ROUMYANA PETROVA

“IF THERE WERE NO CLOUDS, WE SHOULDN’T ENJOY

THE SUN”: THE CROSSCULTURAL VIEW AND MULTI-
FACETED MEANING OF A PROVERB

Abstract: This study discusses an experiment with the semantics of the

English proverb “If there were no clouds, we shouldn’t enjoy the sun.” The
individual interpretations of this proverb by thirty six Bulgarian bachelor
students fluent in English are compared with the definition(s) of the prov-
erb and its linguocultural semantic analysis involving the application of the
cultureme. The findings reveal a large area of semantic overlap between
the proverb meaning and its perception by non-English respondents.
Keywords: rhetoric, ethics, semantics, associations, cultureme, proverb
meaning, imagery, linguistic culturology

Ethics and rhetoric in Europe have since classical times been

following two distinct lines of development, although there have
also been times when they would work jointly. When composing
their speeches, Roman orators as a rule used rhetorical devices to
put across their ethical or political messages in a more persuasive
way. As regards the ethical value of political communication, the
eminent European rhetorician Quintilian viewed this aspect of pub-
lic life in the same way as Cicero did before him: he was convinced
that only good and knowledgeable persons could and should be-
come writers and orators and that only persons of wisdom and in-
tegrity should be entrusted with the task of shaping public opinion
and acting as leaders of the community (Quintilian 1982: 36, 702,
704). Proverbs have always been among the tools most frequently
used by orators in speeches meant to persuade the audience into
thinking and acting in the desired ways. For practically millennia
they have served in instilling ethical norms, wisdom and common
sense in both young and old, rich and poor, rulers and ruled, educat-
ed and uneducated, citizens of advanced societies and tribal com-
munities alike (cf. Whiting 1994: 34–35). But proverbs have found
their way not only in public speaking; they were also widely used

PROVERBIUM 30 (2013)
256 ROUMYANA PETROVA

by lawyers, as a teaching aid in schools and universities, as well as

in sermons in the church (Bradbury 2002: 264–65). In everyday life,
these short, pithy sentences have helped people see through the illu-
sions in life and assess soberly the situations they find themselves
in. Proverbs are indeed among people’s best friends.
But how have proverbs made their way into the spoken lan-
guages of today? Many of these concise, witty, miniature texts we
hear circulating freely in oral use date back to early antiquity, while
others are of more recent origin. Linguistic culturology claims that
the proverb genre belongs to the group of precedent texts, which
make up the very core of linguocultures (Karaulov 2007: 16)1.
When the first collections of such texts began to be compiled, prov-
erbs would often be grouped together with folk narratives, fables,
parables, poems, myths and legends, riddles, gnomic verses, nursery
rhymes, legal codes, and various other folk and literary genres (cf.
Paxton & Fairfield 1980: xi; Мieder 2004: xii). Like the lexicons of
languages, the larger part of the proverbs making up the paremio-
logical corpora of the linguocultures known to us today are certainly
of native stock, but there may also be numerous borrowings from
other languages in the form of calques and literary translations as
well as excerpts and quotes from authoritative philosophical, liter-
ary, or religious works transformed into folk wisdom. A good ex-
ample is the Bible, which has become the source of several hundred
proverbs in English (cf. Mieder 1990), Bulgarian (Trendafilova
2004 and 2006; Petrova 2006) and, certainly, other languages. In-
terestingly, the ancient proverb genre continues to thrive in our era
of global communication and the Internet: we are now almost on a
daily basis witnessing the rise of new sayings in the English lan-
guage like ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’ ‘There is no such thing as a
free lunch,’ or ‘Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true,’ all coined over
the last century or so (cf. Dictionary of Modern Proverbs), and this
state of affairs probably holds good for other languages too.
But are these archaic and sometimes enigmatic sentences losing
their appeal among the younger generation today? An experiment I
carried out in 2002 showed that Bulgarian students are still interest-
ed in the proverb genre. The respondents (forty bachelor students
fluent in English) were asked to list out all the English and Bulgari-
an proverbs they knew. The results showed that they were best fa-
miliar with ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’, ‘All’s well that
ends well’, ‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk’, ‘Every cloud has a
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 257

silver lining’, ‘Better late than never’, ‘An apple a day keeps the
doctor away’, ‘Love is blind’ and several others (Petrova 2002b).
They may have acquired these sayings during their English classes
at school, at the English courses they had attended, or from personal
reading and communication. In the nineteen years of teaching An-
glophone Area Studies I have often resorted to using English prov-
erbs, especially when trying to illustrate some cultural traits typical
of the English people, and have repeatedly found how appealing
they are to our students. This prompted the inclusion in my book
Anglophone Area Studies: An Introduction, of a chapter about the
English character with a selection of proverb illustrations (Petrova
2010). Everyday practice shows that in teaching English or disci-
plines related to Anglophone culture, these ‘old, generationally test-
ed gems of wisdom,’ as the world’s leading proverb scholar Wolf-
gang Mieder has so fittingly termed the proverb genre, continue to
be a ‘gold mine’ that provides teachers and researchers with a prac-
tically inexhaustible range of opportunities (Wilson 2004, Nuessel
2003: 396, 404–8).
In May of 2012 I carried out another experiment involving the
English proverb ‘If there were no clouds, we shouldn’t enjoy the
sun’, which I gave as a written assignment to the thirty six Bulgari-
an students taking my class in Academic Writing in English. The
respondents were instructed to give their own interpretations of the
proverb in the form of a composition of two pages. This not very
popular English proverb can be found in Ridout and Witting’s col-
lection English Proverbs Explained (1981), in the second edition of
Facts and File Dictionary of Proverbs compiled by Manser, Fer-
gusson, and Pickering (2007), and in Kunin’s English-Russian
Phraseological Dictionary (1984). Being well familiar with the
tricky problem of the ambiguity and the semantic indefiniteness of
proverbs (discussed in great depth by Arvo Krikmann (Krikmann
2009) and many other proverb scholars), the compilers of some of
the more recent proverb dictionaries and collections have wisely
abstained from providing ‘fixed’ definitions or explanations of the
items included, although some may offer (occasional) short illustra-
tions from literary texts with the proverbs used in literary contexts.
In the case of this proverb, Ridout and Witting’s dictionary (Ridout
and Witting 1981) offers the following definition and a note about
its usage: ‘We can have too much of a good thing; and happier
times seem all the happier if they are interrupted now and again by
258 ROUMYANA PETROVA

gloomy spells … sometimes basely used as an excuse for accepting

poverty, overwork and hardships,’ while Manser, Fergusson, and
Pickering’s dictionary (Manser, Fergusson, and Pickering 2007)
offers the synonymous definition ‘we cannot fully appreciate the
good things in life unless they are interspersed with bad times’, and
a literary illustration.
I chose this proverb for a written assignment because of its ap-
pealing imagery and its simple main idea, which the students could
easily illustrate with examples from their own personal experience.
As with many other figurative proverbs, through using familiar im-
ages this proverb sums up a dialectical law of life: the good things
we receive can be appreciated only when contrasted with the nega-
tive aspects of the human condition, which ultimately makes misery
a necessary ingredient of life. Its practical message as a strategy for
dealing with a specific situation, to use Kenneth Burke’s apt charac-
terization (Burke 1941), is that instead of shunning from the occa-
sional spells of bad luck that beset us, we should accept them with
gratitude, knowing that, in the long run, they will help us see and
enjoy the good things we have fully and with a clean conscience.
In paremiology and paremiography, culling primary data with
the help of questionnaires has long established itself as a reliable
research method. Proverb scholars resort to using interviews and
questionnaires with various purposes in mind such as checking
proverb meaning, compiling paremiological minima, summarizing
popular attitudes to certain concepts, comparing popular views ex-
pressed in proverbs, eliciting proverb definitions, and so on. Such
experiments may involve asking a set of questions about a proverb
or a proverb group, posing an ‘open answer’ question, using a com-
bination of both, or other similar arrangements ( cf. Arora 1994,
Doctor 2005, Honeck 1997, Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1973,
Permyakov 1971 and 1985, Lyudmilla Petrova 2007, Mieder 1985
and 1993, etc.). Recently, the questionnaire method has been used
successfully in phraseology by Elisabeth Piirainen, who conducted
extensive research to establish the meaning, origin and dissemina-
tion of a large number of idioms current in all European languages
and beyond the boundaries of the European continent (Piirainen
2012). We find a detailed account of one such experiment in an arti-
cle of 1997 by Wolfgang Mieder, describing how the meaning of
the ethnic slur ‘No tickee, no washee’ was found. This experiment
was conducted in 1995 with students of the University of California
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 259

in Berkeley, who were asked to fill in a one-page questionnaire de-

signed by Alan Dundes about its origin, meaning and usage of this
proverb. The answers, discussed in Mieder (1997: 160–189) show
that part of the respondents do not perceive this sentence as a derog-
atory expression, but as a regular metaphor meaning simply ‘some-
thing is necessary for the exchange of something else.’ This exam-
ple comes to prove once again that the meaning of a proverb and its
perception are not written in stone, but vary with time and some
other factors. But let us also add, that the questionnaire method
should elicit ‘valid’ results when used with respondents that belong
to the same linguoculture as that of the proverb(s), while when used
with non-native speakers, one may expect that their answers will
deviate from those of the former group.
In this paper, I will try to show that when viewed from a lin-
guocultural perspective, the English proverb ‘If there were no
clouds, we shouldn’t enjoy the sun’ reveals additional layers of
meaning, which, while being synonymous with the dictionary defi-
nitions quoted earlier, significantly broaden and complement them;
these meanings can be explicated with the help of the culturematic
analysis, which I am going to demonstrate later. I will also show
that when comparing the results of this analysis with the students’
interpretations of the proverb, we can obtain good evidence of their
level of Anglophone linguocultural competence, firsthand know-
ledge of their own culture specific attitudes, views and personal ex-
perience, and solid proof of the universal, ‘species-wide signifi-
cance’ (Honeck 1997: 35) of the proverb under study.
The culturematic analysis belongs to the research methods of
linguistic culturology, a scholarly field that has been developing
over the last decade and a half at the intersection of linguistics and
culturology. Linguistic culturology attaches special importance to
phraseology and the proverb genre, regarding them as the domains
of language that provide us with truthful and detailed representation
of a people’s character, way of life, prevailing values and mentality,
or, in a word, of a people’s specific culture (Тelia 1996; Маslovа
2001; Dobrovolskij 1997; Vоrobyov 1997; Dmitrieva 1997; V. I.
Karassik 1994 and 2002; A. V. Karassik 2001; Vorkachov 1997
and 2002; Palashevskaya 2001; Savenkova 2002; Hrolenko 2004;
Kushneruk 2005; Petrova 1996, 2002a, 2002b, 2004, 2006 and
2012; Nedkova 2010). In much the same way, some proverb schol-
ars that do not claim any relationship with linguistic culturology
260 ROUMYANA PETROVA

tend to view the proverb lore of a people as a storehouse of its spe-

cific generational knowledge and Weltanschauung and as a tool for
teaching specific behavioural rules and practical wisdom to the folk
(cf. Romanska 1976, Kolessov 1989, Таrlanov 1993). There are of
course other scholars who make the equally valid claim that prov-
erbs represent not specific, but universal values and attitudes com-
mon to all people regardless of their nationality (e.g., Whiting 1994:
43). On this issue I take a middle road. I have done extensive re-
search proving that a great deal can be learned from the proverbs in
a language about the prevailing cultural traits of the people who
speak this language and about their specific conditions of life, but
also that some of these traits may be shared by people from other
cultures as well (Petrova 2006). In this study, we will be interested
in one typical characteristic of proverbs, namely, that they perform
their pragmatic functions of advising, ridiculing, amusing, criticiz-
ing, warning, etc., through attaching positive or negative evaluations
to certain entities. The axiological nature of proverbs takes us very
close to explaining their culture specific role. My work on English
and Bulgarian proverbs over the years confirms that all true prov-
erbs are, overtly or implicitly, axiologically ‘charged,’ which is to
say, culture specific, as long as it is agreed that culture ultimately
means a system of values (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov 2010:
7–10; Maslova 2001: 22; Pivoev 2011: 5. 8, 14‒24). Each proverb
has one (and, very rarely, more than one) main cultureme (the main
entity to which it attaches positive or negative evaluation) and each
conveys a specific lesson, or message, that focuses on this cul-
tureme. For example, the proverb ‘Who hesitates is lost’ focuses on
indeterminacy, evaluating it negatively. This entity can be brought
to the surface through applying a technique I call linguocultural
method (demonstrated in detail in Petrova 1996, 2002a, 2002b,
2004, and 2006); it is analogous to the technique used in school for
finding the different parts of the sentence and involves asking a
question similar to the ‘who’ or ‘what’ questions for finding the
subject or the object of a sentence, and eliciting the needed answer,
which may sometimes need to undergo some kind of semantic
transformation (e.g., paraphrasing, nominalization, contraction,
turning a literal into a figurative meaning, etc.). This method is
demonstrated in examples (1), (2), and (3) below:
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 261

(1) A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Question for establishing the cultureme: What does this proverb
approve of / disapprove of? – It approves of true friendship.
Question for establishing the message and checking the positive or
negative sign of the cultureme: What does it teach us to do / to be
(not to do / not to be)? – It teaches us to be true friends.
The cultureme of this proverb is ‘true friendship’ and it is positive,
hence its full name: ‘true friendship (+)’.
(2) Familiarity breeds contempt.
Question for establishing the cultureme: What does this proverb
approve of / disapprove of? – It disapproves of familiarity.
Question for establishing the message and the sign of the cultureme:
What does it teach us to do / to be (not to do / not to be)? – It teach-
es us not to behave in an intrusive way, not to trespass another per-
son’s privacy.
The cultureme of this proverb is ‘familiarity (–)’.
Proverbs (1) and (2) above belong to the literal type, and in this are
similar to maxims, aphorisms or sententiae. Our third example is a
figurative (metaphorical) proverb.
(3) Many commanders sink the ship.
Question for establishing the cultureme: What does this proverb
approve of / disapprove of? – It disapproves of bad management.
Question for establishing the message and the sign of the cultureme:
What does it teach us to do / to be (not to do / not to be)? – It teach-
es us not to let too many people take charge of a situation.
The cultureme of this proverb is ‘bad management (–)’.
Let it be stressed that although further and more detailed answers
can be given to the questions above, they would all be synonymous.
In English (as well as in Bulgarian), the partly or wholly figura-
tive (metaphorical) type of proverb seems to be by far much more
common than the literal type, a fact that has been proved empirical-
ly in Petrova’s dissertation (2006), where the ratio of the figurative
English and Bulgarian proverbs to the non-figurative ones in the
262 ROUMYANA PETROVA

English and Bulgarian corpora under study is the same: ca. 75% to
25%. In the last example above, instead of being verbally stated, the
idea of bad management is expressed with the help of images. The
surface structure of this proverb (the phrases surface and deep struc-
ture are not to be confused with Chomsky’s terms in syntax), which
serves as a vehicle of its deep structure (or definition), depicts a hy-
pothetical situation – a ship and many commanders in charge of it
instead of only one, the result being the sinking of the vessel. The
deep structure, or definition, of this proverb is ‘Too many persons in
charge, where only one is needed, are sure to ruin an undertaking.’
It is obtained via semantic transformation consisting in translating
the literal meaning into an implicit, figurative meaning (for an in-
depth discussion of this very complex process see Honeck 1997).
On hearing this proverb, the native speaker would automatically
link it to this definition and to no other and to some similar situa-
tions of poor management drawn from his own personal experience,
simultaneously picturing to himself the images in the proverb: the
sea, the ship, the many captains on board the vessel scurrying about,
shouting commands and confusing the sailors, while it is sinking
beneath the waves.
The proverb ‘If there were no clouds, we shouldn’t enjoy the
sun’ belongs to the figurative type. By applying to it the linguocul-
tural method, we find its cultureme – ‘misery and suffering (+)’, and
its message ‒ ‘people should value misery and suffering in life and
try to see in them their best teachers.’ But if it undergoes cul-
turematic analysis, as will be shown later, still further, richer, and
more refined extensions of this meaning will be discovered.
The culturematic analysis is an extension of the linguocultural
method (for a detailed explanation of this analysis see Petrova
2010b, 2012). In essence, it takes into account the supposition that
while the raison d'être of the proverb is its deep structure (defini-
tion), summarized in the proverb cultureme and its message, its sur-
face structure (i.e., the sum of individual meanings of the sentence
constituents) is no less culturally significant: the axiologically
marked concepts and images denoted by the sentence constituents
are seen as equally culture specific, and so are the associations in-
voked by them. For example, the images of the clouds and the sun
in this proverb are also important in that they give us valuable
knowledge of the climate of its place of origin (presumably not
equatorial Africa), while the associations they invoke in the mind of
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 263

the user or recipient – e.g., light, warmth, profusion, abundance,

luck, love, enthusiasm, optimism, and joy, contrasted with darkness,
rain, cold, lack, want, pain, disillusionment, despondency, worry,
misery, poverty, toil, suffering, death, etc. – also add significantly to
this knowledge: the constellation of such associative meanings ac-
quires a life of its own, which cannot and should not be reduced to
the abstract moral of the proverb. Thus, the whole rich interplay of
associative meanings that fill the space between the literal meaning
of the proverb and its definition bridges the gap between the con-
crete and the abstract and makes the proverb lesson easier to per-
ceive.
This kind of analysis should begin with parsing the proverb
sentence into its immediate constituents. From them, the axiologi-
cally marked collocations should be singled out and the non-
nominal ones of them should undergo nominalization (i.e. transfor-
mation into noun phrases or nominal clauses); next, to each should
be attached a positive (plus) or a negative (minus) sign, and, if there
are images, as is the case with this proverb, each should be translat-
ed into its cluster of figurative meanings. To these must be added
the nominalized proverb message. The result will be the sum total
of all culturemes, which completely exhausts the cultural content of
the proverb, as shown in example (4) below:
(4) If there were no clouds, we should not enjoy the sun.
i. clouds (–)
ii. a sky overcast with clouds (–)
iii. misery and suffering (unhappiness, pain, hardship, bad luck) (–)
iv. the sun (+)
v. happiness (joy, abundance, love, luck, ease, success, hope) (+)
vi. enjoying the sun (+)
vii. feeling happy (+)
viii. inability to see the sun (–)
ix. something bad that stands in the way of happiness (–)
x. the need for suffering, which enables us to appreciate the good
things in life (+)
264 ROUMYANA PETROVA

xi. misery and suffering (unhappiness, pain, hardship, bad luck) (+)
Like the perception of a poetical work, because the associations
evoked by the clouds and the sun in this proverb arise from each
recipient’s mental powers of imagination, they can never be exactly
the same and will vary from person to person. The last two cul-
turemes (x. and xi.) are the nominalized proverb message, which is
fully synonymous with the dictionary definitions given earlier, and
the main cultureme of the proverb. We can see how this kind of
analysis explicates a whole rich spectrum of culturally determined
attitudes to the natural images and to the host of associations they
evoke, turning the proverb into a vivid fragment of the multifaceted
physical and cultural life of the people that have created it and
among whom it has acquired currency.
The experiment
The thirty six Bulgarian students of both sexes taking part in the
experiment are aged 19 through 24 and are fairly fluent in English:
prior to the experiment they each passed successfully an entrance
examination in English at the intermediate level, covered two to
four disciplines in English, and studied, or were completing, a
course in Anglophone Area Studies course that is taught in two con-
secutive semesters. Before discussing the answers, I will list these
excerpts from the compositions, which best summarize each writ-
er’s personal perception of the proverb. In order to provide context,
I will list whole excerpts instead of single words or phrases. For the
sake of authenticity the exact wording will be given; let us stress
that no attempt has been made to correct errors.
Answers
1. Every single person knows, and has been through this, to have
‘clouds’ in his life, and every single one of us knows how amazing
fills [sic], and how joyful the ‘sun’ is after that. Some people have
never had even one cloud up their heads [sic] … they don’t really
appreciate anything in their lives … One should appreciate the
‘clouds’ in their life as much as the ‘sun’. And people can wait for a
storm to pass, just to see a little glim [sic] of sunlight in their lifes
[sic].
2. If there were no problems, we cannot realize how nice is life
[sic] when we overcome these problems.
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 265

3. We would not know what is [sic] bad if there was no good. If

we never lived in such a society [communism] we would never
know the sweetness of the power to be heard and to live in
democracy and to have the constitutional right of choice.
4. How can a person learn to deal with the consequences of his
actions if there weren’t any ‘clouds’. How can we explain to our
children which deeds and action are right if a bad deed did not
exist? This proverb tells us that we shouldn’t act as if the world has
come to an end when something bad happens. … If I haven’t done
[sic] a single mistake, how can I know to do my work right? …
Only a sick person can appreciate the treasure that health is. … This
is a model that nature follows, this is a model that God created.
5. All the misfortunes that have happened to me have a reason for
entering my life. Not only do we learn from our mistakes but we try
not to repeat them. … Life without losses and bad luck is not a
complete life. One cannot be happy all the time; if that is the case,
they are either crazy or on drugs! … The bad things are always
followed by happy ones [sic]. This English proverb is concerned
more with the spiritual side of life. … we cannot be happy all the
time, but but if we simply try to be better people and to remember
that life goes on, we will feel the happy side of life.
6. We all appreciate something when we have lost it. … But it is
possible to enjoy the sun when there are clouds. … We shouldn’t
wait for the clouds to come to appreciate the sun. We should enjoy
it while we have it. Losing some things some time [sic] can be the
best thing that can happen to you as then you realize what is really
important to you. [The student gives an example with people from
countries with sunny climates who take sunshine for granted –
R.P.].
7. Grasp the moment’s pleasure, but don’t count too much on it.
Know that luck is fleeting.
8. If we don’t know sadness how can we define what happiness
is? … What is life without death? Without it life becomes
meaningless. One thing without its opposite is meaningless. … joy
and sorrow, evil and good, right and wrong are a natural part of life
and even though we are sometimes sad, or do bad things, it is this
266 ROUMYANA PETROVA

that makes us so very human. It is by suffering that we learn to

enjoy what is good and pleasurable.
9. Why [sic] should we feel the joy of being alive if there were no
difficulties in our lives? Would life be interesting?
10. This proverb can be understood in two different ways. One way
is that a person feels a lot more satisfaction out of accomplishing
something difficult rather than something easy to do. If there were
no hurdles along the path of completing whatever the task may be
and if one can see his goal clearly from the very beginning then in
the end one won’t feel as much satisfaction as when he actually had
to work hard for the same results. 2) When one gets too much of
something with time he can get sick of it. One should treasure even
a smallest [sic] thing because even a food that one hates may save
him from starvation…
11. Sun is the joy of life, the jocund dance of the little boy or girl
laughing and playing in the field. Clouds – we shiver from [sic] the
thought of anguish, misfortune and fear itself. We ‘enjoy the sun’
when we see it, but we forget that without the ‘clouds’, the tiny
miserable moments in our existence, the ‘sun’ would burn us. Life
is a mixture of laughter and sorrow, one cannot have the one
without the other, it is like the sun and the moon, the cat and the
mouse, God and the devil. … If there was no pain, how could we
value the ‘gain’? If we did not have any clouds, … who or what
would keep the balance on earth? The sun and the clouds are like
’compare’ and ‘contrast’. Our mission on earth is to develop every
day… – this can only be achieved through happiness and
misfortune. I believe that there is a strong eternal connection
between good and bad in life.
12. If we had such clear starry nights people would be nocturnal. …
Since most rain comes from clouds, the natural plant life on earth
would die out and the planet would be reduced to an arid, lifeless
desert.
13. It is the end of the world. We would have only one season and
that would be summer. The English proverb gives me the idea and
impression of an evolution of humanity, a new chapter in our future.
So it has a good side to it, apart from the Armaggedon caused by
climate changes. One thing at the expense of another.
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 267

14. [T]he ability to improve after every failure or disappointment.

Everything happens for a reason and we should embrace even the
hardships with enough positive energy and courage. Be happy with
what you have and what you are now.
15. There must be ups and downs in our life because that is how we
appreciate what we have. … Sometimes it is good to fall down so
when we get back to our feet [sic] we could know how to enjoy the
sun.
16. This proverb shows how really important for people is [sic] to
see the simplest things and to look in a different perspective. After
every problem comes a resolution.
17. Humans don’t value the things until they lose them. How can
we define good without evil? How can we describe God’s work if
there was no Devil?
18. You understand how valuable a person was when he is gone.
[A story follows about a terminally ill young person, who knows the
value of life. – R.P.] It is necessary for something bad to happen to
us to realize how valuable life is.
19. A proverb of paradox meaning that the world would be a boring
place and people would have no stimulation [sic] to develop
themselves, the human race, and the civilization on the whole [sic].
Why should we be happy if there is nothing bad which we have
surpassed [sic] to achieve this happiness? Happiness must be
deserved.
20. People are always complaining. But people can appreciate the
good things only in moments of sadness. To see how beautiful love
is, you must know what it is to have a broken heart. Even the kids
get happier when they get punished for having done mischief like
breaking a glass or having a low grade at school. If there is no rain,
there will be no rainbows.
21. The clouds give us water to drink. If there were no clouds, it
would be very boring.
22. The clouds are the ugly part of the sun. The clouds illustrate the
different people. We all should accept the clouds, the different
people – if there was no sun, we shouldn’t enjoy the clouds. Seeing
something ugly makes you appreciate the beautiful world.
268 ROUMYANA PETROVA

23. We grow up so fast without having the chance to understand

the world and tell the difference between good and bad. It is part of
our nature to feel miserable for what others have and not be happy
with what we have. We start to appreciate something or someone
only after we lose him/her. People are blind for what they have but
after a moment of sadness we see the different world [sic].
24. We often forget to enjoy the little things in our lives, especially
born [sic] rights (like freedom) – we don’t pay much attention go
them. The sun symbolizes these things and the clouds symbolize the
darkness. In a strange way the existence of the clouds is like a
reminder to us to enjoy the ‘light of hope’. Without the sun there
would be no life on the planet, ergo we should never stop enjoy
[sic] it.
25. We won’t be able to appreciate and enjoy our lives if there
weren’t our troubles and problems in them [sic]. [If you have
everything you want,] the moment will come when you get bored
and tired of it all. There should be some bad at all [sic], so that we
appreciate the good, some black so that the white looks more white
… Being young forever is also an interesting concept. Imagine
staying 25 years young when your wife grows to be 85 and your
children 60 is no fun. Or you live forever. … Then unique things
like the first kiss, the first love, first girlfriend, first child – would
you be able to enjoy them? You will be so sick of it all.
26. When a husband loses his wife only then does he start thinking
about the time he wasted working instead of being with her. The
English proverb is about the little things in our life which you
should learn to appreciate before losing them.
27. When the summer is hot we look for cooler places. An artist
would sit on a bench in the park and look at the clouds in the sky
with a brush in his hand – they will make his drawing more
beautiful. Photographs too prefer cloudy weather for taking
pictures. I remember on board the plane once the sky was covered
with big mountains of white clouds. Everyone should enjoy the
clouds and also the sun beams [sic], letting it [sic] into your room to
brighten your day.
28. If there were no clouds there would be no rain and no life. But
believing that there is something over [sic] the clouds can make you
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 269

happy. Sometimes our lives are like a sky, sometimes cloudy,

sometimes sunny. We all have to achieve [sic] something to receive
happiness. If there were no clouds, we won’t have anything to fight
for. Remember, everything happens for a reason.
29. If we get used to too much joy, we will forget the sorrow and
the pain. When you are happy, don’t make plans, when you are
mad, don’t take decisions. Happiness is expensive. Every person’s
sky is what he makes it. I too had bad moments but took note of
them and grew stronger because of them. I am grateful I had my
friends to offer me raincoats and umbrellas when it was cloudy. …
You shouldn’t run [away] when you see them [the clouds] but face
them with a smile on your face and friends by your side.
30. Thanks to the bad things that happen to us we appreciate every
sweet moment. The clouds are the pain, the grey, the sorrow. We
know, well, clouds in love, at home, even at school. But we dream
of a shower [on] a hot day. Money is sun, when earned by hard
work, for a poor person who won a green card and went to live in
the USA. The clouds in this person’s life made him what he is now
– rich and happy, with wife and two children.
31. This proverb contains the essence that is part of every single
one of us on this planet and makes us human beings. It describes a
very simple law in life … if someone has gone through some bad
things in life he will appreciate all the good things he experiences.
The bad things give us something good and this is knowledge and
wisdom that they some day are just bad memories from which we
could learn. Could there be peace without war and happiness
without suffering ? That could make our life dearer. A proverb of
the contrast that exists in life.
32. The sun is the reason for the people to feel happy and to be in a
good mood. There are many cloudy countries where people feel sad
and depressed. At the same time people fom warmer countries are
complaining that it is too hot. For that reason it is best there [sic] to
be clouds sometimes in order to be glad [sic] when the sun appears.
Losing something sometimes might be the best thing that can
happen to you and to realize what is really important in life – it is a
lesson that everybody should learn.
270 ROUMYANA PETROVA

33. The proverb … can be deciphered as “If there is no bad, there

will not be any good as well [sic]” … without a certain negative
quality we will not feel, know or enjoy any positive quality. This is
false because not having clouds is much better. … What more can a
person want than a place with no wars, no corruption, no
selfishness, no disputes [presumably meaning strife, discord ‒
R.P.], no criminals. But it is also possible that without the clouds we
would stop appreciating the sun, hence we could stop enjoying it.
This means that the world can be empty in emotions, deeds, and
sensations. Such a world will be extremely boring.
34. We do not value how precious is [sic] something for us until we
lose it. We take them [sic] for granted. The proverb proves the
connection between people and nature. The balance of nature
couldn’t be more perfect. It teaches us to see into ordinary and
simple things and find in them their beauty and necessity [sic].
35. [This is a proverb] about our world of opposites and dualism.
The problems and the good moments in life cannot exist one
without the other. Darkness is lack of light. We wouldn’be able to
make [sic] the difference between them if both of them didn’t exist.
The clouds illustrate [sic] the problems we have and the sun, the
joy, love, the moments when we feel mentally satisfied. Also,
people need variety. We become a little wiser with every mistake
we have made. The clouds are a necessary part of life. Problems and
happiness are a natural part of our life.
36. The clouds are those obstacles and challenges that motivate
people because the will to succeed or fail lies within the individual
jurisdiction. No matter how sunny, with or without clouds, life’s a
challenge. In every black cloud there is always a silver lining.
Discussion
We see that the figurative meaning of the proverb is wholly or
partly missing in five of the thirty six answers, in which the words
are taken in their literal senses (cf. nos. 12, 13, 21, 27, and, partially,
32). The remaining thirty one respondents have fully grasped the
metaphorical meaning of the proverb images and have provided
interpretations.
The first list below presents the sum of 78 figurative meanings
of the word clouds. They are numbered in the order they appear in
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 271

the list of excerpts above. The repetitions within an individual an-

swer are not counted, i.e., only one example is listed when there are
two or more identical examples given by the same respondent.:
1. problems; 2. [something that is] bad; 3. communism; 4. a bad
deed; 5. making a mistake; 6. being sick; 7. something bad; 8. mis-
takes; 9. losses; 10. bad luck; 11. the loss of something [presumably
good and valuable]; 12. sadness; 13. death; 14. evil; 15. wrong; 16.
doing bad things; 17. suffering; 18. difficulties; 19. something diffi-
cult; 20. hard work; 21. anguish; 22. misfortune; 23. fear; 24. the
devil; 25. the tiny miserable moments in our existence; 26. pain; 27.
misfortune; 28. bad (n); 29. failure; 30. disappointment; 31. hard-
ships; 33. the downs [in one’s life]; 34. falling down; 35. problems;
36. being terminally ill; 37. something bad happening to us; 38. bad
(n); 39. moments of sadness; 40. having a broken heart; 41. rain
(fig.); 42. the ugly part of the sun (fig.); 43. the different (i.e. the
bad) people; 44. something ugly; 45. bad (n); 46. feeling miserable
for what others have (i.e. being envious); 47. not being happy with
what we have; 48. losing someone [a significant other]; 49. a mo-
ment of sadness; 50. darkness; 51. trouble; 52. problems; 53. bad
(n); 54. black (n); 55. a husband losing his wife; 56. working hard
for something; 57. sorrow; 58. pain; 59. clouds (fig.); 60. pain; 61.
grey; 62. sorrow; 63. hard work; 64. bad things in life; 65. bad
memories; 66. war; 67. suffering; 68. losing something [valuable to
you]; 69. bad (n); 70. a negative quality; 71. wars; 72. corruption;
73. selfishness; 74. disputes [i.e. strife, discord]; 75. criminals; 76.
losing something precious; 77. problems; 78. obstacles.
The second list comprises the sum of 82 figurative meanings of
the words sun in the way thirty-two of the respondents (including
answer no. 32) have interpreted this image. Again, all repeated iden-
tical words or phrases within one individual answer are left out:
1. life being nice; 2. good (n); 3. the sweetness of the power to be
heard; 4. living in democracy; 5. having the constitutional right of
choice; 6. right deeds and actions; 7. doing one’s work right; 8.
health as a treasure; 9. being happy; 10. happy things [i.e. happy
states]; 11. happy side of life; 12. a moment’s pleasure; 13. luck; 14.
life; 15. joy; 16. good (n); 17. right (n); 18. what is pleasurable; 19.
the joy of being alive; 20. satisfaction; 21. something easy to do; 22.
getting something; 23. the joy of life; 24. the jocund dance of the
272 ROUMYANA PETROVA

little boy or girl laughing and playing in the field; 25. laughter; 26.
God; 27. gain; 28. happiness; 29. good (n); 30. the ability to im-
prove; 31. the ‘ups’ in one’s life; 32. getting up on one’s feet (fig.);
33. the resolution to a problem; 34. the things one has; 35. good (n);
36. God’s work; 37. having someone by one’s side; 38. life; 39.
being happy: 39. good things; 40. rainbows (fig.); 41. good (n); 42.
positive aspects of life; 43. the little things in life; 43. some [civil]
rights one is entitled to; 44. freedom; 45. ‘light of hope’; 46. having
everything you want; 47. the good; 48. white (n) / whiter; 49. being
young forever; 50. staying twenty five years young forever; 51. liv-
ing forever; 52. the first kiss; 52. the first love; 53. first girlfriend;
54. the first child; 55. the little things in our life; 56. something be-
yond the clouds can make you happy; 57. a life which is sunny
(fig.); 58. happiness; 59. joy; 60. being happy; 61. happiness; 62.
every sweet moment; 63. love; 64. money; 65. a green card; 66.
living in the USA; 67. being rich; 68. being happy; 69. having a
wife and two children; 70. the good things one experiences; 71.
something good; 72. knowledge; 73. wisdom; 74. good (n); 75.
some positive quality; 76. something precious we have; 77. good
moments in life; 78. joy; 79. love; 80. the moments when we feel
mentally satisfied; 81. sunny life (fig.); 82. silver lining (fig., i.e.
hope).
The final list below comprises the 64 sentences (some of them
slightly edited) showing how thirty three of the thirty six respond-
ents (all except nos. 12, 13 and 27) have perceived and articulated
the proverb message:
1. One should appreciate the ‘clouds’ in their life as much as the
‘sun’; 2. People should wait for a storm (fig.) to pass; 3. We need
problems to appreciate the positive things in life; 4. Living in com-
munism helps us appreciate the value of democracy; 5. A person
learns to deal with the consequences of his actions; 6. We shouldn’t
act as if the world has come to an end when something bad hap-
pens; 7. We learn to appreciate the treasure that health is; 8. This
contrast is a model that nature follows; 9. This contrast is a model
that God created; 10. We learn from our mistakes and that misfor-
tunes have a reason for entering one’s life; 11. We try not to repeat
our mistakes; 12. We should try to be better people and to remem-
ber that life goes on; 13. We should learn to enjoy the [good] things
we have while we have them; 14. A loss helps us realize what is
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 273

really important to us; 15. Grasp the moment’s pleasure as luck is

fleeting; 16. By suffering we learn to enjoy what is good and pleas-
urable. 17. Difficulties make life interesting; 18. Satisfaction comes
with accomplishing something difficult; 19. One learns to treasure
even the smallest thing; 20. Pain helps us learn the value of gain; 21.
[The alternation of] happiness and misfortune help us develop every
day, which is our mission on earth; 22. One good thing [can be had]
at the expense of another; 23. The ups and downs in our lives help
us appreciate what we have; 24. [We learn that] after a problem
comes its resolution; 25. [Our confrontation with] evil and the Devil
help(s) us value good and God’s work; 26. Losing someone makes
us value him/her more; 27. Being ill makes us value the treasure
that health is; 28. Happiness must be deserved, e.g., by overcoming
something bad; 29. Having a broken heart makes you see how beau-
tiful love is; 30. Kids get happy when punished for having done
mischief; 31. Clouds [understood figuratively] save us from bore-
dom; 32. Seeing something ugly [such as different people, meaning
bad people] makes you appreciate the beautiful world; 33. We learn
the difference between good and bad; 34. Losses make us appreci-
ate what we have; 35. Sadness opens our eyes and we see the differ-
ent world [i.e., the bright side of life]; 36. We learn to enjoy the
rights we take for granted, liker freedom; 37. Clouds [fig.] are a re-
minder to us to enjoy ‘the light of hope’; 38. Troubles and problems
help us appreciate and enjoy life; 39. They save us from boredom;
40. Some bad is needed in order for us to see what is good, and
black makes white even whiter; 41. When you have lost your wife,
you realize how much she meant to you; 42. One must learn to ap-
preciate the little things in life before losing them; 43. If there were
no clouds [fig.], we won’t have anything to fight for; 44. We learn
that everything happens for a reason; 45. [We learn that] happiness
is expensive; 46. The bad moments I had made me stronger; 47.
Don’t run away from your ‘clouds’, but face them with a smile on
your friend and friends by your side; 48. Thanks to the bad things
that happen to us we appreciate every sweet moment; 49. By getting
a green card, going to live in the USA and working hard there one
can earn a contented life [with money and a family of wife and two
children]; 50. The bad things in life help one appreciate all the good
things one experiences; 51. The bad things give us something good
and this is knowledge and wisdom that they some day are just bad
memories from which we could learn; 52. War makes peace dearer;
274 ROUMYANA PETROVA

53. Happiness is appreciated through suffering; 54. Losing some-

thing sometimes might be the best thing that can happen to you to
realize what is really important in life; 55. If there is no bad, there
will not be any good; 56. Without a certain negative quality we will
not feel, know or enjoy any positive quality; 57. Clouds [fig.] enrich
life with emotions, deeds and sensations; 58. They save the world
from boredom; 59. The proverb teaches us to appreciate the pre-
cious things in our life instead of taking them for granted; 60. It
teaches us to see into ordinary and simple things and find in them
their beauty and necessity; 61. We wouldn’t be able to tell the dif-
ference between the problems and the good moments in life if both
of them didn’t exist; 62.We become a little wiser with every mis-
take we have made; 63. Obstacles and challenges motivate our will
to succeed; 64. We learn that in every black cloud [fig.] there is a
silver lining [fig.].
Let us now compare the first list above with no. iii. Suffering
and misery (unhappiness, pain, hardship, bad luck) (–) from the
culturematic analysis. The comparison shows a very rich and di-
verse spectrum of interpretations of the ‘clouds’ image. Some are
found in more than one answer: bad is found in 14 answers, and
problems – in 4 answers. On the whole, the larger part (46) of the
78 answers are closely synonymous to those in our analysis (nos. 1,
2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 45, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63,
64, 67, 69, 70, 76, 77, and 78). But there also interpretations that,
although not contradictory in meaning to suffering and misery (un-
happiness, pain, hardship, bad luck) (–), are different in that they
seem to be more distantly related to them. Among them are fear,
darkness, wars, corruption, living in communism, criminals, obsta-
cles, death, having a broken heart, being terminally ill, feeling envi-
ous, not being happy with what one has, the devil, evil, wrong, do-
ing bad things, bad people, something ugly, the ugly part of the sun,
bad memories, mistakes, selfishness, strife, darkness, rain, grey,
black.
Next, we shall compare the second list above with no. v. happi-
ness (joy, abundance, love, luck, ease, success, hope) (+) from the
culturematic analysis. Of the 82 answers, 47 provide interpretations
that are fairly synonymous with the ‘sun’ image (nos. 1, 9, 10, 11, 2,
13, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27. 28, 31, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43,
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 275

45, 46, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 78, 79,
80, 81, and 82). Among them, happy / happiness is found nine
times, and joy / joyous or (jocund) – six times. But there are also
other, more distantly related interpretations in this group. These are
abstract concepts such as good (four times), right, knowledge, wis-
dom, God, and God’s work, and others such as right deeds and ac-
tions, doing one’s work right, love (twice), life (twice), health, and
having a companion. Getting up on one’s feet and solving a prob-
lem successfully are also associated with the sun image. There are
also several socio-political associations, e.g. democracy, the consti-
tutional freedom of choice, civil rights, the right to be heard, as well
as answers related to the American Dream (going to the USA with a
green card, becoming rich, having a wife and two children).
Lastly, let us compare the message in our definition, x. the need
for suffering that enables us to appreciate the good things in life
(+), with the 64 interpretations of the students. 26 are largely syn-
onymous (nos. 1, 3, 13, 14, 16, 19, 23, 26, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42,
47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, and 63), but 36 (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10,
11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 39, 43,
44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 62, and 63) provide rather differ-
ent although not contradicting interpretations: the bad, the ugly, the
bad people and the Devil, for instance, are seen as a means to ap-
preciating good and goodness; mistakes, obstacles and difficulties
are seen as stimuli for personal growth; according to some respond-
ents problems and losses, interestingly, add excitement to life and
are even a welcome break from boredom; just punishments are
found to be enjoyed by [some] children, while contrast is seen as a
natural aspect of Creation.
Conclusion
We can see that almost all of the thirty-six respondents (except
three) have grasped the message of the English metaphorical prov-
erb correctly: in terms of semantics, their interpretations do not con-
tradict the dictionary definitions of the proverb or the synonymous
culturematic analysis. Similarly, the interpretations of the images
provided by the respondents (except the four students who have
focused on its literal, or weather, aspect) almost wholly coincide
with the ones explicated by the culturematic analysis. This may
serve as good evidence of their level of Anglophone linguocultural
competence. The experiment thus confirms that a foreign metaphor-
276 ROUMYANA PETROVA

ical proverb can be perfectly intelligible to representatives of a cul-

ture that is very different from that of the proverb, provided they are
sufficiently mature and experienced and fairly fluent in the language
of the proverb. This experiment, then, shows that under certain con-
ditions some proverbs do have a wider, crosscultural appeal.
A further reflection is also prompted by the findings of this ex-
periment, which is related to the additional interpretations based on
each student’s individual mindset and sociocultural experience and
then ‘superimposed’ onto the English text. We saw that while not
contradicting the general proverb meaning, these diverse interpreta-
tions represent a truly wide gamut of entirely new, original and
highly personal ways of seeing one and the same (proverb) ‘reality’.
We should then perhaps be right to suppose that these additional
perceptions will in turn reflect back on the meaning of the English
proverb “If there were no clouds, we shouldn’t enjoy the sun,” en-
riching it significantly.
Finally, this experiment shows that some proverbs do behave
like autosemantic texts, which do not need contexts in order for
their meaning to be perceived. This is not to say that proverbs are
not used in discourse or that their meanings are not actualized in
contexts. They indeed are, but learners of a foreign language may
sometimes have no other recourse to certain proverbs, but dictionar-
ies and collections, where they are listed without any explanations.
Interestingly enough, some of these entries can still be understood.
This is because like other literary works, e.g., tales, fables, or folk
and fairy tales, the semantics of such highly generalized proverb
sentences seems to be transparent. As we have seen, both the figura-
tive images and the lesson of some proverbs, whether directly or
metaphorically stated, can be immediately perceived and related to
the personal experience of the listener or reader.

Notes
1
The term precedent text is a key term in linguistic culturology. It was first
coined by the Russian scholar Yuriy Karaulov in the latter half of the 1980s. The
precedent texts are well known and emotionally appealing to generations of people
that belong to a particular linguoculture. They represent this culture and are among
the texts most often recalled and referred to by the authors writing in this language.
CROSSCULTURAL VIEW OF A PROVERB 277

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Roumyana Petrova
Department of European Studies
University of Rousse
Studentska Street, 8
7017 Rousse
Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]