APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE

Shannon News, 31 July 1928, Page 4

APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE

W.E.A. LECTURE,

This week's subject at the W.E.A. lecture in English Literature was “Appreciation, ’’ which the tutor, Mrs A W. Hutchings, M.A. treated in a manner that was' at once interesting and illuminating. A feature of these lectures is- their enrichment by interesting illustrations from literature read by the lecturer. There was again a good attendance and an interesting discussion ! by the class. Mr R. McAllister pre- •' * sided. Literature is the brain of humanity, the .record of sensations and experiences, its actions and its history. Criticism of it is perilously like the eriti- : cism of humanity. The word ‘‘appreciation” I have chosen purposely rather than “judgment," much rather -than “criticism.” To distinguish the ’ good from the bad, to pass-judgment, T' requires exact training—in 'matters of ; 1 technical importance, in the art of writing —a subject for long and careful study, if we are to judge aright. The empiri&al theory is not a®safe one; we cannot ■ pronounce infallibly 1 that this book is good, that is bad. As with. . 1 , men, so with the record of their history.

In men whom men pronounce as ill, 1 find so much of goodness still; In men whom men pronounce divine, 1 find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line Between the two.

Browning, says

New who shall arbitrate; Ten who in ears and eyes Shun what I follow, slight what 1

. receive, Teir who in ears ande yes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom Shall my soul believe?

Kipling in .“The Neolithic Age" says: “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one' of them is right. ’’

Dame Ethel Smyth, in her essay on “Catchwords," says: “Cast away all memory of catchwords picked up like poisonous germs in the vicinity of the intelligentsia, and give any music or art you may be listening to free access to your* soul." Then having warned her readers against carping and criticising as a sign of intellectual distinction, she adds: “In letting Mephistopheles describe himself as ‘the spirit that denies/ Goethe has held up that particular stamp of mind to everlasting execration: and well he may, for to understand, to appreciate, if possible to love, is far rarer, far more difficult, than to pick holes and reject."

What we think to-day of books we may not think to-morrow. Ruskin’s description of the good book of the hour and the good book of all time, the bad book of the hour and the bad book of all time, is interesting reading. It is to be found in “Sesame and Lilies," and we may note that he omits any comment on the bad book.

It is a matter for serious thought to review the fleeting popularity of authors. Books that have had the approval of the “intelligentsia,” the best sellers, are inq few years, months even, scarcely, read at all. The shelves of Muaie's Library could tell a sad tale of neglected favourites.. Nor can we rely on the judgment'of professional reviewers. There are many factors which may sway their judgment. It is a consolation to realise that, as in a picture or a musical composition, there is an aspect which appeals to every one of ordinary intelligence. So there are books that strike a chord, of the larger humanity; and the public in general do claim and exercise'the right of deciding on the worth of a work of art. perhaps with a truer judgment than that of the elect. . “Agreement with the general sense of mankind*’ may be the ultimate test,

New York reviewers are at present ' concerned with “Snob sales.” .When a book with more beauty, more thought, or more delicacy than is com- . . mon is bought by the tens or hundreds .of thousands. “Death Comes for the , . df a “snob sals.” “The first five thou sand readers/’ they say, “read The book- with enthusiasm, and talk of it wildly, but the fifty thousand that follow buy and read all, or part, because they wish to be thought to like it. They purchase, not a book, but a reputation ; for cultivated interest.’’ Many books that are subtle or weighty have lately crashed the gates of popularity—psychologies, advanced novels, and reprints of old-time successful authors. Durant’s “Story of Philosophy,’’ and Wilder’s “The Bridge jof San Luis Bey” have passed into their hundreds of thousands. “Death Comes For The. ' Archbishop,’’ Maurio’s “Disraeli,” 1 the story of Lawrence in Arabia, have . been excellently received by the great --- mass of readers. Anthony Trollope is being read again. Interest has revived in Jane Austen. We may live in a society that plays a day-long game of follow the leader, but there is something pleasantly significant in this side-stepping from morbid exhibitionism or snappy stories. “The Bridge of-San Luis Bey” is a ;", highly civilized book, charged with cul'r>' ture, written in an English whose exk’ cellence has been guaranteed by authority, with characters which have seemed to the judicious worthy of respectful consideration, with a humour and pathos neither cheap nor senti- . mental.-. This is one passage which " may be of interest in our subject. It } ; - refers to Dona' Maria’s letters: “Like r her son-in-law they misunderstood her; : the Condo delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed i.- ':- the style he' had extracted all their '■ ' richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole-purport of liter--4: ature, which.is the notation of the heart. Style is buf the faintly -■coa‘V : '

temptible vessel iu 'which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world."

It is by the study of the masters that taste is formed in literature and art. They are the 'touchstone, the tuning fork. In the book Wilder has followed the plan of great masters, a plan we find in Browning’s “The Ring and the Book," Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales," Langland’s “Piers Plowman," Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn’’ and William Morris’s “Earthly Paradise." “This plan of writing heterogeneous masses of fiction or legends into one artistic circle," known in the east long before it wa s known in Europe, is one that never loses its appeal.

Some members have spoken of Browning’s great drama “The Ring and the Book." The story is a true one of Italian life in the 17th century. Browning found in an old Italian: bookshop, a little book which was the history of a celebrated trial, together with a good deal of old manuscript in connection with the case. How to treat the story, how to begin, how to make artistic order out of it puzzled him for a year. Then the model of tjie old. writers suggested the form to him. He tells us he made his book as the Italian goldsmiths their beautiful carved rings—by the use of an alloy. The facts of history and of law represent the gold and he mixes them with an alloy of imagination, emotion, sympathy, to make the perfectly rounded drama,’ the complete circle in the ring.

The characters in “The Bridge of San Luis Rey" show a remarkable parallel with the characters in “The Ring and the Book."

The main points to consider iu appreciation are matter, manner, and quality of giving pleasure. In matter, the quality of the thought is our study; and truth is the test which reveals its excellence —truth or rather verisimilitude. The facts may not have happened in life, but they must, have the appearance of reality. And because the ordinary happenings of life are not always dramatic, it. takes the master hand of a genius to make them interesting reading or interesting for stage production (Jane Austen, Barrie, Lamb and Burns could do it). Realism is apt to lead writers to a treatment of subjects repugnant to the moral sense. This is sometimes defended on the ground of its superior truth—an argument that permits of a definite answer. This is not the kind of truth, we desire in a novel, a poem, ft play. It is the truth of science. Its place is in a treatise on economics, in • reports of a medical journal, or criminal cases. Hogarth’s picture series, “ The Rake's Progress" is not one to-decorate our living rooms. Pew people enjoy a/ visit to the Wiertz Art Gallery’ in Brussels. “We reject his pictures and such books because they are ugly."

There is another type of literature that fails in truth. It presents characters in real life able to act ideally or real persons surrounded with ideal life. It is unwholesome, has neither truth of logic nor truth of art.

In manner the quality of presenting the thought is of primary importance. Symmetry is the test which reveals excellence of manner; the style must suit the subject. A Government weather report requires : plain talking. Length of composition is important. Sir John Tenniel, writing to Lewis Carroll, advised the omission of one chapter in “Alice in Wonderland”— “The Wasp Chapter.” It was done.

Form should suit the subject. Contrast Cowper’s poem “On My Mother’s Picture,” .with Eliza Cook’s “The Old Arm Chair,” the jingle of which makes the pathos absurd. Prose or verse, narrative, dialogue, or union of dialogue or narrative will be chosen as the subject demands. Teh poet elioses the sonnet for a single thought, the lyric for a brief meditation, the ode, or the epic, blank verse or rhyme.

“The art of the pen is to rouse the inward vision,” says Meredith, “because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted description.” The Shakesperean pictures are in a line or two at most.

The symmetry of the work as a whole is important—the construction of a plot. There is symmetry in the description of an object, a person, an action or a scene.

The quality of giving pleasure lies in the appeal to our imagination, and its test is beauty. Beauty of thought in subject matter is of essential importance in English literature. Our literature is a reflection of our national life—the ideal of good, and the final victory of good in all conflicts in life is in the blood and soul of the people.

And yet we trust that somehow Good will be the final goal of ill

We want law and order in our State, and law and order in a modified form in our reading. Writers in many periods have tried to attract, attention by Frankenstein monsters, the novel of horrors, but the work that lasts is the work that expresses the national ideal.

The beautiful in thought in Shakespeare is the artistic worth of humanity, what he loves is power—intensity —ir. human character, power of intellect or moral power,' power of passion or of grace, the intensity of the exquisite as in Ariel, the power of love as in Imogen, power of wit as in Benedick, or intensity of stupidity as in Sir Andrew Agueeheek, The extremely brutal, the mere bestial, he disregards almost entirely, except in Caliban. The beatity of Nature he uses insofar as it adorns his characters an-d heightens his situations; he is not pre-occupied with it to the same extent as our moderns (Wordsworth, Tennyson and present-day writers). Wordsworth tells us:

For I have learned to look on Nature, Not as in the hour of thoughtless

youth, But hearing often times The still sad music of humanity

The triumphal march of humanity stirs men’s minds more, the psychological drama, the endless struggle of good and evil, life and death.

By beauty of diction the artist casts a glamour over his subject. A city by day is disfigured by ugly buildings, ugly spots, but at night at a distance the gleams of light invest it with a magic robe of beauty. So art can find and reveal an aspect of beauty in all that exists. -

All things worn out and unlovely, All things misshapen and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, The creak of a lumbering cart, Are wronging vour image that bios goms, A rose in the deeps* of my heart.

I. hunger to bind them anew With the earth and the sky and the

water. Remade like a casket of gold For my dreams of your image that.

blossoms, A rose in the deeps of my heart

This, says Yeats, is the poet’s ideal

Diction and thought must be in harmony in all great literature. The language that is “inevitable" is the great appeal in expression.

Simplicity is the first taw of beauty, a style that is at- one with the idea it expresses. Simple diction uses short familiar words, as in the Authorised Version of the Bible, Tennyson and Wordsworth; ornate, a large percentage of more learned words of Latin origin (Milton, Johnson); middle diction, a halfway course between these two (Fronde).

Propriety of diction, the right word in the right, place, is important; then purity of diction, which insists on the use of words that are standard English, that have the approval of the best writers, of the day. It excludes from ordinary composition, technical terms, dialect, provincialisms, colloquialisms, slang, vulgarisms, and newly coined words and foreign words and phrases. Style should be characterised by brevity* the idea expressed in as few words as compatible with clearness or lucidity. Brevity is the soul of witsavs Polouius. ’

The. quality or beauty, that counts for most in poetry and poetic prose is melody. Poetry is music. Melody is achieved by the careful selection of words mainly composed of euphonious vowels and consonants, the avoidance of words that carry harsh sounds, bot-ii singly and in combination, by the judicious use of alliteration in poetry and by rhythmic sequences.

The salt of life is wit—Attic salt, we say in literature. Wit, rumour and fun are terms that are often carelessly treated as interchangeable; in reality they differ in meaning. Wit is a matter of intellect; the lowest form is the pun, the best the epigram. Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have a mind to. arouses feelings of surprise and admiration, and dazzles by unexpected comparisons. Humour is based on insight and sympathy, a mingling of human laughter and tears.

Fun is the creation of animal spirits and-health, depends on the vigour and fros; ..s of mind and body.