Esthetic

Esthetic (pronounced es-thet-ik)

(1) An alternative spelling of aesthetic (mostly North American).

(2) In US commercial use, a term applied to cosmetic surgery (as esthetic surgery) and other fields in the beauty business.

1920s: A re-purposing of an existing word (originally in the form “esthetic surgery” by a US doctor as a means of product differentiation (plastic surgery for cosmetic rather than reconstructive purposes).  Esthetic is an adjective (and when used as an alternative spelling of aesthetic the comparative is more esthetic, the superlative most esthetic) and esthetician is a noun; the noun plural is estheticians.  The alternative spelling esthetic began life as one of those Americanisms which annoy some but it reflected simply the wholly sensible approach in US English that it’s helpful if spelling follows pronunciation and esthetic remains the alternative spelling of aesthetic, used predominately in North America although, as the internet has achieved for so many variants, it is now an internationalism.

Often, when an image appears in which a celebrity seems somewhat “changed”, Instagram lights up with speculation about possible esthetic surgery.  If there’s enough interest, this will spread to the mainstream celebrity sites which will deconstruct the possibilities and sometimes publish interviews with esthetic surgeons who will offer an opinion.  Once, esthetic interventions were almost always denied but now they’re sometimes admitted and even publicized.

In the early twentieth century the US cosmetic surgery industry (even then inventive and profitable), re-purposed the word; linguistic differentiation to create product differentiation: “esthetic surgery”, the business of performing surgery for aesthetic purposes rather than reasons strictly medical or reconstructive and the most significant figure in this was the German-Jewish cosmetic physician Jacques Joseph (1865–1934), now remembered as the “father of modern cosmetic surgery”.  Under the auspices of first the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS, 1931) and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS, 1967), the business of esthetic surgery has since boomed and related (even if remotely) professions such as nail technicians, the lip-plumpers and the body-piercers also append “esthetic” to their advertising; the first “estheticians” were the skin care specialists (exfoliation, massage, aromatherapy, facials and such) but the title soon proliferated.

Forbes on Miami Swim Week 2024

With their coverage of Miami Swim Week (MSW 2024; South Beach, Miami, 29 May-5 June 2024), Forbes must have delighted etymologists looking for case studies.  MSW is self-described as “The premier fashion event of the year!” which may elicit a wry smile from some in New York, Paris, London or Milan but the phase “swim week” is no perhaps too modest from an event which has grown from being in 1998 essentially somewhere for manufacturers and retailers to display the new season’s swimsuits to a place where, in addition to hundred of vendor spaces and multiple runways (no catwalks at MSW) there are seminars, panel discussions and “beach lifestyle events” like yoga + mimosas; MSW is now very much a “vibe occasion”, noted for vendor hospitality and after-parties.  It has of course also moved with the times and those times have changed from when DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) was achieved with a smattering of brunettes among the bronzed blondes on what then were the catwalks.  Now there is obvious ethnic diversity and some “plus-size” models (up to a certain point) and it’d be interesting to have an artificial intelligence (AI) engine review the footage of the last few MSW and similar events to calculate if there’s appears to be an industry “quota” for those not of the (still secretly) desired body type and skin color.  The suspicion is there may be such quotas and those numbers are “creeping up”, presumably to plateau at some “threshold of plausible acceptability”.

What Forbes explored in the headline: "Aesthetics meets Esthetics" was one of the panel discussions conducted at the Gabriel Hotel as part of the Art Hearts Fashion run of show which included runway shows from men’s swimwear line Hunk and The Black Tape Project with its conceptualized futurist swimwear designs.  On Friday, the intriguingly named “Snatched Plastic Surgery” hosted an intimate panel discussion exploring the symbiotic relationship between body trends and fashion.  On the panel were industry experts including designers & fashion house CEOs, magazine editors and a plastic surgeon specializing in cosmetic procedures (esthetic surgery).  The symbiosis explored was about (1) the part esthetic procedures (not all are surgical) contribute to demand for clothing which reveals more of the body’s surface (ie skin) of which swimwear is the most extreme example and (2) the demand for such procedures generated by the desire to wear such clothing.  There are technical aspects to that which involve the intricate details of surgeries which make certain cuts of swimwear wearable by those who would otherwise be precluded but that didn’t appear to make the panel’s agenda.

Structural determinism in action: At MSW 2024, rosettes came in sizes to suit the coverage required (or desired).

What MSW 2024 did reveal was that the trend which disproportionately was over-represented in the coverage continued to be the most minimal but one notable return was one of the industry’s older fig leaves: the rosette.  Having lost the association with high-society and neglected in political campaign wear (except in the UK and to some extent in New Zealand) since the advent of digital advertising, rosettes in fashion were last seen at scale (and occasionally en masse) in the years around the turn of the twentieth century but on the MSW runways they were back.  Although coverage in the press was limited, whether as a three dimensional attachment or a printed motif, rosettes appeared often on the swimwear designed actually to be worn in the water but what caught the eye of photographers were the most minimal, most of which would be unlikely long to survive secure in the surf.  Still, that was unlikely to have been a design objective and as a static display or worn while walking (carefully), they probably work well.

MSW 2024: External superstructure was more apparent al la the exposed plumbing in some of the architecture of mid-century modernism.

The other thing the critics noted was the increasing migration of the “cage bra” look to swimwear.  If well designed, the exposed superstructure can genuinely function as a structural device but the real attraction was that it permits the volume of material (already hardly generous) further to be reduced.  That certainly is a design objective but one which creates the problem of having less surface area with which to work to create something, hence the attraction of making the superstructure a feature.  It’s essentially an underwire which is shaped rather more than is required to fulfil the functional purpose and sometimes even a little wider (a rare case of a minimalist bikini’s component getting bigger) so accessories can be added or more of the fabric covering is displayed.

Aesthetic

Aesthetic (pronounced es-thet-ik or ees-thet-ik (mostly non-US))

(1) Relating to the philosophy of aesthetics; concerned with what is regarded as attractive and what is not.

(2) Relating to the science of aesthetics; concerned with the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.

(3) Having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty (and, used loosely: “good taste”).

(4) Relating to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.

(5) The philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place.

(6) A particular individual’s set of ideas about style and taste, along with its expression:

(7) An individual’s (or a collective’s) set of principles or worldview as expressed through outward appearance, behavior, or actions.

1798: From the mid-eighteenth century German Ästhetisch or the German-derived French esthétique, from the New Latin, ultimately from the Ancient Greek aisthetikos (pertaining to sense perception, perceptible, sensitive perceptive and (of things) perceptible), the construct being aisthēt(ḗs) (aesthete) + -ikos (-ic), from aisthanesthai (to perceive (by the senses or by the mind), to feel, from the primitive Indo-European awis-dh-yo-, from the root au- (to perceive).  The ikos suffix was from κός (kós) with an added i, from i-stems such as φυσι-κός (phusi-kós) (natural), through the same process by which ῑ́της (ī́tēs) developed from της (tēs), occurring in some original case and later used freely.  It was cognate with the Latin icus and the Proto-Germanic igaz, from which came Old English iġ (which in Modern English ultimately was resolved as y), the Old High German ig and the Gothic eigs.  The historic alternative spelling is æsthetics, still see in the odd literary novel.  Derived forms include the adjectives nonaesthetic (which if hyphenated seems to be used as a neutral descriptive and if not, as a critique) & pseudoaesthetic (which is always in criticism).  Aesthetic is a noun & adjective, aesthete & aestheticism are nouns and aesthetically is an adverb; the noun plural is aesthetics.

The noun aesthete (person of advanced and fine artistic sensibilities) dates from the early 1880s and was from Ancient Greek αἰσθητής (aisthētḗs) (one who perceives), the construct being aisthē- (variant stem of aisthánesthai (to perceive)) + -tēs (the Greek noun suffix denoting agent).  It was a Victorian back-formation from aesthetics and there no exact synonym, the closet being “connoisseur” but it conveys a slightly different implication and the derived noun hyperaesthete is used sometimes as a term of derision directed at the “excessively civilized”.  The rarely used alternative spellings esthete & æsthete are now used only as literary devices and are otherwise obsolete.  Aesthete is a noun and aesthetic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is aesthetes and the idea long predates the word, descriptions of such figures appearing (sometimes as slurs hinting at a lack of manliness) in texts from Antiquity and aesthetician (professor of taste) was in use by 1829, aestheticist by 1868.  The original edition (1911) of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COD) noted that in English university slang the opposite of an aesthete was a “hearty”, the former tribe devotes of John Ruskin (1819–1900), the latter lot lusting after a rugby blue.

Ms Andrea Ivanova who is pursuing (from head to toe) a particular aesthetic.

For specific purposes, estheticians can induce localized instances of angioedema (in pathology, a swelling that occurs just beneath the surface of the skin or mucous membranes).  Ms Andrea Ivanova (b 1998), a student from the Bulgarian capital Sofia, has had over twenty injections of hyaluronic acid in her quest to have the world’s plumpest lips but, seeking additional fullness, indicated recently she intends to pursue another course of injections.  Ms Ivanova is also a collector of Barbie dolls, the aesthetic of which she admires, and these are said to provide the inspiration for some of the other body modifications and adjustments she's undertaken.  Like the lips, other bits remain a work-in-progress, Ms Ivanova documenting things on Instagram where she enjoys some 32K followers.

The alternative spelling esthetic began life as one of those Americanisms which annoy some but it reflected simply the wholly sensible approach in US English that it’s helpful if spelling follows pronunciation.  However, in the early twentieth century the US cosmetic surgery industry (even then inventive and profitable), re-purposed the word; linguistic differentiation to create product differentiation: “esthetic surgery”, the business of performing surgery for aesthetic purposes rather than reasons strictly medical or reconstructive and the most significant figure in this was the German-Jewish cosmetic physician Jacques Joseph (1865–1934), now remembered as the “father of modern cosmetic surgery”.  Under the auspices of first the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS, 1931) and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS, 1967), the business of esthetic surgery has since boomed and related (even if remotely) professions such as nail technicians, the lip-plumpers and the body-piercers also append “esthetic” to their advertising; the first “estheticians” were the skin care specialists (exfoliation, massage, aromatherapy, facials and such) but the title soon proliferated.  

A classic reference which can be read for pleasure (by word nerds).

JA Cuddon (1928-1996) was a writer of extraordinary range and one of the great characters of twentieth century literary life in England and while some of his works sold more, none have been of more enduring than his typically comprehensive and amusing Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, first published in 1977 by Penguin and the entry on aestheticism is typical of his style, beginning with the observation the term was “'pregnant' with many connotations” before exploring the history.  In English, “aesthetic” first came into wider use after appearing in translations of the work of the German philosopher of the Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) although the original use was in the classically correct sense “science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception” and Kant’s use had been an attempt at reclamation on behalf of academic philosophy in reaction to his fellow German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) heretically using it in his Aesthetica (1750) to mean “criticism of taste”, something which so appealed to English speakers it became (despite the doughty scholarly rearguard) after the 1830s (in the wake of the Romantic poets) the dominant meaning, freeing the word from the jealous grasp of the philosophers.  This was cemented by the literary critic Walter Pater (1839–1894 and one of the century’s most exquisite stylists of language) who in 1868 applied it to the l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) movement, a place which proved its natural home.  The English academic polymath William Whewell (1794–1866) had suggested callesthetics for “the science of the perception of the beautiful” but that never caught on.  The shift is illustrated by the track of the adjective which was in 1798 was recorded to mean “of or pertaining to sensual perception” while by 1821 there was the parallel “of or pertaining to appreciation of the beautiful.”

Cuddon defined an aesthete as “one who pursues and is devoted to the 'beautiful' in art, music and literature” while aestheticisrn was the “term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility (a way of looking at and feeling about things) in the nineteenth century [which] fundamentally… entailed the point of view that art is self-sufficient and need fulfil no other purpose than its own ends. In other words, art is an end in itself and need not be (or should not be) didactic, politically committed, propagandist, moral - or anything else but itself; and it should not be judged by any non-aesthetic criteria such as whether or not it is useful).”  Cuddon reminded his readers that Kant as well as Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832), Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) & Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) were all in the vanguard of the l'art pour l'art “movement or cult”, arguing “art must be autonomous”, the political implication being “the artist should not be beholden to anyone.  From this, in turn, it followed that the artist was someone special, apart, from others and from this came the post-Romantic idea of the artist as superior to ordinary mortals”, a view which infected many who concluded they deserved to be judged on the basis of being artists, rather than by virtue of the art they produced.  In the dark mist of late Romanticism, this had a certain appeal but it cumulated in post-modernism and while it’s true that even in the nineteenth century high art there really wasn’t one agreed construct of the aesthetic, by the late twentieth century there were so many that Cuddon was probably right in suggesting it was the “long-term result of Romantic subjectivism and self-culture; of the cult of the individual ego and sensibility.”

Cuddon detected “a widespread disenchantment in the literature of the aesthetes, and especially in their poetry” which he contrasted with the popular novelists of the era such as early realists like Charles Dickens (1812–1870) or Émile Zola (1840–1902).  The poets showed a “tendency to withdrawal or aversion”, aspiring to “sensuousness and to what has become known as ‘pure poetry'” and while that was criticized by figures as diverse as Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, UK prime-minister 1868 & 1874-1880) and Karl Marx (1818-1883), at “its best, aestheticism was a revitalizing influence in an age of ugliness, brutality dreadful inequality & oppression, complacency, hypocrisy and Philistinism.  It was a genuine search for beauty and a realization that the beautiful has an independent value.  At its worst it deteriorated into posturing affectation and mannerism, to vapid idealism and indeed to a kind of silliness which is not wholly dead.”  Cuddon was writing in the mid-1970s and it’s doubtful anything he saw in the last decades of his life much changed his mind.

Deconstructing the Lindsay Lohan aesthetic

PinkMirror is a web app which helps users optimize their facial aesthetics, using an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to deconstruct the individual components an observer’s brain interprets as a whole.  Because a face is for these purposes a collection of dimensions & curves with certain critical angles determined by describing an arc between two points, it means things can be reduced to metrics, and the interaction of these numbers can used to create a measure of attractiveness.  Pinkmirror cites academic research which confirms a positive canthal tilt is a “power cue” for female facial attractiveness and while it’s speculative, a possible explanation for this offered by the researchers was linked to (1) palpebral (of, pertaining to, or located on or near the eyelids.) fissure inclination being steeper in children than adults (classifying it thus a neonatal feature) and (2) it developing into something steeper still in females than males after puberty (thus becoming a sexually dimorphic feature).  Pinkmirror notes also that natural selection seems to be operating to support the idea, data from Johns Hopkins Hospital finding that in women, the intercanthal axis averages +4.1 mm (.16 of an inch) or +4^o, the supposition being that women with the advantage of a positive medial canthus tilt are found more attractive so attract more mates, leading to a higher degree of procreation, this fecundity meaning the genetic trait producing the characteristic feature is more frequently seen in the population.  Cosmetic surgeons add another layer to the understanding, explaining the canthal tilt is one of the marker’s of aging, a positive tilt exuding youth, health, and exuberance where as a line tending beyond the negative is associated with aging, this actually literally product of natural processes, the soft tissue gradually descending under the effect of gravity, as aspect of Vogue magazine’s definition of the aging process: “Everything gets bigger, hairier & lower”.

The Pinkmirror app exists to quantify one’s degree of attractiveness.  It’s wholly based on specific dimension and thus as piece of math, is not influenced by skin tone although presumably, its parameters are defined by the (white) western model of what constitutes attractiveness.  Users should therefore work within those limitations but the model would be adaptable, presumably not to the point of being truly cross-cultural but specifics forks could certainly be created to suit any dimensional differences between ethnicities.  Using an industry standard known as the Photographic Canthal Index (PCI), one’s place on Pinkmirror’s index of attractiveness is determined by the interplay of (1) Nose width, (2) Bi-temporal to bi-zygomatic ratio, (3) chin length, (4) chin angle, (5) lower-lip height & (6) eye height.

Lindsay Lohan scored an 8.5 (out of 10), was rated as “beautiful” and found to be “very feminine, with great features of sexual dimorphism”, scoring highly in all facets except lower lip height and eye height.  Her face shape is the heart, distinguished by a broad forehead and cheekbones, narrowing in the lines of down to the jaw-line, culminating in a cute pointy chin.  Pinkmirror say the most attractive face shape for women has been found to be the triangle, scoring about the same as the oval while the heart, round, diamond, rectangle and square are also attractive to a lesser degree.  Within the app, pears and oblongs are described as “not typically seen as attractive” and while the word “ugly” isn’t used, for the unfortunate pears and oblongs, that would seem the implication.

Other aesthethetics

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.

The mysterious “experimental aesthetics” is a discipline in psychology taking “a subject-based, inductive approach to aesthetics”; it was founded by German physicist and experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner (1801–1887) who had a background in psychophysics before changing direction so experimental aesthetics is the second oldest research area in psychology.  It is a field of study which investigates how individuals perceive and evaluate aesthetic experiences using empirical methods, merging principles and techniques from psychology, neuroscience and the arts to understand the underlying mechanisms of aesthetic appreciation and creativity.  Essentially, it was the examination of the way people perceive beauty, art and design, and how they form aesthetic judgments, the resulting metrics gleaned from measuring sensory processes, cognitive mechanisms and emotional responses.  Given these things are inherently hard to quantify in a way which is both statistically sound and has some meaning, what Fechner was attempting was really quite adventurous and those who have continued his work have produced something sprawlingly interdisciplinary, involving collaborations between psychologists, neuroscientists, artists, designers, and philosophers, all with their own traditions of measurement. From this interplay emerged the sub-field of neuroaesthetics which focuses on the neural basis of aesthetic experiences, something made possible by the development of various brain imaging techniques like Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the electroencephalogram (EEG).  Being academics who publish, experimental aesthetics has also yielded theoretical models, the most pleasing of which is the “processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure” which explores what contributes to the ease with which information is processed in the human mind, a significant factor in the way people experience beauty.

In the same vein as ethnomusicology (the study of non-Western musical forms), ethnoaesthetics is the study or description of “the aesthetics specific to or adopted by a particular culture”.  Perhaps surprisingly, both continue to be used although some might consider them at least microaggressions which can be read as implying a cultural hierarchy and even if not, it certainly suggests “separate but equal”, a concept with its own troubled history.  Phonoaesthetics is the study of the aesthetic properties of sounds, particularly in the context of language. The phono- prefix (relating to sound) was from the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound).  The word φωνή primarily referred to articulated human or animal sounds in contrast to ἠχή (from which is derived “echo”) which referred to sounds in general.  Phonoaesthetics involves the analysis of how certain sounds, words, or phonetic patterns are perceived as pleasing or displeasing to the ear, the field combining elements of linguistics, psychology, and aesthetics to explore the sensory and emotional responses elicited by different sounds.  If ever you’ve wondered why a word like “succulent” is so “delicious” to say, phonoaesthetics has the answer.  The inherent beauty or appeal of sounds exists both in isolation and within linguistic structures, most obviously in the phonemes, syllables & prosody but there are also associative factors; a word with a positive association can impart pleasure and that experience can exist across a culture or be specific to one individual.  Somaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field that studies the body (soma, from the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek σῶμα (sôma) (body) as both a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning.  Not taken seriously by all critics, it’s seems essentially the “New Age” with an academic gloss.

Purgatory

Purgatory (pronounced pur-guh-tree (U), pur-guh-tawr-ee (non-U) or pur-guh-tohr-ee (non-U)

(1) In the orthodox theology of the Roman Catholic Church (and in some other Christian denominations), a condition or place in which the souls of those dying penitent (in a state of grace) are purified from venial sins, or undergo the temporal punishment that, after the guilt of mortal sin has been remitted, still remains to be endured by the sinner.

(2) In the Italian Purgatorio (pronounced poor-gah-taw-ryaw), the second part of Dante's (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divine Comedy (1320), in which repentant sinners are depicted.

(3) Any condition or place of temporary punishment, suffering, expiation, or the like; any place of suffering, usually for past misdeeds.

(4) Serving to cleanse, purify, or expiate.

1160-1180: From the Middle English purgatorie (place or condition of temporal punishment for spiritual cleansing after death of souls dying penitent and destined ultimately for Heaven), from the Old French purgatore & purgatorie, from the Medieval Latin pūrgātōrium (means of cleaning), noun use of neuter of the Late Latin pūrgātōrius (purging, literally “place of clensing”), the construct being pūrgā(re) (to purge) + -tōrius (-tory), the adjectival suffix, from purgat-, past-participle stem of pūrgāre (to purge, cleanse, purify).  The adjectival form developed in the late thirteenth century, independent of the evolution in Church Latin.  The figurative use (state of mental or emotional suffering, expiation etc) dates from the late fourteenth century, originally used poetically especially despairingly when speaking of unrequited love, or (and this may seem a paradox to same and merely descriptive to others), of marriage.   In old New England it was used of narrow gorges and steep-sided ravines, a reference to the difficulties to be dad when negotiating such terrain.  Purgatory, purgatorium & purgatorian are nouns and purgatorial is an adjective; the noun plural is purgatories.

Mankind's Eternal Dilemma: The Choice Between Virtue and Vice (1633) by Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642), Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston.

In the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the purgatory is the condition of souls of the dead who die with punishment but not damnation due them for their sins committed on Earth.  Purgatory is conceived as a condition of suffering and purification that leads to union with God in heaven and is something thus inherently temporary and has always been a bit of a theological problem because it’s not mentioned (or even alluded to) in the Bible.  The usual rationalization of this scriptural lacuna is the argument that prayer for the dead is an ancient practice of Christianity and one which has always assumed the dead can be in a state of suffering, something which the living can improve by their prayers.  Theological positions have hung on thinner strands than that and within Roman Catholicism, purgatory has never attracted the controversy which so excited critics of limbo, a rather more obviously unjust medieval conjecture, but many branches of Western Christianity, notably the Protestant tradition, deny its existence although among the more ritualistic, there are those who conceive purgatory as a place and one often depicted as filled with fire.  The transitory nature of the condition has often encouraged misunderstanding for it is not a place of probation; the ultimate salvation of those in purgatory assured, the impenitent not received into purgatory.  Instead, the souls in purgatory receive relief through the prayers of the faithful and through the sacrifice of the mass, the confusion perhaps arising from the imagining the destructive nature of fire on Earth whereas upon the soul with no earthly attachment, it can be only cleansing.

So purgatory is the state of those who die in God's grace but are not yet perfectly purified; they are guaranteed eternal salvation but must undergo purification after death to gain the holiness needed to enter heaven.  The purgatory, the framework of which was fully developed at the Councils of Florence (1431-1449) and Trent (1545 and 1563), is totally different from the punishment of the damned who are subject to a cleansing fire, the scriptural explanation being "The person will be saved, but only through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15) but even then the Church recognized degrees of sin as Pope Gregory I (Saint Gregory the Great, circa 540–604; pope 590-604) helpfully clarified: "As for certain lesser faults, there is a purifying fire."  The possibilities were made explicit during the Council of Trent in the statement “God predestines no one to hell” which made clear that damnation is visited upon sinners only by a persistence in mortal sin until death and God would much prefer "all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).   In the Roman ritual, the relevant line is "save us from final damnation and count us among those you have chosen" and through purgatory, souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".  Mortal sin incurs both temporal punishment and eternal punishment, venial sin ("forgivable sin” in this context) incurs only temporal punishment. The Catholic Church makes a distinction between the two.

Dante and Virgil Entering Purgatory (1499-1502) by Luca Signorelli (circa 1444-1523), Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto, Italy.  The pair are shown in the first terrace watching souls of the prideful being made to cat stones on their backs.

The noun purgatory appeared perhaps between 1160 and 1180, giving rise to the idea of purgatory as a place but the Roman Catholic tradition of purgatory as a transitional condition has a history that pre-dates even the birth of Christ.  There was, around the world, a widespread practice of both caring for and praying for the dead, the idea that prayer contributed to their purification in the afterlife.  Anthropologists note the ritual practices in other traditions, such as the way medieval Chinese Buddhists would make offerings on behalf of the dead, said to suffer numerous trials so there is nothing novel in the practice which is mentioned in what the Roman Catholic Church has declared to be part of Sacred Scripture, and which was adopted by Christians from the beginning, a practice that pre-supposes that the dead are thereby assisted between death and their entry into their final and eternal abode.

Whether purgatory is actually a place has in Roman circles been discussed for centuries.  In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI (b 1927; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus since), speaking of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), said that in her time the purgatory was pictured as a location in space, but that she saw it as a purifying inner fire, such as she experienced in her profound sorrow for sins committed, such a contrast with God's infinite love.  The failing of man she said was being bound to the desires and suffering that derive from sin and that makes it impossible for the soul to enjoy the beatific vision of God.  Noting that little appeared to have changed, Benedict noted "We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin."

The Eastern Catholic Churches are Catholic churches sui iuris of Eastern tradition, (in full communion with the Pope) but there are some differences with Rome on aspects of purgatory, mostly relating to terminology and speculation.  The Eastern Catholic Churches of Greek tradition do not generally use the word "purgatory", but agree that there is a "final purification" for souls destined for heaven and that prayers can help the dead who are in that state of "final purification".  In neither east nor west are these matters thought substantive and are regarded as nuances and differences of tradition.  The Eastern Catholic Churches belonging to the Syriac Tradition (Chaldean, Maronite and Syriac Catholic), generally believe in the concept of Purgatory but use a different name (usually Sheol) and claim there is contradiction with the Latin-Catholic doctrine.  Rome appears never to have pursued the matter.

La Divina Commedia di Dante (Dante and His Poem), oil on canvas by Domenico di Michelino  (1417–1491) after Alesso Baldovinetti  (1425–1499), collection of Florence Cathedral, Italy.  This work, in depicting the seven terraces in the form of the mountain were one approach to Dante's Purgatory, the other a focus on one level. 

The Eastern Orthodox Church rejects the term "purgatory" but does admit an intermediate state after death, the determination of Heaven and Hell being stated in the Bible and it notes prayer for the dead is necessary.  The position of Constantinople and environs is that the moral progress of the soul, for better or worse, ends at the very moment of the separation of body and soul; it is in that instant the definite destiny of the soul in the everlasting life is decided.  There is no way of repentance, no way of escape, no reincarnation and no help from the outside world, the eternal place of the soul decided forever by its Creator and judge.  Thus the Orthodox position is that while all undergo judgment upon death, neither the just nor the wicked attain the final state of bliss or punishment before the last day, the obvious exception being the righteous soul of the Theotokos (the Blessed Virgin Mary), "who was borne by the angels directly to heaven".

Generally, Protestant churches reject the doctrine of purgatory although more than one Archbishop of Canterbury may have come to regard Lambeth Palace as Purgatory on Earth.  One of Protestantism's most cited tenets is sola scriptura (scripture alone) and because the Bible (from which Protestants exclude deuterocanonical books such as 2 Maccabees) contains no obvious mention of purgatory, it’s therefore rejected as an unbiblical and thus un-Christian.  There are however variations such as the doctrine of sola fide (by faith alone) which hold that pure faith, apart from any action, is what achieves salvation, and that good deeds are but mere manifestations of that faith so salvation is a discrete event that takes place once for all during one's lifetime, not the result of a transformation of character.  What does seem to complicate that is that most Protestant teaching is that a transformation of character naturally follows the salvation experience; instead of distinguishing between mortal and venial sins, Protestants believe that one's faith dictates one's state of salvation and one's place in the afterlife, those saved by God destined for heaven, those not excluded.  Purgatory is thus impossible.

Divina Commedia, Purgatorio (circa 1478), illuminated manuscript commissioned by Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), Vatican Library collection, Rome.  Again, the carring of stones on the first terrace, the style is recognizable in the later schools of mannerism and surrealism.  

Wishing to excise any hint of popery from religion, purgatory was addressed in two of the foundation documents of Anglicanism in the sixteenth century.  Prayers for the departed were deleted in the 1552 revision to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer because they implied a doctrine of purgatory (it was the nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic that saw them restored to some editions) and Article XXII of the the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571) was most explicit: "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory . . . is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."  In the twenty-first century, the Anglicans, finding it hard to sit anywhere but on the fence, now say “Purgatory is seldom mentioned in Anglican descriptions or speculations concerning life after death, although many Anglicans believe in a continuing process of growth and development after death.”  The post-modern church writ small; one wonders if the PowerPoint slides of Anglican accountants and Anglican theologians greatly differ.

In Judaism, Gehenna is a place of purification where, according to some traditions, sinners spend up to a year before release.  For some, there are three classes of souls: (1) the righteous who shall at once be written down for the life everlasting, (2) the wicked who shall be damned and (3), those whose virtues and sins counterbalance one another shall go down to Gehenna and float up and down until they rise purified.  Other sects speak only of the good and the bad yet, confusingly, most also mention an intermediate state.  There’s also variance between the traditions regarding the time which purgatory in Gehenna lasts, some saying twelve months and others forty-nine days, both opinions based upon Isaiah 66:23–24: "From one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before Me, and they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched"; the former interpreting the words "from one new moon to another" to signify all the months of a year; the latter interpreting the words "from one Sabbath to another", in accordance with Leviticus 23:15-16, to signify seven weeks.  Whatever the specified duration, there are exceptions made for the souls of the impure which prove resistant to the persuasions of the Gehenna.  According to the Baraita (a Jewish oral law tradition), the souls of the wicked are judged, and after these twelve months are are consumed and transformed into ashes under the feet of the righteous whereas the "great seducers and blasphemers" are to undergo eternal tortures in Gehenna without cessation.  The righteous however and, according to some, also the sinners among the people of Israel for whom Abraham intercedes because they bear the Abrahamic sign of the covenant, are not harmed by the fire of Gehenna even when they are required to pass through the intermediate state of purgatory.

Relief sculpture on a side wall at the Chapel of Souls, (Capilla de Animas) in Compostela, Spain.  These are the souls of the lustful on the seventh terrace, praying for release, which they have been promised will (eventually) be granted by the cleansing flames, something dependent on true repentance.

It was the Florentine poet Dante (Dante Alighieri, circa 1265–1321) who, in the second cantica of the epic poem Divine Comedy (1320) gave the world a vivid depiction of the place he called Purgatorio.  Dante described Purgatory as a mountain which rose on the far side of the world, opposite Jerusalem, with seven terraces, each corresponding to the one of the seven deadly sins, each terrace a place of purification for souls who are penitent and seeking to cleanse themselves of their sins, so to be judged worthy of entering Paradise.  In the valley at the base of the mountain is Ante-Purgatory and here sit the souls of the excommunicated and those who delayed repentance (the so called the “late repentant”) as they await their turn to begin their ascent of the terraces.  Throughout Purgatory, angels and guides assist the souls and Dante's guide is the Roman poet Virgil (symbolizing human reason).  Virgil leads Dante until they reach Earthly Paradise where Beatrice (representing divine wisdom) takes over as the guide to Heaven.

The seven terraces

First Terrace (Pride): Here the souls are humbled by being made to carry heavy stones on their backs, forcing them to bend and contemplate humility.

Second Terrace (Envy): Envious souls are punished by having their eyes sewn shut with twists of iron wire so they may learn to appreciate the beauty of charity and generosity.

Third Terrace (Wrath): Souls of the wrathful Souls enveloped in a thick smoke that blinds them, teaching them to cultivate patience and peace.

Fourth Terrace (Sloth): The slothful are punished by being forced incessantly to run, encouraging diligence and zeal.

Fifth Terrace (Avarice and Prodigality): These souls have to lie face down in the dirt and weep, teaching them to balance their desire for material wealth with the virtues of generosity and moderation.

Sixth Terrace (Gluttony): The gluttonous are starved so extreme hunger and thirst constantly will remind them of the importance of temperance.

Seventh Terrace (Lust): Souls here walk through walls of flames, purging the sin of lust, teaching chastity and love for God.

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

That all sound rather grim but at the mountain’s summit sits the reward: Earthly Paradise (the Garden of Eden).  Here, in this place of peace and beauty, symbolizing the restored innocence and grace, souls are purified completely and ready to ascend to Heaven.  So, the purpose of Dante's Purgatory is less the punishments which must be endured than the possibility of redemption from sin through repentance to purification, leading ultimately to the soul's readiness for Paradise. In this it contrasts with the eternal sufferings which are the fate of those souls condemned to the circles of Hell.

Epizeuxis

Epizeuxis (pronounced ep-i-zook-sis)

A literary or rhetorical device used as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated emphatically with the intention of producing some desired effect.

1580–1590: From the Modern Latin epizeuxis, from the Ancient Greek ἐπίζευξις (epízeuxis) (a fastening together, a joining; in rhetoric the repetition (of words), from ἐπιζευγνύναι (epizeugnúnai), the construct being epi- (the epi- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἐπί (epí) (on top of; in addition to (in a special use in chemistry), it denotes an epimeric (of or pertaining to an epimer (any diastereoisomer that has the opposite configuration at only one of the stereogenic centres) form)).+ zeûxis (the yoking (of oxen)); a joining) a verbal noun from ζευγνύναι (zeugnúnai) (to yoke, to join).  Epizeuxis is a noun; the noun plural is epizeuxes.

In speeches and in debate (that term often used generously when they’re involved), politicians use epizeuxis essentially because they’ve been taught to follow what works in advertising: use simple words and phrases (preferably a TWS (three word phrase)), endlessly repeated in a manner of delivery something like a school teacher uses with the less bright children.  There’s seems a tendency among the more cynical commentators to suggest the less sincere a politician is, the more they’re inclined to be epizeuxistic and while that’s impressionistic, cases like Sir Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007 (education, education, education)) and Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013 (jobs, jobs, jobs)) do come to mind.  Still, in the hands of a master rhetorician, an epizeuxis, especially if unexpected, can be effective.

Lyndon Johnson (left) & Sam Rayburn (right), Washington DC, 1954.  The few left in the modern Democratic Party with any sense of history recall with some nostalgia the Johnson-Rayburn congressional era when, at its peak, the Democrats held majorities of 64-36 in the Senate and 263-174 in the House of Representatives.

In the 1964 US presidential election Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) faced the Republican nominee Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the contest dubbed by some as “a crook versus a kook”.  Only days before the poll, LBJ turned up at Cresent City’s Jung Hotel in New Orleans to deliver a campaign speech which he began conventionally enough, telling the audience of 1500 Louisiana democrat faithful he would enforce the new civil rights law, guaranteeing every American free access to all public accommodations, which had passed with Senate support from “…two thirds of the Democrats and three-fourths of the Republicans.”  Years later, he would note the applause “…was less than overwhelming.”  He then paused before telling them of the words spoken to him by an old, dying Texas senator who had told house speaker Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) he wished he was well enough because “I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech.  I have one in me.  Poor old state, they haven’t heard a real Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is Nigra, Nigra, Nigra.”

Even south of the Mason-Dixon Line, in 1964 for a president to utter the “N-word” (albeit in the form of a “polite southernism”) was startling and the reports in the press spoke of “...a collective gasp in the room” before the Southern audience gave the Southern president “…a five-minute standing ovation.”  It should though be remembered that in his massive biography (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, four of five volumes (1982-2012) thus far published), Robert Caro (b 1935) did note the conversion to racial equality came late in his life, his earlier uses of “Nigra, Nigra, Nigra” having a harsher edge.  Still, LBJ did achieve much to advance civil rights in the US and had the war in Vietnam not consumed his presidency, he would now be remembered differently although it was the reaction to his domestic policies which triggered the birth and growth of the “New Right” and the neo-liberal economic order which staged history’s greatest corporate takeover (ie most of the planet).  Political scientists have written much on the roots and evolution of the “New Left” but there remains a tendency to focus on the Reagan-Thatcher era (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) & Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) as a kind of sudden “revolution” rather than something which really began in the wake of Goldwater’s massive defeat in 1964.

In rhetoric & literary use, the devices related to epizeuxis includes “anaphora, “diacope”, “contrastive reduplication” while in song writing and poetry there’s also “incremental repetition” (where a line is repeated with slight variations to advance the narrative or argument) and “refrain” (where a phrase or line repeated regularly, usually at the end of a stanza or verse.  Epizeuxis (known also as palilogia) involves the immediate repetition of words or phrases without any intervening words and often reinforced with, if written, an exclamation mark or if spoken, some sort of gesture.  As a device to convey vehemence, it works by emphasizing some point by (1) repetition & (2) delivery in quick succession.  It’s not the most refined of devices and in literature is best used with some infrequency because the power of its novelty fades fast although if deployed for comic effect, it can be used more often.  Joseph Conrad’s (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) use of “The horror, the horror!” in Heart of Darkness (1899) is a classic example of the effect but as endlessly used in advertising, it’s often just intrusive.

Anaphora (from the Ancient Greek ἀναφορά (carrying back)) is the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses.  Borrowing from poetry and often the chorus passages from various forms of music, it creates emphasis and rhythm.  It was a favourite of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” from Richard II (1595) illustrates how he used anaphora to make language flow.  The companion term is epistrophe (or epiphora), the repeating of words at a clauses' end.  The combination of anaphora and epistrophe results in symploce.

A diacope (from the Ancient Greek diakopḗ (cut in two) involves the repetition of words or phrases with a few intervening words, the emphasis achieved by a “sandwiching” (a special class of interpolation in structural linguistics) the repeated elements.  Again, Shakespeare provides perhaps the most famous example in English in having the Danish prince say “To be or not to be” (Hamlet (circa 1600) and a classically simple example is Ian Fleming’s (1908–1964)”Bond, James Bond”.  In linguistics there are three classes of diacope: (1) Vocative Diacope in which the repeated words are separated by nouns which directly are addressed (ie the noun must address something, or someone), (2) Elaborative Diacope where an adjective is used between the repeated words to enhance the meaning of the repeated word and (3) The extended diacope where for even more emphasis a word is repeated more than twice.

Lindsay Lohan and her then “girlfriend-girlfriend” Samantha Ronson (b 1977) at the release of her twin Charlotte Ronson's Spring 2009 line, New York Fashion Week, Bryant Park, New York, September 2008.  Among women, the “girlfriend-girlfriend” contrastive reduplication distinguishes “a friend who is female” from “a female lover”, the latter once often known by the euphemism “special friend”. (although author and one-time communist Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) liked "you-know-what-bian" which never caught on)  In this context “girlfriend” is exemplified by the gang of four in the HBO television series Sex and the City (1998–2004), based on Candace Bushnell’s (b 1958) compilation (the book Sex and the City (1996)) of columns (1994-1996) under the same title written for the New York Observer.  The same thing could be achieved by the adoption of the convention of using “girl friend” for friends and “girlfriend” for lovers (as men use the word) but that really works only in writing or with the addition of visual clues.

Contrastive reduplication (CR to the practitioners who treat the analysis as “phrasal focus movement (PFM)” although in the way of academic life it’s also called “identical constituent compounding” (ICC), “lexical cloning (LC)” “contrastive focus reduplication” (CFR) or “double construction” (DC), all grouped under the rubric of “syntactic reduplication” (SR)) is a widely practiced phenomenon of conversational speech in which a word or larger constituent is reduplicated to single out a default or prototypical meaning, one of the duplicates receiving or imparting the contrastive (focal) stress.  Sometimes used in conjunction with “air quotes”, structurally CR often makes no sense if deconstructed literary but they are widely understood:  “Do you like him or like-like him?” is in no way ambiguous, the first “like” interpreted as the default (dictionary” definition, the “duplicated like” carrying the “loaded” meaning.  In English, the first part of the reduplicant bears contrastive intonational stress.