I can’t think of a more fitting celebration of this Fourth of July than a reading of Walter Isaacson’s thin volume “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”
Isaacson is an influential public scholar and biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin.
This timely text coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a milestone for a democratic form of government that suddenly seems fragile.
Isaacson’s booster shot is to remind us of a single sentence, not the first one in the Declaration, but the second:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
He argues those 35 words constitute “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.” That opinion could inspire a brilliant — if nerdy — cocktail party debate.
In microchapters, Isaacson describes the historical significance of such words and phrases as: We; self-evident truths; all men; created equal; endowed by their creator; unalienable rights; Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
This is no uncritical patriotic declamation. With careful attention to Thomas Jefferson’s original text, to the suggested revisions from Ben Franklin, and from the ensuing debates, we learn the limitations and hypocrisies within a phrase such as “all men” — as it leaves out women, enslaved people and even many males without property.
I stipulate the infelicity of my revision: “All men are created equal — sort of.”
It’s also interesting that Isaacson prefers the second sentence to the first:
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
In our time, that 71-word sentence filled with abstractions may seem impenetrable, but it adheres to the serious literary styles of the 18th century, when sentences could be praised for their complexity.
Isaacson reads and deciphers his greatest sentence from a historian’s point of view.
My immodest contribution is to offer a different, but compatible analysis: an X-ray reading, from a rhetorical perspective, of how the tools of language, still relevant to all writers, combine to make great meaning. What can we writers today learn from our founding authors?
Tool No. 1: The power of placing the subject and verb together at the beginning of the sentence, and letting all the subordinate elements branch to the right. (Sentences work best when the subject and verb of the main clause join to spark the energy and meaning that come after. When subjects and verbs come later, or are separated, that energy is lost.)
Tool No. 2: The power of a transitive verb that takes an object: We hold these truths … (SEO, search engine optimization, may be important in the digital age, but it can never replace the muscularity of SVO: subject, verb, object.)
Tool No. 3: The power of passive, active and other forms of the verb “to be.” (Writing guides for centuries prefer the active voice to the passive, so that the verb delivers rather than receives the action. But strong passives work as well. Men, we learn, are created and endowed. We are active when “we hold.” And the third possibility — a form of the verb “to be” joins the party with “among these are …” Active, passive, to be — together in perfect harmony.)
Tool No. 4: The power of the magic number three, the largest number in literature and culture. (The number of elements in a text sends a secret message to the reader. One declares the world. Two divides the world. Three encompasses the world. That is why so many writers use three items to signify the whole. Our unalienable rights are many, but our authors chose three: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.)
Tool No. 5: The power of establishing a pattern and giving it a twist. (Here are three examples: Peter, Paul and Mary; Hither, Thither and Yon; Truth, Justice and the American Way. And before all those: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. In each case, the writer builds what seems like a predictable series, which ends with a surprise. How do I know? Because, like Sinatra, I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn — and a king!)
Tool No. 6: The power of placing the emphatic word at the end of a sentence or paragraph. (I would have written, “The Queen is dead, my lord.” But Shakespeare, a better writer, preferred: “The Queen, my lord, is dead.” The authors could have written: the pursuit of happiness, liberty and life. But for metrical reasons and the power of that final phrase, the word Happiness lands at the end, where you can’t ignore it.
I am delighted that Isaacson’s book has given me — and many other readers — an inspiring example, not of unreflective patriotism, but of an appreciation of our most significant civic ideals, especially at a time when they are so often ignored.
What is your candidate for the greatest sentence ever written? One of mine is biblical: “Jesus wept.”
