Theme Week 10: Vantage Point
Funk and Wagnall’s gives Irony’s definition the following:
“3. A situation, event, pairing, etc., in which main elements are rationally or emotionally incompatible because of contrast, conflict or surprise, but are nevertheless undeniable.”
Sounds an awful lot like life, love, relationships, hell-all of those things that definitions fail to tame. The definition is an example of its ability to twist and turn on itself offering first one perspective and then another in sweet, succinct and sometimes murderous tones.
On one of my visits to New York, I was in Battery Park watching a chess game when a woman dressed in a long, brown man’s coat and mismatching boots sauntered by me asking herself over and over in a hushed whisper, “Ironic? Ironic? Ironic?” I don’t know why the word resounded so strongly in my otherwise chess distracted mind, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that her whisper and that word conjured images both horrific and polite and at the same time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about irony this week. I’ve tried to make its definition conform to some simple measure that I could follow but as F & W confirms, irony is not rational or emotionally inclined. Even its best examples verge on its own fine line. What chance might I have at glistening its possibilities and relating them in some nonfiction fashion to satisfy an assignment? It isn’t a line well placed or well intended. It’s the underlining of particular words in a way that their measure is lost in their weight.
As you yourself stated “You don't create irony usually--you find it.”
And I’ll be sure to let you know the minute that I do.
“3. A situation, event, pairing, etc., in which main elements are rationally or emotionally incompatible because of contrast, conflict or surprise, but are nevertheless undeniable.”
Sounds an awful lot like life, love, relationships, hell-all of those things that definitions fail to tame. The definition is an example of its ability to twist and turn on itself offering first one perspective and then another in sweet, succinct and sometimes murderous tones.
On one of my visits to New York, I was in Battery Park watching a chess game when a woman dressed in a long, brown man’s coat and mismatching boots sauntered by me asking herself over and over in a hushed whisper, “Ironic? Ironic? Ironic?” I don’t know why the word resounded so strongly in my otherwise chess distracted mind, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that her whisper and that word conjured images both horrific and polite and at the same time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about irony this week. I’ve tried to make its definition conform to some simple measure that I could follow but as F & W confirms, irony is not rational or emotionally inclined. Even its best examples verge on its own fine line. What chance might I have at glistening its possibilities and relating them in some nonfiction fashion to satisfy an assignment? It isn’t a line well placed or well intended. It’s the underlining of particular words in a way that their measure is lost in their weight.
As you yourself stated “You don't create irony usually--you find it.”
And I’ll be sure to let you know the minute that I do.
posted by millay | 11/11/2005 08:44:00 AM
1 Comments:
Hahaha--you got me! That last line! Irony squared. Good for you! That shets my mouf!
One way you know you're tapping the ironic vein is when you get either a startled laugh (you can check that one off, you did) or a confused shake of the head(I wasn't confused, right up til the end where you pulled the rug out from under my certainties, i.e., pulled off an ironic gambit. Come to find out, I had been confused but hadn't known it. Ironic, eh?)
I like very much the homeless lady or crazy lady (because the logical result of the right amount of irony is a cozy home and eminent sanity, and the logical result of too much of any good thing is a wandering and crazed spirit) so she works symbolically.
I also like your description of your wrestling with week 10: "It’s the underlining of particular words in a way that their measure is lost in their weight" is particularly fine. To say that the assignment disappears in on itself and is impossible is a fine ironic approach indeed.
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