In rhetoric, chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular in Latin literature, where it was used to articulate balance or order within a text. The Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible also contain many long and complex chiasma.

Today, chiasmus is applied fairly broadly to any "criss-cross" structure, although in classical rhetoric, it was distinguished from other similar devices, such as the antimetabole. In its classical application, chiasmus would have been used for structures that do not repeat the same words and phrases, but invert a sentence's grammatical structure or ideas. The concept of chiasmus has been applied to motifs in stories and plays, producing chiastic structure.

The elements of a simple chiasmus are often labelled in the form A B B A, where the letters correspond to grammar, words, or meaning.

Chiasmus in inverted meaning

But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves.
—Shakespeare, Othello 3.3

"Dotes" and "strongly loves" share the same meaning and bracket "doubts" and "suspects."

Chiasmus in inverted grammar

An example of a parallel sentence is:

• ”He knowingly lied and we blindly followed”

(A B A B)

Inverting into chiasmus:

• "He knowingly lied and we followed blindly"

(A B B A)

Other examples:

• "By day the frolic, and the dance by night". Samuel Johnson The Vanity of Human Wishes.
• "His time a moment, and a point his space." Alexander Pope Essay on Man, Epistle I.

• "Swift as an arrow flying, fleeing like a hare afraid..."

The clause above follows the form of adjective, simile, gerund, gerund, simile, adjective (A B C C B A).

Chiasmus in Scripture

The ancient Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments are rich in chiasmus, as is the Book of Mormon. Many of these have become lost in translation, but hundreds of others remain. The following examples are indented to show the parallel structure of the text.

A "But many that are first
    B shall be last;
    B¹ and the last
A¹ shall be first." Jesus (Bible: Matthew 19:30.)
(Note: this chiasmus defines the structure of chiasmus itself.)

A "Do not give what is holy to dogs,
    B and do not throw your pearls before swine,
    B¹ lest they (the pigs) trample them under their feet,
A¹ and (the dogs) turn and tear you to pieces." (Jesus Bible: Matthew 7:6.)

A "Make the heart of this people fat,
    B and make their ears heavy,
        C and shut their eyes;
        C¹ lest they see with their eyes,
    B¹ and hear with their ears,
A¹ and understand with their heart, and convert [return], and be healed." (Bible: Isaiah 6:10)

A "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    B to the house of the God of Jacob
        C …and we will walk in his paths…
            D And he shall judge among the nations…
                E they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
                E¹ and their spears into pruninghooks:
            D¹ nation shall not lift up sword against nation…
    B¹ O house of Jacob,
A¹ come ye,
        C¹ and let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Bible: Isaiah 2:3-5)
(Note: in this example, C¹ does not fall where it is expected to fall; it follows A¹.)

A "…but men drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves
    B and become as little children,
        C and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.
            D For the natural man
                E is an enemy to God,
                    F and has been from the fall of Adam,
                    F¹ and will be, forever and ever,
                E¹ unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit,
            D¹ and putteth off the natural man
        C¹ and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord,
    B¹ and becometh as a child,
A¹ submissive, meek, humble…" (Book of Mormon: Mosiah 3:18-19)

Chiasmus in Latin

Chiasmus is often used in Latin poetry as an alternative form of the golden line, but it can be found in prose as well.

• From Seneca the Younger, Thyestes

visceribus atras pascit effossis aves (10)

“He feeds the black birds with his gutted wounds”

AbVaB

(A and B denote nouns; a and b denote adjectives and the nouns they modify; V is the verb.)

• A more complex form can be found in Cicero’s oration Pro Archia Poeta

Adest vir summa auctoritate et religione et fide, M. Lucullus, qui se non opinari sed scire, non audisse sed vidisse, non interfuisse sed egisse dicit. (8)

"There is a man present of the highest authority, duty, and faith, M. Lucullus who (will testify) that he himself does not believe but knows, did not hear but saw, was not only present but did it himself."

The grammar of the Latin follows the form of Verb, Subject, ablative, ablative, ablative, Subject, (relative clause in indirect statement), infinitive verb phrase, infinitive verb phrase, infinitive verb phrase, Verb. The ablatives of quality are bracketed by the subjects they modify and form a chiasmus within a chiasmus.

A B b b b B a a a A

• Pliny the Younger also uses the chiasmus frequently in his letters.

For example, in his letter about the death of Pliny the Elder, he described his uncle sailing into danger to save others:

festinat illuc unde alii fugiunt

"He hurried to the place from where others were fleeing."

Here, he places the verbs festinat (hurried) and fugiunt (were fleeing) on the outside of the chiasmus and the adverbs illuc (to the place) and unde (where from) in the middle to form the cross. This contrasts his uncle's two actions (hurrying and fleeing), and emphasizes his bravery.

Chiasmus as a synonym for antimetabole

These examples are often quoted by modern commentators to demonstrate chiasmus, although they are defined as antimetabole in the classical sense.

• "Who sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall his blood be shed..." Genesis 9:6

In the original Hebrew the above phrase is exactly six words long, in the form (A B C C B A)

• "...ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.
• "...Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.." John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.
• "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy
• "Let's make sure that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, and this president does not choose the next Supreme Court." Albert Gore Jr. at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
• "America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America." [1] Jimmy Carter Farewell Address
• "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
• "To be kissed by a fool is stupid; To be fooled by a kiss is worse." Ambrose Redmoon
• "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog." Dwight D. Eisenhower January 1958 speech to the Republican National Committee
• "Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men." Line spoken by Mae West in I'm No Angel (1933)
• An earlier example, from Croesus dates back to the 6th century BC: "In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons."
• "In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you!" Yakov Smirnoff (See Russian Reversal)
• A popular saying is, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."
• "Some people use 'change' to promote their careers; other people use their careers to promote change." Sarah Palin
• "Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling." Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.

Chiasmus may be implied, referring to a well-known expression, as when Kermit the Frog says "Time's fun when you're having flies" or Mae West says "A hard man is good to find," or Jethro Tull's "In the beginning Man created God."

Chiasmus is not limited to an exchange of words; it can also involve the exchange of letters or syllables, as in Tom Waits' quote, "I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

An informal term for chiasmus introduced by Calvin Trillin and used particularly among political speechwriters is reversible raincoat sentences.

See also

• Antanaclasis
• Antimetabole
• Chiastic structure
• Figure of speech
• Rhetoric
• Russian reversal
• Spoonerism
• Synchysis (the reverse of the chiasmus)
• Transpositional pun

References

• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, p. 677. ISBN 0-674-36250-0. 
• John Breck. The Shape of Biblical Language. Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1994).

External links

• Rhetorical device defined and examples given, Dr. Gideon O. Burton, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, BYU.
• A website dedicated to the subject from the author of Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You: Chiasmus and a World of Quotations That Say What They Mean and Mean What They Say (ISBN 0-670-87827-8)
• Chiasmus as a figure of speech
• Political Speech Wordplay at the RNC from NPR's Day to Day
• Inauguration Speech Do's and Don'ts, Slate-published email exchange between presidential speechwriters Peter Robinson and Michael Waldman
• Chiastic Structures in the Christian Scripture - Examples from the Psalms and sayings of Jesus.