Prosaic (pronounced proh-zey-ik)
(1)
Of writing or speaking, straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or
elegance of poetry.
(2) Something commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact
or unimaginative; overly
plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring.
(3) Of or having the character or form of prose,
the ordinary form of spoken or written language, rather than of poetry (now of
technical use only).
1650-1660: From the fifteenth century Middle French prosaïque and directly from the sixteenth century Medieval
Latin prōsaicus (in prose), from the Classical Latin prōsa (prose), from prorsus (straightforward, in prose), from the Old Latin provorus (straight ahead), the construct
being pro-
(forward) + vorsus (turned), from vertō (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European
wer- (to turn, to bend). The original meaning was technical,
distinguishing text as prose rather than poetry and in this sense was usually
written as prosaicus (in prose). The first hints of literary hierarchy were
first noted in French in 1746 when used to contrast the “character” of prose in
contrast to the “feeling” of poetry. The
sense of describing something ordinary or mundane first seen in French in 1813,
a meaning soon adopted in English. Prosaic & prosaical are adjectives,
prosify is a verb, prosified & prosifying are verbs & adjectives, prosaicness
is a noun and prosaically is an adverb.
Figurative use of poetic & prosaic: Jaguar E-Type (XK-E, 1961-1974) (left) & Jaguar XJ-S (1975-1996) (right).
Whether Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) ever called the E-Type "the most beautiful car in the world" remains uncertain but over the decades plenty have echoed the sentiment, sometimes using the phrase "poetry in motion". By 1975, the world had changed and there were now rules with which to comply and although the XJ-S (later XJS) wasn't really a replacement for the E-Type, because of the timing, that was how it was viewed. Dynamically, it was a better car than the E-Type on about any objective measure but it certainly wasn't better looking and in contemporary reviews, the styling was sometimes described as "proasic". It might have been more accurate to use the word "pragmatic" and the lines have aged better than many at the time imagined, the car in continuous production for over twenty years and the platform endured until 2006, providing the underpinnings for the first generation of Jaguar's XK8 (1996-2005) and the Aston Martin DB7 (1997-2004), both of which looked better than the XJ-S although neither matched the timeless E-Type.
Prosaic
is an example of the figurative adoption of a word with a precise technical
meaning assuming such popularity that the original sense was effectively
lost. Once, any text not poetic was “prosaic”
(ie “written in prose”), and this description
denoted nothing negative; it was just a way of distinguishing between written
forms, reflecting prosaic’s origins in the Latin prosa (prose). However, by
the seventeen century, poetry had come to be regarded as a most superior form
of expression, considered more beautiful, imaginative, and emotional, prose relegated
to the status of the mundane and procedural.
The figurative use evolved from this and prosaic came to be used to refer to
anything thought ordinary or unimaginative including music, ideas and
architecture etc. The adjective thus
transformed into a synonym for "colorless, drab, lifeless, lacklustre, humdrum,
dull, pedestrian, unimaginative" etc and this resulted in phrases which once would have been
thought bizarre or tautological: “prosaic poetry” & “prosaic prose”. In its original technical sense (distinguishing the
style of writing used for poetry from other literature), the word is now
obsolete except for historic references and indeed, it’s now challenging to use in
the context of literature because of the implications of the modern meaning. Still, for those who wish to emphasise that some bad
texts are worse than others, the comparative
is more prosaic and the superlative, most prosaic.
The
Tay Bridge Disaster
William
Topaz McGonagall (circa 1825–1902) was a Scottish poet of Irish ancestry, now acknowledged
as perhaps the worst poet ever to have been published in English, a fair achievement
given the wealth of modern competition. His
best known work remains The Tay Bridge
Disaster (1880), lamenting the disaster of 28 December 1879, when, during a
severe gale, the central section of Dundee's Tay Rail Bridge collapsed, sending
to their deaths in the freezing water the 80-odd souls aboard the Wormit-Dundee
train passing at the time. Regarded at
the time as a triumph of Victorian engineering, the Tay bridge was nearly two
miles (3.2 km) long and then the longest in the world but was built with an
insufficient allowance for lateral wind-load, the structure that night succumbing
to the gale-force winds estimated at 80 mph (130 km/h / 70 knots). An enquiry was conducted and the designer,
Sir Thomas Bouch (1822-1880) (knighted by Queen Victoria in recognition of the quick
and economic construction of the bridge) was found for primarily responsible
for the disaster. He died within a year
of the collapse.
The Tay Bridge after it collapsed. Photo credit: National Library of Scotland
Whether
the The Tay Bridge Disaster can be
said to be prosaic is debatable because there are probably better adjectives
but critics have long been united that it's a very bad piece of poetry and it's
doubtful a re-rendering in prose would be much of an improvement, one writing
of it that McGonagall was “deaf to poetic
metaphor, employing inappropriate rhythms that resulted in unintentionally amusing
poetry.” Said to be wholly oblivious
to the invective almost universally directed to his oeuvre of over two-hundred
pieces of verse, his sheer awfulness and tenacity caused him to be remembered to
this day for at least something while countless poets who were merely earnest
and competent are long forgotten.
The
Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall
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