Martyr

Martyr (pronounced mahr-ter)

(1) A person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce their religious faith, most notably those saints canonized after martyrdom.

(2) A person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause.

(3) A person who undergoes severe or constant suffering (often applied informally to those subject to chronic conditions such as rheumatism or migraine headaches).

(4) A person who seeks sympathy or attention by feigning or exaggerating pain, deprivation (fake martyrdom) or who willingly assumes some sort of easily avoidable (self-imposed martyrdom), both usually applied in a facetious or derogatory manner.

(5) To make a martyr of someone (especially by putting to death); to persecute, to torment or torture.

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun marter, from the Old English martir & martyr, from the Ecclesiastical Latin martyr, from the Doric Greek μάρτυρ (mártur (martus & mártyr)) (witness), a later form of the Ancient Greek μάρτυς (mártus (mártys & mártyros)) (witness).  The verb was from the Middle English martiren, from the Old English martyrian, from the noun.  The noun martyr referred to one who bears testimony to faith, especially one who willingly suffers death rather than deny their religious faith and specifically one of the Christians who put to death because they would not renounce their beliefs.  The verb developed in the sense of "put to death as punishment for adherence to some religious belief (especially Christianity) and was from the Middle English martiren, from Old French martiriier (and influenced by the Old English gemartyrian, from the noun martyr) and Middle English also had the mid-fifteenth century verb martyrize.  The general sense of "constant sufferer, a victim of misfortune, calamity, disease, etc" was in common use by the late sixteenth century while the Martyr complex (an exaggerated desire for self-sacrifice or assuming burdens) dates from 1916.  The noun martyrdom ("torture and execution for the sake of one's faith) emulated the use in the Old English and in the more abstract sense of "a state of suffering for the maintaining of any obnoxious cause", came to be used in the late fourteenth century.  The word has proved productive in its proliferation.  Martyr is a noun, martyrization, martyrdom, martyrology, martyry, martyrer, martyrship, martyrion, martyrium, martyrologe, martyrologue, protomartyr are nouns, martyring, martyrize & martyrizate are verbs, martyrish & martyresque are adjectives, martyred is a verb & adjective and martyrly is an adverb & adjective; the noun plural is martyrs.

Self-help for one's self.

The word was adopted directly into most Germanic languages (Old Saxon, Old Frisian Old High German et al), but fourteenth century Norse used the native formation pislarvattr (literally "torture-witness" meaning "one who suffers death or grievous loss in defense or on behalf of any belief or cause" (which could be personal, devotional or political).  Danish, French, Norwegian & Swedish all used the modern English spelling (some language groups in the old British Empire modified the spelling (notably under the Raj) while others picked it up unaltered).  Among other languages there was the Proto-Brythonic merθɨr, the Dutch martelaar, the Estonian märter, the Finnish marttyyri, the Old French martire, the Scots mairtyr, the Maori matira, the German Märtyrer, the Hungarian mártír, the Old Irish martar, the Old Italian martore, the Italian martire, the Lombard màrtul, the Neapolitan marture, the Catalan màrtir, the Occitan martir, the Galician, Spanish & Portuguese mártir, the Romanian martor, the Sardinian màrturu, the Sicilian màrtiri, the Scottish Gaelic martai and the Tagalog martir.  The origin of the Greek word is uncertain but may have been connected to mermera (care, trouble), from mermairein (be anxious or thoughtful), from the primitive Indo-European smrtu & mrtu-, source also of the Sanskrit smarati (remember) and the Latin memor (mindful).  Not all etymologists support the theory, usually because the phonetic relationships are dubious, suggesting a more likely origin lies in Archaic or Pre-Greek, perhaps even as a loan-word.  The Arabic شهيد (shaheed or shahid) (witness) in Islam refers to a martyr and appears often in the Quran (in the sense of "witness") but in only one instance can it be understood as  "martyr", the sense it acquired in the Ḥadīth, the vast body of work produced by authors which documented the words and thoughts attributed to the prophet.  The variations in the translations of these texts are legion and there has been cynical exploitation of this by the recruiters to jihadist causes who tend to seek out and merge the most punitive of the translations and the rewards to martyrs of 72 (the number varies) dark-eyed virgins appears with frequency.

Self-help for those with a difficult mother.

Martyrdom was of great interest to the Church, illustrated by the frequency with which martyrs to their faith were canonized (made into saints).  As a branch of theological academia, martyrology (history of the lives, sufferings, and deaths of Christian martyrs) became a district thing in the 1590s, either as a native formation from the noun martyr + -ology, or from the Ecclesiastical Latin martyrologium, from Ecclesiastical Greek martyrologicon.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).  In the Roman Catholic Church (an institution long given to making lists of stuff), an important part of martyrology was the index (or calendar) of martyrs, arranged according to their anniversaries (ie of their martyrdom).  In Middle English there was the late fourteenth century martiloge (the register of martyred saints), from the Medieval Latin martilogium; the related coining was martyrological.

Self-help for those with a difficult boyfriend.

Except where it’s unavoidable, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), tends not to use popular forms like “martyr complex”, bundling the condition in the category of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a cluster B personality disorder considered to be one of the least identified of the class, noting NPD frequently coexists with other psychiatric disorders.  A relatively recent diagnostic category, its development reflected not a distinct set of diagnostic criteria but rather the recognition by clinicians (psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists) that to classify certain difficult (though typically not neurotic) patients as psychotic was counter-productive.  The most often noted characteristics of NPD include grandiosity, the excessive quest admiration and a lack of empathy, coupled with underlying feelings of low self esteem issues and inadequacy.  In the DSM-5-TR (2022), the symptoms of NPD are listed as:

(1) A grandiose logic of self-importance.

(2) A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love.

(3) A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions.

(4) A desire for unwarranted admiration.

(5) A sense of entitlement.

(6) Interpersonally oppressive behavior.

(7) No form of empathy.

(8) Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her.

(9) A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes.

The early Church celebrated particularly the example of Justin Martyr (circa 100-circa 165, who appears in some texts as Justin the Philosopher).  His name wasn’t actually Martyr but it was adopted because his conduct in the face of suffering was thought exemplary.  He was in all probability a pagan and had sought education from schools in the Peripatetic, Pythagorean and Platonic traditions but was still unsatisfied unit falling into conversation with an elderly man he met on a beach who “…convinced him of the truth as it is in Jesus”.  His conversion to Christianity led to a lifetime of teaching, writing his apologia which culminated with his martyrdom, beheaded with six others under the reign of Marcus Aurelius (121–180; Roman emperor 161-180) although there’s nothing to suggest the emperor was involved in the sentencing.  For his faith he was of course rewarded with eternal life in Heaven but Justin too achieved a kind of earthly immortality, venerated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern & Oriental Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican community.  Later, the legend arose that Marcus Aurelius became disposed to relax the persecution of Christians after a group of them prayed for rain and the subsequent storm was of such intensity it enabled him to avoid military defeat although, off and on, persecution continued and it wasn’t until the reign of Constantine the Great (circa 272-337; Roman emperor 306–337) began to emerge as the dominant religion of the empire.

The persecution of Christians will seem familiar to minorities living under many authoritarian regimes including the Falun Gong in China and the Baháʼí in Iran and many historians have concluded the reasons tend to be political rather than theological, structuralists summarizing things thus:

(1) Emperors in Rome were much opposed to gods their regime did not recognize, the Bible noting (1 Corinthians 8:5) “there be gods many, and lords many” but the imperial authorities did not own the God of the Christians.

(2) The Christian faith preached One who was God over all the earth, who knew no political frontiers and that pagan gods were mere idols.

(3) Christians could not join in pagan worship or the idolatrous acts which were part of the social or civic occasions of which the state approved. 

(4) Christians met as a secret society and were unsociable in their behavior, the assumption being they might be plotting against the state.

(5) Christians were seen to be threatening the financial and political interests of various powerful classes, priests, the makers & sellers of idols and those who bred and sole sacrificial animals.

(6) Christians and their ways were accused to be arousing the anger of Roman gods who proved vengeful in visiting upon the empire famines, earthquakes, military defeats and other punishments.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1653, the full title Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church) by John Foxe (1517-1587) was a review of the history of martyrdom in European Christianity with a particular focus on the suffering of the early English Protestants.

The persecution continued until the year 311 when the Emperor Galerius (circa 258–311; Roman emperor 305-311) expired, meeting his death in a manner similar to that recorded in Acts (12:3) as that suffered by Herod Agrippa: “He was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost”.  Baffled yet convinced by grace with which Christians accepted their martyrdom, on his deathbed Galerius issued the Edict of Toleration and entreated Christians to pray on his behalf.

Relic & Relict

Relic (pronounced rel-ik)

(1) A surviving memorial of something past; something that has survived from the past, such as an object or custom.

(2) An object having interest by reason of its age or its association with the past; something kept in remembrance; souvenir; memento.

(3) A surviving trace of something.

(4) Remaining parts or fragments.

(5) In ecclesiastical use in Christendom, (especially in the Roman Catholic and Greek churches) the body, a bone or other body part, or some personal memorial of a saint, martyr, or other sacred person, preserved as worthy of veneration.

(6) In linguistics, a once widespread linguistic form that survives in a limited area but is otherwise obsolete.

(7) In informal use, an old or old-fashioned person or thing, a survivor from a bygone era.

(8) The remains of a dead person; a corpse (largely archaic and usually in the plural).

(9) In ecology a now less common term for relict.

1175–1225: From the Middle English relik (a body part or other object held in reverence or affection due to its connection with a holy person), from the Old French relique & relike (the eleventh century plural was reliques), from the Old English reliquias, the construct being reliqu(us) (remaining) + -iae the plural noun suffix), from the Late Latin reliquiæ (plural) (the remains of a martyr (although in Classical Latin it had meant “remains; remnants”)), noun use of the feminine plural of reliquus (remaining, that which remains), from relinquō (I leave behind, abandon, relinquish), the construct being from re- (back, backwards; again) the prefix added to various words to indicate an action being done again) + linquō (I leave, quit, forsake, depart from), and related to relinquere (perfective reliqui) (to leave behind, relinquish, forsake, abandon, give up), from the primitive Indo-European linkw-, a nasalized form of the root leikw- (to leave).  The Old English reliquias was a direct borrowing from Latin.  The noun reliquary (receptacle for keeping relics, often small enough to be carried on the person) dates from the 1650s, from the fourteenth century French reliquaire.  The noun plural was relics and the obsolete spellings were relick & relique.  The third-person singular simple present was relics, the present participle relicing or relicking and the simple past and past participle reliced or relicked).

The now familiar general sense of "remains, remnants, that which is left after the loss or ruin of the rest" dates from the early fourteenth century whereas the meaning "something kept as a souvenir, a memento" didn’t emerge until circa 1600.  By the 1590s, the word had, in conversational use, developed the weakened sense of "anything made interesting by its association with the distant past and ten years earlier had come also to describe "surviving trace of some practice, idea etc, a use which later (by 1809) influenced the specific use in history & anthropology: “relic of barbarism” the “survival of a (bad) old custom or condition."  Other words used in this context includes antique, antiquity, artifact, curio, evidence, fragment, keepsake, memento, monument, remains, remnant, souvenir, archaism, curiosity, heirloom, memorial, remembrance, reminder, residue & ruins.

Relict (pronounced rel-ikt)

(1) In biology & ecology, a species or community of animals or plants that exists as a remnant of a formerly widely distributed group in an environment different from that in which it originated (usually as a modifier (eg a relict fauna)).

(2) In geology, a mineral that remains unaltered after metamorphism of the rock in which it occurs.

(3) In geomorphology, a landform (a mountain, lake, glacier etc) formed by either erosive or constructive surficial processes that are no longer active as they were in the past.

(4) A remnant or survivor (rare).

(5) The surviving member of a married couple after one or the other has died; a widow or widower (although in practice the word was only ever applied to widows and is now archaic).

(6) In linguistics, a surviving archaic word, language or other form (technically slightly different from a relic (qv) but in casual use both are often used interchangeably.

(7) In the law of real property, the gradual recession of water from its usual high-water mark so that the newly uncovered land becomes the property of the adjoining riparian property owner.

1525–1535: From the Middle English relicte, from the Medieval Latin relicta (widow), noun use of feminine of the Latin relictus, past participle of relinquere (to relinquish).  Relicte in the sense of a widow, etymologically is "one who is left, one who remains", from the Old French relict (feminine relicte) (person or thing left behind (especially a widow)) and directly from the Medieval Latin relicta (a widow), noun use of feminine of relictus (abandoned, left behind), past-participle adjective from the Latin relinquere (leave behind, forsake, abandon, give up),

Relict came so often to be confused with relic that by 1926, Henry Fowler (1858-1933) noted in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage it had become a word seldom used except in legal documents when referring to a widow (and only lawyers would find the word “widow” unsuitable) and was thus "more often seen than heard", its place as an adjective in Middle English and early modern English (originally "left undisturbed or untouched, allowed to remain" (although used in various senses) long supplanted by relic.  As a technical word in biology, zoology and geology, it remains useful; the noun plural was relicts.

Print of original Heiltumsblätter (woodcut; circa 1496) of the relics of the Holy Roman Empire by Hans Spoerer of Nuremberg, hand-colored, printer's ink on paper, donated to the British Museum in 1916.

In the great cities of the Holy Roman Empire, there were publishers which offered entire relic-books but, parchment and even paper being expensive, as an alternative, pilgrims could purchase Heiltumsblätter (woodcut) reproductions of relics associated with a particular church or shrine.  The single-leaf woodcut illustrating the relics of the relics of the Holy Roman Empire was first printed circa 1480 with a second run of hand-colored versions offered in 1496 and as well as being used for private devotion, being large-scale they could be displayed in public places like churches, where they performed a similar function to indulgence announcements.

The Heiltumsblatt illustrating the relics of the Holy Roman Empire included pieces of the True Cross, thorns from Christ's crown, along with the sword, robe and scepter of Charlemagne (747–814; first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814).  The imperial collection also featured the Holy Lance that tradition stated was used by Longinus to pierce Christ's side after his death; this was a highly prized possession, since it was one of the few contact relics associated with Christ who was said to have left behind no bodily relics.  In 1423, Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368–1437; Holy Roman Emperor 1433-1437) bequeathed the Lance to Nuremberg for safekeeping, where it became the centerpiece of the Heiltumsweisung (sanctuary).  The Holy Lance's size in the woodcut is one indication of its importance, although this was not a mere effect of representation, for its makers claimed that this was a "true copy" of the Lance, which measures 508 x 79 mm (20 x 3.1 inches).

Enshrine

Enshrine (pronounced en-shrahyn)

(1) To enclose (a sacred relic etc) in a shrine or chest.

(2) To cherish as sacred or venerated, someone, an idea or an institution.

(3) In statute or constitutional law, to protect (a concept, ideal, or philosophy) within a law or treaty.

(4) Figuratively, to make permanent.

1575–1585: The construct was en- + shrine.  The en- prefix was from the Middle English en- (en-, in-), from the Old French en- (also an-), from the Latin in- (in, into).  It was also an alteration of in-, from the Middle English in-, from the Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in (in).  Both the Latin & Germanic forms were from the primitive Indo-European en (in, into).  The intensive use of the Old French en- & an- was due to confluence with Frankish intensive prefix an- which was related to the Old English intensive prefix -on.  It formed a transitive verb whose meaning is to make the attached adjective (1) in, into, (2) on, onto or (3) covered.  It was used also to denote “caused” or as an intensifier.  The prefix em- was (and still is) used before certain consonants, notably the labials b and p.  Shrine ((1) a holy or sacred place dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, or similar figure of awe and respect, at which said figure is venerated or worshipped, (2) a case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint & (3) figuratively a place or object hallowed from its history or associations) was from the Middle English shryne, from the Old English scrīn (reliquary, ark of the covenant), from the Medieval Latin scrīnium (reliquary (“case or chest for books or papers” in Classical Latin)) and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sker & ker- (to turn, bend).  It was linked with the Old Norse skrín and the Old High German skrīni (which survives in Modern German as Schrein).  In the sixteenth century enshrine & inshrine were used in parallel, both in the sense of “enclose in or as in a shrine; deposit for safe-keeping”.  The (rare) alternative form inshrine is listed (like the verb enshrineth as obsolete for all but the odd ceremonial use in religious rituals.  Enshrine & enshrined are verbs, enshriner, enshrinee & enshrinement are nouns, enshrined is verb & adjective and enshrining is a verb.

Implausibly, the White House tries to suggest Joe Biden is "cool".

October 3 has become enshrined as Mean Girls Day which is good but the White House for the last two years (2023 (left) & 2022 (right)) has tweeted memes on the theme, apparently in an attempt to make Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) seem somehow relevant (al last to the early twentieth century).  On both occasions, the reaction has been such that one might hope it stops but the next Mean Girls Day falls a few weeks before the 2024 presidential election and if Mr Biden doesn’t die (God forbid) and really does again run, the temptation may be too great.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice (TheVoice)

In October 2014, the Australian government submitted to the voters by means of referendum (the only way to modify the nation’s constitution):

A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?

The insertion of the following chapter:

Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

The “No” case assembled a number of arguments in opposition but one, although it seemed of fundamental importance, seemed to attract little comment and the “Yes” proponents made little attempt to refute its implications.  What the “No” case alleged, inter alia, was:

Putting a Voice in the Constitution means it’s permanent.  Enshrining in our Constitution a body for only one group of Australians means… once it is in the Constitution it won’t be undone.

In a literal sense that was of course almost certainly true but given the vagueness of the wording and the latitude afforded to the parliament in framing the parameters of “The Voice”, there seems no reason why things shouldn’t have gone the way of the Interstate Commission, a creature of Section 101 of the Constitution of Australia (1901):

There shall be an Inter-State Commission, with such powers of adjudication and administration as the Parliament deems necessary for the execution and maintenance, within the Commonwealth, of the provisions of this Constitution relating to trade and commerce, and of all laws made thereunder.

In terms of both legal theory and the usual constitutional practice the words “There shall be an Inter-State Commission” seem unambiguous but the Inter-State Commission wasn’t established until 1912 and became dormant after 1920 because the High Court of Australia (HCA) in 1915 has found the judicial powers granted to the commission by the parliament were invalid.  The bench held a “separation of powers” was implicit in the constitution which demanded judicial power be vested only in the judiciary and that on technical grounds the commission was not a judicial body.  Rendered therefore merely investigative and deliberative, the government allowed the commission to become defunct and it wasn’t revived until the 1980s and even then, after a brief existence as a stand-alone body, it was absorbed by what eventually became the Productivity Commission.

So, even had the words “There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice” had been enshrined in the Constitution, that alone would not seem to prevent a parliament at some point passing a law defining “The Voice” as one (suitably accommodative) indigenous person attached to the Department of Prime-Minister & Cabinet (PM&C) or just about any other model.  Because of the wording, it might be the High Court would have been generous in their view of who would have standing to challenge a model but the clause “The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures” would seem to offer little scope.  Lord Denning (1899-1999; English judge 1944-1982) himself would have struggled to find an “indigenous peoples’ equity” in all that.  Mere enshrinement of “The Voice” in the Constitution would not in itself have guaranteed any sort of legal or political dynamic because, as the tale of the Inter-State Commission demonstrated, words can be dead letters.

Comet

Comet (pronounced kom-it)

(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun, usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).

(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.

(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.

(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close to weightless environment.  Used to train astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some experience.

(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something) who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular event.

1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη (kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail.  The descendants in other languages include the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed.  Comet, cometlessness, cometography, cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical, cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.

Comets orbit the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen water, frozen gases, and dust.  When near the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas), the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).  The path of a comet can be in the shape of an ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit around the sun.  Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt) and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and coming from the Oort cloud).

Before the development of modern techniques, comets were visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected.  Superstition stepped in where science didn’t exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom, famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires.  It was the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682 published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their appearance could be predicted.  Halley's Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.

Comet wine: Non-vintage Alois Lageder Natsch4 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti.

Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence.  A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall) which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant and superior yield of the continental vineyards.  For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and thus a premium price).  Wine buffs say any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial bodies is entirely coincidental.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2021) by Dr Heather Clark (b 1974).

One of things about the feminist cult which is now the construct of Sylvia Path (1932-1963) is that her mistreatment at the hands of her husband Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) tends to obscure her work which many quite familiar with the story of her brief life will barely have read and that’s perhaps predictable, certainly for those for whom the lure of tales of tragic woman and brutish men is a siren.  As human tragedies go, her story is compelling: A precocious talent, the death of the father to whom she was devoted when only eight, the suicide attempt while a student and the burning ambition to write and be published.  Almost as soon as she met Ted Hughes she knew he was “my black marauder” and their affair was one of intense physicality as well as a devotion to their art, something which might have endured during their marriage (which produced two children) had Hughes not proved so unfaithful and neglectful.  In 1963, as an abandoned solo mother in a freezing flat during what entered history as London’s coldest winter of the century, she took her own life while her two babies slept nearby, becoming a symbol onto which people would map whatever most suited their purposes: the troubled genius, the visionary writer, a feminist pioneer and, overwhelmingly, a martyr, a victim of a man.  To his dying day, feminists would stalk literary events just to tell Hughes he had “Sylvia’s blood on his hands”.

So the story is well known and in the years since her death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two decades.  For that reason the 1000-odd densely printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife” and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years” and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956.

Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman.  Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”.  This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity.  Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher.  Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding.  Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail. 

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years.  One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.”  As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.

Not quite an Edsel, not yet a Mercury: The 1960 Comet; it was an era of imaginative (other use different adjectives) styling (and at this time they were still "stylists" and not "designers").

The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning.  The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched).  The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had as many as nine rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models.  There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades.  Thus Ford ended up (briefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental.  That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.

1963 Mercury Comet S-22 Convertible.

The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately.  The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms).  The Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969 but was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was smaller, requiring the industry to coin the class-designation “sub compact”.  Cheap to produce and essentially a “consumer disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.

1967 Mercury Comet Cyclone "R Code", one of 60 built that year with the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE side-oiler V8 and one of the 19 with a four-speed manual transmission.

The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford.  The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range.  In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”.  For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970).  Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body.  The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.

1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).   

In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower.  That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0).  Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production.  Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge.  In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era.  Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.

The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior). 

Catharsis

Catharsis (pronounced kuh-thahr-sis)

(1) The purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

(2) In psychiatry, a form of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of repressed, pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.

(3) The discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

(4) In Aristotelian literary criticism, the purging or purification of the emotions through the evocation of pity and fear, as in tragedy.

(5) In medicine, purgation, especially of the bowels.

1770: From the New Latin catharsis, from the Ancient Greek kátharsis (a cleansing) equivalent to kathar, variant stem of kathaírein (to cleanse, purge, purify), from katharós (pure, clear of dirt, clean, spotless, open, free, clear of shame or guilt, purified) + sis.    Root was the Medieval Latin Catharī (the Pure), from the Byzantine Greek καθαροί or katharoí (the Pure), plural of καθαρός (katharós) (pure).  Most of the extended senses found in Modern English are of unknown origin, the original sense from 1770 being "a bodily purging" (especially of the bowels), then an important aspect of medical practice.  After 1872 it came to be applied to emotions when it was referred to as "a purging through vicarious experience"; the psychotherapy sense first recorded in 1909 in Abraham Brill's (1874–1948) translation of Sigmund Freud's (1856–1939) Selected Papers on Hysteria  (Dr Brill’s translation the first of Freud into English).  The alternative spelling cathartick went extinct in the mid-nineteenth century.  The adjective cathartic dates from its use in medical literature in the 1610s in the sense of preparations claimed to be "purgative; purifying"; more general use noted by the 1670s.  Presumably, the cures proved efficacious because the adjective cathartical soon emerged, existing also in the plural as the noun catharticals (laxatives).

Cathar (religious puritan (implied in Catharism)), dates from the 1570s and was from the Medieval Latin Cathari (the Pure), the name taken by the Novatians and other Christian sects, from the New Testament Greek katharizein (to make clean), from the Ancient Greek katharós (pure).  It was applied particularly to the twelfth century sects (Albigenses etc) in Languedoc and the Piedmont which denied and defied the authority of the pope.  The feminine proper name Catherine is from the French Catherine, from the Medieval Latin Katerina, from the Classical Latin Ecaterina, from the Ancient Greek Aikaterine.  The -h- was introduced in the sixteenth century, probably a tribute in folk etymology from the Greek katharos (pure).  Familiar in Modern English also as Katherine, Kate, Cate and other variations, the initial Greek vowel preserved in the Russian form Ekaterina.  For reasons unknown, Catherine began to be used as a type of pear in the 1640s.

The term “Catherine wheel” was originally from the early thirteenth century and described a torture device, the spiked wheel on which (according to some versions of what is thought to be a most dubious tale) the legendary virgin Saint Catherine of Alexandria was in 307 tortured and martyred by the pagan Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (circa 283–312; a Roman emperor, 306-312), thus becoming, in the associative way the Church did these things, patron saint of spinners.  She was a most popular saint in medieval times and popularized the name Catherine (and its variations), the favor enduring to this day.  It was applied from 1760 to a kind of firework which shot flame from a revolving spiral tube, creating the shape of a spinning wheel.

Of the Cathars: Catharism

With origins in Persia and the Byzantine Empire, Catharism was a dualist (or Gnostic revival) fork of Christianity, the movement most active during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in what is now northern Italy and southern France.  It was not a good time to be promoting the notion of two Gods, one good, the other evil; this dualism was however the essential core of Cathar beliefs.  The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God, creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and not a few of their persecutors, identified as Satan.  It was an exacting creed which meant all visible matter, including the human body, was created by the evil god and therefore tainted with sin.  Taint might be an understatement; Cathars thought human spirits were the lost spirits of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through what they called the consolamentum, a highly ritualized form of baptism.

The Holy See's foreign policy when the pope did have a few divisions: The papal army, the Cathars & the Albigensian Crusade.

All this was heresy to the monotheistic Roman Catholic Church, founded on the fundamental principle of one God, the creator of all things temporal and spiritual.  The Church’s crackdown got serious during the pontificate of Innocent III (circa 1160-1216; pope 1198-1216), initially by means of political and theological persuasion but with the assassination of his emissary, Innocent abandoned diplomacy, declared his dead ambassador a martyr and launched a military operation, the twenty-year (1209-1229) Albigensian Crusade.  It was the beginning of the end of Catharism.  After 1244 when the great fortress of Montsegur near the Pyrenees was razed, the Cathars became an underground movement, many fleeing to Italy where the persecution was milder.  The hierarchy faded but the heresy lingered until it finally it vanished early in the fifteenth century.

Simone Weil.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher and political activist who, in a manner unusual among left-leaning intellectuals of the era, returned to the religion ignored in her youth and became attracted to the mystical.  Remembered for her political writings and active service in both the Spanish Civil War and occupied France, she died tragically young in the self-sacrificial manner she had lived her life.  Among the more delicate historians, (typified by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)), there’s often an undisguised preference for Greek over Roman but few went as far as Weil who could find no virtue in the latter and was barely less dismissive of the medieval Church.  By contrast, in the Cathars, she found exemplars of goodness although she offered few reasons and fewer still shreds of evidence for this.  Most convincing is the notion that what Weil called affliction (malheur) goes beyond merely describing suffering and makes of it, if not a fetish, then certainly a calling.  Weil felt there were only some able truly to experience affliction: those least deserving of suffering.  Seduced by the lure of the tragic and having trawled history, she found in the Cathars the doomed victims with whom she could identify, drawn to them as Sylvia Plath was to Ted Hughes.

Simone Weil Agitprop.

Although her readership remains substantially limited to those clustered around a number of academic and feminist circles, Weil’s influence on literature has been profound.  She wrote neither fiction nor poetry but in her prolific output, existing mostly in letters and notebooks which in her lifetime were almost entirely unseen and edited for publication only posthumously, lay an extraordinary exploration of the contradictions and confusion of the modern world.  One gains much from reading Weil for despite her tone there’s pleasure in enjoying the lucidity and discovering an uncompromising critique of a world poisoned by the exclusivity of Christianity and its damnation of progress as heresy.  But guilt tinges the pleasure.  This tortured soul lived and died in anguish and dark despair because she knew she deserved no more in a world of where injustice had triumphed and probably forever would.  One fears that in all her brief years, she may never have felt a moment’s joy.

The modern catharsis is a public event, best enjoyed after emerging from rehab.  Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) and Oprah Winfrey (b 1954), 2013.