Condign

Condign (pronounced kuhn-dahyn)

(1) Well-deserved; fitting; suitable; appropriate; adequate (usually now of punishments).

(2) As condign merit (meritum de condign), a concept in Roman Catholic theology signifying a goodness that has been bestowed because of the actions of that person

(3) As “Project Condign”, a (now de-classified) top-secret study into UFOs (unidentified flying objects, known also as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon)) undertaken by the UK government's Defence Intelligence Staff between 1997-2000.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English condign, & condigne (well-deserved, merited) from the Anglo-French, from the Old French condign (deserved, appropriate, equal in wealth), from the Latin condignus (wholly worthy), the construct being con- + dignus (worthy; dignity), from the primitive from Indo-European root dek- (to take, accept).  .  The Latin con- was from the Proto-Italic kom- and was related to the preposition cum (with).  In Latin, the prefix was used in compounds (1) to indicate a being or bringing together of several objects and (2) to indicate the completeness, perfecting of any act, and thus gives intensity to the signification of the simple word.  It's believed the UK's MoD (Ministry of Defence) chose “Project Condign” as the name for its enquiry into UFOs (1) because (1) the military like code names which provide no obvious clue about the nature of the matter(s) involved and (2) in the abstract, it conveyed the notion the investigation would provide a measured, proportionate, and sober assessment of the issue (ie a response commensurate with the evidence, not an endorsement of unsubstantiated speculation or explanations delving into the extra-terrestrial or supernatural).  Condign is an adjective, condignity & condignness are nouns and condignly is an adverb; the noun plural is condignities.

In Middle English, condign was used of rewards as well as punishment, censure etc, but by circa 1700 it had come to be applied almost exclusively of punishments, usually in the sense of “deservedly severe”.  Thus used approvingly, the adjectival comparative was “more condign”, the “superlative “most condign”.  That means the synonyms included “fitting”, “appropriate”, “deserved”, “just”, “merited” etc with the antonyms being “excessive”, “inappropriate” & “undeserved”, the latter set expressed by the negative incondign.  However, a phenomenon in the language is that words which have, since their use in Middle English, undergone a meaning shift so complete as to render the original meaning obsolete, can in ecclesiastical use retain the original sense.  In the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, meritum de condigno (condign merit) is that due to a person for some good they have done.  As a general principle, it’s held to be applied to “merit before God”, the Almighty binding Himself, as it were, to reward those who do his will; a kind of holy version of social contract theory.  Among the more simple aspects of Christian theology, the conditions for condign merit are: (1) holding oneself in a state of grace and (2) performing morally good actions.  Not transferable, the beneficiary can be only the person who performs the good act with condign merit based on the revealed fact that God has promised such a reward and as a reward it’s accumulative, each individual condignly meriting an increase of the virtue of faith by every act of faith performed in the state of grace.

Pragmatic parish priests probably are inclined to explain condign merit as a way of encouraging kindness to others (linking it to the notion of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” which is the essence of the Christian morality) but the theologians stress the significance of meritum de condign is it refers to merit based on justice rather than mere generosity of spirit.  It seems a fine distinction and doubtless is, both to doer of deed and beneficiary but, because the act is performed in a state of grace and is proportionate by God’s own ordinance to the reward promised, it’s a genuine claim based on justice, God rewarding such acts not out of mere benevolence but because freely He has so bound himself.

Project Condign: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region (in three volumes).  It turns out they're not out there.

The theologians manage to add layers by stressing meritum de condign can apply only to an individual in a state of grace (and thus justified and acting under sanctifying grace); without grace, no strictly meritorious claim on God is possible.  God may still be generous, but the reward will be granted under another head of power.  Additionally, the act must freely be performed and motivated by charity (love of God); mere kindness in the absence of this love not reaching the threshold.  Unusually, the reward of condign merit is by virtue of a Divine promise, the “justice” not “natural” but “covenantal”, God having imposed upon himself the obligation of reward, therefore it would be incongruum (from the Latin, an inflection of incongruus (inconsistent, incongruous, unsuitable)) for him not to do so and unlike the state in the social contract, God regards Himself truly as bound and the proportion is by divine ordination (ie the proportion between act and reward exists only because God has established it; it is not intrinsic to the act itself.

In certain aspects, the comparison with later legal traditions is quite striking.  Condign merit can apply variously to (1) an increase in charity, (2) an increase of sanctifying grace and (3) heavenly glory (eternal life), insofar as it is the consummation of grace already possessed but crucially, even condign merit presupposes grace entirely: the grace that enables the act is itself unmerited.  In other words, God and the church expect a certain basic adherence and this alone is not enough to deserve condign merit.  The companion term is meritum de congruo (congruous merit) in which a fitting or appropriate reward may be granted but that will be based on God’s generosity rather than being the self-imposed obligation that is condign merit.  If searching for a metaphor, condign merit may be imagined as something given according to a salutatory schedule while congruous merit is more like an ex gratia (a learned borrowing from Latin ex grātiā (literally “out of grace”)) payment (a thing not legally required but given voluntarily).

Santo Tomás de Aquino (Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1476) ,egg tempera on poplar panel by Carlo Crivelli (circa 1430-circa 1495) in a style typical of religious portraiture at at time when some Renaissance painters were still much influenced by late Gothic decorative sensibility.  This piece was from the upper tier of a polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli in 1476 completed for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche.

Even among the devotional, in the twenty-first century all that may sound mystical or a tiresome theological point but there was a time in Europe when many much were concerned about avoiding Hell and going to Heaven with the Medieval church was there to explain the rules and mechanisms.  The carefully crafted distinction was made by the Italian Dominican friar, philosopher & theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in the Summa Theologiae (Summary of Theology, a work still unfinished by the time of the author’s death) and re-affirmed, essentially unaltered, during Session VI (Decree on Justification) of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).  In modern practice, priests don’t much bother their flock with Aquinas’s finely honed thoughts and instead exhort them to acts of kindness, rather than dwelling too much on abstractions like whether God will reward them by virtue of obligation or generosity, the important message being the Almighty remains sole source of both grace and reward, thus the importance to keep in a state of grace with him.

Google ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

So while it has always implied “deserved”, Roman Catholic theologians thus still use “condign” in the context of a “reward for goodness” but in secular use it has for centuries been associated only with punishment and, the more fitting the sentence, the more condign it’s said to be.  As Christianity in the twentieth century began its retreat from Christendom, condign became a rare word and some now list it as archaic although as late as 1926, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler (1858–1933), no great friend of “decorative words” and “elegant variations” though it still worth a descriptive (and cautionary entry: “Condign meant originally ‘deserved’ and could be used in many contexts, with praise for instance as well as with punishment.  It is now used only with words equivalent to ‘punishment’, and means deservedly severe, the severity being the important point, and the desert merely a condition of the appropriateness of the word; that it is an indispensable condition, however, is shown by the absurd effect of: ‘Count Zeppelin’s marvellous voyage through the air has ended in condign disaster’”.

Boris Johnson (right) handling a prize bull (left), Darnford Farm, Banchory, Scotland September, 2019.

Quite what old Henry Fowler would have made of the way the language of Shakespeare and Milton is used on social media and the like easily can be imagined but he’d have been heartened to learn the odd erudite soul still finds a way to splice something like “condign” into the conversation.  One, predictably, was that scholar of Ancient Greek, Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) who, during his tumultuous premiership, needed to rise from his place in the House of Commons to tell honourable members that the withdrawal of the Tory Party whip (“withdrawal of the party whip” a mechanism whereby a MP (Member of Parliament) is no longer recognised as a member of their parliamentary party, even though in some cases they continue for most purposes to belong to the party outside the parliament) from a member accused of sexual misconduct was “condign punishment”.

Mr Johnson was commenting on the case of Rob Roberts (b 1979; MP for Delyn 2019-2024) and while scandal is nothing novel in the House of Commons (and as the matter of Lord Peter "Mandy" Mandelson (b 1953) illustrates, nor is it in the upper house), aspects of the Roberts case were unusual.  In 2021, an independent panel, having found Mr Roberts sexually had harassed a member of his staff recommended he should be suspended from parliament for six weeks.  The panel found he’d committed a “serious and persistent breach of the parliament’s sexual misconduct policy” and although the MP had taken “positive steps”, he’d demonstrated only “limited insight into the nature of his misconduct”, the conclusion being there remained concerns “he does not yet fully understand the significance of his behaviour or the full nature and extent of his wrongdoing.”  Politicians sexually harassing their staff is now so frequent as to be unremarkable but what attracted some interest was that intriguingly, Mr Roberts had identified the problem and it turned out to be the complainant.  When alone together in a car on a constituency visit, the MP had said to him: “I find you very attractive and alluring and I need you to make attempts to be less alluring in the office because it's becoming very difficult for me.”  So it was Mr Roberts who really was the victim and the complainant clearly made an insufficient effort to become “less alluring” because the MP later told the man the advance he had made in the car was “something I would like to pursue, and if you would like to pursue that too it would make me very happy”.  From there, things got worse for the victim (in the sense of the complainant, not the politician).

Official portrait of Rob Roberts, the former honourable member for Delyn.

Mr Roberts had “come out” as gay after 15 years of marriage, the panel noting he’d been “going through several challenges and significant changes in his personal life”, adding these “do not excuse his sexual misconduct”.  Despite his announcement, he also propositioned young female staff members (perhaps he should have “come out” as bisexual), suggesting to one they might: “fool around with no strings”, assuring her that while he “…might be gay… I enjoy … fun times”. In April 2021 the Conservative (Tory) Party had announced that the MP had been "strongly rebuked", but would not lose the whip. Apparently, at the time, it was thought sufficiently condign for him to “undertake safeguarding and social media protection training”.  The next month however, the panel handed down its recommendations and he was “suspended from the services of the house for six weeks”, subsequently losing the Tory whip and had his party membership suspended.  In a confusing coda, after (controversially) returning to the Commons in July 2021, he was re-admitted to the party in October 2021 but was denied the whip, requiring him to sit as an independent until the end of his term.  In the 2024 general election, he stood as an independent candidate in the new constituency of Clwyd East, coming last with 599 votes and losing his deposit.  Privately as well as politically, life for Mr Roberts has been discursive.  After in May 2020 tweeting he was gay and separating from his wife, in 2023, he re-married.

The word even got a run on Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) Fox News, an outlet noted more for short sentences, punchy words and repetition than words verging on the archaic but on what the site admitted was a “slow news day”, took the opportunity to skewer Jay Robert “J.B. Pritzker (b 1965, (Democratic Party governor of US state of Illinois since 2019), noting the part the wealth of the “billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotels fortune” had played in defeating a Republican opponent (it couldn’t resist adding that “money in politics” was something crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) “could tell you more about”).  Fox News’s conclusion was “…the shamelessness and even braggadocio with which Pritzker sought to buy the governorship could be a harbinger of things to come.  But, we suppose, having to serve as governor of Illinois is condign punishment for the offense…”

In happier times: But wherever he is in the world, he remains my best pal!  Mandy’s (pictured here in dressing gown, tête-à-tête with Jeffrey Epstein) entry in the now infamous "birthday book", assembled for the latter’s 50^th birthday in 2003.

The matter of condign punishment has in Westminster of late been much discussed because of revelations of the squalid behaviour of Mandy and his dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019).  Undisputedly, one of politics great networkers, Mandy’s long career in the Labour Party was noted not for any great contribution to national life (although he did good work in the project which was "New Labour" but whether he now should regard that a proud boast or admission of guilt he must decide) or achievements in policy development but blatant self-interest, conflicts of interest and repeated recovery from scandal; twice he was forced to resign from cabinet because of matters classed as “conflict of interest” and his whole adult life has been characterized by seeking association with rich men who, for whatever reason, seem to become anxious to indulge his desire to receive generous hospitality and large sums of cash.  Sir Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007), clearly seeing talent where many others did not, was most forgiving of Mandy’s foibles, twice re-appointing him to cabinet after decided a longer exile would be most incondign and famously once observed his "mission to transform the Labour party would not be complete until it had learned to love Peter Mandelson."  Even Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) who is believed to have existed in a state of mutual loathing with Mandy, was by 2008 in such dire political straits he brought him back to cabinet, solving the problem of finding a winnable seat in the Commons by appointing him to the upper chamber, the House of Lords.  While the presence of the disreputable in the Lords has a tradition dating back centuries, it was thought a sign of the times that Brown “ennobling a grub like Mandelson” to take a seat in the house, where once sat Wellington, Palmerston and Curzon, attracted barely an objection, so jaded by sleaze had the British public become.

Still, even by the standards of Mandy’s troubled past, what emerged from the documents released by the US DoJ (Department of Justice) was shocking.  Not only did it emerge Mandy had lied about the extent of his connections with Epstein but it became clear they had, despite his repeated denials, continued long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida on charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution for which he received an 18 month sentence.  So well connected in the Masonic-like UK Labour party was Mandy (and there have been amusing theories about how he has maintained this influence), it might have been possible to stage yet another comeback from that embarrassment but his life got worse when it was revealed large sums of cash had been passed to him (or the partner who later became his husband) by Epstein, transactions made more interesting still when it emerged Mandy appears to have sent to Epstein classified files to which he gained access by virtue of being a member of cabinet.  More remarkable still was Mandy, while a cabinet minister, appearing to operate as a kind of lobbyist in matter of interest to what was described as: “Mr Epstein and his powerful banking friends”.

In happier times, left to right: Tony Blair, Gordon Blair & Mandy (left) and the mean girls: Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried, b 1985), Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert, b 1982) & Regina George (Rachel McAdams, b 1978) (right).

In the early 1990s, detesting the Tory government, the press were fawning in their admiration and dubbed the New Labour trio "the three musketeers" but they came also to be called: "the good, the bad and the ugly, a collective moniker which may be generous to at least one of them.  There is no truth in the rumor the threesome provided the template for the personalities of the "plastics" in Mean Girls (2004, right) although the idea is tempting because both photographs can be deconstructed thus: Tony & Karen (sincere, well meaning, a bit naïve); Gordon & Gretchen (insecure, desperately wanting to be liked) and Mandy & Regina (evil and manipulative). 

All this was revealed in E-mail exchanges during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) which unfolded between 2008-2012 after the demise of US financial services firm Lehman Brothers (1850-2008), Mandy giving Epstein “advance notice” the EU (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957) would be providing (ie “creating”) a €500bn “bailout” to prevent the collapse of the Euro (the currency used by a number of EU states).  Those familiar with trading on the forex (foreign exchange) markets will appreciate the value of such secret information and, given the trade in global currency dwarfs that in equities, commodities and such, the numbers (and thus the profits and losses) are big.  Pleasingly, in the manner commercial arrangements often are, it was a two-way trade, representations to the UK and US Treasuries arranged in both directions.

Mandy also acted as Epstein’s advisor about “back channel” ways to influence government policy (ie the government of which he was at the time serving in cabinet) and political scientists probably would concede his advice was sage; he suggested to Epstein he should arrange for the chairman of investment bank J.P. Morgan to “mildly threaten” the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer (the finance minister).  What a cabinet minister is by convention (and implied in various statures) obliged to do is promote and defend government policy while assisting in its execution; should they not agree with that policy, they must resign from government.  Clearly, Mandy decided what is called “cabinet solidarity” was a tiresome inconvenience and in an attempt to change cabinet’s policy on a bankers’ bonus tax, made his suggestion which Mr Epstein must have followed because J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon (b 1956; chairman and CEO (chief executive officer) of JPMorgan Chase since 2006) indeed did raise the matter with the chancellor although opinions might differ on whether what he said could be classed as “mildly threatening”.  In his memoir, Alistair Darling (1953–2023; UK Chancellor of the Exchequer 2007-2010) described a telephone call from Mr Dimon and recalled the banker was “very, very angry” about the plan, arguing “..his bank bought a lot of UK debt and he wondered if that was now such a good idea.  I pointed out that they bought our debt because it was a good business deal for them.  He went on to say they were thinking of building a new office in London, but they had to reconsider that now.”  The lobbying didn’t change the chancellor’s mind and the bonus tax was imposed as planned.  Mandy can’t be blamed for that; he did his bit.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

Probably the most amusing of Mandy’s reactions to the revelations about his past related to payments he received from Epstein in 2003-2004 (US$75,000 to Mandy and Stg£10,000 to his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva (the couple married in 2023)).  When late in January, 2026 he resigned from the Labour Party (it’s believed he’d been “tapped on the shoulder” and told he’d be expelled if no letter of resignation promptly was received), he used the usual line adopted these circumstances, saying he wished to spare the party “further embarrassment” and added: “Allegations which I believe to be false that he made financial payments to me 20 years ago, and of which I have no record or recollection, need investigating by me.”  Few seemed to find plausible a man who has such a history of “money grubbing” could fail to recall US$75,000 suddenly being added to his bank balance and, unfortunately for Mandy, various authorities have decided the matters “need investigating by them”. 

In happier times: Mandy (left) with Sir Keir Starmer (right).

One who seems to be taking the betrayals personally is Sir Keir Starmer (b 1962; prime-minister of the UK since 2024) who appointed Mandy as the UK’s ambassador to the US, the prime minister making clear his outrage at the lies Mandy (more than once) told him and his staff during the (clearly inadequate) vetting process.  In one of his more truculent speeches, Sir Keir contrasting himself with Mandy, pointing out that while he’d come late to politics and entered the nasty business with the intention of trying to improve the country, he contrasted that high aim with the long career of Mandy who, it had become clear, viewed “climbing the greasy” pole of public office as a device for personal enrichment.  Hell hath no fury like a prime minister lied to.  Mandy has already resigned his seat in the Lords (now something separate from his possession of the life peerage conferred by Gordon Brown) although, all things considered, that probably was one of history’s less necessary letters.  However, as well as referring his allegedly nefarious conduct to the police and other investigative bodies, the government is said to be drafting legislation to eject Mandy from the Lords and strip him of his noble title: Lord Mandelson.  Given that over the past century odd members of the Lords have been jailed for conduct such as murder, perjury and what was in the statute of 1553 during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) called “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery” yet not been stripped of their titles, the act will be a bit of a novelty but constitutional experts agree it’s within the competence of parliament, needing only the concurrence of both houses. Not since the passage of the Titles Deprivation Act (1917) have peerages been stripped and that statutory removal happened in the unusual circumstances of World War I (1914-1918) when it was thought the notion of Germans and Austrians holding British titles of nobility was not appropriate though it was a measure of the way the establishment resists change that the war had been raging three years before the act finally received royal assent.

The irony of a gay man becoming entangled in the scandals surrounding a convicted child sex trafficker who allegedly supplied men with girls younger than the age of consent has been noted, some dwelling on that with unseemly relish; it was with both enthusiasm and and obvious relief that members of the Labour Party felt finally free to tell journalists (or anyone else who asked) just what they really thought of Mandy, their previously repressed views views tending to a thumbnail sketch which could be précised as: “evil and manipulative”.  More generally, although it was the English common law which did so much to establish the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, in parliament and beyond, the consensus seems already reached that Mandy is “guilty as sin”; it’s a question of to what extent and what’s to be done about it.  That will play out but what may happen sooner is that Sir Keir could be the latest of the many victims of Mandy's machinations over the decades.  For matters unrelated to Mandy, the prime minister had anyway been having a rugged time in the polls and on the floor of the house and all that that has thus far ensured the survival of his leadership is thought to be (1) the lack of an obvious contender in the Labour Party and (2) the ineptitude of the Tory opposition, the talents of its MPs now thought to be as low as at any time in living memory.  Sadly, when discussing the travails of Sir Keir, it notable how many commentators have described him with terms like "decent", "integrity" and "honorable" (not qualities much associated with Mandy) but it remains unclear if the prime minister's commendable virtues will prove enough for his leadership to survive in the clatter of one of the moral panics the English do so well.  Over the thirty-odd years, quite often the Labour Party apparatchiks have had to ponder: “What are we going to do about Mandy?” but this time it’s serious and there will be much effort devoted to combining “damage limitation” with what the baying mob will judge at least adequately condign.

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.