Chapter 15 Luxos
LUXOS
Longinus defined the sublime as the experience of greatness that inspires overwhelming intensity, awe, and transcendence of the mind. In line with that understanding, there is no greater instrument of sublimity than sex.
Excerpt from Serafina Olivier’s thesis “On Sublimity: Eros, Luxos, and the Techne of Sex”
The rhetorical mastery class first filled Claudia with wonder, then dread, then nausea, and now it’s somewhere at the intersection of all three.
Sunlight streams through the stained glass, turning the air pink.
Claudia pulls out her notebook and centers it on her desk as Cassius walks in.
Storms in, actually. He seems agitated, or maybe just exhausted.
Either way, Claudia can’t wait to make it worse.
Professor Olivier finishes off her tea and stands before the class. “Last semester, we learned of the rhetorical triangle. Can anyone—”
“Ethos, logos, and pathos.”
Olivier pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Very eager, Miss Gibson.” Her gaze sweeps the room and lands on Claudia. “Miss Jolicoeur, can you define each of them?”
Her immediate response is panic, but she takes a deep breath.
She knows this. She memorized it weeks ago.
“Ethos is an appeal to authority, when the rhetor establishes their personal credibility to build trust with the audience. Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions—examples include evocative language or fables or anything that makes the audience feel.
Logos is an appeal to logic—arguing based on evidence and reasoning.
” She surprises herself when she can’t stop speaking.
“And where each intersects yields a different persuasive effect. Ethos and logos together create cogency. Logos and pathos inspire conviction. And ethos paired with pathos establishes credence.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she checks to see if her desk mate is looking at her, but Cassius’s eyes are fixed forward at the blank board. It’s like he didn’t even hear her.
Professor Olivier beams with pride. “Very good, Miss Jolicoeur. Excellent, in fact.” Her professor turns to the board and draws the triangle.
Claudia smiles so big that it hurts. Since Olivier marked up her paper, it’s as if she hasn’t taken a breath, hasn’t relaxed her shoulders, hasn’t so much as blinked until this moment.
Until she earned it. Now it’s like her muscles and bones are all gone.
She’s nothing but good, nothing but light.
At this point, she can’t help herself—she looks directly at Cassius and flashes a wide, proud grin.
He turns toward her and arches one brow.
She expects him to say something, some sort of acknowledgment or validation or maybe even praise, but he doesn’t.
He turns back to the board, and Olivier turns back to the class.
Claudia’s eye twitches.
“Who created the rhetorical triangle?” the professor asks the rest of the class.
“The father of rhetoric,” Benjamin answers, and Olivier, to everyone’s surprise, groans and scowls. She’s known to be bold, but very rarely is she rude, especially when a student is correct—it was indeed Aristotle who crafted the rhetorical triangle.
The professor looks up at the ceiling for a long time and purses her lips like she’s contemplating something.
She scoffs, sarcastically muttering, “The father of rhetoric,” while rolling her eyes.
With an expression of resigned acceptance, she shrugs and says, “All right. Let’s talk about the very beginnings of rhetoric, shall we?
Who was the first to use it? I can tell you now that it wasn’t Aristotle. ”
“Right,” Cassius says. “It began with Corax.”
Olivier blinks. “No.”
The entire room stills. Cassius MacLeod just answered a question incorrectly. Claudia’s never seen this before. She can’t stop herself from smiling.
“Yes,” Cassius says as if he thinks the professor didn’t hear him correctly.
Olivier raises her brows and shakes her head. “No,” she says, even firmer this time.
Claudia sees Cassius’s fingers curl into a fist underneath their desk.
His nostrils flare. He tightens his jaw. “Corax wrote the first treatise on rhetoric in the fifth century BC.”
“I didn’t ask who wrote the first treatise on rhetoric. I asked who was first to use it.”
“And as I said, it was Corax. He may have only used it in court, so not quite in the sense we use it, but rhetoric began with him and his defining treatise. No one could have employed any rhetorical technique before he defined it.”
“That’s a logical fallacy. Definition does not precede existence. Something must first be known for it to be named.”
Cassius’s face turns red, with either frustration or embarrassment or both. Meanwhile, Olivier turns on her heels to face the blackboard. She writes a name and speaks it aloud.
“Enheduanna. Daughter of Sargon of Akkad, the first king of the Akkadian Empire. Enheduanna was the High Priestess of the goddess Inanna. An artist, orator, and author of powerful hymns and persuasive narratives, she is the progenitor of rhetoric.”
“I’ve never heard of her. Her work isn’t in the Lexora or the Caedleian,” Cassius says.
“I know,” Olivier says calmly, flicking lint off her red robes.
“Then how did you expect us to answer the question?” he says through gritted teeth. Claudia can feel him vibrating with rage beside her. He’s emotionally imploding.
This is delicious.
“I didn’t,” Olivier quips. “I expected you to recognize that the answer is something you do not yet know. There is never shame in accepting there is more to learn.”
Cassius relaxes in his seat, and Claudia’s smile sinks; of course the one time her rival didn’t know the answer was because the question was a trick.
“Remember that truth isn’t limited to what we already know; there’s still so much to uncover. That’s what makes Cygnus so magical—we can divine the truth before the masses even know where to look for it. Enheduanna’s works have been buried for centuries, and they will be buried for centuries more.”
“How did you discover her?” Claudia asks.
“Malevimus grants the gift of truth. I have worked with him for decades, and I know how to pray for what I want to know. And with the aid of his magic, I have crafted a rhetorical appeal of my own. Controversial as this may be, I don’t agree with the rhetorical triangle.
It’s incomplete.” She crosses out the triangle on the board.
“What all those fathers of rhetoric so egregiously missed is evident in their own title. Where are the mothers of rhetoric? I will tell you—we are here, now, in this room, arguing within the confines of a system designed by and for men alone.”
Every woman in the room smiles.
“So, let’s talk about the rhetorical triangle. What’s missing? What underscores all our desires? What drives humanity to keep existing? The answer is sex.” She turns to the board and writes, LUXOS.
“An appeal to the audience’s lust. Persuasion by way of enticing, seducing, and inspiring want.”
She continues writing:
“This is from ‘The Hymn to Inanna’ by High Priestess Enheduanna. Do you see how she places power on the breast of her goddess? That’s intentional.
That’s luxos. It persuades the audience to recognize Inanna’s omnipotence by adorning her form with seductive power.
Aristotle himself says that we can indeed know divinity, but only by which we already understand.
Enheduanna is using the known—in this case, the enticing female form—as a mirror to the unknown, the goddess Inanna, so that divinity might become clear and familiar. ”
Claudia’s heart pounds imagining Inanna. She envisions a moon-touched woman with heaving breasts spilling over a bodice; her hip bones jutting through the slits of a white skirt; silvery power pouring out from between her legs, dripping onto Claudia’s tongue. It makes her shiver.
“And in the same hymn,” Professor Olivier continues, “Enheduanna later writes, ‘My beautiful mouth knows only confusion. Even my sex is dust.’ That is luxos, too—expressing the magnitude of mortal horrors as they inhibit the want of her mouth and the sex between her legs.” After a pause, she takes a deep breath, surveying everyone’s faces.
She takes off her spectacles and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand.
“I apologize for the tangent. I hadn’t planned on teaching this until next year, but passion got the better of me.
Where were we?” Clearing her throat, she flips through the notebook on her desk.
“Ah, yes. It’s time for the first debate of the semester. Give me a moment to divine the topic.”
She lights a tapered red candle from her desk and holds it up high.
As the wax drips down onto her hand, she chants something in Latin and the lit sconces on the walls flicker in a strange rhythm.
Professor Olivier then suddenly gasps hard.
Her eyes roll back in her head, turning milky white.
It looks like she’s choking on her own tongue, like something is going horrifically, fatally wrong, but all the other students remain fixed on their books.
Why does everyone seem so calm? Claudia stands, ready to run to Olivier’s aid, but Cassius turns sharply at the sound of Claudia’s chair scraping the floor.
He points at her and says, “Don’t interrupt her divination. ”
“But she’s hurt and—”
“Sit. Down,” he growls through gritted teeth.
Now she wants to help Professor Olivier solely because Cassius told her not to, but when she takes a step beyond the desk, he catches her wrist and holds her tightly. Forcefully, he pulls her back into her chair.
“Why don’t you ever listen to me?” he whispers, seething, lips nearly pressed to her ear.
She pulls her arm back, but he doesn’t let go. He only pulls her closer, tighter.
“You’re not worth listening to,” she snaps.
Frozen, they glare at each other, panting in sync.