by Ilkay Makhotina

'La paix est la seule bataille qui vaille la peine d'être menée.'

The words of Albert Camus - Peace is the only battle worth waging - never falls short of significance, not at their time of writing during WWII, and certainly not now. The message of the French philosopher is clear-cut, I think: peace is not as passive as we would like to believe. It is a battle in itself, an effort that we have to fight towards.

The search for peace is, arguably, eternal. We humans have been seeking peace as long as we have been waging wars; unfortunately, it's seeming like a vicious circle. Nevertheless, persistence is the human race - the search continues on. We seek, however, that which we can never see. Inner tranquillity may be a journey of one's own, but to achieve true worldwide peace, a few seven billion people must be unanimous.

And so, this begs the question: where, and how, might we find peace? Where might we spot some glimpses of harmony and concord, what shape would they take? What unit, (Arts and STEM majors may not be so at peace here etc etc.) might we use to measure it?

Objectively, we may interpret peace as an absence of war, a politically established accordance treaty of sorts, but, there's hardly ever any objectivity to the human condition, is there? Humans are unique masters of representation. We have, over the course of our existence, no doubt amassed a wide array of depictions of peace in all her tremendous connotations. I think our representations, our perceptions of peace - transcultural, artistic, linguistic - are certainly worthy of an exploration.

I find that the best place to start our search is the beginning, something as simple as the word itself. With that, bear with me as I express my plaudits to the ever-so niche and nuanced school of etymology. The word 'peace' in English traces its etymological origins to mid-12th century Anglo-French pes. This meant a 'freedom from civil disorder, an internal peace of a nation,' and dates back to none other than the Latin root pax, or pacem. The Latin root strictly refers to a contractual peace, one of an agreement, a treaty, or even a 'fastening or binding together by pact' (pact of course then also comes from pax but this is me nerding out...). However, the modern English peace, from pes, actually replaced the pre-existing Old English frið, (frith) or sibb, (from which we get ‘sibling’ and even ‘gos-sip’) which also meant friendliness and happiness!

A stained glass depiction of a dove — This stained glass dove can be found in the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church in Paris, France dating back to the 1500s. Doves historically symbolise peace, but also the Holy Spirit in certain religious contexts, and as we come to find out, peace is often represented by multiple meanings at once.

Peace, by all means, encompasses happiness and friendship - especially the peace we strive for in our time. If we let technicalities be technicalities though, one might wonder why the modern word for peace took its origins from a root form which prioritised political accord over happiness, as they were utterly synonymous once...

What's more, the modern French word, paix, took on an even closer form of the Latin pax, in terms of spelling and pronunciation. However, its earliest form, paiz of the 10th century, only defines peace as 'toute tranquillité' (total tranquillity) between two or more people. The act of 'making peace by means of treaty' comes later, with some records identifying the first use of peace-treaty only in 1317. In French too then, peace seems to hold a deeper semantic meaning - a serenity first between people, not between states.

This idea, that the linguistic associations of peace place it at the very core of human interrelationships, is found even more explicitly in Arabic. The word for peace in Arabic, ﺳَﻠَﺎﻡ or ‘salaam,’ is used as a greeting between people, and is part of the expression ‘As-Salaam-Alaikum’ meaning ‘peace be unto you!’ A common response to this might be ‘and peace be upon you!’ (وعليكم السلام, pronounced ‘waealaykum alsalam’). It loans its etymological origins to one of the oldest languages in the world, Aramaic, שְׁלָמָא‎ / ܫܠܵܡܵܐ (pronounced approximately ‘shelem’) where it is defined as ‘wholeness,’ ‘wellness,’ and ‘peace.’ It’s a neat and beautiful thing that this word, which connotes good wishes, safety, and protection, marks the first verbal exchange between people. It seems that even in our first encounters, we strive to bring peace to the table and wish it upon one another. Maybe, then, peace, inherent in us, emerges even stronger when we strive to interact with each other. It seems that peace comes naturally and starts small - from the very first greeting of the day.

Slavic art depicting the creation of the world within an egg — The World Egg: an ancient Slavic symbol representing the creation of the Universe. As seen in the next image, eggs have a lot to do with peace for Ancient (and modern) Slavs!

When I think of the word peace, I often think of its Slavic form. In most Slavic languages, including Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, peace, or мир (pronounced 'mir,' or 'myr') is a homophone for both the words ‘peace’ and ‘world,’ or even ‘universe.’ It originated from the Proto-Slavic mirъ or měrъ (pronounced approximately as 'mirgh'). Mirъ referred to ‘world’ and ‘peace’ interchangeably. That etymological evidence is incredibly difficult to attest is not an understatement, and thus far expert opinion has diverged into two leading hypotheses about the formation of this intricate duality. One theory is that ‘peace’ and ‘world’ conflated purely because of semantics - peace underlies friendship, which in turn generates community, and what is our world if not a chain of communities? The other hypothesis proposes that the word mirъ was an early conflation of two separate words - one with the Indo-European root mey- (‘to tie,’ ‘strengthen’) and the other Proto-Slavic milъ (‘nice,’ ‘gentle,’ pronounced 'mill') or otherwise the Latin mītis (‘calm,’ ‘peaceful’ - I can guesstimate how to pronounce Old Cyrillic, not Latin, sorry!). Whatever the origins, scholars agree on one feat: the dual meaning of ‘peace’ and ‘world’ is unique to Slavic.

Ukranian hand-painted easter eggs dyed with bright colors — The Pysanka: a Ukrainian Easter Egg hand-inscribed with a beeswax dye method. The pysanka represents prosperity, health, and peace in Ukrainian and many other Slavic cultures

The concept of the cosmos too is denoted by мир in Slavic - universal peace takes on a richer meaning. In Latin, paxum solely means 'the action of making peace,' and excludes periods of ongoing, existing peace, both at the national level and at the individual level, between people. Perhaps, though, this is only part of the idea. That we must make peace is unquestionable - endowed with the ability to create civilizations, to modernize the globe, humanity does have a duty to ensure peace and prosperity for all citizens of our planet. And as our little species tend to do, we've snuck the gentle nuances of the human spirit within our dictionary definitions. While a remarkable etymological journey to observe, I am not at all surprised that over centuries, so many languages of different cultures, different histories, different origins, have embraced more profound, subtle tones within their visions of peace. According, at least, to the linguistics of our predecessors, (with whom I very-much agree), treaties cannot be our sole means for making peace - it seems that local, small-scale peace is a good place to start looking for signs of this great, big concept; whether inter-individual, international, or internal. The prospect of true peace is, after all, monumentally imperative, and I don't think it too hyperbolic of us to equate it to the power of the stars.

ST.ART does not own any of the images used in this article.