Part 10 (1/2)

II

Now the word is nothing in itself; it is not sound priible quantity in human intercourse--a counter in which the coins are ideas and ee What we really experience in the sound of a sentence, in the sight of a printed page, is a coes, ideas, e in the strea, indeed, in certain ways from daily experience, but yet primarily of the web of life itself The words in their nuances, march, tempo, melody add certain elements to this flood--hasten, retard, undulate, or calm it; but it is the THOUGHT, the understood experience, that is the stuff of literature

Words are first of all h We can hardly even speak of theof a word, but rather of what it is, directly, in the mental state that is called up by it Every definition of a word is but a feeble and distant approxi to that word It is not the sound sensation nor the visual ie evoked by the hich counts, but the whole of the mental experience, to which the word is but an occasion and a cue Therefore, since literature is the art of words, it is the streaht itself that we must consider as the material of literature

In short, literature is the dialect of life--as Stevenson said; it is by literature that the business of life is carried on Sons, too, are the dialect of life We understand by e see, and we live by e understand The curve of a line, the crescendo of a note, serve also for wordlessand ed first as evocation of life, and only afterward as sight and hearing? This conceded, we are thrown back on that view of art as ”the fixed quantity of iht supple, of sound in music, of rhythmical words in poetry,” frouments of this book to free us

The holders of this vieever, ignore the history and significance of language Our sight and hearing are given to us prior to our understanding or use of them In a e subh passive states, through seasons of indifference; moreover e see to understand, we do not SEE, and e hear to understand we do not hear Only shreds of sensation, caught up in our flight fros which concern us In proportion as action is prompt and effective, does the cue as such tend to disappear, until, in all , the sight or sound which serves as cue drops alether out of consciousness

So far as it is vehicle of inforht or sound as such--interest has devoured it But language caht and sound

It was created by ourselves, to e mental experience, and it coency--a literally crying need In short, it is CONStitUTED by ht and sound have a relatively independent existence, and ely independent of s Not so the art of words, which can be but the art of ain, were the evocation of life the means and inative thought was low, the range of human experience narroould take a low place in the scale What, then, of e co art of literature But this is patently not the fact There is no hierarchy of the arts We may not rank St Paul's Cathedral below ”Paradise Lost” Yet is the material of all experience is the material of all art, they must not only be compared, but ”Paradise Lost” reater No--we may not admit that all the arts alike deal with the material of expression The excellence of music and architecture, whatever it may be, cannot depend on this h the use of its material that the end of beauty is reached by every art

A picture has lines and masses and colors, ith to play with the faculty of vision, to weave a spell for the whole h the eye and all that waits upon it, into a hts, all passions, all delights”--the treasury of life--to play with, to weave a spell for the whole man

Beauty in literature is the power to enchant hih the mind and heart, across the dialect of life, into a moment of perfection

III

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 ant forms, is but another name for this desired lucidity of theof phrases, has the sa aim at a similar unity or identity of the mind in all the processes by which the word is associated to its iht, and has its essential beauty, when it beconifies, as with the names of simple sensations”<1> He quotes therewith De Maupassant on Flaubert: ”A 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, aht 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 et their excellence as thought; yet, as Flaubert says, the idea only exists by virtue of the form

The for with it the fringe of suggestion which crystallizes the floating possibility in the streae sho 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 irimaces of hness, sth, 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 ono the sounds of nature A second order of ih the associations of sensations The different sensations, auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, anic have common qualities, which they share with other more co, 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 ive 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, shtness, (facile, suave, roulade);--”lucent syrops, tinct with cinnaan, 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 ,” which is directly imitative of a sound, and by the ests the extended energy of the action itself

The stage in which the word becon of object or process never occurs, practically, for in any case it has accuestiveness, as a shi+p accus they have worn,” says Walter Raleigh in his ”Essay on Style” ”A slight technical ie of archaism in the common turn of speech that you employ, and in a hway, and are addressing a select audience of ticket-holders with closed doors” Manifold le letter Thus a char anonymous essay on the word ”Grey” ”Gray is a quiet color for daylight things, but there is a touch of difference, of rorey Gray is a color for fur, and Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a gray day, and a gentleworey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in them andand true as blue ones; a coquette s, they ARE estion and induction They nify 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 swi 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 rhythly commented on by Mr GK Chesterton in his ”Twelve Types” ”He (Byron) es, heverdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on so and all the blood alive in the body, the lips :

'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”

IV

Such, then, are soht, and enius will have ways, to which these briefly outlined ones will seem crude and obvious, but they will be none the less of the same nature Shall we then conclude that the beauty of literature is here? that, in the words of Pater, from the essay I have quoted, ”In that perfect justice (of the unique word)ole epithets to the rhythm of a whole book, lay the specific, indispensable, very intellectual beauty of literature, the possibility of which constitutes it a fine art”

In its last analysis, such a conception of literature amounts to the unimpeded intercourse of e which dispenses with gesture, facial expression, tone of voice; which is, in its halts, accelerations and retardations, emphases and concessions, the apotheosis of conversation But this clearness,--in the subli the ornate and the subtle,--this luminous lucidity,-- is it not quite indeterminate? Clearness is said of a h?