"For a moment, he possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a single individuality - the orator wielding a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by the simple majesty of his all controlling thought, converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That night there were at least one thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!" - Frederick Douglass (1076)
Wow. If there was ever a rhetorical power to be had, the above is the kind I would want to wield - both in the way he has written it, and the experience itself. I really thought I might be drawn to Willard, as I usually have, in the case of Grimke or Aspasia, but Douglass really seems to speak to me personally. I've been trying to figure out why that is, and I think the above paragraph illustrates pretty well it for me: it's because his style, his eloquence, if you will, appeals directly to my humanity, and hopefully to a lot of others - mostly, in his use of the word "soul" which crops up a lot in any of his writings. I noticed it particularly in his "Narrative Life," which I just reread about a month ago actually. There's something about the word "soul" that holds much more depth than "heart" or "mind" for me - there must be an underlying metaphysical sense that exudes from it.
He's not only obviously an expert writer - and an amazing orator, if his speaking voice was anything like his writing voice - but there is something larger about his words that seem to just fill and rise up, kind of like a balloon.
I don't know how to explain it, other than to say that there must be a perfect listener to fit every orator. The only way I know how to tie this into rhetoric directly right now is to say that, if rhetoric is the art of persuasion, then Douglass has mastered his art very well.
Douglass's work is very eloquent. It is that use of artful form which gives his text such power. As you point out, his use of soul alludes to that part which cannot be separate from the idea of the Divine, but can be separate from the idea of the Individual. "Soul" is a concept we share, and as being in the domain of the Divine, we feeble humans cannot judge. I feel like it is a way for Douglass to draw a unifying line between himself and his audience (e.g. we all have a soul, and all souls are equal in the eyes of God). That is very powerful imagery and none of it has to be explicitly stated beyond the words, "his own soul".
ReplyDeleteDo you guys think that Douglass's soul is our classical rhetoricians Truth? I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I thought of it with Kelly's link between soul and the Divine. It is Douglass's way of connecting his rhetoric to his audience and to a larger cause. In the same way, our older rhetoricians concerned with Truth were seeking to join rhetoric with a higher moral authority (ultimate understanding), much as Douglass is linking his rhetoric with his overarching beliefs and cause.
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