imminence is ominous?

[DaSwede]

Borges has spoken of 'aesthetic phenomena' or 'the aesthetic fact' as "the imminence of a revelation that does not take place." This is a magical and mystical quote to me, and I've always felt I understood it - until I happened to see how the word 'imminence' was translated (into Swedish) in my dictionary. That sorta blew it... According to that translation, the word imminence doesn't only imply proximity but also that there is some threat involved. Is that really so? I realize that the word is often used in such context (imminent danger, the imminence of war), but is there really something ominous about the word itself?

Also, I'm wondering if anyone has read the passage in Spanish and feels up to offering an alternative interpretation into English for the translation 'aesthetic phenomena' (or 'aesthetic fact'), which to me sounds a bit bloodless. But perhaps it has the same ring in Spanish.

[jno]

Swede, I think your English is a lot better than the English of whoever wrote your dictionary. There's no threat at all implied by the word 'imminent', although as you correctly say it often gets attached to words like 'danger'. Your understanding of the word is dead right.

Can't help you with the Spanish, though...

[Quizmonster]

As J suggests above, the word is nowadays two-edged...ie it may just mean that something is approaching but its basic sense is that that thing is looming or threatening. The Latin source, of course, suggests something 'jutting into' the situation.

Here's what The Oxford English Dictionary says...
"Of an event (almost always of evil or danger)...impending threateningly, hanging over one's head..."

That is how the word was used from the 16th to the 19th century; only then did it start to take on the less worrying alternative meaning of 'about to happen'.

[heathfield]

DaSwede - can you tell us which of Borges works this comes from? I should have thought that an aesthetic phenomena or fact would be experienced as an anticipation whether the revelation occurred or not - but I'm clueless about the context.

[jno]

My New Oxford Dictionary makes no mention of threat - it's an abbreviated version of the full dictionary, and clearly they thought that this was the bit of definition they could throw away for the late 20th century. Nonetheless, it does raise the question of when Borges wrote this, and when it was translated into English. If this was sufficiently long ago, perhaps he was indeed thinking of something threatening, and my first post was incorrect.

Today, however, I think the word to use to denote something menacing would be 'impending' rather than imminent.

[Quizmonster]

Chambers Dictionary reads "impending, approaching, forthcoming, looming, threatening" and the Bloomsbury Dictionary reads "about to happen or threatening to happen."
Given the word-order in each case, it is clear that the relatively harmless "about to happen" idea is the more prevalent today but both make clear that the "threat" side of things has far from disappeared.

[DaSwede]

/Blushing/ heathfield, for heaven's sake, it's not like I read it in an actual book or something... No, seriously, I've been keeping that quote (from a magazine) on my pin board for years and I'm not sure where it's from. Now that I've surfed around a bit for it, it seems he used and re-used it a lot, but below paragraph from Guardian Unlimited expresses more (than I did in my question) about what he was talking about:

His clear intelligence led him to define the essential ambiguity at the heart of every work of art, thereby granting readers permission to enjoy and yet not fully understand: 'The imminence of a revelation that does not take place,' he wrote, 'is, perhaps, the aesthetic fact.'

jno and Quizmonster, thank you for replying and for discussing with each other! I love it when people and/or their dictionaries slightly disagree about language; I feel that this actually furthers my understanding of a word rather than muddle it.

(jno, thanks for your kind words about my English. Alas I'm certain you'd be shocked if you could witness my live attempts at actually speaking English, without my dictionaries at hand. You'd think it was my cat that had written my contributions to the AB...)

[jno]

nonetheless, perhaps just ever so slightly better than my Swedish, DaSwede! Quizmonster's learning is always worth hearing, as he is aware not only of dictionary meanings but of the way these change in time - and it's cases like that which usually make for the most interesting questions and answers.

[heathfield]

Ah! Good link, DaSwede. It certainly makes clear the basis of Borges's statement. Many Thanks!

[DaSwede]

Talar du svenska, jno? A little, perhaps...?