The Fourth Circle of Hell
I was quite pleased with myself today. More than usual even. Apparently someone in Time Out quotes a Vic punter describing the place as "the seventh circle of hell". Having a passing familiarity with "The Inferno" (Dante was great, and not mad or anything) I thought, I bet I can find a good description of the Vic in there. But even I was surprised to turn up :
"Useless giving, and useless keeping, has robbed them of the bright world, and set them to this struggle: what struggle it is, I do not amplify. But you, my son, can see now the vain mockery of the wealth controlled by Fortune, for which the human race fight with each other, since all the gold under the moon, that ever was, could not give peace to one of these weary souls."
Such an accurate description of any card room that you expect Virgil to break off and shout "SEAT HERE !" at any moment. Just do a search if you're interested - it took me all of two minutes to find a suitable quote for the Vic in Dante's Inferno. Which says a lot about the Information SuperHighway, and even more about the Vic.
Predictably enough, hardly anyone on the Mob Forum was interested. Although Vicky C did post a response which said "Ooh. I have to admit that's very good". Which I thought was funny in its way. After all, there are people on there who would die for an "Ooh" from Vicky C. It seemed kind of wasted on someone who everyone thinks is gay.
"Useless giving, and useless keeping, has robbed them of the bright world, and set them to this struggle: what struggle it is, I do not amplify. But you, my son, can see now the vain mockery of the wealth controlled by Fortune, for which the human race fight with each other, since all the gold under the moon, that ever was, could not give peace to one of these weary souls."
Such an accurate description of any card room that you expect Virgil to break off and shout "SEAT HERE !" at any moment. Just do a search if you're interested - it took me all of two minutes to find a suitable quote for the Vic in Dante's Inferno. Which says a lot about the Information SuperHighway, and even more about the Vic.
Predictably enough, hardly anyone on the Mob Forum was interested. Although Vicky C did post a response which said "Ooh. I have to admit that's very good". Which I thought was funny in its way. After all, there are people on there who would die for an "Ooh" from Vicky C. It seemed kind of wasted on someone who everyone thinks is gay.
7 Comments:
Come Out, come out!
Oh for heavens' sake Andy, pull yourself together.
It's "whom" everyone thinks is gay, not "who". Please learn to use the accusative relative pronoun.
DY
Definitely 'whom'. And I loved the Dante quote Andy, just somehow couldn't be bothered posting on the hendon forum...
POS
I'm not convinced it's "whom" in this particular case. After all, everyone thinks _I_ am gay, that's different to everyone hates _me_ . So it would have been wasted on someone whom everyone hates, that's fair enough.
Still, if that's all I end up arguing about on that particular post, I'll have got off lightly ...
Andy.
Tut tut, DY - seems as well as being humourously pedantic, you may have been wrong.
In the sentence in question you could rightly argue that the clause is "who .... is gay" - "who" is the subject, and so the nominative case is correct.
On another note, when the active verb in the sentence/clause is "to be" - there is no subject and object but rather a subject and a complement. In that situation the nominative case is used to be used for both anyway.
I liked the Dante quote very much, Andy.
DY is, I think, wrong. The end of the sentence could be rephrased as "blah blah blah who, everyone thinks, is gay."
What is clear is that the "who" in this case is not the accusative of the verb "thinks". What is equally clear is that the entire clause needs a subject and there is no other likely candidate but the "who".
Let's put it another way and eliminate the "everyone thinks" (although I admit this distorts the meaning of the sentence, it does not change its logical structure).
"It seemed kind of wasted on someone whom is gay".
Well, that doesn't work, does it? The defence rests.
Pete B
Yes, that does distort the meaning just a little !
Post a Comment
<< Home