Longinus

“ He does not rate his business so low as that. He admits that the inspiration comes from genius, from nature. But “an author can only learn from art when he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius.” Nature must “burst out with a kind of fine madness and divine inspiration.” The madness must be fine. How can art aid it to this end? By knowledge of, by sympathy and emulation with, “the great poets and prose writers of the past.” By these we may be inspired, as the Pythoness by Apollo. From the genius of the past “an effluence breathes upon us.” ”

“ Nature in her loftier and 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. ”

“ Among many others especially this, that it was not in nature's plan for us her chosen children to be creatures base and ignoble,—no, she brought us into life, and into the whole universe, as into some great field of contest, that we should be at once spectators and ambitious rivals of her mighty deeds, and from the first implanted in our souls an invincible yearning for all that is great, all that is diviner than ourselves.3 Therefore even the whole world is not wide enough for the soaring range of human thought, but man's mind often overleaps the very bounds of space. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He may have suffered, as we suffer, from critics who, of all the world’s literature, know only “the last thing out,” and who take that as a standard for the past, to them unfamiliar, and for the hidden future. As we are told that excellence is not of the great past, but of the present, not in the classical masters, but in modern Muscovites, Portuguese, or American young women, so the author of the Treatise may have been troubled by Asiatic eloquence, now long forgotten, by names of which not a shadow survives. ”

“ The critic is even confident enough to expect to find his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime “will always please, and please all readers.” And in this universal acceptance by the populace and the literate, by critics and creators, by young and old, he finds the true external canon of sublimity. The verdict lies not with contemporaries, but with the large public, not with the little set of dilettanti, but must be spoken by all. ”

“ The circumstance is noble 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. ”

“ There was no city, no people of Asia, which did not send an embassy 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. ”

“ Is it not worth while to raise the whole question whether in poetry and prose we should prefer sublimity accompanied by some faults, or a style which never rising above moderate excellence never stumbles and never requires correction? and again, whether the first place in literature is justly to be assigned to the more numerous, or the loftier excellences? ”

“ Nor in my opinion would so many fair flowers of imagery have bloomed among the philosophical dogmas of Plato, nor would he have risen so often to the language and topics of poetry, had he not engaged heart and soul in a contest for precedence with Homer, like a young champion entering the lists against a veteran. It may be that he showed too ambitious a spirit in venturing on such a duel; but nevertheless it was not without advantage to him: "for strife like this," as Hesiod says, "is good for men." ”

“ 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. ”

“ To believe or not is usually in our own power; but the Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader whether he will or no. Skill in invention, lucid arrangement and disposition of facts, are appreciated not by one passage, or by two, but gradually manifest themselves in the general structure of a work; but a sublime thought, if happily timed, illumines [2] an entire subject with the vividness of a lightning-flash, and exhibits the whole power of the orator in a moment of time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He never exhibits strong feeling, has little energy, rouses no emotion; certainly he never kindles terror in the breast of his readers. But Demosthenes followed a great master, [1] and drew his consummate excellences, his high-pitched eloquence, his living passion, his copiousness, his sagacity, his speed—that mastery and power which can never be approached—from the highest of sources. ”

“ Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, 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." ”

“ It would be an easy task to ransack contemporaries, even great contemporaries, for similar failings, for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap erudition, for misplaced flippancy, for nice derangement of epitaphs wherein no adjective is used which is appropriate. With a library of cultivated American novelists and uncultivated English romancers at hand, with our own voluminous essays, and the essays and histories and “art criticisms” of our neighbours to draw from, no student need lack examples of what is wrong. ”

“ If we would write becomingly, our utterance should be worthy of our theme. We should take a lesson from nature, who when she planned the human frame did not set our grosser parts, or the ducts for purging the body, in our face, but as far as she could concealed them, "diverting," as Xenophon says, "those canals as far as possible from our senses," [2] and thus shunning in any part to mar the beauty of the whole creature. ”

“ He never looks up again; he has lost all care for good report; by slow degrees the ruin of his life goes on, until it is consummated all round; all that is great in his soul fades, withers away, and is despised. ”

“ A mind always intent on correctness is apt to be dissipated in trifles; but in great affluence of thought, as in vast material wealth, there must needs be an occasional neglect of detail. And is it not inevitably so? Is it not by risking nothing, by never aiming high, that a writer of low or middling powers keeps generally clear of faults and secure of blame? ”

“ 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 ”

“ In all other uses of amplification, if you subtract the element of sublimity you will take as it were the soul from the body. No sooner is the support of sublimity removed than the whole becomes lifeless, nerveless, and dull. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I fear that for such men as we are it is better to serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world."
11I ended by remarking generally that the genius of the present age is wasted by that indifference which with a few exceptions runs through the whole of life. If we ever shake off our apathy [7] and apply ourselves to work, it is always with a view to pleasure or applause, not for that solid advantage which is worthy to be striven for and held in honour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He who writes, reflecting on his own innumerable sins, can but beat his breast, cry Mea Culpa, and resist the temptation to beat the breasts of his coevals. There are not many authors, there have never been many, who did not need to turn over the treatise of the Sublime by day and night. [6]
As a literary critic of Homer our author is most interesting even in his errors. He compares the poet of the Odyssey to the sunset: the Iliad is noonday work, the Odyssey is touched with the glow of evening—the softness and the shadows. “Old age naturally leans,” like childhood, “towards the fabulous.” ”

“ Hence we develop nothing but a fine genius for flattery.4 This is the reason why, though all other faculties are consistent with the servile condition, no slave ever became an orator; because in him there is a dumb spirit which will not be kept down: his soul is chained: he is like one who has learnt to be ever expecting a blow. ”

“ The word “style” has become a weariness to think upon; so much is said, so much is printed about the art of expression, about methods, tricks, and turns; so many people, without any long experience, set up to be judges of style, on the strength of having admired two or three modern and often rather fantastic writers. About our author, however, we know that his experience has been long, and of the best, that he does not speak from a hasty acquaintance with a few contemporary précieux and précieuses. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The first question which presents itself for solution is whether there is any art which can teach sublimity or loftiness in writing. For some hold generally that there is mere delusion in attempting to reduce such subjects to technical rules. "The Sublime," they tell us, "is born in a man, and not to be acquired by instruction; genius is the only master who can teach it. ”

“ He does not, you observe, ask for his life—such a request would have been unworthy of his heroic soul—but finding himself paralysed by darkness, and prohibited from employing his valour in any noble action, he chafes because his arms are idle, and prays for a speedy return of light. ”

“ His true merit is in his original and, as we think, modern telling of a love tale—pure, passionate, and tender, the first known in literature. Medea is often sublime, and always touching. But it is not on these merits that our author lingers; he loves only the highest literature, and, though he finds spots on the sun and faults Homer, he condones them as oversights passed in the poet’s “contempt of little things.”
Such for us to-day are the lessons of Longinus. He traces dignity and fire of style to dignity and fire of soul. ”