Arlo Bates

“ If he followed the actual order of nature, he would put down a heterogeneous mass of reflections, good and bad mingled together, with no system apparent in them except after a painful study which no reader would be at all likely to give to the confused and confusing pages. Art is not nature. It is not the reproduction of nature. It is the invention of man to produce at will and to enshrine in permanent form those impressions, those emotions which come to him in rare and fleeting instants when his own consciousness reaches for a quick moment to the secret of that life which informs nature. ”

“ In one shape or another, reasoning comes constantly into play. He is merely a “mush of concession” who never attempts to bring another to his way of thinking. Indeed, he who does not endeavor to make others think as he thinks may be suspected of never thinking at all. Life is a continuous conflict, the strife for the survival of the fittest. The instinct to make our opinions prevail is in the blood of the meekest. Civilization differs from barbarism chiefly in that the strife has become intellectual instead of physical; and intellectual conflict is but another name for Argument. ”

“ It requires great effort to realize that the sentence or the paragraph which we write will not mean to the reader all that we wish him to understand. The thought in our mind is so vivid, so poignant, so vital, that for us the words brim over with significance as a full honeycomb drips with honey. The emotion which we feel in writing seems to belong inevitably to what is written, and to be inseparable from it. It is of all things most difficult for the author, especially in an impassioned mood, to put himself in the place of the cool and unmoved public ”

“ I should as soon think of taking my political opinions from a paid stump-speaker as my literary judgments from the book-reviews in a newspaper. The intellectual furnishing of a mind which is guided by them is like the plenishings of a room supplied with second-hand furniture purchased on the installment plan and decorated with [Pg 298] cigarette-advertising lithographs.
In its high and proper sense, however, criticism is not alone a matter of literature, but of life as well. Culture is mainly a matter of self-criticism. We do not really know unless we are fully aware what we know. ”

“ Most young writers compose pages of dialogue which seems to them clever, which, when it is written, they read over with tender admiration, generally not without a little amazement that they have done so well and a conviction that this at least imparts distinction to their book,—when as a matter of fact the whole thing is simply an amateurish mistake. It is one of the many pitfalls which egotism and inexperience dig for the unwary writer, who forgets that success can be achieved only when the end of a work is the work and not the worker. ”

“ Each mail carries to the office of every magazine scores of manuscript which are nothing but the crude exercises produced in more or less unintelligent struggles with the art of composition. The soul of the editor faints within him, while on the other hand the misguided, sensitive, self-conscious writer is smitten to the heart when his or her exercise is sent back with a printed card declining it with a hollow mockery of thanks. ”

“ Classification is founded upon natural facts, but it is an enumeration rather than an elucidation. It arranges; it does not explain.
Understand that I do not undervalue classification. The student can no more advance without it than he could climb to a roof without a ladder. I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that in all work—and perhaps especially in scientific work—it is of the highest importance to keep steadily in mind that it is not the ladder but the ascent which is of consequence; that the aim is not the schedule but the secrets of wisdom to which it helps us. ”

“ Our idea of truth is the standard by which we estimate the thing that a work expresses, whether in idea or in impression. To estimate the mechanics of a book, its technical finish, and all that has to do with workmanship, it is necessary to study the masterpieces of literature. To judge of what may be done and what may therefore be fairly demanded, it is necessary to examine those works which have stood the test of time and which are pronounced good by the verdict of mankind. ”

“ Upon variety depends largely that delightful and elusive quality which we call Euphony. No writer or reader can be long insensible to that music of words which is as intangibly tangible in prose as in poetry,—different in the one from the other, but as real and truly a source of delight in speech as in song, in prose as in verse. It is true that what is written is not necessarily read aloud. ”

“ If a thing is good it is of no great consequence what we call it.
In an age like this, when the magazine flourishes and newspapers are thick strewn like sodden leaves in a November storm, the exposition is naturally one of the most common and one of the most practically useful of all forms of composition. The modern endeavor to make all men understand everything of course renders necessary an enormous amount of expository writing; so that the press turns out daily and hourly an innumerable number of small essays upon all imaginable topics. We live in an expository era. ”

“ The first thing in establishing a line of argument is to define clearly the proposition to be proved. Nothing further can be done until the writer has made the question at issue clear beyond all possibility of mistake. It is necessary to force one’s own mind to an understanding so sharp and exact that confusion is impossible. The most common failing of mankind is mental ambiguity; and nothing is more frequent than for writers to be entirely mistaken in what they suppose themselves to mean. The whole so-called Socratic method of reasoning—the most teasingly irritating form of logic ever devised ”

“ Of essential importance in story-telling is movement. This is an advantage in other forms of composition, but indispensable in Narration. There can be no sense of unity, no continuity of interest, unless there is a constant sense of progression. A story can no more stand still than can life. When the incidents cease to carry the reader forward, it is as if the heart stopped beating. Each incident in a narrative, as in existence, must stand in relation to what comes before it of effect to cause, and to what follows it of cause to effect. ”

“ An opportunity presents itself for the introduction of a charming episode; there is a temptation to develop a thought, a sentiment, a seductively favorite theory; and the result of yielding to this is apt to be a violation of unity. What the old-fashioned writers—as if confession were an excuse—were accustomed to confess by saying, “But this is a digression,” hopelessly injured the effect of a composition as a whole. Only the clever and cunning artificer of style can introduce digressions without marring the fair proportions of the complete work. ”

“ Reasoning which does not succeed is the strongest presumption against the proposition it seeks to defend. Indeed, logic which fails seems almost to establish the truth of the opposite proposition. “He that taketh the sword shall fall by the sword,” and he who advances an argument must either prevail by it or fall altogether. The proposition which before it is argued is viewed at worst with indifference is discredited and disbelieved when once an attempt to establish its credibility has been made and has failed.
The strength of an argument lies in that quality which is called logical accuracy. ”

“ The world has long recognized that in painting, music, sculpture, and architecture it is indispensable that technique shall be acquired; but—absurd as it may seem—it is only recently, comparatively speaking, that it has been practically recognized that this is as true of poetry as of painting, as true of literature as of any other art. It is in truth only in our own day that there has been anything like a general acceptance of the fact that in literature as in the other arts technical skill must be laboriously acquired before any successful and permanent work can be produced. ”

“ We all know extraordinary incidents which are real yet which are too improbable to be used in fiction. The reason is obvious. It is necessary for fiction to be probable, while truth is free from all restrictions. The novelist is never allowed to take refuge behind the fact that a thing is veracious. He may tell whatever he has the art to make appear true, but the criterion of his success is the semblance of verity rather than verity itself. ”

“ Certainly if a writer desires to impress, to persuade, to move, to arouse; if he have a report to write which he hopes may be adopted, a theory to state which he is in earnest to have received; a history to relate that he would have believed; an appeal that he longs to have heeded, a creation of the imagination by which he aims to touch the emotions of his fellow-men, he cannot too carefully cultivate the art of communicating it. In any of these cases mastery of literary technique is as essential to success as is air to breathing or light to seeing. ”

“ It is a moral duty for one to know why one likes or dislikes a thing. I do not mean that we can go to the ultimate analysis of the reasons why beauty delights and ugliness pains. I do mean that the possession of reason lays on a man a moral obligation to use it; and that so far as his individual reason can go, it is his duty to examine the grounds of his feelings. How is a man to have the courage of his dislikes if he does not know upon what they rest? It is the duty of every rational creature to have opinions. In order to have opinions it is necessary to estimate belief and feeling. ”

“ It is true that the first germ of a fiction is often caught in the mind as a plumy-winged seed of the wild clematis is caught in the cranny of a wall. Sometimes a chance word, the sight of a face in the crowd, a bit of information or talk, will become the suggestion from which a story will grow. ”

“ The fine arts are possible only because men do not spare labor even if what is done must be wrought in the sweat of the brow and with the blood of the heart; art lives because the artist works from love, and does not count the cost. Unless the worker is willing thus to labor at literature, he will do well to leave it alone. ”

“ The study of the masterpieces of literature—always with earnestness and with sympathy—is the most direct means of improving a sensitiveness to literary fitness and to literary beauty. The adaptation of means to ends we shall go on considering throughout these talks; and now, as always, it is necessary to remember that the way to learn to write is to write. The way to achieve Elegance is to labor for it with that persistence which is in itself the best compensation which Heaven has bestowed upon man for all other boons denied. ”

“ Holmes has said, with that quaint mingling of wit and wisdom which made him unique, that writing a poem is like pouring syrup out of a pitcher,—some of it always sticks to the pitcher. The principle holds good of all composition, and by no means the smallest thing to be learned is to judge how completely the syrup has been poured out. Often it is necessary to let the mood pass away entirely before one can estimate work. ”

“ Emerson stalks like a giant from mountain peak of thought to mountain peak, while the reader is often sorely puzzled to know how to cross the deep gullies between. Emerson was a genius, and prophesied so gloriously on his mountain-tops, that we struggle forward after him despite all difficulties. Those who are not geniuses cannot hope that readers will follow their lead unless the road is shown and the chasms bridged. ”

“ Elegance is that distinguishing quality of style that pleases the taste; ... the æsthetic quality of style, that subtle something in a work of literary art which makes us feel delight in workmanship. Beauty, some call it; charm, others; others still, grace, ease, finish, [Pg 85] mastery.
The name does not much matter; the quality matters greatly. It is this more than all else that gives lasting value to literature. There is in style an indefinable power of reaching the emotions of the reader which is beyond the effect of what is actually said, even beyond the effect of what is suggested. ”

“ The domain of literature is not a despotism, but the most absolutely free of all republics. No author, no matter how great he be, can force the public to accept his book or can impose his works upon the generations. It is by the suffrages of the readers of the world that he stands or falls, and if there was ever given in the whole world a disinterested and [Pg 292] impartial vote, it is precisely this decision which the world makes upon the merit of works. What we call the classics are the books which the world has decided are good. ”

“ How is skill in composition to be gained? The general principle is as simple as the details of the craft are complicated. The way to write is to write. Perhaps the most exact image of the process is that of piano-playing. Just as one acquires skill in the use of the piano by innumerable exercises and continual practice, so one attains to mastery in written language only by writing and writing and writing. It is necessary to compose and recompose; to write all sorts of things, to prune them, recast them, polish them; to elaborate and to simplify; to weigh each word and phrase ”

“ No intellectual necessity is more common than that of endeavoring to make others think or believe as we think or believe. The effort to establish truth by argument is one which from the dawn of civilization has occupied the best powers of mankind. Openly, in avowed reasoning, or covertly, in cunningly disguised forms, those who write are constantly arguing for one theory or another, for some idea, for some conviction. The writer who is trained to the craft of logic has the same advantage in discussion with one who has not that a trained boxer has in an encounter with a green hand. ”

“ Literature as an art should deal with those ethical questions only which are of universal human interest.
We have noticed already that whatever a reader is led to do for himself is more real and more vital than anything which can be done for him. This principle, carried farther and higher, underlies the fact that mankind will give little heed to any “record of intellectual conceptions” of life, while they will be moved and led by a “reflection of life”—in other words by those tales which are the embodiment of human emotions and human passions. ”

“ No conviction, no opinion, no faith is vital which is not the original growth of the mind which holds it. We may induce it. We may advance ideas, we may even formulate views, and suppose that we have converted another to our own position, be it intellectual, moral, æsthetic, or religious. We may have secured a sort of conformity; the other may even himself suppose that he thinks as we do; but until he feels that we think as he does there is little hope that genuine opinions have taken root in his mind. ”

“ Persuasion, in the strict sense of the term, is of course not a kind of composition, but a quality of style. An argument, an exposition, a narrative, must alike be persuasive to succeed in winning the reader. Indeed, persuasion is a quality essential to all art. In the sense of being that which leads others to submit their personality to the artist, it is necessary to painter, musician, sculptor, and architect, no less than to writer. ”

“ Imitation, moreover, is at best but a reproduction of the more obvious peculiarities of work, while at worst it is a catching of tricks, mannerisms, and faults. It may be added, too, that it is oftener at its worst than at its best. Anybody can imitate the defects of a style, and few its virtues.
In these days nobody reads avowedly for style directly. There was once an idea that it was well to select an author of standing and deliberately attempt to catch his manner, or, as the phrase went, to “form one’s style on the master.” ”