tony blair and resolve and dissolve and melt and determination and london underground and bombing

After the vicious attacks in the London Underground yesterday, killing more than 50 and wounding in excess of 700, a somber Tony Blair expressed his firm "resolve" to deal with those who had perpetrated the deed. Though there was no doubt in anyone's mind that when he used the word "resolve" he meant to express his determination to fight the perpetrators by whatever means necessary (with the emphasis on military means), the word "resolve" has a much greater linguistic field to it, a field that is arrestingly suggestive to those who imagine a better day of peace in the world. Let's examine the word.

Resolve as Determination

There is a long tradition of using "resolve" or "resolute" in the way Blair used it yesterday. Shakespeare says, "Get you gone, be strong and prosperous/ In this resolve" (R & J 4.1.123). Or, from the 17th century, "The common affection of Countrymen soders them into a common resolve of kindness each to other." A Christian hymn ("The Voice of God is Calling") , dripping with elegance and noblesse oblige of the early 20th century, talks about the Christian duty to help the less fortunate.

"I hear my people crying/ in slum and mine and mill; no filed or mart is silent,/ no city street is still./ I see my people falling/ in darkness and despair./ Whom shall I send to shatter/ the fetters which they bear?" And then, after heeding the summons of God to help these folks, the hymn concludes, "From ease and plenty save us/ from pride of place absolve; purge us of low desire,/ lift us to high resolve."

Thus, the concept of resolve as determined action, as decided and firm inclination, is well-attested in English. When Tony Blair used the term "resolve," yesterday, he meant to express this determination. I would imagine that most who heard him say this word heard it in a military sense. "We are resolved," means that we will commit ourselves to the kind of military action that the Americans initiated in the wake of 9/11.

Resolve as Melt

Yet there is another meaning of resolve, better attested even than resolve as determination, that might give a completely different spin to what Tony Blair said yesterday. Let's begin with the Latin resolvo. The OLD lists seven definintions for the verb--none of which is "to be determined" or "to be resolute" or something of that kind. Here are a few of them: (1) "To loosen, undo, unfasten. To relax (one's grip); to open (the throat or veins, i.e., by cutting); or to unravel a puzzle or mystery." (2) "To free a person from bonds or release from some oppressive condition;" (3) "To separate into particles, components, etc.; break up; melt; dissolve;" and (4) "To make (a part of the body) less rigid or tense, relax, allow to go limp..."

While the first attestations in English of resolve as determination appear in Shakespeare's time, the idea of resolve as "melt" or "dissolve" goes back to Chaucer and Wycliffe (late 14th century). In Job's hymn to wisdom (Job 28), where there is "a place for gold to be refined" and "iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smilted from ore" (28:1,2), Wycliffe put all this together with these words: "A stoon (i.e., stone) resolved, ether meltid, bi heete, is turned in to money."

The OED gives more than 20 meanings of the verb "resolve," but most of them are consistent with the Latin definitions listed above. "Resolve" means to "melt" or "dissolve" things, to "solve" a mathematical equation, "to soften" a tumor (medical usage), or "to slacken or relax (the limbs)." In a figurative context, resolve can suggest the conversion or transformation of one thing into some other thing or form, such as when Hamlet said, "Oh, that this too too solid Flesh, would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a Dew." Deliberative bodies can resolve themselves into a committee of the whole. Resolve can also be used in the sense of removing, clearing away or dispelling a doubt, as when Shakespeare said, in Titus Andronicus, "Resolve me this, Was it well done...To slay his daughter?" Of course it can also mean "to determine or decide upon (a course of action)," but this is definition 14.

A Tale of Two Resolves

Though it is undoubtedly true that we need people today of "Blairean" resolve, it seems also true that for every one who wants to resolve things through determined military action, we might need a dozen of those who want to resolve things in the other sense. We need resolvers who know how to relax, to melt, to dissolve. We need people committed to the slow action of melting away something that is seemingly so hard and inveterate and spiky. We really are in a mind set in the United States in 2005 that the only way to "resolve" the "terrorist" issue is to bury them, figuratively and literally. We must stand firm in our determination, not waver in our commitments, and make sure that we have weeded out and obliterated every inclination to destruction that exists in the "terrorists."

Is this the best way to resolve the issue? To be resolute in this way? Of course if you suggested another way, you would be liable to attack as a weak-willed accommodator, a person who is afraid to fight fire with fire, a person whose muddled brain is giving comfort to those who are hellbent on destroying our mode of life. But, I say, let's stop for a moment and see how we are using our language. We need resolute people, but people resolved to "melt" and "dissolve" and "relax" the tensions that exist. If it is too late for this kind of resolver, our children indeed will be in trouble.

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