Course XXXIII - Teaching 8: Several Types of Eloquence

Popular eloquence. Its tribune is the environment, and its audience, the people. Through it you can try the most daring and less controlled flights, the boldest images and the most vivid and profound emotions in comparison with eloquence of other types.
This eloquence keeps in mind rather ornament of your language than fiber and energy of your sayings. People want to hear great things, loudly and entirely announced by the orator with passion, expressive gesture and all signs of conviction and enthusiasm. There an orator stirs or calms down multitudes through the breath of his word.
Military eloquence. It is this eloquence that mainly influenced destinies of peoples.
An eloquence of this type proves the power of the word. It enraptures men and makes them run blindly in search for a golden glory; it exalts their spirits and pushes them to death with the same joy of going to a feast, and fills them with enthusiasm to the extent of making them forget their parents, sons, daughters and wives, and thinking just of an idol in front of them, or of a fatherland, or of a flag that is its emblem.
Napoleon’s victories were dependent a lot upon the fiery word of this leader who was entirely able to captivate and convey enthusiasm, arrogance and magnanimity to his troops. His notable harangues are a particular example in this sense.
Academic eloquence. This eloquence requires of measure and calculation as a whole, and just claims for cultivated diction, refined and subtle concepts, brilliant figures in accordance with beauty, not with elevation and magnificence; that is, rhythm and cadence that our soul does not admit easily through other means. This eloquence is like a walk through pleasant gardens. Timon has described it accurately: “Its aspect is entirely different. It is like a coquette looking and looking at herself from foot to head. It caresses the vanity of others so that they flatter her vanity. It dislikes many ideas. It moves easily through well-studied sentences, intangible delicacies and fine allusions. Its own crown is pallid roses that are born of coal in warm greenhouses of the Institute”.
Sacred eloquence. It is related just to the rest, since at this point a detailed consideration is beyond the reach of this course.
It is over a profane orator because a sacred orator can choose his object, can meditate, dispose and formulate it, and can order it profoundly and closely in the archive of his memory. On the other hand, a profane orator receives the object that has been presented to him and in the way it has been presented, and most times is obliged to speak about this object with little preparation or without any preparation.
A preacher speaks to pious and devout individuals, whose hearts do not admit opposition, suspicion or distrust; usually a profane orator speaks among tenacious opponents and sometimes before reluctant persons. Most times a preacher speaks sweetly, lovingly and fraternally, but a profane orator throws fiery bolts and evokes passion and hatred. The former tries to fraternize; the latter, tries to beat enemies.
But a profane orator, in relation to oratory, always has other advantages as compensation of that irregularity. A preacher is a man of yesterday, of precedent days; and orator is man of today, of the present moment.
But the divine word resounds on the solemn picture of his pulpit. As an advocate of his religion, an interpreter of God, an announcer of doctrine or dogmas, a father for his devotees, who as such is leading them with holy severity and encouraging them with his angelic sweetness, he is a guide for the sinner who is about to fall in the abyss, and as such he grasps him with his strong arm and moves him away from the abyss, gives him comfort and hope in the word, and his fight, even though not so manifested as that of a tribune, parliamentarian and patriot, is not free of attacks and resonant victories that the latter get. But victories of a sacred orator are a result of solitude and silence. His work is less temporal by virtue of its mission and nature, but in spite of it he works amid a temporal environment and, being unaware of the fleeting triumph before men, necessarily he must know, through faith, the last victory close to God.