Re: GG: the piano is hung from the chandelier

["Ronald D. Davis" <rdavis@chass.utoronto.ca>]

Junichi:

The phrase "At any event I have not yet  requested the orchestra to file
to the balcony while for three
  glorious minutes the piano is hung decorously from the chandelier" to
my mind is a wonderfully absurd and non-literal image.

This language implies no actual request, no displacement of an
orchestra, and no hanging chandeliers. In other words it is not
connotative. It is denotative. And the denotation is, for me, of an
orchestra sitting out while the pianist engages in exhibitionistic
pyrotechnics. Rather than simply say this, GG strings together two
farfetched images (the request, and the hanging of the piano) in an
elegant phrase. It is also a rhetorically complex phrase, combining (in
my view) hyperbole, catachresis ('hanging a piano from a chandelier'),
irony ('decorously', 'glorious'), perhaps meiosis ('hung'), and more. In
other words, it is typically Gouldian: rich and complex, yet
transparent.

Ron




--

ronald d. davis | barrister and solicitor
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e-mail: rdavis@chass.utoronto.ca