Critique of rhetorical

lator is faced. Inæsthetic translations, such as those which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastic translations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on the original.

The division of expressions into various categories. classes is known in literature by the name of theory of ornament or of rhetorical categories. But similar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are not wanting suffice it to mention the realistic and symbolic forms, spoken of in painting and sculpture.

The scientific value to be attached in Esthetic and in æsthetic criticism to these distinctions of realistic and symbolic, of style and absence of style, of objective and subjective, of classic and romantic, of simple and ornate, of proper and metaphorical, of the fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of word and of sentence, and further of pleonasm, of ellipse, of inversion, of repetition, of synonyms and homonyms, and so on; is nil or altogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can be given a satisfactory æsthetic definition. Those that have been attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of sense. A typical example of this is the very common definition of metaphor as of another word used in place

of the word itself. Now why give oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when you know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, because the correct word is in certain cases not so expressive as the so-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphor becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were used, would be but little expressive and therefore most improper. Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. One can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally? In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression, indistinguishable from the whole.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence. Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant

Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories.

Use of these categories as

the asthetic

fact.

in literary production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to rhetoric.

The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding the opportunity of using them in strictly æsthetic discussions, or even of doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionally employed in one of the following significations: as verbal variants of the æsthetic concept; as indications of the anti-æsthetic, or, finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is no longer æsthetic and literary, but merely logical.

Expressions are not divisible into classes, but synonyms of some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the various forms of the failures. But they are employed in the most inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect.

An instance of this is found when someone,

criticizing two pictures-the one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likeness to existing objects -calls the first realistic, the second symbolic. Others, on the contrary, pronounce the word realistic about a strongly felt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of symbolic in reference to another picture representing but a cold allegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic, and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. How, then, can we be astonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the realistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words in senses so diverse.

The great disputes about the classic and the romantic are frequently based upon such equivokes. Sometimes the former was understood as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect; at others, the classic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere, warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. Thus it was

Their use to indicate various æsthetic

imperfections.

always possible to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romantic against the classic.

The same thing happens as regards the word style. Sometimes it is affirmed that every writer should have style. Here style is synonymous with form or expression. Sometimes the form of a code of laws or of a mathematical work is said to be devoid of style. Here the error of admitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admitting an ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking, have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming someone for having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic.

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Passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means that in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words than is necessary