Longinus
On the Sublime
XVII
There is one truth which my studies have led me to observe, which perhaps it would be worth while to set down briefly here. It is this, that by a natural law the Sublime, besides receiving an acquisition of strength from figures, in its turn lends support in a remarkable manner to them. To explain: the use of figures has a peculiar tendency to rouse a suspicion of dishonesty, and to create an impression of treachery, scheming, and false reasoning; especially if the person addressed be a judge, who is master of the situation, and still more in the case of a despot, a king, a military potentate, or any of those who sit in high places.58 If a man feels that this artful speaker is treating him like a silly boy and trying to throw dust in his eyes, he at once grows irritated, and thinking that such false reasoning implies a contempt of his understanding, he perhaps flies into a rage and will not hear another word; or even if he masters his resentment, still he is utterly indisposed to yield to the persuasive power of eloquence. Hence it follows that a figure is then most effectual when it appears in disguise. 2 To allay, then, this distrust which attaches to the use of figures we must call in the powerful aid of sublimity and passion. For art, once associated with these great allies, will be overshadowed by their grandeur and beauty, and pass beyond the reach of all suspicion. To prove this I need only refer to the passage already quoted: “I swear it by the men,” etc. It is the very brilliancy of the orator’s figure which blinds us to the fact that it is a figure. For as the fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light all round the sophistries of rhetoric they become invisible. 3 A similar illusion is produced by the painter’s art. When light and shadow are represented in colour, though they lie on the same surface side by side, it is the light which meets the eye first, and appears not only more conspicuous but also much nearer. In the same manner passion and grandeur of language, lying nearer to our souls by reason both of a certain natural affinity and of their radiance, always strike our mental eye before we become conscious of the figure, throwing its artificial character into the shade and hiding it as it were in a veil.
XVIII
The figures of question and interrogation59 also possess a specific quality which tends strongly to stir an audience and give energy to the speaker’s words. “Or tell me, do you want to run about asking one another, is there any news? what greater news could you have than that a man of Macedon is making himself master of Hellas? Is Philip dead? Not he. However, he is ill. But what is that to you? Even if anything happens to him you will soon raise up another Philip.”60 Or this passage: “Shall we sail against Macedon? And where, asks one, shall we effect a landing? The war itself will show us where Philip’s weak places lie.”54 Now if this had been put baldly it would have lost greatly in force. As we see it, it is full of the quick alternation of question and answer. The orator replies to himself as though he were meeting another man’s objections. And this figure not only raises the tone of his words but makes them more convincing. 2 For an exhibition of feeling has then most effect on an audience when it appears to flow naturally from the occasion, not to have been laboured by the art of the speaker; and this device of questioning and replying to himself reproduces the moment of passion. For as a sudden question addressed to an individual will sometimes startle him into a reply which is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments, so the figure of question and interrogation blinds the judgment of an audience, and deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in every detail has been struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of the moment.
There is one passage in Herodotus which is generally credited with extraordinary sublimity…
XIX
… The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and “torrent rapture” to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: “Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell.”61 And the words of Eurylochus in the Odyssey—
“We passed at thy command the woodland’s shade;
We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade.”62
Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once halts and hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure Asyndeton.
XX
But nothing is so conducive to energy as a combination of different figures, when two or three uniting their resources mutually contribute to the vigour, the cogency, and the beauty of a speech. So Demosthenes in his speech against Meidias repeats the same words and breaks up his sentences in one lively descriptive passage: “He who receives a blow is hurt in many ways which he could not even describe to another, by gesture, by look, by tone.” 2 Then, to vary the movement of his speech, and prevent it from standing still (for stillness produces rest, but passion requires a certain disorder of language, imitating the agitation and commotion of the soul), he at once dashes off in another direction, breaking up his words again, and repeating them in a different form, “by gesture, by look, by tone – when insult, when hatred, is added to violence, when he is struck with the fist, when he is struck as a slave!” By such means the orator imitates the action of Meidias, dealing blow upon blow on the minds of his judges. Immediately after like a hurricane he makes a fresh attack: “When he is struck with the fist, when he is struck in the face; this is what moves, this is what maddens a man, unless he is inured to outrage; no one could describe all this so as to bring home to his hearers its bitterness.”63 You see how he preserves, by continual variation, the intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that his order seems irregular, and conversely his irregularity acquires a certain measure of order.
XXI
Supposing we add the conjunctions, after the practice of Isocrates and his school: “Moreover, I must not omit to mention that he who strikes a blow may hurt in many ways, in the first place by gesture, in the second place by look, in the third and last place by his tone.” If you compare the words thus set down in logical sequence with the expressions of the “Meidias,” you will see that the rapidity and rugged abruptness of passion, when all is made regular by connecting links, will be smoothed away, and the whole point and fire of the passage will at once disappear. 2 For as, if you were to bind two runners together, they will forthwith be deprived of all liberty of movement, even so passion rebels against the trammels of conjunctions and other particles, because they curb its free rush and destroy the impression of mechanical impulse.
XXII
The figure hyperbaton belongs to the same class. By hyperbaton we mean a transposition of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agitation. In real life we often see a man under the influence of rage, or fear, or indignation, or beside himself with jealousy, or with some other out of the interminable list of human passions, begin a sentence, and then swerve aside into some inconsequent parenthesis, and then again double back to his original statement, being borne with quick turns by his distress, as though by a shifting wind, now this way, now that, and playing a thousand capricious variations on his words, his thoughts, and the natural order of his discourse. Now the figure hyperbaton is the means which is employed by the best writers to imitate these signs of natural emotion. For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature, again, is most effective when pervaded by the unseen presence of art. An illustration will be found in the speech of Dionysius of Phocaea in Herodotus: “A hair’s breadth now decides our destiny, Ionians, whether we shall live as freemen or as slaves – ay, as runaway slaves. Now, therefore, if you choose to endure a little hardship, you will be able at the cost of some present exertion to overcome your enemies.”64 2 The regular sequence here would have been: “Ionians, now is the time for you to endure a little hardship; for a hair’s breadth will now decide our destiny.” But the Phocaean transposes the title “Ionians,” rushing at once to the subject of alarm, as though in the terror of the moment he had forgotten the usual address to his audience. Moreover, he inverts the logical order of his thoughts, and instead of beginning with the necessity for exertion, which is the point he wishes to urge upon them, he first gives them the reason for that necessity in the words, “a hair’s breadth now decides our destiny,” so that his words seem unpremeditated, and forced upon him by the crisis.
3 Thucydides surpasses all other writers in the bold use of this figure, even breaking up sentences which are by their nature absolutely one and indivisible. But nowhere do we find it so unsparingly employed as in Demosthenes, who though not so daring in his manner of using it as the elder writer is very happy in giving to his speeches by frequent transpositions the lively air of unstudied debate. Moreover, he drags, as it were, his audience with him into the perils of a long inverted clause. 4 He often begins to say something, then leaves the thought in suspense, meanwhile thrusting in between, in a position apparently foreign and unnatural, some extraneous matters, one upon another, and having thus made his hearers fear lest the whole discourse should break down, and forced them into eager sympathy with the danger of the speaker, when he is nearly at the end of a period he adds just at the right moment, i. e. when it is least expected, the point which they have been waiting for so long. And thus by the very boldness and hazard of his inversions he produces a much more astounding effect. I forbear to cite examples, as they are too numerous to require it.
XXIII
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.”65
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.”
And in those words of Plato’s (which we have 4 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,”66 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 ornament67 is very pedantic.
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.”68 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.
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.”69
and that line in Aratus —
“Beware that month to tempt the surging sea.”70
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.”71 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. 3 And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the readers generally, as in the line 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.
“Thou had’st not known for whom Tydides fought,”72
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.”73
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. 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,”74 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. 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?”75
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.”76 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. 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.”77 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.”
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,”78 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.”
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 …