A Literary Look at: Chiasmus!

If someone walked up to you in a supermarket and suddenly said, "Chiasmus!", it seems to me you might reasonably (though not quite accurately) respond with something like, "Gesundheit!"  -- Am I wrong?  

Well.  Anyway.  Chiasmus:  I'll wager you've never heard of this little literary gadget.  It's dashed useful, though, which is why I'd like to introduce it to you.  One of my favorite rhetorical figures, chiasmus is so named because it, according to Merriam-Webster, is "an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chiasmus).  More simply put, it's language in the shape of an "x."  Think a-b-b-a, if that helps -- I love chocolate, and chocolate loves me (for example).  Not to get too bogged down in grammatical details (which has a nasty habit of making people stop reading an otherwise decent blog...), I here present a smattering of thoughts regarding chiasmus and what it can do, which, I hope, will spark a bit of interest in you for this splendid tool of language.  Without further ado:

Warping With Words

By Caitlin Clancy

Copyright 2011

To turn backwards and forwards, to right and reverse, and thereby to challenge the mind, engaging the intellect in a search for truth – this is power of chiasmus.   A daring device, chiasmus bends the brain and compels contemplation. In the Encomium of Helen, for example, Gorgias uses chiasmus to posit that “it is an equal mistake to blame the praisable and praise the blamable” (75).  This sentence requires one to ponder, however briefly, in order to apprehend its full meaning.  By “praisable,” does Gorgias mean “able to be praised” or “worthy of praise” (75)?  And what of “blamable” (Gorgias 75)?  The power of chiasmus rests in its ability to cause men to think and seek some degree of truth.  The best kind of chiasmus will point to Truth itself.

Like any tool, though, chiasmus can be corrupted.  When used with the fallacy of equivocation, chiasmus conceals rather than reveals.  Instead of illuminating, such chiasmus confuses.  Related to this is Gorgias’ declaration that: “[i]t is the duty of one and the same man both to speak the needful rightly and to refute (the unrightfully spoken” (75).  Equivocation in any circumstance fails to “speak the needful rightly” and thus goes beyond dishonesty, neglecting the “duty…to refute (the unrightfully spoken” (Gorgias 75).  But equivocation has another fault: theft.  By confusing the meaning of terms, equivocation can make it appear that one has won an argument when, in reality, one has simply avoided the matter at hand.  Hence, deliberate equivocation sins both against others, by withholding knowledge to which they have a right (“You shall not steal”), and against truth (“You shall not bear false witness”) (Exodus 20:15-16).  To avoid this double trap and use chiasmus – and all rhetoric – well, we must beware of warping truth with words used equivocally.  We must scrutinize closely whether we are wording clever twists or merely twisting clever words.  

Works Cited

Gorgias. “Encomium of Helen.” The Belmont Abbey College Reader. Ed. Angela

Mitchell Miss. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. 75. Print.

The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. London, Eng.: Oxford UP,                        1966. Print.