_THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LITERARY STYLE_
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s famous essay, entitled, “The Philosophy of
Style”—by which is meant the Psychology of Style—propounds what we may
term the economic theory of literary effect. The secret, he tells us, of
the pleasing effect of diction, rhythm, figurative language, sentence
structure, lies in this, that these are labour-saving devices to
economize mental effort, that by their use we get with the least
attention the greatest apprehension; and hence we receive pleasure as
reflex of the facile and full cognition functioning. Literary pleasure
is thus brought under the law of pleasure in general. Take the quotation
from Shelley cited by Mr. Spencer:—
“Methought among the lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind.”
You have read this with pleasure, and is not the source of this pleasure
the ease and celerity with which the mind reaches the “desired
conception”? Vividly and forcibly the mind is led by cunning use of
phrase and rhythm and figure to realize the picture, and there is a glow
of pleasure in the reaction from the facility. Language is a medium for
the transfer of ideas, and when it accomplishes this office most
effectively, as in the present case, and acts upon the mind so clearly
and forcibly that _nolens volens_ the reader at once apprehends and
comprehends, he feels a thrill of pleasure therewith, just as there is
pleasure connected with the rapid and easy assimilation of well cooked
food. Before developing and criticising this theory I may remark in
passing that Blair, the rhetorician, in treating of the structure of
sentences foreshadows in a way the economic theory when he writes that
“to have the relation of every word and member of a sentence marked in
the most proper and distinct manner, gives, not clearness only, but
grace and beauty to a sentence, making the mind pass smoothly and
agreeably along the parts of it.” This surely implies that æsthetical
pleasure of style may be based in a psychological economy and facility.
It is indeed a commonplace remark, “The book is so well written that you
cannot mistake or miss its meaning”; wherein the identification of style
with intelligibility becomes a truism. Certainly Mr. Spencer has not in
the economic theory propounded anything radically new.
We note at the outset that while this pleasure of style may result from
economy it is not the pleasure of the conscious economizer. The reader
who is enjoying a very readable book has a distinct pleasure from him
who views with satisfaction his finishing a book at a great and
unexpected saving of mental energy. We have here the direct pleasure
from economical exercise of the faculties contrasted with the indirect
introspective-retrospective pleasure at economy effected. Many persons
take as much pleasure in making mental energy go as far as possible, but
this pleasure in economy is obviously not the pleasure of style, which
is not reflective, but naïve and direct impression.
Language, either spoken or written, by its more or less effective modes
of accomplishing its office does then awaken a simple and direct
pleasure, according to the general law that pleasure accompanies
efficient acts as a sanction and stimulus. It is obvious that style for
spoken language, oratorical style, is precedent in its formation to
style for written language or literary style, and that it has greatly
affected literary style throughout its whole history. Yet the
distinctness of the two modes is affirmed by the common observation that
a speech, impressively pleasing to listen to, often does not read well.
While it may be true that in its origin literary style borrowed certain
devices from oratorical, yet in its latest evolution the written page is
far from being the speaking page. The book is not a substitute speaker
addressing us, and modes of expression which are most fitting for
conversation and oration, though sometimes used by writers, are alien to
pure literary art. However, I cannot pursue this interesting subject,
nor yet can I here treat of the origin of style more than to merely
observe that it is considerably later than the origin of language
itself. Neither the original uncouth speech, whether interjectional or
onomatopoetic, nor the earliest rude inscriptions can be said to have
style, oratorical or literary. Style is the offspring of specialization;
it first appeared when men recognised some one as particularly gifted
for fitting expression, and chose him as spokesman because of this
ability to communicate what was desired to be said with special force
and clearness. Thus arises the orator who achieves and invents
oratorical style. Likewise the writer is one who is selected for his
special abilities in expression by word of pen, and the scribe, clerk,
and public letter writer arise and evolve literary style as a skilful
way of effectively conveying ideas and impressions by written language.
The reader is also evolved, and in the reciprocal relation of demand and
supply and the competitive struggle to secure readers, the writer seeks
ever more and more to please and interest by introducing and perfecting
various inventions to make the reading of his work very easy and
enjoyable. Thus it comes that readableness is the natural test for
reading matter.
The economic theory of style in fine art plainly implies at bottom
physiological economy, for all psychological economy can only be
effected on this basis. The psychology of style must rest on a
physiology of style. We know that the pleasures of form and colour in
sculpture and painting are the reflex of physiological functions as
easily and completely performed. The curve of beauty is such because the
eye follows it more easily than other lines; the pleasing colour is such
because the physiological stimulus is accomplished in a normal and
facile way. And as visibility is the test for the arts which appeal to
the eye, so audibility is for the fine art which appeals to the ear.
Pleasure from music is the reflex of aural functioning accomplishing the
most with least strain. Now the pleasure which comes from literary style
must similarly be sought in some physiological mode. While plain print
and good paper are incidental pleasures in reading, they are not
primarily due to the stylist, who does, however, appeal to the eye by
the due proportioning of long and short words, sentences and paragraphs.
Though there is no conscious intent by the stylist, yet it may be
believed that the use of certain letters and certain successions of
letters as more or less easy for the eye is a matter of some importance.
Some letters and some combinations are ocularly more pleasing than
others, and this is clearly founded on economic physiological
conditions. It is greatly to be desired that physiologists would invent
new alphabetical forms which should be most adapted to the eye. It is
scarcely to be supposed that our present A B C's are the simplest and
easiest line-combinations for the eye. When the visual side of reading
is made as easy as possible, the general reflex sense of facility and
pleasure therewith is certainly increased. The artificial languages now
being exploited, as Volapuk, ought and would effect a great
physiological saving, as would also be accomplished by a phonetic
spelling.
But the direct visible function of style is certainly far inferior to
the indirect. The power of style is very largely in stimulating pleasing
visual images. The main element in literature we are told is vision and
imagination, which is but a restimulation and recombination of ocular
experiences. Sensation is the source and strong basis for all those
faint revivals which are so aptly and pleasantly called up by the
literary artist, and hence when the poet speaks of “the light which
never was on sea or land,” this is really meaningless, since all our
light impressions are terrestrial in their nature. To the blind man the
whole visual effect, direct and indirect, of style is lost; his imaging
power must be in some other sense.
Literature is then, like sculpture and painting, largely a visual art,
and its pleasure-giving quality is the reflex of visibility. Mere form
and colour may in a sense constitute a picture; though in general we
demand that it mean something, suggest something. A picture is such as
depicting something, and so being more than a study in form or colour.
The mere direct pleasure of ocular sensation plays a large part in
graphic and glyptic art, yet it is commonly conceived that some measure
of imagination, that is, some indirect visible function, is necessary
even here. Sculpture and painting depend like literature on both direct
and indirect vision as physiological and psychological basis of æsthetic
pleasure.
But in a secondary way literary style depends for its effect upon
auditory sensations both direct and revival. We mentally, and often
orally, pronounce as we read, and so appreciate sonorous quality and
onomatopoetic force. Alliteration, rhyme, euphony, and rhythm play
certainly a considerable part in the charm of style, and literature on
this side approaches and passes gradually into music. Euphony answers to
melody, and rhyme and rhythm to harmony. Literature may become for us
merely a succession of pleasing sounds, as when we hum over some
favourite lines of poetry, or when, ignorant of the Italian language, we
listen to an opera. Some of Milton’s lists of names in such lines as
these,—
“Of Cambalu, seat of Cathayan Can,
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temer’s throne”—
charm merely by the flow and fulness of sound. But the stylist aims, not
merely at formal sensuous beauty in tone and cadence of language, he
aims to suggest pleasing sounds, and to awaken the auditory imagination,
and to harmonize sense with sound as is done so successfully by poets
like Tennyson and prosaists like Sir Thomas Browne. All this auditory
side of literary style is lost on the deaf, as the visual is lost on the
blind. Literature as an art is neither blind like music nor deaf like
painting, but it is a compound art, visual-auditory, and thus, by virtue
of its range, is the greatest of the arts. It is true that indirectly
and in a very limited way painting can suggest sounds, and music sights,
but literature, both directly and indirectly, can freely and fully give
both. Word-music and word-painting are both methods of literary style.
In short, the explanation of the pleasure of style is pleasing sight or
sound directly or indirectly given, and the explanation of the pleasing
character of the sight or sound is as the reflex of easy economical
physiological functioning as basis of easy economical psychic function.
But we have now to ask whether economy of attention is the sole
psychological secret of style, and whether, indeed, it is always
necessary to style. Is style, like grammar or orthography, merely a more
or less conventionalized device to make intelligibility certain and
easy? Is our reading always the more pleasurable as it is the more
effortless? The pleasure of facility certainly bears a large part in
much of our literary enjoyment, but there is another and opposite law of
pleasure which, I think, often determines pleasure in style. To
accomplish much with no exertion, to slide down a long hill, gives
pleasure, but there is also a pleasure in exertion, in climbing hills as
well as sliding down. The pleasures of strenuous activity of attention
form a certain element in literary effect. The writer may do too much
for the reader, may make everything so simple and easy that the reader
has nothing to do, but is carried along without volition and curiosity,
losing all joy of attainment and grasp. For my own part, I often find
authors too fluent and facile, especially among the French, and
sometimes among the English, as, for instance, in some of John Stuart
Mill’s writings. These do not leave enough for me to do, and led
skilfully along so smooth a road that I am not conscious of moving, I
lose the pleasure of achievement, of the sense of enlargement of
conscious powers. Easy got, easy goes, is the law here as elsewhere. The
pleasure of acquirement is directly as the amount of attention
exercised.
Mr. Spencer in discussing this matter remarks that, as “language is the
vehicle of thought, we may say that in all cases the friction and
inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency, and that in
composition the chief thing to be done is, to reduce the friction and
inertia to the smallest amounts.” But it must be remembered that motion
is not only against friction but by friction. The rail may be too smooth
as well as too rough. Every locomotive, for a given piece of track with
a given gradient, has a certain co-efficient of friction for its most
effective working, above and below which there is alike decrease of
efficiency; and in engineering it is equally a problem to keep friction
up as to reduce it. So I say of style, that it may be too smooth and
facile, and may reduce mental friction to so low a point that there is
no grasp and no real progress. A sentence of Hooker or Milton,
magnificent stylists though they are, can, as an affair of economy of
attention, be greatly improved by breaking it up into a number of simple
plain sentences after the primer fashion, The cat mews, The dog barks,
etc.; but this process certainly is not an improvement of their style.
But if economy of attention were the sole secret of style, certainly the
more economy we introduce the greater and better should be the style.
Professor Sherman, of the University of Nebraska, in a recent article
shows that heaviness—that which requires “constant effort in reading”—is
due to the number of words _per_ sentence, which has been reduced in the
course of the history of English prose from an average of fifty words a
sentence in Chaucer and Spenser to five in the columns of a modern,
low-grade, popular story-paper; but it obviously cannot be maintained
that the style of the story-paper is ten times better than that of
Spenser’s _State of Ireland_.
We might then set up with plausibility an exactly opposite theory to the
economic, and maintain that the secret of style is in exciting us to the
greatest attentive effort, and that the best style is that which rouses
us to the severest mental exertion. However, I believe that these two
opposite methods of style are complementary. The great stylist is he who
strikes the exact mean between over facility and over difficulty, and
touches the exact co-efficient of mental friction in the reader, at
which his whole power of mind comes into highest and most harmonious and
effective exercise. The accomplished stylist most cleverly throws in
questions, suggests doubts, and defers answers. To read his book is not
a toboggan slide, but an obstacle race. What is plot interest but a
skilful putting of obstacles in the reader’s way, deferring and
thwarting his expectations, putting him on the _qui vive_ of attention?
By the development of plot the novelist and dramatist plays hide and
seek with the reader. No cunning artist reveals at once his whole
thought in a blaze of light, but he mystifies and draws in half-tones,
thus to stir you to reach out and grasp his meaning.
But we are as yet far from exhausting the psychological significance of
pleasure in style when we trace it to a reflex from either decrease or
increase of attentive effort. The pleasure we have so far considered is
naïve and direct; it is from literary art rather than in or at literary
art as such. The child and the most ordinary reader derive from books a
simple and natural pleasure which they do not reflect upon, and do not
in any wise conceive the ways and means by which the effect is produced.
Indeed, in the presence of the most lucid and perfect art these readers,
like Partridge at the play, take everything as a matter of course, as
just the way they would themselves express it. The _dilettante_ alone
tastes the pleasure in style as such; as an art, an adaptation of means
to ends, he alone appreciates the delicate adjustment of expression to
thought, the choice diction, the deft management of word and phrase. The
quality of this technical pleasure in style is exemplified in its
highest form in this note of a great artist-critic, Shelley, appended to
his fine translation of the opening chorus in “Faust”:—
"Such is a literal translation of this astonishing chorus; it is
impossible to represent in another language the melody of the
versification; even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas
escape in the crucible of translation, and its reader is surprised to
find a _caput mortuum_."
The psychological nature of this pleasure in style is obviously quite
distinct from the direct pleasures from reading which have been
previously discussed. Here is pleasure in literary art, not for what it
brings, but for its own sake. The distinction between the pleasure the
average tourist takes in travelling swiftly and smoothly in a _de luxe_
train, and that taken by the professional engineer inspecting the
high-speed locomotive, is analogous in quantity and quality to the
distinctive pleasures of critical and uncritical appreciation of fine
art. But we have as yet only cleared the ground toward ascertaining the
psychological _rationale_ of literary style. We have marked only general
causes of literary pleasure, we have noticed in this pleasure only those
elements which flow from the psychological and physiological basis of
all pleasure as reflex of functioning. That we admire and take pleasure
in nice adjustment of means to ends is also a general law of pleasure
with all who act teleologically, and are capable of appreciating actions
of this kind. But is there not a specific quality in the æsthetic
pleasure from or in literary art which has not yet been accounted for?
Certainly the common expression, “more forcible than elegant,” as
applied to spoken or written language, denotes that for the popular
consciousness style is somewhat more than and different from mere force
and consequent ease and largeness of apprehension. We hear a very loud
sound with greater ease than smaller sounds, there is economy of
attention, yet this does not bestow æsthetic quality on the great sound.
At the renderings of the finest music we are often called on to strain
the ear, and the mental receptiveness as a whole to the utmost, in order
to hear, note, and appreciate the delicate effects. So in literary art
it is not that which speaks most loudly and strongly to the mind that
thereby becomes the best style. In fact, the most forcible method of
expression is often, as is generally acknowledged, slang, which is
debarred from style. Literary style seems, then, more than a mental
labour-saving machine. As a utilitarian device it certainly does save
mental exertion, and gives rapidity, accuracy, and facility to psychic
function. Like grammar, a mechanic rhetoric is useful, and we receive a
pleasure from its use as from any other mechanism of man’s industry; and
further, we may take a certain pride and pleasure in its consciously
recognised effectiveness. However, we have not yet reached style in the
higher sense, which may be clear and forcible, but must be dignified,
graceful, and beautiful. For purposes of business, for conventional
communication, for science, for philosophy, language fulfils its end in
stating accurately, clearly, and forcibly; but style as literary art is
more than instrument to intelligibility, it has an independent office of
its own. Language in the lower service as a medium of communication is a
lens which cannot be too transparent; but in the higher service to fine
art, language is rather a mosaic window of stained glass which both
absorbs and transmits light, which both conceals and reveals, which we
look at as well as through. In literary art or style, language has a
value of beauty for itself alone, as well as a value of use as a means
of communication.
But the root of style is in emotion; it is as expression of emotion, and
in the main of one kind of emotion, that language rises to style. All
emotions influence language expression, and any one may, under certain
conditions, lead towards literary art; there is an eloquence of wrath
and of fear, of hate and of love, and these emotions may induce artistic
creativeness in written language; but the main impulse to art is in the
feeling for beauty _per se_. This is a certain mode of emotional delight
which every one who has felt it knows at once in its quality as quite
distinct as a psychic mode. How literary style rises and falls with
æsthetic emotion might be exemplified by a wide range of quotations, but
an example or two must suffice. This, from one of Shelley’s letters,
will, I trust, illustrate the point:—
“MY DEAR P——, I wrote to you the day before our departure from Naples.
We came by slow journeys, with our own horses, to Rome, resting one
day at Mola di Gaeta, at the inn called Villa di Cicerone—from being
built on the ruins of his villa, whose immense substructions overhang
the sea, and are scattered among the orange groves. Nothing can be
lovelier than the scene from the terraces of the inn. On one side
precipitous mountains whose bases slope into an inclined plane of
olive and orange copses, the latter forming, as it were, an emerald
sky of leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their ripening
fruit, whose rich splendour contrasted with the deep green foliage; on
the other the sea, bounded on one side by the antique town of Gaeta,
and the other by what appears to be an island, the promontory of
Circe. From Gaeta to Terracina the whole scenery is of the most
sublime character. At Terracina precipitous conical crags of immense
height shoot into the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano we arrived
again in sight of Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines
stretching across the uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined line of
the mountains seen between them, masses of nameless ruin standing like
rocks out of the plain, and the plain itself, with its billowy and
unequal surface, announced the neighbourhood of Rome. And what shall I
say to you of Rome? If I speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones
piled upon stones which are the sepulchres of the fame of those who
once arrayed them with the beauty which has faded, will you believe me
insensible to the vital, the almost breathing creations of genius yet
subsisting in their perfection?”
This letter opens with language as method of conventional commonplace
communication. The second and third sentences are barely tinged by
æsthetic emotion, as in “immense substructions” and “lovelier”; but it
is not till the fourth sentence that style fairly begins. Then it
rapidly falls away in the fifth, sixth, and seventh sentences, to arise
again with a new wave of æsthetic emotion, which progresses through the
remainder of the quotation. The culminating points of the æsthetic
emotion are precisely the culminating points of style, namely, in the
phrases, “an emerald sky of leaves, starred with innumerable globes of
their ripening fruit,” and in “sepulchres of the fame of those who once
arrayed them with the beauty which has faded.” What constitutes the
peculiar attractiveness of these expressions is this, that they are rich
in æsthetic feeling, and communicate it to us. We are by the power of
style sharers in high delights. In the first case we are awakened to a
visualizing, to a sensuous beauty, though compounded with other
elements, through metaphor; and in the second case the emotion is a
complex of sensuous and spiritual elements.
Take also the verses from Shelley already quoted. Mr. Spencer, in
commenting on these lines, has correctly pitched upon the word
“shepherded” as the culminating point; but when he intimates that the
beauty and pleasing effect is due to the “distinctness with which it
calls up the feature of the scene, bringing the mind by a bound to the
desired conception,” we must dissent. This purely utilitarian
explanation fails to recognise that poetic metaphor is confusing—here
two classes of objects, clouds and sheep—and misleading, except to the
poetic mind. A writer who was aiming purely at clearness and correctness
of imaging, as a popular scientific writer, might mention the clouds as
like patches of white wool; but he would not bring in the extraneous
ideas of sheep and shepherd. If Mr. Spencer were trying to give us a
vivid idea of clouds, he would surely not speak in this purely poetic
fashion. It is a mode of fancy and emotion which the poet is indulging
when he writes these lines, and not an intellectual impulse to clarify
and illustrate. If Mr. Spencer receives them in this latter spirit, he
misses their psychic content and explanation. Poetry is only
intelligible to the poetic, and the German pedant who emended “Celia,
drink to me only with thine eyes,” to “Celia, wink to me only with thine
eyes,” was certainly economizing attention and rendering conception
easy, but at the expense of poetic beauty. The source of the pleasure we
take in poetic style—the highest and purest form of literary art—is
evidently not for its intelligibility, at least primarily, but its
æsthetic quality, an expression of a peculiar emotional attitude toward
objects.
To illustrate this psychological distinction between the sense of beauty
as inherent in style, and style as mere force and clearness, I instance
further only this sentence from Mr. W. D. Howell’s Italian sketches,
describing a side wheel steamer in motion: “The wheel of the steamer was
as usual chewing the sea, and finding it unpalatable, and making vain
efforts at expectoration.” This is the _ne plus ultra_ of a _pseudo_
literary style, of affected and strained literary art. An ugly metaphor,
forcible and clear enough, is relentlessly pursued to its ugliest
conclusion. Here is style in pin feathers, and we are glad to remember
that it was writ in callow youth. It brings “the mind by a bound to the
desired conception,” but this does not sanction it as fine art, for it
is utterly without taste and beauty.
I believe then from considering the previous examples—and they might be
indefinitely extended—that the main function of literary art is not
intelligibility, and that pleasure in style in its specific quality does
not arise out of economy of attention, but it is a direct communication
of pleasant æsthetic emotion artistically conveyed. Intelligibility is a
regulative by-law of art, but it is neither standard nor goal. Literary
art is then a compromise between intellectual and emotional motives,
between sense and sensibility. The natural choice and order of words for
easiest apprehension is rarely the artistic order, as every
_littérateur_ knows full well. It is, for example, simplest and clearest
to repeat the best and exact word, yet the literary artist avoids, and
rightly, the repetition of words in the same sentence or paragraph. Thus
also, while, as Mr. Spencer suggests, rhythm and euphony may often help
sense, yet I believe they as often distract from it. We often tend to
turn over in a very senseless way words and verses which please the ear.
As language is both an organ for meaning and for beauty, literary art,
like architectural, is always a compromise between utility and beauty,
that is, neither literature nor architecture are pure and perfectly
independent arts. However, it is possible that poetic license may, as
has already been done to some extent in English, ultimately develop a
pure poetic language, entirely distinct from the utilitarian product,
and bound by none of its practical rules; then and then only will
literature become a pure art.
Further, that literary art does not always imply clearness and
consequent economy of attention is evident when we reflect that the
nature of emotion is to disturb the mind, and hence also the language
expression. Incoherence, dimness, darkness, as qualities of æsthetic
emotion, render literary art correspondingly broken and obscure. The
weird, fantastic, and mysterious issues in style which is far from being
easily intelligible. In the dreamy poetry of the Orient all is hazy and
evanescent, and the mind strives in vain for clear impressions, yet here
is the peculiar charm of style. Among Occidentals William Blake, with
his childish incoherence, and Robert Browning, with his harsh
abruptness, have a certain obscurity, but both are great stylists and
great poets.
Style then is at bottom something quite distinct from either ease or
difficulty of apprehension. It is founded, not on apprehension at all,
but on emotional receptiveness. Hence very active and intellectual
natures seem ever debarred from really entering the realms of art,
because they ever fail to appreciate that the function of art is not
practical, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, but emotional. The
man of business, of politics, of science, of thought, cannot give
himself up without questioning to be thrilled and suffused by the
unanalyzable charm of mere beauty. Such natures seem incapable of
receiving, they must get and acquire, and so they miss all that art to
which the only open sesame is a quiet inattention and a wise
passiveness. The kingdom of art is not taken by violence, and the
violent do not take it by mere intellectual force.
As to the origin and nature of the feeling for beauty in style as for
beauty in general, the reason may be sought in survivals of primitive
pleasures. Thus the expression, before quoted, “starred with innumerable
globes of their ripening fruit,” aside from the pleasure in sonorous
quality and artistic construction, pleases mainly as awakening the
feeling for natural beauty. But what is the psychological explanation
for this æsthetic emotion in presence of tree, fruit, flower, sky, and
all landscape features. It may largely be a revival of feelings felt
long since by our arboreal and forest-haunting ancestors, “combinations
of states which were organized in the race, during barbarous times, when
its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and waters”
(Spencer, _Psychology_, Sect. 214). In the woods and by the streams
there tends to revive the long outgrown physical emotion; the old savage
feelings of delight and excitement in the chase come back to the
civilized man, and in stealthy approach of game and skilful slaying the
modern man re-experiences far distant ancestral joys. Now literary art
by skilfully setting forth scenes of savage life may renew, the old
survival feelings to a certain degree of illusive life. This is done to
a large extent by pastoral poetry, mythic story, legend and fairy tale,
whereby we drop back into a very old and simple mode of enjoyable mental
life. The basis of primitive psychosis is in the particular concrete and
animate, and literary art, especially in its highest manifestation,
poetry, as becoming simple, sensuous, and impassioned, has a foundation
in survival tendencies. Through literature mankind renews its youth.
Similarly we may suppose that if in the future psychic evolution of the
race the present mode of thinking in general and abstract terms should
be succeeded by some new and higher phase, then the artificial
stimulating the revival of this outgrown abstract phase would constitute
a source of pleasure and might be achieved through a style. As a means
toward revivals literary style is a backward moving spirit in sharp
contrast to science, which, as generalizing and depersonifying, is the
forward moving process.
However, we have sharply to distinguish between what is given in a
survival state and that which accompanies it. Primitive realization is
always single and naïve, but when it comes up in a survival it is
generally consciously contrasted with accustomed modes by consciousness,
and there arises a reflective pleasure of contrast which is not
contained in the survival itself, but of which the survival is merely a
condition. Further, our realization of the outgrown psychic elements is
very generally dramatic. We take self-conscious pleasure in
investigating, assuming, and re-enacting past psychic phases. Even when
a survival state arises spontaneously and naturally, it holds
consciousness at best in its original _status_ for a moment only, for
self-consciousness quickly occurs and brings in a variety of secondary
emotions. However attained, the obsolescent type of consciousness does
not stand in its simple original force, but most often there is more or
less make-believe, some sense of its artificial and unreal nature: we do
not become children by playing at being children. Children and savages
are in the animistic psychic stage, but the poetic interpretation of
nature by adult man is plainly far more than mere revival of this stage,
it is dramatic self-conscious realization. Original animism is often
painful; the savage fears his gods and the child dreads ghosts; but
myths and ghost stories are sources of amusement to us, and the twinge
of fear which comes up as survival loses its real force and is
dramatically realized and enjoyed. Literary art is a dramatic induction
into the past rather than incentive to mere revival; and it makes us to
pleasurably renew alike the outgrown pains and pleasures. We certainly
should go far astray if we should consider style as effectual mainly by
its exciting to revival of ancestral experiences. What is recurrent is
but a small element compared to what is concurrent.
We must note the particular case of landscape beauty. Shelley’s
description of the orange tree laden with fruit excites in us the
feeling of pleasure in the beauty of nature, a feeling which is declared
by some to be merely the reminiscent revived feelings which our distant
progenitors felt in the presence of natural forms and forces. But what
was the emotion our remote progenitor felt at sight of a well-fruited
orange tree? Did he feel moved as Shelley was and as we through Shelley
are? and is our emotion but a faint survival of that which welled up in
him at viewing the mass of green and gold, or has it any relation
thereto? The civilized traveller in wild regions is often charmed by the
beauty of the scenery which the savage natives do not in the least
appreciate. But the revival feelings which come over him must be
identical with the feelings of his unæsthetic companions who are totally
insensible to natural beauty. The reversal tendency can give to the
traveller only an animal pleasure in viewing an orange tree as
satisfying to the taste and stomach; a fine, bright day can only suggest
the pleasure of a sluggish basking. Goethe rejoiced that, though the
incidental pains of æsthetic sensitivity were great, yet he could see in
a tree shedding its leaves more than the approach of winter. Bare
revival then cannot in itself constitute æsthetic pleasure or explain
it. A savage race transferred to a civilized land for a few generations
and then returned to their native haunts have acute pleasures of
revival, but these are not of the æsthetic quality. An outcropping
survival tendency may serve as itself an object for emotion and æsthetic
emotion to the mind experiencing it, but thereby the survival is like
any other object, physical or psychical, which excites æsthetic
sensibility, and it no more explains the emotion for beauty than any
other object.
It is evident thus far that the psychological basis of stylistic effect
is very complex, and in this essay we certainly lay no claim to making
an exhaustive enumeration of its factors. However, we have still to
consider one more element, and perhaps, at least for cultivated minds,
the most important psychic element of literary art. Read now the
following extract, and analyze the impression it makes:—
“The natural thirst that ne’er is satisfied
Excepting with the water for whose grace
The woman of Samaria besought,
Put me in travail, and haste goaded me
Along the encumbered path behind my Leader,
And I was pitying that righteous vengeance;
And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth
That Christ appeared to two upon the way
From the sepulchral cave already risen,
A shade appeared to us, and came behind us,
Down gazing on the prostrate multitude,
Nor were we 'ware of it, until it spake,
Saying, 'My brothers, may God give you peace.'”
Here, surely, is neither facility, nor beauty of expression, nor deft
and subtle art to please the mind, yet it attracts and interests. The
main secret of the effect of Dante’s style is as revelation of
personality. Art with Dante is the child of life, the product of long
and deep-felt experience; and because he is an original reality he
achieves in his writings that distinctiveness and distinction which is
the truest and highest mark of style. Again, it is not the lucidity of
Sam Weller’s remarks that pleases us, but rather their characteristic
flavour. We delight to come in contact with originals, and we relish the
characteristic for its own sake, even when ugly or when most unlike
ourselves in tendency, and so the modernest of the moderns enjoys Dante,
the typical mediævalist. Style is the man. This is the best definition
of style and the best explanation of its peculiar effect. Style is
expression of subjective quality. While scientist and philosopher aim to
be objective, to justly reflect and interpret outward reality the
literary artist aims merely to give a perfect exposition of himself.
Style is the literary expression of self-realization. Hence the greatest
stylists write to please themselves, and are their own severest critics.
Style is _timbre_, and the best style is that in which this peculiar
tone of the individual mind is most perfectly revealed. A great style
is, then, the expression of a great man, and the consummation of style
occurs when the genius has grown to the highest point of his
individuality—and individuality is genius—with corresponding power of
expression. Among Tennyson’s poems the most Tennysonian has the greatest
style. When we quote from Wordsworth such lines as,—
“The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”—
and say of them that they are eminently Wordsworthian, that no one else
could have written them, we have said the highest word for the style.
In the very largest sense style is the evolution of the characteristic;
development physical and psychical is but a movement toward style. The
progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity in matter; the morphological
development of animate things from indefinite formless beings to
definite, complex types; biological integration and specialization—all
this is progress of style. Thus the most lion-like lion and the most
elephantine elephant respectively achieve the highest style of animal in
their kind. The development in the human race is mainly psychic, and
includes psychic classes, orders, genera and species, not as yet so
clearly tabulated as in general natural history. A genius is the
inauguration of a new _genus_, style, or type of man; he is a psychic
“sport,” to borrow a botanical term. A new mode of personality is
achieved and may manifest itself in various ways of action, thought and
emotion. If the expression is through literature a great style is
generated, and this style grows with the growing individuality—the
productions of youth have little style—and culminates with its
culmination.
To discover style is almost as rare a gift as to achieve it. The
critical sense is about as uncommon as the creative power; hence the
greatest masters of style have had often to wait long for recognition,
which would hardly be the case if the main value of style was in
economising attention. According to this theory, we should expect the
stylist to be welcomed with instant and universal appreciation, a
phenomenon which rarely or never occurs. With very many writers, as with
Wordsworth, recognition is very tardy, and with some only posthumous.
Many readers fail even with the utmost attention to appreciate the
greatest artists, and can make nothing out of them; a few rise at length
to some understanding; but only rare and select spirits find themselves
at once _en rapport_. The true _connoisseur_ and critic must introduce
and interpret to us the characteristic quality or style of the
_littérateur_, else we may never know and feel it. Recognition and
appreciation of style as the characteristic is, then, for the vast
majority an acquired taste; it is slowly and painfully learned, and so
the emotion for style as specific mode of expression must be pronounced
a very late psychic development.
The taste and emotion for the characteristic as such, whenever and
however acquired, is certainly a peculiar and definite mode of emotion.
It is far from being the feeling of discipleship, and is often excited
by that which is most remote and opposite to ourselves. We say of a
certain person, “He is a _character_,” and he interests and pleases us
as such, though entirely foreign to us in either sympathy or antipathy.
As an entirely disinterested emotion, the æsthetic is beyond the range
of common naïve consciousness. The enjoyment of the characteristic _per
se_ is specially for the analytically super-conscious cosmopolite and
for the cultured critic. The pleasure comes partly from the novelty and
the contrast reflectively understood, partly from admiration for the
forcefulness of creative personality, its plastic power in forming its
material of expression, and largely a teleologic pleasure in perceiving
fulness and purity of type. The emotion for style as characteristic
expression is plainly one of those which is not due to the utility in
the struggle for existence, but has arisen when experience comes to be
cultivated for its own sake.
When, as in eras like our own, personality weakens, and the inner
plastic and creative force of conviction and emotion decreases, the
writer is driven to technical treatment. The _littérateur_, as he has
little or nothing to say, contents himself with playing tricks on
language, and elaborating rhythms and cadences. Style becomes finicky; a
race of prinking poetasters and priggish prosaists arise, punctiliously
formal, and superlatively dainty, who attain the art of saying nothing
very elegantly, elaborately, and brilliantly. An over-conscious,
over-subtle technique destroys the grand style as transmitter of
characteristic quality.
* * * * *
I trust I have, in this brief study, made it clear that the psychology
of literary style is far from simple, and that a number of factors are
involved, which are slighted by Herbert Spencer and others of that
school. I believe that any one at all conversant with literature who
will reflect upon the pleasures he receives from reading, will perceive
that the pleasure of smoothness and facility, of moving along rapidly
and easily, is but one, and that generally a minor factor in literary
enjoyment. Beside this, he often has the pleasure of difficulties
overcome, of ideas grasped, and delicate emotional touches appreciated
by triumphant attentive effort. Again, he receives pleasure in
perceiving literary skill, the adaptation of artistic means to the
artistic end. But, as I have maintained, the chief mode of pleasure is
through style as transmitter of æsthetic emotion and as expression of
the characteristic, achieving its acme when both these functions are
simultaneously performed most fully and perfectly.