Literature abounds in attempts to define literature. One of the most
strenuous and thorough-going definitions I have seen has lately been
published by one of our college professors--it is a most determined
attempt to corral the whole subject. “Nothing belongs to real
literature,” says the professor, “unless it consists of written words
that constitute a carrying statement which makes sense, arranged
rhythmically, euphoniously, and harmoniously, and so chosen as to
connote an adequate number of ideas and things, the suggestion of which
will call up in the reader sustained emotions which do not produce
undue tension, and in which the element of pleasure predominates, on
the whole, over that of pain. Practically,” the writer goes on to say,
“every word of this description should be kept in our minds, so that we
may consciously apply it as a test to any piece of writing about the
literary character of which we are in doubt.”
Fancy a reader, in his quest for the real article, going about with
this drag-net of a paragraph in his mind. Will the definition or
description bear turning around upon itself? Is it a good sample of
literary art? The exactness and literalness of science are seldom
permissible in literature. That a definition of anything may have
literary value it must possess a certain indirect and imaginative
character, as when Carlyle defined poetry as the heroic of speech.
Contrast with the above John Morley’s definition of literature: “All
the books--and they are not so many--where moral truth and human
passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction
of form.” This is much better literature, because the language is much
more flexible and imaginative. It imparts more warmth to the mind;
it is more suggestive, while as a literary touchstone it is just as
available.
Good literature may be a much simpler thing than our teachers would
lead us to believe. The prattle of a child may have rare literary
value. The little Parisian girl who, when asked by a lady the price
of the trinkets she offered for sale, replied, “Judge for yourself,
madam; I have tasted no food since yesterday,” expressed herself with
consummate art. If she had said simply, “Whatever your ladyship pleases
to give,” her reply would have been graceful, but commonplace. By the
personal turn which she gave it, she added almost a lyrical touch. When
Thackeray changed the title of one of his novels from “Scenes from Town
Life,” or some such title, to “Vanity Fair,” he achieved a stroke of
art. It is said that a now famous line of Keats was first written thus:
“A thing of beauty is a continual joy.”
How the effect of the line was heightened by the change of one word,
and itself became “a joy forever.” Poe, too, altered two lines of his
with like magical effect, when for
“To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome,”
he wrote:
“To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.”
The phrase “well of pure English” conveys the same idea as “well of
English undefiled,” but how much greater the artistic value of the
latter than of the former! Thus the literary value of a sentence may
turn upon a single word.
The everyday speech of the people is often full of the stuff of which
literature is made. No poet could invent better epithets and phrases
than abound in the common vernacular. The sayings and proverbs of a
people are also, for the most part, of the pure gold of literature.
One trouble with all definitions of literature is that they proceed
upon the theory that literature is a definite something that may be
determined by definite tests like gold or silver, whereas it is more
like life or nature itself. It is not so much something as the visible
manifestation of something; it assumes infinite forms, and is of
infinite degrees of potency. There is great literature, and there
is feeble and commonplace literature: a romance by Hawthorne and a
novel by Haggard; a poem by Tennyson and a poem by Tupper; an essay
by Emerson and an essay by John Foster--all literature, all touching
the emotions and the imagination with varying degrees of power, and
yet separated by a gulf. There are no degrees of excellence in gold or
silver, but there are all degrees of excellence in literature. How hard
it is to tell what makes a true poem, a lasting poem! When one asks
himself what it is, how many things arise, how hard to narrow the list
down to a few things! Is it beauty? Then what is beauty? One meets with
beautiful poems every day that he never thinks of or recurs to again.
It is certain that without one thing there is no real poetry--genuine
passion. The fire came down out of heaven and consumed Elijah’s
offering because Elijah was sincere. Plan and build your poem never so
deftly, mankind will not permanently care for it unless it has genuine
feeling. It must be impassioned.
The genus Literature includes many species, as novels, poems, essays,
histories, etc., but our business with them all is about the same--they
are books that we read for their own sake. We read the papers for the
news, we read a work of science for the facts and the conclusions,
but a work of literature is an end in and of itself. We read it for
the pleasure and the stimulus it affords us, apart from any other
consideration. It exhibits such a play of mind and emotion upon the
facts of life and nature as results in our own mental and spiritual
enrichment and edification.
Another thing is true of the best literature: we cannot separate
our pleasure and profit in the subject-matter from our pleasure and
profit in the personality of the writer. We do not know whether it
is Hawthorne himself that we most delight in, or his style and the
characters and the action of his romance. One thing is quite certain:
where there is no distinct personal flavor to the page, no stamp
of a new individual force, we soon tire of it. The savor of every
true literary production comes from the man himself. Hence, without
attempting a formal definition of literature, one may say that the
literary quality seems to arise from a certain vital relation of the
writer with subject-matter. It is _his_ subject; it blends with the
very texture of his mind; his relation to it is primary and personal,
not secondary and mechanical. The secret is not in any prescribed
arrangement of the words--it is in the quality of mind or spirit that
warms the words and shines through them. A good book, says Milton, is
the precious life-blood of a master spirit. Unless there is blood in
it, unless the vital currents of a rare spirit flow through it and
vivify it, it has not the gift of life.
In all good literature we have a sense of touching something alive and
real. The writer uses words not as tools or appliances; they are more
like his hand or his eye or his ear--the living, palpable body of his
thought, the incarnation of his spirit.
The true writer always establishes intimate and personal relations with
his reader. He comes forth, he is not concealed; he is immanent in his
words, we feel him, our spirits touch his spirit.
Style in letters is a quality of mind--a certain flavor imparted to
words by the personality back of them. Pass language through one mind
and it is tasteless and colorless; pass it through another, and it
acquires an entirely new value and significance and gives us a unique
pleasure. In the one case the sentences are artificial; in the other
they bud and sprout out of the man himself as naturally as the plants
and trees out of the soil.
There is nothing else in the world so sensitive and chameleon-like as
language; it takes on at once the hue and quality of the mind that
uses it. See how neutral and impersonal, or old and worn and faded the
words look in the pages of some writers, then see how drastic or new
and individual they become when a mind of another type marshals them
into sentences. What vigor and life in them! they seem to have been
newly coined since we last met them. It is the test of a writer’s real
worth--does the language tarnish, as it were, in his hand, or is it
brightened and freshened in his use?
A book may contain valuable truths and sound sentiments of universal
appeal, but if the literary coinage is feeble, if the page is not
strongly individualized, freshly and clearly stamped by the purpose
of the writer, it cannot take rank as good literature. To become
literature, truth must be perpetually reborn, reincarnated, and begin
life anew.
A successful utterance always has value, always has truth, though in
its purely intellectual aspects it may not correspond with the truth as
we see it. I cannot accept all of Ruskin’s views upon our civilization
or all of Tolstoi’s upon art, yet I see that they speak the truth as
it defines itself to their minds and feelings. A counter-statement may
be equally true. The struggle for existence goes on in the ideal world
as well as in the real. The strongest mind, the fittest statement,
survives for the time being. That a system of philosophy or religion
perishes or is laid aside is not because it is not or was not true, but
because it is not true to the new minds and under the new conditions.
It no longer expresses what the world thinks and feels. It is outgrown.
Was not Calvinism true to our fathers? It is no longer true to us
because we were born at a later day in the world. With regard to truths
of science, we may say, once a truth always a truth, because the world
of fact and of things is always under the same law, but the truth
of sentiments and emotions changes with changing minds and hearts.
The tree of life, unlike all other trees, bears different fruit to
each generation. What our fathers found nourishing and satisfying in
religion, in art, in philosophy, we find tasteless and stale. Every
gospel has its day. The moral and intellectual horizon of the race is
perpetually changing.