On the Sublime
more passionate moods, while detesting all appearance of restraint, is
not wont to show herself utterly wayward and reckless; and though in all
cases the vital informing principle is derived from her, yet to
determine the right degree and the right moment, and to contribute the
precision of practice and experience, is the peculiar province of
scientific method. The great passions, when left to their own blind and
rash impulses without the control of reason, are in the same danger as a
ship let drive at random without ballast. Often they need the spur, but
sometimes also the curb.
3
The remark of Demosthenes with regard to human life in general,--that
the greatest of all blessings is to be fortunate, but next to that and
equal in importance is to be well advised,--for good fortune is utterly
ruined by the absence of good counsel,--may be applied to literature, if
we substitute genius for fortune, and art for counsel. Then, again (and
this is the most important point of all), a writer can only learn from
art when he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius.[1]
[Footnote 1: Literally, "But the most important point of all is that
the actual fact that there are some parts of literature which are in
the power of natural genius alone, must be learnt from no other
source than from art."]
These are the considerations which I submit to the unfavourable critic
of such useful studies. Perhaps they may induce him to alter his opinion
as to the vanity and idleness of our present investigations.
III
... "And let them check the stove's long tongues of fire:
For if I see one tenant of the hearth,
I'll thrust within one curling torrent flame,
And bring that roof in ashes to the ground:
But now not yet is sung my noble lay."[1]
Such phrases cease to be tragic, and become burlesque,--I mean phrases
like "curling torrent flames" and "vomiting to heaven," and representing
Boreas as a piper, and so on. Such expressions, and such images, produce
an effect of confusion and obscurity, not of energy; and if each
separately be examined under the light of criticism, what seemed
terrible gradually sinks into absurdity. Since then, even in tragedy,
where the natural dignity of the subject makes a swelling diction
allowable, we cannot pardon a tasteless grandiloquence, how much more
incongruous must it seem in sober prose!
[Footnote 1: Aeschylus in his lost _Oreithyia_.]
2
Hence we laugh at those fine words of Gorgias of Leontini, such as
"Xerxes the Persian Zeus" and "vultures, those living tombs," and at
certain conceits of Callisthenes which are high-flown rather than
sublime, and at some in Cleitarchus more ludicrous still--a writer whose
frothy style tempts us to travesty Sophocles and say, "He blows a little
pipe, and blows it ill." The same faults may be observed in Amphicrates
and Hegesias and Matris, who in their frequent moments (as they think)
of inspiration, instead of playing the genius are simply playing the
fool.
3
Speaking generally, it would seem that bombast is one of the hardest
things to avoid in writing. For all those writers who are ambitious of a
lofty style, through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty
of language, slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme.
"Who fails in great endeavour, nobly fails," is their creed.
4
Now bulk, when hollow and affected, is always objectionable, whether in
material bodies or in writings, and in danger of producing on us an
impression of littleness: "nothing," it is said, "is drier than a man
with the dropsy."
The characteristic, then, of bombast is that it transcends the Sublime:
but there is another fault diametrically opposed to grandeur: this is
called puerility, and it is the failing of feeble and narrow
minds,--indeed, the most ignoble of all vices in writing. By puerility
we mean a pedantic habit of mind, which by over-elaboration ends in
frigidity. Slips of this sort are made by those who, aiming at
brilliancy, polish, and especially attractiveness, are landed in
paltriness and silly affectation.
5
Closely associated with this is a third sort of vice, in dealing with
the passions, which Theodorus used to call false sentiment, meaning by
that an ill-timed and empty display of emotion, where no emotion is
called for, or of greater emotion than the situation warrants. Thus we
often see an author hurried by the tumult of his mind into tedious
displays of mere personal feeling which has no connection with the
subject. Yet how justly ridiculous must an author appear, whose most
violent transports leave his readers quite cold! However, I will dismiss
this subject, as I intend to devote a separate work to the treatment of
the pathetic in writing.
IV
The last of the faults which I mentioned is frequently observed in
Timaeus--I mean the fault of frigidity. In other respects he is an able
writer, and sometimes not unsuccessful in the loftier style; a man of
wide knowledge, and full of ingenuity; a most bitter critic of the
failings of others--but unhappily blind to his own. In his eagerness to
be always striking out new thoughts he frequently falls into the most
childish absurdities.
2
I will only instance one or two passages, as most of them have been
pointed out by Caecilius. Wishing to say something very fine about
Alexander the Great he speaks of him as a man "who annexed the whole of
Asia in fewer years than Isocrates spent in writing his panegyric
oration in which he urges the Greeks to make war on Persia." How strange
is the comparison of the "great Emathian conqueror" with an Athenian
rhetorician! By this mode of reasoning it is plain that the Spartans
were very inferior to Isocrates in courage, since it took them thirty
years to conquer Messene, while he finished the composition of this
harangue in ten.
3
Observe, too, his language on the Athenians taken in Sicily. "They paid
the penalty for their impious outrage on Hermes in mutilating his
statues; and the chief agent in their destruction was one who was
descended on his father's side from the injured deity--Hermocrates, son
of Hermon." I wonder, my dearest Terentian, how he omitted to say of the
tyrant Dionysius that for his impiety towards Zeus and Herakles he was
deprived of his power by Dion and Herakleides.
4
Yet why speak of Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato--the
very demi-gods of literature--though they had sat at the feet of
Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry
conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these
words: "Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble,
their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would
deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes."[1] To speak
of the pupils of the eye as "modest maidens" was a piece of absurdity
becoming Amphicrates[2] rather than Xenophon. And then what a strange
delusion to suppose that modesty is always without exception expressed
in the eye! whereas it is commonly said that there is nothing by which
an impudent fellow betrays his character so much as by the expression of
his eyes. Thus Achilles addresses Agamemnon in the _Iliad_ as "drunkard,
with eye of dog."[3]
[Footnote 1: _Xen. de Rep. Laced._ 3, 5.]
[Footnote 2: C. iii. sect. 2.]
[Footnote 3: _Il._ i. 225.]
5
Timaeus, however, with that want of judgment which characterises
plagiarists, could not leave to Xenophon the possession of even this
piece of frigidity. In relating how Agathocles carried off his cousin,
who was wedded to another man, from the festival of the unveiling, he
asks, "Who could have done such a deed, unless he had harlots instead of
maidens in his eyes?"
6
And Plato himself, elsewhere so supreme a master of style, meaning to
describe certain recording tablets, says, "They shall write, and deposit
in the temples memorials of cypress wood";[4] and again, "Then
concerning walls, Megillus, I give my vote with Sparta that we should
let them lie asleep within the ground, and not awaken them."[5]
[Footnote 4: _Plat. de Legg._ v. 741, C.]
[Footnote 5: _Ib._ vi. 778, D.]
7
And Herodotus falls pretty much under the same censure, when he speaks
of beautiful women as "tortures to the eye,"[6] though here there is
some excuse, as the speakers in this passage are drunken barbarians.
Still, even from dramatic motives, such errors in taste should not be
permitted to deface the pages of an immortal work.
[Footnote 6: v. 18.]
V
Now all these glaring improprieties of language may be traced to one
common root--the pursuit of novelty in thought. It is this that has
turned the brain of nearly all the learned world of to-day. Human
blessings and human ills commonly flow from the same source: and, to
apply this principle to literature, those ornaments of style, those
sublime and delightful images, which contribute to success, are the
foundation and the origin, not only of excellence, but also of failure.
It is thus with the figures called transitions, and hyperboles, and the
use of plurals for singulars. I shall show presently the dangers which
they seem to involve. Our next task, therefore, must be to propose and
to settle the question how we may avoid the faults of style related to
sublimity.
VI
Our best hope of doing this will be first of all to grasp some definite
theory and criterion of the true Sublime. Nevertheless this is a hard
matter; for a just judgment of style is the final fruit of long
experience; still, I believe that the way I shall indicate will enable
us to distinguish between the true and false Sublime, so far as it can
be done by rule.
VII
It is proper to observe that in human life nothing is truly great which
is despised by all elevated minds. For example, no man of sense can
regard wealth, honour, glory, and power, or any of those things which
are surrounded by a great external parade of pomp and circumstance, as
the highest blessings, seeing that merely to despise such things is a
blessing of no common order: certainly those who possess them are
admired much less than those who, having the opportunity to acquire
them, through greatness of soul neglect it. Now let us apply this
principle to the Sublime in poetry or in prose; let us ask in all cases,
is it merely a specious sublimity? is this gorgeous exterior a mere
false and clumsy pageant, which if laid open will be found to conceal
nothing but emptiness? for if so, a noble mind will scorn instead of
admiring it.
2
It is natural to us to feel our souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and
conceiving a sort of generous exultation to be filled with joy and
pride, as though we had ourselves originated the ideas which we read.
3
If then any work, on being repeatedly submitted to the judgment of an
acute and cultivated critic, fails to dispose his mind to lofty ideas;
if the thoughts which it suggests do not extend beyond what is actually
expressed; and if, the longer you read it, the less you think of
it,--there can be here no true sublimity, when the effect is not
sustained beyond the mere act of perusal. But when a passage is pregnant
in suggestion, when it is hard, nay impossible, to distract the
attention from it, and when it takes a strong and lasting hold on the
memory, then we may be sure that we have lighted on the true Sublime.
4
In general we may regard those words as truly noble and sublime which
always please and please all readers. For when the same book always
produces the same impression on all who read it, whatever be the
difference in their pursuits, their manner of life, their aspirations,
their ages, or their language, such a harmony of opposites gives
irresistible authority to their favourable verdict.
VIII