On the Sublime - Longinus - (1 of 2) MY FAVORITE

Longinus is a Greek scholar of whom we know nothing of his life, writing to a Roman friend in the first century AD. Upon reading his words we are astonished by his learning and vast comprehension of all classic literature from Homer and the ancients up to the best writers of his own time. Much more than the expanse of his knowledge, his writing in this translation is breathtaking. He shares brilliant insights on how best to achieve grandeur in composition and speaking. He demonstrates how the greatest writers move audiences with emotions rather than merely ideas, and uplift readers to the rarely achieved but undeniable experience he describes in On the Sublime.

            Longinus quotes and criticizes the greatest authors in history, such writers as Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, so we see these timeless works through his incredibly perceptive eyes. Most impressive of all about this treatise is how Longinus deploys his skill and power, the way he induces in us the feelings he describes, the grandeur of his own language, the sublimity of his visionary expression, proving that he is not just one of the greatest literary critics, but is himself a magnificent writer.  

This chapter relies upon the slim but rich volume Classical Literary Criticism, published by Penguin Books in 2000. This book includes original Penguin 1965 translations of the included works of Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus by T.S. Dorsch, Professor of English at the University of Durham until his retirement in 1976. Penelope Murray, founding member and Senior Lecturer in the department of Classics at the University of Warwick, provided new translation of the Plato extracts, and revisions of the Dorsch translations, supported by an enlightening Introduction, Notes and a very helpful chronology.

            In addition to the subject of this chapter, On the Sublime by Longinus, the book also includes three other works of Classical Literary Criticism. This volume provides extracts from Plato’s Ion, and Republic books 2, 3 and 10, as well as Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars Poetica, the Art of Poetry. To offer a hint of educational topics covered in the Introduction, here are the sub-headings: Homer and the Early Greek Poets, Aristophanes, Gorgias and the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, The Alexandrians, Horace, Longinus, and the Epilogue.

The book also offers a tremendous Literary Chronology arranged in two columns to place Historical Events and Authors side by side, which is an educational, high-level view of the comprehensive culture over time. Historical Events begin c. 1600-1200 BC with the Mycenaean Civilization, and Authors begin c. 750-700 BC with Homer and Hesiod. This is an enlightening overview of the periods in classical literature in the context of history. For example, a simple list of authors’ writing careers puts the tragedians in temporal context with the periods written about by the historians who have come down to us: Aeschylus (499-458), Sophocles (468-406), Herodotus (460-430), Euripides (455-408), Thucydides (431-400). The periods are also delineated with the Archaic time of Lyric Poetry and the beginnings of Philosophy about 650, the two Greek Classical periods of Fifth and Fourth Centuries, Hellenistic Period beginning at 323 with death of Alexander and beginning of his successors’ kingdoms. The Roman period starts at the First Carthaginian War in 264 with the early influence of Greece on Rome. The two Golden Ages of Latin Literature are marked as the Late Republic from 107, to the Augustan Age beginning in 27 BC when Octavian takes sole power. The first Silver Age of Latin Literature occurred under the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the second under the Flavian Dynasty, where Longinus appears as the last author mentioned with uncertain dates in the late first century AD. Finally, in the Age of the Antonines, we find the last great Roman authors, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal, who were active in the 120’s.

Longinus begins Chapter 1, First Thoughts on Sublimity, with a broad introduction to his fundamental principle, addressing his Roman friend Terentianus, of whom nothing is known.

For the effect of elevated language is not to persuade the hearers, but to amaze them; and at all times, and in every way, what transports us with wonder is more telling than what merely persuades or gratifies us. The extent to which we can be persuaded is usually under our own control, but these sublime passages exert an irresistible force and mastery and get the upper hand with every hearer.

            It is this point that Longinus emphasizes, the power of sublime language to carry the “hearer” or reader away with emotional effects. Persuasion is achieved with argument and appeals to the intellect; sublimity achieves its higher influence on our emotions, or soul. And this effect, as he clearly states above, is “irresistible.” In Chapter 4, Frigidity, Longinus warns how language can fail at this goal by poor wording and inappropriate analogies. We also immediately understand his estimation of certain authors by the way he matter-of-factly personalizes them in the flow of sentences. These incidental descriptors are one of many ways he not only describes the best writing, but how he demonstrates the art in his own word choices and phrasing. In these sections he criticizes imperfect writing and uses examples to show “frigidity” of language.

But why speak of Timaeus when even such demigods as Xenophon and Plato, though they were trained in the school of Socrates, forget themselves at times for such trivial effects? In his “Constitution of Sparta” Xenophon writes: “… you would think them even more modest than the maidens in their eyes.” … how absurd to ask us to believe that every single one of them had modest eyes, when it is said that the shamelessness of people is revealed in nothing so much as their eyes! … As for the otherwise divine Plato, he says, when he means merely wooden tablets, “They will inscribe memorials of cypress-wood and place them in their temples.” … And Herodotus’ phrase for beautiful women, when he calls them “tortures for the eyes,” is not much better. However, Herodotus can in some measures be defended, for it is barbarians who use this phrase in his book, and they are drunk.

            It is both the absolute confidence with which he writes and the fearlessness of his criticism of the greatest writers of antiquity that are so striking about Longinus. The brilliance of his own writing makes us feel he is speaking directly to us, sharing his exceptional judgment of the best possible literature, including even word choices and analogies. This certainty and assurance is clear in Chapter 7, The True Sublime, when he offers the distinguishing marks of sublime grandeur.

For by some innate power the true sublime uplifts our souls; we are filled with a proud exaltation and a sense of vaunting joy, just as though we ourselves had produced what we had heard. … As a generalization, you make take it that sublimity in all its truth and beauty exists in such works as please all men at all times.

            In Chapter 12, Amplification Defined, Longinus shows us that this essence he calls the sublime exists in both poetry and prose, in philosophy and rhetoric, it is in the nature of language itself and how it affects the hearer.

Where language is concerned, Demosthenes, being more concerned with the emotions, shows much fire and vehemence of spirit, whilst Plato, standing firmly based upon his supreme dignity and majesty, though indeed he is not cold, has not the same vehemence. … Cicero is to be differentiated from Demosthenes in his use of the grand style. Demosthenes is characterized by a sublimity which is for the most part rugged, Cicero by profusion. Demosthenes, by reason of his force, yes, and his speed and power and intensity, may be likened to a thunderbolt or flash of lightning, as it were burning up or ravaging all that is before him. But Cicero is, in my opinion, like a wide-spreading conflagration that rolls on to consume everything far and wide; he has within him an abundance of steady and enduring flame which can be let loose at whatever point he desires, and which is fed from one source after another.

            Longinus frequently returns to Homer, leaving no doubt that he considers him the greatest of all poets, indeed, of all masters of language of any sort. In Chapter 13, Plato, and the Sublime: Imitation, we can feel his boundless admiration for Homer.

Was Herodotus alone a most Homeric writer? No, for even earlier there was Stesichorus, and Archiolocus, and above all others, Plato, who for his own use drew upon countless tributary streams from the great Homeric river. … I do not think there would have been so fine a bloom on Plato’s philosophic doctrines, or that he would so often have embarked on poetic subject-matter and phraseology, had he not been striving heart and soul with Homer for first place, like a young contestant entering the ring with a long-admired champion.

            In Chapter 14, Some Practical Advice, aspiring writers and speakers are blessed with Longinus’ advice to rely for guidance on the greatest masters of these arts.

It is well, then, that we too, when we are working at something that demands grandeur both of conception and expression, should carefully consider how perhaps Homer might have said this very thing, or how Plato, or Demosthenes, or (in history) Thucydides, might have given it sublimity.