Does "nor he mine" make sense here?

Question

I have been staring at this sentence for 5 minutes:

I looked up, though I could not see his face, nor he mine.

"Nor he mine" seems...off to me. Is this grammatically correct?

Answer 1

It's elliptical, that is, it drops some words for economy of expression, since the words omitted will be obvious to the native speaker.

I looked up, though I could not see his face, nor could he see mine.

American Heritage Dictionary "ellipsis"
"1. a. The omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical construction but not necessary for understanding.
b. An example of such omission."

Answer 2

Yes, it's grammatical.

In the context of the sentence, nor he mine is a shortened form of the following:

nor [could] he [see the face that was] mine

The missing words are assumed from the context of what came before, and understandable from the parallel structure of the sentence.

Such phrasing was more common in English from many years ago, but it is still used today.

Answer 3

The sentence follows a pattern of leaving out words in cases that a reader may understand those words from context. The general pattern is called ellipsis, and the specific type for this sentence is called gapping.

To learn how we think about removing words, it may help to show several changes in a sentence, one after another.

Consider a simple sentence. It is a run-on sentence, with two independent clauses separated by a comma and a conjunction.

You should put a mask on your face, and I should put a mask on my face.

Notice the parallel structure of the two clauses. Other than the person (you vs. I), they are the same.

This sentence is clear, but also longer than we may prefer, and awkward to read, because of the repeated information. We may wish to shorten it.

You should put a mask on your face, and I should put one on mine.

This change is familiar. In the second clause, we replaced both noun phrases ("a mask", "my face") with pronouns ("one", "mine"). The pronouns refer to the same noun phrases in the first clause, so the change has not removed any information from the sentence.

The sentence is still longer than we prefer. The effect of the change was less than we might hope.

Of the words in the second clause, several provide no information not in the first. We can remove some of them, without changing the meaning of the sentence.

You should put a mask on your face, and I one on mine.

Although the verb ("should put") no longer appears in the second clause, we understand that it is the same as in the first.

Two further words are not needed.

You should put a mask on your face, and I mine.

Without the direct object ("one") and preposition ("on"), the second clause shows only the difference in meaning from the first, without repeating any information.

The words that express the difference are the only ones that we need. We simply wrote a sentence with two clauses of the same structure, and then removed words from the second clause that were repeated from the first. The remaining words appear in the same order, one next to the other.

When we read the second clause, we see two nouns. We know they have some relationship, so we look for that relationship in the nearest place where we might find it. We know that the subject is before the object, just as in other independent clauses.

This structure is uncommon in vernacular, but in literature, an author may use it to help the reader to keep a focused mind on the important details, without the distraction of the repeated information.

We can use the same structure, but with a different meaning. Suppose we are helping each other by putting the masks on each other.

You should put a mask on my face, and I yours.

The original example follows the same pattern. Here it is, with extra words to make the meaning clear.

I looked up, though I could not see his face, nor could he see mine.

Reaching the ending of the sentence, "nor he mine", we notice no verb, and also that the subject and object are reversed from earlier. This structure emphasizes that the relationship between the characters is the same in both directions, because it presents two directions of relationship, but identifies only a single kind of relationship.