The elusive art of the epigraph: some mislead us (the blatantly fabricated prelude to “The Great Gatsby”), others act as humorous disclaimers ("Huckleberry Finn" 's "persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted."). Some warm but many chill: Nabokov’s epigraph for “The Gift” (“An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animal. A sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Death is inevitable.”) comes closer to an epitaph than an epigraph. But why do we bother with them at all? Are they touchstones, allowing the precious metal of the work that follows to rub out more clearly? Are they the literary equivalent of a performer tapping a microphone before he begins? Andrew Tutt takes on these and other possibilities in an essay on The Millions, asking:
(Tutt cobbles together other interpretations, too, my favorite of which is that epigraphs are “like little appetizers of the great entrée of a story," though I myself would characterize them more as amuse-bouche, perhaps artfully presented spoonfuls of sweet basil foam—both palate cleansers and complements to the primary plates.)
Epigraphs, of course, were originally inscriptions, generally engraved in stone on a building or statue ("epigraphpein" literally means “to write on”; the term didn’t take on its more modern meaning until 1844), and there’s still a lively community of epigraphists who study inscriptions for clues to ancient cultures. I like to think that, in this sense, the epigraph is a reminder that we are literary archaeologists, unearthing and interpreting the unknown culture between the covers of a book, and that the epigraph is our tool, our Rosetta Stone or hand pick, to help us crack the code.
Then again, as is so often the case when we plunder the past, maybe we just surround ourselves with them to look smart.
