Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

The Awakening 7itself borrowed from Hesiod, that “strife is good for men” (13.4). Theorator attempts to possess the auditor in much the same way that thepoet wishes to transport the reader; the view of creativity as bound upwith the quest for mastery and ownership shapes Longinus’ view ofliterary production itself. Poets struggle amongst themselves to bestone another: even Plato would not have attained greatness withoutthe need to show his superiority to his rival Homer, for he couldnot have “put such a brilliant finish on his philosophical doctrinesor so often risen to poetical subjects and poetical language, if he hadnot tried, and tried, wholeheartedly, to compete for the prize againstHomer, like a young aspirant challenging an admired master” (13.4).Many contemporary American theorists of the sublime reinforce thisclaim. 11 Thomas Weiskel, for example, insists that “discourse in thePeri Hypsous (on Great Writing) is a power struggle,” while accordingto Paul Fry, “the Longinian sublime appears in a climate of antagonism,as rivalry between authors.” 12But if the sublime is, to borrow Fry’s phrase, always “a drama ofpower” and “a struggle for possession,” I must stress what Longinusand the majority of his critics do not: that the kind of power at stakein Sappho’s lyric differs in important respects from the other examplesLonginus cites as illustrative of the sublime. 13 For Sappho’s ode affirmsa form of possession that redefines traditional modes of dominationand relations of power. By exploring the differences between Sappho’sode and Homer’s—since he is the other poet Longinus chooses toexemplify “excellence in selection and organization” (10.1)—we willsee that Sappho’s lyric offers an alternative to Longinus’s belief thatthe sublime entails a struggle for domination in which one partysubmits to another, and that his misreading of Sappho has significantconsequences for the sublime’s theorization.For Longinus, who believes that “sublimity will be achieved ifwe consistently select the most important of those inherent featuresand learn to organize them as a unity by combining one withanother” (10.1), the ability “to select and organize material” is one ofthe factors that “can make our writing sublime” (10.1). ComparingSappho’s skillful description of “the feelings involved in the madnessof being in love” (10.1) with Homer’s talent for portraying storms,he especially praises the latter’s skill in depicting “the most terrifyingaspects” (10.3). And both poems provide impressive examples of realisticdescription. Sappho conveys precisely what “lovers experience”