Satisfaction can come from many sources. Some may argue that satisfaction stems from a personal feat, like the sense of pride after conquering the tops of a treacherous mountain, whereas others may find joy in the little things in life – like a good cup of coffee or a warm and sunny windowsill. Regardless whether you get your kicks from physical accomplishments or small comforts, you’d probably agree with us that writing a couple lines with a killer kick is also pretty far up there on the list. However, the highs of writing can be elusive, especially for those who find it to be a chore. With the help of Mark Forsyth’s book, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect Phrase, let’s continue discovering how we can experience the thrills of catchy and eloquent writing again and again!
Flipping the conversation with chiasmuses
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about symmetry. Just like how some people are willing to shell out big bucks for plastic surgeons to create symmetric physical beauty, some writers go great lengths to build symmetric copy. The palindrome is the most primitive form of mirrored writing. With words like kayak or radar, you can’t help but admire how the word is spelt the same way going forwards or backwards. Palindromes can also be applied to short phrases to create a burst of symmetry, like taco cat or never odd or even – longer ones do exist, but they rarely make sense, like Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.
While a palindrome is the literal definition of symmetric writing, a chiasmus is its more evolved and eloquent cousin. Consider this example from the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette:
“Tea for two and two for tea,
Me for you and you for me”
“There’s something lovely about the symmetry here, not because it’s visual like a palindrome, but because the thoughts replicate each other,” describes Forsyth. When two phrases reflect each other, we are drawn towards them like moths to a flame. Beyond its pleasing visual appeal, the symmetric beauty invites us to dive into its deeper meaning – just as we yearn to find the significant other who completes us, we hope that someone else will think the same of us. “Also, everybody likes a cup of tea now and then,” he adds. Reflections are so simple, and yet, so deep at the same time.
Perhaps it is this simplicity that attracts American politicians to using the chiasmus, observes Forsyth. Whether it be former President Obama’s quote “you stood up for America, now America must stand up for you,” during his address on the end of the Iraq war or former Senator Hillary Clinton saying “the true test is not the speeches a president delivers, it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches” during her 2008 presidential campaign… or even the late JFK during his address to the United Nations in 1961, where he declared “mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind”, it’s clear that the chiasmus is prized as a powerful and inspirational rhetoric.
Although chiasmuses are simple enough to write and use as is, did you know that they can be taken even further and paired with assonances? Consider English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, where it starts:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…”
If you remember how assonances work, it’s the resemblance of sound between the stressed vowels in a phrase. Look closely at the stressed vowel syllables for Xanadu and Kubla Khan. “An-Ah-Oo” and “Oo-Ah-An” deciphers Forsyth. It’s a chiasmus of syllables! Which Forsyth believes to be “ a species of chiasmus that is as hard to spot in the wild as the Abominable Snowman.”
Should you use an assonance and chiasmus hybrid in your next marketing piece then? Well… we’d recommend against it. It’s one of those instances where less is more – not only would it be difficult to write, many clients (and their customers) would probably value mirrored words over syllables. The combo is undeniably beautiful, but its lack of an immediate punch in the visual and interpretational department is perhaps why it’s so rare in pop culture today. After all… if you were a politician or a marketer to the masses, do you think your audience would care more about a pair of phrase’s meaning or how you inverted their syllables? Let’s try writing a headline for an upcoming charity fundraiser in Boston organised by Kanye West:
Just chiasmus:
Boston was there for Kanye, now Kanye is back for Boston
Chiasmus and assonance:
Boston was there for Kanye, now Kanye organises service unto Boston
(Aw) (Uh) (Err) (Or) (Ahn) | (Ahn) (Or) (Uhr) (Uhn) (Aw)
By itself, the chiasmus is snappy and sweet. We really tried to make it work with assonances, but getting the perfect syllabic mirror without completely skewing the meaning was too difficult. Even if we managed, we doubt it’d carry the same impact as the lone chiasmus.
Catching the wind with catachresis
Have you ever looked at someone and stared death at them? It’s metaphorical, but the sentence doesn’t make sense. Looks can’t physically hurt anyone (unless you’re the Medusa from Greek mythology or X-Men’s Cyclops)… and yet our brains automatically reinterpret it as “glared angrily” or something equivalent. Such is the catachresis, an instance where a sentence is “so startlingly wrong that it’s right.” Perhaps the best known example hails from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the young prince said:
“O heart, lose not thy nature, let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.”
Obviously, you can’t speak daggers because it isn’t possible (for now anyway). “You can speak any adverb. You can speak loudly, softly, gradually, democratically and deliciously,” muses Forsyth. “You can speak a few nouns: English and the truth. Or you could speak words as sharp as daggers, or as cruel… but you can’t speak daggers any more than you can speak grenades or bullets or blunderbusses. And that’s why the phrase stuck.” It’s a rare phenomenon for phrases that break writing convention to be accepted, but Forsyth wagered that catachreses caught on because of its shock value. “You shock, you are noticed, you are remembered, but what is remembered ceases to be noticed and shocks no more.”
Catachreses have seen an influx of usage since. Just look at the titles of some hit songs over the past century points out Forsyth – like Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” or Bananarama’s “Love in the First Degree”. Although catachreses no longer have the same wow factor, you have to admit, speaking daggers or dance me to the end of love carries a lot more weight than speaking with hatred or dance me to the end of time – the extra bit of visual imagery really does give it the edge!
Rhetorics and literary devices grant us an extraordinary boost in persuasion. Be it the simple and elegant solution of reflecting a phrase with a chiasmus, or constructing vivid metaphorical imagery through the catachresis, both are stylish ways to command the attentions of an audience. Stay tuned to find out what’s next in Forsyth’s book, and in the meantime, why not brush up on some of our previously covered chapters below?
Part 1 – Alliterations and assonance
Part 2 – Polyptotons, antitheses, merisms and blazons
Part 3 – Hyperbatons, anadiplosis and periodic sentences
Part 4 – Parataxis and hypotaxis
Part 5 – Diacopes and rhetorical questions
Part 6 – Hendiadyses, epistrophes and tricolons
Part 7 – Syllepses and iscolons
Part 8 – Enallages, versification and epizeuxes
Part 9 – Zeugmas and paradoxes