Parataxis is different from asyndeton, though they are easy to confuse. Both lack syntactical structure and therefore ask their audience to guess at the gaps. The difference between them is one of intent. Asyndeton is an intentional removal of conjunctions to tighten the pace and length of a text or speech. Parataxis is not intentional. Its quick waterfall never contained connective material in the first place. In a sense, then, asyndeton is a subset of parataxis by way of human intention.
Mark’s Gospel is an excellent example of parataxis in its ubiquitous use of καί between clauses. Bruce Metzger observed that 80 of 88 sections in Mark begin with καί. Sixty-four percent of the sentences in Mark begin with καί. Thirty-three of the thirty-eight sentences that make up its first chapter begin with καί. About this, Rodney Decker said:
It appears that Mark’s usage of καί as an unmarked sentence (and clause) connective is very similar to narrative books that I have examined in the LXX. Adjusted for length, the frequency of sentence-initial καί in Mark is very close to 1 Maccabees and 1 Chronicles . . . with Genesis and Joshua close behind.[1]
Mark’s frequent use of καί is therefore a result of exposure to the LXX (probably reflecting Hebrew’s eponymous vav). It was not intentional; not asyndeton.
Another example of parataxis (which also results from the Hebrew conjunction vav) is its restoration in the English translation of Robert Alter’s Five Books of Moses. Since the KJV, English translation committees working in Old Testament books have used subordinate clauses for easier reading without consistent demands on the reader to supply connection. But, as Alter says in his introduction, parataxis reflects the Bible’s context in which the reader was asked to “establish precise connection between actions.” Eliding it, he continued, also ruins the effect of the language and creates “a kind of narrative arrhythmia.” “The artfulness of biblical parataxis is precisely in its refusal to spell out causal connections, to interpret the reported narrative data for us.”
“Parataxis is the ordering of words in parallel clauses linked by ‘and,’ with very little syntactic subordination or the accompanying subordinate conjunctions such as ‘because,’ ‘although’ or ‘since’ that specify the connection between clauses. It creates ‘one beautifully uncoiling rhythmic sequence’ that ‘marches us steadily from one point to the next in the narrative sequence.’ In the Hebrew, parataxis is very much an artful vehicle, generating imposing cadenced sequences of parallel clauses and often exploiting the lack of causal explanation of the relation between clauses to create thought-provoking ambiguities.”[2]For the purpose of illustration, let me give two more examples. One from Ernest Hemingway. As a young man in Paris in the early 1920s, Hemmingway was influenced by the work of Paul Cezanne and Ezra Pound. Placing images and colors next to each other without explanation achieved an emotional response that Hemingway adopted. He liked the way parataxis allowed him to build impressions that would ultimately suggest a meaning without saying it. He could provoke emotion without explanation. Here is an example from an early story, "Big Two-Hearted River":
“Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.”The fictional Nick Adams takes the reader on a ride through his consciousness of clipped sentences. Each one sits equally with the rest. And none of them overtly tell the reader anything about Nick's overall mood. And now, an example from the Old Testament, NRSV + LXX.
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. (Deut. 6.1-3 NRSV)
Καὶ αὗται αἱ ἐντολαὶ καὶ τὰ δικαιώματα καὶ τὰ κρίματα, ὅσα ἐνετείλατο κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν διδάξαι ὑμᾶς ποιεῖν οὕτως ἐν τῇ γῇ, εἰς ἣν ὑμεῖς εἰσπορεύεσθε ἐκεῖ κληρονομῆσαι αὐτήν, ἵνα φοβῆσθε κύριον τὸν θεὸν ὑμῶν φυλάσσεσθαι πάντα τὰ δικαιώματα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ, ὅσας ἐγὼ ἐντέλλομαί σοι σήμερον, σὺ καὶ οἱ υἱοί σου καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν υἱῶν σου πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ζωῆς σου, ἵνα μακροημερεύσητε. καὶ ἄκουσον, Ισραηλ, καὶ φύλαξαι ποιεῖν, ὅπως εὖ σοι ᾖ καὶ ἵνα πληθυνθῆτε σφόδρα, καθάπερ ἐλάλησεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων σου δοῦναί σοι γῆν ῥέουσαν γάλα καὶ μέλι.
It is difficult to see it in the NRSV, but plain enough in the Septuagint underneath; the text is one short, breathless clause after the next. Moses's oration builds on and on about itself. The effect is hypnotic.
Contrast parataxis with hypotaxis. In hypotaxis, grammatical information abounds as sentences lengthen in complexity with subordinate clauses. Syntactical structure is intentional and "the logical relationships among sentences are explicitly rendered" (John Burt).
The subordinating style orders its components in relationships of causality (one event or state is caused by another), temporality (events and states are prior or subsequent to one another), and precedence (events and states are arranged in hierarchies of importance). 'It was the books I read in high school rather than those I was assigned in college that influenced the choices I find myself making today' -- two actions, one of which is prior to the other and has more significant effects that continue into the present.[3]
Good writing is an intentional combination of parataxis and hypotaxis.
__________
[1] Rodney Decker “Parataxis in Mark’s Gospel” https://ntresources.com/blog/?p=672 accessed 3/20/2022.
[2] Everett Fox, “Robert Alter and the Art of Bible Translation,” Expositions 2:2 (2008): 231-281. Princeton University Press quoting Alter in Twitter on April 24, 2019. I also recommend reading chapter 1 from Robert Alter’s the Art of Bible Translation: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691189253-002/pdf
[3] Stanley Fish, "How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One", 2011.
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