Society and solitude: Twelve chaptersEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century
For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must still be required,
namely, a reinforcing of man from events, so as to give the double
force of reason and destiny. In transcendent eloquence, there was
ever some crisis in affairs, such as could deeply engage the man to
the cause he pleads, and draw all this wide power to a point. For
the explosions and eruptions, there must be accumulations of heat
somewhere, beds of ignited anthracite at the centre. And in cases where
profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no
beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It
agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power
of articulation. Then it rushes from him as in short, abrupt screams,
in torrents of meaning. The possession the subject has of his mind is
so entire, that it insures an order of expression which is the order
of Nature itself, and so the order of greatest force, and inimitable
by any art. And the main distinction between him and other well-graced
actors is the conviction, communicated by every word, that his mind is
contemplating a whole, and inflamed by the contemplation of the whole,
and that the words and sentences uttered by him, however admirable,
fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole which he
sees, and which he means that you shall see. Add to this concentration
a certain regnant calmness, which, in all the tumult, never utters a
premature syllable, but keeps the secret of its means and method; and
the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal power to whose
miracles they have no key. This terrible earnestness makes good the
ancient superstition of the hunter, that the bullet will hit its mark,
which is first dipped in the marksman’s blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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