Blog Post 4/4/12 Arendt Sentence Examples

My choice for a ‘bad sentence’

“The astonishing flowering of poetry and music from the middle of the eighteenth century until almost the last third of the nineteenth, accompanied by the rise of the novel, the only entirely social art form, coinciding with a no less striking decline of all the more public arts, especially architecture, is sufficient testimony to a close relationship between the social and the intimate.” P.39

This is a bad sentence because it does not read well at all. The meaning is not hard to ascertain but it is so poorly formed that the reader must spend extra time just to get the gist of it. This is because this sentence has way too many commas and is far too long. After reading the whole thing, the reader has to stop and break down the meaning of each individual phrase to put together what it means as a whole. Here is how I would rewrite the sentence to make it easier on the reader.

During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the intimate arts of poetry and music were accompanied by the rise of the novel, an entirely social art form. This, in combination with the decline of public art forms such as architecture, is evidence of a close relationship between the social and the intimate.

My choice for a ‘good sentence’

“The distinction between man and animal runs right through the human species itself: only the best (aristoi), who constantly prove themselves to be the best (aristeuein, a verb for which there is no equivalent in any other language) and who “prefer immortal fame to mortal things, “are really human; the others, content with whatever pleasures nature will yield them, live and die like animals.” P. 19

This is one of the best sentences that I have read by Arendt because not only is it extremely powerful (like many of her other sentences) but part of the reason it is so powerful is because of how clear and concise it is. If you take out the parentheses, it reads like this.

“The distinction between man and animal runs right through the human species itself: only the best who constantly prove themselves to be the and who “prefer immortal fame to mortal things, “are really human; the others, content with whatever pleasures nature will yield them, live and die like animals.” P. 19

In one sentence and only one sentence, she states exactly what it is that she thinks makes us human. Whether you agree or not if the quest for immortality is where the line should be drawn, it forces you to deeply reflect on the content of the writing. This is an impressive thing to accomplish in just one sentence and is surely a sign of intelligent, thought provoking writing.