Bombast & Bluster

Bombast (pronounced bom-bast)

(1) Speech deemed pompous for the occasion or context; pretentious or grandiloquent language.

(2) Cotton or cotton wool (archaic).

(3) Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments or upholstery; padding.

1560-1570: A corruption of the earlier bombase (raw cotton), from the Old French bombace (cotton, cotton wadding), from the from the Medieval Latin bombācem, accusative of the Late Latin bombāx (cotton; linteorum aut aliae quaevis quisquiliae (towels or any other rubbish (rags))), a corrupted variant use of bombyx (silk; silkworm (which in Medieval Greek came to mean “cotton”)), from the Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux) (silkworm) and perhaps connected with both certain oriental words and the Middle Persian pambak (cotton), possibly related to a primitive Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.  From the same source came the Swedish bomull, the Danish bomuld (cotton) and, (via Turkish forms), the Modern Greek mpampaki, the Rumanian bumbac and the Serbo-Croatian pamuk.  The German Baumwolle (cotton) is thought likely to be the Latin word altered by folk-etymology to look like “tree wool”.  Both the Lithuanian bovelna and the Polish bawełna are partial translations from the German.  The earliest known appearance in print of the adjective bombastic was in 1704.  The synonyms include fustian, grandiloquence, purple prose, overblown, pretentious and the now obsolete aureation.  Bombast is a noun, verb & adjective, bombaster & bombastry are nouns, bombastic & bombastical are adjectives and bombastically is an adverb; the noun plural is bombasts.

In English, the word “bombase” was used of raw cotton as early as the 1550s and the sense of “stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery” would have begun as the verbal shorthand of tailors, seamstresses and artisans making clothing, furniture and such.  Remarkably quickly, the idea of what was done with chairs and garments (padding them out) was co-opted to mean “pompous, empty speech”, that sense in use as early as the 1580s.  The idea was just as cotton (soft, loose, insubstantial) was used to “swell” clothing or upholstery to provide the illusion of something more substantial, so it was used of speech and writing judged as “swollen by extravagant sentiments and expressions which add nothing to the meaning”.  The old press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken, 1879-1964) used the term “highfalutin nonsense” whenever he detected bombast in anything his editors were proposing to publish.

Volkswagen Super Beetle Cabriolet by Karmann: 1978 (left) & 1977 (right).  The taillights were dubbed "elephant's feet" and were that large to comply with US regulations which demanded certain dimensions and luminosity from both the rear and side-views.  They proved popular with third-party builders, especially those in "neo-classical" business making bodies using the motifs of the inter-war years.  Some cars are described as "bombastic" (a view one suspects based often on perceptions of the typical owner) but that was never applied to the modest Beetle.  There was though much bombast in the soft-top which to this day remains one of the industry's most impressive.  

Shaming what UK manufacturers offered even in their more expensive ranges, classic Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle 1938-2003) Cabriolets manufactured between 1949-1980 by coachbuilder Karmann featured a commendably heavy, weatherproof, multi-layered folding soft-top roof.  An intricate construction of structural steel, shaped timber members, vinyl and safety glass, the bombast was a rubberized horsehair (with some later variants).  Close to two inches (50 mm) thick and affording what was by convertible standards outstanding sound insulation and weather-proofing, the factory used a “sandwich” design in which the materials were arrayed in three distinct functional layers: (1) The outer layer originally was a heavy-duty Pinpoint vinyl (a two-ply composite featuring a PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) with a cotton sateen inner backing) although there was for years the option of canvas and Mohair and canvas was used for the later runs.  (2) The bombast was the “insulation padding”, a thick matting originally only of rubberized horsehair although this later was augmented by a reinforcing of coconut fibre and burlap with late build examples switching to a dense, foam rubber. (3) The headliner (inner layer) was a soft-to-touch, full-length inner canopy that hid the mechanism, emulating the look in a closed vehicle; it was made from either perforated vinyl (usually white or off-white) or a cotton-mohair fabric.  Unlike many convertibles in the era (including Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz which used discoloration-prone Perspex), the Karmann cabriolets included a solid frame holding a tempered safety glass window and from 1968 this included a integrated electric defroster wire grid.

Also by extension, “fustian” was used as a synonym, that being a type of cloth that lend garments a “stiff expansive character”, the similarity to “fuss” & “fuss” thought to have added to the appeal.  In English, “fustian” proved adaptable.  Originally, it was a coarse fabric made from cotton and flax but in modern use, while the texture is emulated, it’s now usually made with twilled wool, cotton or a cotton-linen blend.  The nature of the fabric made it suitable for furnishings such as bedspreads and many garments including skirts, coats and jackets and a specific variant with a short pile (almost always in sombre shades) is used still for menswear.  The noun fustian was from the Middle English fustian (of the fabric), from the Old French fustaine & fustaigne (persisting in modern French as futaine), from the Medieval Latin fūstāneum, from the (pannus) fūstāneus or the (tela) fūstānea, thought to be a reference to “Fustat, locality of Cairo” although this is contested.  Fustat (Al-Fustat) became the first Islamic capital of Egypt and its outgrowth was the origin of modern Cairo.  In commerce, the use of fustian (based on the texture rather than the materials) extended to a whole class of fabrics including corduroy and velveteen and there was also the now rarely seen alcoholic concoction so named (also in older guides as “rum fustian”).  That was a hot drink made variously with beer, gin, sherry or white wine (and often probably what conveniently fell to hand) to which was added egg yolk, lemon and spices (doubtlessly there were many variations).  There has been speculation about how the drink picked up the fabric’s name with suggestions including something to do the color or the nature of the mix being “rough”.  Fustianists & fustianism are nouns, fustianize is a verb and fustianed is an adjective; the noun plural is fustianists.

That literary use is thought likely based on fustian fabrics being used to make cushions, pillowcases (ie things associated with “padding or stuffing), the adjectival use in literature an attributive figurative use of the noun; it suggested (usually disapprovingly) words were inflated, pompous or pretentious (ie bombastic) and there was as late as the mid-seventeenth century the parallel sense of “incoherent or unintelligible speech or writing; gibberish, nonsense”.  Literary critics (a most judgmental lot), of course liked to apply “fustian” to anything they deemed “a bit too purple” and probably, at least mentally, kept lists of offenders but poets and authors could be just as bitchy about their literary colleagues, although Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735) was a tribute to his subject’s many achievements and a memorial of their friendship, prompted by the news the physician John Arbuthnot (circa 1667–1735) was on his death-bed:

The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year:
He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:

Although the use of “he” does suggest Pope may have had in mind a certain writer, scholars believe he was presenting a sequence of composite caricatures of the kinds of “bad poets” he thought were a plague on the language, their sins including plagiarism, being shameless translators for hire, being so muddle-minded as never to attain meaning and producing lines so inflated (fustian) that they ceased even to be “bad poetry” and became “manic prose”.  As was at the time wise for satirists, Pope often deliberately would avoid explicitly identifying his targets although knowing readers would have seen through the thin disguises; “reading between the lines” as useful then as it is now in certain countries, some even “democracies”.  His views on the use of language are however crustal clear and “sublimely bad” is a fine phrase, suggesting a writer's failures might be so spectacularly ghastly they achieve a kind of perverse grandeur, the notion he would, three years hence, return to in the mock critical treatise Peri Bathous or, Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728).  In that, he assured readers he would “…lead them as it were by the hand… the gentle downhill way to Bathos; the bottom, the end, the central point the non plus ultra [nothing further beyond], of true Modern Poesy!”  Unfortunately, by the twentieth century and beyond, students of the “sublime in the ridiculous” had become victims of “the curse of plenty” but Pope can’t be blamed for that; he did his bit.

The literary term bathos (from the Ancient Greek βάθος (bathos) (depth) is used of types of writing which may include the bombastic.  Bathos is attained when a striving at the sublime, over-reaches and “topples into the absurd”, a classic collection of the bathetic was published in The Stuffed Owl (1930), compiled by the English authors Dominic Bevan “D.B.” Wyndham Lewis (1891–1969) & Charles James Lee (1870–1956).  Lewis should not be confused with the English painter, writer & critic (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), best remembered for his seminal contribution to short-lived Vorticist movement in art that was extinguished by the blast of World War I (1914-1918).  Although the usual suspects from poetaster’s (bad poets) role of infamy appear in The Stuffed Owl including the American Julia Ann Moore (1847–1920) and Scotland’s notoriously inept William McGonagall (1825-1902), Lewis & Lee didn’t defer to reputations or the canon and among the entries were lines by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Lord Byron (1788–1824), John Dryden (1631–1700), Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) and Robert Browning (1812–1889). Curiously, while the noun bombaster (a bombastic speaker or writer) exists, there’s no such thing as a bombastee (one compelled to listen to read the words of a bombaster).

I Am Charlotte Simmons (20004) by Tom Wolfe (1930–2018), a hefty 688 pages, it "won" the Literary Review's 2004 Bad Sex Award but was said to be a favorite of George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) so there was that.

Lewis & Lee took to their work with a light touch.  Rather than condemnation, it was admitted: “Bad verse has its canons, like good verse” and the selection of the “bad” was no less difficult than the challenges in assembling the “best” for a more conventional anthology.  As their argument went, “good” bad Verse has “an eerie, supernal beauty comparable in its accidents with the beauty of good verse” and it was likely as difficult to write a genuinely “good” bad poem as it is to write a good poem.  That was a generous view but there was also an audience for the bad, William McGonagall often engaged to give recitals of his work, always including the infamous The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), its place in literary history assured by appearing usually in lists of the “worst ever poems”.  That “monetizing of awfulness” happens also in music.  The Portsmouth Sinfonia (1970-1979) was an English orchestra open to “musicians” with neither skill nor training and their idiosyncratic performances were well attended, as were those of Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944).  Ms Foster Jenkins (who was first married at 15, the age of consent in Pennsylvania then ten despite it being north of the Mason-Dixon Line) was rich enough to indulge her hobby which was singing Opera and that she did, giving public performances so awful that word spread and most were sold-out.  In literary use, there was also (between 1993-2019) the “Bad Sex Award”, described by organizing committee as “Britain’s most dreaded literary prize”.  Conferred every winter by the London-based Literary Review, it was awarded to the author judged to have penned the worst sex scene published in the previous twelve months.  It was established in 1993 by the magazine’s former editor, Auberon Waugh (1939–2001).

1938 Mercedes-Benz 320 (W142, 1937-1942) Cabriolet B in a factory promotional image.  As well as the upholstery, the folding soft-top contained horse-hair bombast. 

European manufacturers and coach-builders used “cabriolet” to distinguish certain convertibles from the more rakish, sporty roadsters although the English had to be different and decided they were DHCs (drop-head coupés) which meant a convertible version of a FHC (fixed-head coupé).  Cabriolets were for decades a fixture in the catalogues (low-priced vehicles as well as the better-remembered exotics) but in the late 1920s (with typically Teutonic attention to detail), Daimler-Benz codified the naming conventions for cabriolets built by Mercedes-Benz:

Cabriolet A: A cabriolet with two doors and room for two passengers.

Cabriolet B: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers, fitted with a rear-quarter window for the rear seat.

Cabriolet C: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers with no rear quarter window.

Cabriolet D: A cabriolet with four doors and room for four to six passengers.

Cabriolet F: A cabriolet with four doors, built on an extended wheelbase, usually for state or formal use with room for six or more passengers.

The jump in the factory's designations from "D" to "F" obviously skipped "E" and because that didn't seem the German way of doing things, there was speculation another type of open coachwork had been planned but which was never built because of the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).  That's not impossible (some records were lost during the war) but the archives for the period have revealed nothing which supports the theory and the sometimes repeated assertion the "Cabriolet F" label was an allusion to "Führer" (the car's most infamous customer) is simply wrong because the designation was first used in the 1920s, prior to the Nazis gaining power and creating the Third Reich (1933-1945).  Quite what would have been the configuration of the allegedly “missing Cabriolet E” is purely speculative and those who have written on the subject have concluded it’d likely have been either (1) a four-door body distinguished only from a Cabriolet D by a longer wheelbase or different side-window treatment or (2) the intended differentiation of a Cabriolet F without the rear-quarter window (as some were built but never uniquely designated).

Bombast, in its original sense, could prove fatal.

Bomb-blasted: the Mercedes-Benz 320 Cabriolet B in which SS-Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) was being driven on the day of the assassination attempt.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had in 1938 appointed Baron Konstantin von Neurath (1873–1956; Foreign Minister of Germany 1932-1938) as Reichsprotektor (a sort of proconsul (from the Latin prōconsul, a shortened form of prō consule (one acting on behalf of the consul))) of occupied Bohemia and Moravia (a region of Czechoslovakia).  Hitler did not make the appointment because of any great regard for the baron’s administrative or diplomatic skills but because (1) he wanted the more obsequious Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) as his cipher in the Foreign Ministry and (2) he thought von Neurath’s reputation in international circles as a “moderate” would mollify the outrage expressed about the brutish and cynical tactics employed by the Nazis in their takeover of the Czech lands.  To an extend the political window dressing worked, not because von Neurath’s delegated rule was benign but because news of much of what was being done was suppressed and international attention had already turned to events elsewhere as concerns grew over Hitler’s next target.

With the outbreak of World War II, von Neurath’s regime became harsher with an increased rate of imprisonment in concentration camps, more executions and less restrained persecution of Czech Jews (the last measure not wholly without support from sections of Czech society).  However, bloody though it was, what the Reichsprotektor did was mild compared with what was done in other conquered territories (notably Poland and later in the Soviet Union when the Nazis turned to genocide as a “final solution”) and, not best pleased, late in 1941 Hitler appointed SS General Reinhard Heydrich as von Neurath’s nominal deputy although Heydrich assumed full executive authority, leaving the Reichsprotektor as a figurehead, the Nazis assuming his veneer of (relative) respectability remained useful.  Hitler knew the murderous Heydrich would not be troubled by the notions of humanity or residual decency that had constrained von Neurath and he wasn’t disappointed in his latest appointment for within days martial law had been imposed on the protectorate with thousands and arrested and hundreds executed.  When Hitler wanted something done, if possible, he’d allocate the task to the SS.

The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc)) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Hitler.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than a million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 800,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Konstantin von Neurath.  At the first Nuremberg Trial (1946-1946) he received a 15 year sentence but was released in 1954 because of ill health, dying within two years.  Had Heydrich lived to be tried, he'd have been hanged.

Just as Heydrich understood Hitler’s language, so the Czechs understood his and rapidly the once troublesome protectorate was pacified.  Heydrich was however there not merely to impose and maintain order but also to ensure the agricultural and industrial capacity efficiently was exploited to benefit the German economy and war machine; rapidly his “carrot & stick” approach produced dividends with production rising and resources re-allocated within the Czech economy towards the needs dictated by Berlin.  Heydrich proved remarkably successful in his role, his “cut the head off the snake” (ie identifying and what would now be called “neutralizing” those likely to be troublesome) approach ending acts of sabotage or other resistance while his increases in the allocation of food and consumer goods to the population resulted in a workforce which, it not exactly “happy”, was at least compliant and productive.  Having witnessed the crackdowns and collective punishments that had characterized the early days of his rule, the Czech population had little taste for resistance, knowing retribution would be swift, brutal and widespread, meaning the place soon became peaceful.  Heydrich however regarded his tactics as a temporary measure and planned with the end of the war to engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing to “Germanize” the whole region.

That goal was known to Czech resistance based in London and for reasons both political and military, wished to do something to encourage acts of disobedience, despite knowing the consequences that would be visited upon the population.  The British authorities did nothing to discourage this view and believed resistance in occupied territories was a vital element in their plan to “set Europe ablaze” with ferment against Nazi rule.  Accordingly, a team of London-based Czech assassins was assembled and smuggled back into Prague with the audacious plan to assassinate Heydrich.  Code-named Operation Anthropoid (a word translated variously as (1) a non-human creature with some of the physical characteristics of a human or (2) a creature with the characteristics of an ape), Heydrich made their task easier because, so assured did he think was his pacification of his domain that routinely he was driven to his office in an un-armored, open-top car with no escort or security detail.

The aftermath.   A 320 Cabriolet B reputed to be this car now sits in a museum in Denmark.

On 27 May, 1942, the two Czech operatives waited at a corner where the Mercedes-Benz cabriolet had to slow to negotiate a tight turn and although mechanical failures meant Operation Anthropoid didn’t go to plan, the wounds which finally killed Heydrich were inflicted by a grenade.  The tossed grenade actually missed ending up in the rear compartment where the target was sat and instead exploded outside, just ahead of the right-side rear wheel.  What happened was shrapnel from the device passed through the cushion of the rear seat and entered Heydrich’s torso and it’s believed it took with it some of the horsehair used as the upholstery’s bombast.  The most common theory to account for his death (nine days after the blast) is the horsehair caused a systemic infection, trigging sepsis and putting his body into shock.  For the Czechs, the consequences were severe with the deaths and deportations in the thousands and never again did the Czechoslovak government-in-exile order such an operation.  In his honor, the programme to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland was named Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) and this was the start of what came to be called “the Holocaust”.  The circumstances of the loss of a man he regarded as “irreplaceable” appalled Hitler who found inexplicable the idea his representative would travel around occupied territory unescorted and in an un-armored, open-top car.  Accordingly, Mercedes-Benz was commissioned to build a run of armoured sedans to be allocated to the Nazi party.  This included the last 20 770Ks (W150, 1938-1943) and 37 two-door 540Ks (W29, 1936-1940) built on the already completed chassis and delivered between 1942-1944.

Bluster (pronounced bluhs-ter)

(1) Noisy, swaggering, empty threats or protests; inflated talk (often in the phrase “bluff and bluster”).

(2) Boisterous noise and violence.

(3) Of the wind, noisy; gusty; tumultuous.

(4) To speak or say loudly or boastfully

(5) To act in a bullying way

(6) To force or attempt to force (a person) into doing something by behaving thus

1520-1530: From the Middle English blusteren (aimlessly to wander about), the modern sense perhaps gained from the Middle Low German blustern & blüstern (to blow violently) (which may be compared with the later Low German blustern & blistern).  The obviously related words were blow and blast and it seems likely there was some connection with the East Frisian blüstern (to bluster), the Old Norse blāstr (blowing, hissing) and the Saterland Frisian bloasje (to blow) & bruusje (to bluster).  In English, the use in the context of the weather had emerged by at least the 1540s and the sense of bluster being “a storm of violent wind” (directly from the circa 1400 verb) was in general use by the 1580s.  The meaning “noisy, boisterous, inflated talk” appeared in print in 1704 but may long have been in oral use.  The adjective blustery dates from the 1730s and seems to be used first of persons in the sense of “noisy, swaggering” and may not have been applied to the weather (rough & stormy) for some decades.  Bluster is a noun & verb, blusterer, blusteration & blustrification are nouns, blustering is a noun, verb & adjective, blustered is a verb, blustersome, blusterous, blustery & blustery are adjectives and blusterously & blusteringly are adverbs; the noun plural is blusters.

Wind-blown: Lindsay Lohan at the beach on a blustery day.

Blustering was in use by the 1510s to imply “someone stormy or tempestuous” and by the 1650s it was applied to “boastful, swaggering people”.  In the (possibly co-authored) Pericles, Prince of Tyre (circa 1608), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) uses blusterous: “Now may your life be mild, for a blusterous birth had never babe!” (Act 3, Scene 1) and of course in Coriolanus and Sir John Falstaff he created archetypes of the loud, swaggering blustering character.  Bluster’s synonyms include boast, brag & rant.  There are a remarkable number of phrases meaning much the same thing as “all bluff and bluster” (full of talk but lacking substance) including: “all bark and no bite”, “all foam, no beer”, “all fur coat and no knickers”, “all garnish and no meat”, “all hat and no cattle, “all icing, no cake”, “all lime and salt, no tequila”, “all mouth and no trousers”, “all shot, no powder”, “all show, no go, “all sizzle and no steak and “all talk and no action”.

Bombast and bluster are much associated with politicians although, if anything, those tendencies are now seen less as the trend from at least the mid-twentieth century has been towards simplicity and repetition (the most effective form clearly believed to be the 3WS (three word slogan)).  In political rhetoric however, bombast and bluster did have a long and sometimes ignoble history and among critics the terms often were used interchangeably because, despite the subtle differences in meaning, very often there’d be elements of both in the one speech.  They are different faults: Bombast refers to inflated, grandiose, pompous language. The criticism is that the speaker's words are overly elaborate or impressive-sounding relative to their actual substance; after listening for a while to some of Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) carefully crafted phrases, Aneurin “Nye” Bevan (1897–1960) responded by saying: “The majesty of his words conceals the poverty of his thoughts.”.  Bluster is different in that it refers to loud, aggressive, boastful, or threatening talk, often with the implication there is more noise than action.  Bluster is a label applied to the speaker's swaggering manner rather than their vocabulary or phraseology.  So, bombast is a thing of style & language while bluster is about tone and attitude but there are many instances of speeches contain both bombast (grandiose language) with bluster (aggressive attitude); the preferred collective term is “hot air”.  That of course reflects the different etymology, bombast (originally “padding or stuffing” in its figurative sense meaning “stuffed excessively with words” while bluster (originally of stormy wind conditions) suggesting “noisy or overbearing speech”.  So, in as few words as possible: bombast is verbal inflation; bluster is verbal intimidation.

Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) at the UN, September 2025.

Mr Trump often is described as “bombastic” but that really is a misuse, albeit a common one among those commenting on politics and politicians.  Whether or not one concurs with his views, Mr Trump usually expresses himself in commendably succinct terms which readily can be understood by most, eschewing the use of long, unusual or obscure words.  It’s an example of how the meaning of bombast has shifted but what critics really mean to say is Mr Trump is inclined to bluster and prone to exaggerate; he does not however “pad out” his sentences with decorative phrases or words inserted mere to prove his erudition.  Instead, his language is direct and simple and while someone like the classically educated Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) sometimes couldn’t resist delighting at least some in his audience with the odd linguistic flourish, Mr Trump likes simple, punchy words and some fragments from his address to the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) in September 2025 illustrate his approach: “One year ago, our country was in deep trouble.  But today, just eight months into my administration, we're the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.”; “This is the greatest administration in US history.  We have strongest borders, military and relationships around the world.”; “What is the purpose of the United Nations?  It has such tremendous, tremendous potential.  But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.  For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly-worded letter and then never follow that letter up.  It's empty words and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”; “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.”; “Europe has to step it up.  They can't be doing what they're doing.  They're buying oil and gas from Russia while they're fighting Russia.  It's embarrassing to them.”; “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should, too often it's actually creating new problems for us to solve.  The best example is the No. 1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. It's uncontrolled. Your countries are being ruined.  Your countries are going to hell.”; “Climate change is the greatest con job ever.  If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”  There are grounds on which Mr Trump can be criticized but he uses plain, simple words and his meaning is always clear and that approach may be compared with that of Kamala Harris (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025), his opponent in the 2024 election and it wasn't only Fox News that liked to describe her speech as a “word salad”.  In fairness, what Ms Harris did wouldn’t have met the clinical threshold of what in psychiatry used to be called schizophasia (a severe form of disorganized speech consisting of a confused, unintelligible mixture of seemingly random, unconnected words and phrases; while the words themselves may be grammatically correct, they lack logical or semantic meaning, making the speech impossible for a listener to understand) but it could be a challenge to gain meaning from her words.  At least Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) had an excuse for his mumbling and incoherence; he was senile.

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.