On the Sublime - active 1st century Longinus (read novels website .TXT) 📗
- Author: active 1st century Longinus
- Performer: -
Book online «On the Sublime - active 1st century Longinus (read novels website .TXT) 📗». Author active 1st century Longinus
My purpose in making this digression was, as I said, to point out into what trifles the second childhood of genius is too apt to be betrayed; such, I mean, as the bag in which the winds are confined,21 the tale of Odysseus’s comrades being changed by Circe into swine22 (“whimpering porkers” Zoïlus called them), and how Zeus was fed like a nestling by the doves,23 and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the shipwreck without food,24 and the improbable incidents in the slaying of the suitors.25 When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say that he dreams as Zeus might dream. 15 Another reason for these remarks on the Odyssey is that I wished to make you understand that great poets and prose-writers, after they have lost their power of depicting the passions, turn naturally to the delineation of character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and characteristic picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called a sort of comedy of manners.
XLet us now consider whether there is anything further which conduces to the Sublime in writing. It is a law of Nature that in all things there are certain constituent parts, coexistent with their substance. It necessarily follows, therefore, that one cause of sublimity is the choice of the most striking circumstances involved in whatever we are describing, and, further, the power of afterwards combining them into one animate whole. The reader is attracted partly by the selection of the incidents, partly by the skill which has welded them together. For instance, Sappho, in dealing with the passionate manifestations attending on the frenzy of lovers, always chooses her strokes from the signs which she has observed to be actually exhibited in such cases. But her peculiar excellence lies in the felicity with which she chooses and unites together the most striking and powerful features.
Who sits, and, gazing on thy face,
Hears thee discourse with eloquent lips,
So wildly flutter in my breast;
Whene’er I look on thee, my voice
Through all my body inly steals;
Mine eyes in darkness reel and swim;
An icy shiver shakes my frame;
Paler than ashes grows my cheek;
3 Is it not wonderful how at the same moment soul, body, ears, tongue, eyes, colour, all fail her, and are lost to her as completely as if they were not her own? Observe too how her sensations contradict one another—she freezes, she burns, she raves, she reasons, and all at the same instant. And this description is designed to show that she is assailed, not by any particular emotion, but by a tumult of different emotions. All these tokens belong to the passion of love; but it is in the choice, as I said, of the most striking features, and in the combination of them into one picture, that the perfection of this Ode of Sappho’s lies. Similarly Homer in his descriptions of tempests always picks out the most terrific circumstances. 4 The poet of the “Arimaspeia” intended the following lines to be grand—
That men should make their dwelling on the deep,
With anxious heart their toilsome vigils keep;
Their eyes are fixed on heaven’s starry steep;
And oft each shivering wretch, constrained to weep,
While many a direful qualm his very vitals rives.”
All must see that there is more of ornament than of terror in the description. Now let us turn to Homer. 5 One passage will suffice to show the contrast.
Child of the winds, under the darkening clouds,
On a swift ship, and buries her in foam;
Then cracks the sail beneath the roaring blast,
And quakes the breathless seamen’s shuddering heart
In terror dire: death lours on every wave.”26
6 Aratus has tried to give a new turn to this last thought—
banishing by this feeble piece of subtlety all the terror from his description; setting limits, moreover, to the peril described by saying “shields them”; for so long as it shields them it matters not whether the “timber” be “frail” or stout. But Homer does not set any fixed limit to the danger, but gives us a vivid picture of men a thousand times on the brink of destruction, every wave threatening them with instant death. Moreover, by his bold and forcible combination of prepositions of opposite meaning he tortures his language to imitate the agony of the scene, the constraint which is put on the words accurately reflecting the anxiety of the sailors’ minds, and the diction being stamped, as it were, with the peculiar terror of the situation. 7 Similarly Archilochus in his description of the shipwreck, and similarly Demosthenes when he describes how the news came of the taking of Elatea28—“It was evening,” etc. Each of these authors fastidiously rejects whatever is not essential to the subject, and in putting together the most vivid features is careful to guard against the interposition of anything frivolous, unbecoming, or tiresome. Such blemishes mar the general effect, and give a patched and gaping appearance to the edifice of sublimity, which ought to be built up in a solid and uniform structure.
XIClosely associated with the part of our subject we have just treated of is that excellence of writing which is called amplification, when a writer or pleader, whose theme admits of many successive starting-points and pauses, brings on one impressive point after another in a continuous and ascending scale. 2 Now whether this is employed in the treatment of a commonplace, or in the way of exaggeration, whether to place arguments or facts in a strong light, or in the disposition of actions, or of passions—for amplification takes a hundred different shapes—in all cases the orator must be cautioned that none of these methods is complete without the aid of sublimity,—unless, indeed, it be our object to excite pity, or to depreciate an opponent’s argument. In all other uses of amplification, if you subtract the element of sublimity you will take as it were the soul from the body. No sooner is the support of sublimity removed than the whole becomes lifeless, nerveless, and dull.
3 There is a difference, however, between the rules I am now giving and those just mentioned. Then I was speaking of the delineation and co-ordination of the principal circumstances. My next task, therefore, must be briefly to define this difference, and with it the general distinction between amplification and sublimity. Our whole discourse will thus gain in clearness.
XIII must first remark that I am not satisfied with the definition of amplification generally given by authorities on rhetoric. They explain it to be a form of language which invests the subject with a certain grandeur. Yes, but this definition may be applied indifferently to sublimity, pathos, and the use of figurative language, since all these invest the discourse with some sort of grandeur. The difference seems to me to lie in this, that sublimity gives elevation to a subject, while amplification gives extension as well. Thus the sublime is often conveyed in a single thought,29 but amplification can only subsist with a certain prolixity and diffusiveness. 2 The most general definition of amplification would explain it to consist in the gathering together of all the constituent parts and topics of a subject, emphasising the argument by repeated insistence, herein differing from proof, that whereas the object of proof is logical demonstration, ...
Plato, like the sea, pours forth his riches in a copious and expansive flood. 3 Hence the style of the orator, who is the greater master of our emotions, is often, as it were, red-hot and ablaze with passion, whereas Plato, whose strength lay in a sort of weighty and sober magnificence, though never frigid, does not rival the thunders of Demosthenes. 4 And, if a Greek may be allowed to express an opinion on the subject of Latin literature, I think the same difference may be discerned in the grandeur of Cicero as compared with that of his Grecian rival. The sublimity of Demosthenes is generally sudden and abrupt: that of Cicero is equally diffused. Demosthenes is vehement, rapid, vigorous, terrible; he burns and sweeps away all before him; and hence we may liken him to a whirlwind or a thunderbolt: Cicero is like a widespread conflagration, which rolls over and feeds on all around it, whose fire is extensive and burns long, breaking out successively in different places, and finding its fuel now here, now there. 5 Such points, however, I resign to your more competent judgment.
To resume, then, the high-strung sublimity of Demosthenes is appropriate to all cases where it is desired to exaggerate, or to rouse some vehement emotion, and generally when we want to carry away our audience with us. We must employ the diffusive style, on the other hand, when we wish to overpower them with a flood of language. It is suitable, for example, to familiar topics, and to perorations in most cases, and to digressions, and to all descriptive and declamatory passages, and in dealing with history or natural science, and in numerous other cases.
XIIITo return, however, to Plato: how grand he can be with all that gentle and noiseless flow of eloquence you will be reminded by this characteristic passage, which you have read in his Republic: “They, therefore, who have no knowledge of wisdom and virtue, whose lives are passed in feasting and similar joys, are borne downwards, as is but natural, and in this region they wander all their lives; but they never lifted up their eyes nor were borne upwards to the true world above, nor ever tasted of pleasure abiding and unalloyed; but like beasts they ever look downwards, and their heads are bent to the ground, or rather to the table; they feed full their bellies and their lusts, and longing ever more and more for such things they kick and gore one another with horns and hoofs of iron, and slay one another in their insatiable desires.”30
2 We may learn from this author, if we would but observe his example, that there is yet another path besides those mentioned which leads to sublime heights. What path do I mean? The emulous imitation of the great poets and prose-writers of the past. On this mark, dear friend, let us keep our eyes ever steadfastly
Comments (0)