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In a week’s time, the residents of Scotland (not the Scottish people: Scots resident south of the border are ineligible to vote) will decide whether or not to destroy the UK as currently constituted. The polls are on a knife edge; and Alex Salmond, the leader of the separatists, has a track record as a strong finisher. If he gets his way, the UK will lose 8% of its citizens and a third of its land mass; and Scotland, cut off, at least initially, from every international body (the UN Security Council, NATO, the EU) and every UK institution (the Bank of England, the pound sterling, the BBC, the security services), will face a bleak and uncertain future.

In the first century BC, the Roman republic was collapsing as a result of its systemic inability to curb the ambitions of powerful politicians. Everyone could see that the end was nigh; no one could predict what would follow. The conditions were ideal for the development of political oratory, and Cicero emerged as Rome’s greatest orator, determined to save his country even at the cost of his own life. During his consulship, he suppressed the conspiracy of Catiline, denouncing that man and his deluded supporters in his four Catilinarian Speeches. He pulled no punches: he did not hold back, like the supporters of the Union today, for fear of appearing too “negative”. So he informed the senate:

“A plot has been formed to ensure that, following a universal massacre, there should not be a single person left even to mourn the name of the Roman people or to lament the destruction of so great an empire.”

For Catiline’s supporters, he had nothing but contempt, telling the people:

“Reclining at their banquets, embracing their whores, heavy with wine, stuffed with food, wreathed with flowers, drenched with perfume, and worn out by promiscuous sex, they belch out their plans for the massacre of decent citizens and the burning of Rome.”

Cicero went straight for the jugular. Two decades later he denounced a more powerful adversary, Mark Antony, who was attempting with much greater forces to seize control of the state. Cicero attacked him in a series of speeches, the Philippics; but Antony did a deal with Octavian, got what he wanted, and had Cicero killed. Cicero’s words at the end of the Second Philippic were prophetic:

“I defended this country when I was a young man: I shall not desert it now that I am old. I faced down the swords of Catiline: I shall not flinch before yours. Yes, and I would willingly offer my body, if the freedom of this country could at once be secured by my death. Two things alone I long for: first, that when I die I may leave the Roman people free; and second, that each person’s fate may reflect the way he has behaved towards his country.”

Where is Cicero today when we need him? The debate on the future of Scotland, and hence of the UK, has been conducted in newspapers, in TV interviews and debates, and in social media. Anonymous internet trolls hurl abuse at celebrities who dare to express their affection for Britain. The Westminster Parliament stays silent. One MP, however, is free of the party whips, and has been touring Scotland delivering passionate, hard-hitting and unapologetically negative speeches in defence of the Union. This is George Galloway, and the speech he gave in Edinburgh on 24 June can be read and listened to here.

Like Cicero, Galloway pulls no punches. He compares the current crisis with 1940, the last time the UK faced an existential threat:

“And not one person asked in that summer and autumn of 1940 and into 1941 if the pilots who were spinning above us defending us from invasion from the barbaric horde were from Suffolk or Sutherland. We were people together on a small piece of rock with 300 years of common history.”

Referring to his political differences with the other supporters of the Union, he says, “We have come together but temporarily at a moment of national peril”, declaring:

“There will be havoc if you vote Yes in September. Havoc in Edinburgh and throughout the land and you will break the hearts of many others too.”

This preference for extreme, unambiguous statements, delivered with the greatest possible emotional force, and this recognition of the significance of the historical moment, is pure Cicero. But what is most Ciceronian in Galloway’s speech is the moral dimension. Galloway is not concerned with whether the new Scottish state would have to concentrate its spending on benefits or foreign embassies. Instead, he harks back repeatedly to the Second World War, that conflict of good against evil, contrasting it with Bannockburn, “a battle 700 years ago between two French-speaking kings with Scottish people on both sides”. And, as Cicero would, he judges an issue by the moral character of the people concerned: on the one side, Brian Souter, “the gay-baiting billionaire” and major donor of the SNP, and on the other, the children’s author J. K. Rowling, “one of our highest achieving women in the history of our entire country”, whose moderate and reasoned support for the Union has earned her hate mail from fanatical separatists. Morality runs like a thread all the way through Galloway’s speech.

How come so few women are in favour of independence? Why are Scotland’s women the most resistant of all the demographics in this contest? The reason is that women simply don’t like gambling. And everything in their project is about gambling — for your future, your pension, your children and their children’s future.

“Let it be inscribed on the forehead of every citizen what he thinks about his country”, Cicero told the senate. Next week, the future of the UK will be decided by a secret ballot. If Britain survives in a political and not merely in a geographical sense, part of the credit will be due to the Ciceronian eloquence of Mr Galloway.

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By James Grant

Plato famously said that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. But with respect to one aspect of poetry, namely metaphor, many contemporary philosophers have made peace with the poets. In their view, we need metaphor. Without it, many truths would be inexpressible and unknowable. For example, we cannot describe feelings and sensations adequately without it. Take Gerard Manley Hopkins’s exceptionally powerful metaphor of despair:

selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless,
thoughts against thoughts in groans grind.

How else could precisely this kind of mood be expressed? Describing how things appear to our senses is also thought to require metaphor, as when we speak of the silken sound of a harp, the warm colours of a Titian, and the bold or jolly flavour of a wine.  Science advances by the use of metaphors – of the mind as a computer, of electricity as a current, or of the atom as a solar system. And metaphysical and religious truths are often thought to be inexpressible in literal language. Plato condemned poets for claiming to provide knowledge they did not have. But if these philosophers are right, there is at least one poetic use of language that is needed for the communication of many truths.

In my view, however, this is the wrong way to defend the value of metaphor. Comparisons may well be indispensable for communication in many situations. We convey the unfamiliar by likening it to the familiar. But many hold that it is specifically metaphor – and no other kind of comparison – that is indispensable. Metaphor tells us things the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ never could. If true, this would be fascinating. It would reveal the limits of what is expressible in literal language. But no one has come close to giving a good argument for it. And in any case, metaphor does not have to be an indispensable means to knowledge in order to be as valuable as we take it to be.

Metaphor may not tell us anything that couldn’t be expressed by other means. But good metaphors have many other effects on readers than making them grasp some bit of information, and these are often precisely the effects the metaphor-user wants to have. There is far more to the effective use of language than transmitting information. My particular interest is in how art critics use metaphor to help us appreciate paintings, architecture, music, and other artworks. There are many reasons why metaphor matters, but art criticism reveals two reasons of particular importance.

Take this passage from John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice. Ruskin describes arriving in Venice by boat and seeing ‘the long ranges of columned palaces,—each with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation’, and observing how ‘the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation’.

One thing Ruskin’s metaphors do is describe the waters of Venice and the Ducal palace at an extraordinary level of specificity. There are many ways water looks when breezes blow across its surface. There are fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into many pieces. And there are still fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into pieces forming a rich mosaic with the colours of Venetian palaces and a greenish tint. Ruskin’s metaphor communicates that the waters of Venice look like that. The metaphor of the Ducal palace as ‘flushed with its sanguine veins’ likewise narrows the possible appearances considerably. Characterizing appearances very specifically is of particular use to art critics, as they often want to articulate the specific appearance an artwork presents.

A second thing metaphors like Ruskin’s do is cause readers to imagine seeing what he describes. We naturally tend to picture the palace or the water on hearing Ruskin’s metaphor. This function of metaphor has often been noted: George Orwell, for instance, writes that ‘a newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image’.

Why do novel metaphors evoke images? Precisely because they are novel uses of words. To understand them, we cannot rely on our knowledge of the literal meanings of the words alone. We often have to employ imagination. To understand Ruskin’s metaphor, we try to imagine seeing water that looks like a broken mosaic. If we manage this, we know the kind of look that he is attributing to the water.

Imagining a thing is often needed to appreciate that thing. Knowing facts about it is often not enough by itself. Accurately imagining Hopkins’s despondency, or the experience of arriving in Venice by boat, gives us some appreciation of these experiences. By enabling us to imagine accurately and specifically, metaphor is exceptionally well suited to enhancing our appreciation of what it describes.

James Grant is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of The Critical Imagination.

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By Russ Castronovo

Ever since 4 July 1777 when citizens of Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary of American independence with a fireworks display, the “rockets’ red glare” has lent a military tinge to this national holiday. But the explosive aspect of the patriots’ resistance was the incendiary propaganda that they spread across the thirteen colonies.

Sam Adams understood the need for a lively barrage of public relations and spin. “We cannot make Events; Our Business is merely to improve them,” he said. Exaggeration was just one of the tricks in the rhetorical arsenal that rebel publicists used to “improve” events. Their satires, lampoons, and exposés amounted to a guerilla war—waged in print—against the Crown.

Cover of Common Sense, the pamphlet. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In place of measured discourse and rational debate, the pyrotechnics of the moment suited “the American crisis”—to invoke the title of Tom Paine’s follow-up to Common Sense—that left little time for polite expression or logical proofs. Propaganda requires speed, not reflection.

Writing became a rushed job. Pamphlets such as Tom Paine’s had an intentionally short fuse. Common Sense says little that’s new about natural rights or government. But what was innovative was the popular rhetorical strategy Paine used to convey those ideas. “As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain,” he wrote, playing upon the sensational language found in popular seduction novels of the day.

The tenor of patriotic discourse regularly ran toward ribald phrasing. When composing newspaper verses about King George, Freneau took particular delight in rhyming “despot” with “pisspot.” Hardly the lofty stuff associated with reason and powdered wigs, this language better evokes the juvenile humor of The Daily Show.

The skyrockets that will be “bursting in air” this Fourth of July are a vivid reminder of the rhetorical fireworks that galvanized support for the colonists’ bid for independence. The spread of political ideas, whether in a yellowing pamphlet or on Comedy Central, remains a vital part of our national heritage.

Russ Castronovo teaches English and American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book is Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications.

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On 2 September 44 BC, Cicero launched into the first of the most blistering oratorical attacks in political history, attacks which ultimately cost him his life. The following is an excerpt of the Second Philippic, a denunciation of Mark Antony, from the Oxford World’s Classic Political Speeches. Do we hear echoes of contemporary political rhetoric in these harsh tones?

Conscript fathers, I have something to say in my own defence and much to say against Marcus Antonius. As to the former theme, I ask you to listen to me sympathetically as I defend myself; as to the latter, I shall myself make sure that you pay me close attention while I speak against him. At the same time I beg of you: if you agree that my whole life and particularly my public speaking have always been characterized by moderation and restraint, then please do not think that today, when I give this man the response he has provoked, I have forgotten my true nature. I am not going to treat him as a consul any more than he has treated me as a consular. And whereas he cannot in any sense be regarded as a consul, either in his private life, or in his administration of the state, or in the manner of his appointment, I am beyond any dispute a consular.

So to let you appreciate what sort of consul he professes himself to be, he attacked my consulship. Now that consulship, conscript fathers, was mine in name only: in reality it was yours. For what decision did I arrive at, what action did I take, what deed did I do other than by the advice, authority, and vote of this order? And now do you, as a man of wisdom, not merely of eloquence, dare to criticize those proceedings in the very presence of those by whose advice and wisdom they were transacted? But who was ever found to criticize my consulship except you and Publius Clodius? Indeed, Clodius’ fate awaits you, just as it did Gaius Curio, since you have at home the thing which did for both of them.

Cicero. Source: NYPL.

Marcus Antonius does not approve of my consulship. But Publius Servilius approved of it — of the consulars of that time I name him first, because his death is the most recent. Quintus Catulus approved of it, a man whose authority will always remain a living force in this country. The two Luculli, Marcus Crassus, Quintus Hortensius, Gaius Curio, Gaius Piso, Manius Glabrio, Manius Lepidus, Lucius Volcacius, and Gaius Figulus approved of it. Decimus Silanus and Lucius Murena, who were then consuls-elect, approved of it. Like the consulars, Marcus Cato approved of it — a man who in taking leave of life showed great foresight, especially in that he never saw you become consul. But Gnaeus Pompeius above all approved of my consulship in that, the moment he saw me on his return from Syria, he embraced me and congratulated me, saying that it was thanks to me that he would once again set eyes on his country. But why do I mention individuals? A packed senate approved my consulship so strongly that there was no one who did not thank me as if I were his parent, and who did not put it down to me that he was still in possession of his life, his property, his children, and his country.

But since the many distinguished gentlemen whom I have just named are all now lost to our country, I turn to the living. Out of the body of consulars, two are still with us. The gifted and judicious Lucius Cotta proposed a thanksgiving in the most complimentary terms for those very actions which you criticize, and the consulars I have just named, together with the entire senate, accepted the proposal — an honour which I was the first civilian since the foundation of our city to receive. Lucius Caesar, your uncle — what eloquence, what resolution, what authority he showed as he denounced his sister’s husband, your stepfather! He was the man you should have had as your guide and mentor in all your decisions throughout your life — and yet you chose to model yourself on your stepfather rather than your uncle! Although unrelated to him, I as consul accepted Caesar’s guidance — but did you, his sister’s son, ever ask his advice on any public matter at all?

Immortal gods, whose advice, then, does he ask? Those fellows, I suppose, whose very birthdays we are made to hear announced. ‘Antonius is not appearing in public today.’ ‘Why ever not?’ ‘He is giving a birthday party at his house outside the city.’ ‘Who for?’ I will name no names: just imagine it’s now for some Phormio or other, now for Gnatho, now for Ballio even. What scandalous disgrace, what intolerable cheek, wickedness, and depravity! Do you have so readily available to you a leading senator, an outstanding citizen, and never consult him on matters of public interest — while all the time consulting people who have nothing of their own, but sponge off you instead?

Your consulship, then, is a blessing, and mine was a curse. Have you so lost your sense of shame, together with your decency, that you dare to say such a thing in the very temple where I used to consult the senate in its days of greatness, when it ruled the world — but where you have now stationed thugs armed with swords? But you even dared (is there anything you would not dare?) to say that in my consulship the Capitoline path was packed with armed slaves. I was, I suppose, preparing violence to force the senate to pass those wicked decrees! You despicable wretch — whether you do not know what happened (since you know nothing of anything good) or whether you do — you who talk with such utter lack of shame before such men as these! When the senate was meeting in this temple, did any Roman equestrian, did any young noble except you, did anyone of any class who recalled that he was a Roman citizen fail to come to the Capitoline path? Did anyone fail to give in his name? And yet there were neither enough clerks nor enough registers to record all the names that were offered. After all, traitors were admitting to the assassination of their homeland, and were compelled by the testimony of their accomplices, by their own handwriting, and by the almost audible sound of the words they had written to confess that they had conspired to set fire to the city, to massacre the citizens, to devastate Italy, and to destroy their country. In such a situation, who would not be roused to defend the national security — particularly at a time when the senate and people of Rome had the sort of leader under whom, if we had a similar leader now, you would have met the same fate that those traitors did?

Cicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a leading politician of the closing era of the Roman republic. Political Speeches presents nine of his speeches that reflect the development, variety, and drama of his political career. Among them are two speeches from his prosecution of Verres, a corrupt and cruel governor of Sicily; four speeches against the conspirator Catiline; and the Second Philippic, the famous denunciation of Mark Antony, which cost Cicero his life. These new translations by D. H. Berry, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Leeds, preserve Cicero’s oratorical brilliance and achieve new standards of accuracy. A general introduction outlines Cicero’s public career, and separate introductions explain the political significance of each of the speeches. This edition also provides an up-to-date scholarly bibliography, glossary and two maps.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Exciting: Poet and Silver Jews singer/songwriter/mastermind David Berman has a blog, Menthol Mountains, where he’s pondering “the phony gulp,” hooked-up verse, and other things. (Thanks, 5redpandas.)

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Obama’s gestures. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

President Barack Obama gave his first speech from the Oval Office last Tuesday. It wasn’t great, as most commentators have noted.

To begin with, the White House appears to believe that body language is presidential language. Our eyes were constantly drawn to the bottom quarter of the screen, where the president’s hands seemed to have taken on a life of their own. If our democracy has degenerated from deeds to words, we’re now becoming accustomed to gestures. Our great deliberative democracy, reduced to a series of hand flicks.

The words weren’t that good either. Even though the President was, understandably, trying to signal strength and decisiveness with words and gestures, he had to lace his speech with tentative caveats in a bid to lower our expectations about what can be achieved and how soon – another presidential goal on Tuesday night. As a result, the speech was wishy-washy, tepid and pointless. It looked and sounded like a damage-control skit, and the president looked like he had George Clooney’s PR job in “Up in the Air” – telling the American people harsh news and artificially sweetening the news with an a dose of saccharine.

Talking about enlisting scientists and experts doesn’t help when they can’t even agree on the size of the oil spill. And everyone can see that the purpose of telling the American people how serious the problem served, selfishly, only to tell us that the president feels our pain. It is gratuitous at best and condescending and worst. Empathy and euphemisms together do not eloquence make.

The administration was hoping for a game-changer in this speech. But not even the weight of his office was able to help this young, politically inexperienced president stave off the inflexion point he did not intend. From now on, it looks like there will be no more free passes from Rachel Maddow and the liberal media.

If Obama is our era’s Greatest Communicator, then perhaps the only good that came out of this speech is that we may begin to realize that no rhetorical wizardry can solve our nation’s crises. There is no messiah, and there is definitely no rhetorical messiah. Indeed, I would go one step further and hope that we all realize that eloquence is not the solution to our problems. Eloquence – our atavistic yearning for a grand orator, a Cicero who can inspire our nation into action – is the problem itself for it is a phantasm that too often has become a substitute for deeds.

The next time the president is in political trouble, and he has nothing to offer but damage-control dribble, then perhaps he shouldn’t say anything at all. Let the pundits and bloggers chatter, but lie low and just get down to work, for goodness sake. Sometimes, a measure of humility, in spite of popular expectations for presidents to speechify and to perform, can help a president ride out of a po

I'm going to wrap up my series on Beginnings this week and will start up a new one next week. Please post topics you would like to know more about, and I will surely let you have my two cents.

Today I want to encourage you to zip some creativity into your first chapter language this week. You've got a nifty plot going with a winning hero, and now it's time to brush in the details. Yes, you might want to head over to your poetry tool box and add some imagery and emotion through your word choice.

Think onomatopoeia. Add some words that make noise. So, sigh a melancholy air release or bang, bash, and boink away! Zoinks, Batman! This is great in picture books but you might be surprised to find that YA authors slip in noises too to spice up that first chapter.

Don't stop with making some noise. Chip in some alliteration and assonance along with that onomatopoeia. Add some simile and metaphor. Pull out your classical rhetoric textbook and check out those figures again. Or just head over to The Forest of Rhetoric. I go there regularly to toss on some genius.

Don't go crazy overboard! Nobody wants a little salad with their croutons.

Yes, you are going to fine tooth comb that first chapter and you are going to strike every boring word. You aren't going to run or walk anywhere. You'll dash, dive, saunter or tiptoe. You will make that first chapter the most sparkly writing ever. I know you will.

Whew! You've got lots of work ahead. Good luck as you go forward. After all this you should have a fantabulous first chapter.

Still no doodles. Waiting on the computer fairies to wave their magic wands and heal my sick, sick laptop.

My playlist hit is Josh Radin and "No Envy, No Fear."


My quote for the week:

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. Ann Frank

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects Obama’s speaking style. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

President Barack Obama’s first press conference was serious, measured, and according to Mark Nikolas (Politicalbase.com), three grade levels more complex than President George W. Bush’s first press conference.

A cursory glance at readers’ comments to Nikolas’ post reveals sharp disagreements about both the empirical claim and its implications. Since I have used the Flesch readability scale to score the rhetoric of every president since George Washington, I will venture to offer some observations to suggest that George Bush and Barack Obama aren’t all that different.

Superficially, they couldn’t be more different. While the former president is a self-styled cowboy who has rejected his northeastern roots in favor of a Texan down-home speaking style, the current one is a former professor of constitutional law who (if one recalls his speech on race in Philadelphia at the height of the Jeremiah Wright fiasco) will not demure from pontificating on things complex and controversial. I doubt many people will argue that Bush was a more sophisticated speaker, but people disagree about whether or not his simple sentences were delivered at the expense of complex thoughts.

Complex thoughts can be simply expressed, his defenders contend. But Einstein also said that “things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Consider John Robert’s question to President Bush in his first press conference in 2001: “I’m wondering what message he (the Secretary of State) will take from this administration to leaders of the Middle East in the area of sanctions that matter, sanctions that are effective on the regime?”

President Bush answered in his inimitable style: “I have said that the sanction regime is like Swiss cheese. That meant that they weren’t very effective. And we’re going to review the current sanction policy and review options as to how to make the sanctions work. But the primary goal is to make it clear to Saddam that we expect him to be a peaceful neighbor in the region, and we expect him not to develop weapons of mass destruction; and if we find him doing so, there will be a consequence.”

President Bush dedicated little time to “review options” on improving the efficacy of sanctions on Saddam’s regime. And the conditional clause “if we find him (Saddam) doing so” (developing WMDs) was far from satisfied before the President rushed to war. The fact is it was by our president’s slovenly words that we were led to do rather foolish things, as George Orwell warned.

Yes, we need a president who connects with the people. Simple words can conceal complex thoughts. But that is exactly the problem. If we allow presidents to sweet talk us with simple platitudes, and assume that complex negotiations and deliberations are going on behind the scenes and outside of public earshot, we abdicate our role as citizens to adjudicate the direction of public policy. A seduced citizenry cannot hold their executive accountable. Eloquent platitudes generate applause, not reflection. As a component of democratic discourse, they are, like Swiss cheese, utterly inadequate.

Lest this may sound like a partisan post, let me say that Obama is not immune to the draw of anti-intellectualism. The President’s and Secretary Geitner’s messages on the economic stimulus package and especially TARP 2 have thus far been woefully lacking in detail. The President is back to being the Poet-in-Chief, taking his message on road as if he never left the campaign trail. The stock market takes no partisan sides, and it has not taken kindly to the president’s eloquent generalities.

Life is like a box of chocolates, Mama Gump once told Forrest. Profound truths can be simply said, but what we need now are concrete solutions, not quotable verses. President Obama may be speaking at a higher grade level than President Bush, but so far, he appears no more adept at offering us precise answers. The President can use his words – simple or complex – to educate or to obfuscate. The choice is his.