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Bob - 2006-02-13 22:43:47
Paula, if you use bathos one more time when you mean pathos, I'm gonna have to come up there and pepper you with a shotgun (and claim you snuck up behind me).
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Paula - 2006-02-14 11:03:14
Uh-oh! Isn't bathos just really bad pathos?
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2fs - 2006-02-14 11:42:29
bathos/pathos: "Isn't bathos just really bad pathos" - yes, so long as by "really bad" you also mean "evoking a somewhat opposite-than-intended reaction, as in sentimental overkill that becomes silly instead." Also, have I mentioned? I love your blog so much that when even a moment passes when you haven't updated, it's as if my heart is being run through a superefficient shredder and my eyes are propped open and I'm being forced to watch tiny kittens being ruthlessly ignored despite their ineffable cuteness! It's true!!!!
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Paula - 2006-02-14 11:47:43
Then I think my use of it was correct, Bob.
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Bob - 2006-02-14 18:26:27
I get "An abrupt transition from elevated to commonplace style / An anticlimax / The lowest point // Insincere or grossly sentimental pathos [how would THAT be heartbreaking?] / Extreme triteness or dullness". All of which are an embarrassment, and a low point in that sense, and are more cause for depression than for sadness or heartbreak. And bathos at root has to do with lowness, rather than passion (pathos), and I think if you read way down in the comments on your 8/03/04? "Sad songs" entry, you'll get a keener sense of the two (and I won't have to pepper you!). (Cuz bathos isn't extreme pathos, or 'twould be more passionate that pathos, and I find the "b"adly done - and thus badly pronounced - p"athos" sense to be a precious modern conflagration.) But check those old comments and you might even agree that they make a clear, useful distinction between the two (one that the Greeks may even have had in mind).
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