gives a description of Waterloo, and in a single sentence shows its
relation to the story and brings the tale into closest connection with
all of history and all of human life:--
The darkness came down on field and city, and Amelia was praying
for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet
through his heart.
It is of course unnecessary to go on with examples. The student can
find them abundantly for himself. The point is that in his own work
he shall remember to look carefully to this detail, since there is no
single matter more closely connected with the effect of a composition.
* * * * *
It is evident that the power to interest and to arouse by suggestion
must depend largely upon the extent to which the writer is able
to enter into the reader’s mood. In other words, that writer is
most effectively suggestive who is most completely and practically
sympathetic. The foundation of whatever is really vital must be in
the genuine feeling and the actual experience of the author. This
experience, it is true, may be actual in the imagination only, but it
must have been felt as a reality. The secret of sympathy is in the
well-known line of Sidney:--
“Fool,” said my muse to me, “look in thy heart and write!”
It is idle to hope to hold any reader, or to move him strongly, unless
we are really interested ourselves; and it is equally impossible to
touch him if there be any suspicion on his part that we are not dealing
with him with perfect frankness. What we write must be real to us, and
it must be told with perfect frankness, if we are to reach the hearts
of those we address.
There is perhaps no advice more wholesome for young writers than that
they confine themselves absolutely to their own experience whenever
it is in any way possible. If an illustration is to be given, a
figure employed, a comparison used, let the illustration, the figure,
the comparison be found in the things of which the writer has actual
knowledge. It is not alone that this will insure a vitality which is
hardly to be imparted to anything taken at second hand, but, what is of
more importance, it will also make it at least more probable that the
writer keeps within the experiences of his readers. Of the things which
one has actually seen and felt, it is easy to judge how far they are
usual; and the more closely a writer confines himself to usual things,
the more forceful his style is likely to be.
A remark of Lowell’s contains by implication a hint which we shall do
well to notice here.
What he [Dryden] valued above all things was force, though in
his haste he is willing to make shift with its counterfeit,
effect.--_Dryden._
The word “force” is here used in the sense of vigor and lasting power,
its meaning being somewhat more limited than that in which we are using
it as a technical term. It is the same in essentials, however, and the
distinction which is brought out in the sentence quoted is one not to
be overlooked. Effect is the transient, whereas force is the permanent:
effect startles, force holds; effect is the sham, force the true. The
worst type of style which sacrifices force to effect is the sensational
novel, or the so-called “breezy” journalism. To startle, to shock, to
produce a sensation, at whatever sacrifice of probability, of reason,
or of good taste,--the thing is unfortunately too well known to need
particularization.
An effeminate form of striving for effect is what is known as “fine
writing.” “Fine writing” is a fault so gross that it is not necessary
to waste many words on it. It need only be said that there is no more
certain indication of a hopelessly diseased literary taste, or of a
hopelessly depraved habit of composition, than this absurdly antiquated
verbal vice. Of course no writer who produces literature is guilty
of it, but I somewhere have picked up an example which so happily
illustrates all that could be said on the subject that I cannot forbear
to quote it. It is from a novel called “Barabbas,” by Miss Marie
Corelli, and is part of the description of the appearance of Christ
before Pontius Pilate. Water having been brought, Pilate, according to
Miss Corelli, thus proceeded:--
Slowly lowering his hands, he dipped them in the shining bowl,
rinsing them over and over again in the clear, cold element, which
sparkled in its polished receptacle like an opal against the fire.
The Bible finds it possible to say all of this that is necessary in the
words:--
Pilate took water, and washed his hands.
Miss Corelli’s ingenuity in expanding and distorting has won its
reward,--her novel has been warmly commended by Queen Victoria.
Even really great writers are not always free from this fault, although
here it is apt to be from some mixture of humorous intent that they
fall into it. Instead of “she hardened her heart,” George Meredith
writes, in one of those irritating sentences which are too frequent in
his books, and which affect one like freckles on the face of a goddess,
“She turned her inward flutterer to steel.”
Force, then, depends upon suggestion, and this is secured by sincerity,
by appeals to human experiences common to all, by freedom from
affectations, and by attention to such details as proper beginnings
and endings. Other means of securing it we shall deal with later. Here
it is enough to insist again that the great secret of Force lies in
earnestness, sincerity, and sympathy.
To pass from Force to Elegance is to advance from the more subtle to
the most subtle. It is not difficult to be definite in speaking of
Clearness; it is less easy in discussing Force; while, at the very
outset of the consideration of Elegance, we are met by the fact that
it is hardly possible even to define this third principle of quality.
Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that nobody is even fully
satisfied with this name for the æsthetic quality. “Elegance” is
the term which is coming to be accepted as, on the whole, the most
convenient and satisfactory offered; but I suppose that nobody would
feel inclined to insist strongly upon this especial word. Mr. Wendell
writes:--
Elegance is that distinguishing quality of style that pleases the
taste; ... the æsthetic quality of style, that subtle something in
a work of literary art which makes us feel delight in workmanship.
Beauty, some call it; charm, others; others still, grace, ease,
finish, mastery.
The name does not much matter; the quality matters greatly. It is this
more than all else that gives lasting value to literature. There is
in style an indefinable power of reaching the emotions of the reader
which is beyond the effect of what is actually said, even beyond the
effect of what is suggested. The quality which makes intelligible
actual statement is Clearness; that which brings home to the reader
the wealth of suggestion which may lie behind what is directly said
is Force; while beyond both is that quality of style which conveys
the intangible, which carries to the mind of the reader emotions too
delicate to be confined in words, which touches and arouses as fineness
of color or line or sound moves us in painting or sculpture or music.
This is what we mean by Elegance. It is the æsthetic effect produced
purely by the literary form; by the perfection of the relation between
the end sought and the means employed; by the complete mastery of
technique, and the employment of all the resources of art for the
embodiment of the imaginative in literary form.
I am aware that my definition may make the matter less clear rather
than more plain, but the thing is too elusive to be caught in the
trap of a simple definition. Elegance is the quality in which the
imagination most directly makes itself manifest. It is the most
tangible proof that a writer possesses that power which at the start we
spoke of as inborn and incommunicable. As a matter of workmanship, and
so far as it may be learned, Elegance is chiefly the ability to convey
in words the mood of the writer. It depends largely upon an exquisite
sensitiveness to the indirect effect of words and of word-combination.
It is to be cultivated by training the mind to consider always the
value of terms in their connotation; to weigh them not only by their
direct meaning, but by their association, and by the ideas and ideals
and emotions which they bring to the mind; and by developing taste in
literary construction. To write with Elegance, it is also necessary to
keep in mind the effect upon the reader of the emotional word-color.
The suggestions of words are dependent in part upon the mere vocal
effect of the sounds producing them, upon the harmony of the sentence,
the tone-value and cadence of clause and paragraph. All these things
are elements which must be considered. Completely to master all these,
so as to work upon the mind and imagination of the reader at will, is
of course within the power of the great imagination only; but every
student may advance toward it.
We are none of us able satisfactorily to define beauty, or to explain
the pleasure which it excites; yet there is no one of us who has
not recognized both. Why a curve is more pleasing to the eye than a
straight line may be too deep a question; but none the less may one
safely appeal to the universal experience that there are certain lines,
certain forms, certain colors, certain sounds which give us pleasure.
With equal assurance may one appeal to the universal instinct which
is gratified by the adaptation of ends to means; to the innate human
sense of the rightness of what is fitting; the constant pleasure in
order, in appropriateness, in harmony. It is this instinct, this sense,
this pleasure, which underlies the sensitiveness of the mind to what we
call Elegance in composition.
The quality which we are discussing is, more than any other, dependent
upon the personal taste and culture of the writer. The thing to be
said to the student is perhaps this: “Elegance is the result of a
keen and acutely imaginative perception of the fitness of things, and
of a quick appreciation of beauty, with the power to convey both by
a delicate adaptation of literary means to literary effects.” A keen
and acute perception of the fitness of things can only be acquired
by the development of the taste. This is an affair of culture in its
broadest sense, and it is hardly possible to separate here the question
of literary excellence from that of general development. The study
of the masterpieces of literature--always with earnestness and with
sympathy--is the most direct means of improving a sensitiveness to
literary fitness and to literary beauty. The adaptation of means to
ends we shall go on considering throughout these talks; and now, as
always, it is necessary to remember that the way to learn to write is
to write. The way to achieve Elegance is to labor for it with that
persistence which is in itself the best compensation which Heaven
has bestowed upon man for all other boons denied. “Persistence,
persistence, and persistence” is the motto which the student must
engrave on his heart.
There will always remain the personal equation. No student can afford
to close his eyes to the fact that all men are born intellectually
unequal. To one has Nature given gifts of appreciation, of
apprehension, and of expression, while from another she has withheld
them. This personal difference affects all work, and it affects work
more and more strongly as we draw nearer to that quality in literature
which is incommunicable. Steadily, since the beginning of these talks,
have we been advancing toward those fields of composition where
comes into play that power which is the gift of the gods only; that
imaginative essence which some men are dowered with at birth, and which
some go seeking their whole lives through with insistence pathetically
vain. The one thing important is, that the student not only accept his
individual limitations, but that he do not stop short of them. It is
necessary to realize that one has not genius, and then to work as if
one had; and it is amazing how much may be done in this way. Nature,
for instance, plainly intended that Matthew Arnold should not write
elegant prose, and she absolutely forbade him to write poetry, yet he
succeeded in doing both. The earnest student of literary art should
resolutely refuse to be satisfied with any thing short of the miracle
of the impossible, and haply so he may sometimes attain to it.
VII
MEANS AND EFFECTS
When the student has come to have a clear idea of what is to be sought
in composition, he naturally goes on to inquire by what means a writer
can gain the ends desired. It has been shown that there are certain
principles which govern the mechanical structure of language, and also
that there are as well principles which have to do with the quality of
what is written. The next step is to examine the especial means which
are at the command of the worker, and what effects may be secured by
the use of given means.
It has already been said and insisted upon that it is necessary to
know accurately what effect the writer desires to produce; and it is
to be added that it is especially needful to realize from the start
what is to be the conclusion of a work, great or small. The end of
a composition is its consummation, the climax toward which all else
conducts the reader, the ultimate effect to which all other effects are
subordinate. The writer who sets out to go nowhere in particular, it
has been said, is little likely to arrive anywhere. It is also to be
remembered that, unless he is clearly aware what is to be his strongest
point, he is not in a position to make all other parts properly
subordinate to this,--to secure that careful proportion of emphasis
which is one of the great essentials of all good work in whatever
province of art.
Before he begins to write, the writer must make up his mind how he
intends to end. He may, it is true, modify to some extent the first
idea of the form in which this climax of his work is to be put, but it
is safe to lay down as a general rule that he shall not essentially
alter it. Whether one sits down to write a novel, a tale, an essay,
an editorial, or a simple paragraph, let him know at least what the
conclusion is to be, whether he is aware of the steps by which he is to
reach this or not. The minor points may be thought up as one proceeds,
but the end, which is in a manner the reason of the existence of the
whole, must be clear in the mind of the writer from the very start.
It is this thing which Mr. Walter Pater means when he speaks of--
That architectural conception of a work which foresees the end
from the beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every part
is conscious of all the rest, till the very last sentence does
but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and justify the first.
The conclusion being well defined in the writer’s thought, the next
thing to be determined is the point of view. The point of view is to
any composition what the hypothesis is to a proposition in geometry. It
is the assumption of personality and of attitude which is presupposed
from the start, and which must be rigidly maintained to the end.
If a writer is describing a landscape, he is obliged to fix in his own
mind the point from which he is to consider that landscape as being
seen,--whether near or remote, from hill or plain, from a bridge, a
window, or it may be from the deck of a vessel. If he hopes to produce
an impression which shall be clear, or to bring up vividly in the mind
of the reader the thing described, he must not forget where the reader
is supposed to be placed. If at the start he writes as if the view were
remote, and then forgets and speaks of it as if it were near at hand,
he destroys the consistency of the work and makes all ineffectual.
Another easily appreciated illustration is to be found in novels
which are written in the form of an autobiography. Since the story
is supposed to be narrated by one of the characters, it follows
that nothing should be told which that person could not know. The
introduction of scenes at which he could not have been present, of
talk which he could not have heard, of thoughts which he had no means
of discovering, completely dispels the illusion. If these things must
be used, care must be taken to show how the narrator came to know
them; since otherwise the hypothesis with which the author started is
violated by the alteration of the point of view. The reader may or may
not realize why the story loses its effect of reality, but he cannot
fail to feel that it does lose it.
The same principle applies to everything that is written, even to the
most trivial paragraph. Consciously or unconsciously, the writer at
the start assumes a certain mental attitude toward the subject of
which he writes, and this attitude he must carefully preserve. Of
course the point of view may be progressive, as when one describes the
scenery as viewed from a car window or shows the change of opinion;
but in this case the motion is part of the original hypothesis. The
first assumption must be adhered to, since to change the point of view
is to break faith with the reader, and to break faith is to lose his
confidence.
The philosophy of the matter is simple and obvious enough. It is the
aim to induce the reader to submit, for the time being, his personality
to that of the writer; to induce him to see with the eyes of the
author, and to think with the author’s mind. The slightest jar may
destroy all illusion; the least difficulty may make the reader assert
the supremacy of his own individuality. If even unconsciously his
judgment is offended, his own consciousness is sure to assert itself,
and he gives himself up no longer.
In practical work, the secret of preserving one mental attitude is
largely that of being clearly aware of it. This detail of composition
is perhaps most easily understood in its application to description or
narration, but it must be as clearly realized in all composition. It
is of high importance to determine beforehand what is the attitude of
the writer both toward the subject and toward the reader addressed. The
effect of a failure to observe this is found in a great many letters,
and, perhaps I may be pardoned if I add, especially in feminine
letters. The mind of woman is so flexible, so versatile, so capable of
seeing many sides to a subject which to the duller masculine intellect
seems to have but one, that it not infrequently happens that in a
single page of a woman’s letter there will be half a dozen points of
view, or even that seeming impossibility of two or three points of view
at once.
Often the application of this principle is so subtle that the tyro is
entirely at a loss to know what is the matter with his sentence. Take
these examples:--
The crowd turns, departs, disintegrates.
I noticed that the hat was of soft felt, and one might easily
guess that it had been bought at a bargain sale. It lent a
comfortable sense of satisfaction to its owner, and suggested to
him the idea of going to church.
In the former, the writer’s point of view is that of one looking out
of a window at a crowd, and it is proper that he should say “turns,
departs;” but after the crowd has departed he cannot see whether
it disintegrates or not. If he should say, “Turns, disintegrates,
departs,” one could find no fault. In the second example, the point of
view is at first that of an observer who sees the hat on the head of
a stranger; then, without warning, it is shifted to the mind of any
observer,--“one,”--and then, in a twinkling, to the thought of the
wearer himself, which has been by the hat turned to the idea of going
to church.
We shall have to do later with the point of view in its application to
the various sorts of composition. Here it is enough to add the warning
to inexperienced writers: Do not write to discover what you think, or
how you feel about a subject. These questions are to be settled before
writing is begun. In half the themes which I read, it is apparent that
the writer has been going ahead in a sort of forlorn hope of ultimately
learning his own opinions. To be in doubt when one begins, either of
where one is bound or of how the attempt to get there is to be made,
is as fatal in writing as in horse-racing. There is a good deal of
what might be called the June-bug style of composition. Just as a
beetle bangs his clumsy thick head against a window or a netting in
hope that he may chance to strike a place where he can get through to
the lamp within, so the June-bug writer goes banging absurdly down his
page, bumping against any obstacle, trusting to fate and the chapter
of accidents to show somewhere and somehow a way through. The man who
has learned to write does not begin until he has an idea what his way
through is to be. This being clear in his mind, he goes consistently
toward it, and his consistency is what is called keeping the point of
view.
The point of view being selected, it is often necessary to give the
reader a clue to it. Sometimes it is needful to use no inconsiderable
amount of skill to bring him to accept it. The well-trained reader
always endeavors to put himself into complete sympathy with an author.
The author is bound to make this as easy as possible, and even, if may
be, to render it inevitable, to the end that the reader shall be forced
to share the outlook of the writer, whether with conscious willingness
or not. In obvious matters, like descriptions, the simple device of
naming the point of view is enough. When Keats begins a poem,--
I stood tiptoe upon a little hill,--
he gives the point of view. So does Spenser when he opens the “Faerie
Queene:”--
A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.
Equally is Lowell giving the point of view in the opening of the
essay on Chaucer, already quoted: “Will it _do_ to say anything more
about Chaucer?” Here he at once puts the reader into the attitude
of examining with fresh attention a subject which has been greatly
discussed; by implication he intimates that there is still enough wheat
in the often-threshed straw to make it worth while once more to turn it
over. With equal skill and felicity he puts the reader into the mood in
which he writes of Carlyle by the first sentence of another essay:--
A feeling of comical sadness is likely to come over the mind of
any middle-aged man who sets himself to recollecting the names of
the authors that have been famous, and the number of contemporary
immortalities whose end he has seen since coming to manhood.
The reader perceives at once that the subject which is to be treated
is to be regarded as of less assured permanence of importance than has
been sometimes held. Evidently Lowell would not allude to the many
transient so-called immortalities if he had not at least a suspicion
that the contemporary reputation of Carlyle is likely to be lessened
by time. The key-note is struck, and what follows is governed by it.
The secret of holding the reader to the point of view consists largely
of keeping strictly to it in writing. If the author does not change
his position, the reader is unconsciously drawn to it. There is a
persuasive power in mere persistency which is recognized by any one
who has had to do with an obstinate person, and this power tells in
literature as fully as in domestic life.
* * * * *
We come next to figurative language, so called; and at this point it
used to be the fashion to overwhelm the student with a list of dreadful
names which was in itself enough to paralyze the mental processes, and
to discourage at once and forever all aspiration after excellence. The
appalling words _synecdoche_, _metonymy_, _antonomasia_, _asyndeton_,
_anacolouthon_, _parrhesia_, _onomatopoeia_, and the rest, seemed
to fascinate the soul of writers on composition as completely as
they dazed and stupefied the understanding of the unhappy student.
Pedants have amused themselves by darkening wisdom with words without
knowledge, until it is all but impossible to come at anything practical
in the old-fashioned books,--which were invariably called “treatises.”
It has been found that this is idle, and for the most part it has been
laid aside. A few terms are for convenience still used, but in these
days the effort, instead of being to give learned and pompous-sounding
treatises on the art of composition, is if possible to set down what
will assist the student in learning literary expression.