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Today’s contemporary writers so obsessed with writing short declarative sentences forfeit a degree of elegance in their prose, elegance that may easily come by using a rhetorical figure: ‘gradation.’

How to write sentence or sentences with Elegance

And what is literature but elegant prose? So for the serious writer who wants to write literary prose, here are some examples:

Cicero in his Ad Herenium, IV. XXIV, defines Climax —which today is known as Gradatio— as the figure in which the speaker passes to the following word only after advancing by steps to the preceding one. Here are two examples:

I did not conceive this without counseling it; I did not counsel it without myself at once undertaking it; I did not undertake it without completing it; nor did I complete it without winning approval of it.

And:

The empire of Greece belonged to the Athenians; the Athenians were overpowered by the Spartans; the Spartans were overcome by the Thebans; the Thebans were conquered by the Macedonians; and the Macedonians in a short time subdued Asia in war and joined her to the empire.

Here’s another example from Cicero’s “Discussions at Tusculucum (V)”:

I have Socrates’s well known demonstration to support me. For according to that prince of philosophers the disposition of a man’s soul indicates the man; the man indicates his speech, his speech indicates his actions; his actions indicate his life.

Examples of ‘Gradatio’ as shown in traditional rhetorical textbooks:

Of sloth cometh pleasure, of pleasure cometh spending, of spending cometh whoring, of whoring cometh lack, of lack cometh theft, of theft, cometh hanging, and there an end for this world.

Who controls Berlin, controls Germany; who controls Germany controls Europe; who controls Europe controls the world.

As it can be observed, the steps may be given using verbal forms and nouns —Athenians, Spartans, Theban, and Macedonians, overpowered, overcome, etc.— But once the nouns or subjects are clearly identified, the writer may emphasize the verbal forms, as when

Rosalind speaks in Shakespeare’s As You Like It:

For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they ask one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have theymade a pair of stairs to marriage.

Let’s see how the Argentinean polymath Jorge Luis Borges uses gradation in his short story “The Secret Miracle”:

From perplexity Hladik moved to stupor, from stupor to resignation, from resignation to sudden gratitude.

What is notable in Borges’ use of this rhetorical figure is that he gives it a twist at the end; gradatio means ‘gradual increment,’ yet Borges alters the traditional usage by giving it a sudden unexpected jolt.

Mary Duffy in her short story “Panic Attacks,” collected in East of Tiffany’s, uses ‘gradatio’ in the voice of a pet:

For a moment my whole world came crashing down on me: out of the debris came pain, of the pain came hurt, of the hurt came paralysis, of the paralysis came numbness, of the numbness came total eclipse of the soul.

Once a writer masters this rhetorical figure, it could well be employed as: sentence openers, paragraph openers, and in the middle and closing of sentences and paragraphs.

Related articles

• Become a Writer Like Gorgias of Leontini (ca 483-376 B.C.E) (sentenceopeners.com)
• Become a Writer Like Jorge Luis Borges (sentenceopeners.com)
• Essay Writing Tips: Negation and Affirmation (writeessaysandfiction.com)