October 25, 2005

Dear Colleague,

(What follows is professor Lloyd Bitzer's response to my letter of October 10. Lloyd is professor emeritus of rhetoric at UW-Madison. Since his letter corrects the many foolishnesses of my letter on oratory [see "Dear Colleague, Oct 10"], I feel some urgency to reproduce it for the benefit of readers of "Dear Colleague".)

Dear Yi-Fu:

I have some reservations about your take (Oct. 10) on oratory and eloquence. Consider "Blessed are the meek." Add many other memorable lines from scripture and other devotional works. Hardly political discourse. Nor are these:

"Come up and see me sometime" (Mae West, Movie)
"Here's looking at you, babe," and "Play it again, Sam" (Bogart, movie)
"It isn't over till it's over" (Yogi Bera, sports talk)
"Honesty is the best policy" (Shakespeare or Pope, I think)
"Win one for the Gipper" (Ronald Reagan, movie; later a campaign slogan)

Add also favorite phrases or lines from hymns, popular songs of our youth, etc. Many such are memorable, though often not eloquent. The same is true, I think, of Henry's line, FDR's "fear" statement, and Kennedy's antithesis. Though in context they were rather powerful. The powerful is not necessarily eloquent; nor vice versa.

I think political discourse (which in clear cases is pragmatic, or has work to do) seldom permits high eloquence. If I am taking part in a political deliberation, say in a congressional hearing or a faculty meeting, I risk raising laughter by talking like Martin Luther King. Imagine the faculty reaction to a string of JFK-like antitheses. The usual political context doesn't invite high eloquence.

The poet and dramatist have the best chance to produce eloquence, because their artistry creates contexts in which eloquence fits--creates situations that invite eloquence. They aren't bound by the real, as political speakers are. An Abe Lincoln finds himself in contexts that are real, and not of his making. So, his being eloquent depends on his being lucky enough to find himself in the right sort of situations, and being skilled enough to be eloquent. Aristotle's "Rhetoric" pointed out that the courtroom and the political assembly only rarely permit high eloquence; the exception being the ceremonial speech, or the genre he called epideictic, which borders on the poetic. Pericles's funeral address, King's Dream speech, the inaugural addresses, Lincoln at Gettysburg--all epideictic.

Reagan's most eloquent speeches were, I think, his speech at Normandy, honoring the war dead, and his speech after the explosion of the space vehicle, all lives lost. Both were epideictic. In the second of these, by the way, his best line came from a poem, "High Flight," by WW ll RAF pilot John Gillespie Magee. Reagan's eulogy said those crew members "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God." A fine, rich image, exactly fitting. Magee's poem, in part:

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth...
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Poets often do supply eloquence for use by the less able.

Cheers,

Lloyd