The Sublime
| On
the Sublime |
| Longinus, or Pseudo-Longinus |
| A
classical rhetorician, probably of the 1st century A.D. |
Translation
of the Greek word hypsos, which is also translated as height or elevation and can refer to character, speech, or literal
space |
“The
Sublime leads the listeners not to persuasion but to ecstasy. What
is wonderful goes always together with a sense of dismay and prevails
over what is merely convincing or delightful, since persuasion, as a
rule, is within everyone’s grasp, while the Sublime, which gives
speech an invincible power, rises above every listener.” |
| “Nothing reaches great eloquence so surely as genuine passion in the right place; it breathes the vehemence of frenzy and divine possession, and makes the very words inspired” |
“The
silence of Ajax in the book of the Lower World [in The Odyssey],
is great, and more sublime than any words” |
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