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Mystery men sphinx wisdom2/15/2023 ![]() The word chiasmus comes from the (Latinized) Greek chiasmos “a placing crosswise,” which comes from chiazein “to mark with a chi.” "Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self." I know little about the man’s work beyond these words of writing wisdom, but I know he’s okay with that because he said. One of my favorite chiasmi comes from Cyril Connolly. Chiasmus can be used to good effect for any inverted parallel pairs - for example, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “Each throat was parched, and glazed each eye” in Rime of the Ancient Mariner - but it’s more memorable, and often more powerful, when it inverts the same words in each pair. The speech ended with what is perhaps the most well-known chiasmus in history: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”Ī chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. Kennedy’s inauguration speech on January 20, 1961, inspired a generation of young people to a life of public service and self-sacrifice. ![]()
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