APPLE OF DISCORD

CRITIQUE

Background: With a view to boosting my creativity in regard to accuracy of diction and logical appreciation of the meaning and scope of words and figurative expressions, I often subject laid-down definitions of words and expressions to personal, independent examination, confirming some as logical and defensible, and others as faulty or questionable. One which I have found questionable is the conventional definition of the phrase: “ APPLE OF DISCORD”. Dictionaries define this phrase as what amounts to: “a cause of strife, contention, or quarrel.” What follows encapsulates the grounds upon which I do not agree with this definition:


APPLE OF DISCORD: RE: THE SPECIOUSNESS OF ITS
CONVENTIONAL DEFINITION

By definition, a literary imagery serves two purposes in evoking a conception: To induce a logical mental imagination and to stimulate the mind towards a penetrative comparison and deduction meant to generate not only a picture, but also a logical intuitive feeling whose propinquity to the issue concerned stares the reader or hearer in the face. In other words, in its logic, the denotative dimension of a linguistic imagery complements its connotative dimension, unequivocally to strike a balance between reason and feeling: intellectual validity marrying intuitive “ intuitive reasonability ” to entrench a conception to the certainty and conviction of the mind.

Hence the designation “ imagery”: a mental image leading up to a vivid impressionistic image, with a bridge of logical translation of pictures from imagination into experiential reality.

Therefore, neither from syntactic and intellectual logic, nor from human or natural initiative should the construction of imagery be divorceable-and just as little could one divorce its valid definition from logic and initiative.

Now, on objective examination in the light of reason and common initiative, the expression “ apple of discord “on the one hand denotes either a very definite sort of apple instigating a « conflict» or «some conflict” yielding this « apple» .On the other hand, there is a connotation of a distasteful aftermath, preceding or attending a very definite kind of cause. Neither of these images is dispensable if in conceptualising the expression, one must think simply and naturally.

For the derivation of this expression the following anecdote is given: “Eris, the goddess of Discord has not been invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles. To avenge this slight, Eris threw among the guest a golden apple on which is written “For the most beautiful.” Juna, Minerua and Venus contended for this prize of beauty and this quarrel finally led to the Trojan War.”

Coincidentally, in substance, the objective deductions from the expression concur with the tenor of the anecdote, namely: there is an implication of an unsavoury causation with a definite, clear-cut cause(the apple).

If logic must be gone by, in only this should the definition of the phrase “ Apple of Discord” consist.

From the above mythical anecdote, the apple of the Trojan war (as it is right to be called) came from and “ arose out of ” an egotistic outrage. A symbol of vengeance by mischief, it bore an inscription that was sure to and did stampede into fierce competition the three people (presumably ladies) each of whom fancied herself the most beautiful one out. This fierce competition heightening into a jealous stalemate or a trichotomous conflagration, a war was precipitated which became the fruit of discord from the latently divisive golden apple.

The apple of egotism, the egotism of contention, the contention of conflict-THE golden apple of jealous discord.

But authoritative definitions of this imagery approximate to: “ a cause of strife, contention, or quarrel.” This means any cause of strife, contention, or quarrel: an oblivion of the definiteness of the invidious apple of the Trojan War, respecting its inflammatoriness.

The missing link: The image of the contentious inscription on this golden apple which was intended to lead on the egotistic self-beauteous ladies to chaos and mischief, and which is evocative of “ Lure capitalising on sinister vanity”. It is this conception that the imagery of the apple (Not an [any] apple) of discord should embody in seeking to resurrect the exploitation of the vanity of the self-beautiful-contenders by the allegorical goddess of discord (who therewith came into her element and found fulfilling self-expression.), and in drawing an analogy between the conflict of the egotistic jealousy of the contestants and that of some allied circumstance.

More exactly, “ The apple of discord” may well be defined as “any exploitative cause of a maleficent or combustible egotistic contention”-the malificence and combustibility subsuming possibilities of FIERCE strife, quarrel, clash, and all. In this way, the definition will comprehensively consist in the unsavoury causation of its (mythical) derivation.

Therefore, though quite related to the allegorical incident from which it derived, the conventional definition is inexact, not completely embracing the substance of the incident for a logical denotativeness and connotativeness of the figurative diction.


OMOTAYO
(a.k.a- Tee)