  The logical incoherence of contradictions is the ground both for indecision (as with Zerlina’s ambivalent Vorrei e non vorrei in our epigraph) and for the pragmatic exploitation of apparent contradictions for communicative ends. One locus is the oxymoron, a phrasal contradiction recognized for millennia as a figure of speech. The dramatic effect of yoking contradictories is as old as the classical festina lente (‘make haste slowly’, adopted as a motto by Augustine and the Medicis. The German counterpart, deployed by Goethe and others, adds rhyme: Eile mit Weile.