ZKV 114
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria,
iudicare vivos et mortuos
(Nicene Creed)
A striking difference between English and other Germanic languages is that if you use an adjective as a noun about people, it nearly always can only refer to more that one person, e.g. the rich, poor, elderly, unemployed, injured, young, homeless, wounded, mentally ill, etc.
In a few cases – the accused for one person in court, the deceased is a legal term for a person who is dead – it is also possible to use such words for one person only. Germanic languages can use for both singular and plural, and they distinguish grammatically, e.g. den døde/de døde; der Tote/die Toten (the dead person/dead people). Handy.
What about the quick and the dead? Here something else is at work too. The original meaning of quick is not fast. It exists in such phrases as That hurt me to the quick. The quick of one’s nails (the sensitive, living tissue beneath the nail plate). Here’s the etymology:
quick (adj.)
English quik, from Old English cwic "living, alive, animate, characterised by the presence of life" (now archaic), and figuratively, of mental qualities, "rapid, ready," from Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian quik, Old Norse kvikr "living, alive," Dutch kwik "lively, bright, sprightly," Old High German quec "lively," German keck "bold"), from PIE root *gwei- "to live." Sense of "lively, active, swift, speedy, hasty," developed by c. 1300, on notion of "full of life."
So when the Danish poet Klaus Høeck calls his latest collection AND THE DEAD, bells ring for the English reader:
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
(Book of Common Prayer, 1662)
Høeck has written many collections of poetry about the quick and the dead, but here there is an extra poignancy because those featured are no longer here amongst the living. They live on within the minds of those who remember them. And, as in life, they quicken our hearts and minds.
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