Chapter 40: Rhythm and Diction
And most important among those things which make for greatness in speech is the setting together of the members, as in living bodies: though one member sheared off from the rest has nothing in itself worthy of rational speech, all combined together complete a perfect system; thus, though greatnesses, scattered from each other, carry away their sublimity with them in various directions, when by their common association they form a body and, in addition, are clasped in a harmonious bond, they make a voice by their very periodic form. Actually, in periodic sentences, greatness is almost a contribution made by a multiplicity of elements. 2. But we have, in fact, made it sufficiently clear that many prose-writers and poets, although not naturally sublime, and perhaps even lacking in greatness, still, using words that are common and ordinary which do not lead to too much of anything in themselves, by the way they place them together and make them fit, throw around themselves a rough dignity and avoid getting a low opinion—as is shown by Philistus (among many others), Aristo phanes in some passages, Euripides in most. 3. Of course, you know what Euripides’ Heracles says after the slaughter of his children:
I’m packed with ills, no place to put them left to me,
a remark spoken in an intensely ordinary way, but it has come to be sublime proportionately to the molding of the sentence: if you fit the sentence together differently, it will appear to you why Euripides is a poet of arrangement more than of thought. And in treating Dirce, when she was swept away by the bull, he says:
if he chanced to turn
Somewhere around, he dragged… and took at once Oak, rock, woman, over and over again exchanging each. Though the point is actually noble, it has been made more solid by not having its harmony hurried along, and, as it were, by not being brought in on rollers; but the words have for each other supports and the proppings of time-beats that result in a steady beat of greatness.
Commentary
members: the Greek word means pri marily a “member” or part of a whole, like the limb of a body; by analogy it comes to refer to a member or phrase of music, and then melody or lyric song. Longinus is playing on these two mean ings—corporeal and musical—and ap plying both analogically to the phrases and clauses of speech.
as in living bodies: the links between this chapter and ch. 10 are forged by this analogy. Plato, in both the Phaedrus (264C) and the Philebus (64B), com pares speech to the way a living creature is put together. So too Aristotle (Poetics 1450b35) argues thus:
Furthermore, a fine object, whe ther a living creature or every thing put together from parts, ought not only to have its parts arranged but also to have a kind of greatness.
Since art is an imitation of nature, and since the works of nature for Plato, Aris totle, and Longinus, have an organic wholeness, the work of art, when suc cessful, should have a similar organic wholeness.
one member sheared off: Demetrius (2) uses the same analogy:
Sometimes the member constitutes not a complete sentence, but a part of it, yet a complete part. For just as the arm, which is a whole of a certain kind, has parts such as fingers and forearms which them selves are wholes, inasmuch as each of them has proper limits, and itself is made up of parts; so also a complete sentence, when it is extensive, may very well com prise within itself parts which themselves are integral. (tr. Rhys Roberts)
Similarly, Galen (On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body 1.347) says that if a part of the body lacked usefulness, we would cut it off; if a part lacked action, we would deny usefulness to the whole.
perfect system: the adjective “perfect” (lit., “final”) describes that which has reached its end (telos). Behind the word lies an “organic” conception of the cosmos, which as a whole, and in its parts which are themselves wholes made up out of elements, is either perfect or developing towards a perfection, even though the perfection be transient. Aris totle defines “nature” as that stage in a thing’s development when it has reached its end (telos).
“System” is a transliteration of the Greek word; its root means literally “to stand together, to put together,” so as to form a whole. Paul (Colossians I:16-17) says:
For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible…all things were created by him and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
So Peter (2 Peter 3.5) says that the earth was put together from water by the logos of God. Dionysius of Halicarnas sus (Art of Rhetoric 10.6) says that Demosthenes imitated Plato in seeking to make his speeches organic wholes: he paraphrases Plato (Phaedrus 264B-C), saying that a speech ought to be like a body which has its members appropri ate to one another—to be like “the whole system of the body.” The word is also used to signify a musical scale and a metrical scale (LSJ).
periodic sentences… multiplicity: Grube argues (articles in The American Jour nal of Philology, 1957) that the word “period” in Longinus does not refer to the periodic sentence (see ch. 11, n. on periodically). Because of the metaphor in the word “contribution,” he takes the word here to signify the courses in a feast.
Since, however, it is Longinus’ habit either to use terms different from those in the handbooks, or to use the same words but differently-allusively, pun ningly, originally, expansively—such a variation of the argumentum ex silentio is not needed. For example, Longinus does not use the technical words for “phrase” and “clause”; but here in ch. 40 it is clear that the word “member” covers both.
Furthermore, both the subjects of ch. 39 and 40 are directly related to the peri odic sentence. Dionysius of Halicarnas sus (On Composition 2) says:
The combination or juxtaposi tion of these parts [of speech]… forms the “members” (or clauses) of a sentence. Further, the fitting together of these clauses consti tutes what are termed the “peri ods,” and these make up the com plete discourse. The function of composition is to put words to gether in an appropriate order, to assign a suitable connexion to clauses and to distribute the whole discourse properly into periods.(tr. Rhys Roberts)
Both Dionysius (19) and Demetrius (13) praise a style which combines periods with other kinds of sentence; and Dio nysius says that even within periods some should interweave a larger number of clauses.
None of the writers who deal with periods at length—despite their frequent mention and praise of Plato—quotes any of his huge sentences, which Longinus often imitates.
The word “contribution” refers Lo the Greek custom of what we call “pot luck” dinners; each participant “chips in” something to fill out the meal. By extension it came Lo refer to the finan cial share paid by each diner at a feast. The short sentence here follows Longi nus’ usual pattern: a long analytic period at the end of which comes a short epigrammatic, often metaphorical ex ample. The point is the same: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. “Multiplicity” signifies the number of clauses; “periodic” their arrangement; “greatness” the bonus.
words…common and ordinary…make them fit: Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition 3) makes the same point, citing a passage from Homer as an example:
The diction consists… of the most ordinary, the humblest words, such as might have been used off hand by a farmer, a seaman, an artisan, or anybody else who Lakes no account of elegant speech… they [the lines] con Lain neither noble metaphors… nor any other figurative language; nor yet many unusual terms, nor foreign or new-coined words. What alterna tive, then, is left but to attribute the beauty of the style to the composition?
Wordsworth, in the Preface of Lyrical Ballads, says that he sought to make all of the poems in that volume operate by this method: “to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them… in a selection of language really used by men ... to make these interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement ... because in that condition the essential passions of the heart… speak a plainer and more emphatic language” (com pare Dionysius, chs. 12 and 20). Quite consciously Wordsworth acknowledged that this method “cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which. . .have long been re garded as the common inheritance of poets” (throughout these quotations the italics have been ours).
Coleridge (Biographica Literaria, chs. 14 ff.) discusses Wordsworth’s choice of “real” language—for which Coleridge wished to substitute the term “ordi nary”; in ch. 18, he analyzes a poem of Wordsworth’s in terms remarkably parallel to those of Dionysius. We may also compare Arnold’s distinction be tween the “simple” language of Words worth’s Michael and the “simplistic” language of Tennyson’s Dora.
rough dignity: Longinus is referring to a glottal phenomenon resulting from the collocation of certain clusters of consonants: the words must be pro nounced separately, with spaces or time intervals between. Dionysius treats the subject in many places; he associates it most explicitly with the “austere” or grand style (e.g., Pindar and Thucy dides: On Composition 22). Browning’s notorious line exemplifies the principle grotesquely:
Irks care the cropfilled bird?
The effect is, when well-used, one of “rough dignity.”
Philistus: an historian of the fourth century B.C.; he wrote a history of Sicily from its earliest times on in a manner so imitative of Thucydides that Cicero (Letters to His Brother Quintus 2.13.4) called him rich, acute, terse, “almost a petit Thucydides.” Dionysius of Hali carnassus discusses Philistus both in his letter to Pompeius (section 5) and in the fragmentary work On Imitation (Usener-Rademacher ed., VI, 208). He says that Philistus had a subservient and low nature; that he avoided Thucydi dean peculiarities and imitated the terse ness and the opinions (sententiae) but not in fineness of language or preg nancy of thought; that he was weak in figures and variety; but that he did have a euphony and was a better model for actual court-cases.
Aristophanes: in ch. 38, Longin us sug gested that there can be comic ecstasy. He mentioned comic hyperbole as pro ducing such an effect, and Aristophanes uses hyperbole frequently.
That comedy can be sublime, at least in part, is not, of course, impossible; Dryden praises Congreve in words that do not always emphasize his comic genre (To My Dear Friend Mr. Con greve):
Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length;
Our beauties equal, but excel our strength.
Firm Doric pillars found your solid base;
The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space…
So bold, yet so judiciously you dare That your least praise is to be regular.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought;
But genius must be born, and never can be taught.
This is your portion; this your native store;
Heav’n, that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakespeare gave as much; she could not give him more.
Heracles says...children: from Her cules Mad (1245). The word translated “packed” is, in Greek, generally used of ships laden with cargo. It appears to have been colloquial to the point of vulgarity. But Dionysius of Halicarnas sus argues, with sound tolerance (On Composition 12), in defense of such language:
And, in my opinion, we ought not to feel shy of using any noun or verb, however hackneyed, un less it carries with it some shame ful association; for I venture to assert that no part of speech which signifies a person or thing will prove so mean, squalid, or other wise offensive as to have no fitting place in discourse. (tr. Rhys Roberts)
sublime proportionately: once again Longinus links these chapters with his fivefold division. As in 8.1 he spoke of “the molding of figures”—the third of the five elements which make for sub limity—so here in ch. 40 he speaks of a sublimity which comes simply from the “molding” of the sentence.
poet of arrangement: we must be care ful not to misinterpret the word “of” in the phrase “poet of arrangement”; Rus sell, who makes this point well, renders the passage: “it is the arrangement rather than the sense of which Euri pides is the poet,” i.e., “poet” in the sense of “maker,” the one who “makes” or “works out” the arrangement. Aris totle (Rhetoric 1404bl-25) discusses the steady movement in Greek tragedy from unusual diction to the speech of ordi nary men, and at the end of the passage he praises Euripides as the initiator of the trend.
The distinction between Euripides.as poet of arrangement and poet of thought (nous) may seem at first not altogether flattering; but since, for Longinus, ar rangement includes all the other ele ments of sublimity, we may assume that the distinction is not cutting. If we pos sessed the two lost books on arrangement, we could be more confident; Longinus’ summary of the connection existing between arrangement and “solid thrust of conception” is extremely brief; for the full discussion he simply refers us to the now lost books.
he says: from a lost tragedy, the Anti ope (fr. 221, Nauck); considerable frag ments survive, one of which is cited by Plato (Gorgias 484C-486D) as a splen did expression of the contest between the active and contemplative lives. Russell gives a summary of the complicated plot. The quotation illustrates Longinus’ point, made earlier in the chapter, that sublimity is achieved by setting words together so that their consonants pro duce a distance between them. The effect can be ugly, as in the line from Browning quoted earlier (see above, n. on rough dignity), or powerful and solemn, as in these lines from Paradise Lost (11.620-24), where we see the fallen angels exploring hell:
O’er many a frozen, many a Fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives…
Pope imitates the effect for comic pur pose in his Essay on Criticism (11.345-47):
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
Note the effect of the adjective “low.” Single vowel sounds can have a remarkable effect on a line, both in the sound and in the power of the individ ual word to effect the rhythm of the whole; T. S. Eliot has justly praised Tennyson’s line
The blue fly sung in the window- pane.
Even at the cost of grammar, the poet has seen that the regular form of the past tense (“sang”) would destroy the line.
solid: another link between these chap ters and the fivefold division; the only other use of “solid” was in 8.1, where Longinus lists as the first element of sublimity a “solid thrust of conception.”
rollers...steady greatness: the word for “rollers” suggests in Greek the word for “cycle.” The word seems to allude to Homer’s famous line (Odyssey 11.598), which contains a cognate verb; Sandys’ translation (in Jebb’s translation of the Rhetoric of Aristotle [Cambridge, 1909], p. 172) catches some of the effect: Downward anon to the valley rebounded the boulder remorse less.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Com position 20) remarks on the way in which the arrangement of the words “rolls down together” with the rock. In the Essay on Criticism (II.370-73), Pope combines both this effect and that ob served earlier (see note above on sublime proportionately):
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er the unbending com, and skims along the main.
His last line, an Alexandrine, is an imitation of his own parody just before (356-57):
A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
“Time-beats” refers both to the quan tities of the syllables and to the distance between words produced by consonan tal clusters. The famous words of Mil ton’s Christ in Paradise Lost (7.215-16) show this “steady beat of greatness”:
Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou Deep, peace,
Said then th’ Omnific Word, your discord end.
And, in a lower key, the closing lines of the poem:
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
Commas are not needed to make the reader pause after “They,” “hand in hand,” and “steps.”
