Three semantic brides all in a row

[Joe Carillo]

To show the semantic power of the three rhetorical devices that we have taken up in our preceding discussions—namely the resumptive modifier, the summative modifier, and the free modifier—it’s tempting to simply mint new specimens of each as examples. That’s actually what we have been doing so far, a process that, of course, is very much like using bridal stand-ins to go through rehearsals for a grand wedding. But this time we’ll see all three of the semantic brides for real, their grooms three of the finest stylists the English language has ever produced: the breathtakingly iconoclastic American journalist H. L. Mencken, the towering English historian Edward Gibbon, and the eminent American naturalist-philosopher Loren Eiseley.

The masterful English prose of H.L. Mencken, Edward Gibbon, and Loren Eiseley draw much of their power from their skillful use of resumptive modifiers and free modifiers and, once having exhausted a theme, from an occasional summative modifier--yielding nonfiction that not only read well but that’s also great literature.
   
Let’s begin by taking a look at Mencken’s artistry in using resumptive, summative, and free modifiers in this vaulting, magnificent prose from In Defense of Women [all underscoring in this and in subsequent passages mine]:

       “Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free from sentimentality and illusion, a man hard to deceive, a man of the first
        class, and I’ll show you a man with a wide streak    of woman in him. Bonaparte had it; Goethe had it; Schopenhauer had it;
        Bismarck and Lincoln had it; in Shakespeare, if the Freudians are to be believed, it amounted to downright homosexuality. The
        essential traits and qualities of the male, the hallmarks of the unpolluted masculine, are at the same time the hallmarks of the
        Schafskopf [a German word, literally “sheep’s head,” that means a “dolt” or “numskull”]. The caveman is all muscles and mush.
        Without a woman to rule him and think for him, he is a truly lamentable spectacle: a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the frame
        of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous caricature of God.”

Notice, first, how Mencken uses “man” as a resumptive modifier, effortlessly elaborating on the word in the four free relative clauses that follow the main clause: “a man free from sentimentality and illusion,” “a man hard to deceive,” “a man of the first class,” and “I’ll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him.” Then marvel at how Mencken audaciously sums up the paragraph by reinforcing the noun phrase “a truly lamentable spectacle” with free relative modifiers that also superbly work as summative modifiers: “a baby with whiskers,” “a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs,” and “a feeble and preposterous caricature of God.” In this kind of rapier-sharp prose, Mencken—then as now—has few equals.

Contrast Mencken’s deliciously scathing diatribes with Gibbon’s detached yet consummately elegant parallelisms in this passage from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

        “Yet Julian sustained adversity with firmness, and prosperity with moderation. After an interval of one hundred and twenty
        years from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an emperor who made no distinction between his duties and his    
        pleasures, who laboured to relieve the distress and to revive the spirit of his subjects, and who endeavoured always to connect
        authority with merit, and happiness with virtue. Even faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge the superiority
        of his genius in peace as well as in war, and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of his country, and that he
        deserved the empire of the world.”

In this train of evocative relative clauses, both bound and free, Gibbon makes history spring back to life, vividly and authoritatively.

Now, let’s watch Eiseley eloquently yet quietly conjuring for us the epochal march of life and time in this meditation from The Immense Journey:

        “The world of the giants was a dying world. These fantastic little seeds skipping and hopping and flying about the woods and
         valleys brought with them an amazing adaptability. If our whole lives had not been spent in the midst of it, it would astound
         us. The old, stiff, sky-reaching wooden world had changed into something that glowed here and there with strange colors,
         put out queer, unheard-of fruits and little intricately carved seed cases, and, most important of all, produced concentrated
         foods in a  way that the land had never seen before, or dreamed of back in the fish-eating, leaf-crunching days of the
         dinosaurs.”

Through the masterful use of free and bound relative modifiers, Eiseley shows us eternity in just a little over a hundred words.

The prose of Mencken, Gibbon, and Eiseley shows one outstanding thing in common: an authentic voice that gives vent to a seamless, effortless flow of ideas. And as we can see, their discourses draw much of their power from the skillful use of resumptive modifiers and free modifiers and, once having exhausted a theme, from an occasional summative modifier. As such their prose becomes more than just journalism, more than just history, more than just meditation. They bring us to the realm of deeply felt and felicitously expressed ideas—nonfiction that not only reads well but that’s also great literature.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 64 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Three semantic brides all in a row

Next week:  In defense of the passive voice   (January 2, 2025)

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.