Chapter 43: Petty Diction
And pettiness of words is powerful at shaming greatness. Now, though the winter storm in Herodotus is in all its points described in daemonic fashion, (heaven knows) it has some things which do not measure up to the repute of the subject matter; this is perhaps true in the phrase “the sea sizzled”, where “sizzled” draws away much of the sublimity because of its cacophonousness; but “the wind,” he says “got tired” and those thrownup by the sea onto the wreckage received “an ungraceful end.” The verb” got tired,” you see, is by its colloquial nature unimpressive, and “ungrace ful” is not at home with so much emotion. 2. Similarly, Theopompus, having described the descent of the Persian on Egypt in a way beyond nature, split up the whole thing by some little words:
What city or what people in Asia did not send envoys to the King? What creation of earth or what perfection of art, fine and precious, was not conveyed to him as a gift? Were there not many extravagant carpets and cloaks— some purple, some intricate, some white—and many golden pavilions prepared with all manner of useful things, and many robes and extravagant divans? And further, both silver plates and vessels worked in gold, and cups and bowls, some of which you are to under stand were studded with gems, and others wrought with extravagant precision. And in addition countless tens of thousands of weapons, some Greek, some barbarian, and pack animals transcendent in their multitude, and sacrificial animals fattened for slaughter, and many ephas of condiments and many grain-sacks and burlap bags, and blank books of papyrus and all other useful things: and so much preserved flesh of sacrificial animals as to make heaps so large that those approaching them from afar took them to be mounds and hills thrust in front of them.
He runs away from what is more sublime to what is too low, when he ought instead to have made a development; but by mixing into his wonder ful account of the whole preparation things like grain-sacks and condi ments and burlap bags, he has made it into a kind of image of a butcher’s shop. You see, just as if someone brought between these ornate facades golden and gem-encrusted bowls and silver plate and solid gold pavilions and cups and set them down with grain-sacks and burlap bags it would be inappropriate to the sight, so, too, such words are a shame to the structure of the sentence, and, arranged at the wrong time, appear, as it were, like tattoo-marks. 4. It lay before him to describe as a whole the succession of items and those mounds of which he speaks as having been thrown together, by changing his account of the other preparations thus-to say something about “camels and a multitude of pack animals bearing as freight all the production expenses of a luxurious enjoyment at table;” or to word it “heaps of all kinds of grains, all those which make a difference in cookery and culinary pleasure;” or, if he wished to make the list entire in itself, to say “and as many seasonings as belong to chef and caterer.” 5. In matters of sublimity, one ought not to confront directly what is solid and overly contumelious, unless we are harried into it by a kind of intense necessity; but it would be fitting to make our voice worthy of the things discussed and to imitate nature, the artist of humanity, she who neither set our unspeakable parts before our faces nor the drainages of our distentions, but hid them away as well as she could and—according to Xenophon—hid their channels as far away as possible, in no way shaming the fineness of the the whole living being. 6. But, as you see, it is not urgent to enumerate every species of thing that produces pettiness; it is clear that the opposites of the things which we showed before make speeches and writings sublime and noble are what, for the most part, will make them low and disfiguring.
Commentary
As Russell observes, since in both prac tice and theory some words lend dignity and distinction, it follows that some words will produce the opposite effect. The word “proper” in Swift’s famous definition of style—”proper words in proper places”—implies the same cri terion, one which dominated antiquity, the Renaissance, the eighteenth cen tury, and the Victorian period. It really lies behind the present fashion for ob scenity in diction, for those who urge the use of such language argue that it is proper, i.e., aesthetically fitting for their subject matter. Granted their subject matter, they are of course right—though one may legitimately question whether the subject matter itself is as worthy of rational attention as the subjects, actions, and emotions which Longinus— and the consensus of cultures—have adjudged to represent the higher elements of man. Hume—to pick a critic not ordinarily grouped with the more rhapsodic upholders of “the dignity of man,” like Longinus or Pico—after a judicious assessment of the two schools of thought on man’s worth, concludes, “To love the glory of virtuous deeds is a sure proof of the love of virtue” (Essay XI, Of the Dignity and Meanness of Human Nature).
How ingrained was the decorum of diction in the Renaissance can be seen most amusingly in Polonius. When he reads Hamlet’s letter, written to Ophelia, to the King and Queen, he inter rupts his reading of the words “most beautified Ophelia” to remark (II.ii), “That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase, ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase.” And out of the player king’s turgid speech (11.ii) which Polonius properly thinks “too long”-he selects one good phrase, “mobled queen.” In both instances he is right.
Longinus, with his Platonic empha sis on the aspiring mind of man, would not find sublimity in obscenity or copro philia, although he sanctions “low” language under the pressure of “intense necessity.” He has preferences, but they are not so inflexible as those of the neo classic critics and authors. Instead, he seems to adopt the sensible standard of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (quoted in ch. 40, n. on Heracles says). Russell notes that, for the ancients, genre was important: words suited to tragedy were not suited for a forensic speech; words appropriate to a dialogue might not be permissible in history. We make an analogous distinction in our phrase “levels of diction” or “levels of dis course.” Earlier views—say in the nineteenth century—that only certain words were “poetic” no longer appeal to us, but only because we have enlarged the range of poetic subject matter, not be cause we differ with the notion of appropriateness. When T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound juxtaposes words from different “levels of diction” to produce a shock, the shock will be felt only if the reader recognizes and respects the exist ence of such “levels.”
For citations of ancient texts on this topic, see Russell’s introductory note to ch. 40. Aristotle puts his finger on the problem with his usual acumen (Poetics 1458al8 ff.): lucidity is the principal aim of good prose; the most lucid words are those of ordinary speech; but these words are low. Russell cites a most amusing passage from Velleius Pater culus (2.41), who “steeled himself for his task” of saying that Caesar, when captured by the pirates, never took off his shoes or undressed, with these words: “Why should details be omitted simply because they cannot be told in presenta ble language?”
in Herodotus: the passage from Hero dotus extends over several chapters in Books VII-VIII: Longinus cites specifi cally from 7.188, 7.191, and 8.13.
“sizzled”… cacophonousness: we have borrowed the felicitous translation “siz zle” from Grube. It is, however, over translated, for the Greek verb literally means “boil” and “seethe,” English words not cacophonous enough.
As Russell observes, ancient critics were highly conscious of sibilants; Dio nysius of Halicarnassus (On Composi tion 14) says that “s” is a graceless and unpleasing sound, and painful when occurring often, hissing sibilance being more suited to a wild beast than to a rational human being. Pindar (fr. 61, Bowra; 79, Schroeder) says that “s” began to be frequent with dithyrambic poetry. In English, Tennyson was espe cially careful not to allow one word to end with an “s” and the next word to begin with one. Milton is fond of con glomerating the letter when describing the devils, e.g., in Bk. I of Paradise Lost: “Ahaz his sottish conqueror” (472); “Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train” (478); and “Azazel as his right” (534, cited by William Smith in his eighteenth cen tury translation). In Bk. X, the sibilants assimilate with the serpentine meta morphosis into “A dismal universal hiss, the sound/Of public scorn” (508-09).
Longinus objects here to both the lowness of the term and its ugliness; we have used “cacophonousness” rather than the more normal English “caco phony” to enhance this sense. Literally, the word translated “cacophonousness” is “vicious-mouthed”; the prefix “caco-” is a transliteration of the Greek.
“got tired”: we have borrowed Einer son’s translation, resisting a desire to use “pooped out.” Dorsch’s “fagged” is good but more British than American. A splendid example of such failure in diction appears in Narcissus, by an anonymous playwright of the early seventeenth century:
0 do not stay a moment nor a minute,
‘Love is a puddle, and I am o’er shoes in it.’
The lines are quoted by W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), p. 377.
Russell remarks that for Longinus to object to Herodotus’ litotes—”an un graceful end”—is “a little odd… One might have expected more appreciation of this kind of heroic if macabre under statement, natural to many courageous races and generations.” It is not, how ever, the litotes to which Longinus objects, but the word “grace”: for Lon ginus, the word “grace” suggests the delicacy of expression characteristic of Lysias and Hyperides (34.2; see also 1.4).
emotion: the word here is perilously close-or so we might expect-to “emotional experience,” but Longinus is not thinking so much of the human suffering as of the emotional quality which Herodotus sought to convey.
Theopompus: see ch. 31 for this histo rian. The passage quoted here seems to confirm the judgment of Isocrates, that of his two “star” pupils, Ephorus needed to be spurred on, Theopompus needed to be curbed.
Dio Chrysostom (Discourse I8.10), writing in the same century—as is probable—as Longinus, says of Theo pompus that Thucydides is among the highest of historians, Theopompus in the second class. Dio gives his reasons for the lower classification of Theo pompus as (a) his rhetorical quality even in narration and (b) the laziness of his diction. These are the qualities noted with examples here by Longi us, although for Longinus the faulty dic tion is a vice, the rhetorical quality of the narrative a virtue. Even Dio con cedes the power of Theopompus.
the Persian...whole: Longinus uses the poetic singular for “Persians,” and—just to emphasize the rhetorical joke—puts the word “whole” into a poetic plural, a Greek idiom not translatable in English idiom.
ornate facades: the word—not a com mon one in Greek—signifies a showy facade (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 6.72). Longin us seems Lo be referring partly to the Potemkin Village of the Persian armament and ornament, partly to the two parts of Theopompus’ description, which starts and finishes with the appro priate “show” but ruins Lhe effect of the stage-setting by depositing grain-sacks and burlap bags in the middle.
tattoo marks: the Greek word (stigma) has this initial and continuous mean ing, although it can be used in a more general sense, i.e., “blemish” or “spot.” But the root strongly indicates a punc ture of some kind, as in the stigmata of Jesus. We have chosen this strong trans lation partly because the lexicons justify it, partly because it suggests better than any other the horror which Longinus feels: given his admiration of the human body, tattoo-marks would be a gross disfiguring.
Herodotus (5.35) tells the story of a slave whose head was shaven and tat Looed with a message; and in 7.35 he relates that Xerxes not only lashed the Hellespont but even brought in “tat tooers” to “brand” the recalcitrant waters. The word signifies a permanent disfiguration produced by a heated in trument.
production expenses: the word is strong ly associated, by etymology and usage, with expenses for putting on a tragedy, i.e., “production expenses for a chorus”; combined with “ornate facades,” it cer tainly seems to suggest a theatrical effect.
heaps: Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition 21, ad. fin.) says that this is a very “vague and general term.” When dealing with “low” items, Lon ginus is saying, it is better to heap them all together in some general way.
one ought not to confront directly: Longin us does not seem to object to the monstrous hyperbole in Theopompus’ pictured hills of meat moving across the countryside on their way “down country.” Persian armaments were notoriously huge: see Aeschylus’ Per sians and the hyperbole, praised in ch. 38, where the Greeks are literally buried under the enormous quantity of Persian missiles.
intense necessity: Longinus’ criterion for sanctioning vulgar language. So Philip is admired for his ability to “stomach patiently” things “dirty and shameful,” i.e., it was intensely neces sary to do so.
imitate nature: the most famous ex pressions of the doctrine to be found in English are in Shakespeare-Hamlet’s advice to the players, in which he says, “hold the mirror up to nature”-and Pope: “first follow nature “For a contemporary discussion of the matter, see M. L. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). For the ancient doctrine of mimesis, see ch. 13, n. on mimesis and emulation.
drainages of our distentions: the peri phrasis is genteel and illustrates Longi nus’ point, as does “hid their channels”; but it is also preparation for a rhetorical joke (see below, n. on disfiguring). Compare the Spenserian passage on the same subject, quoted in ch. 32, n. on in Xenophon, where Xenophon’s allegor ical periphrasis is also cited.
Xenophon. . .as far as possible: from the Memorabilia 1.4.8. Russell observes, “In Greek thought the creator is not omnipotent; he does the best he can with the [material],” a Platonic notion.
disfiguring: the word is a pun on the root “figure,” the rhetorical term which consumes the bulk of the extant text of Longinus and in which periphrasis is included. The joke which Longinus set up in his periphrasis for excrement (“drainages of our distentions,” above) and which he continued in his phrase “intimated demonstratively” now comes to a head. By not using a figure, i.e., a periphrasis, for what is dirty and disgusting, an author makes himself “disfigured.”
