Longinus

Longinus. On the Sublime. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 1991.
Originally published c. 1st-century AD.

Context
The writer, Longinus, studied a work on great writing (by Caecilius) with his friend, Terentianus. Now Longinus is expanding upon Caecilius’ subject to Terentianus.

Regarding the literary critic or reader
• “…literary judgment is the last outgrowth of long experience” (9).
• “…these eminent personages are present in our minds and raise us to a higher level of imaginative power” (23).
• “…man can easily understand what is useful or necessary, but he admires what passes his understanding” (48).

Attributes of great writing
1. “…great passages have a high distinction of thought and expression to which great writers owe their supremacy and their lasting renown” (4).
2. “Great writing does not persuade; it takes the reader out of himself” (4).
3. “The startling and amazing is more powerful than charming and persuasive, if it is indeed true that to be convinced is usually within our control whereas amazement is the result of an irresistible force beyond the control of any audience” (4).
4. “…greatness appears suddenly; like a thunderbolt it carries all before it and reveals the writer’s full power in a flash” (4).
5. “The truly great can be pondered again and again; it is difficult, indeed impossible to withstand, for the memory of it is strong and hard to efface” (10).
6. “…truly great and beautiful writing [is] that which satisfies all men at all times…” (10).
7. “…nothing contributes to greatness as much as noble passion in the right place…” (11).
8. “To select the most vital [features of a situation] and to relate them to one another to form a unified whole is an essential case of great writing” (17).
9. “…if a man is actually afraid to utter anything that looks beyond his own life and time, then his mind’s conceptions are destined to be imperfect and blind…” (23).

Loginus’ framework for sublime writing
1. Vigor of mental conception.
2. Strong and inspired emotion.
3. Adequate fashioning of figures.
a. Figures--literary devices like apostrophe, anastrophe, asyndeton, anaphora, diatypsis, periphrasis, etc.--should be well-placed. Essentially this means using the figure that best matches the intended effect.
4. Nobility of diction.
5. Dignified and distinguished word-arrangement.

Other notes
1. Longinus points to the concept of the agon (i.e. contest; court hearing) between great writers as a pathway to successive great writing.
2. “…inferior and average talent remains for the most part safe and faultless because it avoids risk and does not aim at the heights, while great qualities are always precarious because of their very greatness”(45).

Why aren’t there more great writers?
For Longinus, there are two reasons why genius is rare: money and pleasure. These two things deaden our motives and sensibilities.

The big question
“[W]hich is to be preferred in poetry or in prose, great writing with occasional flaws or moderate talent which is entirely sound and faultless? (44)”… (plus d'informations)

It surprises me that Longinus is not as well as known as I think he should be, given the influence of his ideas. I'll say this, though: anyone who cares about putting words together in order to express something of him or herself to the world should read On the Sublime. "Longinus" (the identity of the man who wrote this collection of writings has never been clearly established by scholars) was one of the earliest thinkers (around the first century AD) who saw in words their ability, given the proper composition, to transcend the human: "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 had ourselves produced what we had heard." Though poets, dramatists, and orators should aim for this kind of excellence and grandeur, the sublime is hardly perfect in its manifestations, even among the best composers of words. He calls certain sections of Homer's Odyssey "nonsense" and criticizes Plato for getting too bogged down with metaphors. Yet he will always acknowledge with much admiration the flashes of innate brilliance of both (especially Homer's verses from the Iliad). Longinus defines "five sources of sublimity", which, in my opinion, are really five criteria for excellent writing (of any kind): great ideas, inspired passion, effective use of rhetoric, appropriate diction and figurative language, and the effective arrangement of words. I especially like what he says about the passions, emphasizing that strong emotions are not enough to create works of art that can elevate the human soul. Much of what Longinus says of the sublime has been redefined and redeveloped by many thinkers since then and seems almost common knowledge, even intuitive, to any conscientious artist. This rather short work is relatively easy to read (compared to the Poetics, let's say) and easy to appreciate. What he does very well is support his points with concrete examples from literature, and in that respect, Longinus is really my kind of literary critic: a close "reader" of texts and an analyzer of words for their rhetorical effects. This is one of my favorite works of literary criticism, ever. I wouldn't call this heavily theoretical at all; in fact, it is very accessible and I highly recommend it. Whenever I try to write something, poetry, I'll think about On The Sublime, even re-read it as I did this evening, and remind myself again that there is so much more to transcendence than powerful feelings. Since my academic background is rhetoric and philosophy, my understanding of writing and art follows much of what Longinus says: literature is as much about ideas and technique as it is about Romantic passion. Good literature that transcends requires a careful balance of both.… (plus d'informations)