Climax (language)

The climax is a rhetorical stylistic device ( ancient Greek κλίμαξ climax , stairs' or 'ladder') and consists of a step-like increase in expressions, i.e. H. from a transition from the less significant to the significant, from the less pronounced to the more pronounced, whereby the overall message is considerably strengthened (mostly threefold increase).

Examples:

• "Let him be my friend, my angel, my God" ( The robbers - Friedrich von Schiller )
• "He cries, he is conquered, he is ours!" ( The Maid of Orléans - Friedrich von Schiller )
• "This is bad; the world is getting bad, very bad! "( Woyzeck - Georg Büchner )
• "Today I bake, tomorrow I brew, the day after tomorrow I'll bring the queen her child" ( Rumpelstiltskin - Brothers Grimm )
• “ Veni, vidi, vici .” - (I came, saw and won.) Caesar's letter to Gaius Matius
• “Tak bylo, tak jest i tak budet wsegda!” - (It was like that, it is like that and it will always be like that.) Last verse of the 3rd stanza of the Russian national anthem

This is in contrast to the Antiklimax , in which an expression is gradually weakened:

• “The cardinals circulate around the Pope. And the bishops circulate around the cardinals. And the secretaries circulate around the bishops. "( Life of Galilei - Bertolt Brecht )
• "Ancestor, grandmother, mother and child" ( The Thunderstorm - Gustav Schwab )

Bathos is a special, mostly humorous form of anticlimax .

Sometimes both stylistic devices are summarized under the term gradation , which describes both the increasing and the weakening gradation of expressions.

Background information

• Example video for the application of the climax and anticlimax

Individual evidence

1. ^ Texts, Topics and Structures , p. 197, Cornelsen Verlag