Silence Is Better

From A Lexicon Of The Homeric Dialect

My main hope has been, by making the reading of Homer easier, to bring him to readers who will read the epics as what above all things they are–as poems, as works of imagination. For such reading, translations being useless, an accurate and familiar knowledge of the Homeric language is the first essential. This knowledge is not to be acquired without hard, and possibly repulsive, work with grammar and dictionary; but though the way be long, the reward is sure. Let a man once acquire the power to read Homer as he reads Spenser or Milton, and he will have a possession which he would change for no other, an unfailing source of solace and of the purest pleasure. Homer is like Shakespeare in this, that he cannot be exhausted, that the more he is read the more there is found, and that while the effects are more and more felt, the means by which they are got remain more and more mysterious. The epics must be read as wholes, and not as is too much the way, in books here and there. It will come to be realized more and more with each reading that under the smooth and apparently art-less surface there lie depths of supreme and conscious art. The man who has realized this has gone far to solve for himself the Homeric problem.

Alan Jacobs said goodbye to his blog. Jacobs says that blogs, and news media, most especially digital, is by nature dismissed for the new, and therefore not a forum that lends to a genuine deliberation of extensive or serious thought. Blog comments, for example, are the means of response to what would otherwise be purely rhetorical. And, so often, as soon as a new post is made, all old threads are no longer viewed, or assumed to be outdated. I see this in my own blogging, reading or writing. It’s difficult to find time to create a thoughtful blog post, let alone respond thoughtfully to any and all comments made. Especially when those posts fall away from the main ‘entry’ or view of the site. Nevertheless, I don’t follow Jacobs thought so far as to say goodbye to blogs. Though he cited a few ’successful’ blogs, like The Valve, by ditching blogging he’s seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If any of the parties at hand, readers or writers, are serious in their endeavor of understanding and exchanging ideas, I think a lot of good can come of it. There are many factors at hand, and it’s up to the person to be disciplined enough to let go what is unfruitful, and work towards what is good.

Last night, the dean of St John’s, Michael Dink, gave this semester’s opening lecture on Rhetoric and the Liberal Arts. What is Rhetoric? It is at least simple communication from one to another, but more frequently it’s thought of as a well formed message to a number of people, in the hopes of convincing them of some ‘truth’. Beginning with Plato’s Gorgias, he reasoned Rhetoric as an art worthy of suspicion. Socrates, opposed to Gorgias, felt Rhetoric as a means of political persuasion, not in submission to Truth or Good, and used by the speaker to coerce or gain power. Mr. Dink felt that Aristotle’s On Rhetoric gave Rhetoric a more positive light. I believe Aristotle felt that it could be used wisely, when and if the speaker submits the art to Truth or the Good (though I can’t recall which, as it is possible to serve one and not the other). The question then arises, with suspicions and positives at hand, how does Rhetoric fit in at St. John’s. Does the school teach it? Should it? Is it dangerous? Mr. Dink gave then defined the liberally educated mind as one that seeks genuine engagement with other minds, questioning the assumptions of both in a spirit of peaceful openness yet serious criticism in a reach for truth, and then asked, would teaching Rhetoric help to meet this end? His answer was yes, but then, how to teach it? With that left purposefully unanswered, he encouraged all to more intentionally use Rhetoric not for the sake of persuasion of blind belief, but to persuade the listeners to question both the Rhetorician’s message, held assumptions, and further, to examine themselves in the same way.

Though blogging may be more rhetorical than dialectical, we should remember that rhetoric in number is in a way dialectic. The importance is to weigh and consider carefully, question all assumptions, yours and the speaker’s, knowing that rhetoric is by nature persuasive and often coercive… but, says Aristotle, it’s not always bad, right So-crates?

The lecture began at 8:15, lasting an hour, it was followed by a coffee break. And then came the Q&A time, which did not end until midnight! This place is intense.