The perfect speech contains nothing slipshod; in it there are no loose threads; it contains no word that has been picked at random; it is not marred by errors due to faulty memory or to any other kind of carelessness; strong passions and a powerful and fertile imagination are guided with ease by a reason which knows how to use the unexpected gift, which knows how to persuade and which knows how to forbid; it allows of no adornment which is not imposed by the gravity and the aloofness of the subject matter; the perfect writer rejects with disdain and with some impatience the demand of vulgar rhetoric that expressions must be varied since change is pleasant.
Leo Strauss
Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 121
Strauss wasn’t saying anything about the usefulness or validity of “imperfect speech.” He was characterizing something presumably quite rare, though it explains something about his own style.
I singled out the one sentence, literally a sentence of sentences, about the best sentences, because of what it is. The context is a characterization of Machiavelli’s writing, which, according to Strauss, controversially, is pervaded with Machiavelli’s peculiar and even world-historical complex intentions and schemes, and is a somewhat literary-philosophical version of the kind of scheming he’s famous for urging upon others, especially ambitious others. I need to re-read the passage, but I took from it that Strauss saw Machiavelli’s writing as aiming for such perfection, if also in part by manipulating countless seeming contradictions and literary inaccuracies fully consciously. The sentence of sentences is followed by a short discussion of translations of Machiavelli that try to improve upon and correct his style according to the rules of “vulgar rhetoric.”
The sentence of sentences, about sentences, including its Strauss-typical “pulled-up short” ending, helps explain much about Strauss’s own approach to writing, and also about attacks on it by people who agree more with those translators about what makes good writing.
I disagree with Strauss. “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”