569. Golden Latin Artistry by L. P. Wilkinson- Summary

569.  Golden Latin Artistry by L. P. Wilkinson.  Cicero had long standing interest in sounds.  In De Oratore III.24  Crassus complains of half educated people who separate words from meaning as body from the soul, which cannot be done without the perishing of both. 

In his discussion of verbal music Wilkinson gives idea to the suggestion whether a writing is beautiful because of its ideas or because of its sounds.  Cicero would probably say that truly great literature would have both. And he would say they these are inseparable.

Wilkinson discusses whether letters/syllables can be euphonious and cacophonous.  Much argument here.  But the ancients would say yes.  Thybris was often preferred by Virgil over Tiberis.  A more pleasant sound.  Cicero preferred euphonious sounds as far as possible even to detriment of proper grammar.  All ancient critics agree that excessive sibilants were cacophonous.  Cicero found the letter “f’ most unpleasant.  The concept of “s” being cacophonous is not easy.  This was considered pretty:  si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae.  I suggest that the “v” helps make it so.  Some sounds are more sonorous than others.  Cicero preferred formarum over specierum due to ease of pronunciation.  Lucretius thought that mel (honey) was so named because the word was pleasant to relish in the mouth.  Aulus Gellius tells the story of Probus who used urbis for urbes.  With the “e” the breath is drawn in, without “e” the sound issues forth.  I find it fascinating that there are people who noticed such things and that these relate to meaning because  attractive words causes a person to pay more attention.

De Oratore III.171-2.  “Such a collocation of words should be preserved as to make your style continuous, coherent, smooth, even flowing.  This is achieved if you so manage the junction of words that they do not clash harshly nor gape too wide.”  Quintilian said that -ere for -erunt was invented to smooth out an otherwise harsh sound.  Aulus Gellius writes that Virgil rejected hic finis Priami as lacking harmony.  Thus he used haec finis Priami.  Finis is masculine and should have hic with it.

Alliteration correctly applies to initial letter but in literature initial letters of syllables also have a part.  It is used to make phrases memorable, distinctive, solemn, magical.  Thus it is used in proverbs, legal formulae and prayers.  Both alliteration and assonance are indigenous to Latin.  Cicero may be old fashioned in his use of assonance:  civem bonarum artium, bonarum partium, bonorum virorum.  But Cicero thought that it gave energy (vis) and grace (lepos) to a passage.  Anaphora is another form of repetition.  Homeoteleuthon is a form of rhyme.  Rhyme is more common after the caesura and the end of a line.  Virgil avoided this.  Perhaps it was not to his taste.

Meter may well have come from dancing.  Wilkinson suggests that it gives the heart of the reader a sympathetic pleasure akin to that of dancing.  In composition it is known that sometimes sounds appeared in the head before thought.  It is not easy to divorce sound from thought.  Meter creates a bond.

Vowels and consonants make up verbal music.  This consists of:
sonorous sounds
vowels modified by consonants
running together of vowels
avoidance of cacophony
smoothness
ease of utterance
variation of sounds
alliteration
assonance
rhyme.

This produces a music of sorts which is latent and has the potential to effect meaning which gives pleasure.  I think that this means that verbal music gives pleasure in two ways:

1.  Music is found in using vowels and consonants to create it.  But it is subtle.

2.  This music makes the idea presented have more meaning and a source of pleasure.

This fusion of sound and sense is the magic of the greatest poetry says Wilkinson.

Beauty sometimes is in conflict with expressiveness.  (Wilkinson prefers expressiveness to the word onomatopoeia.  Many ancients thought that much of language was naturally onomatopoetic)  Cicero says that sound and rhythm wait upon every whim of sense and leave no neutral tracts for beauty to cultivate.  Cicero calls this decorum, a word which he interestingly uses in De Officiis to describe fitting behavior.  For Cicero this embraced all parts of life in the manner of life and speech.  He is an interesting man.  Cicero sometimes comes under fire for sacrificing meaning to beauty of sound.  Bunk, but we will allow differences of opinion.  It seems that careful reading of what he has to say reveals that he has much of value to say.

Expressiveness.

Ancients often thought that language was natural.  What the heck does this mean?  Vos, tu and tibi shoot the lips out.  I direct myself to you with such words.  Nos, ego and mihi by the sound of the words I am drawn in to me.  Words for light often have the letter “l”.  Lux=light.  The tongue glides like light or curls like a flame.  In English flames leap.  They do not jump.  Flames lick but do not gnaw.  This is why this refers to onomatopoeia.  But Wilkinson prefers expressiveness.  Human speech arose out of generalized unconscious pantomime gesture language says Wilkinson.  What a fascinating idea.  The ancients thought that if one took advantage of these qualities of sounds produced by vowels and consonants and syllables that a sentence could be expressive and a delight to hear.  If something is a delight to hear it is more likely to be remembered.  Maybe even understood.

Expressiveness in literature.  The goal of an author is to keep a grip on this aspect of words, then select words with sounds, images which together express

1. the idea he has in mind
2.  use sounds to support that idea

Style should be appropriate to the subject matter.  This is decorum.  The letter “a” is sad and tragic.  Look at this example:

moriamur et in media arma ruamus.=
Let us die and into the midst of weapons let us rush.

Variation of expressive techniques.

2 parts to remember.  Delivery can have great impact on what someone wrote but the words used can of themselves have impact.  An example could be the use of “s” to generate hissing when angry.  But words themselves can have their own power and punch.

nec gemere aerea cessabit turtur ab ulmo

= nor will  the dove cease to coo from lofty elm.  There is a coo sound coming from turtur, which is the Latin word for dove.  Now think of an earlier statement.  Ancients thought that language was naturally onomatopoetic.

Sometimes rhythm can imitate sounds heard in life.  The galloping of horse can be heard here:

Half a league half a league onward (from Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade)

Sometimes the way the mouth moves produces something the author wants to suggest:

Pope:
with many a weary step and many a groan
up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone.

The “h” shows us that he pants.  He is describing Sisyphus.

Sometimes association works to create expressiveness.

Sound or rhythm is expressive by association of ideas says Wilkinson.  Example: feet used can influence what a word means.  Virgil uses ten “o” s to give a solemn religious tone to his prophesy in his 4th Eclogue.

The length of a word can strengthen a metaphor.  Look at this:

tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore=
and they stretched their hands with a love of the further shore.  The long word which takes longer to pronounce than the others helps to strengthen the metaphor.

Quintilian says that long syllables create heaviness,  loftiness, and adorned setting.  But common speech needs more short vowels.  There is something to this.  If I say- Life is replete with concern and difficulty.  This sounds more like it belongs in some philosophical discussion.  But - Life is a battle sounds more like it belongs in a letter to a friend.  Oh well, I tried.

Metaphor from word order.  Here synchysis is handy.  Look at this:
qui capite ipse sua in statuit vestigia sese=
who himself plants himself with his head on the place of his feet.  i.e. he is upside down.  So are the Latin words, sort of.

Anaphora can be very useful for metaphor.

Water water everywhere
and all the boards did shrink
water water everywhere
nor any drop to drink

Look too at the nature of the word water.  There is a soothing, pleasant sound to the word.  Accident?  It looks to me that the author took advantage of the sound that the word “water” makes.

Rhythm can make a metaphor.  Aeneas was hammered by Dido when he decided to leave Carthage.  And Virgil’s language reflects this.  But when he decided to leave, he had no trouble sleeping:

Aeneas celsa in puppi iam certus eundi
carpebat somnos rebus iam rite paratis=
Aeneas on the lofty deck now certain of departure
plucked sleep when matters now were rightly arranged

Look at the second line.  Four spondees in a row.  He was one sleepy boy.  He was comfortable with what he had to do.

Wilkinson’s list is very long of different possibilities.  He adds a caution.  It is a good one.  Just because one person agrees with the above and another does not does not mean that expressiveness (onomatopoeia) does not exist. 

Verse rhythm is a tuffy.  Cicero says that it is whatever can be measured by the ear.  I like this.  Not too complicated and functional.  Wilkinson here is confusing for me.  But does have good advice when he suggests reading Latin poetry as it were natural speech and let the meter make itself felt as undercurrent for the sake of interplay.  Only this way can the words be uttered as though they meant what they say, since the stress of the word will generally fall on the stem.

Dactylic verse.

Romans felt that the meter of a verse should emerge at the end of each line.  By this I mean that as a line of dactylic is read, the sense of verse becomes more and more clear.  To avoid monotony and to aid in this, they often used caesura.  This prevents the beginning of the line from sounding too much like the end.  Perhaps Latin poetry wanted to avoid any sing songy feel.

The reason the hexameters of Catullus reach the maturity of Virgil’s was due to Cicero.  He worked out many of the complex difficulties of adapting Greek hexameters to Latin.  This is one of the most profound statements in the whole book as far as the history of Latin literature goes.  I wish he had discussed it more fully.

Prose rhythm.

Cicero in the Orator says that all feet are mingled and jumbled up in prose because if we used the same one repeatedly it would be verse and prose ought not to be as rhythmic as verse.  Note that Cicero says as rhythmic as verse.  He wanted some rhythm in his prose.  The rhythmic qualities in prose alert the ear to verse which it likes and listens to hear more.

Clausula is the term used to discuss the ends of Cicero’s sentences.  It is the close of the sentence.  Where does the clausula begin?  Where the quantities of the syllables cease to be indifferent.  I think that there is not any question that Cicero paid attention to the manner in which his sentences ended.  But such a rule as the one just stated does not make it easy to decide just where a clausula begins. Or to find any ‘system’.  Think about it.  Every syllable is long or short.  So feet of some sort may be present anywhere in a sentence.  In fact Cicero makes this even more difficult because he says that rhythm is needed for the beginning of a sentence.  But the clausula (end) is the more important of the two.  On all of this there is great controversy.  Scholars seem to be looking for some overall formula which can be used to explain how Cicero composed.  But I suggest that the fact that there is debate on Cicero’s beginning of sentences, middle of sentence and the end of his sentences (clausulae) is a tribute to Cicero.  He did not want to be tied down to a fixed system.  He had a love of sound but the system is not nailed down.  Thus he could adjust what he had to say to the requirements of the moment and keep the listener’s attention because the listener could not know what new sounds lay in wait. Perhaps this is what Catullus admired in Cicero and found as a source of inspiration.  Romans were very sensitive to the quantity of vowels and syllables.  Cicero takes advantage of this.

The fact that authors came along who saw things differently and broke with Cicero’s system is sometimes cited as proof that Cicero’s style became viewed as bloated or boring.  I suggest that this reaction to Cicero was as much due to his primacy in so many aspects as his actual style.  He made himself a target because he loomed so large in all matters intellect.  How could these guys have come up with a new style without Cicero’s style to reflect upon?  Shakespeare is loved but imagine how dull English would be if everyone wrote the same way.

Cicero’s sentences are famous.  They are fascinating means of conveying thought.  Aristotle discussed the period.  A period is a sentence which has a beginning, middle and end.  It is of a size to be taken in in one view.  This aids in pleasure because it is easy to follow, there is pleasure in comprehending and the periodic system makes it easy to remember.  What lies at the heart of this is Aristotle’s search for the universal in this case that of beauty.  What in heavens sake do I mean by this?  Beauty depends chiefly on order, symmetry and limits.  The period has all of these.  There is order to the structure of the sentence, the period is symmetrical and there are limits- it comes to an end in proper form and time.  The period is sort of like a circle.  It is balanced, neat and free from straggling superfluity.  It is complete in itself.  The period is complete in itself.  The periodic style is often present in Catullus and with adjustments in Virgil and others. 

Asiatic style in its attempt to have the correct rhythm often used more words than necessary. Cicero criticizes the Asiatics for being wordy. . 

A period consists of members or phrases.  The last member needs to be longer than the others.  Here is famous example:

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.

This rule Cicero does not always adhere to. Neither did President Lincoln.  Just as Catullus does not always stick to the rules.  Rules are important to have frame of reference for change and new expressions.

Tricolons have almost endless varieties.  The simplest is:

Veni, vidi, vici.

Cicero was aware that oratorical artistry may make judges suspicious of sincerity and that they were being led around by the nose.  I think that modern criticisms of Cicero too often do not take into account that his speeches were often instant successes in the schools.  Also he was aware of the concern.  When one looks at Cicero’s Pro Archia and then the Ninth Philippic, it is very clear that Cicero was constantly performing self-examination.  His style was evolving and changing as time went by.

Cicero in De Oratore has Antonius say that history requires a smooth flowing, symmetrical and extensive sentences.  In other words history needs the kind of sentences which Cicero wrote.   It seems that although Cicero’s style is given some credit for influencing Livy and a little for Sallust, the author suggests that Cicero’s style was not adaptable to history. I do not know, not being a master in these matters, but in book three of De Oratore, Cicero’s introduction to the book is an example of they way he would write history.  It is engaging and interesting.  In fact when it so quickly comes to an end, I am always left hoping for more.  His style was/is adaptable to all sorts of uses. I remember in a graduate class years ago the Professor I had pointed this passage out.