E Quindi Uscimmo a Riveder le Stelle

I’ve only dabbled in Dante, in my “visions of Hell” Italian paper at university (Dante, Primo Levi, Italo Svevo… cheerful stuff), and even then, it was, of course, only Inferno and not Purgatorio or Paradiso. This suited me fine: Paradiso just waffled on about a golden river of light that symbolised the incredible, pure love Dante felt for his beloved Beatrice, and Purgatorio seemed like Hell-lite.

Inferno, by contrast, was the place to be for drama. It opens in a dark wood with Dante, the pilgrim and protagonist, having a big-time mid-life crisis only to bump into Virgil (the poet not the pilot of Thunderbird 2), who offers to lead him back to the righteous path by giving him a tour of all the sinners (as judged by Dante the poet, who has a habit of holding grudges, particularly against anyone from Florence, his hometown, after his exile from the city). You have your “abandon every hope, all ye who enter here” plastered on the gates of Hell. You have your Popes with their heads stuck in graves and their feet dangling in the air as a punishment for their hypocrisy. You even have Satan, right at the bottom, like a mutant Hound of the Baskervilles; the bottom of Hell is like Antarctica, rather than the traditional fiery pit.

Dante’s system of punishment for the sinners in Inferno is based on Thomas Aquinas’s idea of the contrapasso, or the punishment fitting the crime. This does not mean that the sinners are deprived of the sinful pleasure in which they indulged – quite the opposite, in fact, as the sin they committed is twisted to become a corrupted, perverted form of its original self, thus providing the punishment. The gluttons in Canto VI, then, are forced to spend eternity with faeces, vomit and waste – the very products of their own crimes – raining down upon them. People who died by suicide become Ents in Inferno's Canto XIII. Well, they would have been if J.R.R. Tolkien had got there first; instead, they are just trees that bleed sap and cry out in pain when meddlesome Dante breaks off a branch.

One of the most famous and charismatic characters of the whole Divina Commedia is Francesca da Rimini, the lovelorn lass of Canto V, whose only crime was to take too much inspiration from reading the tale of Guinevere and Lancelot when love overcame her (“Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto / di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse”) when it came to her relationship with her brother-in-law, Paolo. Francesca was tricked into marrying Paolo’s disabled brother when the boy's parents sent Paolo to the wedding instead of his brother. Francesca and Paolo couldn’t contain their love/lust for each other and the tales of Camelot served as an aphrodisiac, so of course they couldn’t help themselves. Sadly, all did not end well, as Paolo's brother tried to stab him, only for love-struck Francesca to jump in the way, and both lovers died.

In Canto V, Francesca and Paolo are bound together as a single body, unable to escape from each other, for all eternity. Dante criticises the lustful for their excess feelings and emotions and as such, they are doomed to be battered about through the air by the “bufera infernal” and to be struck by lightning (and not in a good way). Francesca even seduces Dante with her beautiful story of sadness, flattering him and then unleashing these wonderfully rhythmic lines about love, so much so that he faints with all the emo-ness of the occasion:

Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende, prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e ‘l modo ancor m’offende. Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.

(Roughly: "Oh noes! Love haz trapped my hottie lover and me and will never release us, nor allow us to release each other, thanks to my lover’s brother who murdered us." The fourth line is the most beautiful of all though: “Love, that releases no beloved from loving” – check those ms in the original Italian; note Dante's use of all those labial sounds to make the reader think of lips?).

Francesca goes on a bit, for sure; these days, she would definitely have had a LiveJournal. Understandably, this isn’t a popular canto with feminists as Dante takes down Semìrasus who got the better of the Sultan, of “wanton Cleopatra” and Helen “for whose sake so many years / of evil had to pass” (Paris, Tristan and Achilles are here too but it clearly wasn’t their fault).

Despite all this, the lustful ladies and their hapless male accomplices are all punished pretty high up in Dante’s Hell (higher up being "less severe" in Dante's hell); better be lustful than treacherous, according to Dante.

There is also a section for the lustful in Purgatorio, which I’ve started browsing in my illustrated edition. In Purgatorio, though, the sinners get to do their time on a terrace on the Mountain of Purgatory, which sounds quite pleasant, in the grand scheme of things (beats being flung around in the sky, anyway). But perhaps it's not quite so pleasant, as, if the people in Terrace VII want to get to Paradiso and the River of Awesomeness, they must first purge their sins and here, the sins must be purged in a wall of fire. 

The difference between these folks and Francesca and her femmes fatales, apparently, is that their love was pure and proper but their lust was intervening, which meant that god’s love was being misdirected. None of the historical or literary characters Dante meets has even a smidgen of the charisma of Francesca; is it really any wonder that everyone likes the gory details of Inferno, where there is no way out for these bad people, so much better than the mediocre of Purgatorio?

For some reason, A-level French teachers insist on foisting the works of French existentialist philosophers onto their students. I rather liked Sartre the writer, if not the philosopher. I thought Les Jeux Sont Faits (from which M. Night Shyamalan clearly stole the plot for The Sixth Sense) was rather interesting – poor old Pierre and Eve who die unhappy deaths and then fall in love in the afterlife, only to get a second chance to come back to life and be together. Only, it turns out that les jeux sont faits (“the die is cast”) and that on ne peut pas reprendre son coup (“you can’t replay your hand”), and it doesn’t work out for them.

More pertinent here is Sartre’s play Huis Clos (literally “Closed Doors” but more often translated as “No Exit”) in which three bad people are stuck in a room with trashy 18^th century furniture. You have Joseph, a WWII deserter; Inèz, a lesbian postal worker who comes between a woman and her husband; and Estelle, a haughty blonde, who marries for money and then cheats on her husband with a younger man. They all die brutal deaths and their punishment, it turns out, is to spend the rest of eternity with one another in that room and discover that…l’enfer, c’est les autres. Estelle and Joseph want to hook up to make themselves feel better about what they have done but Inèz won’t let this happen because she knows their attempts to atone are fake and don’t count to the purging of their sins. Instead, they must wait and go, “man, this is pretty funny, this eternal damnation business” and, “ah, well, we might as well get on with it.”

That seems more like purgatory to me: waiting and waiting with no sense of happiness and without any knowledge of if or when the punishment will end. It’s hardly living at all, really, but rather, just going through the motions. At least in Hell, you know there’s no escape, no exit, no hope and that, in itself is some comfort against the uncertainties and constant hope of purgatory.

And yet, Dante the pilgrim leaves Inferno with hope: “E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” (“and then we emerged and saw the stars again”). The same stars continue to haunt him throughout Purgatorio until he's reunited with Beatrice in Paradiso...

Resolutely Irresolute

Actually, the title of this post is somewhat of a misnomer: although I never make New Year's resolutions any more, this is because I am constantly resolute rather than the opposite. One of the joys of keeping a diary as a kid and teenager is looking back at the NYRs I used to make. When I was nine, they tended to be unrealistic ("I will publish a book this year") and when I was older, they tended to be copycat NYRs ("I will lose 5 kilos this year, and so will my friends!"; thanks, school, for putting competitive non-eating on the curriculum).

NYRs tend to fall into three categories:

1. Things I wish to stop doing.
2. Things I wish to continue doing.
3. Things I wish to start doing.

The motivation behind them all, though, should be the same: you want to make this change (or non-change in the case of #2) because it will make you happier, because it will make someone else happier (still, ultimately, selfish, sez the cynic, as this will in turn make you feel better about yourself) or because it will improve your life in some other way (and may make you happier in the long term, even if it makes you miserable in the short term (giving up coffee is not a good example here)).

The thing is, though, that if I want something enough, I don't need to inscribe an NYR in my diary (if I still had one) or blog to make myself do it. If the motivation is there (albeit a kind of long-term motivation) then I will just make the change and writing it down on a piece of paper isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference: if I want it enough, I will do it; if I don't want it enough, it probably won't happen.

Of course, there is the old "if you tell someone else your NYRs, they can motivate and encourage you to persevere." I think I was always too embarrassed to tell other people my NYRs - too embarrassed and too proud to admit that I wasn't perfect. If I was making the change because of what other people thought of me, then their perception of me would be enough and I wouldn't want them to know that I was consciously changing myself because of their opinion.

So, I won't be resolving to stop biting my nails, as my mother would wish, because I'm simply not fussed enough to want to stop. As for the rest of the things I want to change, well, I'm already doing everything I can, so there's simply no need to NYRise them.

This post reflects a particularly arrogant light upon me; hopefully, the rest of this blog will put any beliefs in this to rest - I think there's plenty of self-mockery and light-hearted self-deprecation to spare.

Baby, It's Cold in Here

Christmas Day means the time-honoured (brand new) family tradition of swimming in the Med when it was pretty damn freezing. I kept my gloves off but it was still bloomin' cold, given that the air temperature was probably only about 12 degrees.

The French, meanwhile, thought it was hilarious that les Anglais felt the need to strip down to their swimwear (Mum and Bro cheated with their neoprone tops) and hurl themselves into the ocean and were standing watching, laughing and (later) clapping. As we walked back to the apartment for some warming (Irish) hot chocolate, the drunks sitting on a park bench with their party hats, sipping on their booze, yelled out, "you are crazy boys, no?" That's when you know you're mad.

Fairy Tale of NYC

The latest installment (oh noes! B is worried that C will tell N about their thing! D and Little J, meanwhile, certainly aren't having a merry little Christmas when mom moves out; OMG! Oh noes!) of my latest guilty pleasure, AKA Gossip Girl, has left me craving NYC even more than usual. 'Twas the Christmas episode and there were plenty of NYC-at-Christmastime scenes, including skating on the Wollman rink in Central Park.

I guess, to me, New York is Christmas or, at least, it has all of the elements for the perfect Christmas and having spent four out of the past ten Christmases there, I feel I am in a good position to judge. Here are a few of my favourite things about New York in December

1. Skating in Central Park. One of my favourite things to do in the whole world - the rink is decent-sized, the hot choc is superb, the choons are awesome but, most of all, the views of the skyscrapers lit up by night are outstanding.

2. Last minute shopping made easy given that there are so many great shops, and Kate's Paperie provides beautiful cards, wrapping paper and accessories to make even the cheapest present look classy and expensive.

3. The weather. It's only snowed on two of the occasions I've been in NYC for Christmas: one time was pretty intense (about a foot) although being New Yorkers, they just got on with cleaning the streets and getting back to normal.

4. The inevitable Boxing Day walk can be done on Brooklyn Bridge to maximise the spectacular urban scenery; it certainly beats walking along the Cam to Fen Ditton, anyway.

5. Jack's coffee house feels even cosier and more inviting than usual when the weather outside is frightfully cold.

6. Apart from Christmas Day, the shops are open long, long hours and have great sales (I usually hate The Sales; they tend to be over-populated and full of crap I wouldn't want to buy).

7. The Festive Spirit. Americans are so much better at holidays than we Brits are and everyone is just brimming with seasonal excitement, along with that New Yorker - can't stop, must get on - attitude.

Incidentally, when I was scouring the lyrics of the song that gave its title to this post, I came across a list of songs about NYC. Given how hard it was for me to make my selections for a California-themed playlist, I can see that creating one for NYC songs could take some time to pick my favourites (Interpol, for example, are a favourite band of mine but their song NYC isn't their best IMO).

Ah, New York, I miss you. Luckily, though, my dad is already dropping hints about the next family trip there, which should be in about March or April; I can probably wait until then, I suppose. I'm still jealous of my housemate who is there right now.

Glo[ʔ]alisation and the Glo[b]alisation of Corpora

One of the main distinctions between British English and U.S. English is the varying pronunciation of the voiceless, dental stop [t] between vowels. While in many dialects of British English, this tends to be realised as a glottal stop ([ʔ]) so butter is pronounced "buh'uh", speakers of American English generally pronounced intervocalic [t] as a [d]-like sound ("budder"). Those American visitors to the Sandwich Shop of Dreams never could work out what I wanted to spread on their sandwich when I asked whether they would like "butter or mayonnaise"; their best guess was that I was saying mustard.

However, on a couple of podcasts recently, I have noticed this spreading across the pond. Tyler Cowen, of Marginal Revolution, for example, glottalises his [t] as evidenced in this EconTalk podcast. Similarly, on today's NY Times Science Times podcast, Frederic Riccardi, a "health insurance counselor" was doing the same thing, from about five minutes in (e.g. "Manha[ʔ]an"). The latter is Spanish-English bilingual so perhaps this played some role, although I can't think of any comparable processes in Spanish.

Neither speaker does this all of the time but I lack the time at the moment to work out the phonetic contexts in which they glottalise their [t]. Nor can I think of any reasons why this change should have come about; that said, I have previously noted that explanations of linguistic change almost always tend to be post hoc and aren't predictive.

Google Scholar doesn't seem to have found any studies of this; however, it occurred to be that the spread of podcasting has created whole new corpora of data for linguists to study. No more Observer's Paradox-ridden participant interview! No more Labovian department store harassment! Of course, I don't know where Cowen or Riccardi grew up or any of the other information about them that may be helpful when determining the scope of a language change (if they lived abroad for a period of time, what other languages they speak, etc.). Nor am I a good enough dialectologist to say confidently, on the basis of their accents alone, where they are from (although Cowen's vowel raising (about > [uh-'bʌwt] (with the vowel of put followed by a [w])), make me think he is either Canadian or from New England.

Bex's Guide to Oxford

I haven't been into Oxford in ages and I do miss the place, not least because there's so much more to do than in Cambridge.

Bookshops:

Oxford is pretty much the bookshop capital of the world; England, at the very least. Obviously, I exclude Borders and Waterstones from my list of favourites. The QI Bookshop (left) is pretty awesome. It's just a smallish, circular room in the QI Club on Turl Street. The books are arranged, oh-so-quirkily, by subject area ("drunk", "the Great American Novel", "first love", etc.) and although the collection isn't huge, most of the books on offer are pretty interesting and it's always nice to see someone else's recommendations. Arcadia (in the centre) has second-hand books (almost all fiction) along with assorted gifts. The books are pretty cheap and the guy who owns the shop is friendly, so the shop is definitely worth a browse. Blackwells is the grandad of the Oxford bookshop family but you can't beat it for the range. It is bigger and more spacious than Heffers in Cambridge, and has a great second-hand department, as well as the Norrington Room, the academic department in the basement.









Other shops:

Fresh, Aspire and Browse, all have assorted girlie clothes and accessories. Perfect for secret santas or secret splurging on oneself. A girl must buy her overpriced, exquisite stationery from somewhere; The City Organiser (bottom) is that place. They have Moleskines, posh fountain pens, gorgeous writing paper, non-Paperchase cards and Dr Who gifts! What variety, eh?








Food 'n'drink:

Brothers is my favourite place for coffee in Oxford, although the coffee there isn't always the greatest (they do, at least know how to make a cappuccino, even if it sometimes comes out as more of a latte) but the atmosphere is great (especially in term time when it's full of students chatting about Important Oxford Things) and it's right in the middle of the awesome covered market. They have cool coffee facts and quotations printed on the wall too; also, they have the Grauniad available, which is great when your parents only have the Telegraph and you want to catch up on your leftie-themed news. Pieminister is new; I'm not a big pie fan but I can never pass up such a quality pun and I spotted it as I was walking through the covered market. If you want a sandwich, though, where better than The Sandwich Shop of Dreams (right)? Now that I've left, I can't make any guarantees of the quality but there was always a great range that catered for all of your sandwich needs. I was shocked to find they now serve Lavazza not Illy, though! Shockers! Finally, Quod, which serves the best burgers in Oxford (after a few shaky periods) and does a fantastic mojito. The Old Bank Hotel, to which the restaurant is attached, is the trendiest hotel in the city as well as being Papa's bank when he was a student here.








I didn't go to Walton Street today but that's probably the coolest place to hang out, with the Phoenix cinema, Freud (cafe-bar in a former neo-classical church) and assorted other clothes and bookshops that seem to change every time I go.

Chaque Mot A Son Histoire

It was probably inevitable that the kid who used to read the dictionary would want to be an etymologist when she grew up. Deprived, at university, of the areas of linguistics that really interested me, I made do with semantic change - how the meaning of words changes over time. The key word there is how because no one has come up with a completely convincing explanation of why meaning changes over time (or why language changes over time), least of all why a meaning changed in a particular way within a particular speech community at a particular time.

In my second year course on the history of the French language, I remember struggling with an essay entitled something like, "There are no halfway decent theories explaining semantic change; instead, 'chaque mot a son histoire.' Discuss." My problem was that once I got started on the project of researching the history of assorted words (thanks, in part to the wonderful Trésor de la langue française), I found it hard to stop. I think this is true of people in general: tell someone all about the joys of X-bar theory and you will, most likely, be met with blank stares, whereas a neat little anecdote of a "just-so story" of etymology can be far more interesting in an ORLY kinda way. For example:

One of the biggest pains for English folks learning French or Italian is the discovery that in the Romance languages, you don't miss other people; instead, they are lacking to you. "I miss you" thus becomes tu me manques in French and mi manchi in Italian (pronounced [mee mankee] - delightful). Mancare in Italian ("to be lacking") comes from the adjective manco ("lacking"; also "left-handed") itself evolved from the Vulgar Latin mancus "maimed, infirm." Your absence maims me? Nice... Mancus itself is probably from manus, the Latin for "hand." I have a wounded hand for you?

English didn't really do much better, I suppose: "to miss" developed from the Old English missan "to fail to hit." This concrete meaning was metaphorically extended (as is common) to incorporate the abstract sense "to fail to get what one wanted" and then the abstract sense "to perceive with regret the absence or loss of (something or someone)" by the 15th century. "I missed you," of course, takes on a whole other meaning when uttered by a thwarted assassin whose gunshot went astray. A language is perfectly "happy" for a verb to connote both an abstract and a concrete meaning in tandem (polysemy is one of the mechanisms by which meaning can change) and context usually rules here.

w00t is WOTY

Geeks everywhere will, I'm sure, be celebrating the victory of w00t as Merriam Webster's Word of the Year for 2007.

As voted for by site users, w00t:

1. w00t (interjection): expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all0; similar in use to the word "yay."

MW also comes up with the word's etymology: "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community") but this seems to be more of a folk etymology.

They don't mention the word's sarcastic use which is, as far as I can remember, the only way in which I have ever used it. Lexicography in the news again. W00t. etc. Edit: I do remember my mate Steve using "w00t" in a sarcastic way in about 2002; perhaps this is actually the homophone "woot," which evolved separately from its geekery counterpart.