Narratology

Narratology (pronounced nar-uh-tol-uh-jee)

The study of narrative & narrative structure and the ways these affect human perception (with some mission creep over the years).

1967: The construct was narrate +‎ -ology, an Anglicization of the French narratologie, coined by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher & structuralist literary critic Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017), it first appeared in his book Grammaire du Décaméron (1967), a structural analysis of Decameron (The Decameron (1348-1353)) by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375).  Although once thought an arcane appendage to literature and a mere academic abstraction, structuralism and narratology in the 1970s and 1980s became a very popular (and controversial) field and while postmodernism’s historic movement may have passed, the tools are an important part of the “learning” process used by generative AI (artificial intelligence) to produce meaning from the LLM (large language models.)

Title page from a 1620 printing of Decameron.

Boccaccio’s Decameron (literally “ten days”) was a collection of short stories, structured into a hundred tales of seven young women and three young men who had secluded themselves in a villa outside Florence, seeking to avoid the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) then sweeping Europe.  Although not too much should be made of this comparison, the work in some aspects is not dissimilar to reality television, being a mash-up of erotic scenes, set-piece jokes, suspense and unrequited love.  Todorov’s Grammaire du Décaméron was a literary analysis of the work but “grammaire” must be understood as meaning “grammar” in the sense of the structural or narratological principles rather than as its used in its “everyday” sense.  Historians and literary scholars have for centuries regarded Decameron as a valuable document because, written in the Florentine vernacular of the era, although fictional, it’s a kind of “snapshot” of life in what was one of Europe’s many troubled times.  It was Boccaccio who dubbed Dante’s (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)) “divine” (in the sense of “very good” rather than “holy”).

Narrate (to relate a story or series of events (historically in speech or writing)) may for years (or even decades) have been in oral use in English before the first known use in print in 1656, etymologists noting that until the nineteenth century it was stigmatized as “Scottish” (long a slur among the more fastidious) although it’s thought it was derived from the “respectable” narration.  Narrative ((1) a story or account of events or (2) the art, process or technique or telling the story) was in use by the 1440s and was from the Middle French noun & adjective narrative, from the Late Latin narrātīvus (narration (noun) & suitable for narration (adjective)), the construct being narrāt(us) (related, told), past participle of narrāre (to relate, tell, say) + -īvus (the adjectival suffix).  Again, like “narrate”, narrative was once used exclusively of speech or writing but in recent decades the terms have been more widely applied and not restricted to describing the efforts of humans.

Since the nineteenth century, “-ologies” have proliferated.

The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

A narrative is a story and it can run to thousands of pages or appear in a few words on a restaurant menu describing their fish & chips: “Ethically sourced, line-caught Atlantic cod, liberated from the frigid depths, encased in a whisper-light, effervescent golden shroud of our signature micro-foamed artisanal lager batter and served with hand-sliced, elongated potato batons fried to a crisp perfection in sustainably produced vegetable oil.”  In the age of every customer being able to post from their phone a rating and review of a restaurant, wisely, some institutions include a footnote along the lines: “These narratives are a guide and because natural products vary greatly, there will be variation.”  That’s an aspect of narratology, a process which is not the reading and interpretation of individual texts but an attempt to study the nature of “story” itself, as a concept and as a cultural practice or construct.

Crooked Hillary Clinton's book tour (2017).

Narratologists know that what to a narrator can be a narrative, a naratee will receive as spin.  In What Happened (2017), a work of a few dozen pages somehow padded out to a two-inch thick wad of over 500 using the “how to write an Amazon best-seller” template, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) explained who was to blame for her loss in the 2016 US presidential election (spoiler alert: it was everybody except her).

Presumably not comparing what they’re doing with making “fish & chips” sound like something expensive, politicians and their operatives will often describe something they offer as a “narrative” although were mush the same stuff to come from their opponents it might be dismissed as “spin”.  A political narrative functions as a cognitive schema intended to simplify complexity, motivate support and legitimizes particular courses of action.  The concept has a long history but in recent decades the emphasis has been on “simplicity”, something illustrated by comparing a narrative like The Federalist Papers (1878-1788; a collection of several dozen essays advocating the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) with how things are now done (mostly fleshed-out, three-word slogans endlessly repeated).  That descent doesn’t mean both are not narratives in that both are crafted interpretive frame rather than objective descriptions although the extent of the deception obviously had tended to change.  Political spin can also be a narrative and should be thought a parallel stream rather than a tributary; variations on a theme as it were.  Although the purpose may differ (a narrative a storyline intended to set and define and agenda whereas spin is a “damage control” story designed to re-shape perceptions.  Given that, a narrative can be thought of a “macro-management” and spin “micro-management”, both providing fine case-studies for narratologists.

Narratology is a noun; the noun plural is narratologies.  The derived forms are the noun antenarratology (the study of antenarratives and their interplay with narratives and stories), the noun antenarrative (the process by which a retrospective narrative is linked to a living story (the word unrelated to the noun antinarrative (a narrative, as of a play or novel, that deliberately avoids the typical conventions of the narrative, such as a coherent plot and resolution)), the noun  econarratology (an approach to literary criticism combining aspects of ecocriticism (the interdisciplinary study of literature and ecology) and narratology), the noun narratologist (one who (1) studies or (2) practices narratology), the adjective narratological (of or pertaining to narratology) and the adverb narratologically (in terms of narratology).  Remarkably (given the literary theory industry), the adjective narratologistic seems never to have appeared; it can be only a matter of time.

Tzvetan Todorov on the rooftop of Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Barcelona, Spain, November 2014.

Although not a lineal descendent, what Todorov did in Grammaire du Décaméron was in the tradition of Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) work, especially ποιητικῆς (Peri poietikês (De Poetica De Poe in the Latin and traditionally rendered in English as Poetics).  Poetics is notable as the earliest known study of the structure of Greek drama and remains the oldest known text written exclusively in the form of what now would be called literary theory.  To a modern audience the word “poetics” can mislead because the author’s focus was ποιητική (literally “the poetic art”, from ποιητής (poet, author, writer) and his scope encompassed verse drama (comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and the epic.  For centuries, Poetics loomed over the Western understanding of Greek theatre; it was revered by scholars of the late Medieval period and especially the Renaissance and their influence endured.  As far as is known, the Greeks were the first of the tragedians and it’s through the surviving texts of Aristotle that later understandings were filtered but all of his conclusions were based only on the tragedies and such was his historic and intellectual authority that for centuries those theories came to be misapplied and misused, either by mapping them on to all forms of tragedy or using them as exclusionary, dismissing from the canon those works which couldn’t be made to fit his descriptions.  However, as well as being an invaluable historic text explain how Greek theatre handled mimesis (imitation of life, fiction, allegory etc), Poetics genuinely can be read as proto-critical theory and in it lies a framework for structuralism.

Paintings of Claude Lévi-Strauss: Portrait de Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1991 (1991), oil on panel by Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) (left) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (undated), oil on other by Cal Lekie (b 1999).

Narratology as a distinct fork of structuralism does pre-date Todorov’s use of the word in 1967, the seminal work in the parameters of the discipline by Russian folklorist & literary historian of the formalist school Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) who doubtlessly never anticipated “formalism” would come to be weaponized by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Indeed, by the late 1920s the school of formalism had become unfashionable (something which in the Soviet Union could be dangerous for authors) and their works essentially “disappeared” until being re-discovered by structuralists in the 1950s.  In the West, the idea of narratology as the “theory, discourse or critique of narrative or narration” owes a debt to Belgian-born French anthropologist & ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) who defined the structural analysis by narrative as its now understood.  His landmark text Anthropologie structurale (Structural Anthropology (1958)) suggested myths are variations on basic themes and that in their totality (which runs to thousands) their narratives contain certain constant, basic and universal structures by which any one myth can be explained.  In that way, myths (collectively) exist as a kind “language” which can be deconstructed into units or “mythemes” (by analogy with phonemes (an indivisible unit of sound in a given language)).  Although he didn’t pursue the notion of the comparison with mathematics, others did and that (inherently more segmented) field perhaps better illustrates “structural roles” within language in elements which, although individually standing as minimal contrastive units, can be combined or manipulated according to rules to produce meaningful expressions.  As in formal language theory, in mathematical logic, the smallest units are the primitive symbols of a language which can be quantifiers, variables, logical connectives, relation symbols, function symbols or punctuation.  Broken into the individual parts, these need have no (or only minimal) semantic meaning but gain much meaning when assembled or otherwise handled through syntactic combination governed by a recognized grammar (ie although conceptual primitives rather than “building blocks”, complex meaning can be attained by applying axioms and rules).

Azerbaijani folk art, following Layla and Majnun (1188), a narrative poem by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (circa 1141–1209), printed in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928) by Vladimir Propp.  In something of a Russian tradition, there are no known photographs of Propp smiling.

Levi-Strauss’s contribution was that myths can be read in relation to each other rather than as reflecting a particular version, thus the his concept of a kind of “grammar” (the set of relations lying beneath the narrative’s surface), thus the general principle of the “collective existence of myths”, independent of individual thought.  That was of course interesting but the startling aspect was the implication myths as related to other myths rather than truth and reality; they are, in a sense, “outside” decentred, and possess their own truth and logic which, when contemplated in a “traditional” way, may be judged neither truthful nor logical.  In that, Levi-Strauss applied something of the method of Propp who, in Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), “reduced” all folk tales to seven “spheres of action” and 31 fixed elements or “functions” of narrative.  In Propp’s scheme, the function was the basic unit of the narrative “language’ and denoted or referred to the actions which constitute the narrative while the functions tend to follow a logical sequence.  The concept would have been familiar to engineers and shipbuilders but genuinely there was some novelty when applied to literature

Lithuanian semiotician A. J “Julien” Greimas (1917–1992) was among the many academics working in France who found Propp’s reductionism compelling and in Sémantique Structurale Recherche de méthode (Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966)) he further atomized things, apparently seeking something like a “universal macro language”, a grammar of narrative which could be derived from a semantic analysis of sentence structure.  That was as ambitious as it sounds and to replace Propp’s “spheres of action” he suggested the “actant” (or role): a structural unit which is neither character or narrative.  To handle the mechanics of this approach he posited three pairs of binary oppositions which included six actants: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/opponent.  The interactions of these binary oppositions served to account for or describe the three basic patterns which are to be found in narrative: (1) desire, search or aim (subject/object), (2) communication (sender/receiver) and (3) auxiliary support or hindrance (helper/opponent).

An eleven-volume first edition of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (published originally in seven (1913-1927); in the the original French it contained some 1.267 million words.  By comparison, Leo Tolstoy's (1828-1910) War and Peace (1898) ran ran (depending on the edition) to 560-590 thousand.

While Greimas didn’t explicitly claim his model successfully could be mapped on to “any and every” narrative, he does appear to have built his model as a general theory and while not all critics were convinced, it seems generally to have been acknowledged his toolbox would work on a much wider range than that of Propp which did break down as narrative complexity increased.  Another French literary theorist associated with the structural movement was Gérard Genette (1930–2018) and in choosing a case study for his model he described in Discours du récit est un essai de méthode (Narrative Discourse: An essay in method (1972)) he selected Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) (originally translated in English as “Remembrance of Things Past” and of late as “In Search of Lost Time”) which spans many volumes and narrative streams.  This time the critics seemed more convinced and seem to have concluded Genette’s approach was “more accessible” (these things are relative).  Noting the distinctions made in Russian Formalism between fabula (story) & syuzhet (plot), Genette distinguished between récit (the chronological sequence of a narrative’s events), historie (the sequence in which the event actually occurred and narration (the act of narrating itself); atop that framework, he built a complex discussion.  Being a French structuralist, he of course added to the field some new jargon to delight the academy, concluding there were three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the heterodiegetic' (where the narrator is absent from his own narrative), (2) the homodiegetic (the narrator is inside his narrative, as in a story told in the first person) and the autodiegetic (the narrator is inside the narrative and also the main character).  Genene’s approach was thus relational, envisaging narrative as a product or consequence of the interplay of its different components, meaning all and all aspects of narrative can be seen as dependent units (or, debatably, layers).

Narrator & protagonist: Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron in Mean Girls (2004).  What in literary theory is known as homodiegetic narration is in film production usually called “subjective narration” or “first-person narration”, realized usually in a “voice-over narration by the protagonist”.

In formulating his three categories Genene nodded to Aristotle and Plato (circa 427-348 BC), the ancient worthies distinguishing three basic kinds of narrator: (1) the speaker or writer using their own voice, (2) (b) one who assumes the voice of another or others and (3) one who uses both their own voice and that of others.  These categories need not be exclusive for a story may begin in the voice of a narrator who may then introduce another narrator who proceeds to tell the story of characters who usually have their own voices and one or more of them may turn to narration.  Structurally (and even logically), there’s no reason why such a progression (or regression) cannot be infinite.  Although it’s obvious the term “narrate” denotes the person to whom a narrative is addressed, just because there is a narrative, it need not be axiomatic a narratee is present or ever existed, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) in The Three Voices of Poetry (1953-1954) discerning three modes (voices) of poetic expression: (1) the poet speaking to himself, a personal, often obscure meditation, (2) the poet addressing an audience, aiming to teach, persuade, or amuse and (3) the poet creating a dramatic character, as in verse drama, something demanding complex communication between imagined characters.  Eliot argued that “good” poetry often was a blend of these voices and distinguishing them helps in understanding a poem's social and artistic purpose, beyond its mere self-expression.  However, Eliot did note that in “talking to himself”, the writer could also be “talking to nobody”.  He was at pains also to point out that when speaking in the third voice, the poet is saying not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.  More than many, Eliot knew narrative was not always reliable but the techniques of narratology (and structuralism generally) exist for purposes other than determining truth.

Roland Barthes (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas by Benoit Erwann Boucherot (b 1983).

Layers in narrative structure were identified by the French philosopher & literary theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and his work had great appeal, something of an academic cult once surrounded him and, almost half a century after his death, he retains a following.  In Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits (Introduction to Structural Analysis of Narrative (1966)), Barthes presumed a hierarchy of levels existed within narrative, suggesting that, up to a point, they can be discussed separately.  Narrative (at least for this purpose), he conceived as a “long sentence”, just as every constative (in linguistics, pertaining to an utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false) sentence can be the “rough outline” of a short narrative.  Barthes’ model was more building block-like in that he selects basic units of narrative (such as “function” & “index”, functions constituting a chain of acts while indices are a kind of metadata containing information about characters.

François Mitterrand (1984), acrylic on canvas by Bryan Organ (b 1935).

On X (formerly known as Twitter), one tweeter analysed the images on Barthes which exists and the indexed web, finding in 72% he was smoking a cigarette or cigar.  The statistical risks associated with routinely inhaling a known carcinogen have for decades been well-known but Barthes didn’t live long enter the age of “peak statistical risk”.  In February, 1980, having just taken lunch with François Mitterrand (1916–1996; President of France 1981-1995) in a restaurant on Paris’s Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, Barthes was using a zebra crossing on the Rue des Ecoles when knocked down by a laundry van; never recovering from his injuries, he died a month later.  The van’s driver was one Yvan Delahov, of Bulgarian nationality who tested positive for alcohol, but his reading of 0.6 fell below the legal maximum of 0.8; admitting he was late delivering his shirts, he claimed he’d not exceeded 60 km/h (37.3) mph.  At the time, Barthes was carrying no identity documents but was identified his colleague, the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (first edition, 1957).

Finally must be acknowledged the contribution of Canadian literary critic & literary theorist Northrop Frye (1912–1991) whose Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is regarded still as one of the more “remarkable and original” (in the words of the English historian and critic J.A. Cuddon (1928-1966)) works of literary theory in the English-speaking world.  In the narrow technical sense, Frye's theory is not structuralist (something which doubtless burnished its reputation among many) but it certainly contains strands which can be seen as structuralist.  Frye positioned literature as an “autonomous verbal structure”' unrelated to anything beyond itself, a world which contains “life and reality in a system of verbal relationships”.  In this “self-contained literary universe”, there were four radical “mythoi” (plot forms and basic organizing structural principles) which corresponded to the four seasons of the natural order and constitute the four main genres of comedy romance, tragedy and satire.  For those non-postmodernists who still long for l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), Frye’s mythois are there to be used and he proved their utility in a wide range of texts, including the Bible.

Osculate

Osculate (pronounced os-kyuh-leyt)

(1) To come into close contact or union.

(2) In geometry (of a curve), to touch another curve or another part of the same curve so as to have the same tangent and curvature at the point of contact.

(3) To kiss (now often jocular).

(4) In zoology, of an organism or group of organisms, to be intermediate between two taxonomic groups.

(5) In mathematics, determining whether a number is divisible by another by means of certain operations on its digits.

1650-1660: From the Classical Latin ōsculātiōn, stem of ōsculātiō (a kissing) drawn from osculor (I kiss).  The –ate suffix (used to form adjectives from nouns indicating the possession of a thing or a quality) was from the Proto-Italic -ātos, from the primitive Indo-European –ehtos; a "pseudo-participle" possibly related to -tus, though similar formations in other Indo-European languages show that it was distinct from it already in Indo-European times.  It was cognate to the Proto-Slavic –atъ and the Proto-Germanic –ōdaz.  Osculator has retained its original meaning (a kisser) but is now more often cited as the title of the Osculator software, a specialised calculator.

The noun & adjective osculatory (the noun plural osculatories) means "of or relating to kissing" but also enjoys two technical meanings: (1) in geometry it means "relating to, or having the properties of, an osculatrix; capable of osculation" and (2) in Christianity it describes a religious tablet (usually one with a representation of Christ or the Virgin Mary) which is kissed by the priest during the Mass (the "kiss of peace") after which it is passed to others in the congregation for them to kiss (the ritual modified in recent years, notably after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic).  As an adjective (in both geometry and kissing!), the comparative is more osculatory and the superlative most osculatory).  The now most commonly used form now appears to be the noun osculation, from the Latin ōsculātus, past participle of ōsculārī (to kiss) from osculum (a kiss; pretty mouth, sweet mouth (literally "little mouth") a diminutive of os (mouth).  Osculate is a verb & adjective, osculation is a noun, osculated is a verb, osculating is a verb & adjective, osculant is a noun & adjective and osculatory is a noun & adjective; the most common noun plural is osculations.

Il Bacio della Morte (The Kiss of Death).  That Ms Christian's eyes remained wide open at such a moment has long disturbed the romantics.

The monochrome image known as the Il Bacio della Morte (The Kiss of Death) was taken on 12 May 1957 at the moment actress Linda Christian (1923-2011) kisses Scuderia Ferrari factory driver Alfonso de Portago (1928–1957) as he was about to re-join the 1957 Mille Miglia (thousand mile) race after a brief stop.  Moments later, Portago died instantly when, at high speed on the road between Cerlongo and Guidizzolo, a tyre blew, causing his Ferrari 335 S to crash, killing eleven including de Portago's navigator and nine spectators, four of whom were children.  The 1957 event was the 24^th running of the endurance classic which had first been contested in 1927 and by the 1950s was one of the most prestigious rounds of the World Sports Car Championship, attracting factory entries from Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, BMW & Porsche; it would also be the last.

The victorious Ferrari 315 S, 1957 Mille Miglia.

Scuderia Ferrari's entries would finish 1-2-3 and the team would win the 1957 World Sports Car Championship.  Only three 315 S cars were constructed, two modified from earlier chassis (a 290 S & 290 MM) and one an original build.  Because a 3.0 litre limit was imposed for the subsequent season, development ceased and the 250 Testa Rossa (literally "Red Head" a reference to the red paint applied to the V12's camshaft covers) was created.

The Mille Miglia was a round trip from Rome to Brescia and back and by the mid 1950s the cars had become very fast (speeds of 180 mph (290 km/h) were recorded and the 1955 race was won by a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S and essentially the factory's Formula One car with roadster bodywork and an enlarged straight-8 engine) with an average speed close to 100 mph (161 km/h)) and the event was run on public roads which, while closed for the occasion, were poorly supervised and crowd control was in many places non-existent, people forming on the roadside to ensure the best view, literally inches from cars travelling at high speed.  Over thirty years, the race had claimed the lives of 30 souls but the eleven in 1957 would be the last because within days, the Italian government banned all all motor racing on Italian public roads although since 1977 an event of the same name over much the same course has been run for historic vehicles which competed in the event in period (or were accepted and registered).  Now very much a social occasion for the rich, it's not a high-speed event.

Just who took the photograph which came to be dubbed Kiss of death has never been known and although one eye is drawn Linda Christian looking lovely in polka dots, what is striking is the sight of de Portago in "pudding basin" helmet, goggles and leather jacket, sitting in his open Ferrari without seatbelts.  It was a time when motor racing was a dangerous business for drivers and spectators alike (83 of whom were killed in a single accident at Le Mans in 1955) and the reasons for the long and lucrative careers of modern top-flight drivers includes (1) they survive because the cars and circuits are now so much safer and (2) they're not when younger dissuaded from their career choice by having to attend several funerals a year.  Life magazine was not hyperbolic when it published the photograph under the headline Death finally takes a man who courted it.  There remains an alluring romance to The Kiss of Death and as much as any human interaction the kiss enchants poets.  In Poets in a Landscape (1957) the Scottish American classicist & literary critic Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) observed of the Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus, circa 84–54 BC):

“He came from the north.  He lived a brief, passionate, unhappy life.  He wrote magnificent poetry.  And he introduced a new word for ‘kiss’ into the European languages… Whenever a Frenchman says baiser, whenever an Italian talks of un bacio, when a Spaniard says besar or a Portuguese beijar, they are using the word which this poet picked up and made into Latin to amuse his sweetheart.  The woman was unworthy.  The poet died.  The word lives.”

The Neoterikoi (from the Ancient Greek νεωτερικοί) were in the Latin known as the poetae novi (new poets), modern literary historians calling them the Neoterics.  Emerging in the first century BC, they were the disruptive avant-garde who eschewed the long dominant style of classical Homeric epic poetry, turning from the gods, mythological heroes and endless wars of Antiquity to themes more domestic and often intensely personal.  The troubled Catullus remains among the best remembered of these proto-modernist emos and that sexual imagery appears so often in his works of devotion and unrequited love made him a favourite among lecturers and students alike.  Presumably, neo-Freudians might also be attracted.  However, while poets can contribute to language, those who follow will make of their words what they will and while the French baiser (from the Old & Middle French baiser, from the Latin bāsiāre (to kiss) endures, the dominant sense of verb has become “fuck”, something which evolved from euphemistic use.  Of this, Catullus might have approved but Highet would have been appalled.  

Ms Linda Christian.

Linda Christian was between 1949-1956 married to the film star Tyrone Power (1914-1958) who she had divorced only shortly before The Kiss of Death was taken.  When one-time Hollywood enfant terrible Orson Wells (1915-1985) was in 1956 received in the Vatican for an audience with Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), he was expecting to be quizzed about American politics but was intrigued to find His Holiness more interested in industry gossip.  Later, Wells would recall the two sitting alone for 45 minutes, the pope "held my hand and never let it go" while asking questions like "Is it true that Irene Dunne is contemplating divorce?" and "What do you think of Ty Power’s marriage coming up?"  "All the hot stuff" was how Welles put it.  Others have had similar experiences with exalted clerics, Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) complaining that whenever he met an bishop with whom he wished to discuss some theological point, all they wanted to do was "talk politics".  The year after meeting Pius XII, Welles began production of the film noir Touch of Evil (1958) but it may be unfair to suggest any connection between these two events in the director's life.

Osculation is a style, a technique and a message:

Top row left: Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) delivers a “socialist fraternal kiss” to Red Air Force pilot Vasily Molokov (1895-1982) while (in cap, to the right) comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) watches approvingly.  Public kisses between men are rare in the modern Russian cities but the tradition was long and it was part of Soviet social orthodoxy.

Top row centre: Melania Trump (b 1970, US First Lady 2017-2021 and since 2025) demonstrates her perfected art of the “air kiss” with osculating husband, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025).  Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963) told Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) she wore wide-brimmed hats to prevent him kissing her.

Top row right: Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) and fashion designer Donna Karan (b 1948 and creator of the Donna Karan New York and DKNY clothing labels), London, 2006.  This photograph pre-dates Ms Lohan meeting former special friend, DJ Samantha Ronson (b 1977).

Bottom row left: George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) and US talk show personality Oprah Winfrey (b 1954).  Ms Winfrey is here stopping a stage short of the “air kiss”, adopting the “lie back and think of the ratings” attitude.

Bottom row centre: Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  Note crooked Hillary's open eyes and pursed lips.

Bottom row right: French football player Madeleine Bracquemond (1898–1981, left) and English Association Football (soccer) player Alice Cook (née Kell, 1898–1972, right), North End, Deepdale, Preston, UK, 1920.  In England, women's football (soccer) had in local competitions been played for decades before a rise in popularity during and immediately after World War I (1914-1918).  The English FA (Football Association) imposed a ban on women's participation in 1921, something attributed variously to sexism, selective theological interpretation and avarice, the fiscal envy trigged by the large (paying) crowds the women attracted.  Not until the 1970s was the ban relaxed and it took until the twenty-first century for women's football to enter the cultural and economic mainstream.

Torch

Torch (pronounced tawrch)

(1) A light to be carried in the hand, consisting of some combustible substance, as resinous wood, or of twisted flax or the like soaked with tallow or other flammable substance, ignited at the upper end.

(2) A portable light-source (now almost universally electric and battery or solar powered); use rare in the US where the preferred term is “flashlight”.

(3) Any of various lamp-like devices that produce a hot flame and are used for soldering, burning off paint etc (blowtorch, oxy-gas torch etc).

(4) Figuratively, something considered as a source of illumination, enlightenment, guidance etc.

(5) In slang, an arsonist (one who to set fires maliciously (ie “torches” stuff).

(6) To burn or flare up like a torch.

(7) As “torch singer”, one who sings “torch songs” (pieces lamenting an unrequited love by one who still “carries a torch” for their object of desire).

(8) As “pass the torch”, the idea (sometimes inter-generational) of a responsibility or office being handed to a successor (synonymous with “pass the baton”).

(9) To insult someone or something, to ruin the reputation of someone or something; to release damaging claims about someone or something (a generalized term, particular flavors of such “torchings” on the internet often now described with specific terms).

1250–1300: From the Middle English noun torch & torche, from the Old French torche & torque (torch; bundle of straw), from the unattested Vulgar Latin torca (something twisted; coiled object) from the Latin torqua, a variant of torquis, from torqueō (twist), from the primitive Indo-European root PIE root terkw- (to twist).  In a very modern twist, it’s from this source that the OnlyFans favourite “twerking” comes.  From the Latin is drawn the modern measure of specific energy (twisting effort): “torque”), the original sense being a “torch formed of twisted tow dipped in wax”.  By at least the 1620s “torch” was in figurative use describing “a source of inspiration or guidance”.  Quite when the term “torch-bearer” (in the literal sense) was first used isn’t known but it’s a very old job and likely therefore also to be used as long as the word “torch” although use seems not to have been documented before the early fifteenth century.  The figurative sense of s “torch-bearer” being the “leader of a cause” dates from the 1530s.  The slang sense of “an arsonist” dates from 1938.  In the way these things happen, electrically powered portable light-sources usually are called “flashlights” in US use while “torch” tended to predominate elsewhere in the English-speaking world although, because so many products are now marketed internationally as “flashlight”, the use has spread.  The verb torch dates from circa 1819 in the sense of “illuminate with a torch” and was derived from the noun while as a regional or dialectal form by mid century it was used to mean “flare up, rise like flame or smoke from a torch”.  In US use, the meaning “set fire to” was in use by 1931, this extended by 1938 to “arsonist”.  Torch & torching are nouns & verbs, torcher is a noun, torched is a verb and torchable, torchless & torchlike (also as torch-like) are adjectives; the noun plural is torches.

In Greek mythology, Θᾰ́νᾰτος (Thánatos) was the personification of Death.  Thánatos was from θνῄσκω (thnēskō) (I die, I am dying) and although his name was transliterated in Latin as Thanatus, his counterpart in Roman mythology was Mors or Letum.  In the Iliad, Thánatos appears as the brother of Sleep (Hypnos) and according to the 7-8^th century BC Ancient Greek poet Hesiod, these two spirits were the sons of Nyx (the personification of the night and its goddess).  The sister of Ertebus and daughter of Chaos, her realm was the far west far beyond the land of Atlas and as well as Death & Sleep, she was the mother of a number of abstract forces including Morus (Destiny), Momus (Reproach), Oizys (Distress), the Moirae (Nemesis), Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Love), Geras (Old Age), Eris (Strife), and the Hesperides (the nymphs of the Setting Sun).  As a dramatic device, Thánatos sometimes appeared as a character in Greek theatre but his presence was otherwise rare.  When he appeared in paintings or sculpture, it was often with the torch he held in his hand being upside-down, signifying death or the end-of-life.

A cooking torch being used to apply a finishing touch to a lemon meringue pie.

There are all sorts of torches including “blow-torch” (a gas-powered tool used by plumbers), “cooking torch” (a gas-powered tool used by chefs usually to induce some sort of “burnt” effect on the surface of dishes), “cutting torch” (the tool attached to cylinders of oxygen & acetylene (ie oxy-acetylene) which, when combined and ignited, enable metal to be cut or joined, “fusion torch” (in nuclear physics, a technique using the high-temperature plasma of a fusion reactor to break apart other materials (especially waste materials) and convert them into reusable elements, “weed torch” (A torch used to kill weeds by means of a high-temperature propane flame, the attraction being precision (ie can be used in close proximity to desirable plants one wishes not to kill) and avoiding the use chemicals or disrupting the soil, “pen torch” (also as “pen-light”) small torches built into functional pens.

In the history of World War II (1939-1945), the word “torch” is most associated with “Operation Torch”, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, conducted between 8–16 November 1942.  One of those “compromises” thrashed out between the British and Americans in the mechanism of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), it was a vital component in the rhythm of the conflict because (1) it allowed a final “mopping up” of the Axis forces in North Africa, (2) introduced US forces to the European theatre (albeit in Africa) and (3) removed any threat to the Allied control of the Mediterranean, (4) secured Middle East oil supplies and (5) made possible later military action in Italy & southern France.  There was though also a “torch” footnote in the history of the war.  Before things turned against him, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) would sometimes make (usually inept) attempts at humor and, early in 1941 when the invasion of the Soviet Union was going well, the Führerhauptquartiere (Leader’s Headquarters) was the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) near the East Prussian town of Rastenburg (now Kętrzyn in present-day Poland).  There one night, he found one of his secretaries (Christa Schroeder (1908–1984)) wandering in the darkness saying she couldn’t find her torch.  He claimed innocence, arguing: “I’m a country thief (Ländledieb) thief, not a lamp (Lämpledieb) thief”.  That was about as good as Anführerhumor got.

Passing the Torch

In use since the late nineteenth century, the idiomatic phrase “pass the torch” is a metaphor drawn from Antiquity: the λαμπαδηδρομία (lampadēdromía) (torch-races), a feature at many festivals in Ancient Greece.  These were relay events, run over a variety of distances, each team member carrying a burning torch, the prize awarded to the team whose runner crossed the finish line first with the torch still burning.  That is of course the long accepted myth but many modern historians regard the "torch relay" from Antiquity as a "manufactured myth", one of many emerged in the centuries long after the purported events were said to have transpired.  The idea entered modern athletics in relay events where each runner carries a baton which they hand to the competitor about to run the next leg (thus “pass the baton” being synonymous with “pass the torch”).  The torch relay idea was revived for 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin and has since been a feature of all games (winter & summer), the design of the devices now part of Olympic history.   

Berlin, 1936.

So much publicity did the torch run from Olympia in Greece to Berlin attract as a prelude to the 1936 Olympic games that it has since been a feature of every subsequent summer & winter games (and within five years the Nazis would occupy Greece although not willingly).  The 1936 run was a genuine relay which involved over 3,000 in a route which included Greece (which within five years the Nazis would occupy although not willingly, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (invaded by the Nazis in 1941), Hungary (invaded by the Nazis in 1944), Austria (annexed by the Nazis in 1938), Czechoslovakia (annexed by the Nazis in 1938-1939) & Germany.

Rendered in steel and fueled by a flammable paste inside a magnesium tube, each load had a burning time for some 10 minutes, ideal for the relay schedule but there were quality control problems with one batch of torches so the Nazis cheated, some of the torchbearers in more rural regions being driven by car.  The decision to use a torch was a deliberate attempt to link the Third Reich with the classical civilizations of Antiquity.  Although symbolic fires had been kept alight during the games at Amsterdam (1928) and Los Angeles (1932), neither had been lit with flame carried from Olympia in a torch relay.  The first intention of the Berlin organizing committee had been to remain true to the old ways, creating torches of hardwood topped with bundles of narthex stalks, taken from a Mediterranean tree known for its slow combustion but tests soon revealed this to be impractical and so metal torches were fabricated.

Mexico City, 1968.

One of the more pleasing designs was that used for the 1968 summer games in Mexico City.  In a then novel touch, the torch was produced in four versions: (1) An all-steel construction with vertical grooves present on the whole body of the torch, (2) A similar design to the first type except for the bottom part of the body which featured a black leather handle, (3) A design which included a handle made partly from wood and a motif featuring a dove was repeated on the upper part and (4) A silver ring with repeated dove motifs was added to decorate the top of the torch while the caption “Mexico” was reproduced twice at the base of the handle.  Depending on which method of construction was used, the fuel load varied, the solid mix including nitrates, sulphurs, alkaline metal carbonates, resins and silicones.

Lake Placid, 1980.

According to the organizing committee, the design and choice of materials used for the torch for the XIII Olympic Winter Games held at New York’s Lake Placid in 1980 was intended to symbolize the blending of modern technology and the traditions of Ancient Greece.  Accordingly, it was constructed of metal with a bronze finish, a handle wrapped in leather and as fuel it used liquid propane, each torch able to remain alight for an impressive 40 minutes.  The sole decorative element was a silver ring where metal met leather, the inscription reading: “XIII Olympic Winter Games Lake Placid 1980”. Although it pre-dated both the personal computer (PC) revolution and the internet, apparently there was some use of computers in the design.    The committee described the shape of the bowl as a tribute to classical Greek architecture but many couldn’t help but notice some resemblance to a certain plumbing tool.

President Biden passes the torch

Opinion seems divided on whether the remarkable “Pass the torch Joe” advertisement a Democratic Party Super Political Action Committee (PAC) paid to run on what is known to be one of Joe Biden’s (b 1942; US president since 2021) favorite television shows had much to do with his decision to withdraw from seeking his party’s nomination for a second term.  Even if not decisive however, for a Super PAC publicly (and expensively) to advocate something which is usually an internal party matter must have had some sort of “shock effect” on the president because it was unprecedented; to him it must have been something like seeing "something nasty in the woodshed".  While the Super PAC structure is not exclusive to US politics, the American devices (created essentially as a work-around of tiresome campaign finance laws) work on a grand scale compared with those in other countries but previously they have exclusively been devoted to promoting a candidate, not airing the dirty laundry.

The Super PAC’s message (best translated as “Joe, you’re too old and senile to do this”) wasn’t new because it had (in sanitized form) since the first presidential debate in June been either stated or selectively leaked by any number of party grandees including a former president, a former speaker and leading Democrats in both houses of Congress.  That might have been manageable by the Biden faction but what was not was the flow of funds from party donors drying up, another candidate being the only conduction of resumption.  The Super PAC’s choice of “pass the torch” as a metaphor was clever because (1) it’s well understood and (2) with its classical origin it lends an air of nobility, the idea being the old warrior, standing undefeated, handing the torch to someone who was after all his chosen deputy.  Of course, what was left unspoken was that in Ancient Greece the point of the exercise was the torch has to be passed while still aflame, the question being whether it has in Mr Biden’s increasingly unsteady grip, blown out, leaving only smoking embers.

On the way out; on the way in: Time magazine covers after the debate (left) and after the tweet (right).  What the latter cover lacked was a word to replace "panic".  The editorial board would have discussed the matter, pondering possibly "faith", "hope" or "desperation" before deciding to leave it to the readers.  The choice of red for the background was interesting.

By Sunday 21 July it seems the cold hard numbers had been assembled and presented to Mr Biden, explaining that not only could he not win the presidency but that with him as a candidate, The Democrats would likely lose control of the Senate and the Republicans would increase their majority in the House of Representatives.  Senile or not, Mr Biden can still comprehend basic electoral arithmetic and understand the implication for his “legacy” were he to cling to something his very presence was making a losing cause.  His statement on X (formerly known as Twitter) was essentially the same as that of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) who realized the war in Vietnam had destroyed his presidency:

President Biden, 2024 (edited): “My Fellow Americans, over the past three-and-a-half years, we have made great progress as a nation.  Today, America has the strongest economy in the world.  America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today.  I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people.  Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  We've protected and preserved our democracy. And we've revitalised and strengthened our alliances around the world.”

“It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.  For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me re-elected.  I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.”

The Washington Post, 1 April 1968.

President Johnson, 1968 (edited): “With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of this country.  Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Not all were happy when crooked old Lyndon announced he would not seek another term, Carl Giles (1916–1995), Daily Express, 2 April 1968.  Reaction to senile old Joe's tweet will also be mixed.

LBJ’s legacy is now better regarded than would have been thought likely in 1968 but it’s not possible to predict what will be the fate of Mr Biden’s except to say it will at least be influenced by the outcome of the 2024 election and perception of what part his long delayed withdrawal from the contest played.  The comparisons with 1968 are inevitable for a number of reasons, not least because both presidents were products of and operatives in the Democratic Party machine and both achieved the highest office in unlikely circumstances, having earlier failed while attempting a more conventional path.  The other echo of 1968 is the prospect of an open party convention in Chicago, something the political junkies would welcome for the same reasons the party leadership will wish to avoid one; on both sides, the conventions have for decades been stage-managed affairs, something in no small part encouraged by the scenes of violence and chaos in Chicago in 1968.  Thus, what’s planned is to have Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021) position on the ticket stitched up by a “virtual vote” of the delegates, well in advance of the mid-August convention which can then be allowed to function as a combination of coronation and formal campaign launch.  Details about which white, male governor of which battleground state will be named as running mate have yet to be confirmed.  It’s impossible to say how good Ms Harris will be as a candidate (or for that matter as president) because until they’re in the arena (having “the blowtorch applied to the belly” as Neville Wran (1926–2014; premier of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) 1976-1986) put it), it won’t be known and political history is littered with examples of those of whom much was expected yet failed and of those expected to fail yet who prospered for a decade or more and not un-noticed in both parties is her unprecedented electoral advantage in being (1) not white and (2) not male, thus making available at any time accusations of racism or misogyny.  Already, some Republicans are complaining she’ll be “bubble-wrapped” by the liberal media (the outfits Mr Trump calls “the fake new media”) and they’re suggesting that any time a difficult question is asked (presumably by Fox News) it’ll be answered by “that’s sexist” or “that’s racist”.  Played selectively, they can be good cards.

So the 2024 election will be a very modern campaign.  One who must be mulling over the wisdom of doing such a good job in making Mr Biden’s candidature untenable is Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) and it was notable that in the hours after Mr Biden’s tweet, he couldn’t resist continuing his attacks of the person no longer his opponent.  It was flogging a dead horse but presumably his team had no more appropriate material available for his use.  The Trump campaign team certainly has a problem in that all the resources they have for months devoted to honing the attacks for a Trump-Biden re-match and it’s unlikely much can be re-purposed for a Trump-Harris bout.  Tellingly, perhaps because of concerns about the “racism, sexism thing”, not much thought seems to have been given to Ms Harris and even the occasionally used “laffin’ Kamala” has nothing like the ring of “crooked Hillary”, “sleepy Joe”, “the Biden crime family”, “low energy Jeb”, “crazy Bernie” “lyin’ Ted”, “Mini Mike” or any of the other monikers he used to so effectively import into political campaigning the techniques he’d perfected on reality television.  He does deliberately mispronounce “Kamala” (which, like “lafin’”, some have suggested is a coded racial slur) and, apparently impromptu, recently said “she’s nuts” but none of that suggests anything which had been well-workshopped.  The team will be aware that when dealing with a PoC (person of color) there must be caution so it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.  That caution meant Mr Trump must have regretted he couldn't use the gay slur "mayor Buttplug" of Pete Buttigieg (b 1982 US secretary of transportation since 2021), an allusion to him being (as it's still put in sections of the Republican Party) "a confessed homosexual" because "Alfred E Newman" didn't catch on, Mad Magazine now too remote for most of the population; "must be a generational thing" Mr Buttigieg said, explaining it baffled him although the resemblance certainly was striking.  

It is a whole new dynamic for the campaign but what hasn’t changed is that just as there was no great pro-Biden feeling, nor is there yet much of a pro-Harris feeling (although there may be a pro-woman & pro-PoC factor) and the 2024 poll remains pro-Trump vs anti-Trump.  Unlike a week ago, a Democrat victory is now something many are contemplating.  The critical factors are abortion which in recent months has proved an electoral asset for the Democrats and the potential a PoC has to entice to vote the habitually politically disconnected.  To win the election a party needs a surprisingly small number of these recalcitrant souls to turn out and it’s worth remembering that both Mr Biden and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) in 2020 & 2016 respectively anyway received substantially more votes than Mr Trump.  The 2024 election can go either way and is now interesting in a way it wasn’t a week ago.

Torch Songs

The notion of “keeping the torch burning” refers to those who remain faithful to causes often thought doomed.  Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) for example never gave up the idea the Orthodox Church might one day return to communion with Rome and thus always “kept burning on the ramparts a torch to guide home the wandering daughter who ran off to Constantinople.”  It’s used also of those who never abandon the idea they might yet be reconciled with a long-lost lover and it’s those feelings which inspire the writers of “torch songs” although they are often tales of unrequited love.  Most “torch singers” seem these days to be women but the original pieces described as “torch songs” during the 1920s were performed by men although when “torch singer” came into wider use the next decades, it seems mostly to be used of women.

Over, a Lindsay Lohan torch song (official music video).

Over by John Shanks, Kara Dioguardi & Lindsay Lohan, © BMG Rights Management, Sony-ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, released in 2004 on the album Speak.

I watch the walls around me crumble

But it's not like I won't build them up again

So here's your last change for redemption

So take it while it lasts because it will end

My tears are turning into time I've wasted trying to find a reason for goodbye

I can't live without you

Can't breathe without you

I'm dreamin' 'bout you honestly

Tell me that it’s over

'Cause if the world is spinning and I'm still living

It won't be right if we're not in it together

Tell me that it's over

And I'll be the first to go

Don't want to be the last to know

I won't be the one to chase you

But at the same time you're the heart that I call home

I'm always stuck with these emotions

And the more I try to feel the less I'm whole

My tears are turning into time

I've wasted trying to find a reason for goodbye

I can't live without you

Can't breathe without you

I'm dreamin' 'bout you honestly

Tell me that its over

'Cause if the world is spinning and I'm still living

It won't be right if we're not in it together

Tell me that it's over

And I'll be the first to go

Yeah, I'll be the first to go

Don't want to be the last to know

Over, over, over

My tears are turning into time

I've wasted trying to find a reason for goodbye

I can't live without you

Can't breathe without you

I'm dreamin' bout you honestly

Tell me that it’s over

'Cause if the world is spinning and I'm still living

It won't be right if we're not in it together

Tell me that it's over

Tell me that it's over

Honestly tell me,

Honestly tell me,

Don't tell me that it's over

Don't tell me that it's over.