RAT Re: TravSD and Grandma

[Chris Jeffries <cjeffries@seanet.com>]

I'll wager that Trav's only point, really, was that there are more 
important and interesting things to do than police each other's grammar.  
But while we're on great writers and "rules," (which I _do_ think can be 
worth discussing), here, for anyone interested, is what Longinus said in 
"On the Sublime," a guide to good writing from around the third century.

(Personally, I don't think the issue needs to be as either/or as we, or 
Longinus, tend to make it.  And please don't ask me what the hell is 
meant by "the flame of their onset" -- I don't pretend to know.)    

"Or should we not discuss this problem in general terms: which is to be 
preferred in poetry or in prose, great writing with occasional flaws or 
moderate talent which is entirely sound and faultless?  And further, 
should the prize go to the greater or the more numerous virtues?  These 
questions are very pertinent in a discussion of great writing and they 
certainly require an answer.  I am well aware that supreme genius is 
certainly not at all free from faults.  Preciseness in every detail 
incurs the risk of pettiness, whereas with the very great, as with the 
very rich, something must inevitably be neglected.  It is perhaps also 
inevitable that inferior and average talent remains for the most part 
safe and faultless because it avoids risk and does not aim at the 
heights, while great qualities are always precarious because of their 
very greatness.  Nor am I unaware of this further point: that in all 
human endeavors it is natural for weaknesses to be more easily 
recognized; the memory of failures remains ineffaceable while successes 
are easily forgotten.

"I have myself drawn attention to not a few faults in Homer and other 
very great writers.  These faults displeased me, but I did not consider 
them to be willful mistakes but rather lapses and oversights due to the 
random carelessness and inattention of genius.  In any case, it is my 
conviction that greater talents, even if not sustained throughout, should 
get our vote for their nobility of mind if for no other reason.  
Apollonius is an impeccable poet in the _Argonautica_, and, except for a 
few eternals, Theocritus is equally successful in bucolic poetry, but 
would you rather be Homer or Apollonius?  The _Erigone_ of Eratosthenes 
is a flawless little poem, whereas Archilochus sweeps along with many 
structural faults but with that outpouring of divine spirit which it is 
hard to bring under any law.  Is Eratosthenes the greater poet?  Would 
you choose to be Bacchylides rather than Pindar in lyric poetry?  Or, in 
tragedy, Ion of Chios rather than Sophocles?  The impeccable poets have 
written with beauty and elegance, but Pindar and Sophocles illumine all 
things by the flame of their onset, even though that flame is often 
unaccountably quenched and they sink to a lamentable level.  Yet no sane 
man would count all the plays of Ion to be worth as much as the one play, 
_Oedipus_."