BEg2 ch 22 fugue state

[Michael Bailey]

“It surprises Maxine how populated it is down here in sub-spider country.
Adventurers, pilgrims, remittance folks, lovers on the run, claim jumpers,
skips, fugue cases, and a high number of inquisitive entreprenerds, among
them Promoman, whom Eric introduces her to. His avatar is an amiable geek
in square-rim glasses wearing a pair of old-school sandwich boards that
carry his name, as do those of his curvaceous co-adjutor Sandwichgrrl, her
hair literally flaming, a polygon-busy GIF of a bonfire on top of a
manga-style subteen face.”


“Fugue cases” unfortunately is not a musical reference but has more to do
with a type of amnesia, I was slightly let down to learn.

https://www.britannica.com/science/fugue-state

The fugue is a condition in which the individual wanders away from his home
or place of work for periods of hours, days, or even weeks.

But I had to Google “is a fugue state in any way similar to a musical
fugue” and found an article:

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/02/fugues.html


Q: I was at a concert last week and began wondering if there’s a
correlation between the “fugue” that’s a musical construction and the
“fugue” that’s a psychiatric state. Any ideas? Such are the thoughts that
sometimes come into my mind while listening to a particularly interesting
piece of music.

A: There is indeed a relationship between the “fugue” that’s a musical
composition and the “fugue” that’s a mental state. Both have to do with
fleeing and come from the same Latin source.

We’ve written about the “two fugues” before on our blog, but now we’ll go
into a bit more detail. Call this a variation on a theme.

We’ll start with an obsolete English word spelled “fuge,” which was a noun
for the act of fleeing and a verb meaning to flee.

It was adapted in the 15th century from the Latin fugere (to flee), which
is also the source of the words “fugitive,” “refuge,”  “refugee,”
“subterfuge,” and others.

The noun “fuge” first appeared, according to citations in the Oxford English
Dictionary, in a 1436 poem: “Assaute was there none; No sege, but fuge.”
(“Assault was there none; no siege, but fuge [i.e., retreat].”)

The verb “fuge” came along in 1566, in George Gascoigne’s translation of
Supposes, a comedy by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto: “I to fuge and
away hither as fast as I could.”

The old senses of “fuge” quickly disappeared. But soon a more lasting
“fuge” entered English, this one meaning a polyphonic composition in which
one or more musical themes are interwoven in different voices.

The OED’s first citation for the word is from the composer Thomas Morley’s A
Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597):


“We call that a Fuge, when one part beginneth and the other singeth the
same, for some number of notes (which the first did sing).”

For its first 70 years, this word was spelled “fuge.” It was borrowed
directly from the Italian word fuga (flight), a descendant of the
Latin fuga (the
act of fleeing), a relative of fugere (to flee).

A new spelling, “fugue,” was introduced by the poet John Milton, who used
the French version of the word in Paradise Lost (1667):

“His volant touch /  Instinct through all proportions low and high / Fled
and pursu’d transverse the resonant fugue.”

(Notice Milton’s play on words in the last line. He uses both “fled” and
“fugue,” the original sense of fugere as well as the musical sense derived
from the Latin verb. And “volant,” or flying, comes from the Latin volare,
to fly.)

We come now to the mental state known as a “fugue.” This sense of the word
entered English in the early 20th century, according to OED citations, and
is defined in the dictionary as “a flight from one’s own identity.”


The term first appeared in 1901 in Caroline Corson’s translation of Dr.
Pierre Janet’s The Mental State Hystericals: “Those long flights
(fugues) … those
strange excursions, accomplished automatically, of which the patient has
not the least recollection.”

Mrs. Corson was translating a book published in French in 1894, and
apparently felt the word’s first appearance needed an explanation. But
later in the book, she refers to “these fugues” without translating the
word.

French doctors, who were the first to describe the psychiatric condition,
had been using fugue in the medical sense since the late 1880s. The French
also used l’état de fugue before the equivalent term “fugue state” showed
up in English.

It’s easy to see why “fugue,” a word having to do with fleeing or flight,
seemed appropriate to both composers and doctors.

In a polyphonic “fugue,” melodic strands are introduced that flee or
diverge from the original theme, like musical flights of fancy. A
psychiatric “fugue” or “fugue state” represents a flight or a fleeing from
reality.