The Superiority of the Inferior Position

 

 

Listen to me.

 

Don't disparage the inferior position.

 

What greater glory can the orator win

than to defend the inferior position? And in the games,

who makes the multitudes rise up,

pound each others' backs,

and roar like kataigis, their bellows descending from above

to raise the dust of arenas?

Who but the underdog who prolongs the fight

even to the death?

 

"In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail," said Longinus.

 

And didn't he, when describing hypsous,

plant his kiss, like a spear-point,

on the ear of your soul, Athos,

prying it open to receive his torrent of words overwhelming?

Did he not speak of blows, and the acolyte

near fainting with terror, and the pleasures

of being driven and swept like a towering wave

until you lapsed again into the blank sea,

or died, whimpering, on the shore?

 

Did you never taste that sweet delirium of surrender,

when the strings of your sinews come undone, utterly—

the grand illusion of believing

you created what you heard?

 

The thunder of Demosthenes is like that of Zeus, presaging

lighting, incineration, the birth

of Dionysus.

 

I speak

over my shoulder to aver

it has its advantages.

 

Sublime natures are seldom clean.