, etc. The conjunction presents a general view to our
thought, it is the reunion of scattered facts; it is essentially
elliptical.
10. The _interjection_ responds to those circumstances where the soul,
moved and shaken by a crowd of emotions at once, feels that by uttering
a phrase it would be far from expressing what it experiences. It then
exhales a sound, and confides to gesture the transmission of its
emotion.
The interjection is essentially elliptical, because, expressing nothing
in itself, it expresses at the time all that the gesture desires it to
express, for ellipsis is a hidden sense, the revelation of which belongs
exclusively to gesture.
It must first be noted that these degrees are numbered from one to nine,
and that, of all the grammatical values defined, the conjunction,
interjection and adverb are classed highest.
Delsarte made the following experiment one day in the "Circle of Learned
Societies," during a lecture:
"Which word," he asked his audience, "requires most emphasis in the
lines--
"The wave draws near, it breaks, and vomits up before our eyes,
Amid the surging foam, a monster huge of size?"
The absence of any rule applicable to the subject caused the most
complete anarchy among the listeners. One thought that the word to be
emphasized must be _monster_--as indicating an object of terror; another
gave the preference to the adjective _huge_. Still another thought that
_vomits_ demanded the most expressive accent, from the ugliness of that
which it expresses.
Delsarte repeated the lines:
"The wave draws near, it breaks, and ... vomits up before our
eyes."
It was on the word _and_ that he concentrated all the force of his
accent; but giving it, by gesture, voice and facial expression, all the
significance lacking to that particle, colorless in itself, as he
pronounced the word, the fixity of his gaze, his trembling hands, his
body shrinking back into itself, while his feet seemed riveted to the
earth, all presaged something terrible and frightful. He saw what he was
about to relate, he made you see it; the conjunction, aided by the
actor's pantomime, opened infinite perspectives to the imagination; his
words had only to specify the fact, and to justify the emotion which
had accumulated in the interval.
But this particle, which here allows of eight degrees, is much
diminished when it fills the office of a simple copulative. The extent
of the word or the
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