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 thrown up by the sea onto the wreckage received “an ungraceful end.” The verb” got tired,” you see, is by its colloquial nature unimpressive, and “ungraceful” 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.

3. 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 wonderful account of the whole preparation things like grain-sacks and condiments 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 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.