On Literature

by Umberto Eco

  And there is no Russian formalist, no Prague-school or French structuralist, no Belgian rhetorician or German "Stilkritiker" who has spent as much energy as Longinus (even though only over a dozen pages or so) in exploring the strategies of the Sublime, and showing how they work. I mean showing how they work as they come into being and are then arranged on the linear surface of the text, reflecting the deepest workings of style back toward the readers eyes.

  And in fact Longinus, Pseudo or not, lists the five sources of the sublime: the capacity "to conceive noble thoughts," the ability "to display and arouse noble passions," the way "to create appropriate rhetorical figures," ingenuity in nobility of expression through "the choice of lexis and the accurate use of figures," and lastly the "general overall arrangement of the text." These are the sources of a dignified and elevated style. Because above anything else Longinus knew, against those who in his time identified the semiotic passion of the Sublime with the physical experience of excitement, that "there are some passions which are very far from the Sublime, and rather squalid, such as lamentation, dejection and fear, and at the other extreme many examples of a Sublime devoid of emotion."

  And we can see Longinus embark on his search for the sublime photosynthesis that produces the feeling of Sublimity: he shows how in order to produce an effect of grandeur in describing the Divine, Homer gives us the sense of a cosmic distance by way of a brilliant hypotyposis, and conveys the sense of this cosmic expanse through a prolonged description of physical distances; elsewhere he sees how Sappho conveys interior pathos just by bringing to the foreground a battle that involves the eyes, tongue, skin, and ears; or he contrasts a shipwreck in Homer with one by Aratus of Soloi, where the latter in a sense anesthetizes the imminence of death with a simple choice of metaphor ("Only a thin bark keeps Hades at bay"), whereas in Homer Hades is not mentioned, and for that very reason looms even larger. We see him studying strategies for amplification and hypotyposis, exploring the whole panoply of figures, asyndeta, sorites, and hyperbata, and noting how conjunctions weaken the discourse, polyptoton reinvigorates it, and shifting tenses dramatize it.

  But one should not think of this as nothing more than a series of stylistic analyses. Longinus deals with the opposition and interchange of characters, the shift from one verbal tense to another, the way the author addresses the reader, or identifies himself with the character, and examines the grammar of these narrative manipulations. He does not ignore periphrases and circumlocutions, idiomatic phrases, metaphors, similes, and hyperboles. It is all one huge stylistic-rhetorical machine—of narrative structures, of voices, looks, and tenses—which is seen at work, analyzing texts and comparing them, in order to reveal and make us admire the strategy of the Sublime.

  It seems that only the simple-minded fall into excitement, while Longinus knows the chemistry of their passions, and for that reason enjoys even greater pleasure.

  In section 39 Pseudo-Longinus sets out to deal with "the compositional harmony in the arrangement of words," a harmony that is not only a natural positioning aimed at producing persuasion and pleasure but also an astonishing tool for achieving sublimity and pathos. Longinus knows (because of the ancient Pythagorean tradition) that the flute generates passions in listeners, reducing them to a state of frenzy like so many Corybants, even though they are not musical experts; he knows that the sounds of the lyre, which on their own are devoid of sense, produce an effect of enchantment. But he knows that the flute obtains its effects "by giving a certain movement to the rhythm," and the lyre acts on the soul because of its "varying modulations" and the blending of its harmonies. What he wants to explain is not the effect, which is obvious to everyone, but the grammar of its production.

  It is in this context that, when he moves on to verbal harmony, "which captures the soul along with the ear," he finds himself analyzing a phrase of Demosthenes that seems to him not just miraculous but sublime: "This decree made the danger looming over the city move on, like a cloud." And he adds:

  Here the concept is as noble as the rhythm. The entire sentence is expressed in dactylic rhythm, the most noble rhythm and the one most suitable for producing grandeur, and it is for this reason that it is typical of the heroic meter, the finest we know. Try to move the words from their present position to anywhere you like: "This decree made, like a cloud, the danger looming over the city move on," or try to get rid of just one syllable, saying "moved it on, like a cloud," and you will understand how much the harmony is consonant with its sublimity. In fact the expression "like a cloud" (hosper nephos) has a long first foot, with four beats; but if you eliminate one syllable and have "like cloud" (hos nephos), you instantly mutilate its grandeur by this reduction. On the other hand, if you add a syllable, saying "made the danger move on, as though it were (hosperei) a cloud," you are saying the same thing but you do not have the same rhythmic cadence, because by lengthening the final syllables the spark of the sublime is weakened and diluted.

  Even without checking this against the original Greek, the spirit of this analysis is clear. Pseudo-Longinus is performing textual semiotics. And he is performing an act of criticism—at least according to the canons of his time—and explaining to us why we find something sublime, and what would need to be changed in the body of the text to lose that effect. And so, right from the most distant origins (for if we go back even further, to Aristotle's Poetics, we find the same thing), people knew how to read a text, and how one must not be afraid of close reading, nor of a metalanguage that sometimes seems terroristic (for Longinus's time his was no less terroristic than the metalanguage that terrorizes many people today).

  Consequently, we have to remain faithful to our origins, as regards both the concept of style and that of true criticism, as well as the concept of analyses of textual strategies. What the best semiotics of style has achieved and continues to achieve is the same as what our predecessors accomplished. Our only commitment is, by serious and continued work, without giving in to any blackmail, to humiliate those who are our inferiors.

  Final address at the Convegno dell'Associazione Italian di Studi Semiotici on Lo stile—Gli stili, held in Feltre, in September 1995.

  LES SEMAPHORES SOUS LA PLUIE

  How is space represented in words? This problem has a history of its own, and the rhetorical tradition classifies the techniques of verbal representation of space (as of every other visual experience) under the heading of hypotyposis, or "evidentia," which is sometimes considered the same as, and sometimes judged to have affinities with, "illustratio," "demonstrado," "ekphrasis" or "de-scriptio," "enargeia," etcetera.

  Unfortunately, all definitions of hypotyposis are circular, which is to say that they define as hypotyposis that figure through which visual experiences are represented or evoked through verbal procedures. Look at the definitions that come from the major exponents of classical rhetoric, from Hermogenes to Longinus, from Cicero to Quintilian, which I quote from Lausberg without specifying who said what, since one seems to borrow from the other: (i) "credibilis rerum imago quae velut in rem praesentem perducere audientes videtur" (a believable image of something that seems to lead the public into its very presence); (ii) "proposita forma rerum ita expressa verbis ut cerni potius videatur quam audiri" (a form of things proposed by the speaker in words in such a way that they seem to be visible rather than audible); (iii) "quae tam dicere videtur quam ostendere, praesentans oculis quod demonstrat" (things that the speaker seems to display as much as to say, presenting before our eyes what he is trying to show); (iv) "quasi gestarum sub oculis inductio" (a kind of parading before the eyes of things that have been done), and so on.

  I have before my eyes (but this time in the literal sense of the expression) the paper on hypotyposis given by Hermann Parret at the Decade de Cerisy, which took place in July 1996, and here too this expedition into the forest of the most modern theoreticians does not seem to yield appreciable results.* Dumarsais reminds us that hypotyposis means image, or painting, and that it comes about "w
hen, in descriptions, one depicts facts that are spoken about as though what is described were genuinely before our eyes; the speaker displays, as it were, what he recounts..." (Des Tropes), and that for others this figure of speech "allows us to touch reality with our fingers"—a fine metaphor, to be sure, but using one figure of speech to define another is not very helpful. All the more so since, as Aristotle observes, a figure that almost places things before our eyes is a metaphor—and no one will claim that a metaphor is the same thing as hypotyposis. The truth is that if by definition rhetorical figures endow a discourse with brilliance, vivacity, and persuasiveness, and if, according to Horace, one has to admit that poetry is to a certain extent "ut pictura" (like painting), then all such figures surprise the reader or listener and place something before their eyes in one way or another. But if that were the case, and if this metaphor were too generic, where would hypotyposis end up?

  Luckily, at those very points where theoreticians are incapable of telling us what hypotyposis is, they are nearly always able to provide us with magnificent examples of it. The first three come from Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria, 8.3.63–69). His first one quotes a line from the Aeneid(5.426) where two boxers "stood up instantly erect on the tips of their toes." The second quotes Cicero's Verrine Orations (5.33.86): "He stood on the shore, wearing sandals, with a red pallium and a long tunic down to his feet, leaning on a vulgar little woman, he, the praetor of the Roman people," and Quintilian wonders if there is anyone so devoid of imagination as not to be able to visualize this scene and its protagonists, and even more than is said, to see their faces and eyes and their obscene caresses, and the uneasiness of the onlookers. The third example, also from Cicero, is a fragment of his speech for Q. Gallius, and refers to a dissolute symposium: "I seemed to see people going in and coming out, some staggering in drunkenness, others yawning from the drunken excess of the day before. The floor was filthy, spattered with wine, and covered with garlands of faded flowers and fish bones."

  His fourth example goes like this: "Undoubtedly, in fact, whoever says 'a city has been captured,' associates with that phrase the idea of all the horrors that such a calamity usually entails, but this kind of concise statement does not arouse profound emotion. If instead the concepts contained in a single word have the chance to expand, they will set before you flames spreading through houses and temples, the roar of crashing buildings and the indistinct uniform rumble produced by various sounds, the uncertain flight of some people, the last desperate embraces of others, the howling of infants and women, and the old people who have remained alive, unluckily for them, until that day; and then the devastation of things both sacred and profane, the milling around of those carrying off booty and coming back for more, and the prisoners, in chains, being pushed along, each one by his own torturer, and the mother trying not to let her child be taken away from her, and the struggle among the victors..."

  Similarly, Dumarsais suggests the following extract from Racine's Phèdre as an example of hypotyposis:

  Cependant sur le dos de la plaine liquide

  S'élève à gros bouillons une montagne humide;

  L'onde approche, se brise, et vomit à nos yeux,

  Parmi des flots d'écume, un monstre furieux.

  Son front large est armé de cornes menaçantes;

  Tout son corps est couvert d'écaillés jaunissantes;

  Indomptable taureau, dragon impétueux,

  Sa croupe se recourbe en replis tortueux...

  Meanwhile on the surface of the ocean's plains

  A watery mountain arises amidst great froth;

  The wave approaches, breaks, and spews forth before our eyes,

  Amidst the spray of foam, a furious monster;

  Its broad forehead is armed with menacing horns,

  All his body is covered with yellowish scales;

  This indomitable bull, this aggressive dragon,

  Has a croup that curves round in tortuous curls...

  If we consider the four examples from Quintilian, we see that in the first all that is mentioned is a physical posture (and the reader is invited, as it were, to imagine the scene). The second describes a pose with a certain amount of spite; the solemnity of the red pallium is set against the vulgarity of that little woman ^ muliercula '), leading the addressee to notice this clash. In the third passage what makes the description interesting is not only its greater precision and length but the unpleasantness of the things described (we must not forget that in the classical art of memory a monstrous or terrible image had more chance of being remembered by the speaker and therefore of being evoked at the right moment). The fourth example is not a specific instance, but it suggests what a detailed and moving description of an extended sequence of actions might be like, and I deliberately describe the dramatic sequence of these actions as if I were discussing a cinematic sequence.

  In the case of the Racine passage we have something even more complex: the description of various phases of a natural event, but with continuous zoomorphic transformation of each of the wavy forms that are listed. It is difficult to resist the temptation, or the habit, of imagining them visually. It might seem irreverent to cite Walt Disney and Snow White's flight into the woods (though this irreverence would be lessened if we supposed that Walt Disney had poetic procedures of this very type in mind), but in reality both Racine and Walt Disney are simply following one of the most natural tendencies in human beings, namely, giving substance to shadows, or, rather, seeing threatening, animal forms in the shapeless darkness of nature in turmoil (and in this context Parret rightly sees hypotyposis as one of the figures that leads to the production of the sublime).

  What I think we can say, however, is that in these examples we are faced with differing descriptive and narrative techniques, which have in common only the fact that the addressee draws a visual impression from them (if he wants to—in other words, if he wants to collaborate with the text). This means I can therefore say that hypotyposis does not exist as a specific rhetorical figure. Language allows us to describe faces, forms, positions, "scenes," and sequences of action, and it allows us to do this continually in everyday life (otherwise we could not even say, "Could you please go to the hardware store and get me something that looks like this"); all the more so, then, does it encourage us to do this for artistic reasons. However, it allows this to happen by way of a multiplicity of techniques, which are not reducible to a formula or rule, as can be the case with real tropes and rhetorical figures like synecdoche, hyperbaton, zeugma, and even—to some extent—metaphor.

  All we need to do then is to proceed to a typology of techniques for representing or evoking space. Except that at this point we really need to ask ourselves what is meant by space—and we cannot avoid asking ourselves an analogous question about time.

  There is Newtonian space and time, which exist as absolute entities, and Kantian space and time, which exist as pure intuitions and conditions that are a priori of experience. There is the Bergsonian contrast between clock time and the time of internal duration, and there is the measurable space of Cartesian geometry and the lived space of phenomenology. It is not a question of privileging one or the other, since language always allows us to speak of these things, and we can say without difficulty how many millions of miles we need to travel to reach Alpha Centauri or to make us undergo (or, rather, suffer) an interminable journey between Florence and Fiesole, not to mention a voyage around one's own room (in Tristram Shandy the discussion between two characters coming down a staircase takes up three chapters).

  If we wanted to rewrite Lessing's Laocoon today (after the invention of new mimetic techniques like cinema), we would have to ask ourselves if a division between temporal arts and spatial arts still makes sense, and—if we regard such a division as still valid—ask how spatial arts can represent time and temporal arts represent space.

  In the meantime, there can still be many reflections on how spatial arts represent space. The classic example of this is perspective, where a
two-dimensional physical surface produces three-dimensionality as its proper content, and where a minimal portion of representational surface can express a vast expanse of space: this is realized by anyone who, after long contemplation of it in various reproductions, finally sees Piero della Francesca's Flagellation in the Ducal Palace at Urbino and is amazed at how such a small frame can contain what is perceived to be such a vast space.

  I have dealt with the question as to how the arts of space represent time, or actually imply the time of their own contemplation, elsewhere. * Phenomenology is vast and requires first and foremost an analysis of the various relations between what Genette calls signifying spatiality and signified spatiality (and which for reasons that will become clear later I would prefer to refer to as spatiality of expression and spatiality of content). There are paintings that suggest a sort of freezing of the moment, like the Annunciation by Lotto, where Mary's gesture of surprise is caught in the moment a cat darts across the room, or the slash by Lucio Fontana, a snapshot of the lightning movement of the blade that has cut through the stretched canvas.

  But when one thinks carefully about it, there is nothing unusual in the fact that a limited portion of space, which of itself is atemporal, can express an instant. The problem arises when you ask yourself how you can express a long period of time through portions of space. And you discover that, in order to express a long period of time you generally need a lot of space. There are stories in painting that represent a century-long succession of events through a series of frames, as happens with comic strips; and there are others that do so through the repeated visual presentation of the same characters in different hairstyles, situations, and ages; and these are all cases where an abundance of space is required to convey an abundance of time, and not only an abundance of signifying space, but also of the (semantic, not pragmatic) space that the beholder has to traverse. To grasp the flow of time in Piero's series of frescoes on the Finding of the True Cross in Arezzo you have to move, and not only with your eyes, but also with your feet, and you have to walk even more to follow the whole story narrated by the Bayeux tapestry. There are works that require a long time to circumnavigate, and a long period of attention to their minutest details, such as a Gothic cathedral. A sculpture that appears as a little ivory cube can be experienced in a second of contemplation (even though I believe it should be touched and rotated in order to grasp all its facets), but a cube in which every side was of one million by one million kilometers has to be circumnavigated, maybe with the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey, otherwise one would not grasp its megagalactic sublimity.