Chapter 20: Gathering of Figures

Ans a gathering of figures, directed at making the same point, usually achieves a height of excitement-when two or three join in a partner­ship and contribute strength, persuasiveness, beauty-the kind of thing found in the speech against Midias, where the lack of connectives is woven together with anaphora and vivid typical description:

The assailant may do many things—some of which the victim may not be able to report to anyone else-by bearing, by look, by voice.

2. Next, so that the speech and writing may advance, not remain at a standstill (you see, quietude lies in standing still, but emotion in confused disorder, since emotion is an impulse and sympathetic excitement of the soul), he directly leaps to other asyndeta and epanaphoras:

… by bearing, by look, by voice, when he insults, when he is hostile, when he uses his knuckles, when he treats you like a slave.

Through these devices, the public speaker achieves an effect no different from that of a boxer: he stuns the perception of the judges with one blow after another. 3. Then, like a squall, he throws himself into another attack, saying:

… when he uses his knuckles, when he boxes his ears. These things excite, these things drive men beside them­ selves with rage, if they are unaccustomed to affrontery and mudslinging. No one reporting these things could present them with appropriate power.

So he everywhere guards the nature of epanaphora and asyndeton with continuous variation; thus his order becomes disorder and, furthermore, his disorder a sort of order.

Commentary

a gathering of figures: Longinus is analyzing certain combinations of fig­ ures: asyndeton together with anaphora. The following passages from English literature exemplify the combination:

1. The notice, which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. Johnson, Letter to Lord Chesterfield
2. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade 13-15

in partnership: the metaphor is drawn from the kind of “chip-in” party popu­ lar in antiquity; our “pot-luck” dinners are a species of this sort of thing.

strength, persuasiveness, beauty: this quotation, and those following, are from Demosthenes’ speech Against Midias (72). The reader should observe the art­ ful way in which Longinus rolls the sequence of quotations one into the other, a variation on the devices of ana­ phora and asyndeton.

anaphora: this, and the word “epana­ phora” used below, are synonymous terms. Russell remarks that strictly “ana­ phora” is the genus: epanaphora refers to clauses beginning with the same word, antistophe to clauses ending with the same word (or words).

Anaphora and asyndeton (on asyn­ deton, see ch. 19, n. on … What) are closely allied, as the famous passage describing Nireus in Homer’s Iliad (2.671-74) illustrates:

Nireus brought three seemly ships from Syme,

Nireus, son of Aglaia and king Charops,

Nireus, the finest man who came to Ilium

Of all the Danaans, after faultless Achilles ….

The master of anaphora in English is Shakespeare’s Richard II:

What must the King do now?
Must he submit?
The King shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The King shall be contented. Must he lose
The name of King? III.iii

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths. IV.i

vivid typical description: the word we translate “vivid typical description” is usually simply transliterated, diatypo­ sis. It refers to a description by details that are vivid, that “strike” a picture for us. The anonymous Art of Rhetoric (Spengel 1.457) stresses its connection with emotion, for “vivid typical des­ cription” or diatyposis is said to excite emotion. Phoibammon, On Figures (Spengel III.SI) says that it is achieved by adding details; it is, then, a kind of verbal portraiture, like the “characters” of Theophrastus and Renaissance Eng­ land. We tend to think of description as referring to individuals; the Greek saw the individual as representative of a type.

The assailant …by voice: from De­ mosthenes’ Against Midias (72). The quotation was a favorite one with the rhetoricians, who used it to illustrate a number of different rhetorical devices (anaphora, asyndeton, clarity).

sympathetic excitement: the term sug­ gests a psychic rapport between the audience and the speaker’s use of fig­ ures; later, in 29.2, Longinus sums up the section on figures by saying, “all these things [figures] make speeches and writings turn out more emotional and more sympathetically exciting.” Aristotle defines pleasure as an excite­ ment of the soul (Rhetoric 1369b33); he frequently says that part of the orator’s job is to “establish” the audience in cer­ tain emotional states (1419b 13; in l 14l9b25 he says the speaker should drive the audience into emotions). Apsines, Art of Rhetoric (Spengel 1.406), says, “We will excite emotion not only by what we have suffered but also by what we fear to suffer.” His discussion compares the parallel role of “emotion” in tragedy and rhetoric; and tragedy, of course, is a genre which intends to pro­ duce “sympathetic excitement” in an audience. The anonymous Art of Rhe­ toric (Spengel 1.427) simply defines an “introduction” as a “‘speech which ex­ cites … the emotions of the audience.” Longinus conjoins Aristotle’s words “establish” and “excite” in the sentence following the one here discussed, and there emotion is defined in Aristotelian terms.

insults: the Greek word is hybris, which Aristotle defines in the Rhetoric (1378b23-25):“hybris is doing or saying things by which shame comes to the one suffering it, not in order that the doer may gain something else, or be­ cause something was done to him, but so that he can have pleasure from show­ ing superiority.” The passage from Demosthenes is a dramatic form of the definition. The best English translation of hybris is the older English word “contumely,” as in Hamlet’s “the proud man’s contumely” (IIl.i.7 ): so Hobbes renders the word in his abridgement of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

Through these devices … after another: these two independent sentences are an example of asyndeton. Although it is, as Russell notes, a common form in this particular construction, the use of it here is in keeping with Longinus’ ha­ bitual imitation of the device under analysis.

variation: for the technical term, see ch. 23, n. on variation. Russell shrewdly observes that the point is paradoxical: “Variation actually maintains the pat­ tern of asyndeton and anaphora, vio­ lence and emotion being of their es­ sence.” As if to sanction Russell’s point, Longinus indulges in oxymoron in the clauses that follow.

order … disorder: the pleasure to be taken in artful deshabille is well known e.g., Horace’s phrase simplex munditiis (Odes I.5); Ben Jonson’s poem which uses that phrase for a title; Robert Her­ rick’s Delight in Disorder; and Spenser’s (or E. K.’s) phrase “disorderly order” (the Epistle to The Shepheardes Calen­ dar). The entire Epistle, together with E. K.’s glosses, shows how the rhetorical terms used by Longinus were a part and parcel of the critical vocabulary in Eli­ zabethan times—although Spenser had not, of course, read Longinus.