< On the Sublime

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XIX

… The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and "torrent rapture" to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: "Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell."[1] And the words of Eurylochus in the Odyssey—

"We passed at thy command the woodland's shade;
We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade."[2]

Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once halts and ​hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure Asyndeton.

  1. ↑ Xen. Hel. iv. 3. 19.
  2. ↑ Od. x. 251.
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