Paul Schleifer

The word inscape was coined in the 19^th century by the British priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. According to www.dictionary.com, it means “the essential inner nature of a person, an object, etc.” If you look it up on www.etymonline.com, you won’t find it. The OED does not do much better: “the unique inner nature of a person or object as shown in a work of art, especially a poem,” and then, “perhaps from in– ‘within’ + –scape.”

So we’re invited to look at those two morphemes, in- and –scape. In– is one of the most common prefixes in English, especially when you consider its various forms, like il-, im-, and ir-, forms of in– caused by assimilation. It can occasionally be a little tricky because it can mean two quite different things: “in, into, within” and “not.” It comes from the Latin in-, which itself comes from the PIE root *en– meaning “in.” But in Old French it often appears as en-, and as French words were imported into England, sometimes they came in with the en-, and sometimes the en– was converted to the more Latinate form, in-. There are even a few words in contemporary English which don’t know which prefix they want to use, like inquire and enquire.

–Scape is a little trickier. It first appears in English in 1773 and means “a scenery view,” according to www.etymonline.com. It derives from the word landscape, which means “painting representing an extensive view of natural scenery,” from Dutch landschap “landscape,” in art, a secondary sense from Middle Dutch landscap “region,” from land “land” + -scap “-ship, condition” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/landscape?ref=etymonline_crossreference). This is what linguists call a back-formation: “the process of creating a new lexeme by removing actual or supposed affixes.” [A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning—we might call it a word, except that a word can have various prefixes or suffixes that alter or add to the meaning of the root. An affix is a piece of a word that is attached to the word; in English we have prefixes and suffixes, but in some languages they actually have infixes, a piece that goes into the middle of a word to alter or add to the root meaning.] The word landscape came into English from Dutch around the year 1600, which is why we call the word scape, which does not appear until 1773, a back-formation. The morpheme –scape is then attached to other morphemes to make a variety of new words in English, all having the sense of landscape but different, such as cityscape.

But that morpheme –scape comes from the Old English word for –ship: word-forming element meaning “quality, condition; act, power, skill; office, position; relation between,” Middle English -schipe, from Old English -sciepe, Anglian -scip “state, condition of being,” from Proto-Germanic *-skapaz (cognates: Old Norse -skapr, Danish -skab, Old Frisian -skip, Dutch -schap, German -schaft), from *skap- “to create, ordain, appoint,” from PIE root *(s)kep-, forming words meaning “to cut, scrape, hack” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ship?ref=etymonline_crossreference). This is not the ship that means “boat” but rather the –ship that we attach to all kinds of words: scholarship, apprenticeship, guardianship, etc.

So perhaps we can see how Hopkins came up with the word inscape: it is not like a landscape of one’s interior self but rather the inner quality or condition of one’s self. Anyone who has come across Hopkins’s poetry in a literature survey class has struggled with his notion of inscape, as well as with the accompanying term instress, “the apprehension of an object in an intense thrust of energy toward it that enables one to realize specific distinctiveness. Ultimately, the instress of inscape leads one to Christ, for the individual identity of any object is the stamp of divine creation on it” (Stephen Greenblatt, et al., eds. “Gerard Manley Hopkins.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York, London: Norton, 2006. p. 2159). Hopkins derived this complex theological notion from his study of the medieval scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus.

So here’s what is kind of sad about what happens in a language. This intriguing spiritual term gets picked up and used by others in what might be considered a tawdry fashion. If you Google inscape, here are some of the first hits you’ll get:

https://www.inscape.life/: a business that promises traditional meditation techniques and a place to go and meditate to help you “Find Balance, Calm, and Clarity.”

http://inscapesolutions.com/: “Inscape is a design enabler. We have been saying yes since 1888 with a versatile portfolio of systems, storage, walls and products that are infinitely adaptable, and always built to last. With care and consideration, and more than a century of expertise, we’re here to make your vision a reality.”

An app: “INSCAPE makes meditation approachable and relevant for today.  Merging traditional techniques with intelligent personalization, the app creates a place for yourself wherever you are. In as little as three minutes, INSCAPE will help you boost your awareness, enhance your emotional intelligence, energize or relax. Commuting, can’t sleep, anxious before a blind date or nervous about a tough decision at work?”

https://www.inscape.tv/: “We access millions of TVs across a wider range of content sources and deliver data the same day. By generating more comprehensive TV viewing data, our partners can gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of their audience.”

http://www.inscape.org/: “Founded in 2004 by Artistic Director Richard Scerbo, INSCAPE Chamber Orchestra is pushing the boundaries of classical music with riveting performances that reach across genres and generations, and transcend the confines of the traditional classical concert experience.”

I could go on, but I think you get the point. And perhaps this commercialization of what was coined as a religious term is indicative of the inscape of America in the 21^st century.

 

The image: “Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse.” The photographer is unknown, as is the date, though it is suggested that this may be at Hopkins’s last birthday.