On the Sublime/Chapter 27
XXVII
Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of passion. Thus Hector in the Iliad
"With mighty voice called to the men of Troy
To storm the ships, and leave the bloody spoils:
If any I behold with willing foot
Shunning the ships, and lingering on the plain,
That hour I will contrive his death."[1]
The poet then takes upon himself the narrative part, as being his proper business; but this abrupt threat he attributes, without a word of warning, to the enraged Trojan chief. To have interposed any such words as "Hector said so and so" would have had a frigid effect. As the lines stand the writer is left behind by his own words, and the transition is effected while he is preparing for it.2 Accordingly the proper use of this figure is in dealing with some urgent crisis which will not allow the writer to linger, but compels him to make a rapid change from one person to another. So in Hecataeus: "Now Ceyx took this in dudgeon, and straightway bade the children of Heracles to depart. 'Behold, I can give you no help; lest, therefore, ye perish yourselves and bring hurt upon me also, get ye forth into some other land.'"3 There is a different use of the change of persons in the speech of Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, which places before us the quick turns of violent emotion. "Is there none to be found among you," he asks, "who even feels indignation at the outrageous conduct of a loathsome and shameless wretch who,—vilest of men, when you were debarred from freedom of speech, not by barriers or by doors, which might indeed be opened,"[2] etc. Thus in the midst of a half-expressed thought he makes a quick change of front, and having almost in his anger torn one word into two persons, "who, vilest of men," etc., he then breaks off his address to Aristogeiton, and seems to leave him, nevertheless, by the passion of his utterance, rousing all the more the attention of the court.4 The same feature may be observed in a speech of Penelope's—
"Why com'st thou, Medon, from the wooers proud?
Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord
To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer?
Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here!
Would God that here this hour they all might take
Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day
Make here your muster, to devour and waste
The substance of my son: have ye not heard
When children at your fathers' knee the deeds
And prowess of your king?"[3]
- ↑ Il. xv. 346.
- ↑ c. Aristog. i. 27.
- ↑ Od. iv. 681.