The Appeal of the Spoken Word

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 19

The Appeal of the Spoken Word

The Lord Chief Justice on Oratory

“Where sincerity and art join together, where th e speech attains beauty and power through the intensity of the speaker's desire to win accepta nee for his thoughts and feelings, the response of the hearers is more than mere aesthetic approval.”—“The Times,” London.

THE Lord Chief Justice (Lord Hewart) recently delivered the presidential address at the anuual general meeting of the English Association. He took as his subject “Modern Oratory.” “In the course of his presidential address the Lord Chief Justice,” reports the ’Times,’ said “Oratory has been said, tentatively, to be ‘speech regarded as an art’ ‘lf the thing be well considered,’ says Francis Bacon in the ‘Advancement of Learning,’ ‘the office and use of this art is but to apply and recommend the dictates of reason to the imagination in order to excite the affections and will.’ “The description merits examination. The affections are to be excited in order that the audience may be attracted to the cause, or the course of conduct, which is being advocated. The will is to be roused in order that it may lead to action. And the imagination is to be provoked into championing something which is represented as reasonable. Moreover, all these effects are to be produced by the use of speech. These signals, therefore (that is, words), are to be much more than mere transmitters. They must, at any rate, have a beauty of their own. . . .” Lord Hewart concluded his address by saying:— ' “In fairness, it should never be forgotten that ancient oratory comes down to us chiefly after very careful editing, and often after more editings than one But is not every one who reads the reports of speeches that flood, or used to flood, the newspapers struck by the avalanche of words? And. as the voter said, who heard one of the torrents of a certain statesman falling at election time, ‘considering how much there was of it, there was precious little in it.’ . “Does not some of It deserve Cicero’s phrase: ‘Volubihtas mams atque inridenda’ (‘De Oratore,’ 1., 5)? Also, to complexity and verbosity there is often added obscurity of expression. The hearer or the reader of many a modern oratorical performance finds himself asking: What has the speaker In substance said? In the case of the politician, especially perhaps of a Minister of the Crown, the obscurity may sometimes be studied. It would be easy, though it would be impious, to give instances. “Who was it who said that a politician is never so obscure as when he assures his audience that he is taking them into his confidence? And did not the same philosopher add that the confidences of a Minister are either an imposture or an infidelity? Perhaps it is a hard saying, as usually they are neither, for thev tell nothing. But to return to our hypothethical critic, it must be confessed—must it not?—that his ear is frequently offended by bad or indifferent English. “Opinions have differed, of course, as to the constituent elements of successful oratory. But will it be denied that one of the secrets, if not the chief secret, is perfect simplicity of diction and the appeal to what is primeval in mankind—that is, to the primitive emotions? Many an example easily occurs. “In prose fiction there are the famous words of Jeanie Deans, in the immortal 37th chapter of the ‘Heart of Midlothian’ pleading to Queen Caroline for her sister’s life. Is there anywhere a more perfect instance of natural eloquence? And in poetry there is the leading case of Odysseus, in the sixth book of the ‘Odyssey,’ pleading to Nausicaa for succour and indeed for clothing—a perfect instance of consummate art and knowledge in the orator. “Both Odysseus and Jeanie Deans use simple language, and both appeal to the common instincts of humanity. Or in history, although Ihuc.tdides does not claim to give an exact report of Pericles —on the contrary, his phrase is that the orator spoke not ‘these words’ but ‘words like these »nd although the speech is at once elaborate and ornate, it is nevejtholess

full of such phrases as ‘of famous men the whole earth is the tomb phrases which live for ever because they appeal to what is primitive.

“Of the same kind, and on the same plane, are the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 18C3, marked, as all his speeches were marked, by a noble simplicity of diction; and what is called the ‘Crimean Speech’ of John Bright in 1855 —‘the angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings’; and the words uttered by Edith Cavell before she met her death. Everywhere it is the same achievement or lesson-—the unrivalled efficacy of plain speech.

“And, although it is easy to contemplate modern oratory without enthusiasm, it does seem perhaps to exhibit one encouraging feature. As it grows more and more modern, it tends more to plain speech than, for example, the rounded periods of early Victorian and late Georgian oratory did. To disdain all ornament needs, to be sure, great courage. Only a perfect figure, it is said, can venture to go naked. But ‘nuda veritas’ is irresistible. “Perhaps Indeed there is only too much warrant for the doubt of Anatole France. He coquets, in a pleasant passage, with the question whether human speech is perfectly well adapted for the expression of the truth. Its origin, he reflects, is to be found in the cries of animals and it retains their characteristics. It expresses sentiment and passion, joy and grief, hate and love. But—‘il n’est pas fait pour dire la verite.’ “Perhaps it may be right to amend or extend that remark hair playful, half serious as it is—by two sentences from the wise words of Benjamin Jowett. ‘Speech,’ he says, ‘is not a separate faculty, but the expression of all our other faculties, to which all our other powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.’ And in another passage: ‘The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants, and not. allowing them to be our masters.’ ” “It is curious that the spread of democracy,” comments the “Morning Post,” “should have been accompanied by a decay of the very art which is designed to make direct appeal to the multitude. Partly that result is due, no doubt, to the conquest of the spoken by the written word, owing to the development of the Press, both in character and distribution. “But mainly it is due to that increased pressure of modern life which breeds impatience of any sustained claim on the attention—which demands more matter and less art; and is always anxious, in the phrase of the familiar anecdote, to ‘cut the cackle and Come to the ’osses.’ Therefore, the graces which used to be cultivated by the orator have been abandoned in favour of direct, matter-of-fact statement, whose greatest merit is that of the spear-thrust—to get straight home. “And yet oratory will always persist, even though it disclaim the name of oratory. Its secret is the influence of strong and sincere emotion, divorced, it may be, from any conscious art. ‘Then did Elijah the Prophet break forth like a fire, and his words appeared as burning torches.’ That is a description of true oratory—an effect that is not to be achieved by taking thought. “Simplicity of diction and appeal may be essential to the effect, or there may be elevation of thought and language; but there must be behind the spoken words a passionate sincerity. They must appear as burning torches. It is not necessary that the effect should endure. It may be untranslatable into print. Enough if at the moment it kindles the hearer to the speaker’s passion. “Like poetry, true oratory must mean more than it says—mean what cau only bo felt. and that is why the aratore ate as uu;o as the poets.”