The Arthur Machen Megapack: 25 Classic Works (155 page)

Tragedy, tragic. “Tragedy” in Soho.

Drama, dramatic. Le “drame” de la Rue Cochon:

“Dramatic” Elopement in Peckham.

Interest, interesting [of “Hamlet”]. An “interesting” number of “Snippets.”

Lyric. The “Lyric” Theatre.

Inebriated. In an “inebriated” condition.

That almost gives my secret away, doesn’t it? Of course you see the place that the words in the right-hand column take in the scheme. The “Romantic” Affair in the West End really concerned the life of a draper’s assistant, who robbed his master’s till, in order that he might make presents to Miss Claire Tilbury, one of the “Sisters Tilbury” now performing at the “Lucifer.” An unmentionable person cut his throat in some alley off Greek Street; hence the “Tragedy” in Soho. Two peculiarly squalid servants, who beat out their master’s brains, under singularly uninteresting circumstances, acted the “Drama” of the Rue Cochon, and it was a dissolute barmaid who eloped “dramatically” from Peckham in the dog-cart of her employer. The two varying uses of the word “lyric” need not be underlined for you, who know the Elizabethans and the Cavaliers; but perhaps I may say that he who tastes
calix meus inebrians
will not be in an “inebriated” condition. It would be possible to extend these parallel columns almost to infinity; but I think the list is long enough for our purpose, and “Trench on Words” is a well-known handbook. But you see my right-hand column word, parallel with “Emotion”? You see I have written “Feelings,” and I suggest that it will be convenient to speak of feelings when we mean the things of life, of society, of personal and private relationship, while we may reserve emotion for the influence produced in man by fine art. Thus it will be with emotion that we witness the fall of Œdipus, the madness of Lear, while we feel for our friends and ourselves in misfortune. That seems to make it plain enough, doesn’t it; you see now, clearly, what I mean by saying that the power of producing an emotional shock cannot be a test of fine literature. Art must appeal to emotion, and sometimes, no doubt, with a shock; but it must always be to the emotion of the left-hand column, never to the “feelings” on the right hand. So you must never tell me that a book is fine art because it made you, or somebody else, cry; your tears are, emphatically, not evidence in the court of Fine Literature.

I daresay it may have struck you that the tests we have considered hitherto have been, in the main, popular tests. No doubt many persons calling themselves critics have praised the art of a book because it has drawn tears from eyes, or because it has not suffered itself to be put down, or because it contains easily recognisable portraits of well-known people, but such critics are to be spelt with a very small initial letter, and, as I said, I don’t think we want to extend that list of parallels. There is another test that I had forgotten: I suppose there really are people who believe that a book is fine “because it will do good,” but I don’t think we’ll argue with them, though I once knew a liberally-educated man who said a certain book was fine because it tended “to raise one’s opinion of the clergy.” So we will reckon our “popular” tests as done with, and proceed to the more technical solvents that are proposed by professed men of letters.

Three of these more literary criteria occur to me at the moment, and I believe we shall understand them and the position which they represent better if we take them, at first, at all events, in a mass. I can conceive, then, that many persons whose opinion one would respect would state their position in literary criticism somewhat as follows:—“If a book (they would say) shows keenness of observation, insight into character, with fidelity to life as the result of these capacities; if its art (we should say, artifice) in the design and ‘laying out’ of the plot, in the contrivance of incident is confessedly admirable, and finally if it is written in a good style: then you have fine literature. Fine art, in short, is a clear mirror, and the artist’s skill consists in arranging and selecting such parts of life as he thinks best for his purpose of reflection.”

Well, now, as to the first point: fidelity to life, clearness of reflection, the selection being taken for granted, as no one out of an asylum would maintain that a book must mirror the whole of life, or even the millionth part of one particular man’s life. Come, let us apply the test in question to one or two of the acknowledged excellencies—to the “Odyssey” for instance, to the “Morte D’Arthur,” to “Don Quixote.” Is the story of Ulysses, in any accepted sense of the phrase “faithful” to life as we know it? Is it “faithful,” that is to say, with the fidelity of Jane Austen, of Thackeray, of George Eliot, of Fielding? Is there anything in our experience answering to the episodes of the Lotus-Eaters, Calypso’s Isle, the Cyclops’ Cavern, the descent of the Goddess? Is the “reflection” even a reflection of Homer’s own experience? Had he escaped from the cave under the belly of a ram? Had he been in the world of one-eyed giants? Were his friends in the habit of talking in hexameter verse? We may go on, of course, but is it worth while? It is surely hardly necessary to demonstrate the fact that the author of the “Morte D’Arthur” had never seen the Graal, that such a character as Don Quixote never existed in the natural order of things. We might have gone more sharply to work with this “fidelity” test: we might have said that poetry being, admittedly fine literature at its finest, and (admittedly also) being unfaithful to life as we know it both in matter and manner, that therefore the test breaks down at once. If fine literature must be faithful to life, then “Kubla Khan” is not fine literature; which, I think we may say, is highly absurd.

I daresay you think I have dealt rather crudely, in a somewhat materialistic spirit, with this criterion of “fidelity to life.” I admit the charge, but you must remember that I am dealing with very bad people, who understand nothing but materialism. And when these people tell you in so many words that it is the author’s business clearly and intelligently to present the life—the common, social life around him—then, believe me, the only thing to be done is to throw “Odyssey” and “Œdipus,” “Morte D’Arthur,” “Kubla Khan” and “Don Quixote” straight in their faces, and to demonstrate that these eternal books were not constructed on the proposed receipt. Of course if I were treating with the initiated, if I were commentating and not arguing, I should handle the great masterpieces in a much more reverent manner. I mean that for those who possess the secret it skills not to bring in the Cyclops (who for us is not a giant but a symbol); we have only to bow down before the great music of such a poem as the Odyssey, recognising that by the very reason of its transcendent beauty, by the very fact that it trespasses far beyond the world of our daily lives, beyond “selection” and “reflection,” it is also exalted above our understanding, that because its beauty is supreme, that therefore its beauty is largely beyond criticism. For ourselves we do not need to prove its transcendence of life by this or that extraordinary incident; it is the whole spirit and essence and sound and colour of the song that affect us; and we know that the Odyssey surpassed the bounds of its own age and its own land just as much as it surpasses those of our time and our country. You look as if you thought I were fighting with the vanquished, but let me tell you that great people have praised Homer because he depicted truthfully the men and manners of his time.

But as I was saying, all this would be too subtle for the enemy, for the people who maintain that fine literature is a faithful reflection of life, and think that Jane Austen touched the point of literary supremacy. With them, as I said, we must be rough; we must ask: Did Sophocles describe the ordinary life of Athens in his day? No: very well, then; since the works of Sophocles are fine literature, it follows that some fine literature does not reflect ordinary life, and therefore that fidelity to nature is not the differentia of the highest art.

I wonder whether I ought to caution you again against the ambiguity of language? We are dealing easily enough with such words as “life” and “nature,” and from what you know of my system you may perhaps have seen that I have been using these words as the people use them, as those use them who would say that “Vanity Fair” is a faithful presentation of life. I thought you would understand this, but I may just mention in passing that words like “nature,” “life” and “truth” or “fidelity” have also their esoteric values, that (by way of example) the truth of the scientist and the truth of the philosopher are two very different things. So it may turn out by and bye that in the occult sense, “fidelity to life”
is
the differentia of fine literature; that the aim of art is truth; that the artist continually mirrors nature in its eternal, essential forms; but for the present moment, it is understood, is it not, that these words have been used in their common, everyday popular significance? The “Dunciad” is a study of man, and Wordsworth’s “Ode on Intimations of Immortality” is a study of man, and the literary standpoint that we have been attacking is that of Pope and not that of Wordsworth.

If I remember, the next test we have to analyse is that of artifice, often and improperly called art. But I think we have already demolished this criterion. In distinguishing between art and artifice I pointed out that the latter merely signifies the adaptation of means to an end, and has no relation whatever with art properly so-called; it is simply the mental instrument with which man performs every task and every work of his daily life; it consists in the rejection of that which is unfit for the particular purpose in view, and in the acceptance and use of that which is fit for the desired end and likely to bring it about. It concerns not creation but execution, and it is I need hardly say as indispensable to the author as are his pen and ink, and (I might almost say) is as little concerned as these with the essence of his art. Of course in works of the very highest genius we may declare that, in a sense, art has become all in all, that the necessary artifice has been interpenetrated with art, so that we can hardly distinguish in our minds between the idea and the realisation of it. In such cases, artifice has been lifted up and exalted into the heaven of art, and it remains artifice no longer; but in the view that we are considering it is merely the adaptation of means to an end, a clever choice of incident, the knack of putting in and leaving out. The faculty may, as I said, be glorified and transfigured by genius, but every newspaper reporter must have more or less of it, and it is clear enough I think (perhaps I may mention Wilkie Collins once more) that in itself it cannot establish the claim of any book to be fine literature.

And lastly we have to deal with style; and here again I must have recourse to my distinctions. What
is
a good style? If you mean by a “good” style, one that delivers the author’s meaning in the clearest possible manner, if its purpose and effect are obviously utilitarian, if it be designed solely with the view of imparting knowledge—the knowledge of what the author intends—then I must point out that “style” in this sense is or should be amongst the accomplishments of every commercial clerk—indeed, it will be merely a synonym for plain speaking and plain writing—and in this sense it is evidently not one of the marks of art, since the object of art is not information, but a peculiar kind of æsthetic delight. But if on the other hand style is to mean such a use and choice of words and phrases and cadences that the ear and the soul through the ear receive an impression of subtle but most beautiful music, if the sense and sound and colour of the words affect us with an almost inexplicable delight, then I say that while Idea is the soul, style is the glorified body of the very highest literary art. Style, in short, is the last perfection of the very best in literature, it is the outward sign of the burning grace within. But we must keep the systematic consideration of style for some other night; it’s not a subject to be dealt with by the way, and I have only said so much because it was necessary to draw the line between language as a means of imparting facts (good style in the sense of our opponents) and language as an æsthetic instrument, which is a good, or rather a beautiful style in our sense. In the latter sense it is the form of fine literature, in the former sense it is the medium of all else that is expressed in words, from a bill of exchange upwards.

It seems to me, then, that we have considered one by one the alternative tests of fine literature which have been or may be proposed, and we have come to the conclusion that each and all are impossible. It is no longer permissible, I imagine, for you or for me to say: “This book is fine literature because it makes me cry, because it was so interesting that I couldn’t put it down, because it is so natural and faithful to life, because it is so well (plainly and neatly) written.” We have picked these reasons to pieces one by one, and the result is that we are driven back on my “word of the enigma”—Ecstasy; the infallible instrument, as I think, by which fine literature may be discerned from reading-matter, by which art may be known from artifice, and style from intelligent expression. At any rate we have got our hypothesis, and you remember what stress Coleridge laid on the necessity of forming some hypothesis before entering on any investigation.

I believe we began tonight with the evening paper, and the strange glimpse it gives us, through a pinky-green veil, through a cloud of laborious nonsense about odds and winners and tips and all such foolery, into that ancient eternal desire of man for the unknown. And that, you remember, was one of the synonyms that I offered you for ecstasy; and so in a sense I expect that we shall have the evening paper close beside us all the way of our long voyage in quest of the lost Atlantis.

II