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I spose 'ironic' is one word you could use in reference to some of the greatest people of our time:
Arguably the most intelligent man on the planet - Dr Stephen Hawking - locked in a twisted body and incapable of speech but capable of explaining the complexities of time and space to mere mortals.
And what about Nelson Mandela? Is it not ironic that he was locked away for 25 years, only to wind up the leader of his nation - and working alongside his former captors without recrimination and retribution?
What about that group of people referred to as savants? Almost incapable of operating as independent human beings in many cases but, among other things, variously capable of generating the most extraordinary art works, remembering entire telephone books, replaying complex and lengthy musical pieces after hearing them once and so on.
These kinds of irony bring a lump to my throat.
stales
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stales,
Hawking could certainly be considered an example of tragic irony. is the Mandela example really irony, or something else...? (I'm thinking irony usually has a negative context)
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One of my favorite irony lines was Sammy Davis Jr.ostensibly thanking Archie Bunker: "That's very white of you."
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Too true and too sad, Mr. Stales, but when a situation or circumstance becomes too sad one would think that we would stop calling it "ironic" and call it something else. Personally I resist to the teeth any act that would make me seem Politically Correct, yet I think that someone of words should generate a word that would replace "idiot savant", it is in-apt and mean.
Bye the bye, earlier in this thread the word mycterisum was batted about. I wonder if its origin and meaning could be traced to the word mysterium. The word means "one thousand" and is used by numerologists in need of that particular number to complete a task. It's usage presumably dates back to the early Catholic Church when numbers were more magical and, more so than today, politics elected the pope. One method of disposing of a bad Pope was to connect his name to the number 666, the mark of the beast. Using a conversion scale like A=1, B=2, etc., they then added, subtracted, divided, and multiplied in an attempt to prove his Holiness a beast. One Pope who was considered especially bad, had a name that math-ed out poorly. Try as they might the best the numerologists could do was 1666. But damnit the Pope was bad nonetheless, so they invented the mysterium, subtracted it, and the Pope was disgraced.
Milum.
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Here's a pretty good definition, though incomplete: " Irony--originally a deceptive form of understatement (from the Greek eiron, a stock comic character who typically equivocated, misled his listeners, or concealed complex meanings behind seemingly simple words); hence an attribute of statements in which the meaning is different--or more complicated--than it seems. A subtle form of sarcasm, verbal irony is a rhetorical device in which the speaker either severely understates his point or means the opposite of what he says (as when a guest politely describes a host's unimpressive wine as "nicely chilled" or a conspicuously dull person is described as "not a likely Mensa candidate." Dramatic irony arises in situations where two or more individuals have different levels of understanding or different points of view. More specifically, it occurs when the audience or certain characters in a play know something that another character does not--as when Oedipus, ignorant that he himself is the person he seeks, vows to track down Laius's killer." http://condor.depaul.edu/~dsimpson/awtech/lexicon.htmlBest regards, Dub
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here is the best explanation I've found -- I used it when irony was my wwftd:
I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that
some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of Ironia, which we
call the drye mock, and I cannot think of a better term for it:
the drye mock. Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or
cynicism, which is often the voice of disappointed idealism, but
a delicate casting of a cool and illuminating light on life, and
thus an enlargement. The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek
to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns
the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to
speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a
moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of
controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and
thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often
speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to
be funny, the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.
- Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man
this is verbal irony, the irony that the Brits say USns don't get, the irony you have to be "more or less brilliant" to get. you won't get much watching US tv.
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tsuwm
I agree - hence my comment that irony is one word that could be used. I thought pathos may have a place here too, but it's still perhaps not right on the money...
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I was thinking about the times when the whole board, or rather the posters on a particular thread, have gone off into a flight of fancy; and about our ongoing stories we've tried.
What about somebody starting a story thread with some kind of irony theme? Possibly, each addition should at least try to show some irony in it, or, perhaps one person could write the beginning of a very short story, and anyone who cared to could post an ending with an ironic twist to it.
It's all right with me if this flops--I'm not pushing it on anybody. Just thought I'd throw part of an idea out, since it's been a while since we've done a group effort. Alternative suggestions welcomed. And if the whole thing is a non-starter, that's fine, too.
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Milum, could you be a bit more specific and let us know which popes were disposed of using numerology?
Bingley
Bingley
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Milum, could you be a bit more specific and let us know which popes were disposed (by the use) of numerology.
Bingley.
Drat it, Bingley, you caught me, but notice that I didn't say that the pope was disposed I said disgraced. I well know that many of the AWAD members would slap their sweet Granny for the offense of verbing an inappropriate noun but I couldn't find substantiation in my books at home so I called Andy for a ride downtown. (The downtown library is next door to a bar and I refuse to drive drunk.) At length I found the book, a paperback, and retired to the bar to read it...
Archimedes' Revenge. -Paul Hoffman Ballantine Books, 1988.
...in the sixteenth century a German monk named Michael Stifel who dabbled in algebra and number theory, slipped into a book on algebra a peculiar interpretation of the number of the beast. Determined to impugn the character of Pope Leo X, Stifel put His Holiness's name through contortions.
He spelled out the X as DECIMUS (the Latin word for "tenth") and then changed the u to v, in the spirit of the Romans, to get DECIMVS. From LEO DECIMVS, he picked out the Roman numererals-L, D, C, I, M, and V- and for good measure , threw in the X from Leo X. Now, substituting numbers for the Roman numerals, Stifel computed the numerical value of the name: L(50) plus D(500) plus C(100) plus I(1) plus M(1000) plus V(5) plus X(10) = 1,666.
Oops! A thousand too much. So, thought Stifel, the M, whose value is 1,000, must stand for MYSTERIUM ( mystery). By removing the "mystery" he got 666 exactly. With this discovery, he renounced his monastic vows and became a follower of Martin Luther.
Angered by his treasonous discovery the papists threaten to kill him and he took refuge in Martin Luther's house.
To be continued...
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