Four Years Ago Today: Ne’er so well expressed

Learning from English epigram

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on October 29, 2013, not one word different, but more urgent than ever.]

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
                            –Alexander Pope
    Here is a sentiment that many of today’s high school students might heartily commend, at least according to Kyle Garza’s overview of the state of teaching English (see “Tuesday Voice: Our amusing age,” October 1). Our educators are the canaries in our cultural coalmine: we ignore them at our peril. Some of today’s students will go on to lead entertainment and media corporations, or programs for the endowment of the arts, or institutes of higher education. Some will be news anchors or reviewers. A few will become Speaker of the House, or President. Any malaise affecting our youth has potentially drastic ramifications for the culture at large.
    The symptoms Garza notes are familiar to us all by now—a greatly truncated attention span that favors the sound bite over the speech, and the tube over the text—although their educational impacts heighten their urgency. Technology, always a for-profit enterprise, feeds this trend and stimulates increased demand, despite the implications. And so the descent of attention accelerates, with Apple, Sony, Twitter, and Tumblr pushing our future leaders down the slope. It wouldn’t be the first time technology killed a culture: the Romans drank degeneration from their lead-lined water pipes.

Is there nothing we can do to help teachers like Garza? The attention deficit may be impossible for a single teacher to overcome, but are there ways to teach English in spite of it? One possibility is suggested by the quote above, not in its content, but in its form. This type of pithy statement, commonly referred to as an epigram, is one of the miracles of English literature. And it is accessible to even the shortest attention span.
    An epigram, as I learned in a college English course, is a poem or poetic part that is concise, terse, sage, or witty in expression, as well as ingenious or paradoxical in thought. While examples can be found in earlier and later periods, its use flourished during what is often called the Augustan period of English literature among a handful of practitioners, most notably

John Dryden, 1631–1700
Alexander Pope, 1688–1744
William Cowper, 1731–1800
George Crabbe, 1754–1832

    In addition to its attraction as something of literary value that can be read in less than ten seconds, the epigram is often a model of useful modes of thinking. Literature (of any length) ought to be apprehended for its own sake, of course, but when it isn’t, it can still be assimilated as the gateway to intelligent thought in general, the lack of which will hinder any student in any field. Some examples may make this clear.

All human things are subject to decay,
And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
                            –John Dryden

    The first lesson of the epigram, as mentioned already, is brevity. Brevity is not an evil, even these days. Nor does it merely coddle a student’s attention deficit. (Brevity may contradict, however, the economics of authors, often excellent, who yet are compensated based upon their output: think of Dickens, Hugo, Michener.) With brevity so suddenly in vogue, why not astonish students with what their ancestors might have achieved with just a few-score characters had Twitter flowered first in France or England in the eighteenth century? And though most epigrams occur within a longer work (such as An Essay on Criticism, from which our opening verse was extracted), it is not always necessary to know the context. Dryden’s verse above obviously transcends its setting. The closed perfection of the couplet (the epigram’s most typical format) encourages lingering as opposed to an onward dramatic rush. For high school students with an interest in journalism or any arena of verbal competitiveness, therefore, these literary lessons in brevity may supply an important foundation. Brevity without any attending qualities, however, would scarcely be a lesson for today’s teenagers.

The thriving plants ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep those Alleys they were born to shade.
                            –Alexander Pope

    This example illustrates the second major lesson to be learned from the study of epigrams, the potency resulting from a concisely ordered summary. In these two lines is contained not only an entire plot, but a complex social allegory. As Donald Davie puts it, “The rapidity of Byron is a rapid movement of lips and tongue; Pope’s rapidity is a rapid movement of the mind.” (Articulate Energy: An Enquiry into the Syntax of English Poetry) Any high school student dreaming of a career in business or entertainment must master the mechanics of the elevator speech: that twenty-second synopsis of the product to be pitched, whether screenplay, institutional master plan, or a candidate’s resume. With proficiency, the student learns to pare description to essentials while displaying the emotional core that fuels the endeavor. This skill supports more activities than describing and selling: when the paring-down seems too elusive, take it as a red-flag warning to improve the product. A good elevator speech can often drive a great product and guide its execution.

And had the grace in scenes of peace to show
The virtue they had learned in scenes of woe.
                            –William Cowper
    The third important lesson of the epigram is clarity. Brevity and potency are like multi-vitamins that enhance the health of all, but, for those students with futures in healthcare, public policy, or the writing of contracts, an extra supplement of clarity is essential. Much of the ordering of the verse from the Augustan period, of course, relies on meter and what poet Mark Doty calls “the glamor of rhyme.” Even today, many high school students would affirm the appeal of rhythm and rhyme in rap and other forms of popular music. Such tools, however, are not the epigram’s essential instruments in clarifying thought. In Cowper’s couplet about the Israelites above, it is the parallel construction between the two lines that cements the comprehension: similar elements—such as “grace” and “virtue”—as well as contrasts—“scenes of peace” versus “scenes of woe.” While parallel construction is not the only strategy for poetic clarity, it is perhaps the most effective, as seen in some of the examples that follow. Students can be helped to understand its clarifying strength by comparing this usage to that found, say, in many of the Hebrew Scriptures, where it is used for merely oratorical effect. But brevity, potency, and clarity are not all.

Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive divine.
                            –Alexander Pope
    Tomorrow’s politicians, comedians, and advertising executives would do well to learn at once what makes a saying memorable. In this world of throw-away text-messaging, emails, YouTube, and Facebook, it is increasingly rare for content to either merit or achieve retention. The last half of the couplet above is one of the most quoted lines in English literature. These seven words have been arranged to convey a theological truism with greater compactness than would seem possible. Its effect is not achieved merely by the parallelism (although that’s vital), nor even by the rhyme, since the last line is usually quoted in isolation, and it doesn’t really rhyme with its partner anyway. Much of the effect is rhythmic, the downward-tending trochees in the first half (“human”) followed by the upward-tending iambs (“forgive, divine”) in the second. Many students will be surprised to observe how sound can mirror sense.

Gay spite of time, though poor, yet well attired,
Kind without love, and vain if not admired.
                            –George Crabbe

    George Crabbe was the last of the Augustans, but the most congenial. He seldom renders judgments as mercilessly as Pope. But, if “Pope is always packed with sense,” as George Fraser remarks (Alexander Pope), then Crabbe is here attempting to double the density. Where Pope is usually content with two contrasting parallels, Crabbe has crammed in four. Brevity and clarity can only march so far together, however, and the resulting verse is not Crabbe at his best. It feels forced and stilted. Worse, there is some ambiguity, as in the phrase “kind without love.” Does Crabbe intend charity as opposed to romantic ardor? Or does he refer to mere courtesy without genuine affection? And “vain if not admired” is equally uncertain. We get a sense of the intent of the second line by studying its companion, yet the condensation of this verse may render it unintelligible without its context (The Borough). This negative example contains an important lesson, however, for, even standing alone, its rhetorical phrasing carries a conviction and finality that belies its obscurity. The tools of brevity and potency work even when clarity is temporarily occluded. The point here is not to legitimize obfuscation, but to convey certitude in advance of proofs, an invaluable asset for students whose future will take them into one of the legal professions.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
                            –Alexander Pope
    Here we may note one of the greatest advantages of the English epigram: its breadth. A thought so succinctly arranged, with its parts so logically contrasted, and supported by the arsenal of diction, meter, alliteration, and rhyme, carries a conviction that can only be called universal. Such conviction not only actively discourages doubt, but conveys a breadth of application to all times and cultures. In the case of this particular epigram, the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, from Edison to Jobs, have exposed its falsehood. And yet its tone of universality may still give us pause. For those of Garza’s high school students destined to be diplomats, judges, or preachers, a familiarity with the uses and, more importantly, the misuses of such tone is essential.
    Obviously, the common theme towards which all of these lessons point—brevity, potency, clarity, retention, finality, and universality—remains the all-too-familiar maxim that it matters less what one says than how one says it. When I was still a high school student, I bridled at such notions, still certain that the most important truths would speak for themselves. As I have aged, alas, I’ve learned that while truth can speak, without a little help it often isn’t heard. In fact, the most cliché of commonplaces, when elegantly presented, can seem downright new. Or, as Pope so aptly puts it,

True wit is Nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

Copyright © 2013, 2017 by Eric Meub