The difference between parallelism and balance is that in the former the elements involved must stand in an identical gram- matical relationship to the same word or construction. Bal- anced words or constructions, however, do not have to be parallel (though they can be). Thus in the sentence above by Defoe the six clauses are separate and independent, not related to anything.
But parallelism and balance often go hand in hand, and nothing prevents the same constructions from being both par- allel and balanced, if they are performing an identical gram- matical function, are in the same form, and roughly equal in length. Here are two examples:
As for me, I frankly cleave to the Greeks and not to the Indians, and I aspire to be a rational animal rather than a pure spirit.
George Santayana
The sentence balances two coordinated clauses of similar structure and length. Within the first clause, the prepositional
SENTENCE STYLES IJJ
phrases "to the Greeks and not to the Indians" are parallel and antithetical. In the second clause "a rational animal rather than a pure spirit" is a parallel construction, and balance (in this case antithesis) is provided by playing "rational animal"
against "pure spirit."
Most people, of course, made no distinction between a Commu- nist—who believed in nothing but government—and such philo- sophical anarchists as Vanzetti—who believed in no government
at a l l . Phil Strong
"A communist" and "such philosophical anarchists as Van- zetti" are parallel objects of "between," though the second is too much longer than the first to constitute a balance. How- ever, balance does occur in the two "who" clauses, though these are not parallel because they modify different nouns.
The Advantages of Balance
Balanced construction has several virtues. It is pleasing to our eyes and ears, and gives shape to the sentence, one of the essentials of good writing. It is memorable. And by playing key terms against each other, it opens up their implications.
For example, the following sentence by Charles Dickens makes us consider the plight of those who lack the cash to turn their ideas to account:
Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not.
Anthony Hope implies a skeptical assessment of politicians and bureaucrats:
Ability we don't expect in a government office, but honesty one might hope for.
And here the movie critic Pauline Kael comments on the film Love Story:
178 THE SENTENCE In itself, a love idyll like this may seem harmless, but it won't be by itself very long.
Kael's complaint is that shlock films, if they are popular, usher in a host of even worse imitations. Notice how the sentence swings and advances on the phrases "in itself" and "by itself."
Beyond highlighting specific words and ideas, balance has a deeper significance. It expresses a way of looking at the world, just as freight-train or cumulative sentences express their own angles of vision. Implicit in the balanced style is a sense of objectivity, control, and proportion. In the following passage about Lord Chesterfield, the critic F. L. Lucas rein- forces his argument by the reasonableness of his balanced sen- tences. The very style seems to confirm the fairness and lack of dogmatism suggested by such phrases as "seem to me" and
"I think":
In fine, there are things about Chesterfield that seem to me rather repellant; things that it is an offense in critics to defend. He is typ- ical of one side of the eighteenth century—of what still seems to many its most typical side. But it does not seem to me the really good side of that century; and Chesterfield remains, I think, less an example of things to pursue in life than of things to avoid.
Because the balanced style keeps a distance between writer and subject, it works well for irony and comedy. For instance, the novelist Anthony Trollope implies humorous disapproval of a domineering female character in this way:
It is not my intention to breathe a word against Mrs. Proudie, but still I cannot think that with all her virtues she adds much to her husband's happiness.
The balance suggests the objectivity of the author and in- creases the credibility of his criticism, while at the same time the second clause comically reveals him indulging in the very gossip he forswears in the first.
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Comic, too, is the effect of this sentence from the autobi- ography of Edward Gibbon, the historian of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which describes an unhappy love affair of his youth, broken off at his father's insistence:
After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, ab- sence, and the habits of a new life.
Writing from the calmer waters of age, when the tempests of twenty seem less catastrophic, Gibbon is smiling. The very parallelism and balance of this triadic sentence, as formal as a minuet, are a comment on the passions of youth.
Balance and parallelism do not communicate meaning by themselves. The primary units of meaning, of course, are words. But balanced and parallel constructions do reinforce and enrich meaning. Or, to be more exact, certain kinds of meaning. Not every sentence can be cast in this mold, or should be. Like every style, parallelism and balance have lim- itations as well as potentialities. Their very sanity, reason- ableness, and control make them unsuitable for conveying the immediacy of raw experience or the intensity of strong emo- tion. Moreover, their formality is likely to seem too elaborate to modern readers, a less "natural" way of writing than the segregating style or the freight-train or cumulative sentences.
However, we ought not to equate formality with artifici- ality or to think naturalness the only ideal. All well- constructed sentences result from art, even those—perhaps especially those—like Hemingway's that create the illusion of naturalness. Remember, too, that natural is a tricky word. To men and women of the eighteenth century, parallelism and balance reflected nature, which they understood as a vast but comprehensible structure of ordered parts.
Perhaps the best lesson a modern writer can learn from the parallel and balanced styles is the necessity of giving shape to what he or she thinks and feels. The shape congenial to the eighteenth century seems unnatural to us. But while we no
l 8 o THE SENTENCE longer write like Thomas Jefferson or Samuel Johnson, we can still use parallelism and balance as ways of organizing some aspects of experience and knowledge, and as means of attaining economy, emphasis, and variety in our sentences.
For Practice
t> The following sentences all exhibit balanced construction.
Some exhibit a simple one-to-one balance; others are more com- plicated. Identify the general pattern of each, whether /
; / ; / ; and so on.
I was enjoying the privilege of studying at the world's finest uni- versities; Negroes at home were revolting against their miserable condition. Stanley Sanders As for me, I am no more yours, nor you mine. Death hath cut us asunder; and God hath divided me from the world and you from
m e . Sir Walter Raleigh For aristocrats and adventurers France meant big money; for most Englishmen it came to seem a costly extravagance.
Geoffrey Hindley
Then she shrieked shrilly, and fell down in a swoon; and then women bare her into her chamber, and there she made overmuch
sorrow. Sir Thomas Malory
Heaven had now declared itself in favour of France, and had laid bare its outstretched arm to take vengeance on her invaders.
David Hume
The more we saw in the Irishman a sort of warm and weak fidelity, the more he regarded us with a sort of icy anger.
G. K. Chesterton Building ceases, births diminish, deaths multiply; the nights lengthen, and days grow shorter. Maurice Maeterlinck In a few moments everything grew black, and the rain poured down like a cataract. Francis Parkman
SENTENCE STYLES l 8 l He could not keep the masses from calling him Lindy, but he con- vinced them that he was not the Lindy type. John Lardner In literature there is no such thing as pure thought; in literature, thought is always the handmaid of emotion. j . Middieton Murry
> Choosing different subjects from those in the text, compose five balanced sentences modeled upon examples in the preceding question.