Course XXXIII - Teaching 6: Speech and Orator

Rules to prepare the speech. Above all, an orator should devote especially to read selected books, where serious erudition and substantial ideas, and beauty and language energy go hand in hand.
It can never be too much emphasized how this continuous reading improves your formation. Inadvertently you start thinking and speaking with usual grace and elegance when you have excellent books of this type at hand. But reading is not enough: you should do a quite close mental work, give a different turn to every sentence of the book that you are reading, and try to change its outer aspects if they may be improved.
Through every one of these attempts silently made in your inner laboratory, obstacles and troubles of your reason and language start being broken, and wings start growing for some short flight.
Translation is another exercise leading to the same aim. Translation has two advantages: you grasp in depth the work that you are translating, and also you necessarily consider a lot of words. So you get inadvertently a treasure twice.
After these previous exercises, you can start trying to compose. First, you choose the subject matter, and then you should meditate a lot on it in order to find thoughts and to co-ordinate them so that they have the most natural and logical concatenation, relationship and dependence. Being entirely alone and devoted to his analysis and investigation, the orator moves in a wider and wider circle of ideas and images, and chooses and keeps those that are fitter to his aims and intellectual prospective. You need this mental disposition and reflective composition in order to prepare yourself to be truly eloquent. Keep in mind this warning: never work in a hurry, especially in the beginning, because if you try to arrive too soon, then you will not arrive at all. Another remark: not to prepare long speeches because their own extension weakens them and eventually are tiresome for the audience.
Also remember this: some days and moments, everything comes to your mind with wonderful rapidity and ease. So the link between your soul and the gross and material part is seemingly broken; then your word goes up graciously to quite subtle regions. But other days and moments are fateful and fruitless because your thought comes up reluctant and lazy; then you hardly glimpse some ideas on a lake of darkness, you are unable to formulate them, and even your tongue refuses to serve. Then simplicity, humility and patience are the best resources. Sometimes solemnity, words chosen in solitude and study, serenity and certain selected slowness grant a fit ceremonial to overcome this obstacle.
Also add this very especial rule: when the orator has already combined his ideas, sees them clearly and knows their links and similarities; when his meditations have provided necessary heat and cleverness, and has abundant inspirational images, then by way of preparation, he should write down just divisions or arrangement of his speech and capital ideas which will be useful as starting points. Some few points are enough for this purpose. And sometimes they do not need to be consulted later.
General rules for the orator. The first rule of all is to be modest. If he appears daring and petulant, his audience, which had to be docile and kind, rebels against him, and they will listen to him with prejudice.
This precaution is twice recommendable for a young and novice orator. Age and acquired reputation give certain authority and permit to insist firmly and irrevocably on his proposed opinion.
But this modest should not demean and become shyness. Serenity and inner calm are quite in accordance with modesty; the absence of these qualities makes the speech impossible, especially if there is improvisation. Fear blinds your reason, darkens your understanding, dulls your discursive faculty, and its unequivocal symptoms produce indifference and pity in the audience as soon as all this is perceived. At this point, a mean term is recommendable, but if you have to touch certain extremes, then to be daring is better than to be meticulous.
Another object that an orator should keep ever in mind: to give variety to his speech, by avoiding the same tone and color. Like in painting, chiaroscuro enhances a work of art.
You should meditate on Saint Augustine’s sentence: “Words depend on the orator, and the orator depends on words”.
A final warning: decorum and circumspection have to preside the speech, and the orator should carefully avoid to mistake zeal for offense. Your language should be restrained and circumspect, but emphatic at the same time.