BEg2 ch 22 fugue state

[Mark Kohut]

A kind of 'fugue state"? :

The New Statesman
@NewStatesman
<https://mobile.twitter.com/NewStatesman>
·
6m <https://mobile.twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1500892630800080896>
Anil Seth's research has led him to radical positions: the way you see
yourself and the world is a controlled hallucination.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 1:02 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> “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.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>