● Use of words to express a meaning other than the literal meaning and, esp., the opposite of it.
● Incongruity between actual circumstances and the normal, appropriate or expected result.
Examples
● A marriage counsellor files for divorce
● It's ironic that computers break down so often since they're meant to save people time.
And then there's me.
A recent combined cough, common cold, feverish state, left me with a disturbed stomach. But today was singing lesson; I was there on the dot. V produced the score of Schubert's, An die Laute (To the Lute), a song I have never heard, never even heard of. After 60 minutes I sang the two verses in tune, on the beat and adding interpretation. Several big firsts. V nodded, then said: "Good on you. But what you did took it out of you. Look after yourself."
At brunch back home there are rillettes, fatty and a firm favourite. They are intended as a treat. Normally I'd gobble them in a minute but I can't face them. Wrote this as therapy. Don't tell me I'm better off 'cos that'll cause me to grind my teeth, good news only for the dentist.
"Rillettes" is a new one to me. But I guess it is similar to pate on toast, with added fat. I enjoy pate, but I think I would forgo the extra fat.
ReplyDeleteHope you are feeling better now.
You are fortunate to have teeth to grind. I have some teeth remaining but few that coincide with each other from upper to lower- that sounds almost ironical?
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to all at yours.
Avus: Rillettes: nationally available in France and almost certainly in Belgium, routinely in Waitrose, more intermittently in Tesco (ie, in the more sophisticated areas).
ReplyDeleteBut the aim of this deliberately brief post was to invite discussion on a word (irony) that is frequently misused and - I think - mainly misunderstood. Yet, at its best, is at the core of some excellent fiction (E. Waugh in particular). But alas it bloweth where it listeth.
Sir Hugh: I can combine the two elements of your comment in a sentence which makes things clear. As Sir Hugh got older his taste for apples grew; ironically, old age simultaneously caused coinciding teeth (upper and lower jaws) to drop out, leaving him without tools for enjoying this late-life delight.
Bonne santé et bonne année Roderique. May the songs in your heart leap forth from your increasingly confident throat and lungs and everything. Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteNatalie: I'd settle for meilleure santé. Just a modicum would help. Watched Rigoletto for the first time last night, a terrible opera but magnificently sung by a youthful Pavarotti and and Ingvar Wixell. It's an odd experience - like having one foot in an oven turned up to full, the other foot in a freezer, while claiming to the world at large one was statistically comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI see you're still pumping out high-level painting despite having entered your tenth decade. No evidence of any diminution of your talents. You mention hearing aids somewhere but the great thing is you don't have to listen to paint. But what would I know?
Meilleure santé, d'accord! Pour nous tous.
DeleteI'm flattered but "pumping out" is highly exaggerated, even ironically. "Trickling out" would be more accurate. The spirit is more than willing but the f....g hip joint is weak, sitting down makes it weaker and I can't paint/draw etc. standing up for long. But doing okay all the same, musn't grumble.
Rillettes sounds a wee bit like pulled pork without the spices. But I guess it's closer to pâté...
ReplyDeleteI'm in favor of irony going on holiday for the next half-century or so. Post-modernism wore it out surely.
Marly: I'm guessing but I think we're at cross-purposes here: you're referring to irony as a broad literary fashion (don't smack my wrist too hard if I've got that wrong) whereas I see it as simply a figure of speech, along with litotes, bathos, etc. This wouldn't be the first time I've encountered transatlantic disagreement on the subject but I've had an enormous advantage over most Americans on this. To a man and, of course, to a woman all Americans have been better educated than I am (I couldn't expatiate on postmodernism for even a moment) and have taken in this kind of stuff with their corn-flakes. As an auto-didact I'm still struggling to arrive at workable conclusions; I am in fact a modern-day Autolycus, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Thus am I fresh-faced although what knowledge I have is fragmentary. Thus, too, I see irony as synonymous with cruelty - literary cruelty, not physical cruelty - and that'll do for the moment.
ReplyDeleteI should add rillettes are (is?) not food for "sensible" people, the quotes being advisory.