The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-16

upon, whose passions and diseases waste and slay us-to compete with the flavor of wine, the beauty of the dawn, the s.orching of fire, the bitterness of death and separation-here is, indeed, . pro- jected escalade of heaven; here are, in- deed, labors Tor Hercules in . dress coat, armed with pen and dictionary to depict the passions, armed with tube of superior dake-white to paint the DOT trait of the unsufferable sun. No art is true in this sense; none can compete with life "-nos even history, built. in- deed, of indisputable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity and sting so that even when we read of the sack of a city or the fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly commend the authors talent, if our pulse be quickened. And mark for last differentia, that his quickening of the pulse is, in almost every case, purely agreeable; that these phantom reproductions of experience, even at their most acute, convey decided pleasure 1; while experience itself, in the cockpit of life, can torture and slay.
 What. then, is the object, what the method, of an art, and what the source of it's power? The whole secret is that no art does compete with life" Mans one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of rei lity. The arts, like arithmetic and geometry, turn away their eyes from the gross, coiored, and mobile nature at our feet, and regard instead a certain 6gmentary abstraction. Geometry tells us of q circle, a thing never seen in nature asked about q green circle CT an iron circle, it lays its hand upon its mouth So with the arts. Paint ing, ruefully comparing sunshine and fiake-white, gives up truth of color, as it had already given up relief and move ment ; and instead of wing with nature, arranges a scheme of harmonious tints. Literature, above all in its most typical mood, the mood of narrative, similarly Aces the direct challenge and pursues in- stead an independent and creative aim. So far as it initiates at all, it initiates not life, but speech; not the facts of human destiny, but the emphasis and the sup pressions w ith which the human actor tells of them. The real art that dealt with life directly was that of the first men who told their stories round the savage campfire. Our art is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in making stories true as in making them typical; not so much in capturing. the lineaments of each fact as in marshalling all of them toward a common end. For the welter of impressions. all forcible, but all discreet, which life presents, it substitutes certain artificial series of impressions, all indeed most feebly repre- sen,ed, but all aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of the same idea, all chim- ing together like consonant notes in music or like the graduated tints in a good picture. From all it's chapters, from all its pages, from all its sentences, the well-written novel echoes and re- echoes its one creative and controlling tn ought to this must every incident and character attribute; the style must have been pitched in unison with this {; and if there is anywhere a word that looks another way, the book would be stronger, clearer, and 1 had almost said) fuller without 1t. Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt, and poignant work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self contained, rational, flowing, and emascu- late. Life imposes by brute energy. like inarticulate thunder art catches the ear, among the far louder noises of experience, like an air artifcially made by discreet musician. A proposition of geometry does not compete with life {; and propo- sition of geometry is fair and luminous parallel for a work of ant. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact :; both inhere in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of leather, but by its immeasurable difference from life, which is designed and significant, and is both the method and the meaning of the work.
 The life of man is not the subject of novels, but the inexhaustible magazine from which subjects are to be selected {; the name of these is legion; and with each new subject-for here again must differ by the whole width of heaven from MT. James-the true artist will vary his method and change the point of attack. That which was in one case an excellence will become a defect in another; what was the making of one book will in the next be impertinent or dull First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself will take, for instance, three main classes, which are fairly distinct: first, the novel of ad- venture, which appeals to certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man; second, the novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual appre- citation of mans foibles and mingled and inconstant motives; and third, the dra- matic novel, which deals with the same stuff as the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral jndg- ment
 And first for the novel of adventure Mir. James refers, with singular generosity of praise, to little book about a quest of hidden treasure; but he lets fall, by the way, some rather startling words. In this book ne misses what he calls the "immense luxury" of being able to quar- v~1 ~vsth h,e ns.tk4~ TkA s<~ -.s