LITMIR.BIZ

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asserting that the quality which chiefly distinguished the immortal works from the transient was sincerity, single-heartedness, reality of intention and love of the work for the work's sake. That was only a partial view of the truth. It is right in a measure, since that sincerity, that absence of make-believe, in the literary creation is a prime necessity; but it is not sufficient. It is, indeed, a prime necessity, because it means that the superlative writer must write at first hand of things genuinely conceived and realized by his very self. It is, indeed, a prime necessity, because you cannot conjure up vividly and hold in steady view the communicable picture of your feeling or your thought, unless you feel it or think it with all your own being. But the sincerity is only a pre-supposed condition. The supreme literary quality is the power to realize the picture and so body forth the thing thought or felt. The great dramatic genius, for example, first realizes a character and his thoughts and feelings, and then, identifying himself with that character, gives them expression. When Homer imagines Odysseus descending to the nether world and meeting there the shades of heroes whom he had known at Troy, his Odysseus accosts this one or that and receives answer as befits the person. But to Ajax, son of Telamon, Odysseus had indirectly done a wrong, and caused his suicide, and, when the ghost of Ajax appears, Odysseus speaks to it gentle and soothing words of explanation and self-defence. And what does that proud injured Ajax reply? Well, on Homer's brain the picture is very vivid. His brain becomes practically the brain of the very Ajax, and the continuation shows it: "So I spake, but he answered me not a word, and passed on to Erebus after the other spirits of the departed dead." That silence of Ajax is truer than the most scathing of speeches.

      So is it with Shakespeare. He sees his characters and realizes their sensations so vividly that his brain and feelings become the brain and feelings of his creations; and thus only does his Lear say with such perfect naturalness, "Pray you, undo this button." Hence, too, all the distinctness of character in his lifelike men and women, be it Hamlet or Falstaff, Cordelia or Lady Macbeth.

      "Imagination," "the shaping gift of imagination," is this power of first presenting a thing to your own brain with luminousness. For once etymology lends real aid. Imaginatio is "the making of pictures." It is inseparable from the power of perfect expression.

      Why did the people of Verona whisper of Dante, "Yonder is the man who has been in Hell?" Simply because of this power. Dante saw the place of torment in his imagination, not as any of us might see it, vaguely terrible, but clear in every dread and horrid detail. And, having so seen it, he lends to that seeing the gift of expression, and with a few simple verbs and nouns and plain forceful similes he makes his readers see what he had seen. So did it come about that he was regarded as the man who had actually "been in Hell." How far does Milton stand below him in this imaginative vision! Milton, too, describes an Inferno, but it lacks the convincingness of one who has seen it for himself. We could never say that Milton was the man who had "been in Hell."

      What is the special power of Carlyle in his dealings with history? It is the power of summoning up visions of the past, standing out clear to the last particular, as if lightning illuminated them against the background of the ages.

      I do not know whether any better definition of imagination can be given than that of Ruskin in his Modern Painters. "Imagination is the power of seeing anything we describe as if it were real, so that, looking at it as we describe, points may strike us which will give a vividness to the description that would not have occurred to vague memory, or been easily borrowed from the expressions of other writers." I do not say we can necessarily describe a thing because we so see it, but I do say that we cannot describe it unless we so see it. Therefore the supreme literary gift of communicating exactly what we think and feel, exactly as we think and feel it, involves no mere control of language, but, therewith, an imaginative brain to realize conceptions as vivid pictures. To combine these powers is to be a genius of great rarity.

      In one part of the Inferno of Dante it rains fire. To say that much would be enough for the ordinary writer. But Dante not only sees fire falling; he sees exactly how it falls, and the picture in his mind becomes the picture in ours, when he simply says that it fell silently, steadily "as fall broad flakes of snow when winds are still." Perfectly easy, is it not? Yes, for Dante. But for the ordinary writer it would have been no more than "A rain of fire." But what manner of rain, O thou ordinary and inadequate writer? We do not, indeed, want scorching rhetoric and verse piled on verse. We want the "inevitable" word, the simple and the home-coming, the Dantesque. Byron now and again exhibits the power. Mazeppa is bound naked on the wild horse, and—

      The skies spun like a mighty wheel,

       I saw the trees like drunkards reel,

       And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes,

       Which saw no further. …

      With the consummate literary artists the picture, whether it be of a real scene, an imagined scene, or a feeling, is given in few but effective strokes. And it is so given simply because they see it all so distinctly. As Longinus says of Sappho's famous ode of passion, the supreme writer seizes upon the essential and salient features, combines them, and trusts to your and my imagination to supply the rest. When a writer welters in words and lines, when he elaborates touch upon touch, you may be sure that he is trying to fill the picture into his imagination, instead of being possessed by an imagination which determine the picture.

      In the Ancient Mariner Coleridge describes the passing of the spectral ship:—

       The western wave was all aflame,

       The day was well-nigh done!

       Almost upon the western wave

       Rested the broad bright Sun,

       When that strange shape drove suddenly

       Betwixt us and the Sun.

       And straight the Sun was fleck'd with bars,

       (Heaven's Mother send us grace!)

       As if through a dungeon-grate he peer'd

       With broad and burning face.

       Are those her ribs through which the Sun

       Did peer, as through a grate?

       And is that Woman all her crew?

       Is that a Death? and are there two?

       Is Death that Woman's mate?

      and then—

      The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out;

       At one stride comes the dark;

       With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,

       Off shot the spectre-bark.

      For my own part those words make me see it all fully, vividly. I do not merely behold the scene: I feel the peculiar awe of the narrator. Can you doubt that Coleridge saw this in his brain exactly as if it were real?

      When Keats in his mind's eye saw Madeline praying under that Gothic window which was so "innumerable of stains and splendid dyes" he beheld the scene as if he were positively on the spot to paint it. And how does he paint it? What an opportunity for the display of pictorial technique in words! But Keats is not thinking of that. One does not really perceive a myriad little details at such a time. You never do actually see all the things which you would describe if you sat down to think details out one by one. If you had really fixed your eyes on the kneeling Madeline, as Porphyro did on that eve of St. Agnes, you could not also be taking an inventory of the particulars in the situation. The inferior writer forgets this, because he is writing from his wits, and not, as Keats wrote, from the spontaneous picture of imagination. What Keats sees is this:—

      Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

       And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,

       As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;

       Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest,

       And on her silver cross fair amethyst,

       And on her hair a glory, like a saint.

      That is all, and it is enough. A kneeling figure, the wintry moon, and some few of the

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