The image; and no serious construction
In rime can build upon the modifier.[126]
One of the common mistakes of the inexperienced writer, in prose as well as poetry, is to suppose that the adjective can set the key of a discourse. Later he learns what Shapiro indicates, that nearly always the adjective has to have the way prepared for it. Otherwise, the adjective introduced before its noun collapses for want of support. There is a perceptible difference between “the irresponsible conduct of the opposition with regard to the Smith bill” and “the conduct of the opposition with regard to the Smith bill has been irresponsible,” which is accounted for in part by the fact that the adjective comes after the substantive has made its firm impression. In like manner we are prepared to receive Henley’s
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
because “night” has preceded “black.” I submit that if the poem had begun “Black as ...” it would have lost a great deal of its rhetorical force because of the inherent character of the opening word. The adjective would have been felt presumptuous, as it were, and probably no amount of supplementation could have overcome this unfortunate effect.
I shall offer one more example to show that costly mistakes in emphasis may result from supposing that the adjective can compete with the noun. This one came under my observation, and has remained with me as a classical instance of rhetorical ineptitude. On a certain university campus “Peace Week” was being observed, and a prominent part of the program was a series of talks. The object of these talks was to draw attention to those forces which seemed to be leading mankind toward a third world war. One of the speakers undertook to point out the extent to which the Western nations, and especially the United States, were at fault. He declared that a chief source of the bellicose tendency of the United States was its “proud rectitude,” and it is this expression which I wish to examine critically. The fault of the phrase is that it makes “rectitude” the villain of the piece, whereas sense calls for making “pride.” If we are correct in assigning the substantive a greater intrinsic weight, then it follows that “rectitude” exerts the greater force here. But rectitude is not an inciter of wars; it is rather that rectitude which is made rigid or unreasonable by pride which may be a factor in the starting of wars, and pride is really the provoking agent. For the most fortunate effect, then, the grammatical relationship should be reversed, and we should have “rectitude” modifying “pride.” But since the accident of linguistic development has not provided it with an adjective form of equivalent meaning, let us try “pride of rectitude.” This is not the best expression imaginable, but it is somewhat better since it turns “proud” into a substantive and demotes “rectitude” to a place in a prepositional phrase. The weightings are now more in accordance with meaning: what grammar had anomalously made the chief word is now properly tributary, and we have a closer delineation of reality. As it was, the audience went away confused and uninspired, and I have thought of this ever since as a situation in which a little awareness of the rhetoric of grammar—there were other instances of imperceptive usage—could have turned a merely well-intentioned speech into an effective one.
Having laid down this relationship between adjective and substantive as a principle, we must not ignore the real or seeming exceptions. For the alert reader will likely ask, what about such combinations as “new potatoes,” “drunk men,” “a warlike nation”? Are we prepared to say that in each of these the substantive gets the major attention, that we are more interested in “potatoes” than in their being “new,” in “men” than their being “drunk,” and so forth? Is that not too complacent a rule about the priority of the substantive over the adjective?
We have to admit that there are certain examples in which the adjective may eclipse the substantive. This may occur (1) when one’s intonation (or italics) directs attention to the modifier: “white horses”; “five dollars, not four.” (2) when there is a striking clash of meaning between the adjective and the substantive, such that one gives a second thought to the modifier: “a murderous smile”; “a gentleman gambler.” (3) when the adjective is naturally of such exciting associations that it has become a sort of traditional introduction to matter of moment: “a warlike nation”; “a desperate deed”; etc. Having admitted these possibilities of departure from the rule, we still feel right in saying that the rule has some force. It will be found useful in cases which are doubtful, which are the cases where no strong semantic or phonetic considerations override the grammatical pattern. In brief, when the immediate act of our mind does not tell us whether an expression should be in this form or the other, the principle of the relationship of adjective and substantive may settle the matter with an insight which the particular instance has not called forth.