Very little is known about the Greek writer called
Longinus. His writings describe early travels with
his parents, which he said enlarged his mind and
diversified his experience. He studied humanities
and philosophy and was well acquainted with the
genius and spirit of Greek literature. Eventually he
established residence in Athens, a seat of learning
in the world of ancient Greece. One tradition identifies
him with the third-century Cassius Longinus,
described in PORPHYRY’s Life of Plotinus (see PLOTINUS)
who was hired by Queen Zenobia to educate
her children.When she was defeated by Emperor
Aurelian, she and Longinus fled but were captured,
and Longinus was executed. For centuries this
commonly held but possibly inaccurate belief cast
a heroic glow on the man otherwise established as
an important literary critic. The majority of scholars
place him in the first century, but most modern
researchers recognize that it is now next to impossible
to identify the real man. If he indeed lived in
the first century, Longinus would have been contemporary
with DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS, another
critic of the Augustan age.
The early biographer Eunapius described Longinus
as “a living library and a walking university.”
The scope of his learning reveals itself in his one
known work, On the Sublime. Also known as “the
Golden Treatise,” this work ranks only slightly less
important than the Poetics of ARISTOTLE in the field
of literary criticism and the history of aesthetics. On
the Sublime is also one of the earliest “how to write”
manuals. Longinus defines the sublime as “an image
reflected from the inward greatness of the soul.”
This quality, also translated as “height,” distinguishes
the greatest writing and explains the impact
that the most profound poetry has upon readers.
Longinus begins the treatise with an address to
his friend Terentianus declaring his threefold purpose:
to outline a method, to be useful to those who
use the art of public speaking, and to provide a
moral answer to the question: “How can we develop
our natural capacities to some degree of
greatness?” His scheme for recognizing and cultivating
the sublime involves a combination of nature
and craft. The artist must possess the ability to
perceive or entertain important thoughts (“high
thinking”); the ability to experience profound emotion
(“high feeling”); and the command of imagery,
diction, and composition that would enable
the best expression of these combined thoughts
and emotions. The sublime was not simply the result
of natural genius, but aptitude disciplined with
knowledge. Longinus wrote that “greatness, when
left to itself with no help from knowledge, is rather
precarious—unsupported and unballasted . . . as
greatness often needs the spur, so too it needs the
rein.” Good fortune, he concludes, must be tempered
with good judgment.
To support his points, Longinus draws examples
of both successes and failures from the long
tradition of Greek literature, including HOMER,
HESIOD, PLATO, XENOPHON, DEMOSTHENES, and EURIPIDES.
The treatise ends with a lament that materialism,
moral decline, and greed are responsible
for the decline in the quality of literature. This sentiment,
it must be observed, was already a literary
commonplace by the first century, also expressed
by but not original to Plato. For Longinus the sublime
was a moral as well as a stylistic ideal, and integrity
was a prerequisite for great writing. Only
“the man of dignity and integrity who does his
duty in human society and understands his station
as a citizen of the cosmos” was capable of high
thought and feeling. Longinus shares this ideal
with other Latin rhetoricians, including CICERO,
SENECA, and QUINTILIAN.
Editor D. A. Russell observes that the work of
Longinus had “an immense influence on critical
thinking” and “retains a power of immediate attraction.”
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, in
their works of literary criticism, stressed the importance
of reading Longinus’s work. The standard
translation of On the Sublime was published by
Nicolas Boileau in 1674, and subsequent readers
regarded Longinus as a critic and hero in the tradition
of SOCRATES and Cato. Philosophical thought
focused once more on the sublime in the 18th century
and the beginning of the Romantic movement
in English literature. Even to the modern eye
the book has a certain appeal, perhaps because, as
Russell says, Longinus simply “loves literature and
wants to communicate his love to others.”
English Versions of Works by Longinus
On Great Writing (On the Sublime). Translated by G.
M. A. Grube. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1991.
Poetics: Longinus on the Sublime, Demetrius on Style.
Edited by Stephen Halliwell, et. al. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Works about Longinus
Arieti, James A. and John M. Crossett. On the Sublime:
Longinus. New York: E.Mellen Press, 1985.
Russell, D. A. Longinus on the Sublime. Oxford, U.K.:
Clarendon Press, 1964.