Pylon (pronounced pahy-lon)
(1) A marking post or tower for guiding aviators, much
used in air-racing to mark turning points in a a prescribed course of flight.
(2) A relatively tall structure at the side of a gate,
bridge, or avenue, marking an entrance or approach.
(3) A monumental tower forming the entrance to an ancient
Egyptian temple, consisting either of a pair of tall quadrilateral masonry
masses with sloping sides and a doorway between them or of one such mass
pierced with a doorway.
(4) In electricity transmission, a steel tower or mast
carrying high-tension lines, telephone wires, or other cables and lines
(usually as power-pylon, electricity pylon or transmission tower).
(5) In architecture (1) a tall, tower-like structure
(usually of steel or concrete) from which cables are strung to support other
structures and (2) a lighting mast; a freestanding support for floodlights.
(6) In aeronautics, a streamlined, finlike structure used
to attach engines, auxiliary fuel tanks, bombs, etc to an aircraft wing or
fuselage.
(7) In modeling, as “pylon shot”, a pose in which a model
stands with arms raised or extended outwards, resembling an electricity pylon.
(8) An alternative name for an obelisk.
(9) In aviation, a starting derrick for an aircraft
(obsolete) and a tethering point for an dirigible (airship).
(10) In American football (gridiron), an orange marker
designating one of the four corners of the field’s end zones.
(11) In the slang of artificial limb makers (1) a
temporary artificial leg and (2) a rigid prosthesis for the lower leg.
(12) In literature, as "Pylon Poet" (usually in the plural
as “the Pylons”), a group of British poets who during the 1930s included in
their work many references to new & newish mechanical devices and other technological
developments.
(13) In slang, a traffic cone.
1823: A learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) (gateway; gate tower), from
pylē (gate, wing of a pair of double
gates; an entrance, entrance into a country; mountain pass; narrow strait of
water) of unknown origin but etymologists suspect it may be a technical term
(from architecture or construction) from another language. The first use was in archaeology to describe
a “gateway to an Egyptian temple”, a direct adaptation of the original Greek. In Western architecture, it’s believed the
first “modern” pylons were the tall, upright structures installed at aerodromes
to guide aviators and it was the appearance of these things which inspired the
later use as “power pylon” (steel tower for high-tension wires over distance,
use noted since 1923) and the word spread to any number of similar looking
devices (even those on a small scale such as traffic cones). Until then, in engineering and architecture,
tall structures used to carry cables or in some way provide support (or even be
mere decorative) were described as a “tower” or “obelisk” (such use
continuing). Pylon is a noun and pylonless,
pylonlike, pylonesque & pylonish are adjectives; the noun plural is pylons. Despite the fondness in engineering for such forms
to emerge, the verbs pyloned & pyloning seem never to have been coined.
The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was used of the grand
architecture seen in the entrances to temples and the usual word for doors (and
gates) rather more modest was θύρα (thýra).
It was a feminine noun and appears in
various forms depending on the grammatical case (θύρα (nominative singular; a
door), θύρας (genitive singular; of a door) & θύραι (nominative plural; doors). Etymologists believe θύρα may have undergone
phonological changes, adapting to Greek morphology and pronunciation patterns,
while retaining its fundamental meaning tied to entryways or openings. The word was from the primitive Indo-European
dhur or dhwer (door; gateway) which was the source also of the Latin foris (door, entrance), the Sanskrit dvā́r (door, gate), the Old English duru (door) and the Old Norse dyrr (door). Because of their functional role and symbolism
as thresholds (ie transition, entry, protection), the door played a prominent part
in linguistic as well as architectural evolution.
Temple of Isis, first pylon, north-eastern view.
The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was the classical term for
an Egyptian ceremonial gateway (bekhenet)
used in temples from at least the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period (circa
2040 BC–AD 395) and anthropologists have concluded the intent was to symbolize
the horizon. The basic structure of a
pylon consisted of two massive towers of rubble-filled masonry tapering
upwards, surmounted by a cornice and linked in the centre by an elaborate
doorway. Ancient depictions of pylons
show that the deep vertical recesses visible along the facades of surviving
examples were intended for the mounting of flag staffs.
An “anchor pylon” is the one which forms the endpoint of
a high-voltage and differs from other pylons in that it uses horizontal
insulators, necessary when interfacing with other modes of power transmission
and (owing to the inflexibility of the conductors), when significantly altering
the direction of the pylon chain. In
large-scale display advertizing, a “pylon sign” is a tall sign supported by one
or more poles and in the original industry jargon was something in what would
now be called “portrait mode”; a sign in “landscape mode” being a “billboard”. Not surprisingly, there are a number of
mountains known as “Pylon Peak”. The
task of naming such geological features is part of the field of toponymy (in semantics
the lexicological study of place names(a branch of onomastics)) and a
specialist in such things is known as a toponymist. The term toponomy was later borrowed by
medicine where it was used of the nomenclature of anatomical regions. In
aviation, the “pylon turn” is a flight maneuver in which an aircraft banks into
a circular turn around a fixed point on the ground.
The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was used of the grand
architecture seen in the entrances to temples and the usual word for doors (and
gates) rather more modest was θύρα (thýra).
It was a feminine noun and appears in
various forms depending on the grammatical case (θύρα (nominative singular; a
door), θύρας (genitive singular; of a door) & θύραι (nominative plural; doors). Etymologists believe θύρα may have undergone
phonological changes, adapting to Greek morphology and pronunciation patterns,
while retaining its fundamental meaning tied to entryways or openings. The word was from the primitive Indo-European
dhur or dhwer (door; gateway) which was the source also of the Latin foris (door, entrance), the Sanskrit dvā́r (door, gate), the Old English duru (door) and the Old Norse dyrr (door). Because of their functional role and symbolism
as thresholds (ie transition, entry, protection), the door played a prominent part
in linguistic as well as architectural evolution.
The plyon pose: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates some variations.
In modeling, the “pylon shot” is used to describe the
pose in which a model stands with arms raised or extended outwards, resembling (at
least vaguely) an electricity pylon, the appearance of which is anthropomorphic.
There are practical benefits for
designers in that raising the arms permits a photographer to include more of a
garment in the frame and this can be significant if there’s detailing which are
at least partially concealed with the arms in their usual position. Topless models also adopt variations of the
pose because the anatomical affect of raising the arms also lifts and to some
extent re-shapes the breasts, lending them temporarily a higher, a more pleasing aspect.
The Pylons
The so-called “pylon poets” (referred to usually as “the
Pylons”) were a group who dominated British poetry during the 1930s, a time
when the form assumed a greater cultural and intellectual significance than today. The best known (and certainly among the most
prolific) of the Pylons were Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), Stephen Spender
(1909–1995), WH Auden (1907-1973) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972), their names
sometimes conflated as “MacSpaunday”. It
was Spender’s poem The Pylons which
inspired the nickname and it referenced the frequent references to the images
of “industrial modernity”, drawn from new(ish) technology and the machinery of
factories. The intrusion of novel machinery
and technology into a variety of fields is not unusual; in the age of steam the
devices were used as similes when speculating about the operation of the human
brain, just as the terminology of computers came to be used when the lexicon
entered the public imagination. Their
method underlying the output of the pylons was influenced by the metaphysical poetry
of John Donne (circa 1571-1631) whose use of “scientific” imagery was much
admired by TS Eliot (1888–1965), the work of whom was acknowledged as
influential by both Auden and Spender.
However, the 1930s were the years of the Great Depression and probably
their most fertile source was Marxist materialism although, of the Pylons,
historians tend to regard only Day-Lewis as one of the “useful idiots”.
The Pylons (1933) by Stephen Spender.
The secret of
these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone
made,
And crumbling
roads
That turned on
sudden hidden villages
Now over these
small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails
black wire
Pylons, those
pillars
Bare like nude
giant girls that have no secret.
The valley with
its gilt and evening look
And the green
chestnut
Of customary
root,
Are mocked dry
like the parched bed of a brook.
But far above
and far as sight endures
Like whips of
anger
With
lightning's danger
There runs the
quick perspective of the future.
This dwarfs our
emerald country by its trek
So tall with
prophecy
Dreaming of
cities
Where often
clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.
The term “useful idiot” is from political science and so
associated with Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924; first leader of
Soviet Russia 1917-1922 & USSR 1922-1924) that it's attributed to him but
there's no evidence he ever spoke or wrote the words. It became popular during the Cold War to
describe pro-communist intellectuals and apologists in the West, the (probably
retrospective) association with Lenin probably because had the useful idiots
actually assisted achieving a communist revolution there, their usefulness
outlived, he'd likely have had at least some of them shot as
"trouble-makers". Although it
took many Western intellectuals decades to recant (some never quite managed)
their support for the Soviet Union, the watershed was probably Comrade
Khrushchev's (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) so called "Secret Speech" (On the
Cult of Personality and Its Consequences) to the 20th Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956 in which he provided a detailed
critique of the rule of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953),
especially the bloody purges of the late 1930s.
Some had however already refused to deny what had become obvious to all but avid denialists, and in 1949 a contribution by Spender appeared in The God that Failed, a collection of six essays in which the writers lay bare their sense of betrayal and disillusionment with communism because of the totalitarian state forged by comrade Stalin which was in so many ways just another form of fascism. Spender was associated with the intellectual wing of left-wing politics during the 1930s and was briefly a member of the Communist Party but his attraction seems to have been motivated mostly by the Soviet Union’s promises of equality and its anti-fascist stance. He quickly became disillusioned with the Soviet state, unable to reconcile its authoritarianism with his personal beliefs in freedom and individual rights, a critical stance differentiated him from figures like George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950) and Sidney (1859–1947) & Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), the latter couple for some time definitely useful idiots.
The sort of sights which would have inspired Spender’s line “Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret”.
Louis MacNeice, was politically engaged during the 1930s but that was hardly something unusual among writers & intellectuals during that troubled decade. Among the pylons he seems to have been the most sceptical about the tenets of communism and the nature of comrade Stalin’s state and no historians seem every to have listed him among the useful idiots, his views of the left as critical and nuanced as they were of the right. What he most objected to was the tendency among idealistic & politically committed intellectuals to engage in a kind of reductionism which allowed them to present simplistic solutions to complex problems in a form which was little more than propaganda, a critique he explored in his poem Autumn Journal (1939) captures his doubts about political certainty and his disillusionment with simplistic solutions to complex problems. Auden certainly wasn’t a “useful idiot” and while politically engaged and associated with several leftist intellectual circles during the 1930s, his sympathy for Marxism and anti-fascist causes were really not far removed from those share by even some mainstream figures and a capacity for self-reflection never deserted him. Much was made of the time he spent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1940) but he went as an observer and a propagandist rather than a combatant and what he saw made his disillusioned with the ideological rigidity and in-fighting among leftist factions and he made no secret of his distaste for Stalinist communists. By the early 1940s, he was distancing himself from Marxism, the process much accelerated by his re-embrace of Christianity where, at least debatably, he discharged another form of useful idiocy, his disapproval of collectivist ideologies apparently not extending to the Church of England.
Profiles of some electricity pylons. There a literally dozens of variations, the designs dictated by factors such as the ground environment, proximity to people, voltage requirements, weight to be carried, economics, expected climatic conditions and a myriad of other specifics.
Of the Pylons, Cecil Day-Lewis (who served as Poet Laureate of the UK 1968-1972) had the most active period engagement with communism and Marxist ideals and he was for a time politically aligned with the Soviet Union; it was a genuine ideological commitment. During the 1930s, the true nature of the Soviet Union wasn’t generally known (or accepted) in the West and Day-Lewis admired the Soviet Union as an experiment in social and economic equality which he championed and it wasn’t until late in the decade he realized the ideals he had embraced had been betrayed; it was Great Purge and the Moscow Show-Trials which triggered his final disillusionment. Day-Lewis later acknowledged the naivety and moral compromises of his earlier stance and came to argue poetry and art should not be subordinated to political ideology, a view formed by his understanding of the implications of propagandistic pieces of his younger years being exactly that.
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