Right now my friends in NSW are bracing for a new "catastrophic" warning level of fire danger forecast for tomorrow, which is basically a result of climate change in Australia drying us out. The last day like this killed 139 people in Victoria three years ago, and 100 are still missing in Tasmania from the fires of the past two days. No, not the connotation you want.
Fwiw, the first I knew of the other meanings of catastrophe was as a word for the sound of a final note of music dying into silence. I'd be most fascinated to hear what the Cheltenham labourers find.
xA
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On 07/01/2013, at 10:04 PM, Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It could well be, which would be a catastrophe for me because it now means something like a H-bomb falling on you, and I wouldn't be able to use it. But catastrophe is a question of plot and I still hope to designate rather the poetical form, the final choral ode which ends the drama and normally has those properties I mentioned of reconciliation with normality. The two short odes at the ends of the two Oedipus plays are good examples. There's now a team of Greeks working on this in Cheltenham.
> pr
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> On 7 Jan 2013, at 02:30, Alison Croggon wrote:
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> I suspect the term you're looking for is catastrophe, which I saw first in reference to ancient Greek music but also applies to plays: "The concluding action of a drama, especially a classical tragedy, following the climax and containing a resolution of the plot."
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> xA
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