Chapter 22: Hyperbata
But hyperbata must also be put down as part of the same idea. These are an excited arrangement of style or conception out of natural sequence and are, as it were, the truest stamp of struggling emotions. You see, as those who in reality are angry or frightened or under pressure from an emulous type of character or from some other emotion—for the emotions are many, even innumerable, and no one can say how many there are—when on each occasion they have put forth some points, they lay the points aside and go jumping after others, throwing some of them in the middle irrationally; and then, circling back to the first points, and straining everywhere from the sense of emotional struggle, as though blown by an unstable wind in a contrary direction, they completely change the arrangement of their style and cast of thought from their natural sequence into tens of thousands of turns: so in the most excellent prose-writers mimesis approaches the workings of nature. Then is technique fulfilled, when it is the general opinion that it is nature at work; and, as already suggested, nature comes out luckily whenever she has in her a technique that escapes notice. As Dionysius of Phocaea says in Herodotus:
You see, matters for us are poised as on a razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we are to be free men or slaves—and runaway slaves at that. Now, then, if you are willing to undergo suffering, you’ll struggle for the present, but you’ll also be able to overthrow your enemies.
2. Here is what would be the natural arrangement:
0h men of Ionia, now is the right moment to take on struggles; matters, as you see, are poised on a razor’s edge for us.
He has moved from its natural place the phrase, “men of Ionia,” and at once, from fear, he directly threw in the “razor’s edge” clause, as though, in view of the danger hanging over them, he could not wait to address them first—though here he transposes the arrangements of his thoughts. You see, before saying that they ought to struggle (which is what he is calling on them to do), he tells them why they ought to struggle, saying,
matters for us are poised on a razor’s edge,
so that in the opinion of his hearers he will not be speaking of something speculative, but of something made necessary. 3. And still more, Thucydides is most powerful at taking things which are by nature unified and indivisible and by hyperbata driving them away from each other. Demosthenes, though not quite so willful as Thucydides, is the most insatiable of all speakers at this sort of thing, and at conveying from his hyperbata his sense of struggle and (by heaven) of speaking on the spot and, in addition, at drawing his hearers along with him into the danger of his hyperbata, [4.] for often he will leave what he has started to say hanging, and in between, in an abnormal and unlikely syntax, he will can in extraneous matter upon extraneous matter, throwing his audience into a fright lest the whole speech or writing fall to pieces and compelling the audience to share with the speaker the danger of the struggle; next, unexpectedly, after a long time, put in at just the right moment, at the end, having presented in payment of his debt what has long been sought, by the very hazardous use of asides thrown in among the hyperbata, he astounds his audience much more. But let me be sparing of more exam pies because there are so many of them.
