08 Aug But it is the cruel fate of talkative people to desire hearers but not to get them (PLUTARCH)
ON TALKATIVENESS
If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person,
“Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages;” two of the first and foremost of which are hearing and being heard, neither of which can happen to talkative people, for however they desire either so unhappy are they that they must desist from it.
For in all other diseases of the soul, as love of money, love of glory, or love of pleasure, people at any rate attain the desired object: but it is the cruel fate of talkative people to desire hearers but not to get them, for everyone flees from them with headlong speed; and if people are sitting or walking about in any public place, and see one coming they quickly pass the word to one another to shift quarters.
And as when there is dead silence in any assembly they say Hermes has joined the company, so when any prater joins some drinking party or social gathering of friends, all are silent, not wishing to give him a chance to break in, and if he uninvited begin to open his mouth, they all, “like before a storm at sea, when Boreas is blowing a gale round some headland,” foreseeing tossing about and nausea, disperse. And so it is their destiny to find neither willing table-companions, nor messmates when they are travelling by land or by sea, but only such as cannot help themselves; for such a fellow is always at you, plucking hold of your clothes or chin, or giving you a dig in the ribs with his elbow.
“Most valuable are the feet in such a conjuncture,”
according to Archilochus, nay according to the wise Aristotle himself.
For he being bothered with a talkative fellow, and wearied out with his absurd tales, and his frequent question, “Is not this wonderful, Aristotle?” “Not at all,” said he, “but it is wonderful that anyone with a pair of legs stops here to listen to you.”
And to another such fellow, who said after a long rigmarole, “Did I weary you, philosopher, by my chatter?” “Not you, by Zeus,” said he, “for I paid no attention to you.”
For even if talkative people force you to listen, the mind can give them only its outward ears to deluge, while it unfolds and pursues some other thoughts within; so they find neither hearers to attend to them, nor credit them. They say those that are prone to Venus are commonly barren: so the prating of talkative people is ineffectual and fruitless.
Nestor indeed in Sophocles’ Play, trying by his words to soothe exasperated Ajax, said to him mildly,
“I blame you not, for though your words are bad, Your acts are good:”
but we cannot feel so to the talkative man, for his want of tact in words destroys and undoes all the grace of his actions.
Lysias wrote a defence for some accused person, and gave it him, and he read it several times, and came to Lysias in great dejection and said, “When I first perused this defence, it seemed to me wonderful, but when I read it a second and third time, it seemed altogether dull and ineffective. Then Lysias laughed, and said, “What then? Are you going to read it more than once to the jury?” And yet do but consider the persuasiveness and grace of Lysias’ style; for he “I say was a great favourite with the dark-haired Muses.”
And of the things which have been said of Homer the truest is that he alone of all poets has survived the fastidiousness of mankind, as being ever new and still at his acme as regards giving pleasure, and yet saying and proclaiming about himself,
“I hate to spin out a plain tale over and over again,”
he avoids and fears that satiety which lies in ambush for every narrative, and takes the hearer from one subject to another, and relieves by novelty the possibility of being surfeited.
But the talkative worry one’s ears to death with their tautologies, as people scribble the same things over and over again on palimpsests.
Plutarch’s Morals
Plutarch
