All your emotions swirled into a fiery ball of life

Scream loud, louder, LOUDER!
or whisper with the fiercest intensity you can muster

It's what you can hear behind really good music, music with some meat to it. Bright, bold in all forms.

Powerful

Unfortunately, usually lacking. Occasionally, often surprising. Tastes tart and tangy to the tongue. Sometimes confused with madness. The root of many things. Our own personal passions correlate with what we find passionate. Not limited to the sexual act, though most find their passionate voice in sex.

(A prerequisite for my respect).

passion

	when the mob calls
the response runs deep

		(a final
moment of time and space,
a gesture -
	an embrace)

	the force of falls
when all we do is sleep

While the the early division of passions into four categories is found first in Plato, the Stoic Cicero was the first to develop a full theory of the passions in his Tusculan Disputations.

The four passions are:

Joy and desire are coded as good, and grief and fear as the result of evil. Joy and grief are immediate, and impinge on the actual presence of the catalyst. Desire and fear arise in anticipation of a future circumstance (albeit often not too far into the future).

Cicero's articulation was widely accepted and endorsed from up to the middle ages, when Thomas Aquinas suggested an even simpler schema. Aquinas divided passions under two rubrics: the concupiscible and irascible "appetites of the soul". Concupiscible passions are those which are readily satisfied. Irascible passions are related to more difficult to obtain objects. Further, the quality of the passion will be affected by the "goodness" or "badness" of the object of desire.

In this schema there are eleven primitive passions which can be experienced, grouped by the quality of the object of desire and its relative attainability. The good and the bad are also seen to be correlates of each other under the single rubrics of concupiscible and irascible:

Concupiscible (Good)

  • love
  • desire
  • joy
  • Concupiscible (Bad)

  • hatred
  • aversion
  • grief
  • Irascible (Good)

  • hope
  • courage
  • Irascible (Bad)

  • despair
  • fear
  • anger
  • Anger is the only emotion without a mirror on the other side of the coin; for Aquinas, the opposite of anger was not another emotion but its absence, or non-anger.


    For more information on the history and etiology of classifications of emotion, see James Fieser's paper (and the source for this brief write-up) "Hume's Classification of the Passions and its Precursors" at http://www.utm.edu/~jfieser/vita1/research/passion.htm

    PaSSion is the club night at The Emporium, Coalville (UK). Perhaps the best club in the Midlands puts on an evening that the likes of Gatecrasher and Cream would do well to emulate. Keeping to the vibe of great music, good times, less fuss has certainly been a driving force in Emporium's incredible rise to renowned club status. Separated into two rooms, the club boasts a chill out room with bar, a Blue and Red room, each with a different DJ, and dancers to spark off the club go-ers. The range of people there is phenomenal. You can see the straight laced fun loving party fiend, out for a good time and then the 'Clubbing's My Life' sort of person, dressed to impress.

    In "Passion," Stephen Sondheim had no intention of writing a conventional love story. He makes this clear in the opening scene, where he puts into the mouths of his two beautiful lovers, Clara and Giorgio, some of the most purposely banal lyrics he ever wrote, making it clear that these lovers are not the interesting ones in this story.

    Where the composer wants to direct our attention is toward Fosca, the sickly wedge that slowly splits apart that conventional pair. Fosca literally believes all of the romantic cliches about love that others, including Clara and Giorgio, merely spout. The notions of an all-consuming devotion, an inability to live without the beloved, a loss of all perspective, are realities to her. Taking their cue from Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's 1869 novel "Fosca" and Ettoré Scola's 1981 film "Passione d'Amore," Sondheim and Lapine have made Fosca painfully plain, an insurmountable defect for a woman in 1863 Italy, where the only options are to be "a daughter or a wife." In the 1994 New York production, which won the Tony Award for best musical, Fosca (played by Donna Murphy) was considerably more than physically plain. She was downright unpleasant: irrational, obsessive, unrelenting. She so thoroughly embodied her monomania that she called into question all of our comfortable ideas about love and lust, kindness and cruelty.

    Passion is essentially an exercise in opposites, primarily in the contrast between Clara and Fosca. Contrast has been a regular device in the muscials for years, but never had the contrast been so clear, or quite so much the point of the story. The original novel is structurally schematic - Clara means "light" whereas Fosca means "dark" - but Sondheim has emphasised the differences between these two women by giving them their own musical languages. Sondheim and Lapine have used this contract to explore the theme of love and relationships in a way that echoes Sondheim's earlier work in Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. But this story is also about light and dark, the physical and the spiritual, the head and the heart.

    Pas"sion (?), n. [F., fr. L. passio, fr. pati, passus, to suffer. See Patient.]

    1.

    A suffering or enduring of imposed or inflicted pain; any suffering or distress (as, a cardiac passion); specifically, the suffering of Christ between the time of the last supper and his death, esp. in the garden upon the cross.

    "The passions of this time."

    Wyclif (Rom. viii. 18).

    To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs. Acts i. 3.

    2.

    The state of being acted upon; subjection to an external agent or influence; a passive condition; -- opposed to action.

    A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power to move, and, when set is motion, it is rather a passion than an action in it. Locke.

    3.

    Capacity of being affected by external agents; susceptibility of impressions from external agents.

    [R.]

    Moldable and not moldable, scissible and not scissible, and many other passions of matter. Bacon.

    4.

    The state of the mind when it is powerfully acted upon and influenced by something external to itself; the state of any particular faculty which, under such conditions, becomes extremely sensitive or uncontrollably excited; any emotion or sentiment (specifically, love or anger) in a state of abnormal or controlling activity; an extreme or inordinate desire; also, the capacity or susceptibility of being so affected; as, to be in a passion; the passions of love, hate, jealously, wrath, ambition, avarice, fear, etc.; a passion for war, or for drink; an orator should have passion as well as rhetorical skill.

    "A passion fond even to idolatry." Macaulay. "Her passion is to seek roses."

    Lady M. W. Montagu.

    We also are men of like passions with you. Acts xiv. 15.

    The nature of the human mind can not be sufficiently understood, without considering the affections and passions, or those modifications or actions of the mind consequent upon the apprehension of certain objects or events in which the mind generally conceives good or evil. Hutcheson.

    The term passion, and its adverb passionately, often express a very strong predilection for any pursuit, or object of taste -- a kind of enthusiastic fondness for anything. Cogan.

    The bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion. Shak.

    The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still. Pope.

    Who walked in every path of human life, Felt every passion. Akenside.

    When statesmen are ruled by faction and interest, they can have no passion for the glory of their country. Addison.

    5.

    Disorder of the mind; madness.

    [Obs.]

    Shak.

    6.

    Passion week. See Passion week, below.

    R. of Gl.

    Passion flower Bot., any flower or plant of the genus Passiflora; -- so named from a fancied resemblance of parts of the flower to the instruments of our Savior's crucifixion.

    ⇒ The flowers are showy, and the fruit is sometimes highly esteemed (see Granadilla, and Maypop). The roots and leaves are generally more or less noxious, and are used in medicine. The plants are mostly tendril climbers, and are commonest in the warmer parts of America, though a few species are Asiatic or Australian.

    Passion music Mus., originally, music set to the gospel narrative of the passion of our Lord; after the Reformation, a kind of oratorio, with narrative, chorals, airs, and choruses, having for its theme the passion and crucifixion of Christ. -- Passion play, a mystery play, in which the scenes connected with the passion of our Savior are represented dramatically. -- Passion Sunday Eccl., the fifth Sunday in Lent, or the second before Easter. -- Passion Week, the last week but one in Lent, or the second week preceding Easter. "The name of Passion week is frequently, but improperly, applied to Holy Week."

    Shipley.

    Syn. -- Passion, Feeling, Emotion. When any feeling or emotion completely masters the mind, we call it a passion; as, a passion for music, dress, etc.; especially is anger (when thus extreme) called passion. The mind, in such cases, is considered as having lost its self-control, and become the passive instrument of the feeling in question.

     

    © Webster 1913.


    Pas"sion (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Passioned (?); p.pr & vb. n. Passioning.]

    To give a passionate character to.

    [R.]

    Keats.

     

    © Webster 1913.


    Pas"sion, v. i.

    To suffer pain or sorrow; to experience a passion; to be extremely agitated.

    [Obs.] "Dumbly she passions, frantically she doteth."

    Shak.

     

    © Webster 1913.

    Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.