stewamax wrote:UncleEbenezer wrote:And since this is Pedant's Place, I must deplore your horrible misuse of the word "crescendo". Not to mention both our misuse of "And since" to begin a sentence!
Crescendo? Mea culpa, but I couldn't think of a more appropriate word.
And I still can't (yip - starts with 'and').
Translate the word into English, and you wrote that it reaches a growing. I realise that's become fashionable among illiterates who butcher language, but surely we can do better here? For example, one might suggest that something reaches a climax? Possibly reaches it via a crescendo?
Poe's poem reaches a climax several verses later than the passage you quote. Though perhaps that's in part a subjective view, influenced by recollection of a superlative impromptu rendition from a Canadian chap whose name alas is lost to me in the mists of time, at a meeting of the Jomsborg back in my first year at Cambridge. The biggest climax of all turns on yet more poetic/emotional devices: direct religious language and emphatic repetition:
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
My original point was that Poe and others use rhyme and alliteration to achieve the progressively more intense gradable adjectives ('big - bigger - more bigger - biggest - most biggest - ...' ) that our largely analytic English with simple comparatives and superlatives shuns.
This poem kind-of uses every device under the sun, which may be why highbrow purists tend to see it as a bit vulgar. I say it may be rather in-your-face, but is nevertheless a superb poem! Though I expect you've gathered that already
The more synthetic languages such as OE and other Germanic languages - and Latin - may have a wider range of gradations using a combination of inflections and comparatives.
We might have had a richer language if we hadn't lost most inflections by needing to trade with the Old Norse speakers in the Danelaw.
I would also like to blame the French. I'm not sure what for, but would still like to blame them.
