Longinus on the Sublime: The Profound Peroration

Using the work On the Sublime as a vessel, Longinus braves the waters of explanation, conquering with precision the tidal wave sublimity. With oars of rhetoric propelling him forward and a hull of literary allusions blighting the blasts of bewilderment that would befall his one-man crew, Captain Longinus and his greenhorn first mate, Terentianus, reach the dry land of literary unity and the fruit of undying works. Of all the portions in the voyage, the peroration (ch. 44) reveals Longinus’ artistry and expertise the most, for the rhetoric of it reflects all of the techniques that Longinus taught Terentianus along their route to Wisdom, their tropical destination. His work, whole by Aristotelian standards and eternal by sublime standards, swings full circle in the peroration. Longinus, au fait with the naivety of his shipmate, highlights in the rhetoric of his peroration the standard of excellence elucidated in the work in order to prevent Terentianus’ forgetting the uses of sublimity and to give an ending consummately pleasing to the soul.

As Longinus “make[s] a diagnosis of [the] matters” of his own work (6.1), so shall we make a diagnosis of his rhetoric in the peroration, which alludes to the body of his speech. Longinus alludes to the diction of his speech in the peroration several times. Longinus uses the term “collection of notes” in 1.2 to refer to his speech, and in the ultimate line of the peroration he recalls that he had “promised to write” a “collection of notes” (44.11). In the opening sentence of On the Sublime, Longinus criticizes Caecilius for failing to do anything of benefit to his reader. Longinus ends where he began by reminding Terintianus of the folly of those writers who would bombastically expound varied subjects “for the sake of praise and pleasure and not for the benefit derived from emulation and worthy esteem” (44.11). Maintaining a consistent abundance of sublimity, Longinus alludes even to individual metaphors from his speech. Recalling his description of Cicero as a conflagration, he writes, “acquisitiveness, if let entirely loose...would burn up the world with its vices” (44.10). By such allusions, Cicero jogs Tenentianus’ memory, keeping the astute pupil from drowning in the mass of information. Furthermore, Longinus’ emulating his past statements in the peroration as he does in the above examples recalls his references to the value of emulation (ch. 4, 12.4). 

In section six of the peroration, Longinus calls finding fault with the present “a peculiarity of human beings.” This sentiment is an echo of the same assertion made in chapter 33, in which Longinus argues that gazing too long at the past is a prodrome of the disease of forgetting present good. In the peroration, Longinus warns of the opposite extreme, forgetting the past (44.9). Longinus develops an intricate analogy between a sick man and a judge who accepts bribes: as the sick man has a body corrupted by disease, so the judge has a soul corrupted by immorality. Should all judges slip into the deep, dark depths of bribery, no acclaimed literary work would merit its praise, and even appreciation of things that were deemed good in the past would cease to exist. Bringing his argument full circle in the peroration, Longinus shows that neither forgetting the past, leading to a perpetuation of the same errors, nor fixing one’s gaze on the past, causing one to forget present blessing, better the present nor further sublimity. The aptness of this analogy in furthering Longinus’ own sublimity, however, does not cease at bringing an argument full circle. Longinus alludes to several other places in his speech with the analogy: the list of bribes and theme of “judgement” (ch. 7), the idea of fixing one’s gaze on an object (ch. 35), and the idea of writing not for present good but for “later fame” (ch. 14). 

Each of these cited passages are rafts to help one escape the clutches of the charybdis of the sea of explanation–blindness. In not accepting bribes–pairing this, of course, with the remaining constituents of sublimity–one can be sure to see “beyond [the] capacity” of most, creating a work “satisfying throughout all time and to all men” (7.2–7.3). In fixing one’s gauge on the eternal, one eschews such errors of measurement as those of which Socrates warns Polus, who erroneously conjectured a present pleasure better than lasting glory. Even the syntax of Longinus’ peroration reflects the rhetorical devices enumerated in the body of his work. He utilizes person shifts (cf. 26), he writes in the historical present (cf. 25), a reference to which even the captain of sternest critics would bow.

Longinus cites Timaeus’ “comparative judgment” between Alexander the Great and Isocrates in chapter four. The rhetoric of the peroration much resembles a comparative judgment in that it compares the proper use of the sublime, which benefits its reader, to the “philosopher” quoted in the opening of the forty-fourth chapter, whose writing in no way betters his readers. Longinus, building up the person and walling up his argument to knock him down later, calls the person a “philosopher” rather than a sophist because that title, amplifying the stature of the cited speaker, reflects the materialism of such writers—a true master of sublimity would know that titles do not matter. Longinus’ reference to useful learning in the first sentence of the peroration recalls his saying in chapter two that many had falsely taught that nature could never be bound to formula or technique, nor could sublimity. Longinus, however, disagrees with their assertions and notes that order “is a nature which underlies all things as a kind of first element and archetype of creating” (2.2).

Longinus maintains that Hyperides would be better than Demosthenes “if correctness were decided by number, not by true greatness” (34.1). This statement is echoed in the peroration in that Longinus, in Demosthenian form, peppers tropes throughout as an expert chef seasoning a choice cut of meat, rather than, in Hyperidian form, as an accident-prone child knocking an entire shaker of salt onto his plate. Longinus’ note that he would “not hesitate to occult what was left” recalls his remark in chapter 17 that “a figure is most excellent when the fact that it is a figure thoroughly escapes our notice.” What a true statement this is, as Longinus’ use of all of the devices aforementioned in his speech, keenly slipped into the rhetoric of the peroration, could be easily missed by a cursory reader. Similarly, Demosthenes is cited in chapter 32 as occulting–i.e. hiding, overpowering, eclipsing–the number of tropes by his fervent animus. Thus, Longinus again reflects not only the tropes discussed in his speech, but the literary style of the writers cited as using exceptional examples of said tropes. Longinus not only ties the peroration as a whole to the rest of the speech but also links the parts of the peroration. ‘Craving’ was the word used at the beginning of his reply to the philosopher” (footnote on out-electioneered, 232).

Longinus indicates in the opening of the peroration that he will discuss what “is left,” indicating the work is not yet whole but in need of a conclusion. In concluding in a way that utilizes his past assertions on sublimity, he properly develops his writing in one of the manners aforementioned: “strengthening arguments” (11.2). Longinus inserts in the peroration phrases such as “as no doubt many others” (44.1), “heaven knows,” and “as one might say” (44.6), recalling his chapter on insertion. Here, too, a conclusion must be inserted, and a brief one at that. Sublimity begets sublimity, and all the rest is history.