A History of Goodbye, Part I: "Goodbye" in Book Titles

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Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio

("Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness"), said by Poe in his “The Purloined Letter” to be from Seneca¹.

Several posts ago I made reference to Jean Puget de la Serre’s wonderfully semi-vicious book The Mirrour Which Flatters Not (1639).   Serre was hardly an oasis of negativity in the early Enlightenment, writing as he was on matters epically moral—I must admit that I was attracted to the title of this condemning and biting book, and frontispiece illustration, which features a royal skeleton wormily seated  in a field of skulls holding the mirror that awaits us all. But as it turns out—ironically, too, perhaps—in the long parting salvo that seems to have been the crux of his book’s biscuit, Serre’s translator, Thomas Cary, is one of the earliest English writers to use the word “goodbye”.  Why this was done, I haven’t the foggiest notion—I do know that writers claim that this is a contraction of the parting salutation of “god be with you”, but that’s all I know on the subject. 

But it did cause me to think about the word "goodbye" and the whole concept of parting from something, or someone, and of change, and adventure , of something happening, flux, introducing or diminishing chaos.  If it is anything at all, the idea of "goodbye" will probably not lead to boredom; ennui is a definite some-percentage possibility,  but it is a direct promise of change for good or for ill or for nil.

And the best place I thought to start of looking at Goodbye is at the beginning,  in the titles of books, where "Goodbye" or "Good-bye" makes infrequent appearances. 

There are titles that say Goodbye to people:  Mr. Chips, Columbus, Picasso, Sister Disco, Mickey Mouse, Judge Lynch, Descartes. And Goodbye… to places: Berlin, Europe, Los Angeles, New York, Venice, Earth.

They are of varying qualities.  This is definitely judging a book by its title, but I think I’d rather read Death in Venice more so than Goodbye to Venice, which sounds like it might be a Weekly Reader version of  Mr. Mann’s big/little write. 

And of course Goodbye… to things, not too many of which sound very appealing:  Hangovers, Weight, Love, Sanity, Health, Life.  These are the books invisibly clamoring for space and life at the 25-cent table at the library sale as they wait their turn to say "hello" to recycling.

Then there are the Goodbye… titles that are Not Terribly Categorizable:  Goodbye Girl, Say Goodbye, and of course Never Say Goodbye, and the lovely Goodbye Blue Monday (the rest of the title of Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions…).  The Long Goodbye has always sounded languid and steamy and the-ice-is-all-melted-y to me.  Hello Goodbye just can’t seem to make up its mind. So far as I can tell there are no books simply entitled Goodbye, nor has anything ever been on bookseller shelves called Get Out, though there is a book called Go Away. Hello Goodbye either can't make up its mind or is welcoming Goodbye, which may or may not be a broken logical circuit.

The playing field gets very wide for book titles (and everything else) when “goodbye” gets more expanded, less demanding, more diplomatic, like, say , with Farewell My Lovely.

But that’s another story.  And so for this bit on the History of Goodbye, I use Mr. Graves, and say Goodbye to All That. 

Footnote

1. Evidently, it is not.  By the way, for all of the great amusement and entertainment taken from this great and wise short story, Poe received a payment of $12 in 1845.

Comments

[Jeff]

And then there's this: Good-bye, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. It may or may not be right for your talented artist off-spring, but I just ordered one Laura.

http://tinyurl.com/njnnlg

[John Ptak]

Well, how serendipitous! Patti just brought home a copy of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's autobiography (a giant of a book, 800+ pages or so) and Emma loved o loves it! Thanks for the head's up on this. John