On the Sublime
The juxtaposition of different cases, the enumeration of particulars,
and the use of contrast and climax, all, as you know, add much vigour,
and give beauty and great elevation and life to a style. The diction
also gains greatly in diversity and movement by changes of case, time,
person, number, and gender.
2
With regard to change of number: not only is the style improved by the
use of those words which, though singular in form, are found on
inspection to be plural in meaning, as in the lines--
"A countless host dispersed along the sand
With joyous cries the shoal of tunny hailed,"
but it is more worthy of observation that plurals for singulars
sometimes fall with a more impressive dignity, rousing the imagination
by the mere sense of vast number.
3
Such is the effect of those words of Oedipus in Sophocles--
"Oh fatal, fatal ties!
Ye gave us birth, and we being born ye sowed
The self-same seed, and gave the world to view
Sons, brothers, sires, domestic murder foul,
Brides, mothers, wives.... Ay, ye laid bare
The blackest, deepest place where Shame can dwell."[1]
Here we have in either case but one person, first Oedipus, then Jocasta;
but the expansion of number into the plural gives an impression of
multiplied calamity. So in the following plurals--
"There came forth Hectors, and there came Sarpedons."
[Footnote 1: _O. R._ 1403.]
4
And in those words of Plato's (which we have already adduced elsewhere),
referring to the Athenians: "We have no Pelopses or Cadmuses or
Aegyptuses or Danauses, or any others out of all the mob of Hellenised
barbarians, dwelling among us; no, this is the land of pure Greeks, with
no mixture of foreign elements,"[2] etc. Such an accumulation of words
in the plural number necessarily gives greater pomp and sound to a
subject. But we must only have recourse to this device when the nature
of our theme makes it allowable to amplify, to multiply, or to speak in
the tones of exaggeration or passion. To overlay every sentence with
ornament[3] is very pedantic.
[Footnote 2: _Menex._ 245, D.]
[Footnote 3: Lit. "To hang bells everywhere," a metaphor from
the bells which were attached to horses' trappings on festive
occasions.]
XXIV
On the other hand, the contraction of plurals into singulars sometimes
creates an appearance of great dignity; as in that phrase of
Demosthenes: "Thereupon all Peloponnesus was divided."[1] There is
another in Herodotus: "When Phrynichus brought a drama on the stage
entitled _The Taking of Miletus_, the whole theatre fell a
weeping"--instead of "all the spectators." This knitting together of a
number of scattered particulars into one whole gives them an aspect of
corporate life. And the beauty of both uses lies, I think, in their
betokening emotion, by giving a sudden change of complexion to the
circumstances,--whether a word which is strictly singular is
unexpectedly changed into a plural,--or whether a number of isolated
units are combined by the use of a single sonorous word under one head.
[Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 18.]
XXV
When past events are introduced as happening in present time the
narrative form is changed into a dramatic action. Such is that
description in Xenophon: "A man who has fallen, and is being trampled
under foot by Cyrus's horse, strikes the belly of the animal with his
scimitar; the horse starts aside and unseats Cyrus, and he falls."
Similarly in many passages of Thucydides.
XXVI
Equally dramatic is the interchange of persons, often making a reader
fancy himself to be moving in the midst of the perils described--
"Unwearied, thou wouldst deem, with toil unspent,
They met in war; so furiously they fought."[1]
and that line in Aratus--
"Beware that month to tempt the surging sea."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 697.]
[Footnote 2: _Phaen._ 287.]
2
In the same way Herodotus: "Passing from the city of Elephantine you
will sail upwards until you reach a level plain. You cross this region,
and there entering another ship you will sail on for two days, and so
reach a great city, whose name is Meroe."[3] Observe how he takes us, as
it were, by the hand, and leads us in spirit through these places,
making us no longer readers, but spectators. Such a direct personal
address always has the effect of placing the reader in the midst of the
scene of action.
[Footnote 3: ii. 29.]
3
And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the
readers generally, as in the line
"Thou had'st not known for whom Tydides fought,"[4]
and thus exciting him by an appeal to himself, you will rouse interest,
and fix attention, and make him a partaker in the action of the book.
[Footnote 4: _Il._ v. 85.]
XXVII
Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third
person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a
kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of passion. Thus
Hector in the _Iliad_
"With mighty voice called to the men of Troy
To storm the ships, and leave the bloody spoils:
If any I behold with willing foot
Shunning the ships, and lingering on the plain,
That hour I will contrive his death."[1]
The poet then takes upon himself the narrative part, as being his proper
business; but this abrupt threat he attributes, without a word of
warning, to the enraged Trojan chief. To have interposed any such words
as "Hector said so and so" would have had a frigid effect. As the lines
stand the writer is left behind by his own words, and the transition is
effected while he is preparing for it.
[Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 346.]
2
Accordingly the proper use of this figure is in dealing with some urgent
crisis which will not allow the writer to linger, but compels him to
make a rapid change from one person to another. So in Hecataeus: "Now
Ceyx took this in dudgeon, and straightway bade the children of Heracles
to depart. 'Behold, I can give you no help; lest, therefore, ye perish
yourselves and bring hurt upon me also, get ye forth into some other
land.'"
3
There is a different use of the change of persons in the speech of
Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, which places before us the quick turns
of violent emotion. "Is there none to be found among you," he asks, "who
even feels indignation at the outrageous conduct of a loathsome and
shameless wretch who,--vilest of men, when you were debarred from
freedom of speech, not by barriers or by doors, which might indeed be
opened,"[2] etc. Thus in the midst of a half-expressed thought he makes
a quick change of front, and having almost in his anger torn one word
into two persons, "who, vilest of men," etc., he then breaks off his
address to Aristogeiton, and seems to leave him, nevertheless, by the
passion of his utterance, rousing all the more the attention of the
court.
[Footnote 2: _c. Aristog._ i. 27.]
4
The same feature may be observed in a speech of Penelope's--
"Why com'st thou, Medon, from the wooers proud?
Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord
To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer?
Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here!
Would God that here this hour they all might take
Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day
Make here your muster, to devour and waste
The substance of my son: have ye not heard
When children at your fathers' knee the deeds
And prowess of your king?"[3]
[Footnote 3: _Od._ iv. 681.]
XXVIII
None, I suppose, would dispute the fact that periphrasis tends much to
sublimity. For, as in music the simple air is rendered more pleasing by
the addition of harmony, so in language periphrasis often sounds in
concord with a literal expression, adding much to the beauty of its
tone,--provided always that it is not inflated and harsh, but agreeably
blended.
2
To confirm this one passage from Plato will suffice--the opening words
of his Funeral Oration: "In deed these men have now received from us
their due, and that tribute paid they are now passing on their destined
journey, with the State speeding them all and his own friends speeding
each one of them on his way."[1] Death, you see, he calls the "destined
journey"; to receive the rites of burial is to be publicly "sped on your
way" by the State. And these turns of language lend dignity in no common
measure to the thought. He takes the words in their naked simplicity and
handles them as a musician, investing them with melody,--harmonising
them, as it were,--by the use of periphrasis.
[Footnote 1: _Menex._ 236, D.]
3
So Xenophon: "Labour you regard as the guide to a pleasant life, and you
have laid up in your souls the fairest and most soldier-like of all
gifts: in praise is your delight, more than in anything else."[2] By
saying, instead of "you are ready to labour," "you regard labour as the
guide to a pleasant life," and by similarly expanding the rest of that
passage, he gives to his eulogy a much wider and loftier range of
sentiment. Let us add that inimitable phrase in Herodotus: "Those
Scythians who pillaged the temple were smitten from heaven by a female
malady."
[Footnote 2: _Cyrop._ i. 5. 12.]
XXIX
But this figure, more than any other, is very liable to abuse, and great
restraint is required in employing it. It soon begins to carry an
impression of feebleness, savours of vapid trifling, and arouses
disgust. Hence Plato, who is very bold and not always happy in his use
of figures, is much ridiculed for saying in his _Laws_ that "neither
gold nor silver wealth must be allowed to establish itself in our
State,"[1] suggesting, it is said, that if he had forbidden property in
oxen or sheep he would certainly have spoken of it as "bovine and ovine
wealth."
[Footnote 1: _De Legg._ vii. 801, B.]
2
Here we must quit this part of our subject, hoping, my dear friend
Terentian, that your learned curiosity will be satisfied with this short
excursion on the use of figures in their relation to the Sublime. All
those which I have mentioned help to render a style more energetic and
impassioned; and passion contributes as largely to sublimity as the
delineation of character to amusement.
XXX
But since the thoughts conveyed by words and the expression of those
thoughts are for the most part interwoven with one another, we will now
add some considerations which have hitherto been overlooked on the
subject of expression. To say that the choice of appropriate and
striking words has a marvellous power and an enthralling charm for the
reader, that this is the main object of pursuit with all orators and
writers, that it is this, and this alone, which causes the works of
literature to exhibit the glowing perfections of the finest statues,
their grandeur, their beauty, their mellowness, their dignity, their
energy, their power, and all their other graces, and that it is this
which endows the facts with a vocal soul; to say all this would, I fear,
be, to the initiated, an impertinence. Indeed, we may say with strict
truth that beautiful words are the very light of thought.
2
I do not mean to say that imposing language is appropriate to every
occasion. A trifling subject tricked out in grand and stately words
would have the same effect as a huge tragic mask placed on the head of a
little child. Only in poetry and ...
XXXI
... There is a genuine ring in that line of Anacreon's--
"The Thracian filly I no longer heed."
The same merit belongs to that original phrase in Theophrastus; to me,
at least, from the closeness of its analogy, it seems to have a peculiar
expressiveness, though Caecilius censures it, without telling us why.
"Philip," says the historian, "showed a marvellous alacrity in _taking