Part 15 A Manual of the Art of Fiction

Part 15

=Recapitulation.=--These, then, are the three merits to be striven for in equal measure by aspirants to the art of fiction: momentous material, masterly method, and important personality. To discover certain truths of human life that are eminently worth the telling, to embody them in imagined facts with a mastery both of structure and of style, and, behind and beyond the work itself, to be all the time a person worthy of being listened to: this is, for the fiction-writer, the ultimate ideal. Seldom, very seldom, have these three contrarious conditions revealed themselves in a single author; seldom, therefore, have works of fiction been created that are absolutely great. It would be difficult for the critic to select off-hand a single novel which may be accepted in all ways as a standard of the highest excellence.

But if the term _fiction_ be regarded in its broadest significance, it may be considered to include the one greatest work of art ever fashioned by the mind of man. The "Divine Comedy" is supreme in subject-matter. The facts of its cosmogony have been disproved by modern science, the religion of which it is the monument has fallen into disbelief, the nation and the epoch that it summarizes have been trampled under the progress of the centuries; but in central and inherent truth, in its exposition of the struggle of the beleaguered human soul to win its way to light and life, it remains perennial and new. It is supreme in art. With unfaltering and undejected effort the master-builder upreared in symmetry its century of cantos; with faultless eloquence he translated into song all moods the human heart has ever known. And it is supreme in personality; because in every line of it we feel ourselves in contact with the vastest individual mind that ever yet inhabited the body of a man. We know (to quote the Poet's most appreciative translator)--

"from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What pa.s.sionate outcry of a soul in pain, Uprose this poem of the earth and air, This medieval miracle of song."

His labor kept him lean for twenty years; and many a time he learned how salt his food who fares upon another's bread,--how steep his path who treadeth up and down another's stairs. But Dante saw and conquered,--realizing what he had to do, knowing how to do it, being worthy of his work. Therefore, singly among authors, he deserves the epithet his countrymen apply to him,--divine.

"The Divine Comedy" is the supreme epic of the world. The supreme novel remains to be written. It is doubtful if human literary art may attain completeness more than once. But as our authors labor to embody truths of human life in arranged imagined facts, they should constantly be guided and inspired by the allurement of the ultimate ideal. The n.o.blest work is evermore accomplished by followers of the gleam. Let us, in parting company, paraphrase the sense of a remark made centuries ago by Sir Philip Sidney,--that model of a scholar and a gentleman:--It is well to shoot our arrows at the moon; for though they may miss their mark, they will yet fly higher than if we had flung them into a bush.

[9] First published in the _Contemporary Review_ for April, 1885; and now included in Volume XXII of the "Thistle Edition": Charles Scribner's Sons.

[10] "Mrs. Knollys" is now easily accessible in "The Short Story: Specimens Ill.u.s.trating Its Development." Edited by Brander Matthews. American Book Company, 1908.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What is meant by style in literature?

2. Make three patterns of words,--the first notable for sheer selection, the second notable for rhythm, and the third notable for literation.

3. Write a theme, containing approximately three hundred words, that shall be judged for its quality of style.