Fag

Fag (pronounced fag)

(1) Something hanging loose, a flap (mostly archaic except in US technical use in the industrial production of textiles where, in the process of quality inspections, a fag is a rough or coarse defect in the woven fabric).

(2) Slang for a boring or wearisome task (archaic).

(3) The worst part or end of a thing (mostly UK, now archaic).

(4) Offensive slang for a contemptible or dislikeable person (archaic).

(5) Offensive slang for a homosexual male, applied most often to an obvious, (especially effeminate) or “unusual” one (now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous although within certain LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing (a la the notorious “N-word” when used between African-Americans).

(6) To tire or weary by labor; to be exhausted (usually in the phrase “fagged out”).

(7) A school student allocated to do menial chores for an older pupil (mostly in the English public school system but said to be extinct since the late 1990s although apparently still practiced in some Commonwealth countries with public (private) schools based on the old English model).

(8) Slang for a cigarette (now rare, especially in North America); the Cockney rhyming slang was “oily rag”.

(9) As “fag-end” (as in the stubbed-out, un-smoked end of a cigarette), a remnant of something once larger, longer etc, such as the frayed end of a length of cloth or rope.

(10) As “fag-end administration”, the last months of a government prior to an election.

1425–1475: Assumed to be a clipping of “fag end” (remnant; discarded off-cut), from the late Middle English fagge (flap; broken thread in cloth, loose end) of obscure origin), the later sense-development to the intransitive verb meaning “to droop, to tire, to make weary; drudgery” apparently based on the idea of “a drooping end” or “something limply hanging” dating from the 1520s (the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) suggests an alteration of the verb “flag” in the sense of “to droop or go limp”).  There may be some (remote) connection to the Dutch vaak (sleepiness) and the transitive sense of “to make (someone or something) fatigued or tire by labor” was first noted in 1826.  Those “fagged-out” (from fatiguing labor) were in the 1850s said to have been engaged in “faggery” and from the same era “brain-fag" described “mental fatigue”.  Apparently, although rare, “un-fagged” is a correct construction that may be used to describe the process of cutting the ties binding a bundle of faggots (sticks; kindling).  Functional forms (fag butt, fag lighter, fag grave (an ashtray) etc) are created as required. Fag is a noun and verb, fagging or fagged are verbs and faggish & fagged are adjectives; the noun plural is fags.   

A GIF of Lindsay Lohan enjoying a fag, The Canyons (2013).

The slang meaning “cigarette” dates only from 1888 and was derived from fag-end (applied to many things and attested since the 1610s), a cigarette butt thus one of many fag-ends but “fag” (and the plural “fags”) came much to be associated with cigarettes producing terms such as “packet of fags” and phrases like “back on the fags” (again taking up smoking after giving up for a while).  The use of the term to refer to cigarettes is still heard in parts of the English-speaking world but is almost unknown in the US where use is not advised because there, almost exclusively, “fag” (as a clipping of “faggot”) is a gay slur.  The specific use as “fag-end administration” (a government’s final year or months in office prior to an election) is used in a number of contexts but most interesting is when the period coincides with a change in leadership.  On the basis of the conventional political wisdom (things are more likely to get worse than they are to get better), if a new leader finds their “honeymoon” with the voters is reflected by polls suggesting a likely win in an election, they’re well advised to seize the moment, even if it means “going early” by a year or more.  That was what Anthony Eden (1897-1977; prime minister of the UK 1955-1957) did in 1955 (increasing his party’s majority) whereas John Gorton (1911-2002; prime-minister of Australia 1968-1971) in 1968 and Gordon Brown (b 1951; prime-minister of the UK 2007-2010) in 2008 made the mistake of waiting, things not working out so well.

Inhaling a known carcinogen is of course a bad idea and not recommended but, undeniably, Lindsay Lohan made smoking look sexy.

Faggery (or faggotry) was the system in English public schools in which the younger students acted as servants (there were sometimes other purposes) for the older.  It was part of public school environment Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; prime minister of the UK 1957-1963) said was designed primarily to teach pupils life was “inherently unfair”.  Still, he valued the process and described any chap who hadn't benefited from the experience as having “no background”.  The use in English public schools to describe a junior student who performs “certain duties” for a senior seems first to have been used in 1785 although the practice is documented from the seventeenth century while the schoolboy slang describing the institution’s roles respectively as “fagdom” & “fagmaster” dates from 1902.  In modern use, faggery (less so faggotry but like faggotness, faggotize & faggotism) is used as a gay slur.  The term “faggot voter” was a historic term in the UK & Ireland, used when there was a property qualification attached to the electoral franchise; a legal loophole, it described someone entitled to vote by virtue of holding some form of property title short of fee-simple (freehold), typically a subdivision.  The origin of the term was based on the idea of “faggot” in the sense of the sticks gathered together and bound to make a whole (ie one property with one title fragmented for electoral purposes while not diminishing the quality of the ultimate ownership).  The “loophole” began as an “unintended consequence” of changes to the rules of real property but wasn’t reformed until the late 1800s because so many land-owners and members of parliament made use of it to “stack their constituencies” with voters.

The Duce's contribution.

The Italian term fascismo (a fascist dictatorship; fascism) was from fascio (bundle of sticks) and ultimately from the Latin fasces (bundle of rods containing an axe with the blade projecting).  Relics from Ancient Rome (left) confirm the fascio littorio was represented both with the head of the axe protruding from the centre of the bundled rods of the fasces and through a gape in the side (left) but in Fascist Italy (1922-1943), the official images (right) issued by the state used almost exclusively the latter arrangement.  Fascism was that rare thing in political science; genuinely it was new.

As a shortening of faggot, “fag” is documented as being applied as a term of disparagement to homosexual males from 1914, an invention of American English slang, though related to the earlier (1590s) contemptuous term for a woman, especially an old and unpleasant one (thus a re-purposing of “faggot” in the sense of “a bundle of sticks”, the idea being something awkward to carry, equating “worthless baggage” with “a worthless woman”).  More speculatively, there may be a link with the Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally “little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).  There may also have been some connection with the English public school slang noun fag which even then carried the suggestion of catamite, from the Latin catamītus (boy kept as a sexual partner), from catamītus, from the Etruscan catmite, from the Ancient Greek Γανυμήδης (Ganumḗdēs) (Ganymede).  In Greek mythology, Ganymede was an attractive Trojan boy abducted by Zeus and taken to Mount Olympus to become his cup-bearer and lover (Ganymede endures as a doublet in that sense).  The term “faggot marriage” was not a synonym of “lavender marriage” (an arrangement in which a homosexual man and a lesbian for purposes of social or professional respectability) but a disparaging reference to gay marriage, an issue that as late as the 1990s the US Republican Party was confident would be a useful “wedge issue”; generational change shifted opinion.

In the same way the now notorious N-word has been re-claimed by certain sub-sets of people of color and is (in context), an acceptable use by or between them, “faggot”, although now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous, within sub-sets of LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing.  Two inventive variations were “fag hag” (a heterosexual woman who socializes with homosexual men (1969)) and “fag stag” (a heterosexual man who socializes with homosexual men (circa 1995)).  The less common companion slang for men who have many lesbian friends was “dutch boy”, “lesbro” or “dyke tyke”.  Covering all bases, it transpires that those of both sexes (and certainly “any gender”) who associate with lesbian, gay and bisexual people are “fruit flies”.  The story that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an urban legend with no etymological or historical basis.

Portrait of Henry VIII (circa 1538), from the studio of Hans Holbein the Younger (circa 1497-1543), oil on panel, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK.  The original was part of the Whitehall Mural (depicting the Tudor dynasty) at the Palace of Whitehall, Westminster (lost in a fire in 1698) but there are many copies (the king encouraged the distribution of reproductions, the artist having rendered a most sympathetic portrait).

Burning at the stake sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (relying on the scriptural suggestion invoked as the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, although under the reign Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) parliament had passed The Buggery Act (1533) criminalizing “the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast” and a conviction could attract the death penalty, that was by being hanged rather than incineration.  As it was, death came to be thought so onerous a punishment for what was often a consensual act that prosecutions became rare and in the twentieth century, (Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) explained why cases so rarely reached the courts: “Prosecutors know convictions are difficult to obtain because half the jury wouldn’t believe such things happened and the other half habitually were doing it.”  While the inquisitorial and judicial organs of the Roman Catholic Church may over the centuries have burned at the stake a goodly number of homosexuals, that really was incidental to the process (sort of the “collateral damage” of the day), the sentence imposed usually for other offences (typically heresy).

Faggot was from the Middle English fagot, from the Middle French fagot (bundle of sticks), from the Medieval Latin and Italian fagotto and related to the Old Occitan fagot, the Italian fagotto & fangotto and the Spanish fajo (bundle, wad).  In Italian, a fagotto was (1) a bundle or sack, (2), (figuratively) a clumsy or awkward person (a klutz), or (3) in music, a bassoon and was probably from the Italian fagotto (diminutive of Vulgar Latin facus, from the Classical Latin fascis (bundle of wood), or perhaps the Ancient Greek φάκελος (phákelos) (bundle).  The senses relating to persons, though possibly originating as an extension of the sense "bundle of sticks", could have been reinforced by Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally “little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).  In English, “fagot” was long the alternative spelling.

Lighting the spark.

Spencer Rascoff (b 1975; CEO of Match Group (Tinder's holding company)) at the Tinder Spark Week 2026 product conference.  Tinder is subject to constant product development and recent innovations include matching based on astrology and tastes in music.  Intriguingly, data-mining revealed Gen Z users (the demographic cohort sandwiched between Millennials & Alphas and roughly those born between 1997 and 2012) wanted IRL (in real life) dating and to this Tinder responded, in March 2026 adding a dedicated tab for users to discover and RSVP to local, “low-pressure” gatherings like trivia nights, pickleball, basket-weaving groups, ceramics classes, and beach tennis (one must be “Photo Verified” to select “Interested” and see other attendees).

There was a time when the most common use of “faggot” was to describe the bundle of sticks used as kindling (small pieces of wood, twigs or other finely-divided fibrous matter used to start a fire) and, when arranged in a pile, these pieces were “the kindling” (from the Middle English kyndelen, from the Old Norse kynda (to inflame), from the Proto-Germanic kundijaną.  Other than the literal use (fire-starting), the word could also be applied figuratively (in the sense of “to arouse or inspire passion, enthusiasm etc”), familiar in phrases such as “the book kindled her interest in the author's work”.  Kindling is however the second stage of the three-part process of fire-starting, tinder first used to light the kindling that then ignites the main fire.  Tinder was from the Middle English tinder, tunder, tender & tonder, from the Old English tynder, from the Proto-Germanic tundrą & tundrǭ (tinder) and related to the Saterland Frisian Tunder (tinder), the Dutch tonder (tinder), the German Zunder (tinder) and the Swedish tända (to light, to set on fire).  Launched in 2012, the Tinder app is an online dating and geosocial networking platform (best understood by the more evocative “hook-up site”).  The Tinder name was adopted because the original (Matchbox) was too similar to the existing match.com (a US dating site) and the idea was of “tinder” as the medium to “spark the fire”.  A genuine cultural phenomenon, Tinder has been highly successful and was the app that legitimized the now universal “swipe feature”.

There can also be figurative use of the literal sense, Ernest Bevin (1881–1951; UK foreign secretary 1945-1951) remarking of his part in the downfall of George Lansbury (1859–1940; leader of the UK Labour Party 1932-1935): “Lansbury has been going about dressed in saint’s martyrdom; I set fire to the faggots.”  Old Ernie Bevin was unsentimental but others had real affection for Lansbury, the historian Alan John Percivale "AJP" Taylor (1906–1990) reflecting on his place in the place in the pantheon by calling him: “The most loveable figure in modern politics” and Harold Laski (1893–1950; LSE (London School of Economics) professor of economics 1926-1950 and chairman of the UK Labour Party 1945-1946) was realistic but generous, summing up Lansbury by saying: “Not a very clear head but with a heart that reached beyond the stars.”.  Ernie Bevin, a most practical politician, had little patience for Laski.  When once the academic economist asked Bevin: “Is there anything more I can do for you?”, he received the tart retort: “Yes. Keep quiet.”  That view was shared by Clement Attlee (1883–1967; prime minister of the UK 1945-1951) who often had cause to be annoyed by Laski giving interviews and issuing public statements contradicting official government policy.  After Laski in August 1945 made a series of embarrassing public remarks regarding potential socialist revolutions (in countries where the government wouldn't welcome such things), Attlee sent a famously blunt letter: “You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government... I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.”  Unlike his predecessor in 10 Downing Street (Winston Churchill), Attlee used as few words as possible but few failed to understand his meaning.  Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) first saw Attlee at the Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945) and thought him unimpressive, remarking: “Mr Attlee does not look like a man hungry for power” but his mild-mannered countenance was deceptive; in office he proved quite ruthless.

Winds of change: Left: Winston Churchill, left, Harry S Truman (1884–1972; POTUS 1945-1953, centre) and comrade Stalin, right) and Right:, Clement Attlee, left, Harry S Truman, centre and comrade Stalin, right, Potsdam Conference, July & August 1945.  Standing behind the heads of government are (left to right), Fleet Admiral William Leahy (1875–1959; Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief (POTUS) 1942-1945, Ernest Bevin, James Byrnes (1882–1972; US Secretary of State 1945–1947) and comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956).  Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) valued Admiral Leahy’s advice on military and political matters but didn’t rely on his views on physics.  Famously, the admiral’s view of the Manhattan Project (developing the first nuclear weapons) was it would “…be a failure and I say that as an explosives expert”.  He was of course proved wrong but his reputation didn’t suffer.

Held in Brandenburg's Cecilienhof Palace in what would soon become the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic; the old East Germany, 1949-1990)), was the last of the three (following Tehran, 28 November-1 December 1943 & Yalta, 4-11 February 1945) World War II (1939-1945) meetings of the heads of government of the UK, US & USSR.  Truman and comrade Stalin attended for the duration while Churchill represented the UK until 24 July, leaving for London the following day to be present for the declaration the general election results.  He left without saying farewell to Truman and Stalin because he expected to be re-elected and return within days.  Instead, in a landslide, the Conservatives were defeated and, on 28 July, the Labour Party’s prime minister Attlee flew to Potsdam for the conference’s resumption.  The defeat provoked a variety of reactions within the Soviet delegation.  Comrade Stalin, who had no particular objection to elections, believing “it mattered not who voted but rather who counted the votes”, was surprised, having assumed the Conservative Party would have “fixed” the result while Churchill’s personal physician noted in his diary the comment of one female Soviet soldier who, on hearing the news, said she expected Mr Attlee would “…now have Mr Churchill shot”.  On 29 July, leaving Chequers (the prime minister’s Buckinghamshire country house) for what he assumed would be the last time, Churchill signed “finis” in the visitors’ book but was too pessimistic, returning to office in 1951 and staying (despite a severe stroke in 1953), until 1955, resisting the efforts by many of his colleagues to “prise him out”. 

A sincere form of flattery: North American F-86 Sabre (first flown October 1947, left) and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (first flown December 1947, right).

A well-crafted amalgam of technology stolen from the West (the airframe construction techniques from the US, the jet-engine a blatant copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene and the aerodynamics from German research during World War II), the USSR’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was a short-range interceptor, the appearance of which in the skies of the Korean War (1950-1953) theatre was such a shock to the UN (United Nations) forces that the USAF (US Air Force) had to scramble to assemble squadrons of North American F-86 Sabres for deployment.  Made in both the USSR and by licensed overseas constructors, the MiG-15 was produced in extraordinary numbers (some sources suggest as many as 17,700) and equipped not only Warsaw Pact (1955-1991, a “mutual-assistance” treaty between the states behind the Iron Curtain within Moscow’s sphere of influence; it was formed in response to NATO) militaries, some three dozen air forces eventually using the type; it remained in front-line service well into the 1960s.  Simple, robust and economical to operate, they proved ideal as jet-trainers because the predictable characteristics made them forgiving in novice hands; in private ownership, many still fly.  Soviet consumer goods of the post-war years may have been of dubious quality and often in short supply (shoes for example were available in black or brown but brown was usually out-of-stock) but the MiGs were well-built and numerous.

The MiG-15’s NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the trans-Atlantic alliance formed in 1949 as a defensive system for Western Europe designed (in the phrase of General Lord (Hastings “Pug”) Ismay (1887–1965; secretary general of NATO 1952–1957): “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”) reporting name was “Fagot”.  Officially, NATO reporting names have no linguistic or etymological significance, being chosen (1) with an initial letter indicating type (B=bomber; F=fighter; C=commercial & cargo; H=helicopter; M= miscellaneous) and (2) a one-syllable name for propeller aircraft and a two-syllable name for jets.  Fagot was just another reporting name picked from NATO’s list of the possible for allocation to fighters.

Fairytale of New York (1987) is a song by the Irish pop-band The Pogues, augmented for the occasion by the late Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000).  One stanza included the lines:

You're a bum

You're a punk

You're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Happy Christmas your arse

I pray God it's our last

The offending (in the sense of “offensive”) line obviously was: “You cheap lousy faggot” and for many years, every Christmas, there was in England an almost ritualistic argument about whether it was appropriate to play the piece on radio, a matter of some interest because Fairytale of New York frequently was voted the nation’s most popular Christmas song, something displeasing many reverend and right reverend gentlemen although Lambeth Palace seems never to have commented on the squabble.  In the late 1980s, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) seemed unconcerned at the possibility of a gay slur being thought at least implied but found the anatomical slang offensive, asking that “arse” be replaced with “ass”, a liberal approach compared with the old BBC tradition of outright bans (a policy that endured long after Sir John Reith's (later Lord Reith, 1889–1971; BBC Director-General 1927-1938) era) but, in the 1990s, sensitivities shifted to gender and, in subsequent live performances, MacColl sometimes adjusted the lyrics further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard".  Since then, broadcasts have varied in the version carried, the BBC even permitting all or some of “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” on certain outlets but not others.  There was also use of the old practice “bleeping out” (actually scrambling) “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” as required and even today it's said to be unpredictable just which version will be played.  It did seem one of the more improbable battlefields of the culture wars but was emblematic of the new censorship.  Although, in the context of the song, it was obvious “faggot” was being used in the old sense of meaning “someone worthless” rather than “a bit of a homosexual”, the objection was to the very word which many activists demand should be proscribed, the same fate suffered by “niggardly”, a word with an etymology as unrelated to the notorious “N-word” as the meaning.

Anagoge

Anagoge (pronounced an-uh-goh-jee)

(1) The spiritual or mystical interpretation of a word or passage beyond the literal, allegorical or moral sense (especially in Biblical criticism); A form of allegorical interpretation of Scripture that seeks hidden meanings regarding the future life.

(2) A spiritual interpretation or application of words (following the tradition with the Scriptures.

(3) In psychology, deriving from, pertaining to, or reflecting the moral or idealistic striving of the unconscious.

(4) The mystical interpretation or hidden sense of words.

1350-1400: From the Middle English anagoge, from the Late Latin anagōgē, from the Medieval Latin anagōgia & anagogicus from the Ancient Greek ἀναγωγή (anagōgḗ) (elevation; an uplifting; spiritual or mystical enlightenment), the construct being an- (up) + agōgḗ (feminine of agōgós) (leading), from anagein (to lead up, lift up), the construct being ana- (up) + agein (to lead, put in motion) from the primitive Indo-European root ag- (to drive, draw out or forth, move).  In theology, the adjective anagogical was from the early sixteenth century the more commonly used form, explaining the ways in which passages from Scripture had a “secondary, spiritual sense”.  The idea of a “spiritual, hidden, allegorical or mystical meaning” spread to literature and other fields where it operates as a special form of allegorical interpretation.  The alternative spelling is anagogy.  Anagoge is a noun, anagogic & anagogical are adjectives and anagogically is an adverb; the noun plural is anagoges.

Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the Baths of Caracalla, depicted writing Prometheus Unbound, oil on canvas, painted posthumously, Joseph Severn (1793–1879), Rome, Italy, 1845.

In literary analysis, there does seem a fondness for classifying methods into groups of fours.  Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) was an English novelist and poet but despite a background in literature and little else, through family connections he was in 1819 appointed an administrator in the East India Company (which “sort of” ran British India in the years before the Raj).  It was an example of the tradition of “amateurism” much admired by the British establishment, something which didn’t survive the harsher economic realities of the late twentieth century although some still affect the style.  Despite being untrained in such matters, his career with the company was long and successful so he must have had a flair for the business although his duties were not so onerous as to preclude him from continuing to write both original compositions and works of literary analysis.  In 1820 he published Four Ages of Poetry which was regarded as a “provocative” and although a serious critique, the tone was whimsical, poetry classified into four periods: iron, gold, silver & brass.  His friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) understood the satire but seems to have been appalled anyone would treat his art with such flippancy, quickly penning the retaliatory essay Defence of Poetry although the text was unfinished and remained unpublished until 1840, almost two decades after his death.  It’s remembered now for its final sentence: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”  With that, the few thousand souls on the planet who buy (and presumably read) poetry collections might concur but for the many more who can’t tell the difference between a masterpiece and trite doggerel, it may sound either a conceit or a threat.

Peacock not treating poets and their oeuvre which what they believed was due reverence left a mark and while Shelly died before he could finish his reply, more than a century later the English poet & academic literary I.A. Richards (1893–1979) in Science and Poetry (1926) still was moved to defend the poetic turf.  Although approvingly quoting the words of English poet (and what would now be called a “social commentator”) Matthew Arnold (1822–1888): “The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay.  There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve.  Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it.  But for poetry the idea is everything.”, he nevertheless admitted “Extraordinary claims have often been made for poetry…”  Tellingly too, he acknowledged those claims elicited from many “astonishment” and the “more representative modern view” of the future of poetry would be that it’s “nil”.  Modern readers could decide for themselves whether that was as bleak as Peacock’s conclusion: “A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community.  He lives in the days that are past... In whatever degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study and it is a lamentable thing to see minds, capable of better things, tunning to seed in the spacious indolence of these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion.”  Take that poets.

Peacock's second novel was the Regency-era three volume novel Melincourt (1817).  It was an ambitious work which explored issues as diverse as slavery, aspects of democracy and potential for currency destabilization inherent in the issue of paper money.  Another theme was the matter of differentiating between human beings and other animals, a central character being Sir Oran Haut-ton, an exquisitely mannered, musically gifted orangutan standing for election to the House of Commons.  The idea was thus of “an animal mimicking humanity” and the troubled English mathematician Dr Alan Turing (1912–1954) read Melincourt in 1948, some twelve months before he published a paper which included his “imitation game” (which came to be called the “Turing test”).  Turing was interested in “a machine mimicking humanity” and what the test involved was a subject reading the transcript of a natural-language conversation between a human and a machine, the object being to guess which interlocutor was the machine.  The test was for decades an element in AI (artificial intelligence) research and work on “natural language” computer interfaces but the field became a bit of a minefield because it was so littered with words like “feelings”, learning”, “thinking” and “consciousness”, the implications of which saw many a tangent followed.  Of course, by the 2020s the allegation bots like ChatGPT and character.ai have been suggesting their interlocutors commit suicide means it may be assumed that, at least for some subjects, the machine may have assumed a convincing human-like demeanour.  The next great step will be in the matter of thinking, feelings and consciousness when bio-computers are ready to be tested.  Bio-computers are speculative hybrids which combine what digital hardware is good at (storage, retrieval, computation etc) with a biological unit emulating a brain (good at thinking, imagining and, maybe, attaining self-awareness and thus consciousness).

Westminster Bridge And Abbey (1813), oil on canvas by William Daniell (1769–1837).

There’s more than one way to read Richards and it may be tacitly he accepted poetry had become something which would be enjoyed by an elite while others could spend their lives in ignorance of its charms, citing the sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth (1770–1850) as an experience for “the right kind of reader”.  So there it is: those who don’t enjoy poetry are the “wrong” kind of reader so to help the “right kind of reader”, Richards also came up with a foursome.  In Practical Criticism (1929) he listed the “four different meanings in a poem”: (1) the sense (what actually is said, (2) feeling (the writer's emotional attitude to what they have written), (3) tone (the writer's attitude towards their reader and (4) intention (the writer's purpose, the effect they seek to achieve).

A vision from Dante's Inferno: The Fifth Circle (1587) by Stradanus (1523-1605)), depicting Virgil and Dante on the River Styx in the fifth circle of Hell where the wrathful are for eternity condemned to splash around on the surface, fighting each other.  Helping the pair cross is the infernal ferryman Phlegyas.  Stradanus was one of the many names under which the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet painted, the others including Giovanni della Strada, Johannes della Strada, Giovanni Stradano, Johannes Stradano, Giovanni Stradanus, Johannes Stradanus, Jan van Straeten & Jan van Straten.

In literary theory, anagoge is one the classic “four levels of meaning” and while there is no consensus about the origins of the four, it’s clear there was an awareness of them manifest in the Middle Ages.  It was Dante (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) in his Epistola a Cangrande (Epistle XIII to Cangrande della Scala (described usually as Epistle to Cangrande)) who most clearly explained the operation of the four.  Written in Latin sometime before 1343, the epistle was the author’s letter to his patron Cangrande della Scala (1291–1329), an Italian aristocrat and scion of the family which ruled Verona between 1308-1387; it was a kind of executive summary of the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)) and an exposition of its structure.  Dante suggested the work could be analysed in four ways which he distinguished as (1) the literal or historical meaning, (2) the moral meaning, and (3) the allegorical meaning and (4) the anagogical.

Among scholars of Dante the epistle is controversial, not for the content but the matter of authenticity, not all agreeing it was the author who wrote the text, the academic factions dividing thus: (1) Dante wrote it all, (2) Dante wrote none of it and (3) Dante wrote the dedication to his patron but the rest of the text is from the hand of another and it’s left open whether that content reflected the thoughts of Dante as expressed to the mysterious scribe or it was wholly the creation of the “forger”.  Even AI (artificial intelligence) tools have been used (a textual analysis of the epistle, Divine Comedy and other material verified to have been written by Dante) and while the process produced a “probability index”, the findings seemed not to shift factional alignments.  Dante’s authorship is of course interesting but the historical significance of the “four levels of meaning” concept endures in literary theory regardless of the source.

First edition of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan (1628–1688).

So the critics agreed the anagogical meaning of a text was its spiritual, hidden, or mystical meaning so anagoge (or anagogy) was a special form of allegorical interpretation.  Whether it should be thought a subset or fork of allegory did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries trouble some who argued the anagogue was a wholly separate layer of meaning if the subject was biblical or otherwise religious but merely a type of allegorical interpretation if applied to something secular; that’s a debate unlikely to be staged now.  However, given the apparent overlap between anagogical and allegorical, just which should be used may seem baffling, especially if the work to which the concept is being applied has a religious flavor.  There is in the Bible much allegory (something which seems sometimes lost on the latter-day literalists among the US Republican Party’s religious right-wing) but only some can be said truly to be anagogic and although the distinction can at the margins become blurred, that’s true also of other devotional literature.  The distinction is more easily observed of less abstract constructions such John Bunyan in The Pilgrim's Progress calling his protagonist “Christian”, the choice not merely a name but symbolic of the Christian soul’s journey to salvation, hinted at by the book’s full title being The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come.  For something to be judged anagogical, the text needs to look beyond the literal and moral senses to its ultimate, transcendent, or eschatological significance, illustrated by applying the four-fold technique (literal, moral, allegorical & anagogical) to the biblical description of Jerusalem which deconstructs as: (1) Literal (the actual physical city in history), (2) Allegorical (the Church), (3) Moral (the soul striving to find a path to God and (4) Anagogical (the heavenly Jerusalem, the final destiny of those humanity who kept the faith).  The point of the anagoge was thus one of ultimate destiny or divine fulfilment: heaven, salvation, forgiveness and eternal life.

That does not however mean the anagogical is of necessity teleological.  Teleology was from the New Latin teleologia a construct from the Ancient Greek τέλος (télos) (purpose; end, goal, result) genitive τέλεος (téleos) (end; entire, perfect, complete) + λόγος (lógos) (word, speech, discourse).  In philosophy, it was the study of final causes; the doctrine that final causes exist; the belief that certain phenomena are best explained in terms of purpose rather than cause (a moral theory that maintains that the rightness or wrongness of actions solely depends on their consequences is called a teleological theory).  The implications which could be found in that attracted those in fields as diverse as botany & zoology (interested in the idea purpose is a part of or is apparent in nature) and creationists (anxious to find evidence of design or purpose in nature and especially prevalent in the cult of ID (intelligent design), a doctrine which hold there is evidence of purpose or design in the universe and especially that this provides proof of the existence of a designer (ie how to refer to God without using the “G-word”)).  Rationalists (and even some who were somewhere on the nihilism spectrum) accepted the way the phrase was used in philosophy & biology but thought the rest weird.  It was fine to accept Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) point the eye exists for the purpose of allowing creatures to see or that it’s reasonable to build a theory like utilitarianism which judges actions by the outcomes or goals achieved but to suggest what is life of earth is an end, purpose, or goal which can be explained only as the work of a “creator” was ultimately just “making stuff up”.  So to reductionists (1) the allegorical was “means something else”, (2) the anagogical was “points upward to our ultimate spiritual destiny” and (3) the teleological was “explained by its end or purpose”.

Anagoge (pronounced an-uh-goh-jee) should not be confused with Anna Gogo (pronounced an-uh-goh-goh, left), a chartered engineer at Red Earth Engineering or Anna Go-Go (pronounced an-uh-goh-goh, right), persona of the proprietor of Anna's Go-Go Academy (a go-go dancing school).  Ms Go-Go is also a self-described “crazy cat lady” and the author of Cat Lady Manifesto (2024); she is believed to be high on J.D. Vance’s (b 1984; US vice president since 2025) enemies list.  Note the armchair's doilies, a cat lady favorite.

Anna & Goggomobil TS 250.

There is also Anna's Gogo which is "Anna explaining the Goggomobil TS 250 Coupé” (in Russian).  The TS 250 was a version of the Goggomobil two-door sedan, one of the many “microcars” that emerged in post-war Europe.  First displayed in 1954 by Bavaria-based Hans Glas GmbH of Dingolfing, the Goggomobil T 250 sedan was about as conventional in appearance as microcars got and its configuration (RWD (rear-wheel-drive) with a rear-mounted 245 cm³, air-cooled parallel twin engine) was not unusual, the economy of production made possible by adapting for four (sometime three) wheeled use mechanical components from motor-cycles.  Although rising prosperity, increased average road-speeds and safety concerns ultimately doomed the sector (in its original form although it survived in an urban niche and there’s been something of a modern revival), more than 200,000 of the little sedans (some with displacements a large as 392 cm³ which can be thought of (loosely) as the “muscle car” or “big block” version) manufactured, production finally ending in 1969.

Glas publictity shot for 1955 Goggomobil T 250 (left) and 1957 Goggomobil TS 250 Coupé (right).

The TS coupé appeared three years after the sedan and used the formula which for more than a century has proved profitable for the industry: Take the platform of a prosaic, mass-market car and drape atop a “more stylish and sporty” body, sometimes with (a little) more power and always a higher price.  The approach was in 1964 exemplified by the original Ford Mustang but the TS 250 was unusual in that to achieve the desired style, the coupé was actually longer than the sedan (3,035 mm (119.5 inches) vs 2,900 mm (114.2 inches) but describing the accommodation as “2+2” was more accurate to modern eyes than the “full four-seater” claim attached to the sedan although, in the era, it wasn’t unusual for families of five or more to be crammed inside.  Like the sedans, the coupés were offered in “muscle car spec” and on the Autobahns, if given long enough and without too many aboard, over 100 km/h (60 mph) was possible.

1959 Goggomobil Dart.

The platform also provided the underpinnings for the quirkiest of the breed, the Goggomobil Dart a fibreglass-bodied “microcar roadster” developed in Australia, with what seems now a remarkable 700-odd sold between 1959 to 1961.  Even when using the “big 392” (not to be confused with the 392 cubic inch (6.4 litre) Chrysler Hemi V8 which in the US had just ended production), it wasn’t “fast” but, weighing only 345 kg (761 lb), with a small frontal area and what was at the time industry-leading aerodynamic efficiency, it was lively enough in urban use and, on short circuits, some even appeared in competition.  The slippery lines however, while adding a little to top speed, hadn't benefited from wind-tunnel testing to ensure downforce was sufficient for high speed stability and even at around the 70 mph (110 km/h) the specially tuned versions could reach on race tracks, the drivers reported "front-end lift" and unpredictable directional stability.  All things considered, it was probably just as well the factory stopped at 392 cm³.

The last Glas Goggomobil, Dingolfing, Bavaria FRG, 25 June, 1969.

Between 1955 and 1969, much changed in the FRG; to illustrate the point the 1955 Porsche 356A may be compared to the 1969 917.  The little Goggomobil however continued serenely on, the last visually little different from the first and even the larger displacement versions were almost indistinguishable although, over the years, there were incremental improvements including, as early as 1957, a second windscreen wiper and wind-up windows replacing the old sliders.  Structurally, the only significant change came in 1964 when the rear-hinged suicide doors were replaced by the front-hinged units which were by then almost universal.  However, the Goggomobil TL (Transporter, 1956-1965) being a van with sliding doors, continued unaffected.  Had Goggomobil’s range included a van with front-hinged doors, they might have taken the same approach as Fiat did with the contemporary Furgoncino (small van) which was based on the Cinquecento (500, 1957-1975).  The Furgoncino was a variant of the Giardiniera (literally gardener (female form) but used for such vehicles in the sense of “related to the garden” (ie something practical for gardeners and such)).  Because the Giardiniera was listed by the authorities as a commercial vehicle, it was exempt from the requirement to adopt front-hinged doors and thus to the end of production retained the suicide doors.  After the Giardiniera was removed from the Fiat catalogue in 1968, production was taken over by Autobianchi, the last leaving the line in 1977.  

Gogo Anime.

GogoAnime is an online streaming site for anime and related TV content (the distinction between the genres escapes most but it's well-established so must be real) which maintains a large library of anime content “ranging from classic titles to the latest releases” and for international audiences offers both “dubbed” (voice in various languages) and “subbed” (on-screen sub-titles in various languages) versions although there's a sub-set of “hard-core” aficionados for whom that will mean little because they know the best way to watch anime is with the sound muted.  Reviewers of GogoAnime praise its “intuitive and user-friendly interface” which makes streaming an effortless experience and it does appear the more disturbing anime content (much of which is available on physical media “off the shelf” in Japanese convenience stores) isn’t hosted.  The lawfulness of GogoAnime offering “free streaming” of commercially released product seems murky so gogo-scrapers should probably stream while they still can.

Although long in the toolbox of theologians & Biblical scholars, anagogical analysis became an element for critics of poetry and, as the post-modernists taught us, everything is text so it can be applied to anything.  One case-study popular in teaching was George Orwell’s (1903-1950) Animal Farm (1945) and that’s because there’s a interesting C&C (compare & contrast) exercise in working out the anagoge first in Orwell’s original book and then in the film versions distributed in post-war Europe, the fun in that being the film rights were purchased by the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) which prevailed upon the makers to alter the ending so the capitalist class didn’t look so bad.  By conventional four-way analysis, Animal Farm traditionally is broken down as (1) Literal meaning: A tale of the revolt of the animals against their human overlords, and the outcome of that revolt, (2) Moral meaning: Power tends to corrupt'; (c) Allegorical meaning: Major=comrade Lenin; Napoleon=comrade Stalin; Snowball=comrade Trotsky; Jones=corrupt capitalist owners of the means of production & distribution.

The Canyons, Cinema Poster.

Although theologians and literary critics alike prefer to apply their analytical skills to material densely packed with obscure meanings and passages impenetrable to most, their techniques yield results with just about any text, even something as deliberately flat and affectless like The Canyons (Paul Schrader’s (b 1946) film of 2013 with a screenplay by Bret Easton Ellis (b 1964)) one intriguing aspect of which was naming a central character “Christian” although unlike Bunyan’s (1628–1688) worthy protagonist seeking salvation in The Pilgrim's Progress, Ellis’s creation was an opportunistic, nihilistic, manipulative sociopath.  The author seems never to have discussed any link between the two Christians, one on a path to salvation, the other mid-descent into a life of drugs, sex, and violence.  It may be it was just too mischievously tempting to borrow the name of one of Christendom’s exemplars of redemption and use it for so figure so totally amoral and certainly it was a fit with the writer’s bleak view of Hollywood.  Structurally, the parallels were striking, Bunyan’s Christian trekking from the City of Destruction to Celestial City whereas Ellis has his character not seeking salvation but remaining in Hollywood on his own path of destruction, affecting both those around him and ultimately him too.  In interviews, Ellis said he chose the name after reading the E. L. James (b 1963) novel Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) in which Christian Grey was a central character and The Canyons does share more contemporary cultural touch-points with the novel than with Bunyan’s work.

A Lindsay Lohan GIF from The Canyons.

(1) Literal or Historical Meaning (a trust-fund movie producer exercises control over his girlfriend while being entangled in transactional and destructive relationships with others in a decadent Hollywood; (2) Moral Meaning: Christian’s controlling, voyeuristic cruelty and his girlfriend’s compromises illustrate the corrosion of moral agency induced by narcissism and a superficial, consumerist culture); (3) Allegorical Meaning (The Canyons is built as a microcosm of what Hollywood is imagined to be, Christian representing the ruthless producer; Tara the girlfriend as the powerless talent unable to escape from a web of exploitation and other characters as collateral damage.  The shuttered cinemas in inter-cut shots serve as allegory for the death of cinema, replaced by shallow, formulaic “product”; the film ultimately less about the two-dimensional characters than the descent of a culture to a moral wasteland and (4) Anagogical Meaning (The film is an eschatology of cultural decay; art corrupted by money, leaving something alive but spiritually dead, something which some choose to map onto late-stage capitalism sustained by atomized, voyeuristic consumption with human life cast adrift from moral responsibility or even its recognition).  Of course for moral theologians accustomed to dancing on the heads of pins, an anagogical viewing of The Canyons might allow one to see some hint of something redemptive and the more optimistic might imagine it as a kind of warning of what may be rather than what is, encouraging us to resist in the hope of transcendence.  That’s quite a hope for a place depicted as owing something to what’s found in Dante’s nine circles.