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Bathing In the Bathos




I am in love with bathos.

Bathos may not know this and would doubtless find the whole concept a touch overblown. 

Rather than an overwhelming crush one should have a mild disposition towards bathos. Otherwise it would doubtless need to take things down a peg or two. 

If bathos were French it would not pirouette or stoop to a proper moue but merely shrug you a bof. 

If you look up bathos on Wikipedia (rather than Tinder) you will be see it defined as a literary term, coined by Alexander Pope, to describe amusingly failed attempts at sublimity  

In particular, bathos is associated with anticlimax, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one. This may be either accidental (through artistic ineptitude) or intentional (for comic effect). 

So why the love? 

As a staple of satire, bathos is one of the great ways of puncturing and undermining the arrogant and the self obsessed. At a time when there are more people than is remotely healthy with an over inflated view of their own importance we need bathos to do its work letting the air out of their little bubbles and allowing them to drift in somewhat dilapidated fashion down to earth to land with a muted minor thud on soggy ground. 

I see bathos as a laconic mischievous imp with a wry smile and sharp pen, a subtle and nuanced mind, a well developed sense of scepticism and a penchant for laceration. 

Bathos is, however, particularly attractive precisely because of its sense of its own absurdity. Otherwise one cannot properly appreciate the absurdity at large in the world. 

That said bathos really does care.  It is serious about stuff. But it doesn't do overblown concern and grand gestures. It stands (literally) in contrast to pathos. 

Instead it undertakes a modest checking in with reality and works its magic through juxtaposition. In doing so it keeps us all magnificently aware that we are all but a few steps from being absurd. 

In that regard it truly loves us so much more than those who see value in inflation and overstatement. 

Bathos is also howlingly funny to be around. That lacerating style is uncompromising.

But hey (to coin a phrase) it's worth it.





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