Climax (Gradation)

Climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance, as in:

"It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city"

or in: bj! "Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide, l\ Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall Rise like the rocks that part Hispania's land from Gaul." (Byron)

Gradual increase in emotional evaluation in the first illustration and in significance in the second is realized by the distribution of the corresponding lexical items. Each successive unit is perceived as stronger than the preceding one. Of course, there are no objective linguistic criteria to estimate the degree of importance or significance of each constituent. It is only the formal homogeneity of these component parts and the test of synonymy in the words 'lovely', 'beautiful', 'fair,' 'veritable gem' in the first example and the relative inaccessibility of the barriers 'wall', 'river', 'crags', 'mountains' together with the epithets 'deep and wide', 'horrid', 'dark and tall' that make us feel the increase in importance of each.

A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.

Logical с I i т а х is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked at from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them. This relative importance may be evaluated both objectively and subjectively, the author's attitude towards the objects or phenomena in question being disclosed. Thus, the following paragraph from Dickens's "Christmas Carol" shows the relative importance in the author's mind of the things and phenomena described:

"Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, 'My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars imgjored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked Jiim what it -was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails, as though they said, 'No eye at all is better than #n evil eye, dark master!'"

The order of the statements shows what the author considers the culmination of the climax. The passage by Dickens should be considered "subjective", because there is no general recognition of the relative significance of the statements in the paragraph. The climax in the lines from Byron's "Ne barrier..." may be considered "objective" because such things as 'wall', 'river', 'crags', 'mountains' are objectively ranked according to their accessibility.

Emotional с I i т а х is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, as in the first example with the words 'lovely', 'beautiful', 'fair'.

Of course, emotional climax based on synonymous strings of words with emotive meaning will inevitably cause certain semantic differences

in these words — such is the linguistic nature of stylistic synonyms—, but emotive meaning will be the prevailing one.

Emotional climax is mainly found in sentences, more rarely in longer syntactical units. This is natural. Emotional charge cannot hold long. As becomes obvious from the analysis of the above examples of climatic order, the arrangement of the component parts calls for parallel construction which, being a kind of syntactical repetition, is frequently accompanied by lexical repetition. Here is another example of emotional climax built on this pattern: p "He was pleased when the child began to adventure across $ floors on hand and knees; he was gratified, when she managed the trick of balancing herself on two legs; he was delighted when she first said 'ta-ta'; and he was rejoiced when she recognized him and smiled at him." (Alan Paton)

Finally, we come to quantitative climax. This is an evident increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts, as in:

"They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens." (Maugham)

Here the climax is achieved by simple numerical increase. In the following example climax is materialized by setting side by side concepts of measure and time:

"Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and 'year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question." (Dickens)

What then are the indispensable constituents of climax? They are:

a) the distributional constituent: close proximity of the component parts arranged in increasing order of importance or significance;

b) the syntactical pattern: parallel constructions with possible lexical

repetition;

c) the connotative constituent: the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation, as no... ever once in all his life*, nobody ever, nobody, No beggars (Dickens); deep and wide, horrid, dark and tall (Byron); veritable (gem of a city).

Climax, like many other stylistic devices, is a means by which the author discloses his world, outlook, his evaluation of objective facts and phenomena. The concrete stylistic function of this device is to show the relative importance of things as seen by the author (especially in emotional climax), or to impress upon the reader the significance of the things described by suggested comparison, or to depict phenomena dynamically.1

1 Note: There is a device which is called anticlimax. The ideas expressed may be arranged in ascending order of significance, or they may be poetical or elevated, but the final one, which the reader expects to be the culminating one, as in climax, is trifling or farcical. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous. A typical example is Aesop's fable "The Mountain in Labour."

"In days of yore, a mighty rumbling was heard in a Mountain. It was said to be in labour, and multitudes flocked together, from far and near, to see what

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