Fifteen years ago, while painting in my studio, a random word came to my mind: Apobathos.
Later that evening I looked the word up but discovered no such word existed.
A month later, in a similar fashion another word came to me: Latigos. And shortly thereafter, in a dream, the third word, Soho, appeared to me.
Somehow I had a strong notion that these three words were related.
I had intended to research the words and extract their etymological relevance in hope of discovering some pattern or a nugget of unconscious gem, or perhaps peer into my own mind, but time passed and the memory faded under a pile of to-do lists that kept growing.
However, many years later, gnarled by twists and turns of fate, on a particularly dark moment I remembered two of the forgotten words. Yet, for the life of me I could not remember the third, that is, until last week when the final word reemerged with a soft exclamation point.
I can’t explain the reason, but I felt, almost reverently, drawn to explore the meaning and nuance and connection between these three apparently random words.
This blog post and subsequent postings will be my brief journey, in a rickety boat constructed from the clapboards of my conscious mind, fishing three words from the dark ocean of the collective unconscious.
…The Bathos, an engraving by William Hogarth, 1764
click on the image to view larger detail
Apobathos
bathos
noun
(esp. in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.(first recorded in the Greek sense): from Greek, literally ‘depth.’ The current sense was introduced by Alexander Pope in the early 18th cent.
Apo-
prefix
1 away from : apocrypha | apostrophe.
• separate : apocarpous.
2 Astronomy denoting the furthest point in the orbit of a body in relation to the primary : apolune. Compare with peri- .
ORIGIN from Greek apo ‘from, away, quite, un-.’
Incidentally, in the year 1697, in London, was born a William Hogarth who engraved his final work of art, aptly titled Tail Piece: The Bathos, etched and engraved.
Since I was born in 1967 in London, this odd bit of trivial coincidence is quite interesting, to say the least. …Thought I’d throw that in for your amusement, hmm…
I should add that Hogarth engaged in political satire, and another of his paintings stands apropos to our current national drama vis-à-vis the Chicago Machinists and their influence in US Capitoline Hill, and now the Executive. Hogarth called his piece An Election: Chairing the Member.
…An Election: Chairing the Member, 1754
But the word that was revealed to me — um, yeah, sounds like revelation doesn’t it? – had a prefix, Apo-, such that if one were to combine the two parts, a new word would be derived; thus:
Apo.bathos
noun
(esp. in a work of alchemical and metaphysical art with social and political objectives) a reversal of the effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. A return to the sublime from the trivial.
ORIGIN early 21th cent.(compounded from two words in the Greek sense): from Greek, literally ‘away’ and ‘depth.’ The current sense is introduced by Iliad Alexander Terra on the eve of the 2012 paradigm shift.
…to be continued
-Iliad A. Terra
