Longinus is the name associated with the Latin treatise commonly known as >"On the Sublime, " one of the most influential and perceptive works of >literary criticism ever written. These by their nature sweep everything, a. The first procedure attracts the reader by the selection of ideas, the second by the density of those selected. Why, the very tones of the, a. And grip my waist to cast me down to Hell,d. I’ll weave one torrent coronal of flame [Return], events in the style of long ago”a—“Why, Isocrates,” one may say, “do you intend by this means to reverse the positions of the Spartans and the Athenians?” For his praise of the power of words has all but issued a prefatory warning to the audience that he himself is not to be believed. 11 Bernabé. Yet again, the converse of this, the contraction of plurals to singulars, sometimes gives a great effect of sublimity. feast for the suitors? His story of Leto,a for instance, is in a more poetical vein, while his Funeral Orationb is as good a piece of epideictic composition as anyone could produce. Longinus is the name conventionally given to the author of an influential work of literary criticism, On the Sublime, the author's real name being unknown. d. Odyssey 10.251-2. Death for him there will I plan.a, There the poet has assigned the narrative to himself as his proper share, and then suddenly without any warning attached the abrupt threat to the angry champion. And this, my friend, is the way: first of all to obtain a clear knowledge and appreciation of what is really sublime. Moreover, the poet’s oath does not immortalize the men so as to beget in the audience a true opinion of their worth, but instead he wanders from those who risked their lives to an inanimate object, namely the fight. Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, line 675. For if I see one hearthholder alone. 557 ( = fr. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. For one can find emotions that are mean and devoid of sublimity, for instance feelings of pity, grief, and fear. This is what Thucydides does in speaking of those who were killed in Sicily. Zealous imitation of the great prose writers and poets of the past. [Plutarch] Consolation to Apollonius 10, Epictetus 4.10.27, Seneca Agamemnon 592 (with R.J. Tarrant’s note). [Return] b. . A Homeric phrase (Odyssey 8.500). [Return] e. Proverbial and perhaps a verse quotation. Indeed the actual phrase [ . substance! However (this service reverts to something with which we began our treatise), since impeccable correctness is, generally speaking, due to art, and the height of excellence, even if erratic, to genius, it is proper that art should always assist literature. Perhaps it is inevitable that humble, mediocre natures, because they never run any risks and never aid at the heights, should remain to a large extent safe from error, while in great natures their very greatness spells danger. For the considerable influence of the passage in the eighteenth, see esp. Fixing their eyes on the stars, their lives they And what of Eratosthenes in his Erigone?c Wholly blameless as the little poem is, do you therefore think him a greater poet than Archilochus with all his disorganized flood and those outbursts of divine inspiration, which are, a.   counsel; The point is that combinations of consonants delay the smooth running of the words: note especially perix helixas and petran drun in the passage just quoted. is the most lavish of all in this kind of use and not only employs hyperbata to give a great effect of vehemence, and indeed of improvisation, but also drags his audience along with him to share the perils of these long hyperbata.   voice of their master. The Greek text edited after the Paris Manuskript. He quotes from Longinus: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Brighten the heaven with sunshine, grant us the I accept this, but at the same time, as I said in speaking of figures, the proper antidote for a multitude of daring metaphors is strong and timely emotion and genuine sublimity. By appearing to address not the whole audience but a single individual—, Of Tydeus’ son you could not have known with [Return] d. Iliad 5.85. ), Greek Lyric I (Loeb Classical Library). For art is only perfect when it looks like nature and Nature succeeds only when she conceals latent art. How would that passage have affected them?” Great indeed is the ordeal, if we suppose such a jury and audience as this to listen to our own utterances and make believe that we are submitting our work to the scrutiny of such heroes as witnesses and judges. There has been considerable dispute as to the author of On the Sublime. 44. The storm in Herodotus, for instance, is, as far as the ideas go, wonderfully described, but it includes certain things which are beneath the dignity of the subject. Presumably in the (lost) work in two books referred to at 39.1. Publ… Little by little the ruin of their lives is completed in the cycle of such vices, their greatness of soul wastes away and dies and is no longer something to strive for, since they value that part of them which is mortal and foolish, and neglect the development of their immortal part. It loses its freedom of motion and the sense of being, as it were, catapulted out. How grand, for instance, is the silence of Ajax in the Summoning of the Ghosts,a more sublime than any speech! Sublimity and emotional intensity are a wonderfully helpful antidote against the suspicion that accompanies the use of figures. To insert “Hector said so and so” would have been frigid. [Return] b. I.e. Might soon splinter asunder the earth, and his struggle for the freedom of Greece, and you have proof of this at home, for neither were the men at Marathon misguided nor those at Salamis nor those at Plataea.”a But when in a sudden moment of inspiration, as if possessed by the divine, he utters his great oath by the champions of Greece, “It cannot be that you were wrong; no, by those who risked their lives at Marathon,” then you feel that by employing the single figure of adjuration—which I here call apostrophe—he has deified the ancestors by suggesting that one should swear by men who met such a death, as if they were gods; he has filled his judges with the spirit of those who risked their lives there; he has transformed a demonstrative argument into a passage of transcendent sublimity and emotion, giving it the power of conviction that lies in so strange and startling an oath; and at the same time his words have administered to his hearers a healing medicine, with the result that, relieved by his eulogy, they come to feel as proud of the war with Philip as of their victories at Marathon and Salamis. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. amplification or redundance or exaggeration or emotion, either one or more of these. The story (told in most of the historians of Alexander: see e.g. This must suffice for our treatment of sublimity in ideas, as produced by nobility of mind or imitation or visualization.c, 16. Again, if you introduce events in past time as happening at the present moment, the passage will be transformed from a narrative into a vivid actuality. Just as people who are really angry or frightened or indignant, or are carried away by jealousy or some other feeling—there are countless emotions, no one can say how many—often put forward one point and then spring off to another with various illogical interpolations, and then wheel round again to their original position, while, under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind, they lay their words and, a. Isocrates was the principal proponent and model of the periodic style which articulates every clause carefully and avoids hiatus. He is promptly indignant that he is being treated like a silly child and outwitted by the figures of a skilled speaker. When the ms. resumes Longinus is evidently discussing the description of Strife in Iliad, iv. [Return]. For Hegesias’ style, see E. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa 134ff. “pure,” in language, possessing one of the basic stylistic virtues. For the effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to transport them out of themselves. For extreme conciseness cripples the sense: true brevity goes straight to the point. Information and translations of Longinus in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on … Would you not say that the writer’s soul is aboard the car, and takes wing to share the horses ’ peril? Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, 267. [Return]. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. One problem now remains for solution, my dear Terentianus, and knowing your love of learning I will not hesitate to append it—a problem which a certain philosopher recently put to me.   the whales at his coming This above all: that Nature has judged manc a creature of no mean or ignoble quality, but, as if she were inviting us to some great gathering, she has called us into life, into the whole universe, there to be spectators of her games and eager competi-, a. all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critick with a Poet's Fire. [Return] c. Herodotus 1.105.4. Take the speech of Dionysius the Phocaean, in Herodotus.a “Our fortunes stand upon a razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we be free men or slaves, aye, and runaway slaves. . But in these days we seem to be schooled from childhood in an equitable slavery, swaddled, I might say, from the tender infancy of our minds in the same servile ways and practices. 15. He set him to drive o’er the swell of the sea, and [Return] b.   with abhorrence.a. . We must remember also that mere grandeur runs the greatest risk if left to itself without the stay and ballast of scientific method and abandoned to the impetus of uninstructed temerity. For when men who differ in their pursuits, their lives, their tastes, their ages, their languages,a all agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writings, then the unanimous verdict, as it were, of such discordant judges makes our faith in the admired passage strong and indisputable. Figures seem to be natural allies of the sublime and to draw in turn marvellous reinforcement from the alliance. have called them “heaps of every kind of grain and of all known aids to cookery and good living”; or, if he must at all hazards be explicit, “all the dainties known to caterers and cooks.” One ought not in elevated passages to descend to what is sordid and contemptible, except under the severe pressure of necessity, but the proper course is to suit the words to the dignity of the subject and thus imitate Nature, the artist that created man. comes good judgement, which is indeed quite as important, since the lack of it often completely cancels the advantage of the former. [Return]. 34. This assumes Reiske’s supplement. B It is probably superfluous to explain at length to someone who knows, how the choice of the right word and the fine word has a marvellously moving and seductive effect upon an audience and how all orators and prose writers make this their supreme object. . [Return] c. [Demosthenes] Or. Yes, and the peaks and the city of Troy and the . For this of itself gives to the style at once grandeur, beauty, old-world charm, weight, force, strength, and a sort of lustre, like the bloom on the surface of the most beautiful bronzes, and endows the facts as it were with a living voice. Will burn your wheel and melt it.”, “But toward the seven Pleiads hold your course.” So supreme is the grandeur of this, one might well say that if the horses of heaven take two consecutive strides there will then be no place found for them in the world. 3.7.1408b2, Cicero, De oratore 3.165, Theophrastus fr. Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no gift of characterization or of fluency, is far from facile, and no epideictic orator. A figure of this kind is a sort of outbreak of emotion: a. Iliad 15.697 – 8. Of those factors of sublimity which we specified at the beginningb the fifth one still remains, good friend—this was the arrangement of the words themselves in a certain order. [Return], again is the towel for the entrails, “with whose offscourings it is filled and becomes swollen and fetid.” “After this,” he goes on, “they shrouded the whole in a covering of flesh, like felt, to shield it from the outer world.” Blood he calls the fodder of the flesh, and adds, “For purposes of nutriment they irrigated the body, cutting channels as one does in a garden, and thus, the body being a conduit full of passages, the streams in the veins were able to flow as it were from a running stream.” And when the end comes, the soul, he says, is loosed like a ship from its moorings and set free. They all serve to lend emotion and excitement to the style.  vast and Olympus; 7 Bolton, fr. However, all these lapses from dignity in literature spring from the same cause, namely that passion for novelty of thought which is the particular craze of the present day. If And the occasion for their use is when emotion sweeps on like a flood and carries the multitude of metaphors along as an inevitable consequence. [Return], speeches. A conflation of Iliad 21.388 and 20.61-5. He uses a cosmic interval to measure their stride. That gave us birth and having given birth [Return]. We have indeed abundantly showna that many writers both in prose and poetry, who are not by nature sublime, perhaps even the very opposite, while using for the most part current vulgar words, which suggests nothing out of the common, yet by the mere arrangement and fitting together of these properly have achieved dignity and distinction and a reputation for grandeur; Philistus,b for instance, among many others, Aristophanes occasionally, Euripides almost always.   ranges In Demosthenes the oath is carefully designed to suit the feelings of defeated men, so that the Athenians should no longer regard Chaeronea as a disaster; and it is, as I said, at the same time a proof that no mistake has been made, an example, a sworn confirmation, an encomium, and an exhortation. De corona 208. . See J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina 64ff. Darkness and helpless night suddenly descend upon his Greek army. “And will none of you,” he says, “be found to feel anger and indignation at the violence of this shameless rascal, who—oh you most accursed of villains, who are cut off from free speech not by gates and doors which one might very well open . I will quote only one or two examples from Timaeus,c as Caecilius has forestalled me with most of them. here in our halls. [Return]. But not yet have I blown the noble strain.a, All this has lost the tone of tragedy: it is pseudo-tragic— the “coronals” and “spewing to heaven” and making Boreas a piper and all the rest of it. According to him, the inability to speak freely, and the sense of being as it were in prison, immediately assert themselves, the product of the repeated beating of habit. Thus, for instance, in the speech against Midias the asyndeta are interwoven with the figures of repetition and vivid presentation.a “For the aggressor may do many injuries, some of which the victim could not even describe to anyone else—by his manner, his look, his voice.” Then to prevent the speech coming to a halt by running over the same ground—for immobility expresses inertia, while emotion, being a violent movement of the soul, demands disorder—he leaps at once into further asyndeta and anaphoras. 14. [Return] b. He does not plead for his life: such a prayer would demean the hero: but since the disabling darkness robbed his courage of all noble use, therefore, distressed to be idle in battle, he prays for light on the instant, hoping thus at the worst to find a burial worthy of his courage, even though Zeus be ranged against him. What and what manner of road is this? As it is, the inspiration and quick play of the question and answer, and his way of confronting his own words as if they were someone else’s, make the passage, through his use of the figure, not only loftier but also more convincing. Indeed, I cannot discover on consideration how, if we value boundless wealth, or to speak more truly, make a god of it, we can possibly keep our minds safe from the intrusion of the evils that accompany it. 33. So it is by some natural instinct that we admire, not the small streams, clear and useful as they are, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and above all the Ocean. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on Zoilus of Amphipolis—nicknamed Homeromastix, Scourge of Homer—was a fourth-century sophist and moralist who criticized improbable and inappropriate features in the epic. H [Return], 7. Construing the fallacy as a personal affront, he sometimes turns downright savage; and even if he controls his feelings, he becomes conditioned against being persuaded by the speech. [Return], of “one who subdued the whole of Asia in fewer years than Isocrates took to write his Panegyric urging war on Persia.”a Surely this is an odd comparison of the Macedonian to the sophist, for it is obvious, friend Timaeus, that on this showing Isocrates was a far better man than the Spartans, since they spent thirty years in subduing Messene,b while he composed his Panegyric in no more than ten! [Return] d. Cicero (Ad Atticum 2.16.2) quotes a different version of this passage ( = fr. So far leap at a bound the high-neighing horses of Similarly Theopompus,c after fitting out the Persian king’s descent into Egypt in the most marvellous manner, discredited the whole description by the use of some paltry words. “It surprises me,” he said, “as it doubtless surprises many others too, how it is that in this age of ours we find natures that are supremely persuasive and suited for public life, shrewd and versatile and especially rich in literary charm, yet really sublime and tran-, scendent natures are no longer, or only very rarely, now produced. [Return], ers fall into this fault through trying to be uncommon and exquisite, and above all to please, and founder instead upon the rock of cheap affectation. And when they have spent some time in our, a. Cf. 8. To give a rough definition, amplification consists in accumulating all the aspects and topics inherent in the subject and thus strengthening the argument by dwelling upon it. ; he is adversely criticized by Polybius for inaccuracy and bad taste. Elatea fell to Philip late in 339. He talks plainly, where necessary, does not speak always in the same tone, as Demosthenes is said to do, and has the power of characterization, seasoned moreover by simplicity and charm. he only imagines that, because he is mad. the comparison between Iliad and Odyssey, above 9.11-15. Sic.   sight of our eyes. TRANSLATION BY W. H. FYFE REVISED BY DONALD RUSSELL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS [Return], Spartans as from marble statues, and could as easily catch the eye of a bronze figure; indeed you might well think them as modest as the maidens in their eyes.”a It would have better suited Amphicrates than Xenophon to speak of the pupils in our eyes as modest maidens. Behind, his sire, astride the Dog-star’s back, For their practical effect instantly loses its vigour and substance if it is not reinforced by the strength of the sublime. Meaning Of Paul, Prawn Korma With Yogurt, Introduction To Aws Cloud Computing Pdf, Campbell And Company Yakima, Rowan Felted Tweed Watery, Emphasis Transition Words, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Is My Bougainvillea Dead Uk, Black Shower Caddy, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Matcha Basque Burnt Cheesecake Singapore, Friendly's Lemon Pepper Fish Nutrition, Architectural Lines And Symbols, " /> Longinus is the name associated with the Latin treatise commonly known as >"On the Sublime, " one of the most influential and perceptive works of >literary criticism ever written. These by their nature sweep everything, a. The first procedure attracts the reader by the selection of ideas, the second by the density of those selected. Why, the very tones of the, a. And grip my waist to cast me down to Hell,d. I’ll weave one torrent coronal of flame [Return], events in the style of long ago”a—“Why, Isocrates,” one may say, “do you intend by this means to reverse the positions of the Spartans and the Athenians?” For his praise of the power of words has all but issued a prefatory warning to the audience that he himself is not to be believed. 11 Bernabé. Yet again, the converse of this, the contraction of plurals to singulars, sometimes gives a great effect of sublimity. feast for the suitors? His story of Leto,a for instance, is in a more poetical vein, while his Funeral Orationb is as good a piece of epideictic composition as anyone could produce. Longinus is the name conventionally given to the author of an influential work of literary criticism, On the Sublime, the author's real name being unknown. d. Odyssey 10.251-2. Death for him there will I plan.a, There the poet has assigned the narrative to himself as his proper share, and then suddenly without any warning attached the abrupt threat to the angry champion. And this, my friend, is the way: first of all to obtain a clear knowledge and appreciation of what is really sublime. Moreover, the poet’s oath does not immortalize the men so as to beget in the audience a true opinion of their worth, but instead he wanders from those who risked their lives to an inanimate object, namely the fight. Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, line 675. For if I see one hearthholder alone. 557 ( = fr. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. For one can find emotions that are mean and devoid of sublimity, for instance feelings of pity, grief, and fear. This is what Thucydides does in speaking of those who were killed in Sicily. Zealous imitation of the great prose writers and poets of the past. [Plutarch] Consolation to Apollonius 10, Epictetus 4.10.27, Seneca Agamemnon 592 (with R.J. Tarrant’s note). [Return] b. . A Homeric phrase (Odyssey 8.500). [Return] e. Proverbial and perhaps a verse quotation. Indeed the actual phrase [ . substance! However (this service reverts to something with which we began our treatise), since impeccable correctness is, generally speaking, due to art, and the height of excellence, even if erratic, to genius, it is proper that art should always assist literature. Perhaps it is inevitable that humble, mediocre natures, because they never run any risks and never aid at the heights, should remain to a large extent safe from error, while in great natures their very greatness spells danger. For the considerable influence of the passage in the eighteenth, see esp. Fixing their eyes on the stars, their lives they And what of Eratosthenes in his Erigone?c Wholly blameless as the little poem is, do you therefore think him a greater poet than Archilochus with all his disorganized flood and those outbursts of divine inspiration, which are, a.   counsel; The point is that combinations of consonants delay the smooth running of the words: note especially perix helixas and petran drun in the passage just quoted. is the most lavish of all in this kind of use and not only employs hyperbata to give a great effect of vehemence, and indeed of improvisation, but also drags his audience along with him to share the perils of these long hyperbata.   voice of their master. The Greek text edited after the Paris Manuskript. He quotes from Longinus: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Brighten the heaven with sunshine, grant us the I accept this, but at the same time, as I said in speaking of figures, the proper antidote for a multitude of daring metaphors is strong and timely emotion and genuine sublimity. By appearing to address not the whole audience but a single individual—, Of Tydeus’ son you could not have known with [Return] d. Iliad 5.85. ), Greek Lyric I (Loeb Classical Library). For art is only perfect when it looks like nature and Nature succeeds only when she conceals latent art. How would that passage have affected them?” Great indeed is the ordeal, if we suppose such a jury and audience as this to listen to our own utterances and make believe that we are submitting our work to the scrutiny of such heroes as witnesses and judges. There has been considerable dispute as to the author of On the Sublime. 44. The storm in Herodotus, for instance, is, as far as the ideas go, wonderfully described, but it includes certain things which are beneath the dignity of the subject. Presumably in the (lost) work in two books referred to at 39.1. Publ… Little by little the ruin of their lives is completed in the cycle of such vices, their greatness of soul wastes away and dies and is no longer something to strive for, since they value that part of them which is mortal and foolish, and neglect the development of their immortal part. It loses its freedom of motion and the sense of being, as it were, catapulted out. How grand, for instance, is the silence of Ajax in the Summoning of the Ghosts,a more sublime than any speech! Sublimity and emotional intensity are a wonderfully helpful antidote against the suspicion that accompanies the use of figures. To insert “Hector said so and so” would have been frigid. [Return] b. I.e. Might soon splinter asunder the earth, and his struggle for the freedom of Greece, and you have proof of this at home, for neither were the men at Marathon misguided nor those at Salamis nor those at Plataea.”a But when in a sudden moment of inspiration, as if possessed by the divine, he utters his great oath by the champions of Greece, “It cannot be that you were wrong; no, by those who risked their lives at Marathon,” then you feel that by employing the single figure of adjuration—which I here call apostrophe—he has deified the ancestors by suggesting that one should swear by men who met such a death, as if they were gods; he has filled his judges with the spirit of those who risked their lives there; he has transformed a demonstrative argument into a passage of transcendent sublimity and emotion, giving it the power of conviction that lies in so strange and startling an oath; and at the same time his words have administered to his hearers a healing medicine, with the result that, relieved by his eulogy, they come to feel as proud of the war with Philip as of their victories at Marathon and Salamis. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. amplification or redundance or exaggeration or emotion, either one or more of these. The story (told in most of the historians of Alexander: see e.g. This must suffice for our treatment of sublimity in ideas, as produced by nobility of mind or imitation or visualization.c, 16. Again, if you introduce events in past time as happening at the present moment, the passage will be transformed from a narrative into a vivid actuality. Just as people who are really angry or frightened or indignant, or are carried away by jealousy or some other feeling—there are countless emotions, no one can say how many—often put forward one point and then spring off to another with various illogical interpolations, and then wheel round again to their original position, while, under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind, they lay their words and, a. Isocrates was the principal proponent and model of the periodic style which articulates every clause carefully and avoids hiatus. He is promptly indignant that he is being treated like a silly child and outwitted by the figures of a skilled speaker. When the ms. resumes Longinus is evidently discussing the description of Strife in Iliad, iv. [Return]. For Hegesias’ style, see E. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa 134ff. “pure,” in language, possessing one of the basic stylistic virtues. For the effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to transport them out of themselves. For extreme conciseness cripples the sense: true brevity goes straight to the point. Information and translations of Longinus in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on … Would you not say that the writer’s soul is aboard the car, and takes wing to share the horses ’ peril? Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, 267. [Return]. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. One problem now remains for solution, my dear Terentianus, and knowing your love of learning I will not hesitate to append it—a problem which a certain philosopher recently put to me.   the whales at his coming This above all: that Nature has judged manc a creature of no mean or ignoble quality, but, as if she were inviting us to some great gathering, she has called us into life, into the whole universe, there to be spectators of her games and eager competi-, a. all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critick with a Poet's Fire. [Return] c. Herodotus 1.105.4. Take the speech of Dionysius the Phocaean, in Herodotus.a “Our fortunes stand upon a razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we be free men or slaves, aye, and runaway slaves. . But in these days we seem to be schooled from childhood in an equitable slavery, swaddled, I might say, from the tender infancy of our minds in the same servile ways and practices. 15. He set him to drive o’er the swell of the sea, and [Return] b.   with abhorrence.a. . We must remember also that mere grandeur runs the greatest risk if left to itself without the stay and ballast of scientific method and abandoned to the impetus of uninstructed temerity. For when men who differ in their pursuits, their lives, their tastes, their ages, their languages,a all agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writings, then the unanimous verdict, as it were, of such discordant judges makes our faith in the admired passage strong and indisputable. Figures seem to be natural allies of the sublime and to draw in turn marvellous reinforcement from the alliance. have called them “heaps of every kind of grain and of all known aids to cookery and good living”; or, if he must at all hazards be explicit, “all the dainties known to caterers and cooks.” One ought not in elevated passages to descend to what is sordid and contemptible, except under the severe pressure of necessity, but the proper course is to suit the words to the dignity of the subject and thus imitate Nature, the artist that created man. comes good judgement, which is indeed quite as important, since the lack of it often completely cancels the advantage of the former. [Return]. 34. This assumes Reiske’s supplement. B It is probably superfluous to explain at length to someone who knows, how the choice of the right word and the fine word has a marvellously moving and seductive effect upon an audience and how all orators and prose writers make this their supreme object. . [Return] c. [Demosthenes] Or. Yes, and the peaks and the city of Troy and the . For this of itself gives to the style at once grandeur, beauty, old-world charm, weight, force, strength, and a sort of lustre, like the bloom on the surface of the most beautiful bronzes, and endows the facts as it were with a living voice. Will burn your wheel and melt it.”, “But toward the seven Pleiads hold your course.” So supreme is the grandeur of this, one might well say that if the horses of heaven take two consecutive strides there will then be no place found for them in the world. 3.7.1408b2, Cicero, De oratore 3.165, Theophrastus fr. Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no gift of characterization or of fluency, is far from facile, and no epideictic orator. A figure of this kind is a sort of outbreak of emotion: a. Iliad 15.697 – 8. Of those factors of sublimity which we specified at the beginningb the fifth one still remains, good friend—this was the arrangement of the words themselves in a certain order. [Return], again is the towel for the entrails, “with whose offscourings it is filled and becomes swollen and fetid.” “After this,” he goes on, “they shrouded the whole in a covering of flesh, like felt, to shield it from the outer world.” Blood he calls the fodder of the flesh, and adds, “For purposes of nutriment they irrigated the body, cutting channels as one does in a garden, and thus, the body being a conduit full of passages, the streams in the veins were able to flow as it were from a running stream.” And when the end comes, the soul, he says, is loosed like a ship from its moorings and set free. They all serve to lend emotion and excitement to the style.  vast and Olympus; 7 Bolton, fr. However, all these lapses from dignity in literature spring from the same cause, namely that passion for novelty of thought which is the particular craze of the present day. If And the occasion for their use is when emotion sweeps on like a flood and carries the multitude of metaphors along as an inevitable consequence. [Return], speeches. A conflation of Iliad 21.388 and 20.61-5. He uses a cosmic interval to measure their stride. That gave us birth and having given birth [Return]. We have indeed abundantly showna that many writers both in prose and poetry, who are not by nature sublime, perhaps even the very opposite, while using for the most part current vulgar words, which suggests nothing out of the common, yet by the mere arrangement and fitting together of these properly have achieved dignity and distinction and a reputation for grandeur; Philistus,b for instance, among many others, Aristophanes occasionally, Euripides almost always.   ranges In Demosthenes the oath is carefully designed to suit the feelings of defeated men, so that the Athenians should no longer regard Chaeronea as a disaster; and it is, as I said, at the same time a proof that no mistake has been made, an example, a sworn confirmation, an encomium, and an exhortation. De corona 208. . See J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina 64ff. Darkness and helpless night suddenly descend upon his Greek army. “And will none of you,” he says, “be found to feel anger and indignation at the violence of this shameless rascal, who—oh you most accursed of villains, who are cut off from free speech not by gates and doors which one might very well open . I will quote only one or two examples from Timaeus,c as Caecilius has forestalled me with most of them. here in our halls. [Return]. But not yet have I blown the noble strain.a, All this has lost the tone of tragedy: it is pseudo-tragic— the “coronals” and “spewing to heaven” and making Boreas a piper and all the rest of it. According to him, the inability to speak freely, and the sense of being as it were in prison, immediately assert themselves, the product of the repeated beating of habit. Thus, for instance, in the speech against Midias the asyndeta are interwoven with the figures of repetition and vivid presentation.a “For the aggressor may do many injuries, some of which the victim could not even describe to anyone else—by his manner, his look, his voice.” Then to prevent the speech coming to a halt by running over the same ground—for immobility expresses inertia, while emotion, being a violent movement of the soul, demands disorder—he leaps at once into further asyndeta and anaphoras. 14. [Return] b. He does not plead for his life: such a prayer would demean the hero: but since the disabling darkness robbed his courage of all noble use, therefore, distressed to be idle in battle, he prays for light on the instant, hoping thus at the worst to find a burial worthy of his courage, even though Zeus be ranged against him. What and what manner of road is this? As it is, the inspiration and quick play of the question and answer, and his way of confronting his own words as if they were someone else’s, make the passage, through his use of the figure, not only loftier but also more convincing. Indeed, I cannot discover on consideration how, if we value boundless wealth, or to speak more truly, make a god of it, we can possibly keep our minds safe from the intrusion of the evils that accompany it. 33. So it is by some natural instinct that we admire, not the small streams, clear and useful as they are, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and above all the Ocean. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on Zoilus of Amphipolis—nicknamed Homeromastix, Scourge of Homer—was a fourth-century sophist and moralist who criticized improbable and inappropriate features in the epic. H [Return], 7. Construing the fallacy as a personal affront, he sometimes turns downright savage; and even if he controls his feelings, he becomes conditioned against being persuaded by the speech. [Return], of “one who subdued the whole of Asia in fewer years than Isocrates took to write his Panegyric urging war on Persia.”a Surely this is an odd comparison of the Macedonian to the sophist, for it is obvious, friend Timaeus, that on this showing Isocrates was a far better man than the Spartans, since they spent thirty years in subduing Messene,b while he composed his Panegyric in no more than ten! [Return] d. Cicero (Ad Atticum 2.16.2) quotes a different version of this passage ( = fr. So far leap at a bound the high-neighing horses of Similarly Theopompus,c after fitting out the Persian king’s descent into Egypt in the most marvellous manner, discredited the whole description by the use of some paltry words. “It surprises me,” he said, “as it doubtless surprises many others too, how it is that in this age of ours we find natures that are supremely persuasive and suited for public life, shrewd and versatile and especially rich in literary charm, yet really sublime and tran-, scendent natures are no longer, or only very rarely, now produced. [Return], ers fall into this fault through trying to be uncommon and exquisite, and above all to please, and founder instead upon the rock of cheap affectation. And when they have spent some time in our, a. Cf. 8. To give a rough definition, amplification consists in accumulating all the aspects and topics inherent in the subject and thus strengthening the argument by dwelling upon it. ; he is adversely criticized by Polybius for inaccuracy and bad taste. Elatea fell to Philip late in 339. He talks plainly, where necessary, does not speak always in the same tone, as Demosthenes is said to do, and has the power of characterization, seasoned moreover by simplicity and charm. he only imagines that, because he is mad. the comparison between Iliad and Odyssey, above 9.11-15. Sic.   sight of our eyes. TRANSLATION BY W. H. FYFE REVISED BY DONALD RUSSELL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS [Return], Spartans as from marble statues, and could as easily catch the eye of a bronze figure; indeed you might well think them as modest as the maidens in their eyes.”a It would have better suited Amphicrates than Xenophon to speak of the pupils in our eyes as modest maidens. Behind, his sire, astride the Dog-star’s back, For their practical effect instantly loses its vigour and substance if it is not reinforced by the strength of the sublime. Meaning Of Paul, Prawn Korma With Yogurt, Introduction To Aws Cloud Computing Pdf, Campbell And Company Yakima, Rowan Felted Tweed Watery, Emphasis Transition Words, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Is My Bougainvillea Dead Uk, Black Shower Caddy, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Matcha Basque Burnt Cheesecake Singapore, Friendly's Lemon Pepper Fish Nutrition, Architectural Lines And Symbols, " />Longinus is the name associated with the Latin treatise commonly known as >"On the Sublime, " one of the most influential and perceptive works of >literary criticism ever written. These by their nature sweep everything, a. The first procedure attracts the reader by the selection of ideas, the second by the density of those selected. Why, the very tones of the, a. And grip my waist to cast me down to Hell,d. I’ll weave one torrent coronal of flame [Return], events in the style of long ago”a—“Why, Isocrates,” one may say, “do you intend by this means to reverse the positions of the Spartans and the Athenians?” For his praise of the power of words has all but issued a prefatory warning to the audience that he himself is not to be believed. 11 Bernabé. Yet again, the converse of this, the contraction of plurals to singulars, sometimes gives a great effect of sublimity. feast for the suitors? His story of Leto,a for instance, is in a more poetical vein, while his Funeral Orationb is as good a piece of epideictic composition as anyone could produce. Longinus is the name conventionally given to the author of an influential work of literary criticism, On the Sublime, the author's real name being unknown. d. Odyssey 10.251-2. Death for him there will I plan.a, There the poet has assigned the narrative to himself as his proper share, and then suddenly without any warning attached the abrupt threat to the angry champion. And this, my friend, is the way: first of all to obtain a clear knowledge and appreciation of what is really sublime. Moreover, the poet’s oath does not immortalize the men so as to beget in the audience a true opinion of their worth, but instead he wanders from those who risked their lives to an inanimate object, namely the fight. Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, line 675. For if I see one hearthholder alone. 557 ( = fr. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. For one can find emotions that are mean and devoid of sublimity, for instance feelings of pity, grief, and fear. This is what Thucydides does in speaking of those who were killed in Sicily. Zealous imitation of the great prose writers and poets of the past. [Plutarch] Consolation to Apollonius 10, Epictetus 4.10.27, Seneca Agamemnon 592 (with R.J. Tarrant’s note). [Return] b. . A Homeric phrase (Odyssey 8.500). [Return] e. Proverbial and perhaps a verse quotation. Indeed the actual phrase [ . substance! However (this service reverts to something with which we began our treatise), since impeccable correctness is, generally speaking, due to art, and the height of excellence, even if erratic, to genius, it is proper that art should always assist literature. Perhaps it is inevitable that humble, mediocre natures, because they never run any risks and never aid at the heights, should remain to a large extent safe from error, while in great natures their very greatness spells danger. For the considerable influence of the passage in the eighteenth, see esp. Fixing their eyes on the stars, their lives they And what of Eratosthenes in his Erigone?c Wholly blameless as the little poem is, do you therefore think him a greater poet than Archilochus with all his disorganized flood and those outbursts of divine inspiration, which are, a.   counsel; The point is that combinations of consonants delay the smooth running of the words: note especially perix helixas and petran drun in the passage just quoted. is the most lavish of all in this kind of use and not only employs hyperbata to give a great effect of vehemence, and indeed of improvisation, but also drags his audience along with him to share the perils of these long hyperbata.   voice of their master. The Greek text edited after the Paris Manuskript. He quotes from Longinus: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Brighten the heaven with sunshine, grant us the I accept this, but at the same time, as I said in speaking of figures, the proper antidote for a multitude of daring metaphors is strong and timely emotion and genuine sublimity. By appearing to address not the whole audience but a single individual—, Of Tydeus’ son you could not have known with [Return] d. Iliad 5.85. ), Greek Lyric I (Loeb Classical Library). For art is only perfect when it looks like nature and Nature succeeds only when she conceals latent art. How would that passage have affected them?” Great indeed is the ordeal, if we suppose such a jury and audience as this to listen to our own utterances and make believe that we are submitting our work to the scrutiny of such heroes as witnesses and judges. There has been considerable dispute as to the author of On the Sublime. 44. The storm in Herodotus, for instance, is, as far as the ideas go, wonderfully described, but it includes certain things which are beneath the dignity of the subject. Presumably in the (lost) work in two books referred to at 39.1. Publ… Little by little the ruin of their lives is completed in the cycle of such vices, their greatness of soul wastes away and dies and is no longer something to strive for, since they value that part of them which is mortal and foolish, and neglect the development of their immortal part. It loses its freedom of motion and the sense of being, as it were, catapulted out. How grand, for instance, is the silence of Ajax in the Summoning of the Ghosts,a more sublime than any speech! Sublimity and emotional intensity are a wonderfully helpful antidote against the suspicion that accompanies the use of figures. To insert “Hector said so and so” would have been frigid. [Return] b. I.e. Might soon splinter asunder the earth, and his struggle for the freedom of Greece, and you have proof of this at home, for neither were the men at Marathon misguided nor those at Salamis nor those at Plataea.”a But when in a sudden moment of inspiration, as if possessed by the divine, he utters his great oath by the champions of Greece, “It cannot be that you were wrong; no, by those who risked their lives at Marathon,” then you feel that by employing the single figure of adjuration—which I here call apostrophe—he has deified the ancestors by suggesting that one should swear by men who met such a death, as if they were gods; he has filled his judges with the spirit of those who risked their lives there; he has transformed a demonstrative argument into a passage of transcendent sublimity and emotion, giving it the power of conviction that lies in so strange and startling an oath; and at the same time his words have administered to his hearers a healing medicine, with the result that, relieved by his eulogy, they come to feel as proud of the war with Philip as of their victories at Marathon and Salamis. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. amplification or redundance or exaggeration or emotion, either one or more of these. The story (told in most of the historians of Alexander: see e.g. This must suffice for our treatment of sublimity in ideas, as produced by nobility of mind or imitation or visualization.c, 16. Again, if you introduce events in past time as happening at the present moment, the passage will be transformed from a narrative into a vivid actuality. Just as people who are really angry or frightened or indignant, or are carried away by jealousy or some other feeling—there are countless emotions, no one can say how many—often put forward one point and then spring off to another with various illogical interpolations, and then wheel round again to their original position, while, under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind, they lay their words and, a. Isocrates was the principal proponent and model of the periodic style which articulates every clause carefully and avoids hiatus. He is promptly indignant that he is being treated like a silly child and outwitted by the figures of a skilled speaker. When the ms. resumes Longinus is evidently discussing the description of Strife in Iliad, iv. [Return]. For Hegesias’ style, see E. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa 134ff. “pure,” in language, possessing one of the basic stylistic virtues. For the effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to transport them out of themselves. For extreme conciseness cripples the sense: true brevity goes straight to the point. Information and translations of Longinus in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on … Would you not say that the writer’s soul is aboard the car, and takes wing to share the horses ’ peril? Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, 267. [Return]. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. One problem now remains for solution, my dear Terentianus, and knowing your love of learning I will not hesitate to append it—a problem which a certain philosopher recently put to me.   the whales at his coming This above all: that Nature has judged manc a creature of no mean or ignoble quality, but, as if she were inviting us to some great gathering, she has called us into life, into the whole universe, there to be spectators of her games and eager competi-, a. all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critick with a Poet's Fire. [Return] c. Herodotus 1.105.4. Take the speech of Dionysius the Phocaean, in Herodotus.a “Our fortunes stand upon a razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we be free men or slaves, aye, and runaway slaves. . But in these days we seem to be schooled from childhood in an equitable slavery, swaddled, I might say, from the tender infancy of our minds in the same servile ways and practices. 15. He set him to drive o’er the swell of the sea, and [Return] b.   with abhorrence.a. . We must remember also that mere grandeur runs the greatest risk if left to itself without the stay and ballast of scientific method and abandoned to the impetus of uninstructed temerity. For when men who differ in their pursuits, their lives, their tastes, their ages, their languages,a all agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writings, then the unanimous verdict, as it were, of such discordant judges makes our faith in the admired passage strong and indisputable. Figures seem to be natural allies of the sublime and to draw in turn marvellous reinforcement from the alliance. have called them “heaps of every kind of grain and of all known aids to cookery and good living”; or, if he must at all hazards be explicit, “all the dainties known to caterers and cooks.” One ought not in elevated passages to descend to what is sordid and contemptible, except under the severe pressure of necessity, but the proper course is to suit the words to the dignity of the subject and thus imitate Nature, the artist that created man. comes good judgement, which is indeed quite as important, since the lack of it often completely cancels the advantage of the former. [Return]. 34. This assumes Reiske’s supplement. B It is probably superfluous to explain at length to someone who knows, how the choice of the right word and the fine word has a marvellously moving and seductive effect upon an audience and how all orators and prose writers make this their supreme object. . [Return] c. [Demosthenes] Or. Yes, and the peaks and the city of Troy and the . For this of itself gives to the style at once grandeur, beauty, old-world charm, weight, force, strength, and a sort of lustre, like the bloom on the surface of the most beautiful bronzes, and endows the facts as it were with a living voice. Will burn your wheel and melt it.”, “But toward the seven Pleiads hold your course.” So supreme is the grandeur of this, one might well say that if the horses of heaven take two consecutive strides there will then be no place found for them in the world. 3.7.1408b2, Cicero, De oratore 3.165, Theophrastus fr. Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no gift of characterization or of fluency, is far from facile, and no epideictic orator. A figure of this kind is a sort of outbreak of emotion: a. Iliad 15.697 – 8. Of those factors of sublimity which we specified at the beginningb the fifth one still remains, good friend—this was the arrangement of the words themselves in a certain order. [Return], again is the towel for the entrails, “with whose offscourings it is filled and becomes swollen and fetid.” “After this,” he goes on, “they shrouded the whole in a covering of flesh, like felt, to shield it from the outer world.” Blood he calls the fodder of the flesh, and adds, “For purposes of nutriment they irrigated the body, cutting channels as one does in a garden, and thus, the body being a conduit full of passages, the streams in the veins were able to flow as it were from a running stream.” And when the end comes, the soul, he says, is loosed like a ship from its moorings and set free. They all serve to lend emotion and excitement to the style.  vast and Olympus; 7 Bolton, fr. However, all these lapses from dignity in literature spring from the same cause, namely that passion for novelty of thought which is the particular craze of the present day. If And the occasion for their use is when emotion sweeps on like a flood and carries the multitude of metaphors along as an inevitable consequence. [Return], speeches. A conflation of Iliad 21.388 and 20.61-5. He uses a cosmic interval to measure their stride. That gave us birth and having given birth [Return]. We have indeed abundantly showna that many writers both in prose and poetry, who are not by nature sublime, perhaps even the very opposite, while using for the most part current vulgar words, which suggests nothing out of the common, yet by the mere arrangement and fitting together of these properly have achieved dignity and distinction and a reputation for grandeur; Philistus,b for instance, among many others, Aristophanes occasionally, Euripides almost always.   ranges In Demosthenes the oath is carefully designed to suit the feelings of defeated men, so that the Athenians should no longer regard Chaeronea as a disaster; and it is, as I said, at the same time a proof that no mistake has been made, an example, a sworn confirmation, an encomium, and an exhortation. De corona 208. . See J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina 64ff. Darkness and helpless night suddenly descend upon his Greek army. “And will none of you,” he says, “be found to feel anger and indignation at the violence of this shameless rascal, who—oh you most accursed of villains, who are cut off from free speech not by gates and doors which one might very well open . I will quote only one or two examples from Timaeus,c as Caecilius has forestalled me with most of them. here in our halls. [Return]. But not yet have I blown the noble strain.a, All this has lost the tone of tragedy: it is pseudo-tragic— the “coronals” and “spewing to heaven” and making Boreas a piper and all the rest of it. According to him, the inability to speak freely, and the sense of being as it were in prison, immediately assert themselves, the product of the repeated beating of habit. Thus, for instance, in the speech against Midias the asyndeta are interwoven with the figures of repetition and vivid presentation.a “For the aggressor may do many injuries, some of which the victim could not even describe to anyone else—by his manner, his look, his voice.” Then to prevent the speech coming to a halt by running over the same ground—for immobility expresses inertia, while emotion, being a violent movement of the soul, demands disorder—he leaps at once into further asyndeta and anaphoras. 14. [Return] b. He does not plead for his life: such a prayer would demean the hero: but since the disabling darkness robbed his courage of all noble use, therefore, distressed to be idle in battle, he prays for light on the instant, hoping thus at the worst to find a burial worthy of his courage, even though Zeus be ranged against him. What and what manner of road is this? As it is, the inspiration and quick play of the question and answer, and his way of confronting his own words as if they were someone else’s, make the passage, through his use of the figure, not only loftier but also more convincing. Indeed, I cannot discover on consideration how, if we value boundless wealth, or to speak more truly, make a god of it, we can possibly keep our minds safe from the intrusion of the evils that accompany it. 33. So it is by some natural instinct that we admire, not the small streams, clear and useful as they are, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and above all the Ocean. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on Zoilus of Amphipolis—nicknamed Homeromastix, Scourge of Homer—was a fourth-century sophist and moralist who criticized improbable and inappropriate features in the epic. H [Return], 7. Construing the fallacy as a personal affront, he sometimes turns downright savage; and even if he controls his feelings, he becomes conditioned against being persuaded by the speech. [Return], of “one who subdued the whole of Asia in fewer years than Isocrates took to write his Panegyric urging war on Persia.”a Surely this is an odd comparison of the Macedonian to the sophist, for it is obvious, friend Timaeus, that on this showing Isocrates was a far better man than the Spartans, since they spent thirty years in subduing Messene,b while he composed his Panegyric in no more than ten! [Return] d. Cicero (Ad Atticum 2.16.2) quotes a different version of this passage ( = fr. So far leap at a bound the high-neighing horses of Similarly Theopompus,c after fitting out the Persian king’s descent into Egypt in the most marvellous manner, discredited the whole description by the use of some paltry words. “It surprises me,” he said, “as it doubtless surprises many others too, how it is that in this age of ours we find natures that are supremely persuasive and suited for public life, shrewd and versatile and especially rich in literary charm, yet really sublime and tran-, scendent natures are no longer, or only very rarely, now produced. [Return], ers fall into this fault through trying to be uncommon and exquisite, and above all to please, and founder instead upon the rock of cheap affectation. And when they have spent some time in our, a. Cf. 8. To give a rough definition, amplification consists in accumulating all the aspects and topics inherent in the subject and thus strengthening the argument by dwelling upon it. ; he is adversely criticized by Polybius for inaccuracy and bad taste. Elatea fell to Philip late in 339. He talks plainly, where necessary, does not speak always in the same tone, as Demosthenes is said to do, and has the power of characterization, seasoned moreover by simplicity and charm. he only imagines that, because he is mad. the comparison between Iliad and Odyssey, above 9.11-15. Sic.   sight of our eyes. TRANSLATION BY W. H. FYFE REVISED BY DONALD RUSSELL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS [Return], Spartans as from marble statues, and could as easily catch the eye of a bronze figure; indeed you might well think them as modest as the maidens in their eyes.”a It would have better suited Amphicrates than Xenophon to speak of the pupils in our eyes as modest maidens. Behind, his sire, astride the Dog-star’s back, For their practical effect instantly loses its vigour and substance if it is not reinforced by the strength of the sublime. Meaning Of Paul, Prawn Korma With Yogurt, Introduction To Aws Cloud Computing Pdf, Campbell And Company Yakima, Rowan Felted Tweed Watery, Emphasis Transition Words, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Is My Bougainvillea Dead Uk, Black Shower Caddy, City Of Blue Ash Administration, Matcha Basque Burnt Cheesecake Singapore, Friendly's Lemon Pepper Fish Nutrition, Architectural Lines And Symbols, " />

longinus on the sublime quotes

Longinus On the sublime. But nevertheless I feel that the beauties of Hyperides, many as they are, yet lack grandeur; “inert in the heart of a sober man,”e they, a. Hyperides’ lost Deliacus (frr. N Longinus, sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Longinus because his real name is unknown, was a Greek teacher of rhetoric or a literary critic … Would that they never had wooed me nor ever met “And locking their shields,” says Xenophon, “they pushed, fought, slew, fell.”c And take the words of Eurylochus, We came, as you told us to come, through the oak- We never drink from the fairest and most fertile source of eloquence, which is freedom, and therefore we turn out to be nothing but flatterers on a grand scale.” This is the reason, he alleged, that, while all other faculties are granted even to slaves, no slave ever becomes an orator. [Return] d. Odyssey 12.447. 26.   now on that side, [Return] d. Laws 5.741C, 6.778D, freely quoted. 41. Thee, bold Longinus! “On this spot,” he says, “while they defended themselves with daggers, such as still had daggers left, and with hands and teeth, the barbarians buried them under a shower of missiles.”d Here you may well ask what is meant by actually “fighting with teeth” against armed men or being “buried” with missiles; yet it carries credence in the same way, because Herodotus does not seem to have introduced the incident to justify the hyperbole, but the hyperbole for the sake of the incident. Sorrowful wretches they are, and theirs is a Strabo 1.1.23, who speaks of kolossoi in which the total effect is all-important, and the accuracy of the detail insignificant. LONDON, ENGLAND 43. ; this story is not mentioned elsewhere. In fact he has no part in any one of the qualities we have just mentioned. [Return]. We must realize, dear friend, that as in our everyday life nothing is really great which it is a mark of greatness to despise, I mean, for instance, wealth, position, reputation, sovereignty, and all the other things which possess a very grand exterior, nor would a wise man think things supremely good, contempt for which is itself eminently good—certainly men feel less admiration for those who have these things than for those who could have them but are big enough to slight them—well, so it is with the lofty style in poetry and prose. . [Return] b. Sicilian historian of the fourth century, imitator of Thucydides: FGrHist 556. Ever their innermost parts are terribly tossed to This passage is fr. [Return]. Soo [sic? [Return] b. We too, then, when we are working at some passage that demands sublimity of thought and expression, should do well to form in our hearts the question, “How might Homer have said this same thing, how would Plato or Demosthenes or (in history) Thucydides have made it sublime?” Emulation will bring those great characters before our eyes, and their shining presence will lead our thoughts to the ideal standards of perfection. [Return] d. In chap. In view of Longinus’ comment, the passage was perhaps put together by earlier critics, and is not simply a confused quotation from memory. 935 Nauck. Thus the whole universe is not enough to satisfy the speculative intelligence of human thought; our ideas often pass beyond the limits that confine us. Yet would you not rather be Homer than Apollonius? ), Greek Lyric III (Loeb Classical Library) Simonides fr. Notes [ edit ] Swearing a mighty oath by War and Havoc As it is, the change of construction has suddenly run ahead of the change of speaker. If, then, a man of sense, well-versed in literature, after hearing a passage several times finds that it does not affect him with a sense of sublimity, and does not leave behind in his mind more food for thought than the words at first suggest, but rather that on consideration it sinks into the bathetic, then it cannot really be the true sublime, if its effect does not outlast the moment of utterance. He might have given a comprehensive description both of what he calls the heaped-up mounds and of the rest of the equipage by altering his description thus: “camels and a multitude of baggage animals laden with all that serves the luxury and pleasure of the table”; or he might, a. Perfect precision runs the risk of triviality, whereas in great writing as in great wealth there, a. Katharos, i.e. Then, moreover, there was plate of beaten silver and wrought gold, cups, and, a. Herodotus 7.188. Longinus quotes. X Whenever the subject matter and the issues admit of several fresh starts and halting-places from section to section, then one great phrase after another is wheeled into place with increasing force. Nor yet from your fathers Sappho, for instance, never fails to take the emotions incident to the passion of love from its attendant symptoms and from real life. The spleen, a. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.4.5. as two longs. Longinus. [. What then is puerility? [Return] c. Fr. In these passages the poet himself saw Furies and compelled the audience almost to see what he had visualized. Agathocles ruled Syracuse, 317-287 B.C. Art that of good judgement. [Return]. In the skill with which she selects and combines the most striking and intense of those symptoms. Sublimity lies in elevation, amplification rather in amount; and so you often find sublimity in a single idea, whereas amplification always goes with quantity and a certain degree of redundance. [Return] b. Aratus, Phaenomena 287. like fastening a great tragic mask on a little child. tors; and she therefore from the first breathed into our hearts an unconquerable passion for whatever is great and more divine than ourselves. Meaning of Longinus. This is why splendid remarks come particularly to men of high spirit. 18) 296. It is thus that in Xenophona the anatomy of the human tabernacle is magnificently depicted, and still more divinely in Plato.b The head he calls the citadel of the body, the neck is an isthmus built between the head and chest, and the vertebrae, he says, are planted beneath like hinges; pleasure is evil’s bait for man, and the tongue is the touchstone of taste. 52 Page). Then he has an untold store of polished wit, urbane sarcasm, well-bred, a. Ion of Chios (mid-fifth century B.C.) . “When it’s with his knuckles, when it’s a slap on the face,” he says, “this rouses, this maddens a man who is not accustomed to insult. The water was immediately tainted but none the less they kept on drinking it, foul though it was with mud and gore, and most of them were still ready to fight for it.”c That a drink of mud and gore should yet still be worth fighting for is made credible only by the height of the emotion which the circumstances arouse. [Return] c. Hyperides’ defence of the courtesan Phryne (frr. Thetext which has been followed in the present Translation is that of Jahn(Bonn, 1867), revised by Vahlen, and republished in 1884. And fire his homestead to a heap of ash. (Yet these are only a bastard counterfeit of persuasion, not, as I said above, a genuine activity of human nature.) By the breadth of a hand swept out from under the b. ‘let there be light,’ and there was light, ‘Let there be earth,’ and there was earth.”b Plutarch, Alexander 29), and perhaps derived from Callisthenes, is that Darius offered Alexander territory and one of his daughters in marriage; Parmenio said “If I were Alexander, I should have accepted,” and Alexander replied “If I were Parmenio, so should I.” [Return], so much as of Homer.a Quite unlike this is Hesiod’s description of Gloom, if indeed we are right in adding the Shield to the list of Hesiod’s works:b. It is curious that the third-century Longinus (Fl5 Prickard) actually says: “Plato is the first who best transferred Homeric grandeur (. But, as I say, my dear Terentianus, these and other such hints you with your experience could supply yourself. “Longinus,” On the Sublime (1st or 3rd century AD) Longinus promotes an “elevation of style” and an essence of “simplicity”: “the Sublime refers to a style of writing that elevates itself above the ordinary”… five sources of the Sublime: “great thoughts, strong emotions, certain … [Return] c. Xenophon, Hellenica 4.3.19 (=Agesilaus 2.12). ]—or simply cut off a single syllable—[. But see how Homer magnifies the powers of heaven: Far as a man can see with his eyes in the shadowy True, the germ of the oath is said to have been found in Eupolis: a. Whomsoever I see of his own will afar from the Works of natural genius, so people think, are spoiled and utterly demeaned by being reduced to the dry bones of rule and precept. As Moses Hadas said in his History of Greek Literature, "Longinus' object is to define true grandeur in literature as opposed to sophomoric turgidity and frigid pretentiousness." Longinus >Longinus is the name associated with the Latin treatise commonly known as >"On the Sublime, " one of the most influential and perceptive works of >literary criticism ever written. These by their nature sweep everything, a. The first procedure attracts the reader by the selection of ideas, the second by the density of those selected. Why, the very tones of the, a. And grip my waist to cast me down to Hell,d. I’ll weave one torrent coronal of flame [Return], events in the style of long ago”a—“Why, Isocrates,” one may say, “do you intend by this means to reverse the positions of the Spartans and the Athenians?” For his praise of the power of words has all but issued a prefatory warning to the audience that he himself is not to be believed. 11 Bernabé. Yet again, the converse of this, the contraction of plurals to singulars, sometimes gives a great effect of sublimity. feast for the suitors? His story of Leto,a for instance, is in a more poetical vein, while his Funeral Orationb is as good a piece of epideictic composition as anyone could produce. Longinus is the name conventionally given to the author of an influential work of literary criticism, On the Sublime, the author's real name being unknown. d. Odyssey 10.251-2. Death for him there will I plan.a, There the poet has assigned the narrative to himself as his proper share, and then suddenly without any warning attached the abrupt threat to the angry champion. And this, my friend, is the way: first of all to obtain a clear knowledge and appreciation of what is really sublime. Moreover, the poet’s oath does not immortalize the men so as to beget in the audience a true opinion of their worth, but instead he wanders from those who risked their lives to an inanimate object, namely the fight. Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, line 675. For if I see one hearthholder alone. 557 ( = fr. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. For one can find emotions that are mean and devoid of sublimity, for instance feelings of pity, grief, and fear. This is what Thucydides does in speaking of those who were killed in Sicily. Zealous imitation of the great prose writers and poets of the past. [Plutarch] Consolation to Apollonius 10, Epictetus 4.10.27, Seneca Agamemnon 592 (with R.J. Tarrant’s note). [Return] b. . A Homeric phrase (Odyssey 8.500). [Return] e. Proverbial and perhaps a verse quotation. Indeed the actual phrase [ . substance! However (this service reverts to something with which we began our treatise), since impeccable correctness is, generally speaking, due to art, and the height of excellence, even if erratic, to genius, it is proper that art should always assist literature. Perhaps it is inevitable that humble, mediocre natures, because they never run any risks and never aid at the heights, should remain to a large extent safe from error, while in great natures their very greatness spells danger. For the considerable influence of the passage in the eighteenth, see esp. Fixing their eyes on the stars, their lives they And what of Eratosthenes in his Erigone?c Wholly blameless as the little poem is, do you therefore think him a greater poet than Archilochus with all his disorganized flood and those outbursts of divine inspiration, which are, a.   counsel; The point is that combinations of consonants delay the smooth running of the words: note especially perix helixas and petran drun in the passage just quoted. is the most lavish of all in this kind of use and not only employs hyperbata to give a great effect of vehemence, and indeed of improvisation, but also drags his audience along with him to share the perils of these long hyperbata.   voice of their master. The Greek text edited after the Paris Manuskript. He quotes from Longinus: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Brighten the heaven with sunshine, grant us the I accept this, but at the same time, as I said in speaking of figures, the proper antidote for a multitude of daring metaphors is strong and timely emotion and genuine sublimity. By appearing to address not the whole audience but a single individual—, Of Tydeus’ son you could not have known with [Return] d. Iliad 5.85. ), Greek Lyric I (Loeb Classical Library). For art is only perfect when it looks like nature and Nature succeeds only when she conceals latent art. How would that passage have affected them?” Great indeed is the ordeal, if we suppose such a jury and audience as this to listen to our own utterances and make believe that we are submitting our work to the scrutiny of such heroes as witnesses and judges. There has been considerable dispute as to the author of On the Sublime. 44. The storm in Herodotus, for instance, is, as far as the ideas go, wonderfully described, but it includes certain things which are beneath the dignity of the subject. Presumably in the (lost) work in two books referred to at 39.1. Publ… Little by little the ruin of their lives is completed in the cycle of such vices, their greatness of soul wastes away and dies and is no longer something to strive for, since they value that part of them which is mortal and foolish, and neglect the development of their immortal part. It loses its freedom of motion and the sense of being, as it were, catapulted out. How grand, for instance, is the silence of Ajax in the Summoning of the Ghosts,a more sublime than any speech! Sublimity and emotional intensity are a wonderfully helpful antidote against the suspicion that accompanies the use of figures. To insert “Hector said so and so” would have been frigid. [Return] b. I.e. Might soon splinter asunder the earth, and his struggle for the freedom of Greece, and you have proof of this at home, for neither were the men at Marathon misguided nor those at Salamis nor those at Plataea.”a But when in a sudden moment of inspiration, as if possessed by the divine, he utters his great oath by the champions of Greece, “It cannot be that you were wrong; no, by those who risked their lives at Marathon,” then you feel that by employing the single figure of adjuration—which I here call apostrophe—he has deified the ancestors by suggesting that one should swear by men who met such a death, as if they were gods; he has filled his judges with the spirit of those who risked their lives there; he has transformed a demonstrative argument into a passage of transcendent sublimity and emotion, giving it the power of conviction that lies in so strange and startling an oath; and at the same time his words have administered to his hearers a healing medicine, with the result that, relieved by his eulogy, they come to feel as proud of the war with Philip as of their victories at Marathon and Salamis. For the true sublime naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled [with] joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard. amplification or redundance or exaggeration or emotion, either one or more of these. The story (told in most of the historians of Alexander: see e.g. This must suffice for our treatment of sublimity in ideas, as produced by nobility of mind or imitation or visualization.c, 16. Again, if you introduce events in past time as happening at the present moment, the passage will be transformed from a narrative into a vivid actuality. Just as people who are really angry or frightened or indignant, or are carried away by jealousy or some other feeling—there are countless emotions, no one can say how many—often put forward one point and then spring off to another with various illogical interpolations, and then wheel round again to their original position, while, under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind, they lay their words and, a. Isocrates was the principal proponent and model of the periodic style which articulates every clause carefully and avoids hiatus. He is promptly indignant that he is being treated like a silly child and outwitted by the figures of a skilled speaker. When the ms. resumes Longinus is evidently discussing the description of Strife in Iliad, iv. [Return]. For Hegesias’ style, see E. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa 134ff. “pure,” in language, possessing one of the basic stylistic virtues. For the effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to transport them out of themselves. For extreme conciseness cripples the sense: true brevity goes straight to the point. Information and translations of Longinus in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on … Would you not say that the writer’s soul is aboard the car, and takes wing to share the horses ’ peril? Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, 267. [Return]. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. One problem now remains for solution, my dear Terentianus, and knowing your love of learning I will not hesitate to append it—a problem which a certain philosopher recently put to me.   the whales at his coming This above all: that Nature has judged manc a creature of no mean or ignoble quality, but, as if she were inviting us to some great gathering, she has called us into life, into the whole universe, there to be spectators of her games and eager competi-, a. all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critick with a Poet's Fire. [Return] c. Herodotus 1.105.4. Take the speech of Dionysius the Phocaean, in Herodotus.a “Our fortunes stand upon a razor’s edge, men of Ionia, whether we be free men or slaves, aye, and runaway slaves. . But in these days we seem to be schooled from childhood in an equitable slavery, swaddled, I might say, from the tender infancy of our minds in the same servile ways and practices. 15. He set him to drive o’er the swell of the sea, and [Return] b.   with abhorrence.a. . We must remember also that mere grandeur runs the greatest risk if left to itself without the stay and ballast of scientific method and abandoned to the impetus of uninstructed temerity. For when men who differ in their pursuits, their lives, their tastes, their ages, their languages,a all agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writings, then the unanimous verdict, as it were, of such discordant judges makes our faith in the admired passage strong and indisputable. Figures seem to be natural allies of the sublime and to draw in turn marvellous reinforcement from the alliance. have called them “heaps of every kind of grain and of all known aids to cookery and good living”; or, if he must at all hazards be explicit, “all the dainties known to caterers and cooks.” One ought not in elevated passages to descend to what is sordid and contemptible, except under the severe pressure of necessity, but the proper course is to suit the words to the dignity of the subject and thus imitate Nature, the artist that created man. comes good judgement, which is indeed quite as important, since the lack of it often completely cancels the advantage of the former. [Return]. 34. This assumes Reiske’s supplement. B It is probably superfluous to explain at length to someone who knows, how the choice of the right word and the fine word has a marvellously moving and seductive effect upon an audience and how all orators and prose writers make this their supreme object. . [Return] c. [Demosthenes] Or. Yes, and the peaks and the city of Troy and the . For this of itself gives to the style at once grandeur, beauty, old-world charm, weight, force, strength, and a sort of lustre, like the bloom on the surface of the most beautiful bronzes, and endows the facts as it were with a living voice. Will burn your wheel and melt it.”, “But toward the seven Pleiads hold your course.” So supreme is the grandeur of this, one might well say that if the horses of heaven take two consecutive strides there will then be no place found for them in the world. 3.7.1408b2, Cicero, De oratore 3.165, Theophrastus fr. Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no gift of characterization or of fluency, is far from facile, and no epideictic orator. A figure of this kind is a sort of outbreak of emotion: a. Iliad 15.697 – 8. Of those factors of sublimity which we specified at the beginningb the fifth one still remains, good friend—this was the arrangement of the words themselves in a certain order. [Return], again is the towel for the entrails, “with whose offscourings it is filled and becomes swollen and fetid.” “After this,” he goes on, “they shrouded the whole in a covering of flesh, like felt, to shield it from the outer world.” Blood he calls the fodder of the flesh, and adds, “For purposes of nutriment they irrigated the body, cutting channels as one does in a garden, and thus, the body being a conduit full of passages, the streams in the veins were able to flow as it were from a running stream.” And when the end comes, the soul, he says, is loosed like a ship from its moorings and set free. They all serve to lend emotion and excitement to the style.  vast and Olympus; 7 Bolton, fr. However, all these lapses from dignity in literature spring from the same cause, namely that passion for novelty of thought which is the particular craze of the present day. If And the occasion for their use is when emotion sweeps on like a flood and carries the multitude of metaphors along as an inevitable consequence. [Return], speeches. A conflation of Iliad 21.388 and 20.61-5. He uses a cosmic interval to measure their stride. That gave us birth and having given birth [Return]. We have indeed abundantly showna that many writers both in prose and poetry, who are not by nature sublime, perhaps even the very opposite, while using for the most part current vulgar words, which suggests nothing out of the common, yet by the mere arrangement and fitting together of these properly have achieved dignity and distinction and a reputation for grandeur; Philistus,b for instance, among many others, Aristophanes occasionally, Euripides almost always.   ranges In Demosthenes the oath is carefully designed to suit the feelings of defeated men, so that the Athenians should no longer regard Chaeronea as a disaster; and it is, as I said, at the same time a proof that no mistake has been made, an example, a sworn confirmation, an encomium, and an exhortation. De corona 208. . See J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina 64ff. Darkness and helpless night suddenly descend upon his Greek army. “And will none of you,” he says, “be found to feel anger and indignation at the violence of this shameless rascal, who—oh you most accursed of villains, who are cut off from free speech not by gates and doors which one might very well open . I will quote only one or two examples from Timaeus,c as Caecilius has forestalled me with most of them. here in our halls. [Return]. But not yet have I blown the noble strain.a, All this has lost the tone of tragedy: it is pseudo-tragic— the “coronals” and “spewing to heaven” and making Boreas a piper and all the rest of it. According to him, the inability to speak freely, and the sense of being as it were in prison, immediately assert themselves, the product of the repeated beating of habit. Thus, for instance, in the speech against Midias the asyndeta are interwoven with the figures of repetition and vivid presentation.a “For the aggressor may do many injuries, some of which the victim could not even describe to anyone else—by his manner, his look, his voice.” Then to prevent the speech coming to a halt by running over the same ground—for immobility expresses inertia, while emotion, being a violent movement of the soul, demands disorder—he leaps at once into further asyndeta and anaphoras. 14. [Return] b. He does not plead for his life: such a prayer would demean the hero: but since the disabling darkness robbed his courage of all noble use, therefore, distressed to be idle in battle, he prays for light on the instant, hoping thus at the worst to find a burial worthy of his courage, even though Zeus be ranged against him. What and what manner of road is this? As it is, the inspiration and quick play of the question and answer, and his way of confronting his own words as if they were someone else’s, make the passage, through his use of the figure, not only loftier but also more convincing. Indeed, I cannot discover on consideration how, if we value boundless wealth, or to speak more truly, make a god of it, we can possibly keep our minds safe from the intrusion of the evils that accompany it. 33. So it is by some natural instinct that we admire, not the small streams, clear and useful as they are, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and above all the Ocean. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on Zoilus of Amphipolis—nicknamed Homeromastix, Scourge of Homer—was a fourth-century sophist and moralist who criticized improbable and inappropriate features in the epic. H [Return], 7. Construing the fallacy as a personal affront, he sometimes turns downright savage; and even if he controls his feelings, he becomes conditioned against being persuaded by the speech. [Return], of “one who subdued the whole of Asia in fewer years than Isocrates took to write his Panegyric urging war on Persia.”a Surely this is an odd comparison of the Macedonian to the sophist, for it is obvious, friend Timaeus, that on this showing Isocrates was a far better man than the Spartans, since they spent thirty years in subduing Messene,b while he composed his Panegyric in no more than ten! [Return] d. Cicero (Ad Atticum 2.16.2) quotes a different version of this passage ( = fr. So far leap at a bound the high-neighing horses of Similarly Theopompus,c after fitting out the Persian king’s descent into Egypt in the most marvellous manner, discredited the whole description by the use of some paltry words. “It surprises me,” he said, “as it doubtless surprises many others too, how it is that in this age of ours we find natures that are supremely persuasive and suited for public life, shrewd and versatile and especially rich in literary charm, yet really sublime and tran-, scendent natures are no longer, or only very rarely, now produced. [Return], ers fall into this fault through trying to be uncommon and exquisite, and above all to please, and founder instead upon the rock of cheap affectation. And when they have spent some time in our, a. Cf. 8. To give a rough definition, amplification consists in accumulating all the aspects and topics inherent in the subject and thus strengthening the argument by dwelling upon it. ; he is adversely criticized by Polybius for inaccuracy and bad taste. Elatea fell to Philip late in 339. He talks plainly, where necessary, does not speak always in the same tone, as Demosthenes is said to do, and has the power of characterization, seasoned moreover by simplicity and charm. he only imagines that, because he is mad. the comparison between Iliad and Odyssey, above 9.11-15. Sic.   sight of our eyes. TRANSLATION BY W. H. FYFE REVISED BY DONALD RUSSELL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS [Return], Spartans as from marble statues, and could as easily catch the eye of a bronze figure; indeed you might well think them as modest as the maidens in their eyes.”a It would have better suited Amphicrates than Xenophon to speak of the pupils in our eyes as modest maidens. Behind, his sire, astride the Dog-star’s back, For their practical effect instantly loses its vigour and substance if it is not reinforced by the strength of the sublime.

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