Project Gutenberg #17957
On the Sublime
Longinus
50The ancient treatise on what makes writing great: grand thought, strong feeling, figures, noble diction, and dignified composition, in H. L. Havell's translation with Andrew Lang's introduction.
Project Gutenberg #17957 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for The Missing Workbook from public-domain source metadata
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... The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and “torrent rapture” to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: “Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell.” And the words of Eurylochus in the Odyssey—
“We passed at thy command the woodland’s shade; We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade.”
Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once halts and hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure Asyndeton.