LITERATURE: A DEFINITION

The purpose of art is to convey to one soul the feeling experienced by another soul. The artist finds himself tingling with an inspiration. This feeling clamors for expression. He applies chisel to marble, brush to canvas, bow to strings, or pen to paper, and the world is richer by a masterpiece.

No definition can make known what a feeling is, and therefore definitions of sculpture, painting, architecture, and music, the products of feeling, can be but feeble things. To know what these words mean one must look with an opened soul upon the Elgin Marbles, or The Descent from the Cross, or St. Peter ’ s, or must hear with an attuned heart the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. So with literature: mere defini¬tion can do but little toward making known what it is. That can be learned only by soul acquaintance with the masters, with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Brown¬ing, Tennyson.

Certain explanation, however, may smooth the path some¬what toward such acquaintance, just as a formal introduc¬tion may open the way to a precious friendship. So, too, even an unsatisfactory definition may be helpful in sug¬gesting what one must expect in the work of literary mas¬ters.

As a foundation for this discussion of what literature is, the following definition may be at least provisionally laid down:

Literature is a written presentation to the feelings of such thoughts, emotions, and deeds as exalt the soul, the lan¬guage used being so filled with suggestion that it enables the reader imaginatively to pass through the given experi¬ence. This presentation is made, not for the sake of the experience itself, but for the sake of the feeling inspired by the experience.

By soul is meant not only the part of man ’ s nature that is prompted to nobility, to worth, and to helpful living, but also the part that appreciates the manifestations of strong and beautiful character, the wonders and beauties of nature, and the products of the fine arts.

The experiences that exalt the soul are the experiences that at least to a degree satisfy one or more of our ideals. We see Captain Joe thrust his body into the splintered gap in the side of the ferryboat in order to keep out the in-rushing water, and we are thrilled by the ideal courage and self-sacrifice. What is better, we feel ourselves prompted to greater unselfishness and bravery, as well as to a desire of inspiring in others a similar feeling, by telling or interpreting to them what we have seen; and in our telling, our interpretation, we do our best to make them appreciate the incident as fully as though they too had been witnesses of it.

Later we hear the bluff captain whisper " Wuz any of them babies hurt?" and our souls vibrate in the presence. of such ideal manly gentleness, and we determine to be more thoughtful for the helpless, and we yearn to interpret to others these strangely affecting words, to give others the delight that comes with a recognition of their spiritual sug¬gestiveness. Probably as we repeat them NIT ’, unconsciously lower the voice in our endeavor to bring the actual scene

more vividly before the imagination, to interpret it more exactly. A similar experience follows our reading of the entry in the log book, at so complete an experience of ideal modesty and unobtrusiveness.

In like manner an inspiring landscape, a spiritual face, a charming sunset, a radiant full moon, delight us with their ideal beauty, and our souls are moved and our lives soothed and quieted, and we strive to make others see it as we see it, to interpret it to them, in order that they may feel as we have felt. In the song of a bird the poet finds ideal spiritu¬ality and serenity and peacefulness, and his soul overflows with an emotion that he must strive to inspire in others, and Shelley bursts forth in his ode "To a Skylark" and Keats in his "Ode to a Nightingale."

When a soul-edifying experience, then, is so vividly in¬terpreted that the reader imaginatively lives through it, and is moved with the feeling that moved the writer, the result is literature.

II

The feeling aroused by an exalting and ennobling ex¬perience may be briefly and abstractly summed up in a fact statement; as, Captain Joe is a courageous, self-sacrificing, gentle, modest man; She is very pretty; The landscape

beautiful; The singing of the skylark pleases me; Slavery is wrong.

These statements make known facts or declare feelings, but they are not literature. In order to become literature they must be interpreted to the imagination, the soul. The conclusion naturally follows that fact statements, made only for the fact declared, can be of but slight value in literature. They appeal to the mind, the intellect, while the interpretations that make literature, appeal to the feelings, the imagination; the one is for the head, the other for the heart.

When seeking to interpret, the writer must make use of everything that will help to present the abstract idea in such concrete form as will enable the imagination to take hold of it and to realize its spiritual power. Among the means that will be found useful are hints of all kinds, words of wide associational meaning, suggestive details, figures of speech, contrasts, symbols, comparisons, imaginary inci¬dents, etc.

Further illustrative material will probably prove helpful.

We are ready to accept as true the statement "God cares for those who strive to live worthily," but we are in no way moved by it, for it is not literature. But see the way an in¬spired poet presents this abstract idea in the Twenty-third Psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name ’ s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;

For thou art with me:

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup rimneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Wishing to interpret the tender watchfulness, and con¬sideration of God, the poet concretely symbols him, first as a shepherd exercising every thoughtful care, and then as a loyal friend and host caring for his friend when all others have forsaken him. The interpretation, so simple and easy to understand, shows us an ideal guardian far more clearly than any dozen pages of abstract statement could do, and the reader is thrilled with the beautiful and lofty emotion that moved the Psalmist to sing.

"He who judges should be without guilt" is an abstract, commonplace statement of no particular value. But lift it by concrete interpretation to the plane of literature, as is done in St. Matthew vii., 3, 5:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother ’ s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how

wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote that is in thy brother ’ s eye.

"Sin brings its own punishment," "Ingratitude is base." The world nods its acceptance of these statements and passes on; but it stops and thinks when they are interpreted, when they become literature. Earlier authors had done it, but Shakespeare did it in an immortal manner in "Macbeth" and "King Lear," and along with these truths interpreted a hundred others.

During the Civil War, when patriotism seemed to be ebbing, Edward Everett Hale was stirred with the feeling

'''that the man who does not love his country has no right to the privileges of a fatherland. Further, he was impelled to make his countrymen, especially those of the younger generation, thrill with this same feeling. To have printed the truth as the motto of every newspaper in the land would have called forth an almost unanimous assent, but it would not have made one man more patriotic. But Dr. Hale knew that the way to make an abstract truth effective is to interpret it concretely. So he wrote "The Man without a Country," a story that no boy or man can read without tears in his soul if not in his eyes, and without a resolve to live a nobler life and be a truer patriot. The experiences of Phillip Nolan were soul-ennobling for him, and have been soul-exalting for countless readers.'''

'''Nathaniel Hawthorne felt himself stirred with the feeling that remorse for sin develops and ennobles the soul. He determined to interpret this to the world in a novel, and he wrote, "The Marble Faun," in which Donatello, a man with a small soul, with little moral perception, commits an awful crime, and the remorse that follows endows him with that which he has lacked.'''

'''In "Evangeline," in like manner, Longfellow interpreted the thought "Love never changes," and in "The Lady of Shalott" Tennyson in an allegory interprets the abstract statement "Success in art demands the devotion of life and soul." Carlyle makes his "Essay on Burns" a medium for the same truth. In a letter to Mr. Blackwood, George Eliot wrote that "Silas Marner" "is intended to set in a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural rela¬tions," and in "The Princess" Tennyson makes his readers feel that woman before all else is a home-maker.'''

In any extended piece of literary art, in addition to the primary interpretation forming the theme of the work, there will be found innumerable brief interpretations, words,

sentences or paragraphs devoted to making the reader feel the meaning of abstract ideas. For instance, in the Fifth Canto of "The Princess," lines 121-123, the author wishes us to feel the meaning of war, and speaks of

The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,

The smouldering homestead, and the household flower Torn from the lintel. . ..

In lines 79-102 of the same Canto he desires the reader to realize something of the meaning of a mother ’ s love, and he makes Psyche, after fate has separated her from her little one, cry out:

Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more!

For now will cruel Ida keep her back; And either she will die from want of care, Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say The child is hers—for every little fault,

The child is hers; and they will beat my girl Remembering her mother: 0 my flower!

Or they will take her, they will make her hard, And she will pass me by in after-life

With some cold reverence worse than were she dead.

Ill mother that I was to leave her there,

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made, The horror of the shame among them all: But I will go and sit beside the doors,

And make a wild petition night and day, Until they hate to hear me like a wind Wailing forever, till they open to me, And lay my little blossom at my feet, My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child: And I will take her up and go my way, And satisfy my soul with kissing her:

All! what might that man not deserve of me Who gave me back my child?

Not only are brief interpretations of this kind found, but yet briefer ones without number are always present. For

example, Tennyson makes the Prince speak of "the trampled year," and has Psyche call her babe "my blossom." In the former the Prince is troubled lest the fields shall be so trampled that there will be nothing to harvest. The work of the year is all for the sake of the harvest; if that is tram¬pled out, the year is trampled out. So Psyche finds her ideals of purity, innocence, and beauty more fully realized in her babe than in the most perfect blossom, but, lacking any more satisfactory concrete term with which to convey her feeling, she uses that word. So Tennyson says "a feast shone, silver-set," choosing words so full of suggestive asso¬ciations that we see snowy linen set with shining silver and china and crystal.

It is probably worth noting, further, that a production may be literature of a high order without containing any such primary interpretation as is referred to above. In¬stead, it may consist of a series of interpretations, each com¬plete in itself, and yet each in such harmony with the others that together they form a string of pearls. Many of Emer¬son ’ s essays are thus made up of linked interpretations of fundamental truths, while in some of Hawthorne ’ s work are found sketches made up of a series of brief emotional presentations of beauty that charm scarcely less than nature itself.

Relate this article to those on theme

III

As worthy men are primarily interested only in those things that never cease to delight and charm or to exalt and en¬noble, literature should deal especially with such things. Only the ultimate, the final, are of value; to the soul the tran¬sitory is valueless.

Beauty of face cannot charm unless beauty of character goes with it; the one is passing, the other always has delighted and always will delight. William Dane ’ s long prayers, sage advice, and reputation for spotless truth are without power the moment we find him laying upon Silas Marner, his friend of many years, the blame for his own .crime.1 The seven-year-old lad looking straight into his teacher ’ s eyes and answering "I did it," when he knows that his words are sure to bring punishment, arouses our admiration, because the truth always has had power to do this and always will. His sister, helping the smaller chil¬dren with their wraps, dividing her dainty lunch with the playmate who is able to bring only a crust, always running to help the little ones that fall, carrying the earliest wild flowers to the lame girl who cannot leave her bed, thrills our hearts, for beauty of character always has thrilled thus and always will.

A broad valley dotted with homesteads, alive with graz¬ing cattle, golden with ripening grain, and cooled with a crystal stream, pleases us with its beauty, just as it pleased the ancient Greeks and will please earth ’ s last generations. The mighty, granite-ribbed, snow-topped mountain peak and the limitless ocean, with their power, majesty, and sub¬limity, affect us differently; they move our deeper natures to a fuller realization of the truth and omnipotence of their Creator.

A great manufacturer is always punctual ; is as careful of the public money he helps to administer as of his own; pays every employee at the highest rate; is untouched by flattery; has steel-gray eyes and square forehead and jaw ; has never a romp with his children, seldom a smile, no farewell to his wife as he leaves home daily, not a penny of wages for an ill employee, nothing for charity, and never an unnecessary word. Not a whisper is breathed against this man ’ s integrity, for he has truth of character; but no one loves him, for he lacks beauty of character. The world has always admired the ftirmer but has loved the latter, and always will.

The mother bending over her sleeping child, the love in her heart all blossoming in her face, is our ideal of beauty, not because she is "pretty," for we do not notice her features, but because a supreme love is in her expression. This has always been the ideal of beauty, as the many pictured Madonnas testify. It always will be. We always admire such truth as impels Abraham Lincoln, grocer ’ s clerk, to walk miles to return a few cents overcharged on a purchase of tea; we always love the beauty of character that per¬suades Abraham Lincoln, President, to send a condemned but really noble son back to a widowed mother. ’

Because literature deals especially with these great mani¬festations of the things that are eternally true and beautiful it has been defined as "ultimate truth and beauty inter¬preted." 1

The student "interprets ultimate truth and beauty" when he tells the story of a courageous act, of a kind word, of a helpful smile, of a child ’ s unselfishness, of a bit of charity, of a harsh word conquered; when he describes a winter morning, a singing brook, a surging mob, a desert ’ s dreari¬ness, a city ’ s awakening, a lamb ’ s gambols, a prairie ’ s lavish¬ness, a Christmas morning, a snowstorm or a summer shower, a mine or a mill; when he portrays a character, or explains the sun ’ s power, or one of nature ’ s laws. To do any of these things so as to appeal to the reader ’ s feelings and to make him live through the experience is to interpret truth or beauty.