STUDIES IN LITERARY TECHNIQUE
Narrative Art
David Pryde has summed up the whole matter in a few well-chosen
sentences: "Keeping the beginning and the end in view, we set out from
the right starting-place, and go straight towards the destination; we
introduce no event that does not spring from the first cause and tend to
the great effect; we make each detail a link joined to the one going
before and the one coming after; we make, in fact, all the details into
one entire chain, which we can take up as a whole, carry about with us,
and retain as long as we please."[63:A] How many elements are here
referred to? There are plot, movement, unity, proportion, purpose, and
climax. I have already dealt with some of these, and now propose to
devote a few paragraphs to the rest.
Unity means unity of effect, and is first a matter of literary
architecture--afterwards a matter of impression. It has been said of
Macbeth that "the play moves forward with an absolute regularity; it is
almost architectural in its rise and fall, in the balance of its parts.
The plot is a complex one; it has an ebb and flow, a complication and a
resolution, to use technical terms. That is to say, the fortunes of
Macbeth swoop up to a crisis or turning-point, and thence down again to
a catastrophe. The catastrophe, of course, closes the play; the crisis,
as so often with Shakespeare, comes in its exact centre, in the middle
of the middle act, with the Escape of Fleance. Hitherto Macbeth's path
has been gilded with success; now the epoch of failure begins. And the
parallelisms and correspondences throughout are remarkable. Each act has
a definite subject: The Temptation; The First, Second, and Third Crimes;
The Retribution. Three accidents, if we may so call them, help Macbeth
in the first part of the play: the visit of Duncan to Inverness, his own
impulsive murder of the grooms, the flight of Malcolm and Donalbain. And
in the second half three accidents help to bring about his ruin: the
escape of Fleance, the false prophecy of the witches, the escape of
Macduff. Malcolm and Macduff at the end answer to Duncan and Banquo at
the beginning. A meeting with the witches heralds both rise and fall.
Finally, each of the crimes is represented in the Retribution. Malcolm,
the son of Duncan, and Macduff, whose wife and child he slew, conquer
Macbeth; Fleance begets a race that shall reign in his stead."[65:A]
From a construction point of view, a novel and a play have many points
in common; and although the parallelism of events and characters is not
necessary for either, the account of Macbeth just given is a good
illustration of unity of effect and impression. Stevenson's "Kidnapped"
and "David Balfour" are good examples of unity of structure.
Movement
How many times have you put a novel away with the remark: "It _drags_
awfully!" The narrative that drags is not worthy of the name. There are
a few writers who can go into byways and take the reader with them--Mr
Le Gallienne, for instance--but, as a rule, the digressive novelist is
the one whose book is thrown on to the table with the remark just
quoted. A story should be _progressive_, not _digressive_ and
episodical. Hence the importance of movement and suspense. Keep your
narrative in motion, and do not let it sleep for a while unless it is of
deliberate intention. There is a definite law to be observed--namely,
that as feeling rises higher, sentences become crisp and shorter;
witness Acts i. and ii. in _Macbeth_. Suspense, too, is an agent in
accelerating the forward march of a story. There is no music in a pause,
but it renders great service in giving proper emphasis to music that
goes before and comes after it. Notice how Stevenson employs suspense
and contrast in "Kidnapped." "The sea had gone down, and the wind was
steady and kept the sails quiet, so that there was a great stillness in
the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A
little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I
knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall; and
after that silence again." These little touches are capable of affecting
the entire interest of the whole story, and should receive careful
attention.
Aids to Description
THE POINT OF VIEW
So much has been said in praise of descriptive power, that it will not
be amiss if I repeat one or two opinions which, seemingly, point the
other way. Gray, in a letter to West, speaks of describing as "an ill
habit that will wear off"; and Disraeli said description was "always a
bore both to the describer and the describee." To some, these
authorities may not be of sufficient weight. Will they listen to Robert
Louis Stevenson? He says that "no human being ever spoke of scenery for
above two minutes at a time, which makes one suspect we hear too much of
it in literature." These remarks will save us from that
description-worship which is a sort of literary influenza.
The first thing to be determined in descriptive art is _the point of
view_. Suppose you are standing on an eminence commanding a wide stretch
of plain with a river winding through it. What does the river look like?
A silver thread; and so you would describe it. But if you stood close to
the brink and looked back to the eminence on which you stood previously,
you would no longer speak of a silver thread, simply because now your
point of view is changed. The principle is elementary enough, and there
is no need to dwell upon it further, except to quote an illustration
from Blackmore:
"For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the
mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round
it, eighty feet or a hundred high, from whose brink black wooded hills
swept up to the skyline. By her side a little river glided out from
underground with a soft, dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing
brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down
the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out of
it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But
further down, on either bank, were covered houses built of stone,
square, and roughly covered, set as if the brook were meant to be the
street between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed
opposite each other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first
of all, which proved to be the captain's was a sort of double house, or
rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge over the
river."[69:A]
SELECTING THE MAIN FEATURES
The fundamental principle of all art is selection, and nowhere is it
seen to better advantage than in description. A battle, a landscape, or
a mental agony, can only be described artistically, in so far as the
writer chooses the most characteristic features for presentation. In the
following passage George Eliot states the law and keeps it. "She had
time to remark that he was a peculiar-looking person, but not
insignificant, which was the quality that most hopelessly consigned a
man to perdition. He was massively built. The striking points in his
face were large, clear, grey eyes, and full lips." Suppose for a moment
that the reader were told about the pattern and "hang" of the hero's
trousers, his waistcoat and his coat, and that information was given
respecting the number of links in his watch-chain, and the exact depth
of his double chin--what would have been the effect from an artistic
point of view? Failure--for instead of getting a description alive with
interest, we should get a catalogue wearisome in its multiplicity of
detail. A certain author once thought Homer was niggardly in describing
Helen's charms, so he endeavoured to atone for the great poet's
shortcomings in the following manner:--"She was a woman right beautiful,
with fine eyebrows, of clearest complexion, beautiful cheeks; comely,
with large, full eyes, with snow-white skin, quick glancing, graceful; a
grove filled with graces, fair-armed, voluptuous, breathing beauty
undisguised. The complexion fair, the cheek rosy, the countenance
pleasing, the eye blooming, a beauty unartificial, untinted, of its
natural colour, adding brightness to the brightest cherry, as if one
should dye ivory with resplendent purple. Her neck long, of dazzling
whiteness, whence she was called the swan-born, beautiful Helen."
After reading this can you form a distinct idea of Helen's beauty? We
think not. The details are too many, the language too exuberant, and the
whole too much in the form of a catalogue. It would have been better to
select a few of what George Eliot calls the "striking points," and
present them with taste and skill. As it is, the attempt to improve on
Homer has resulted in a description which, for detail and minuteness, is
like the enumeration of the parts of a new motor-car--indeed, that is
the true sphere of description by detail, where, as in all matters
mechanical, fulness and accuracy are demanded. In "Mariana," Tennyson
refers to no more facts than are necessary to emphasise her great
loneliness:
"With blackest moss the flower-pots
Were thickly crusted, one and all;
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange."
In ordering such details as may be chosen to represent an event, idea,
or person, it is the rule to proceed from "the near to the remote, and
from the obvious to the obscure." Homer thus describes a shield as
smooth, beautiful, brazen, and well-hammered--that is, he gives the
particulars in the order in which they would naturally be observed.
Homer's method is also one of epithet: "the far-darting Apollo,"
"swift-footed Achilles," "wide-ruling Agamemnon," "white-armed Hera,"
and "bright-eyed Athene." Now it is but a step from this giving of
epithets to what is called
DESCRIPTION BY SUGGESTION
When Hawthorne speaks of the "black, moody brow of Septimus Felton," it
is really suggestion by the use of epithet. Dickens took the trouble to
enumerate the characteristics of Mrs Gamp one by one; but he succeeded
in presenting Mrs Fezziwig by simply saying, "In came Mrs Fezziwig, one
vast substantial smile." This latter method differs from the former in
almost every possible way. The enumeration of details becomes wearisome
unless very cleverly handled, whereas the suggestive method unifies the
writer's impressions, thereby saving the reader's mental exertions and
heightening his pleasures. He tells us how things and persons impress
him, and prefers to _indicate_ rather than describe. Thus Dickens
refers to "a full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman in a blue
coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very
red face, as if an undue proportion of the blood in his body had been
squeezed into his head; which perhaps accounted for his having also the
appearance of being rather cold about the heart." Lowell says of
Chaucer, "Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the
Friar, before sitting himself down, drives away the cat. We know without
need of more words that he has chosen the snuggest corner."
Notice how succinctly Blackmore delineates a natural fact, "And so in a
sorry plight I came to an opening in the bushes where a great black pool
lay in front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at the sides, till
I saw it was only foam-froth, . . . and the look of this black pit was
enough to stop one from diving into it, even on a hot summer's day, with
sunshine on the water; I mean if the sun ever shone there. As it was, I
shuddered and drew back; not alone at the pool itself, and the black air
there was about it, but also at the whirling manner, and wisping of
white threads upon it in stripy circles round and round; and the centre
still as jet."[75:A]
Hardy's description of Egdon Heath is too well known to need remark; it
is a classic of its kind.
Robert Louis Stevenson possessed the power of suggestion to a high
degree. "An ivory-faced and silver-haired old woman opened the door. She
had an evil face, smoothed with hypocrisy, but her manners were
excellent." To advise a young writer to imitate Stevenson would be
absurd, but perhaps I may be permitted to say: study Stevenson's method,
from the blind man in "Treasure Island," to Kirstie in "The Weir of
Hermiston."
FACTS TO REMEMBER
"It is a peculiarity of Walter Scott," says Goethe, "that his great
talent in representing details often leads him into faults. Thus in
'Ivanhoe' there is a scene where they are seated at a table in a
castle-hall, at night, and a stranger enters. Now he is quite right in
describing the stranger's appearance and dress, but it is a fault that
he goes to the length of describing his feet, shoes and stockings. When
we sit down in the evening and someone comes in, we notice only the
upper part of his body. If I describe the feet, daylight enters at once
and the scene loses its nocturnal character." And yet Scott in some
respects was a master of description--witness his picture of Norham
Castle and of the ravine of Greeta between Rokeby and Mortham. But
Goethe's criticism is justified notwithstanding. Never write more than
can be said of a man or a scene when regarded from the surrounding
circumstances of light and being. Ruskin is never tired of saying, "Draw
what you see." In the "Fighting Temeraire," Turner paints the old
warship as if it had no rigging. It was there in its proper place, but
the artist could not see it, and he refused to put it in his picture if,
at the distance, it was not visible. "When you see birds fly, you do
not see any _feathers_," says Mr W. M. Hunt. "You are not to draw
_reality_, but reality as it _appears_ to you."
Avoid the _pathetic fallacy_. Kingsley, in "Alton Locke," says:
"They rowed her in across the rolling foam--
The cruel crawling foam,"
on which Ruskin remarks, "The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl.
The state of mind which attributes to it these characteristics of a
living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All
violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in
all our impressions of external things."
* * * * *
Perhaps the secret of all accurate description is a trained eye. Do you
know how a cab-driver mounts on to the box, or the shape of a
coal-heaver's mouth when he cries "Coal!"? Do you know how a wood looks
in early spring as distinct from its precise appearance in summer, or
how a man uses his eyes when concealing feelings of jealousy? or a
woman when hiding feelings of love? Observation with insight, and
Imagination with sympathy; these are the great necessities in every
department of novel-writing.
FOOTNOTES:
[63:A] "Studies in Composition," p. 26.
[65:A] E. K. Chambers' _Macbeth_, pp. 25, 26. "The Warwick Shakespeare."
[69:A] "Lorna Doone."
[75:A] "Lorna Doone."