On this Mother’s Day 2020, as Y-H-B remembered his mother of blessed memory, Lydia Ita Shapiro (née Chernetzky = R Чернецкая), the following Russian proverb came to mind: Повторение мать учения, which translated literally means “Repetition is the mother of learning.” Notice that this apothegm differs fundamentally from the English “Necessity is the mother of invention.” In Russian the two words for ‘repetition’ and ‘learning’ rhyme, which contributes significantly to the fundamentality of the difference. Why? Because rhyme is a species of paronomasia, and this linguistic feature of poetry and paroemiology (proverbs) makes all the difference in the world to the semantic force of the rhetorical use of language.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
Greek nomos
custom, habit, law, manner,
melody, mode or mood (in music),
course of masonry (in architecture)
Thus when mothers have children suffering from sleeplessness,
and want to lull them to rest, the treatment they apply is
to give them, not quiet, but motion, for they rock them
constantly in their arms; and instead of silence, they
use a kind of crooning noise; and thus they literally
cast a spell upon the children (like the victims of
a Bacchic frenzy) by employing the combined movements
of dance and song as a remedy.
— Plato, Laws, VII, 790D