Do Sublime

by Longinus, Marta Isabel de Oliveira Várzeas (Trad., Introdução e Comentário)

Data do séc. X o mais antigo códice com o tratado do Sublime. Durante muito tempo atribuído a Cássio Longino (séc. III), o opúsculo é hoje geralmente considerado obra do séc. I, escrita por um anónimo ou por um Dionísio Longino do qual muito pouco se sabe.

Ignorado, ao que parece, na Antiguidade e na Idade Média, só em 1554, em Basileia e pela mão de Robortello, veio o texto a conhecer a sua editio princeps, tendo sido depois sucessivamente editado e traduzido, primeiro para latim e, posteriormente, para várias línguas europeias, a começar pela célebre versão de Boileau que, na Europa Ilustrada, se tornou a principal via de acesso ao tratado.

Na linha de uma visão da arte retórica mais próxima do que entendemos por crítica literária, o Peri Hypsos afasta-se da abordagem estilística consagrada nos tratados de Retórica para definir o Sublime como uma qualidade dos discursos que suscita nos ouvintes e leitores não tanto a persuasão quanto o assombro e o êxtase.

Ora, é precisamente esta ideia de assombro e estremecimento suscitados pela linguagem literária que há-de inspirar as obras de Burke e de Kant, entrando, assim, definitivamente o do Sublime na história da Estética ocidental.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Writing, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Theory, Poetry

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1

Reviews

[Steve]

Orpheus serenading the animals - 3rd century CE Roman mosaic from Asia Minor

All such frivolities in discourse are due to the same cause, namely, a desire for novel conceits.


As a Greco-Roman text on literary aesthetics, On Great Writing (On the Sublime) is widely regarded by specialists as second only to Aristotle's Poetics, though it is incomplete (it is estimated that one-third of the text is missing) and its author and date of composition are unknown.(*) Remarkably enough, it is a very readable piece of literary criticism written in epistolary style - and thus seemingly informal - that is appealing to the modern reader with its open enthusiasm and concrete illustrations drawn from all of ancient Greek literature - oratory, philosophy, poetry and history (and, at one point, from the Book of Genesis(**)).

The author analyzes some of the many virtues and vices of style and illustrates each, but he emphasizes that the most important trait for great writing is high-mindedness. I fear that with that one stroke he eliminated nearly all of our contemporary writers. The author is a conservative for whom - along with most of the rest of the Greek speaking world - Homer was the model; in particular, the Iliad, since the author argues that the Odyssey exemplifies "genius past its prime". And though I sympathize with the sentiment expressed in the review's epigraph, for our author even the following figure of speech from Plato's Laws, where he argued that building walled cities would encourage cowardice in the field of battle, is beyond the pale:

As for the walls, Megillus, I should agree with Sparta to let the city walls sleep in the ground and not to rouse them.

But, then, de gustibus non disputandum est.

This opinionated, enthusiastic and engaging text is a quick and pleasant read replete with a rhetorician's psychological insights into the uses of various tropes. It is most definitely not one of the tedious rhetoric manuals that were generated in vast quantity during the Greco-Roman era. Apparently, it became a central text in European literary aesthetics during the 18th and 19th centuries. If for no other reason, we are deeply indebted to this text because it is the only extant source for the following ode by Sappho, selected by our author as a sublime illustration of a "skillful choice of the most important and intense details and in relating them to one another". I give the poem in J.A. Symonds' translation:


Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful
Man who sits and gazes at thee before him,
Close beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee
Silverly speaking,

Laughing love’s low laughter. Oh this, this only
Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble,
For should I but see thee a little moment,
Straight is my voice hushed;

Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me
’Neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling;
Nothing see mine eyes, and a noise of roaring
Waves in my ears sounds;

Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes
All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,
Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,
Lost in the love trance.



(*) Various persons date the text from the 1st to the 3rd century CE.

(**) In Alien Wisdom Arnoldo Momigliano flatly asserts that the Greeks never read the Hebrew scriptures, but they were translated into Greek in the 1st century BCE or earlier for the Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt who had lost their command of Hebrew. So if we take the 1st century CE as the date of composition, it is likely that our author was a Jew.

[Gregsamsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The below is ONLY for hardcore rhetoric nerds.

LONGINUS On The Sublime

...or how to be real fucking dull while lecturing us on how not to be real fucking dull.

This is one of those rhetorics that reminds me of why I love the Sophists. They didn't come from posh backgrounds and had to sing for their suppers, so had an immediate pecuniary interest in being interesting, handily giving demonstrative lessons on how to be interesting, unlike so many classical rhetoricians who would instruct us on such without it ever occurring that they themselves should obey their own rhetorical success formulas, if only to see if they really have legs. Unfortunately there's so much more of this stuff laying around than there is of those dudes who were on the road all the time, peddling their tropes and figures back when rhetoric got RESPECK.

Instead of being demonstrative his ownself, Longinus relies on Herotodus, Homer, and Xenophon for excitement-charged examples of how one approaches the sublime in thought, speech, and writing, apparently unaware of his remaining a sober counter-example all the way through.

No rhetorician writes without some categories and lists, and here Longinus provides a program that tweaks the classical standard canon by beginning with sources rather than just elements, effects or appeals: in writing and speech, sublimity has five sources, the first two of which are not teachable but spring from superior character.

Five sources of sublimity:

1)Grandeur of thought

2)Vigorous and spirited treatment of passions

3)A certain artifice in the employment of figures

a)figures of thought
b)figures of speech

4)Dignified expression

a)diction
b)metaphors

5)Majesty and elevation of structure

He accidentally lets #2 have to do with tropes and figures which gives it a hazy overlap with #3, and--oops--metaphors (from #4) are figures, too. Meanwhile his descriptions of #1 (Elevated Mind) and #2 (Vigorous Treatment of the Passions) are wordy obfuscations of what are basically tautological definitions (e.g. grandeur of thought=ennobled intellect=sublime soul, yadda yadda)

He then goes through some handy tips.

Ways to achieve sublimity:

*Copy people like Plato

*Employ enthralling imagery, not just argument

*Use cool figures:

*Question and answer form

*Asyndeton--a rush of assertions, like “Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell.” --Xenophon

*Mix it up: "continual variation, the intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that this order seems irregular, and conversely this irregularity acquires a certain measure of order."

*Hyperbaton: "By hyperbaton we mean a transposition of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agitation." [Especially when hidden: "For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature, again, is most effective when pervaded by the unseen presence of art."]

*Make plurals into singular for concentration, or singular into plurals to broaden and maximize effect.

*Bring past events to the present tense to create immediacy

*Change of person: Switching to 1st person to relate speech is preferred over "Hector said so and so"

*Paraphrasis to be used carefully and sparingly (rewording a familiar phrase to a novel one)

*Hyperbole, but only when it grows naturally from the subject.

Unusual for this kind of lesson is his emphasis on hyperbaton and other tropes of interruptedness, broken rhythm, or incompletion. He emphasizes the effect of an orator or writer being so overcome with sublime feeling that he must forgo regular sentence flow and rhythm and go for staccato bullet-point articulation.
It's funny reading such a coolly calculated description of how to falsely affect that from someone whose style is far from what it describes.

Just as curious is his emphasis on hyperbole. While he warns about how its improper use makes a joke of its speaker, he has no reservations about putting it above almost all the other tropes, neglecting litotes and hordes of other (see what I did there?) tropes of irony. Longinus is crazy weak on irony, such that one wonders if he "got" Quintilian at all, as he's mentioned nowhere. To be fair, though, most of what the mysterious Longinus wrote (they're not even sure about his name) is lost to us, and I guess you could make an argument that irony isn't part of the sublime but I don't roll like that.

Another curious item here is his elevation of the elsewhere marginal technique of switching person when relating something. I do it all the time, but when you do it nowadays no one notices. See?

Longinus's imagination has been seriously electro-fenced-in by Plato and Aristotle and this is reason enough to dismiss him as just another teensy step toward the dark ages as--as rhet nerds know--nothing hampered the flowering of rhetorical sublimity more than Plato's strawman-scattered rigged reality-TV-of-the-time "dialogs" and Aristotle's Assburgers OCD category madness, but that's just between and/or among us, right? I don't want to get into a big thing here with people who shouldn't even be reading this far. This is just between us, right?

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text here is the 1890 Havell translation. Its introduction is thoughtful regarding the identity of the author; I happen to prefer, aesthetically, the thesis that author is the cat executed by Aurelian when the latter became restitutor orientis.

Heavily laden with tautology and other faux definitions that simply remove the mystery one step, the text is happy to state that the Sublime “acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader” (2). We might identify this “when a passage is pregnant in suggestion, when it is hard, nay impossible, to distract the attention from it, and when it takes a strong and lasting hold on the memory, then we may be sure that we have lighted on the true Sublime” (12). Sublimity is accordingly a function of rhetoric. Most of the argument is mere exemplification, both positive and negative, via reference to other writers, such as:

Hence we laugh at those fine words of Gorgias of Leontini, such as “Xerxes the Persian Zeus” and “vultures, those living tombs,” and at certain conceits of Callisthenes which are high-flown rather than sublime, and at some in Cleitarchus more ludicrous still—a writer whose frothy style tempts us to travesty Sophocles and say, “He blows a little pipe, and blows it ill.” The same faults may be observed in Amphicrates and Hegesias and Matris, who in their frequent moments (as they think) of inspiration, instead of playing the genius are simply playing the fool. (5)

The commentary is fairly puerile—but as an index of what we do not have: amazing. Longinus there refers to six authors casually, as though we know who they are, but I’d never heard of any of them (unless Gorgias is the same guy with whom Plato fucks mercilessly). I suspect that the only existence any of these writers have now is through references such as this.

Kant’s definition of the Sublime in the Critique of Judgment tooths on the ancient apeiron of Anaximander, ontological boundlessness—one is not capable of understanding the extent and degree of the Sublime in Kant (as opposed to the Beautiful), as it is unbound by sense, but reason can identify it. Longinus circles back to Kant eventually: “Nevertheless all the beauties of Hyperides [who? there's another one FFS], however numerous, cannot make him sublime. He never exhibits strong feeling, has little energy, rouses no emotion; certainly he never kindles terror [NB kantians] in the breast of his readers” (66-67).

Am fairly certain however that, though the loss of these writers aforesaid in all but their names is an event tragic without boundary, a loss beyond measure, a magnitude I am unable to estimate, the rational mind nevertheless identifies, primarily, as here, through the mechanism of absence, in which, according to our faithful interlocutor, “a thought in its naked simplicity, even though unuttered, is sometimes admirable by the sheer force of its sublimity; for instance, the silence of Ajax in the eleventh Odyssey is great, and grander than anything he could have said” (15). The silence of the lost writers is their most grand characteristic; they lack now any claim to beauty, though their enforced silence might be considered sublime.

Reveals himself to be fairly procrustean in declaring that “all these glaring improprieties of language may be traced to one common root—the pursuit of novelty in thought” (10). Not sure where fall, though, comments such as:

It is proper to observe that in human life nothing is truly great which is despised by all elevated minds. For example, no man of sense can regard wealth, honour, glory, and power, or any of those things which are surrounded by a great external parade of pomp and circumstance, as the highest blessings, seeing that merely to despise such things is a blessing of no common order: certainly those who possess them are admired much less than those who, having the opportunity to acquire them, through greatness of soul neglect it. (11)

That said, identification of the longinian Sublime relies on pentapartite criteria: grandeur of thought, vigorous passion, artifice, dignity, majesty (13). It can partake of pathos, but need not. And it certainly need not involve the logos:

This striking image, being thrown in by the speaker in the midst of his proofs, enables him by one bold stroke to carry all mere logical objection before him. In all such cases our nature is drawn towards that which affects it most powerfully: hence an image lures us away from an argument: judgment is paralysed, matters of fact disappear from view, eclipsed by the superior blaze. Nor is it surprising that we should be thus affected; for when two forces are thus placed in juxtaposition, the stronger must always absorb into itself the weaker. (36)

Rather, it mostly proceeds through deceit, because “it follows that a figure is then most effectual when it appears in disguise. To allay, then, this distrust which attaches to the use of figures we must call in the powerful aid of sublimity and passion. For art, once associated with these great allies, will be overshadowed by their grandeur and beauty, and pass beyond the reach of all suspicion” (41). One should attempt, with audiences, a method that “deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in every detail has been struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of the moment” (43). And “by continual variation, the intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that his order seems irregular, and conversely his irregularity acquires a certain measure of order”; “even so passion rebels against the trammels of conjunctions and other particles, because they curb its free rush and destroy the impression of mechanical impulse” (45). We might be blameless in concluding therefore that dishonesty is the condition of possibility for sublimity.

Difficult to determine whether we’re being trolled, however, at points:

The same may be observed of two passages in Herodotus: “Cleomenes having lost his wits, cut his own flesh into pieces with a short sword, until by gradually mincing his whole body he destroyed himself”; and “Pythes continued fighting on his ship until he was entirely hacked to pieces.” Such terms come home at once to the vulgar reader, but their own vulgarity is redeemed by their expressiveness. (58)

Really? Central problem with the entire thing, of course, is that it deploys an immaterialist’s lexicon (“grandeur of soul,” say (64)) to abstract from a materialist practice, rhetoric. It’s a fairly plain non sequitur, some sort of ideological blindness, easy for us to spot so far down the road. Blindspots also marked out in opposites of the Sublime in ‘effiminate’ (77) and ‘deformity’ (78).

Recommended for those who have almost in anger torn one word into two persons, writers whose hyperbole appears in disguise, and persons who have achieved the Sublime and are accordingly more than mortal.

[Evan Leach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little book, written by an unknown author sometime in the first century AD*, is the most significant piece of literary criticism surviving from ancient Rome. The author argues that exceptional (or “sublime”) writing contains at least one of five features:

(i) The power to conceive “great thoughts,” either through an author’s natural talent or by the author’s use of imitative and/or visualization techniques.

(ii) Strong and inspired emotion. This portion of the book is no longer extant.

(iii) Skilled use of figures of thought and figures of speech.

(iv) Noble diction, achieved through word choice and the skilled use of metaphorical and artificial language.

(v) Dignified and elevated word-arrangement (i.e., well-structured).

Some fragments have been lost over the years, but the surviving text is compelling. While Aristotle’s Poetics focuses more on theory and general principles of good drama, On the Sublime is much more interested in applying the author’s rules to specific texts. A whole host of ancient works are quoted and critiqued: Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, Aristophanes, Sappho, Apollonius of Rhodes, and many more (the Bible makes a brief appearance**). Even if you’re not familiar with the authors and texts examined in this book, On the Sublime can be read and appreciated on a theoretical level. But if you’re a fan of the classics, and you are familiar with some of the works under the microscope here, this book is a real treat.

On the Sublime enjoyed a 150-year resurgence in popularity from around 1674 to the early 19th century, when its ideas were highly influential. It is not read much today, but this book is probably the second-most interesting work of its kind surviving from antiquity, behind only the Poetics. Fans of Aristotle’s book, the history of literary criticism, or classical literature in general will find much to enjoy here. 3.5 stars, recommended.

*The dating is uncertain, but the 1st century is probable, perhaps during the reign of Nero.

**Again, the date is unclear, but assuming this was written during Nero’s time quoting Genesis was pretty exceptional: this would be the oldest secular text I’ve ever seen to include a quote from the Bible in any capacity (although Longinus would have been drawing from the Torah, as discussed below).

[Amin Medi · Rating 5 out of 5]

شاهکار است این اثر لونگینوس.
شکوهمندی طنین روح بزرگ است... محال است کسی که در سراسر عمر اندیشه‌ها و تلاش‌هایش را مصروف چیزهای پست و حقیر کرده است بتواند چیزی ایجاد کند که شایسته ستایش و تقدیر آیندگان باشد.

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Primera lectura tfg! Com ho estic gaudint pfff...]

El santo al que yo le rezo. Com es beneficiaria la producció literària si certes persones haguessin llegit al mestre Longino... Corregeix els grans vicis a l'escriptura que segles després encara hem d'aguantar. Metòdic en la seva descripció, assenyala tot allò que construeix el Sublim oferint exemples i assenyalant autors. Un tractat sobre l'eloqüència que és també un perfecte exemple d'ella mateixa. Diu Boileau al prefaci de la traducció francesa "al hablar del Sublime él mismo se hace Sublime".

[Descriu el Sublim] "(...) cuando se oye se eleva el alma, y la hace concebir con más grande estimación de sí misma, llenándola de alegría, y de un no sé qué noble aliento, como si fuese parto suyo aquello que no ha hecho más que oír"

[Monika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ändå bra med fina liknelser till exempel: "Kleomenes blev vansinnig och skar med svärd sitt eget kött i småbitar tills han gjort hela sig till köttfärssås och dog" -Målande

[Τζαζίλας Μπάμπης · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πώς προκύπτει το "ύψος" στην ποίηση και τη ρητορική; Ποια τεχνάσματα μπορεί να μηχανευτεί κανείς ώστε να ηχεί σαν κεραυνός ο λόγος του, να εκστασιάζει και να μεταφέρει κρυστάλλινο το μήνυμα; Ο Λογγίνος, ο άγνωστος συγγραφέας του 1ου αι. μ.Χ., μέσα από μια εκπληκτική πραγματεία που σώζεται αποσπασματικά, μας δίνει τις απαντήσεις και μας ξεναγεί στο ωραίο και το υψηλό.

[Unknown · Rating 4 out of 5]

But Longinus' book, taken as a whole, is far from Plato's pessimism. He shows us that great thoughts have been uttered by great men in the past; perhaps they could be uttered again. —D. A. Russell, Introduction
__________
You have asked me to set down a few notes on sublimity for your own use. Let us then consider whether there is anything in my observations which may be useful . . .

__________
The Longinian Sublime is very different from the Philosophical/Aesthetic Sublime; where Kant and Burke respectively describe the latter as

the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of the senses.

and

the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.

Longinus describes the Sublime as an Aesthetic quality found common in the very best writing; although it is evident in a few of Longinus' descriptions of readers' emotional states where Burke and Kant would take Longinus' concept.

On the Sublime is a nice little work, parts of which are sadly lost, where Longinus discourses upon this topic, quoting from a variety of authors illustrate his theories of what makes a book good, and what is conducive of the Sublime. He is also quite humorous in places.

A nice complement to Aristotle’s Poetics.
_____
Read from Classical Literary Criticism
__________
For grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the heater; and the combination of wonder and astonishment always process superior to the merely persuasive and pleasant.

The genius of the ancients acts as a kind of oracular cavern, and effluences flow from it into the minds of their imitators.
__________
'Secondly, the power of speech is such that it can make great things lowly, give grandeur to the trivial, say what is old in a new fashion, and lend an appearance of antiquity to recent events.' (Isocrates, Panegyricus) . . . The encomium on the power of speech is equivalent to an introduction recommending the reader not to believe what he is told!

In the Odyssey, on the other hand, he [Homer] demonstrates that when a great mind begins to decline, a love of story-telling characterizes its old age . . . he made the whole body of the Iliad, which was written at the height of his powers, dramatic and exciting, whearas most of the Odyssey consists of narrative, which is a characteristic of old age. Homer in the Odyssey may be compared to the setting sun: the size remains without the force. He no longer sustains the tensions as it was in the tale of Troy, nor that consistent level of elevation which never admitted any falling off. The outpouring of passions crowding one on another has gone; so has the versatility, the realism, the abundance of imagery taken from life. We see greatness on the ebb. It is as though the Ocean were withdrawing into itself and flowing quietly on its own bed. Homer is lost in the realm of the fabulous and incredible. In saying this, I have not forgotten the storms in the Odyssey, the story of the Cyclops, and a few other episodes; I am speaking of old age—but it is the old age of Homer. The point a bout all these stories is that the mythical element in them predominates over the realistic.

This is what people ridicule most in Plato, who is often carried away by a sort of literary madness into crude, harsh metaphors or allegorical fustian. ‘It is not easy to understand that a city ought to be mixed like a bowl of wine, wherein the wine seethes with madness, but hen chastened by another, sober god, and achieving a proper communion with him, produces a good and moderate drink.’ To call water ‘a sober god’, says the critic, and mixture ‘chastening’, is the language of a poet who is far from sober himself.
__________
If anyone wants to know what we are born for, let him look round at life and contemplate the splendour, grandeur, and beauty in which it everywhere abounds.

. . . enveloped in encircling grandeur.
__________
I wonder whether what destroys great minds is not the peace of the world, but the unlimited war which lays hold on our desires, and all the passions which beset and ravage our modern life. Avarice, the insatiable disease from which we all suffer, and love of pleasure—these are our two slave-masters; or perhaps one should say that they sink our ship of life with all hands.

Greatness of mind wanes, fades, and loses its attraction when men spend their admiration on their mortal parts and neglect to develop the immortal.

[نیکزاد نورپناه]

من به سهم خود می‌دانم که طبایع عالی کمتر از سهل‌انگاری معافند، چون اشتغالِ فکر به درست‌نویسی از همه‌ی جهات آدمی را به خُردنِگَرشی وا می‌دارد. استعدادهای بزرگ نظیر ثروت‌های کلان‌اند و باید امکانِ ول‌خرجی‌هایی را به آنها داد. و نیز شاید ضرورتی است که طبایع پست و کم‌مایه، چون هرگز خطر نمی‌کنند و درصددِ دسترسی به قله‌ها برنمی‌آیند، اغلب کمالِ دقت را در پرهیز از اشتباهات به خرج می‌دهند و قدمی نسنجیده برنمی‌دارند و حال آنکه طبایعِ باعظمت به سببِ همین عظمت‌شان از لغزش بری نیستند.

ترجمه‌ی رضا سید حسینی

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longino - De lo Sublime.

Para mí un tema totalmente nuevo. Me interesé en este libro por un ensayo de Anne Carson titulado:
FOAM (Essay with Rhapsody) On the Sublime in Longinus and Antonioni

El ensayo señala que De lo sublime tiene argumentos confusos, poca organización, ninguna conclusión, que son incoherentes sus intentos de definición. También se menciona que al terminar de leer sus capítulos no tendrás una idea clara de lo que realmente es Sublime, pero que te habrá encantado su documentación.

Todavía no terminaba el ensayo y ya me urgía leer a Longino.

De lo sublime es un libro de pocas páginas, pero con gran valor en su contenido. Carson tenía razón, me encantó la documentación y quedé complacido de haber leído algo nuevo e interesante. El final de la obra de Longino me dejó impresionado, aún cuando el ensayo ya me lo había advertido.

Gocé leyendo este libro, me enriqueció. Creo que su documentación es vigente, en especial para oradores y escritores.

Me gustaría conocer la opinión que tengan de esta obra porque yo lo recomiendo ampliamente.

No olviden leer el ensayo de Anne Carson.

[Jorge Iván Sánchez Beltrán · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Hermoso libro! Además de su valor como manual de retórica, y de la belleza como fue escrito, nos recuerda en cada página que la mediocridad es una (mala) elección, pues nuestra naturaleza nos empuja hacia la grandeza y lo sublime. Impresiona como un texto de hace más de veinte siglos sigue hablándonos al oído, machacando con sumo arte los tristes vicios de nuestra especie. Llegué a este texto consecuencia de la lectura de “La Utilidad de lo inútil” de Nuccio Ordine, a quien le agradeceré toda la vida. Comentario aparte merece la edición bilingüe griego-castellano y la traducción, estudio previo y notas de Manuel Pérez López. El rigor, la profundidad y el amor por el texto se hacen notorios en cada frase. ¡Bravo!

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longinus focuses on style more than substance. Ironically, the best bits are the examples by other writers.

[William Bies · Rating 5 out of 5]

The critical treatise traditionally attributed to Longinus, On the Sublime [Περὶ ὕψους], has, since its recovery in the Renaissance, long occupied a place of honor in the republic of humane letters as a vital spur to excellence of style during the nascent period of the emerging field of aesthetic theory. Modern philological research establishes that its author probably wrote in the first century and could not have been the famed third-century literary critic whom we know as Longinus, after all. Why this ancient teaching matters to us today when descriptivism is all the rage and anyone secretly harboring a prescriptivist tendency stands as if under an ill-boding star: implicit in everything Longinus says is the notion of an external objective standard, the very antithesis of Nietzschean perspectivism. One wonders, indeed, whether any genuine valor and sublimity can prosper or even merely subsist on the barren ground offered by a post-classical, post-Christian era, just as it would be preposterous to suppose anyone capable anymore of composing a serious tragedy.

The edition of Longinus to which the present review is devoted is the excellent reprint of the original Greek text and English translation by W. Rhys Roberts, a facsimile of the Cambridge University press version originally published in 1907. Besides the text itself, Roberts provides a fairly thorough introduction on the question of authorship (pp. 1-23), worth reading for incidental remarks on the nature of the text even if one doesn’t care very much about the question itself; and a nicely written review of its contents and character (pp. 23-37). This recensionist regrettably is in no position to speak on the quality of the English translation – it reads very smoothly as English prose, though the diction in the poetic verses quoted often comes across as stilted to a modern ear. Only the most diligent among us will want more than to glance at the appendices. Appendix A (pp. 163-185) deals with textual matters and critical notes (necessary for a text in a rather poor state of preservation); Appendix B (pp. 186-211) on linguistic matters enters into a meticulous and minute analysis of its grammar and vocabulary with a bearing upon the question of authorship; Appendix C (pp. 211-246) on properly literary matters contains a helpful chronological table of the few dozen authors mentioned by Longinus along with a separate paragraph or two on each, devoting special attention to Caecilius on whose work this treatise is based, to Moses, alluded to in ix.9 (whether this could be an interpolation), and lastly to the historical Longinus himself; finally Appendix D (pp. 247-261) consists in a very thorough bibliography of the primary and secondary literature up to 1907 and in a handful of remarks on previous translations into European languages (briefly discusses English critics such as Burke, Macaulay, Pope but has nothing on the Germans Lessing, Baumgarten, Schiller, Kant).

Now on to Longinus himself (whoever he may have been). How to state his cause? Roberts sums it up thus, ‘His subject is elevation [ὕψος] of style, and this, he holds, depends ultimately on elevation of character’ (p. 11). In Longinus’ own words,

As I am writing to you, my good friend, who are well versed in literary studies, I feel almost absolved from the necessity of premising at any length that sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression, and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets and writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of renown. The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport [ἔϰστασιν ἄγει τὰ ὑπερϕυᾶ]. (i,3-4, p. 43)

Another locus classicus would be the following, in view of which Roberts imputes to him ‘decided Roman affinities’ (p. 12):

Sublimity is the echo of a great soul [ὕψος μεγαλοϕροσύνης ἀπήχημα] (ix, 2, p. 61)

Chapters viii-xl outline what Longinus sees as the five principal sources of the sublime, two having to do with character (hence innate), and three matters of art, that is to say, technical in nature (thus, potentially acquirable). The first, and by far the most crucial, is grandeur of thought, nobility of character, elevation of thought, about which Longinus tells us,

First, then, it is absolutely necessary to indicate the source of this elevation, namely, that the truly eloquent must be free from low and ignoble thoughts. For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and aims prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything that is admirable and worthy of immortality. (ix, 3, p. 61)

What fact, then, was before the eyes of those superhuman writers who, aiming at everything that was highest in composition, contemned an all-pervading accuracy? This besides many other things, that Nature has appointed us men to be no base or ignoble animals; but when she ushers us into life and into the vast universe as into some great assembly, to be as it were spectators of the mighty whole and the keenest aspirants for honor, forthwith she implants in our souls the unconquerable love of whatever is elevated and more divine than we. Wherefore not even the entire universe suffices for the thought and contemplation within the reach of the human mind, but our imaginations often pass beyond the bounds of space, and if we survey our life on every side and see how much more it everywhere abounds in what is striking, and great, and beautiful, we shall soon discern the purpose of our birth. (xxxv, 2-3, pp. 133-135)

Now as regards the manifestations of the sublime in literature, in which grandeur is never, as it sometimes is in nature, found apart from utility and advantage, it is fitting to observe at once that, though writers of this magnitude are far removed from faultlessness, they none the less all rise above what is mortal; that all other qualities prove their possessors to be men, but sublimity raises them near the majesty of God; and that, while immunity from errors relieves from censure, it is grandeur that excites admiration. (xxxvi, 1, pp. 135-137)

Another way (beyond anything we have mentioned) leads to the sublime. And what, and what manner of way, may that be? It is the imitation and emulation of previous great poets and writers. And let this, my dear friend, be an aim to which we steadfastly apply ourselves. For many men are carried away by the spirit of others as if inspired, just as it is related of the Pythian priestess when she approaches the tripod, where there is a rift in the ground which (they say) exhales divine vapor. By heavenly power thus communicated she is impregnated and straightway delivers oracles in virtue of the afflatus. Similarly from the great natures of the men of old there are borne in upon the souls of those who emulate them (as from sacred caves) what we may describe as effluences, so that even those who seem little likely to be possessed are thereby inspired and succumb to the spell of the others’ greatness. (xii, 2, p. 81)

As an aside, precisely this interpersonal radiance of divine grace is what the communion of the saints is all about, which Protestants to a man excise at it were from the Apostles’ creed, the symbol of the early church (its last clause: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.’).

For Longinus, the second source of the sublime is vehement and inspired passion, but he has little to say on the subject as he wishes to reserve it for another occasion. The third and fourth sources are figures of speech and noble phrasing or diction, to which Longinus attributes far greater efficacy than we probably would:

By a sort of natural law, figures bring support to the sublime, and on their part derive support in turn from it in a wonderful degree. (xvii, 1, p. 95)

The fifth and last source of sublimity is elevation in arrangement of words, about which too the following:

In regard to this, having already in two treatises sufficiently stated such results as our inquiry could compass, we will add, for the purpose of our present undertaking, only what is absolutely essential, namely the fact that harmonious arrangement is not only a natural source of persuasion and pleasure among men but also a wonderful instrument of lofty utterance and of passion. (xxxix, 1, p. 143)

The final chapter xliv takes up what Longinus considers to be the causes of the decline of eloquence in his age. Liberty suffered after the conquest of the Greek city-states by the Romans and by his time, presumably in the first century AD, most men were given over to lesser pursuits than politics:

For the love of money (a disease from which we all suffer sorely) and the love of pleasure make us their thralls, or rather, as one may say, drown us body and soul in the depths, the love of riches being a malady which makes men petty, and the love of pleasure one that makes them most ignoble. (pp. 157-159)

W. Rhys Roberts takes it for granted that there is no common ground between Longinus’ conception of the sublime, as sketched here, and that of eighteenth-century aesthetics, which in the main determines how we understand the term today. Alexander Baumgarten (1750/1758) equates the sublime, das Erhabene = magnitudo aesthetica. To draw out what such a magnitude could mean, let us turn to Kant’s ripe theory of the sublime. In an 1764 essay, he spells out the difference between beauty and the sublime: in contrast to the beautiful, an aesthetic judgment of which always rests upon the perception of a finite, bounded object, the sublime is based upon the feeling of nature as impressively large, i.e. virtually infinite, eliciting in us a contrary reflection on concepts of reason within ourselves [Vernunftbegriffe]. The following fine passage from the close of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft helps demarcate the realm of the sublime:

Zwei Dinge erfüllen das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmenden Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je öfter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschäftigt: Der bestirnte Himmel über mir, und das moralische Gesetz in mir. Beide darf ich nicht als in Dunkelheiten verhüllt, oder im Überschwänglichen, außer meinem Gesichtskreise, suchen und bloß vermuten; ich sehe sie vor mir und verknüpfe sie unmittelbar mit dem Bewußtsein meiner Existenz. Das erste fängt von dem Platze an, dem ich in der aüßern Sinnenwelt einnehme, und erweitert die Verknüpfung, darin ich stehe, ins Unabsehlich-Große mit Welten über Welten und Systemen von Systemen, überdem noch in grenzenlose Zeiten ihrer periodischen Bewegung, deren Anfang und Fortdauer. Das zweite fängt von meinem unsichtbaren Selbst, meiner Persönlichkeit, an, und stellt mich in einer Welt dar, die wahre Unendlichkeit hat, aber nur dem Verstande spürbar ist, und mit welcher (dadurch aber auch zugleich mit allen jenen sichtbaren Welten) ich mich nicht, wie dort, in bloß zufälliger, sondern allgemeiner und notwendiger Verknüpfung erkenne. Der erstere Anblick einer zahllosen Weltenmenge vernichtet gleichsam meine Wichtigkeit, als eines tierischen Geschöpfs, das die Materie, daraus es ward, dem Planeten (einem bloßem Punkt im Weltall) wieder zurückgeben muß, nachdem es eine kurze Zeit (man weiß nicht wie) mit Lebenskraft versehen gewesen. Der zweite erhebt dagegen meinen Wert, als einer Intelligenz, unendlich, durch meine Persönlichkeit, in welcher das moralische Gesetz mir einer von der Tierheit und selbst von der ganzen Sinnenwelt unabhängiges Leben offenbart, wenigstens so viel sich aus der zweckmäßigen Bestimmung meines Daseins durch dieses Gesetz, welche nicht auf Bedingungen und Grenzen dieses Lebens eingeschränkt ist, sondern ins Unendliche geht, abnehmen läßt. (AA, pp. 161-163)

But for Kant’s completely worked-out views, we must turn to §§23-29 in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. There, we learn that the sublime is not given in intuition [Anschauung] but in the aesthetic effect [Wirkung] of nature, leading the imagination [Einbildungskraft] to infer a supersensory substrate and releasing thereby the sense of the sublime [des Erhabenen] = mathematical sublime. Another and for our purposes more essential type of Kantian sublime is the dynamical = recognition of the autonomy of the subject, with respect to which nature becomes demoted to but a ‘Macht, die über uns keine Gewalt hat’. Schiller in ‘Über das Erhabene’ (1793) expounds a theory of the moral sublime which is to be aligned with Kant’s dynamical sublime.

To connect Longinus’ sublime to modern ideas, let us begin with two elementary points: first, the Greeks would not have known our distinction between the natural and the supernatural; second, the positive valuation of the infinite dates to post-classical times. From passages quoted above, it should be clear, however, that what Kant and Schiller seek to elaborate is a conceptual articulation of the same feeling of elevation Longinus senses in himself, pre-theoretically as it were. For his motive force is the attractive power of that which is high, which he opens himself to without being overly concerned with niceties such as whether it be natural or supernatural, or literally infinite. To draw such artful conceptual distinctions is the preserve of a later age of man. Here is the reason for Longinus’ immense prestige among the classically educated of Kant and Schiller’s time; for they recognized in themselves a kinship with him. Does the same hold true today?

What else can we say? It would surely prove most rewarding to trace the sublime in scripture (inherent throughout, but especially magnificent in Isaiah). Indeed, the prophets show themselves quite innovative in rhetorical use of language and word-play so as to convey their message in graphic terms, as we – those of us poorly equipped in Hebrew – can learn from good scriptural commentaries, a manner of proceeding of which Longinus could, on his principles, only highly approve. In what may come as a surprise to the modern reader, in a remarkable display of his largemindedness and catholicity, Longinus cites the Pentateuch, freely as is his habit:

Similarly, the legislator of the Jews, no ordinary man, having formed and expressed a worthy conception of the might of the Godhead, writes at the very beginning of his Laws, ‘God said’ – what? ‘Let there be light, and there was light; let there be land, and there was land’. (ix, 9, p. 65)

Conclusion: W. Rhys Roberts isn’t really right that Longinus’ sublime has nothing to do with ours – he’s too unphilosophical anyway for his judgment to count as the last word, though it goes without saying that he makes for a superlative classical philologist, far surpassing what anyone in our day could aspire to.

[Ashley Chang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost never like these philosophical readings and I almost never think when I read about thinking about thinking. But I thoroughly annotated this little book and I thought about the bits and pieces afterwards and I think the impressive thing about this is that it takes something I am often to embarrassed to think about --- greatness --- and presents it like it's just about the most ordinary thing in the world (not that this is, well, true to the name). It admits that greatness often is the harbinger of many flaws, that high-mindedness is a lofty turn but like why not think like this? It's a bunch of rants by Longinus that feel disgruntled and not totally together, but by the definitions he provides, in a sense this piece is just that kind of sublime.

[eve · Rating 3 out of 5]

très bonne édition critique qui met en contexte les propos de Longin et la traduction parfois inexacte de Boileau ; merci à Longin qui loue la poésie de Sappho et surtout dit dans le chapitre XXXIII (De la mesure des périodes) tout ce que je pense des phrases courtes qui sont le fléau de notre siècle (je ne le répèterai jamais assez)

[Ángel Agudo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tiene alguna que otra cita acertada respecto a la creación literaria, pero me parece que tiene poco que aportar a un lector contemporáneo.

«Lo sublime es el eco de un alma grande.»

«La mejor figura [literaria] es aquella que pasa inadvertida como tal figura.»

«En lo sublime, como en las riquezas, siempre hay algo que debe ser pasado por alto. Quizá sea natural que las naturalezas bajas y mediocres estén normalmente libres de fallos y caídas, porque nunca corren riesgos ni aspiran a lo más excelso, mientras que las grandes dotes tropiezan a causa de su propia grandeza.»

[pascal · Rating 3 out of 5]

bro zit lett alleen maar demosthenes te dickriden, love it tho

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longinus holds that great oratory, which is of sublime character, courses through the interstitial space between premeditation and the spur of the moment.
One has to torture speech with defects of chronology, misplaced emphasis, and other interruptions lest it rolls out too polished from the mouth of the orator and on this account fail to ascend to the heights of the Sublime.
The Sublime, according to Longinus, does not persuade (the effect of logic and reason), but stupefies and astounds to the point of terror, sweeping up the audience and blasting them with the impression of a momentary univocity between the utterer, the utterance and the audience themselves.
A straightfoward but pithy lecture in oratory. Longinus' erudition really comes through.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The universe therefore is not wide enough for the range of human speculation and intellect. Our thoughts often travel beyond the boundaries of our surroundings. If anyone wants to know what we were born for, let him look around at life and contemplate the splendour, grandeur, beauty in which it everywhere abounds.”

[Emad · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the Sublime is considered to be the first treatise exclusively written on literary criticism. Longinus seeks a quality of excellence by which a literary work can be evaluated as great. The chapters of On the Sublime contain the definition of sublimity and its existence, the traps that threaten the authors in the way of sublimity, and the methods to avoid those traps and to reach the defined sublimity in the end.



Highlights:

Sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression, and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets and writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of renown.

The effect of an elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport.
Our persuasion we can usually control, but the influences of the sublime bring power and irresistible might to bear, and reign supreme over every hearer.

A lofty tone, says one, is innate, and does not come by teaching.
But I maintain that this will be found to be otherwise if it be observed that, while nature as a rule is free and independent in matters of passion and elevation, yet is she wont not to act at random and utterly without system.
Moreover, The expression of the sublime is more exposed to danger when it goes its own way without the guidance of knowledge when it is left at the mercy of mere momentum and ignorant audacity. It is true that it often needs the spur, but it is also true that it often needs the curb.

[On some lines in Aeschylus's Oreithia:] Such things are not tragic but pseudo-tragic.
They are turbid in expression and confused in imagery rather than the product of intensity, and each one of them, if examined in the light of day, sinks little by little from the terrible into the contemptible. Even in tragedies tasteless tumidity is unpardonable, expressions which are not sublime but high-flown.
Altogether, tumidity seems particularly hard to avoid.

While tumidity desires to transcend the limits of the sublime, the defect which is termed puerility is the direct antithesis of elevation, for it is utterly low and mean and in real truth the most ignoble vice of style.

A third, and closely allied, kind of defect in matters of passion is that which Theodorus used to call parenthyrsus. By this is meant unreasonable and empty passion.

All these ugly and parasitical growths arise in literature from a single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day.

The best means [to avoid the traps] would be, my friend, to gain, first of all, clear knowledge and appreciation of the true sublime.

You must know, my friend, that it is with the sublime as in the common life of man. In life nothing can be considered great which it is held great to despise.
So also in the case of sublimity in poems and prose writings, we must consider whether some supposed examples have not simply the appearance of elevation with many idle accertions, so that when analyzed they are found to be mere vanity, objects which a noble nature will rather despise than admire.

In general, consider those examples of sublimity to be fine and genuine which please all and always.

There are, it may be said, five principal sources of elevated language.
First and most important is the power of forming great conceptions.
Secondly, there is vehement and inspired passion.
These tow components of the sublime are for the most part innate. Those which remain are partly the product of art.
Next, there is noble diction, which in turn comprises choice of words and use of metaphors, and elaboration of language. The fifth cause of elevation, which is the fitting conclusion of all that have preceded it, is dignified and elevated composition.

Among the orators, too, eulogies and ceremonial and occasional addresses contain on every side example of dignity and elevation, but are for the most part void of passion. This is the reason why passionate speakers are the worst eulogists, and why, on the other hand, those who are apt in ecomium are the least passionate.

Sublimity is the echo of a great soul. Hence also a bare idea, by itself and without a spoken word, sometimes excites admiration just because of the greatness of soul implied. Thus the silence of Ajax in the Underworld is great and more sublime than words.

An allied excellence to those already set forth is that which is termed amplification.
And this may be effected by way of the rhetorical treatment of commonplaces, or by way of intensification, or by the orderly arrangement of facts or of passions.
None of these methods by itself, apart from sublimity, forms a complete whole, unless indeed where pity is to be excited or an opponent to be disparaged. In all other cases of amplification, if you take away the sublime, you will remove as it were the soul from the body.

[Ada Bertelsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Lo sublime de verdad eleva nuestra alma, como si fuera algo instintivo, y exultante de dignidad, rebosa alegría y orgullo, como si fuera la creadora de lo que ha oído."

Por un lado, debemos a Longino que se conserve uno de los fragmentos más extensos de Safo.

Por otro lado, para ser un tratado de preceptiva sobre lo sublime, Longino es bien poco sublime en su expresión. Escribir mejor que Aristóteles no es necesariamente un piropo; más bien, uno de los primeros requisitos para no ser un periodista.

No está mal, no me arrepiento de leerlo, pero no lo recomiendo en general.

[Josephus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually a much more engaging and interesting read than I was anticipating. I’d assumed it’d be rather dry and esoteric. I found the comparisons of authors and books to be most interesting, e.g. the Iliad vs. Odyssey, Plato vs. Lysias, etc.

I read the english text but was grateful for having the greek original on facing pages since much of the work is clearer in greek than in translation, though I did find the translation to be quite good.

The author (whoever he was) is also stylistically very enjoyable to read, which is fitting for a work of this nature.

I wouldn’t say this is a must read (unless you’re an aspiring classicist) or anything but it is very interesting as an early work of literary criticism—I could find myself agreeing with a lot of the author’s analyses, though I think some standards are taken too far. His ideal of the “sublime” seems to have almost a religious quality to it.

[ჩომ · Rating 5 out of 5]

ხელოვნება, ნამდვილი ხელოვნება, არ არის ის რისი შეფასებაც და გაანალიზებაც შესაძლებელია. ის უნდა გზარავდენ, მეხის დაცემასავით უნდა იყოს რომლის დანახვისას ან მოსმენისას უბრაკოდ უნდა იძვროდე თავში ყველა უბადრუჯი დიქრი უნდა ქრებიდეს და ამაღლებულით ივსებოდე.

[Eero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good job, "Dionysius Cassius Longinus"

[Kriti Chetri]

The things you read when you are english literature student (๑ت๑)ﾉ
Not judging, not rating, just reminding myself that I read it. (And will revise for exams too👩‍💻)

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pero lo más importante es el hecho mismo de que sólo el arte nos puede enseñar que ciertos rasgos de la literatura dependen únicamente de la disposición natural."

[Saga Adela]

I like this one

[Ray LaManna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work, written over 1900 years ago, still speaks to us about how to write like a genius. The author himself is a genius.

[Annie Xie · Rating 1 out of 5]

My IB english teacher made us talk about this for so god damn long just for me to be totally incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence 11 years later. Thanks a lot Thonginus