The art of letters, then, is the art whose material is life
itself. Such, indeed, is the implication of the approval
theories of style. Words, phrases, sentences, chapters, are
excellent in so far as they are identical with thought in
all its shades of feeling. "Economy of attention," Spencer's
familiar phrase for the philosophy of style, his explanation
of even the most ornate and extravagant forms, is but another
name for this desired lucidity of the medium. Pater, himself,
an artist in the overlaying of phrases, has the same teaching.
"All the laws of good writing aim at a similar unity or
identity of the mind in all the processes by which the word is
associated to its import. The term is right, and has its
essential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what it
signifies, as with the names of simple sensations."<1> He
quotes therewith De Maupassant on Flaubert: "Among all the
expressions in the world, all forms and turns of expression,
there is but ONE--one form, one mode--to express what I want
to say." And adds, "The one word for the one thing, the one
thought, amid the multitude of words, terms, that might just
do: the problem of style was there!--the unique word, phrase,
sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely proper to the
single mental presentation or vision within."...
<1> _Appreciations: An Essay on Style._
Thought in words is the matter of literature; and words exist
but for thought, and get their excellence as thought; yet, as
Flaubert says, the idea only exists by virtue of the form.
The form, or the word, IS the idea; that is, it carries along
with it the fringe of suggestion which crystallizes the floating
possibility in the stream of thought. A glance at the history
of language shows how this must have been so. Words in their
first formation were doubtless constituted by their imitative
power. As Taine has said,<1> at the first they arose in contact
with the objects; they imitated them by the grimaces of mouth
and nose which accompanied their sound, by the roughness,
smoothness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the rattle
or whistle of the throat, by the inflation or contraction of
the chest.
<1> H. Taine, _La Fontaine et ses Fables_, p. 288.
This primitive imitative power of the word survives in the
so-called onomatapoetic words, which aim simply at reproducing
the sounds of nature. A second order of imitation arises through
the associations of sensations. The different sensations,
auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, motor, and organic have
common qualities, which they share with other more complex
experiences; of form, as force or feebleness; of feeling, as
harshness, sweetness, and so on. It is, indeed, another case
of the form-qualities to which we recurred so often in the
chapter on music. Clear and smooth vowels will give the
impression of volatility and delicacy; open, broad ones of
elevation or extension (airy, flee; large, far). The consonants
which are hard to pronounce will give the impression of effort,
of shock, of violence, of difficulty, of heaviness,--"the round
squat turret, black as the fool's heart;" those which are easy
of pronunciation express ease, smoothness, fluidity, calm,
lightness, (facile, suave, roulade);--"lucent syrops, tinct with
cinnamon," a line like honey on the tongue, of which physical
organ, indeed, one becomes, with the word "tinct," definitely
conscious.
In fact, the main point to notice in the enumeration of the
expressive qualities of sounds, is that it is the movement in
utterance which characterizes them. That movement tends to
reproduce itself in the hearer, and carries with it its feeling-
tone of ease or difficulty, explosiveness or sweetness long
drawn out. It is thus by a kind of sympathetic induction rather
than by external imitation that these words of the second type
become expressive.
Finally, the two moments may be combined, as in such a word as
"roaring," which is directly imitative of a sound, and by the
muscular activity it calls into play suggests the extended
energy of the action itself.
The stage in which the word becomes a mere colorless, algebraic
sign of object or process never occurs, practically, for in any
case it has accumulated in its history and vicissitudes a fringe
of suggestiveness, as a ship accumulates barnacles. "Words carry
with them all the meanings they have worn," says Walter Raleigh
in his "Essay on Style." "A slight technical implication, a
faint tinge of archaism in the common turn of speech that you
employ, and in a moment you have shaken off the mob that scours
the rutted highway, and are addressing a select audience of
ticket-holders with closed doors." Manifold may be the
implications and suggestions of even a single letter. Thus a
charming anonymous essay on the word "Grey." "Gray is a quiet
color for daylight things, but there is a touch of difference,
of romance, even, about things that are grey. Gray is a color
for fur, and Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray
day, and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Now
grey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in
them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender and
yielding and true as blue ones; a coquette must have eyes of
grey."
Words do not have meanings, they ARE meanings through their
power of direct suggestion and induction. They may become
what they signify. Nor is this power confined to words alone;
on its possession by the phrase, sentence, or verse rests the
whole theory of style. The short, sharp staccato, the bellowing
turbulent, the swimming melodious circling sentence ARE truly
what they mean, in their form as in the objective sense of
their words. The sound-values of rhythm and pace have been in
other chapters fully dwelt upon; the expressive power of breaks
and variations is worth noting also. Of the irresistible
significance of rhythm, even against content, we have an
example amusingly commented on by Mr. G.K. Chesterton in his
"Twelve Types." "He (Byron) may arraign existence on the most
deadly charges, he may condemn it with the most desolating
verdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk in a
spring morning when all the limbs are swinging and all the
blood alive in the body, the lips may be caught repeating:
'Oh, there's not a joy the world can give like that it takes
away,
When the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull
decay.'
That automatic recitation is the answer to the whole pessimism
of Byron."