Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
We are born into a time and moored to it. Books are not. Books are distinct from people in this way. That's the point.
Since part of the interview is making fun of the way the questions are worded, it also fits in that respect.
Yes, someone "could" do it and we'd understand what they meant. But there's no reason to believe that's what happened here. Maybe "moored" did trigger an association with "birth"/"berth", but "birth" is not a mistake.
"Berthing" is also not a singular, one-time event, any ship has a multitude of berthings over time, in this context it makes no sense for there to be a "time that berthed it" as if it was some singular meaningful event, and it changes "time" into something that "berths" books...what would that mean in this metaphor that a time "berths" a book? Wouldn't other times also berth books in their ports? A time does not "berth" a book, it births a book.
Good day.
Tweet the author. I am very confident in this.
Anyways, I don’t have a twitter but you can feel free.
So that doesn't read right with:
"The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time which birthed them. - Ah-Sen"
It could have used both maybe? "...and then berthed in the present"
A “berthed”-friendly interpretation would be “all books start off tied to a particular point in time, it is their destiny to become free of their temporal bounds, to drift through eternity”
Mixing metaphors and claiming a now-unmoored vessel is more likely to be contrasted with one in a state of being “born” than “berthed” is what “doesn’t work”.
Especially considering “unmoored” is a nearly exact antonym of “berthed”, whereas a ship is never described as being “born”. Christened, perhaps. But certainly not born.
Perhaps you're right and it was remembered or quoted wrong, and the word really is "berthed", but it wouldn't have been just the one word remembered incorrectly.
If the arrow of time isn't berthing a book at its creation, when else would it?
The ambiguity is delightful.
If it were berthed it would make more sense to be something like "The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time where they were originally berthed".
But it is more common in English to use birthed as created than this kind of extended nautical metaphor.
And it is more common for people to mix their metaphors, especially when they are trying to sound clever.
Therefore I think they mixed their metaphors a bit.
The question isn't whether birthed is more common than extended nautical metaphors in general, the question is given that a nautical metaphor is already in place, what is the likelihood that metaphor is being extended, versus trampled and replaced with another?
> If it were berthed it would make more sense to be something like "The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time where they were originally berthed".
Only if the author is assuming the ship has been berthed many times. It might just as easily have been berthed once and adrift ever since. Being berthed in no way implies repetition.
That is to say originally berthed also works for having been berthed once and adrift ever since, at least in English which tends to be forgiving about this kind of thing.