nightshade
For the last few months, the corner of the internet that focuses on the creative endeavors of director David Lynch has been speculating about what might be his next big project: a new TV series that may or may not be a successor or spiritual sequel to Twin Peaks, and that may be titled either Unrecorded Night or Wisteria. Or both. It might be two projects, which would be very on-brand for David Lynch, given his history of twinning.
We really don’t know anything about it for certain, but the one thing that has surfaced again and again in articles about the project is that the first potential title, Unrecorded Night, comes from a translation of an Old English word for nightshade. As it is explained, “unrecorded night” is a literal translation of the Old English nihtscada, apparently with the first part, niht, meaning “night” and the second part meaning something like “forgotten” or “unrecorded.” This is not the case. According to every dictionary I could find, nihtscada translates into modern English simply as “night” and “shade.” That’s it. No evocative poetry there.
Whether you want to call his a folk etymology or simply a false etymology, the “unrecorded night” thing does seem to predate this project: a 2013 Huffington Post article by Tara Heibel also offers the “unrecorded night” translation, explaining it only with this: “This supposedly refers to the effects of the poisonous substances like belladonna and henbane if ingested by people.” I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but given that belladonna can cause blurred vision, irritated skin, fever, fast heartbeat, inability to urinate or sweat, hallucinations, spasms, mental problems, convulsions, and coma, I feel like the night a person would spend contending with belladonna poisoning would be both recorded and remembered.
There are some other Google hits for pages referring to this etymology separate from any mention of David Lynch. And it does make for an evocative title, in the style of Lost Highway and Blue Velvet, but it simply doesn’t seem to have a basis in any etymology I have seen. I do wonder if it was a mistake that found its way to Lynch and may now be realized in a big way in this forthcoming project.
In case you’re wondering how a poisonous berry like belladonna got its name — and I was, because it literally means “beautiful lady” — it apparently comes from the practice of women using an extract of the plant as eyedrops to dilate their pupils and consequently look more aesthetically pleasing. I’m less clear why we ended up calling these plants nightshades. Some have speculated that the nightshade family of plants, which includes toxic ones like belladonna but also potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, might get its name because certain species bloom at night or because the dark purple berries that belladonnas grow.
Since we’re on the subject, wisteria is a fairly new word, having been coined by English botanist Thomas Nuttall in 1819 in honor of the American physician and anatomist Caspar Wistar, who died in 1818. The wisteria is also a legume and not a tree, though I feel like most people who grow them treat them as if they were a tree.
I do go back to the idea of twinning and these two prospective titles for a David Lynch project. Both nightshade and wisteria are famous for their purples — the former the poisonous berries, the latter the blossoms that dangle like grapes. One will kill you. One is simply nice to look at (if super attractive to bees). I wonder if in David Lynch’s mind nightshade and wisteria are similar looking but with reverse polarities, like Laura Palmer and Maddie Ferguson. Hmm.