Classical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic
1. The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style
The coincidence of rhetoric and poetic is in style. They differ typically
in movement or composition; they have a common ground in diction. And in
this common ground each influenced the other from the beginning of
recorded criticism. Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of
the sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets,[86] while the
modern student, Norden, asserts that the poets learned from the
sophists.[87] The evidence at least points to a very marked similarity
between the styles of the sophists and of the poets in the fourth century
B.C. This is well illustrated by the literary controversy between
Isocrates and Alcidamas, both sophists and both students of the famous
Gorgias. Alcidamas reproaches Isocrates because his discourses, so
elaborately worked out with polished diction, are more akin to poetry than
to prose. Isocrates cheerfully admits the accusation, and prides himself
on the fact, affirming that his listeners take as much pleasure in his
discourses as in poems.[88]
That there are characteristic differences in style between rhetoric and
poetic Aristotle justly shows when he asserts that while metaphor is
common to both, it is more essential to poetic. Consequently in the
_Rhetoric_ he refers to the _Poetics_ for a fuller discussion of
metaphor.[89] At the same time he says that metaphor deserves great
attention in prose because prose lacks other poetical adornment.
Furthermore, epithets and compound words are appropriate to verse but not
to prose. And though both verse and oratorical prose should be rhythmical,
a set rhythm, a meter, is appropriate only to verse.[90]
A distinction between the style of poetic and of rhetoric similar to that
of Aristotle is maintained by Cicero, but the distinction was losing its
sharpness. In the _Orator_ he considers the orator and the poet as similar
in style, but not identical. Formerly rhythm and meter were the
distinguishing marks of the poet, but the orators in his days, he says,
made increasing use of rhythm. Meter is a vice in an orator and should be
shunned. The poet has greater license in compounding and inventing words.
Both prose and verse, he adds, may be characterized by brilliant imagery
and headlong sweep.[91] The only essential difference between Cicero's
treatment of style and that of Aristotle is that whereas Aristotle had
shown imagery to be an integral part of poetic, Cicero felt it both in
poetic and in rhetoric to be superadded as a decoration. Whether or not
this difference was caused by lack of discrimination on the part of
Cicero, his position was at least in line with a tendency which in later
criticism received increasing development. Both the poet and the orator,
he says, use the same methods of ornament,[92] and the orator uses almost
the language of poetry.[93] And again, in a phrase which was taken up and
repeated for fifteen hundred years, the poets are nearest kin to the
orators.[94]
2. The Florid Style in Rhetoric and in Poetic
But the public interest in style was increasingly comparable to that in
athletic agility. As Socrates applauded the dancing girl who leaped
through the dagger-studded hoop,[95] the popular audience of imperial Rome
was delighted at a clever turn of speech, a surprising rhythm, or a
startling comparison. Literary study of style in occasional oratory must
have been extensive and extravagant at a very early date, to judge by the
rebukes of such practical speakers as Alcidamas. Moreover, such stylistic
artifice as was practiced and taught by Gorgias, Isocrates, and other
sophists crept into tragedy, says Norden, beginning with Agathon.[96] The
result was that with the poets style became as it had become with the
sophists, an end in itself. The epideictic orators became less orators and
more poets, and the poets cultivated less the characteristic vividness and
movement of poetic than those turns of style which began in oratory.
Thus it was very natural that the discussions of artistic prose in the
treatises of the later rhetoricians should be copiously illustrated by
quotations from the poets, and that the poets should, in turn, be
influenced in the direction of further sophistical niceties by the
rhetorical treatises on style, such as those of Demetrius and Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, who devoted whole treatises to style alone. The obsession
of style is well exemplified by a comparison of Dionysius and Longinus in
their discussion of Sappho's literary art. Longinus praises her passion,
and her masterful selection of images which realize it for the reader,
while Dionysius, no less enthusiastic, points out that in the ode which he
quotes there is not a single case of hiatus. Dionysius is here much the
more characteristic of his age, as he is in his belief that there is very
little difference indeed between prose and verse. Longinus, while showing
the relations of rhetoric and poetic, keeps the two apart; Dionysius draws
them together. To Dionysius the best prose is that which resembles verse
although not entirely in meter, and the best poetry that which resembles
beautiful prose. By this he means that the poet should use enjambment
freely and should vary the length and form of his clauses, so that the
sense should not uniformly conclude with the metrical line.[97] In this
regard he would approve of Shakespeare's later blank verse much more than
of his earlier because it is freer and more like conversation. Thus, to
Dionysius, the diction of prose and the diction of poetry approach each
other as a limit.
3. The False Rhetoric of the Declamation School
Later antiquity carried the mingling further in the same direction. As
time went on, the over-refinement and literary sophistication of the
florid school of oratory became more and more powerful. The puritan
reaction of the Roman Atticists in the direction of the simplicity of
Lysias defeated itself in over emphasis and ended in establishing coldness
and aridity as literary ideals. Such a jejune style could never hold a
Roman audience, and Cicero in theory and in practice took as model not
only Demosthenes, but also Isocrates. As Roman liberty was lost under the
Caesars, style very naturally assumed greater and greater importance.
Bornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates
of the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the
orators sank back in lassitude on the remaining harmless but unreal
occasional oratory and on the fictitious declamations of the schools.[98]
In these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such
imaginary questions as this: A reward is offered to one who shall kill a
tyrant. A. enters the palace and kills the tyrant's son, whereupon the
father commits suicide. Is A. entitled to the reward? In the repertory of
Lucian occurs a show piece on each side of this proposition. For two
hundred years there had been no pirates in the Mediterranean; yet in the
declamation schools pirates abounded, and questions turned upon points of
law which never existed or could exist in actual society. The favorite
cases concerned the tyranny of fathers, the debauchery of sons, the
adultery of wives, and the rape of daughters. In the procedure of the
declamation schools the boys arose and delivered their speeches with
frequent applause from the other students and from their parents. The
master would criticise the speeches and, when the students had finished,
would himself deliver a speech which was supposed to outshine those of his
pupils and give promise of what he could teach them.[99]
The utter unreality and hollowness of such rhetoric could show itself no
better than in contrast with the practical oratory of the law courts.
Albucius, a famous professor of the schools, once pleaded a case in court.
Intending to amplify his peroration by a figure he said, "Swear, but I
will prescribe the oath. Swear by the ashes of your father, which lie
unburied. Swear by the memory of your father!" The attorney for the other
side, a practical man, rose--"My client is going to swear," he said. "But
I made no proposal," shouted Albucius, "I only employed a figure." The
court sustained his opponent, whose client swore, and Albucius retired in
shame to the more comfortable shades of the declamation schools, where
figures were appreciated.[100] But in spite of the ridiculous performance
of the professors of the schools when they did come out into the sunlight,
in spite of the protests of Tacitus who complained justly that debased
popular taste demanded poetical adornment of the orator,[101] style
continued to be loved for its own sake, extravagant figures of speech were
applauded, and verbal cleverness and point were strained for. As Bornecque
has shown, the fact that the rhetoric of the declamation schools was so
unreal, so preoccupied with imaginary cases, and so given over to
attainment of stylistic brilliancy, in no small measure explains the loss
in late Latin literature of the sense of structure. "It is not
surprising," says Bornecque, "that during the first three centuries of the
Christian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from
Latin literature."[102] Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well
constructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste
than the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca.
4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric
As style gained this preponderence in rhetoric, it continued to increase
its hold on poetic. While the rhetoricians were exemplifying from the
poets their schemes and tropes, their well joined words, "smooth, soft as
a maiden's face,"[103] the poets on their part were assiduously practicing
all the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age
is rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged
clever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not
received their education in the only popular institutions of higher
instruction--the declamation schools. The fustian which passed for poetry
and equally well for history is well illustrated by the contempt of the
hard-headed Lucian for those historians who were unable to distinguish
history from poetry. "What!" he exclaims, "bedizen history like her
sister? As well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up
with purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his
cheeks; faugh, what an object one would make of him with such
defilements!"[105] But meretricious ornament was popular, and poets,
historians, and orators alike scrambled to see who could most adorn his
speech. Quintilian's pleas for the purer taste of a former age fell on
deaf ears, and despite his warnings orators imitated the style of the
poets, and the poets imitated the style of the orators.[106] Gorgias may
or may not have learned his style from the ancient poets of Greece, but
the poets of the silver age learned from the tribe of Gorgias.
Not only did poetry and oratory suffer from the same bad taste in
straining for brilliance of style, but in practice, as Bornecque has
shown, both poetry and oratory suffered for lack of structure. The poets
paid so much attention to style that they neglected plot construction and
the vivid realization of character and situation. The orators paid so much
attention to style that they lost the art of composing sentences, and of
arranging sound arguments in such a way as to persuade an audience. In
effect there was a tendency for the late Latin writers to ignore those
elements of structure and movement wherein poetry and oratory most differ,
and stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in
common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between
poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus
Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or
a poet?"[107]