Chapter 7: Effects of Sublimity on the Soul
One must understand, my dear friend, that, as in the common life of mankind, nothing is great which it is great to despise-wealth, esteem, reputation, tyranny, and as many other external qualities as we might find in a tragic hero; nor will these things appear very good to a man of sense since to consider oneself superior to these is itself reckoned a good, and, of course, more than at those who actually do have them, men wonder at those who, though they are capable of having these things (wealth, esteem, etc.), look down on them through greatness of soul; in this way we must also look into what appears lofty in sections of poems and speeches and writings, to see whether it has just an outer image of greatness, with a lot of random decoration, but which when looked into is found to be puffed up, the kind of thing which it is better to sense oneself superior to than to wonder at. 2. You see, by true sublimity our soul somehow is both lifted up and-taking on a kind of exultant resemblance-filled with delight and great glory, as if our soul itself had created what it just heard. 3. Whenever a man of sense, experienced in speeches and writings, hears something very often but does not have his soul uplifted, and whenever what he hears does not leave deep in his mind more to theorize on than what was actually said, if you look well into it, you will see that it falls into a state of withering underdevelopment and is not a true sublimity inasmuch as it is held in the mind only while it is heard. You see, what is really great has much about which to theorize and is difficult, or rather, beyond our capacity to with stand, and the memory of it is strong and hard to let goof. 4. On the whole, consider it a rule that those sublimities are fine and true to nature which are satisfying throughout all time and to all men. You see, whenever men of different behaviors, lives, emulations, ages, and speeches and writings all have one and the same opinion about something, then the agreed upon opinion, arising out of a discordant group, takes on for the object of wonder an assuring strength which does not lend itself to debate.
Commentary
One … : another of Longinus’ long sentences; it extends in Greek through all of paragraph one. See the note at the beginning of chapter 1 for the long periodic sentence. If some of Longinus’ parenthetical interjections seem lengthy, let the reader remember the style of Henry James or the famous sentence in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, which runs to 8,923 words, punctuated by 93 commas, 51 semicolons, and 4 dashes.
wealth ... tyranny: the list is conventional because it is true. Philo (That the Worst is Wont to Attack the Better 122) gives a similar list, which he concludes with an elaborate et cetera: “and as many other things as are sisters of these, over which the mass of men busies itself.” In Rewards and Punishments, the list, which Philo defines as “external goods,” is extended to include “victories over our enemies, triumph in wars, lasting peace and prosperity, and encomia, whether coming from fright or good will.” Compare also Galen’s list (On the Diagnosis of the Emotions 3.3): love of material possessions, love of ruling, love of esteem, love of reputation. Longinus’ list is cumulative and climactic (see ch. 44), for one vice leads to the other, until at last we reach the tyrannical man. Plato analyzes tyranny and its misery both in the Republic (9.578C) and in the Gorgias (508C). The Gorgias especially—an analysis of the fallacy of rhetoric as too often practiced in antiquity—exposes the pseudo-pleasures of absolute power; Socrates’ overwhelming conclusion is that rhetoric has but one true function: to persuade oneself and one’s friends to submit to just punishment.
in a tragic hero: the source of the idea is Aristotle’s observation on the practice of tragedy, defined in the Poetics (1453a): the tragic figure must be a man selected from those who are great in the opinion of mankind and who have had the good luck to be prosperous.
greatness of soul: see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (1124a13): “he will have a moderate attitude towards wealth and dynasty and all good luck ” Such is the character of the man who is “great-souled.” But Longinus’ picture is not simply Aristotelian, for it has been colored by Stoic philosophy, with its renunciation of all emotional concern with things not in our control. This attitude of superiority culminates in the medieval contemptus mundi.
sections of poems: Longinus (chs. 35 and 36) argues that sublimity is not possible throughout a great work because it imitates nature, and nature is not equally grand everywhere. His use of a word meaning “section of a poem” appears to be intended to convey this point. Greek has no word meaning “section of a speech”; presumably we are intended to carry over the sense to the second part of the phrase, “speeches and writings.”
leave deep in his mind: the phrase seems to echo the famous remark on Pericles made by Eupolis (fl. 430-410 BCE)—an Athenian writer of comedies: “he alone of the public speakers leaves his spur deep in the audience.”
underdevelopment: the word seems to be unique in extant Greek literature (Roberts, p. 189). It is translated variously: “disesteem” (Roberts), “dwindles away” (Prickard), “sinks in his esteem (Fyfe), “fades and is forgotten” (Grube), “valueless” (Russell, who says it means “bathos”), “loses … effectiveness” (Dorsch). Galen uses the verbal form to indicate a mathematical disproportion (LSJ). The word occurs frequently in Longinus without the prefix (it is discussed at length in chs. 11 and 12) and means “development”; consequently we have translated the word here as “withering underdevelopment.” Prickard has come closest in sense. Milton makes his Christ reject all of Greek poetry on the ground of “underdevelopment” (Paradise Regained IV.341-45):
In Fable, Hymn, or Song, so personating
Thir Gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets thick laid
As varnish on a Harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight.
true to nature which … to all men: one might expect the simple word “true” instead of “true to nature,” for the distinction see ch. 3, n. on true to nature. Longinus does not here mean all men actually at any given time; as the passage taken as a whole shows, he means men in general and all men potentially, for the rules governing sublimity are capable of being learned at least for purposes of appreciation even if not for creation. The nature of man is some thing universal and constant for Longinus, as his splendid description in ch. 35 shows.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition 25) enunciates the same theory of “the test of time”; he imagines some one objecting to his theory that Demosthenes, for example, paid careful attention to conjunctions of vowels and consonants, to time-beats, to meter, and so on, to whom he replies with these noble words:
It is not surprising that after all a man who is held to deserve a greater reputation than any of his predecessors who were distinguished for eloquence was anxious, when composing eternal works and submitting himself to the scrutiny of all-testing time and envy, not to admit either subject or word at random, and to attend carefully to both the arrangement of ideas and beauty of words.
For the theory of “the ages” as an incentive, see Charles Segal, “ὕψος and the Problem of Decline in the De Sublimitate,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 64(1959): esp. pp. 123-24.
The doctrine is current today in our abbreviated form, “the test of time”; Johnson’s phrasing of it (Preface to Shakespeare, paragraphs 53 and 54) is a just imitation.
To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientific, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favor ….
The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted comes not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been known longest has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood.
ages: the ages of a man’s life, e.g., youth, maturity, old age. These are the three major divisions, analyzed and described by Aristotle in the Rhetoric (1389a ff.) Later thinkers, like Varro, make the division fivefold; we are most familiar with the sevenfold division of Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (2.7).
out of a discordant group: perhaps, in germ, the notion of a discordia concors, a harmony out of dissonance; Russell cites Dio Chrysostom (53.6) on Homer’s popularity not only among those speaking the same language but also among many “barbarians.” Dio refers to two groups of non-Greeks who read and admired Homer: I) those who were bilingual, of whom Dio says that, if they knew nothing else in Greek literature, they knew Homer; 2) those who read Homer in translation, like the inhabitants of India.
