While I haven't been there, I know of it from Alan Furst's novels (which I recommend) -- he writes novels set before and during WWII and likes to often set them in places like Thessaloniki/Salonika in Greece and Trieste in Italy -- places which were on the border between two (or more) cultures and which lost a lot of their multicultural status due to the war.
It is contemporarily relevant to look at the euphemistic 'exchange of populations' during and after the Greco-Turkish War. Today it would be called 'ethnic cleansing'. In Anatolia itself, it took the form of genocide. The Turks had recently executed the Armenian and Assyrian (Sayfo) genocides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_(1919%E2%80%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
Most vividly, it was covered by journalist Ernest Hemingway for the Toronto Star:
A Silent, Ghastly Procession Wends Its Way from Thrace (20 Oct 1922)
Refugee Procession is Scene of Horror (14 Nov 1922)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Quai_at_Smyrna
Some telling quotes here:
https://www.neomagazine.com/2022/04/on-the-quay-at-smyrna-er...
You can find these works in many collections of his journalism and short stories (e.g. "Byline"). I am very glad his early work is now coming out of copyright (and the journalism in Canada too? - if someone has links to his original articles, please post them).
Here is an out-of-copyright paragraph of "In Our Time", which recollects the refugee columns passing through Thrace, to and from Salonika, in 1922:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61085/pg61085-images.ht...
There are similar scenes in our world today. Not being played out today, but really happening.
Why dont they use the simple english to understand?
English is a very beautiful language. There are many ways to say something similar, but each have slightly different meanings. In this case, the writer decided to use "flowery" language, which is usually to create a detailed picture, smell, and feeling for the reader. The point is not only to convey facts but to convey a sense of place. That is the reason for the complicated language.
For example, it says: "A woman in her forties sits on a bench, fixing the shrine with her gaze."
This means that the woman sits on a bench looking at the shrine. But "fixing" it "with her gaze" means that she is staring at it with deep meaning and (possibly) reverence.
To me that says her gaze is fixing the shrine.
What meaning do you infer from what it says?
What it means. The most annoying about that quote is that it is a correct sentence, with one single trivial meaning. Easy right? Your favorite type of sentence. Well guess what, in the text it stands for a totally different thing (without any particular reason or benefit).
I much prefer GP's broken sentence. It is syntactically broken, but it has all the words, much better than if it was syntactically correct with an entirely different meaning than the intended one.
Depends on the correct spelling of gaze.
Fixing one's gaze on something is a standard English expression, it's just the active form of to be fixed on, which is passive. It means, literally, that one's line of sight is 'fixed upon' something. One's mind can also be fixed upon something. The verb is to fix or to affix. 'Fixed to' simply means 'attached to', but 'fixed on' usually implies something lighter attached to a weightier, possibly vertical surface, or something attached by glue or paste. You can also say that a postage stamp is fixed on an envelope.
It's a great sentence if you understand the different things it is communicating compactly and efficiently.
> who says that?
People who watch US TV shows about the American South. Having lived there for awhile and still travel there for work today, I can say with some certainty that the folksy dialect that media gives to people of that region is either largely embellished or made-up. If we stay on the word "fix," I mostly hear it in context of someone making a meal ("Fixing breakfast," etc). The Appalachian regions are must more creative and cant-like with the language historically, but even that is being lost as the generations are exposed to more modern settings, I think. In my experience, the idioms used usually come down to the individual, which has more to do with how their sense of identity was cultivated, a concept that runs quite deep in the American South, but that is a much longer and more complex thread for another day, I reckon.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fix:
to direct one's attention or efforts : FOCUS
also : DECIDE, SETTLE —usually used with on
had fixed on the first Saturday in June
All eyes fixed on her as she entered the room.
> Subjective of course, but I just think it's a bad sentence.
IDK, you could just look up the idiom that you are unfamiliar with? So that next time you come across it, you are better informed.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fix+his+with+a+gaze
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix-a-g...
Exactly, and "fixing" in this sense means "nailing to the spot", or "fastening upon, halt, stop moving, be immobile like a fixed point or fixed price".
It's a poetic expression.
> For example, it says: "A woman in her forties sits on a bench, fixing the shrine with her gaze."
This particular example I don't think is poetic rather it is broken.
At least in British English it’s perfectly fine. A bit poetic, but not an obscure construction.
edit — NB This is a British English publication. This is an American English default site.
> I don't think is poetic rather it is broken.
No, it is not. You are merely unfamiliar with this sentence construction.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix-a-g...
Indeed, the construction gives the feeling that the shrine itself might float away without her gaze, such is the intensity of her watching it. That is purposeful. It comes from the common phrase "she fixed him with her gaze" which means, not as much that her gaze was fixed on him, as that he froze when he saw her looking at him.
I think it was a conscious and valid choice to use this in relation to a static holy object in this context.
"fixing the shrine with her gaze" totally makes sense (I'm also a native speaker of English, that makes four) and is semantically equivalent to "fixing her gaze on the shrine", it merely chooses to emphasize "the shrine" as the object, rather than "her gaze". Clearly "fix" here means "attaching securely"(/"locking on to") not "repairing", that Collins citation already given above also defined "fix" https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix
And adding the preposition "with" to get the preposition phrase "with her gaze" doesn't change the meaning: clearly the sentence is about her gaze being firmly on the shrine (not the shrine being firmly on her gaze).
Only if one is determined to be stubbornly pedantic about it! That would make no sense, so the poetic sense is obviously the one intended.
> it was "fixing the shrine with her gaze", which makes no sense.
Again, I disagree, it's a poetic construction, possibly a bit dated, and so the other commenter pointed out, probably more UK English than US English.
You don't have to be familiar with it. But there's a kind of closed-minded arrogance to reading such an otherwise well-written piece and concluding "is it me that doesn't know this particular turn of phrase? No, it must be nonsense!"
GP post cites Collins defining "fix a gaze on"! https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix-a-g...
Yes Collins knows about it.
Even this lesser-known site knows about it: https://texttospeech.io/thesaurus/gaze
> Definition of gaze: (n): a long fixed look; "he fixed his paternal gaze on me"
(part 1/3)
Let's put this to bed once and for all. The sentence under discussion is:
> A woman in her forties sits on a bench, fixing the shrine with her gaze.
The construction in this sentence is perfectly standard in both British and American English, documented by reputable dictionaries, and in common usage across contexts from tabloids and young adult fantasy to newspapers of record and literary fiction.
Dictionaries: Several commenters have posted dictionary entries for related but distinct constructions like "fix a gaze on." Here are entries supporting the exact construction under discussion.
1. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fix-with
2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fix%20(someone)%2...
3. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix, definition 9: "If you fix someone with a particular kind of expression, you look at them in that way."
- "He took her hand and fixed her with a look of deep concern. [VERB noun with noun]"
- "He fixed me with a lopsided grin. [VERB noun with noun]"
examples from other Collins entries:
- "The man fixed his interrogator with a steady gaze and spoke quietly but firmly." (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/sentences/english/gaze)
- "He pulls his other hand towards his face and fixes me with an intense gaze that has been well practised." (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/inte...)
4. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fix#Verb, definition 1.1: "(Of a piercing look) to direct at someone." (note that definition 1, but not 1.1, is marked as obsolete)
- "He fixed me with a sickly grin, and said, 'I told you it wouldn't work!'"
- "She sniffed, too, comprehendingly, and fixed her son with a relentless eye."
5. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis..., idioms: "fix somebody with a look, stare, gaze, etc.: to look directly at somebody for a long time"
- "He fixed her with an angry stare."
6. Examples from other dictionaries exhibiting the construction:
- "To glare is to fix another with a hard, piercing stare" (https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=gaze)
- "Aron Nimzowitsch, a contemporary of Alekhine’s, would smoke a noxious cigar and fix his opponent with a dread stare." (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nimzowitsch)
It is not an informative article, it's a piece designed to convey emotions and sentiments so readers are more willing to embrace author's view.
There seems to be an agenda there.
If you check wikipedia at least, the muslim-christian population exchange between Greece and Turkey wasn't quite like the article describes it.
The facts may be somewhere in the middle, but certainly not in this article.
FWIW The Critic is associated with the British conservative movement so there is definitely a leaning to the political right
(This is a comment on the magazine that published TFA, not TFA itself)
Could you describe how the muslim-christian population exchange actually happened?
What is the agenda of this piece?
I'm still mystified about the agenda of the piece? I'm not implying that it has one or doesn't have one, I'm keen to know what agenda you saw in it.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
Not all writing needs to be as dry as a technical bulletin.
That’s how you do a proper propaganda piece, you write an emotional article that is mostly correct and insert subtle nudges to your actual topic :)
Here you go: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessaloniki
Be glad it's not Pidgin.
That's a broken sentence.
Broken seems a bit harsh. It might not be idiomatic, it might fall foul of some grammatical standard. But you know what it means.
No, I do not! It is absolutely derived of context.
Kinda like how I understood what you meant here ("absolutely devoid of context") in spite of your error ("derived of context"). Sometimes we need to make an effort to understand.
I wouldn't make you feel bad by saying "that's a broken sentence! I can't understand it!"
>places like Thessaloniki/Salonika in Greece and Trieste in Italy -- places which were on the border between two (or more) cultures and which lost a lot of their multicultural status due to the war
"European borders aren't drawn along ethnic lines, the ethnic lines are drawn along the borders." —/u/sora_mui, two days ago <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1j86d8i/the_balkani...>