ATMOSPHERE 1

ATMOSPHERE

ATMOSPHERE

I

BY atmosphere in literature is meant a mood or feeling which is so dominant in a selection that the reader must come under its spell. Such an emotion is breathed into a piece of literature by its author both consciously and intentionally, because of his wish to kindle the feeling in the soul of his reader.

A careful study of a selection permeated, saturated, with a definite mood will do more toward making known the meaning of this word than any amount of definition or comment can do to make it known, and at the same time will perhaps reveal something of how a wished-for atmosphere may be concretely suggested by means of words. The following poem by Lord Tennyson should therefore be examined minutely with the double purpose of determining exactly what feeling, what atmosphere, is present, and of discovering the methods used for crystallizing that atmosphere:

MARIANA

II

In life, atmosphere is a potent reality. It belongs to individuals, to crowded centers, to desolate wilds. Every home seems to have its own peculiar shade. The moment one steps into some houses, even though an entire stranger, one feels the inspiriting influence that dominates the family; in others one is just as quickly brought under the cloud that seems always floating above the entire household. Even different members of a family seem to be breathed upon by entirely unlike atmospheres. In his conversation,

his acts, his manners, the peculiar condition surrounding each is ever manifest. There is a bubbling effervescence and genial warmth, an oppressive humidity, a numbing chilliness, a zero frigidity, and all the thousand shades that lie between the extremes. The exceptional person has power so to charge all about him that, wherever he is, his own atmosphere is dominant. If his is a genial, invigorating, magnetic atmosphere, he is soon an acknowledged leader; if it is the opposite, he becomes more or less of a social outcast.

So it is with places. Some are sought because they soothe and calm; others rouse and inspirit; others repel; and yet others make thoughtful, render joyful, or call forth someone of our thousand different moods.

Naturally authors have not neglected this means of controlling the sympathies of their readers. Almost every professional writer strives more or less frequently to introduce atmosphere. Some use it continually and effectively; others attempt it but seldom, and even then attain but slight success. Among the authors who have had especial skill in the use of atmosphere may be mentioned Hawthorne, Tennyson, Irving, and Poe, —the last strangely proficient in employing it in his prose as well as in his poetry.