On the Sublime Part 8

x.x.xVIII

Such absurdities as, "Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in your heels."[1] Hence it is necessary to know where to draw the line; for if ever it is overstepped the effect of the hyperbole is spoilt, being in such cases relaxed by overstraining, and producing the very opposite to the effect desired.

[Footnote 1: Pseud. Dem. de Halon. 45.]

2 Isocrates, for instance, from an ambitious desire of lending everything a strong rhetorical colouring, shows himself in quite a childish light.

Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpa.s.sed that of Sparta in her services to h.e.l.las, he starts off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is recent so that it seems to be of the past."[2] Come, Isocrates (it might be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the facts about Sparta and Athens? This flourish about the power of language is like a signal hung out to warn his audience not to believe him.

[Footnote 2: Paneg. 8.]

3 We may repeat here what we said about figures, and say that the hyperbole is then most effective when it appears in disguise.[3] And this effect is produced when a writer, impelled by strong feeling, speaks in the accents of some tremendous crisis; as Thucydides does in describing the ma.s.sacre in Sicily. "The Syracusans," he says, "went down after them, and slew those especially who were in the river, and the water was at once defiled, yet still they went on drinking it, though mingled with mud and gore, most of them even fighting for it."[4] The drinking of mud and gore, and even the fighting for it, is made credible by the awful horror of the scene described.

[Footnote 3: xvii. 1.]

[Footnote 4: Thuc. vii. 84.]

4 Similarly Herodotus on those who fell at Thermopylae: "Here as they fought, those who still had them, with daggers, the rest with hands and teeth, the barbarians buried them under their javelins."[5] That they fought with the teeth against heavy-armed a.s.sailants, and that they were buried with javelins, are perhaps hard sayings, but not incredible, for the reasons already explained. We can see that these circ.u.mstances have not been dragged in to produce a hyperbole, but that the hyperbole has grown naturally out of the circ.u.mstances.

[Footnote 5: vii. 225.]

5 For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and pa.s.sions verging on frenzy there lies a kind of remission and palliation of any licence of language. Hence some comic extravagances, however improbable, gain credence by their humour, such as--

"He had a farm, a little farm, where s.p.a.ce severely pinches; 'Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches."

6 For mirth is one of the pa.s.sions, having its seat in pleasure. And hyperboles may be employed either to increase or to lessen--since exaggeration is common to both uses. Thus in extenuating an opponent's argument we try to make it seem smaller than it is.

x.x.xIX

We have still left, my dear sir, the fifth of those sources which we set down at the outset as contributing to sublimity, that which consists in the mere arrangement of words in a certain order. Having already published two books dealing fully with this subject--so far at least as our investigations had carried us--it will be sufficient for the purpose of our present inquiry to add that harmony is an instrument which has a natural power, not only to win and to delight, but also in a remarkable degree to exalt the soul and sway the heart of man.

2 When we see that a flute kindles certain emotions in its hearers, rendering them almost beside themselves and full of an orgiastic frenzy, and that by starting some kind of rhythmical beat it compels him who listens to move in time and a.s.similate his gestures to the tune, even though he has no taste whatever for music; when we know that the sounds of a harp, which in themselves have no meaning, by the change of key, by the mutual relation of the notes, and their arrangement in symphony, often lay a wonderful spell on an audience--

3 though these are mere shadows and spurious imitations of persuasion, not, as I have said, genuine manifestations of human nature:--can we doubt that composition (being a kind of harmony of that language which nature has taught us, and which reaches, not our ears only, but our very souls), when it raises changing forms of words, of thoughts, of actions, of beauty, of melody, all of which are engrained in and akin to ourselves, and when by the blending of its manifold tones it brings home to the minds of those who stand by the feelings present to the speaker, and ever disposes the hearer to sympathise with those feelings, adding word to word, until it has raised a majestic and harmonious structure:--can we wonder if all this enchants us, wherever we meet with it, and filling us with the sense of pomp and dignity and sublimity, and whatever else it embraces, gains a complete mastery over our minds? It would be mere infatuation to join issue on truths so universally acknowledged, and established by experience beyond dispute.[1]

[Footnote 1: Reading ???? ????e a???, and putting a full stop at p?st??.]

4 Now to give an instance: that is doubtless a sublime thought, indeed wonderfully fine, which Demosthenes applies to his decree: t??t? t?

??f?sa t?? t?te t? p??e? pe??st??ta ???d???? pa?e??e?? ?p???se? ?spe?

??f??, "This decree caused the danger which then hung round our city to pa.s.s away like a cloud." But the modulation is as perfect as the sentiment itself is weighty. It is uttered wholly in the dactylic measure, the n.o.blest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence forming the chief const.i.tuent in the finest metre we know, the heroic.

[And it is with great judgment that the words ?spe? ??f?? are reserved till the end.[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper place and read, say t??t? t? ??f?sa ?spe? ??f?? ?p???se t?? t?te ???d????

pa?e??e??--nay, let us merely cut off one syllable, reading ?p???se pa?e??e?? ?? ??f??--and you will understand how close is the unison between harmony and sublimity. In the pa.s.sage before us the words ?spe?

??f?? move first in a heavy measure, which is metrically equivalent to four short syllables: but on removing one syllable, and reading ??

??f??, the grandeur of movement is at once crippled by the abridgment.

So conversely if you lengthen into ?spe?e? ??f??, the meaning is still the same, but it does not strike the ear in the same manner, because by lingering over the final syllables you at once dissipate and relax the abrupt grandeur of the pa.s.sage.

[Footnote 2: There is a break here in the text; but the context indicates the sense of the words lost, which has accordingly been supplied.]

XL

There is another method very efficient in exalting a style. As the different members of the body, none of which, if severed from its connection, has any intrinsic excellence, unite by their mutual combination to form a complete and perfect organism, so also the elements of a fine pa.s.sage, by whose separation from one another its high quality is simultaneously dissipated and evaporates, when joined in one organic whole, and still further compacted by the bond of harmony, by the mere rounding of the period gain power of tone.

2 In fact, a clause may be said to derive its sublimity from the joint contributions of a number of particulars. And further (as we have shown at large elsewhere), many writers in prose and verse, though their natural powers were not high, were perhaps even low, and though the terms they employed were usually common and popular and conveying no impression of refinement, by the mere harmony of their composition have attained dignity and elevation, and avoided the appearance of meanness.

Such among many others are Philistus, Aristophanes occasionally, Euripides almost always.

3 Thus when Heracles says, after the murder of his children,

"I'm full of woes, I have no room for more,"[1]

the words are quite common, but they are made sublime by being cast in a fine mould. By changing their position you will see that the poetical quality of Euripides depends more on his arrangement than on his thoughts.

[Footnote 1: _H. F._ 1245.]

4 Compare his lines on Dirce dragged by the bull--

"Whatever crossed his path, Caught in his victim's form, he seized, and dragging Oak, woman, rock, now here, now there, he flies."[2]

The circ.u.mstance is n.o.ble in itself, but it gains in vigour because the language is disposed so as not to hurry the movement, not running, as it were, on wheels, because there is a distinct stress on each word, and the time is delayed, advancing slowly to a pitch of stately sublimity.

[Footnote 2: _Antiope_ (Nauck, 222).]

XLI

Nothing so much degrades the tone of a style as an effeminate and hurried movement in the language, such as is produced by pyrrhics and trochees and dich.o.r.ees falling in time together into a regular dance measure. Such abuse of rhythm is sure to savour of c.o.xcombry and petty affectation, and grows tiresome in the highest degree by a monotonous sameness of tone.

2 But its worst effect is that, as those who listen to a ballad have their attention distracted from its subject and can think of nothing but the tune, so an over-rhythmical pa.s.sage does not affect the hearer by the meaning of its words, but merely by their cadence, so that sometimes, knowing where the pause must come, they beat time with the speaker, striking the expected close like dancers before the stop is reached.

Equally undignified is the splitting up of a sentence into a number of little words and short syllables crowded too closely together and forced into cohesion,--hammered, as it were, successively together,--after the manner of mortice and tenon.[1]

[Footnote 1: I must refer to Weiske's Note, which I have followed, for the probable interpretation of this extraordinary pa.s.sage.]

XLII

Sublimity is further diminished by cramping the diction. Deformity instead of grandeur ensues from over-compression. Here I am not referring to a judicious compactness of phrase, but to a style which is dwarfed, and its force frittered away. To cut your words too short is to prune away their sense, but to be concise is to be direct. On the other hand, we know that a style becomes lifeless by over-extension, I mean by being relaxed to an unseasonable length.

XLIII

The use of mean words has also a strong tendency to degrade a lofty pa.s.sage. Thus in that description of the storm in Herodotus the matter is admirable, but some of the words admitted are beneath the dignity of the subject; such, perhaps, as "the seas having _seethed_" because the ill-sounding phrase "having seethed" detracts much from its impressiveness: or when he says "the wind wore away," and "those who clung round the wreck met with an unwelcome end."[1] "Wore away" is ign.o.ble and vulgar, and "unwelcome" inadequate to the extent of the disaster.

[Footnote 1: Hdt. vii. 188, 191, 13.]

2 Similarly Theopompus, after giving a fine picture of the Persian king's descent against Egypt, has exposed the whole to censure by certain paltry expressions. "There was no city, no people of Asia, which did not send an emba.s.sy to the king; no product of the earth, no work of art, whether beautiful or precious, which was not among the gifts brought to him. Many and costly were the hangings and robes, some purple, some embroidered, some white; many the tents, of cloth of gold, furnished with all things useful; many the tapestries and couches of great price.

Moreover, there was gold and silver plate richly wrought, goblets and bowls, some of which might be seen studded with gems, and others besides worked in relief with great skill and at vast expense. Besides these there were suits of armour in number past computation, partly Greek, partly foreign, endless trains of baggage animals and fat cattle for slaughter, many bushels of spices, many panniers and sacks and sheets of writing-paper; and all other necessaries in the same proportion. And there was salt meat of all kinds of beasts in immense quant.i.ty, heaped together to such a height as to show at a distance like mounds and hills thrown up one against another."

3 He runs off from the grander parts of his subject to the meaner, and sinks where he ought to rise. Still worse, by his mixing up _panniers_ and _spices_ and _bags_ with his wonderful recital of that vast and busy scene one would imagine that he was describing a kitchen. Let us suppose that in that show of magnificence some one had taken a set of wretched baskets and bags and placed them in the midst, among vessels of gold, jewelled bowls, silver plate, and tents and goblets of gold; how incongruous would have seemed the effect! Now just in the same way these petty words, introduced out of season, stand out like deformities and blots on the diction.