On the Sublime
advantage to him: "for strife like this," as Hesiod says, "is good for
men."[2] And where shall we find a more glorious arena or a nobler crown
than here, where even defeat at the hands of our predecessors is not
ignoble?
[Footnote 2: _Opp._ 29.]
XIV
Therefore it is good for us also, when we are labouring on some subject
which demands a lofty and majestic style, to imagine to ourselves how
Homer might have expressed this or that, or how Plato or Demosthenes
would have clothed it with sublimity, or, in history, Thucydides. For by
our fixing an eye of rivalry on those high examples they will become
like beacons to guide us, and will perhaps lift up our souls to the
fulness of the stature we conceive.
2
And it would be still better should we try to realise this further
thought, How would Homer, had he been here, or how would Demosthenes,
have listened to what I have written, or how would they have been
affected by it? For what higher incentive to exertion could a writer
have than to imagine such judges or such an audience of his works, and
to give an account of his writings with heroes like these to criticise
and look on?
3
Yet more inspiring would be the thought, With what feelings will future
ages through all time read these my works? If this should awaken a fear
in any writer that he will not be intelligible to his contemporaries it
will necessarily follow that the conceptions of his mind will be crude,
maimed, and abortive, and lacking that ripe perfection which alone can
win the applause of ages to come.
XV
The dignity, grandeur, and energy of a style largely depend on a proper
employment of images, a term which I prefer to that usually given.[1]
The term image in its most general acceptation includes every thought,
howsoever presented, which issues in speech. But the term is now
generally confined to those cases when he who is speaking, by reason of
the rapt and excited state of his feelings, imagines himself to see what
he is talking about, and produces a similar illusion in his hearers.
[Footnote 1: +eidôlopoiïai+, "fictions of the imagination," Hickie.]
2
Poets and orators both employ images, but with a very different object,
as you are well aware. The poetical image is designed to astound; the
oratorical image to give perspicuity. Both, however, seek to work on the
emotions.
"Mother, I pray thee, set not thou upon me
Those maids with bloody face and serpent hair:
See, see, they come, they're here, they spring upon me!"[2]
And again--
"Ah, ah, she'll slay me! whither shall I fly?"[3]
The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and
he almost compels his readers to see them too.
[Footnote 2: Eur. _Orest._ 255.]
[Footnote 3: _Iph. Taur._ 291.]
3
Euripides found his chief delight in the labour of giving tragic
expression to these two passions of madness and love, showing here a
real mastery which I cannot think he exhibited elsewhere. Still, he is
by no means diffident in venturing on other fields of the imagination.
His genius was far from being of the highest order, but by taking pains
he often raises himself to a tragic elevation. In his sublimer moments
he generally reminds us of Homer's description of the lion--
"With tail he lashes both his flanks and sides,
And spurs himself to battle."[4]
[Footnote 4: _Il._ xx. 170.]
4
Take, for instance, that passage in which Helios, in handing the reins
to his son, says--
"Drive on, but shun the burning Libyan tract;
The hot dry air will let thine axle down:
Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way."
And then--
"This said, his son undaunted snatched the reins,
Then smote the winged coursers' sides: they bound
Forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
His father mounts another steed, and rides
With warning voice guiding his son. 'Drive there!
Turn, turn thy car this way.'"[5]
May we not say that the spirit of the poet mounts the chariot with his
hero, and accompanies the winged steeds in their perilous flight? Were
it not so,--had not his imagination soared side by side with them in
that celestial passage,--he would never have conceived so vivid an
image. Similar is that passage in his "Cassandra," beginning
"Ye Trojans, lovers of the steed."[6]
[Footnote 5: Eur. _Phaet._]
[Footnote 6: Perhaps from the lost "Alexander" (Jahn).]
5
Aeschylus is especially bold in forming images suited to his heroic
themes: as when he says of his "Seven against Thebes"--
"Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slew
Over an iron-bound shield a bull, then dipped
Their fingers in the blood, and all invoked
Ares, Enyo, and death-dealing Flight
In witness of their oaths,"[7]
and describes how they all mutually pledged themselves without flinching
to die. Sometimes, however, his thoughts are unshapen, and as it were
rough-hewn and rugged. Not observing this, Euripides, from too blind a
rivalry, sometimes falls under the same censure.
[Footnote 7: _Sept. c. Th._ 42.]
6
Aeschylus with a strange violence of language represents the palace of
Lycurgus as _possessed_ at the appearance of Dionysus--
"The halls with rapture thrill, the roof's inspired."[8]
Here Euripides, in borrowing the image, softens its extravagance[9]--
"And all the mountain felt the god."[10]
[Footnote 8: Aesch. _Lycurg._]
[Footnote 9: Lit. "Giving it a different flavour," as Arist. _Poet._
+hêdusmenô logô chôris hekastô tôn eidôn+, ii. 10.]
[Footnote 10: _Bacch._ 726.]
7
Sophocles has also shown himself a great master of the imagination in
the scene in which the dying Oedipus prepares himself for burial in the
midst of a tempest,[11] and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the
Greeks over his tomb just as they were putting out to sea on their
departure from Troy.[12] This last scene has also been delineated by
Simonides with a vividness which leaves him inferior to none. But it
would be an endless task to cite all possible examples.
[Footnote 11: _Oed. Col._ 1586.]
[Footnote 12: In his lost "Polyxena."]
8
To return, then,[13] in poetry, as I observed, a certain mythical
exaggeration is allowable, transcending altogether mere logical
credence. But the chief beauties of an oratorical image are its energy
and reality. Such digressions become offensive and monstrous when the
language is cast in a poetical and fabulous mould, and runs into all
sorts of impossibilities. Thus much may be learnt from the great orators
of our own day, when they tell us in tragic tones that they see the
Furies[14]--good people, can't they understand that when Orestes cries
out
"Off, off, I say! I know thee who thou art,
One of the fiends that haunt me: I feel thine arms
About me cast, to drag me down to hell,"[15]
these are the hallucinations of a madman?
[Footnote 13: § 2.]
[Footnote 14: Comp. Petronius, _Satyricon_, ch. i. _passim_.]
[Footnote 15: _Orest._ 264.]
9
Wherein, then, lies the force of an oratorical image? Doubtless in
adding energy and passion in a hundred different ways to a speech; but
especially in this, that when it is mingled with the practical,
argumentative parts of an oration, it does not merely convince the
hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of
Demosthenes:[16] "Supposing, now, at this moment a cry of alarm were
heard outside the assize courts, and the news came that the prison was
broken open and the prisoners escaped, is there any man here who is such
a trifler that he would not run to the rescue at the top of his speed?
But suppose some one came forward with the information that they had
been set at liberty by the defendant, what then? Why, he would be
lynched on the spot!"
[Footnote 16: _c. Timocrat._ 208.]
10
Compare also the way in which Hyperides excused himself, when he was
proceeded against for bringing in a bill to liberate the slaves after
Chaeronea. "This measure," he said, "was not drawn up by any orator, but
by the battle of Chaeronea." This striking image, being thrown in by the
speaker in the midst of his proofs, enables him by one bold stroke to
carry all mere logical objection before him.
11
In all such cases our nature is drawn towards that which affects it most
powerfully: hence an image lures us away from an argument: judgment is
paralysed, matters of fact disappear from view, eclipsed by the superior
blaze. Nor is it surprising that we should be thus affected; for when
two forces are thus placed in juxtaposition, the stronger must always
absorb into itself the weaker.
12
On sublimity of thought, and the manner in which it arises from native
greatness of mind, from imitation, and from the employment of images,
this brief outline must suffice.[17]
[Footnote 17: He passes over chs. x. xi.]
XVI
The subject which next claims our attention is that of figures of
speech. I have already observed that figures, judiciously employed, play
an important part in producing sublimity. It would be a tedious, or
rather an endless task, to deal with every detail of this subject here;
so in order to establish what I have laid down, I will just run over,
without further preface, a few of those figures which are most effective
in lending grandeur to language.
2
Demosthenes is defending his policy; his natural line of argument would
have been: "You did not do wrong, men of Athens, to take upon yourselves
the struggle for the liberties of Hellas. Of this you have home proofs.
_They_ did not wrong who fought at Marathon, at Salamis, and Plataea."
Instead of this, in a sudden moment of supreme exaltation he bursts out
like some inspired prophet with that famous appeal to the mighty dead:
"Ye did not, could not have done wrong. I swear it by the men who faced
the foe at Marathon!"[1] He employs the figure of adjuration, to which I
will here give the name of Apostrophe. And what does he gain by it? He
exalts the Athenian ancestors to the rank of divinities, showing that we
ought to invoke those who have fallen for their country as gods; he
fills the hearts of his judges with the heroic pride of the old warriors
of Hellas; forsaking the beaten path of argument he rises to the
loftiest altitude of grandeur and passion, and commands assent by the
startling novelty of his appeal; he applies the healing charm of
eloquence, and thus "ministers to the mind diseased" of his countrymen,
until lifted by his brave words above their misfortunes they begin to
feel that the disaster of Chaeronea is no less glorious than the
victories of Marathon and Salamis. All this he effects by the use of one
figure, and so carries his hearers away with him.
[Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 208.]
3
It is said that the germ of this adjuration is found in Eupolis--
"By mine own fight, by Marathon, I say,
Who makes my heart to ache shall rue the day!"[2]
But there is nothing grand in the mere employment of an oath. Its
grandeur will depend on its being employed in the right place and the
right manner, on the right occasion, and with the right motive. In
Eupolis the oath is nothing beyond an oath; and the Athenians to whom it
is addressed are still prosperous, and in need of no consolation.
Moreover, the poet does not, like Demosthenes, swear by the departed
heroes as deities, so as to engender in his audience a just conception
of their valour, but diverges from the champions to the battle--a mere
lifeless thing. But Demosthenes has so skilfully managed the oath that
in addressing his countrymen after the defeat of Chaeronea he takes out
of their minds all sense of disaster; and at the same time, while
proving that no mistake has been made, he holds up an example, confirms