The World According to Bierce

Ambrose Bierce, American short story writer, man of letters, journalist and civil war (Union side) veteran, is best known for his unorthodox lexicon, The Devil’s Dictionary, a humorous, satirical and very personal take on a selection of words in the English language in his day. The dictionary was compiled by Bierce over three decades, being initially published in instalments in various newspapers and magazines. Eventually the collection was published in book form, first as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906 and then as The Devil’s Dictionary in 1911, two years before Bierce’s never satisfactorily explained disappearance in Chihuahua, Mexico, where the journalist was visiting to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution.

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Highly influential literary critic of the first half of the 20th century, HL Mencken, heaped lavish, over–the–top, almost doting praise on The Devil’s Dictionary…not holding back, he described the dictionary as “the true masterpiece of the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen” (Mencken perhaps unfamiliar with the work of Mark Twain?)…”some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language”…”some of the most devastating epigrams ever written“.

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Cynicism and satire form the backbone of Bierce’s provocative dictionary. So, an interesting place to start delving into the unconventional text is how he handles these terms – the words ‘satire’, ‘cynic’ and ‘dictionary’ themselves. Despite being fully versed in the craft himself, Bierce views the practitioner of cynicism less than favourably.

Cynic: A blackguard❅ who sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be (which presumably is the definition of an optimist۞). 

Satire: An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness✫.

Dictionary: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.

Bierce goes on to add, without drawing breath, that his dictionary, however, is “a most useful work”.

But a cynic Bierce certainly is! At one point, appraising the great thinkers of society, he sweepingly declares—in his trademark blanket fashion—that “all are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher” (in which case, what would Bierce have made of Freud and the “dark art” of psychotherapy!?!). This perception of the author reminds me to some extent of the distinction often made between a person with an erratic behavioural pattern who is poor (and is labelled insane), and a person with an erratic behavioural pattern who is wealthy (labelled merely eccentric).

Romance and true love falls by the wayside with Bierce’s cynic–meter always hovering around ground–level:

Love: A temporary insanity cured by marriage.

Politics is even more fertile ground for Biercian cynicism…even the highest office in the land is not spared. With characteristic directness, there is:

President: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

Senate: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

Alliance:  In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.

And of course, to Bierce, ‘capital’ (ie, the capital) is defined as “the seat of misgovernment”.

The contemporary power politics of the day is very entrenched in the cynic’s consciousness of Bierce:

Cannon: an instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.

In a similar vein Bierce gives recognition to the tradition of his nation’s imperialistic ambitions in possibly the most quoted and most acute of Bierce’s definitions: 

War: God’s way of teaching Americans geography⬲.

Bierce’s definition entries can go off on a tangent☒, often making extensive use of quotations from “eminent poets” to underscore his definitions (Ambrose relies a lot on one Father G Jape, SJ, as a prop for his sometimes outlandish assertions). At times this involves recourse to wordy anecdotes and phrases. In contrast to lengthy descriptors, some Devil’s Dictionary‘s entries are succinctly on the mark and some are absolute poetic corkers:

Absent: Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction.

Erudition: Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Envy: Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity. 

Fib: A lie that has not cut its teeth.

Martyr: One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

And even more succinctly summarised is:

Hope: Desire and expectation rolled into one.

Bierce is often lauded for his humanist perspective of the world…the major organised religions do not escape his critical eye:

Religions: are “conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises”.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

He can be irreverent – “Christians and camels both receive their burdens kneeling”.

The book dishes up a smorgasbord of satirical, ironic and often bitter definitions of the world as seen by Ambrose Bierce (one of the acerbic writer’s nicknames was “Bitter Bierce”). But Bierce is of course a creature of his time with all the glaring faults and prejudices of the 19th century privileged white man’s mindset. So, through the satire and cynicism we witness the less savoury traits and predisposition of the lexicographer. Casual assumptions of racism and misogyny run through the pages of The Devil’s Dictionary.

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AB’s miscellany of hobby horses

Politicians and philosophers are on Bierce’s “hit list”, as are lawyers who get a pithy but predictably caustic assessment:

Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.

Historians, in The Devil’s Dictionary are reduced to “broad-gauge gossips”, and ‘history’ is summarily pigeonholed as “mostly false (and) about unimportant events”.

Although he doesn’t specifically give medical students a definition entry, his regular references to them through the book might prompt one to conclude that their single defining feature is that of “grave-robbers”𖣯.

Iconic places like New York City and specifically Wall Street don’t escape AB’s rancour, swiftly dismissed as “dens of iniquity”, the sort of Biblical association Bierce employs to those things or entities representing (in his eyes) absolute evil.

Bierce’s idiosyncratic designation of ‘happiness’, as “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another” dovetails neatly into the definition of the German term Schadenfreude (substituting the word ‘perverse’ for ‘agreeable’ perhaps).

Bierce’s dictionary is also prone to outbursts of elitism – such as:

Laziness: Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe✪ whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling (an ‘idiotocracy’ perhaps).

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Endnote: Bierce’s cold trail 𖢘 The mysterious disappearance of Bierce has fascinated interested parties for the hundred–plus years since the author suddenly vanished in Mexico. Speculation has been wildly unrestrained and rampant as to the writer’s supposed end (eg, he hooked up with famous Mexican bandit leader Pancho Villa and he was killed by Federal troops, or by rebels, or by his own hand or by Villa himself). Novelists, playwrights and filmmakers have all had a go at unravelling the mystery, but the reality is that no one really knows what happened to Bierce [‘The Death of Bierce’, The Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society, www.biercephile.com].

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❅ Bierce defines ‘blackguard’ as an “inverted gentleman”, like a box of cherries that displays the fine ones on top but with the box “opened on the wrong side”

۞ except that Bierce’s “optimist” is “a pessimist (who) applied to God for relief”

✫ obsolete or not, it doesn’t stop AB from indulging in the device

⬲ it is not universally accepted that this most famous of Bierce-isms originated with Bierce himself, see for instance “The Ambrose Bierce Site”, www.donswain.com

☒ for example see the entry for ‘History’

𖣯 maybe overstated but Bierce was not exactly fabricating a connection – “body snatching” for medical education was a very real and very lucrative activity at the time

✪ Bierce tended to view different societal groups as contrasting tribal entities