In citing examples of sublimity in Homer’s Odyssey and the Illiad, Longinus points out the action and therefore, passion of the Illiad, written "at the height of his inspiration," versus the narrative of the Odyssey, "as is characteristic of old age." He further likens Homer "to a sinking sun, whose grandeur remains without its intensity."
This surprises me, for while passion of youth is spirited, it is often just as strongly misguided as it is intense. Maturity’s passion, it would seem to me, is held within careful worded wisdom, the passion nonetheless diminished by its finesse. Though of course, "there’s no fool like an old fool" wasn’t coined without reason.
In the end of this chapter (IX), there is this:
These observations with regard to the Odyssey should be made for another reason–in order that you may know that the genius of great poets and prose-writers, as their passion declines, finds its final expression in the delineation of character. For such are the details Homer gives, with an eye to characterisation, of life in the home of Odysseus; they form as it were a comedy of manners. (Chapter IX, Part 15)
While Carson McCullers struck immediately the goldmine in her brain with her very first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, after reading Cormac McCarthy’s first, The Orchard Keeper, and the difference between this and his later novels, it would appear to be in direct opposite with what Longinus claims here.
While McCarthy’s characters may be better drawn in his early novel, the characters of the later ones are so multilayered that it is left to the reader to decipher them. His imagery in description of environment–his being so taken with the land in particular–of The Orchard Keeper is where his passion truly comes through, and that is all narrative. The action, as we see, is minimal; barely enough to keep a story plot going.
Maybe it’s me as a writer who has gotten her hackles up at the insinuations of mellowing age here. But I really feel that I write with more passion now than ever before, and with more intelligent and reflective passion at that. Especially in writing, time allows for a controlled form of passion. One can write while in the throes of inflamed inspiration–especially with weblogs these days. Yes, I would admit that my more dangerous and uninformed passion will occasionally flare more quickly and amplified in oratory, but that’s another story.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology