One of the features of life in our time would have seemed quite strange to pretty much everybody who lived on earth not so long ago. That is, we’re very rarely up and outdoors before sunrise, so we don’t have the experience of watching the sky grow brighter, from dark night to that color that Dante brlliantly called dolce color d’oriental zaffiro, which I’ve translated as sweet sapphire of the morning in the east, and then to the full light of day. But we do still have the other experience, of being outdoors when the sun falls, till finally it is just on the horizon. During that time, the sun is drawing even to the horizon: it is in the process of even-ing: and there is our Word of the Week.
This weekend in the United States, we have switched back from Daylight Savings Time, so that the evening was upon us when we left church today at 5:00 PM. I’ve long wondered whether we should just stay on Daylight Savings Time all year round, because most people’s schedules don’t have them at work while it is still twilight in the morning. By the way, it’s twi-light, or two-light, if I guess correctly, because it’s dubious, teetering between two conditions, light and dark: see German zweifeln, to despair, with that same idea of doubtfulness and second-guessing and suchlike. Of course, if we did just keep Daylight Savings Time, it would mean that our noon would never really be noon — the sun would peak in the sky about an hour later. But who steers by the sun anymore? Actually, I do, when I’m driving on a clear day in a place I’m not familiar with, but I think I’m an outlier in that way. The morning twilight is lovely and cheerful, because it’s always brightening, and you may want to hasten it on, but the evening twilight is lovely and wistful, because it brings the day to its close. Yet I guess you can look at it in another way: as the morning twilight vanishes into the clear light, the stars begin to disappear, and last of all to go, if she’s in the morning sky, will be Venus. Have you ever watched a star vanish? I have, or I’ve tried to, because you might blink once, and it’s gone, even Venus. But in the evening, the stars begin to appear. Have you ever seen a star suddenly appear? I haven’t. As soon as you see a star in that evening twilight, you’ll say, “It must have been there ten seconds ago, but I missed it.”
So evening is a verbal noun, as I said, meaning that something is drawing even: it’s from the Old English verbal aefnung, evening, related to the verb aefnian, to grow towards evening; both are built from the adjective aefen, even. There was no v in Old English; but f was pronounced as v when it came between two vowels as here. There are a lot of even- words in Old English and Middle English, and some of them are charming. We’ve got aefendream, which isn’t a nap after supper, but evensong (look here for dream). There’s aefenglom, “even-gloom,” which doesn’t mean that you’re mopey, but that there’s gloaming in the evening sky, that twilight glow. If you’re still awake after supper, and you and your friends are gathered around the big table by the hearth, you might like to hear a song from the aefensceop, the evening poet, the after-dinner bard. And that supper itself is your aefenmete, your “even-meat,” when the word meat did not mean flesh but rather food in general. Perhaps, in Middle English, you will enjoy that supper with your friend, who when you were both little babies was your evensucker, that is, your fellow nursling at the breast! But in any case you ought to treat him as your evenchristian, your fellow Christian, which simply meant, in medieval England, your fellow human being.
And what about evenness? It seems to be a universal in human cultures, to associate evenness with justice: Latin aequus, even, level, along with its derivatives, gives us words that have to do with fairness, even-dealing, a just wage for good work: equal, equity, equable — for someone with an even temper. You can divide an even number by two and each person gets an even share. The rhyming pair even-steven comes from the 19th century and suggests that we’re all square — you’ve paid up, or I’ve come through with the goods, and all’s settled just right.
But to get back to evening as the time of day: we use the word also to describe a time of life. Here again there’s a stark contrast with morning, isn’t there? In the morning of your life, all’s cheerful and bright, or at least it ought to be, but you don’t know a lot, you haven’t been anywhere, you can’t do much except to wonder and to learn and to love. Actually, now that I’ve said so, it seems pretty good, doesn’t it? To be a little child again! But in the evening of your life, you look back, and you cherish the good people you were given to know, and you give thanks to God for the good things you have enjoyed and the graces he has showered upon you, not least his forgiving you your sins, which you also remember, but as things that are done and gone. And you look forward in faith to the time beyond time, to the morning star that never sets.
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