisons.” I’d like to lay out some guidelines myself, while attempting to maintain a delicate balance of broad applicability and rigor.

Identify the type of comparison that you’re undertaking.

I’m going to once again borrow wisdom from Glenn Most, who on the first day of class sketched four ways to answer the question of “why is A like B?” through comparison: A causes B; A and B come from the same source; A and B are connected via polygenesis — that is, similar social structures in similar cultures produced similar effects; A is like B by chance (Aristotle, I remember him adding, says that chance is what we call a causal relationship that we don’t understand). You may be able to come up with another category, but scrutinizing the comparison at hand — thus acknowledging that not all comparisons are created equal — is a crucial step in setting a worthwhile goal. Speaking of which…

Establish the stakes.

I won’t bore you by belaboring this point much more than I already have, except to add that a high-stakes topic to you won’t necessarily be a high-stakes topic to everybody else — a personal angle, not a comparison, may be the way to go. And to reiterate the two statements I made earlier: it’s not enough that ancient phenomenon X is similar to modern phenomenon Y (and vice versa), and you shouldn’t necessarily compare two things just because you can. Why are you comparing them, since you can’t take for granted that you should? My theory is that if you answer this question, or even reflect on it a little, you’ll be less likely to suffer from comparopia.

Generalize if you must, but do so respectfully.

As promised, I’m going to take a more practical turn (summoning Prudentia) and touch upon how to deal with generalizations. At Eidolon, we try to avoid extensive citations, and we don’t have footnotes, so it may seem as though we are unfairly criticizing our writers after giving them an impossible task. But the best writers we know research cultures as conscientiously as possible given the time and word restrictions — such care shows in writing even when it’s not explicitly written. If they’re not experts in one or more of the cultures they’re writing about, they ask someone who is to read over their work before publication. They also adhere to a few “don’t”s: don’t be afraid to admit to your readers that you’re abridging material out of necessity, and if appropriate, link them to places where they can learn more; don’t jump to conclusions that depend on oversimplification, since generalization is a tool for efficiently conveying information, not for justifying a point that wouldn’t be accepted in formal scholarship; don’t get so bogged down in cushioning your argument that you get to the argument itself too late — nuance should not be quicksand. On a final, related note…

Recognize the limitations of comparison, and accept them.

In “The Limitations of the Comparative,” Franz Boas remarks on the futility of the comparative method trying to mimic the historical method: “The comparative method […] will not become fruitful until we renounce the vain endeavor to construct a uniform systematic history of the evolution of culture…” Similarly, we lose something when we generalize, and we ought to acknowledge that, even if we have to generalize in order to compare. Comparison isn’t going to solve all of our intellectual problems, and there’s no reason we should expect it to do so. On the contrary, comparison is a problem generator, and thank god for that — it allows us to engage in a conversation that we would otherwise only overhear.

While writing this article, I realized for the first time that the Mad Hatter asks why a raven is like a writing desk, not how. On the one hand, those are two ways of asking the same question. On the other hand, it also sounds like he’s asking, “A raven is like a writing desk, why is that?” Therein, I think, lies the task of the comparatist once the stakes become clear: to pose a problem without necessarily tying loose ends into a neat bow.

Why is a raven like a writing desk? “I haven’t the slightest idea,” the Mad Hatter tells Alice when she demands the answer. “I think you might do something better with the time than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers,” she replies with a weary sigh.

Is it truly a waste of time to ask riddles that have no answers? If yes, that’s bad news for the comparative method, which mostly circles around the answer without really getting there. And that’s the point. So perhaps the comparative method’s punch line is also its very nonsensicality. We may not have needed comparison had we been smarter creatures, but given the circumstances, comparison is a means for us to stretch the boundaries of our imaginations beyond what is possible merely by understanding something on its own terms. Necessities become options; options become numerous. Would you have come closer to the answer any other way? Would you have asked the question at all?

Yung In Chae is a Research Fellow at the Paideia Institute and the Assistant Editor of Eidolon. She received an A.B. in Classics from Princeton University in 2015 and is currently pursuing a Master’s in History and Civilizations at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, France.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Paideia Institute.