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relation between speech-culture and literature may not
be apparent at first glance. Not only does it exist,
however, but it is fundamental and therefore of prime
importance.
Consider for a moment the position
of literature among the fine arts, and some of the qualities
inherent in literature which make it a fine art.
But
what do we mean by the fine arts? In what do they consist?
What characteristics have they in common by which we
may distinguish them? We may say theoretically that
art is nothing more nor less than the result of man’s
attempt to give expression to [Page 67] his
thoughts, his thoughts, his aspirations, his hopes and
fears, in forms of beauty. We may say, briefly, that
art is the manifestation of the human spirit. But everything
we do it to some extent expressive. Our acts, our looks,
our gestures, the tones of our voice, may all be said
to be expressive in that they convey to others some
impression about ourselves. An advertising sign on the
fence is a form of expression, in that it serves to
convey information from the proprietor to the public.
Indeed, nothing that man does can be wholly without
expression. How, therefore, can we distinguish these
forms of expression which are worthy to be termed the
fine arts?
If
I say to you that a plus b equals
c, or that 2 plus 2 equals 4, I am giving expression
to a statement which appeals at once to your reason.
It requires only your mind to appreciate the information.
You don’t care anything about it. But if I say,
“the sailor and the hunter have come home,”
that piece of information begins to interest you. I
begin [Page 68] to touch upon your
emotions. You fancy there is to be more to the story;
you like the sailor better than the hunter; or perhaps
you wish that the hunter had returned alone; at all
events, your sympathy is awake, and awaiting the development
of the story. It is no longer a pure and simple statement
of fact, such as we had at first in 2 plus 2 equals
4. Now, if I go further and quote you Robert Louis Stevenson’s
line:
“Home
is the sailor, home from the sea,
And
the hunter come from the hill,”
What
is the result? We not only have our mind informed as
before; we not only have our emotions enlisted as before;
we have our sense appealed to as well. The statement
already had mental and spiritual qualities, and now
there has been added to these a physical quality, the
quality of beauty. These three qualities of truth, spirituality,
and beauty are the essential characteristics of all
the fine arts. And among all the achievements [Page
69] and activities of mankind, no form of expression
can be classed as a fine art unless each of these qualities
is present. And, also, any industry may at any moment
rise to the height of a fine art if the workman is given
sufficient freedom and has sufficient talent or genius.
In that case he will impress upon the work something
of his own personality; he will make it expressive of
himself; he will put into his work reason and love and
beauty. He will make it appeal to our mind, our spirit
and our æsthetic sense.
You
see, then, that these three distinguished characteristics
of art are representative of the threefold nature of
the artist. And these three qualities, inherent in every
work of art, implanted there by its human creator, a
reflected image of himself, will in turn appeal to the
living trinity within ourselves. All art has charm;
it has what Rossetti called fundamental brain work;
it has emotion. To say the same thing in another way,
art must make us satisfied and glad and content; it
must [Page 70] give us something to
think about, something to love, and something to recall
with a thrill of pleasure.
It
is the province of art, of every art and every piece
of art, to influence us in these three ways. And any
artist whose work is lacking in any one of those directions
is in so far a limited and imperfect creator.
Art,
then, is the result of man’s attempt to express
himself adequately, with intelligence, with power and
with charm. But when we say that art is the embodiment
of expression, that does not mean that the expression
is given necessarily a permanent form. Some
of the arts, such as architecture, painting, and sculpture,
are dependent on materials for their embodiment. But
their greater or less permanence has nothing to do with
their essential qualities. It would not detract in the
least from the excellence of a painting if it were destroyed
the minute it was finished. Other arts, again, like
music and dancing and acting, are merely instantaneous,
[Page 71] and have no permanence whatever;
they perish more quickly than the impulse which produced
them, except in so far as they can be preserved in the
memory and reproduced by imitation.
Now,
in order to arrest the perishable beauty of these instantaneous
arts, certain mechanical inventions have been devised
from time to time — the invention of writing,
of printing, of photography, for example. And by their
useful means creations of art, which must otherwise
be lost to the world, may be preserved and transmitted
and multiplied for the enjoyment of thousands. And the
point I wish to emphasize is, that music and literature
are in precisely the same case in this respect. Literature,
like music, is dependent on writing only as a means
for its preservation. All its essential qualities, like
those of music, are perceived only when it is reproduced
as modified sound. And in Stevenson’s lines, which
we quoted a moment ago, you remember that we found he
had [Page 72] taken a simple statement
of fact, which contained truth and interest, and had
raised it to the dignity of poetry, by adding a single
quality — the quality of beauty. His genius and
knowledge of English gave him the power of arranging
a few words so that they should not only interest us
as they had done before, but should enthral us with
a new and added charm. That charm was the charm of sound.
Or
to take another example, take this sentence, “So,
among the mountains by the winter sea, the sound of
battle rolled all day long.” There is a statement
of fact, a bit of expression, which conveys information
and which has interest. But now listen to the same words
when Tennyson had added beauty to their thought and
emotion:
“So
all day long the sound of battle rolled
Among
the mountains by the winter sea.”
This
new beauty is purely a beauty of sound. Tennyson’s
taste as an artist led him to perceive, when these sixteen
words were [Page 73] so arranged as
to produce their greatest charm, their maximum effect
upon us.
I
must conclude, therefore, that poetry, or literature,
is an oral art. And the aspect of it, which appeals
to an æsthetic sense, does so, and can only do
so, through the harmonious arrangement of melodious
words.
If
I repeat, then, that it is the inherent characteristic
of art to be beautiful and to appeal to our sense of
beauty, and, furthermore, that the only way literature
has of fulfilling this condition and becoming a fine
art is by the beauty of the spoken word, I think we
may very safely conclude that any composition which
fails in this test fails of being literature.
And
further, this relation between literature and speech
is not only a fundamental one, but its maintenance must
have an important effect. Literature is, as it were,
only a glorified form of speech, produced with greater
care and skill and forethought. The literature of a
nation is the quintessence of the [Page 74]
speech of the nation. Think for a moment what
sometimes happens when any community becomes detached
from the current of civilization; when it becomes isolated
and narrow and self-centred. It often happens that these
impoverished communities deteriorate rapidly, and that
they show mental weakness, moral depravity, physical
debasement. Had their speech become as corrupt and inefficient
as themselves, you would not have expected literature
from such a people.
On
the other hand, think of the case of those nations which
have reached a high grade of civilization in the world’s
history. They have always been nations which have bequeathed
to us valuable and significant treasures of literature
and the plastic arts. Indeed, we have no means of measuring
the greatness of a people except by the fine arts it
encourages and produces. For the fine arts, as we said,
are only the embodiment of man’s aspirations and
ideals. The surpassing literature of Greece and Rome
is a true exponent of the [Page 75] degree
of civilization at which they had arrived. And it is,
too, simply a record of their speech. It were surely
impossible that Greek poetry and Greek prose should
exhibit such qualities of perfection as they do, unless
the Greek tongue had first attained those same perfect
characteristics, those traits of power and beauty and
adequateness of expression.
If
we do not admit this and still profess to think there
is no relation between speech and literature, we are
driven by the force of logic to admit that Shakespeare’s
plays might quite well have been written by some wise
old Chinese philosopher, who was a deaf mute and spent
his whole life in a hermit’s cell.
If
I could acquire a knowledge and use of language such
as Stevenson possessed, such as two or three people
of my acquaintance possess; if I could know the English
tongue with all its shades of meaning and subtle association;
if I could use it with readiness, with exactness, with
copiousness, with feeling; and if, in addition to this,
I could acquire a [Page 76] beautiful
and well-controlled voice, such as one occasionally
hears, so that after I knew my words I could make use
of them, I should in that case not only be a better
educated man, but I should have greater power. I should
have given myself the rudiments of a literary education
(such as is nowhere provided in our schools or colleges),
and I should have fitted myself as a citizen to be one
of that intelligently critical public without which
the fine arts cannot flourish, cannot, indeed, exist.
Moreover, I could fit myself to be an intelligent and
sympathetic, though obscure, appreciator of the art
of literature in no other way than by these two means.
I
do not know how it may be with you, but I cannot recall
more than half a dozen people among those I have ever
known who possessed this happy degree and kind of culture.
If, however, instead of being so rare, speech culture
were made prevalent; if such knowledge and power of
expression could be made almost universal, consider
what a public [Page 77] we should have!
And think how impossible a great mass of our contemporary
literature, with its barbarous offences against good
taste, its ruthless disregard of beauty, its atrocities
against English speech — think how impossible
such work would be. Do you think that a wide-spread
culture of our own language, a national instinct for
exact, flexible, and pleasing speech, would have no
influence upon our literature? I find it difficult to
imagine a perfected standard of diction and literary
mediocrity existing in the same nation at the same time.
As
bearing directly on the question, allow me to quote
a fragmentary poem by Richard Hovey, entitled:
“THE
GIFT OF ART
“I
dreamed that a child was born; and at his birth
The
Angel of the Word stood by the hearth
And
spake to her that bore him: ‘Look without!
Behold
the beauty of the Day, the shout
Of
colour to glad colour, rocks and trees
And
sun and sea and wind and sky! All these [Page
78]
Are
God’s expression, art-work of His hand,
Which
men must love ere they may understand,
By
which alone He speaks till they have grace
To
hear His voice and look upon His face.
For
first and last of all things in the heart
Of
God as man the glory is of art.
What
gift could God bestow or man beseech
Save
spirit unto spirit uttered speech?
Wisdom
were not, for God Himself could find
No
way to reach the unresponsive mind,
Sweet
Love were dead, and all the crowded skies
A
loneliness and not a Paradise.
Teach
the child language, mother. . . .’ ”
This,
then, is the very brief statement of the bearing of
speech culture upon literature, as it appears to me;
and our investigation closes here. In conclusion, however,
I should like to guard against the implication of an
overestimate of the value of the fine arts and their
importance in life. If one insists on the vital necessity
for education in expression, it is not merely to the
end that the fine arts may flourish. For though the
fine arts are lovely and desirable in themselves, they
indicate the [Page 79] existence of
something even more wonderful and desirable —
they indicate the presence of an instinct of for truth,
an instinct for goodness, and an instinct for beauty
in the people which produced them. They reveal, as I
think we said before, the high degree of civilization
which that people had been fortunate enough to reach.
If
we give ourselves to the culture of expression, we shall
undoubtedly have greater art as a result of that education.
But its best result would be the effect upon ourselves;
for in the process of that culture, in the calling forth
of the capacities which reveal themselves in art, we
shall be developing those powers which alone enlighten
and ennoble a nation. [Page 80]
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