Recent posts involving the English pronoun IT referred to
classic tales of horror by Madeleine L'Engle and Stephen King.
Those posts suggest some further remarks by Martin Buber:
THE WORLD IS TWOFOLD for man
in accordance with his twofold attitude.
The attitude of man is twofold
in accordance with the two basic words he can speak.
The basic words are not single words but word pairs.
One basic word is the word pair I-You.
The other basic word is the word pair I-It;
but this basic word is not changed when
He or She takes the place of It.
Thus the I of man is also twofold.
For the I of the basic word I-You is different from
that in the basic word I-It.
— Buber, Martin. I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann
(p. 53). Kindle Edition.
Four German pronouns from the above passage
by Martin Buber lead to six pronoun pairs:
ich-du, ich-es, ich-sie, du-es, du-sie, es-sie.
This is in accordance with some 1974 remarks by
Marie-Louise von Franz —
The following passage by Buber may confuse readers of
L'Engle and King with its use, in translation, of "it" instead of
the original German "sie" ("she," corresponding to "die Welt") —
Here, for comparison, are the original German and the translation.
As for "that you in which the lines of relation, though parallel,
intersect," and "intimations of eternity," see Log24 posts on
the concept "line at infinity" as well as "Lost Horizon."
