Compare vs. Contrast

This is a question of English linguistics. One that has long haunted me. The phrase “compare and contrast,” so popular in junior high essay prompts, is indicative of everything wrong with American education. Because the word “compare” means to delineate the similarities AND differences between two subjects and the word “contrast” in this context is thus redundant.

I have tried to make this simple argument to several friends. They will say, “NO! Compare means to find similarities, and contrast means to find differences.” What baffles me is not that they make this argument – most every product of American junior high does – but that even when they SEE with their own very two EYES the dictionary telling them otherwise, they still cling to their misgivings, much like they sometimes insist that “Wherefore art thou Romeo” is Juliet asking where Romeo is, and not WHY he has to be Romeo, instead of someone less star-crossed, even though they are so clearly wrong.

It is difficult to maintain friendships with people who don’t think “Compare and contrast” is a redundant thing to tell somebody to do. If you are one of the ones who defends that phrase then do us both a favor and don’t tell me about it, unless you’ve been looking for a way out of this friendship for some time. In which case, this is your golden ticket.

This past week or so has been filled with ample opportunity for comparison. And, as things tend to do, the subjects presenting themselves for comparison seem to have fallen into a common theme. Is that because chronology and philosophy have found a brief, if harmonious, marriage in Paris? Or is it because I have that theme in mind and everything now falls into it? Please prepare an argument in 1,000 words or less and have it in my inbox by next Friday.

The saga begins actually a few weeks ago, when at my writing group our leader David presented several quotes about poetry and we compared structured poetry – like iambic pentameters, and sonnets – with the sort of free-flowing, abstract, formless poetry of modern times. The consensus being that grammar is helpful in a very logistical way. It helps us communicate. So if you’re going to undo all the agreed-upon rules of grammar and structure, then you’re certainly going to have to do it with great skill, lest your work appear a jumbled mass of words that means nothing to most readers.

Enter last Friday, when Michael and I went to the Rodin museum. This building, converted from the old Hotel de Biron (where Rodin, among others, had a studio) houses most of Rodin’s major works. Not to mention that it’s a gorgeous structure in and of itself, flanked by amazing gardens.

Rodin was a master of form. His human figures are so realistic that I wanted to reach out and touch them. And because he adheres religiously to the human form, he is able to communicate very immediately the pathos embodied in each form. If any of you ever find yourselves in Paris, put this museum at the top of your list. It’s a beautiful and sensual place.

Skip ahead to the following Thursday, when we went to the Centre Georges Pompidou, home of Paris’ largest modern art collection. Here, we watch the strict adherence to form crumble, jumble and reorder itself. And yet, of course, all the artists featured here did this so skillfully that the effect is not lost – Julio Gonzalez and (of course) Picasso & Matisse – didn’t lose any ability to convey pathos even as they lost skeletal and muscular accuracy. (Although I have to say that I didn’t feel the same urge to reach out and touch the humans in question. That, by the way, is a contrast, but it’s included semantically in the comparison.)

Then we move forward to Rothko, who puts nothing but color on a canvas. And still, it’s compelling. But not just anybody could do that. In fact, I think people who reject grammar and skeletons run a great risk of connecting to nobody. The point, as Picasso says, is not to create a formless blob, but rather to create something “More real than real” in the course of disintegrating the “real” forms of things. To start with a well-constructed sentence and then take out the parts of it that define a thing too much, but to leave just the parts of it that evoke, is a tricky task. I don’t really feel comfortable with it, so I stick to my trusty semicolons and stark definitions of vocabulary words.

Add the Pompidou center to your short list, too.

Another interesting manifestation of this theme presented itself to us on Saturday, when we visited first the Catacombs (Paris’ enormous underground cemetery) and then, not twenty minutes after we exited the underground labyrinth, ended up in the Cemetery Montparnasse, one of Paris’ oldest above-ground cemeteries.

To get to the ossuary of the catacombs (where all the bones are), one first descends many stairs and walks through lots of creepily-lit tunnels. Eventually, this path leads you to the ossuary, where the winding paths are literally lined with bones. Some 6 million people’s bones are down there. Originally they had been thrown in unorganized heaps, but in the early 19th century, they were placed in an orderly fashion. This means wall-like structures formed from femurs and tibias and fibias. Skulls form rows. There are hip and shoulder bones here and there, but most of the smaller insignificant bones have crumbled under the weight of the bigger ones.

Many notorious people are “buried” in the Catacombs, but of course they are buried in obscurity. One of those skulls belonged to Robespierre. But who knows? Maybe his left femur is yards away. Maybe his tibia was stolen. In the catacombs, everyone is anonymous. Great figures of the revolution have decomposed, disintegrated, and mixed up with the remains of unknowns from the Cemetery of the Innocents.

The catacombs was also one of several sites of underground resistance during the Nazi occupation. Which also certainly sparks the imagination.

Ascend the stairs and walk north to the Cemetery Montparnasse, where families are buried in family plots under enormous granite, marble and ceramic edifices. Where the tombstones, some of them, are worth far more than my actual life. Where the grounds are manicured and the light hits the black marble monuments and glints off them pleasantly. A cheerful place.

It’s hard to say, really, which is more real. Scattered, anonymous human skeletons or the overly-ornate monuments to the dead contrived, in large part, by the living. Whom we all know are possessed of amazing powers of imagination.

Anyway, you can draw your own conclusions about all of this. Maybe you like formless poetry. Maybe you hate abstract art. Maybe you want to be buried in a family plot or maybe you want your bones to be scattered underground, or maybe you don’t think too much about your own death, which is healthy and good.

None of that matters to me, personally. I’d love to hear whatever thoughts you have and will be your friend no matter what you believe so long as you don’t ever ask me to compare AND contrast anything. Ever. Life is too short to find our differences twice.