The Craft of Fiction Page 8

  VIII

  In dealing with the method that I find peculiarly characteristic ofThackeray, the "panoramic" method, I have spoken of it also as"pictorial"; and it will be noticed that I have thus arrived atanother distinction which I touched upon in connection with Bovary.Picture and drama--this is an antithesis which continually appears ina novel, and I shall have much to say of it. And first of the nameswhich I give to these contrasted manners of treatment--I do not knowthat they are the best names, but they express the main point ofdifference, and they also have this advantage, that they _have_ beenused technically in the criticism of fiction, with specific meaning.In writing about novels one is so rarely handling words that have everbeen given close definition (with regard to the art of fiction, Imean) that it is natural to grasp at any which have chanced to beselected and strictly applied by a critic of authority. Picture anddrama, therefore, I use because Henry James used them in discussinghis own novels, when he reviewed them all in his later years; but Iuse them, I must add, in a rather more extended sense than he did.Anybody who knows the critical prefaces of his books will remember howpicture and drama, to him, represented the twofold manner towardswhich he tended in his last novels, composed as they are in a regularalternation of dramatic dialogue and pictorial description. But _his_pictorial description was of a very special kind; and when the subjectof criticism is fiction generally, not his alone, picture will take awider meaning, as opposed to drama. It will be found to cover thepanoramic manner of Thackeray.

  It is a question, I said, of the reader's relation to the writer; inone case the reader faces towards the story-teller and listens to him,in the other he turns towards the story and watches it. In the dramaof the stage, in the acted play, the spectator evidently has no directconcern with the author at all, while the action is proceeding. Theauthor places their parts in the mouths of the players, leaves them tomake their own impression, leaves _us_, the audience, to make what wecan of it. The motion of life is before us, the recording, registeringmind of the author is eliminated. That is drama; and when we think ofthe story-teller as opposed to the dramatist, it is obvious that inthe full sense of the word there is no such thing as drama in a novel.The novelist may give the very words that were spoken by hischaracters, the dialogue, but of course he must interpose on his ownaccount to let us know how the people appeared, and where they were,and what they were doing. If he offers nothing but the bare dialogue,he is writing a kind of play; just as a dramatist, amplifying his playwith "stage-directions" and putting it forth to be read in a book,has really written a kind of novel. But the difference between thestory-teller and the playwright is not my affair; and a new contrast,within the limits of the art of fiction, is apparent when we speak ofthe novel by itself--a contrast of two methods, to one of which it isreasonable to give the name of drama.

  I do not say that a clear line can be drawn between them; criticismdoes not hope to be mathematically exact. But everybody sees thediversity between the talkative, confidential manner of Thackeray andthe severe, discreet, anonymous manner--of whom shall I say?--ofMaupassant, for a good example, in many of his stories. It is not onlythe difference between the personal qualities of the two men, whichindeed are also as far apart as the house of Castlewood and the MaisonTellier; it is not the difference between the kinds of story theychose to tell. They approached a story from opposite sides, andthought of it, consequently, in images that had nothing in common: notalways, I dare say, but on the whole and characteristically they didso. Maupassant's idea of a story (and not peculiarly Maupassant's, ofcourse, but his name is convenient) would suggest an object that youfashioned and abandoned to the reader, turning away and leaving himalone with it; Thackeray's would be more like the idea of a long andsociable interview with the reader, a companion with whom he mustestablish definite terms. Enough, the contrast is very familiar. Butthese are images; how is the difference shown in their written books,in Esmond and La Maison Tellier? Both, it is true, represent a picturethat was in the author's mind; but the story passes into Thackeray'sbook as a picture still, and passes into Maupassant's as somethingelse--I call it drama.

  In Maupassant's drama we are close to the facts, against them andamongst them. He relates his story as though he had caught it in theact and were mentioning the details as they passed. There seems to beno particular process at work in his mind, so little that the figureof Maupassant, the showman, is overlooked and forgotten as we followthe direction of his eyes. The scene he evokes is contemporaneous, andthere it is, we can see it as well as he can. Certainly he is"telling" us things, but they are things so immediate, so perceptible,that the machinery of his telling, by which they reach us, isunnoticed; the story appears to tell itself. Critically, of course, weknow how far that is from being the case, we know with what judiciousthought the showman is selecting the points of the scene upon which hetouches. But the _effect_ is that he is not there at all, because heis doing nothing that ostensibly requires any judgement, nothing thatreminds us of his presence. He is behind us, out of sight, out ofmind; the story occupies us, the moving scene, and nothing else.

  But Thackeray--in _his_ story we need him all the time and can neverforget him. He it is who must assemble and arrange his largechronicle, piecing it together out of his experience. Becky's mode oflife, in his story, is a matter of many details picked up on manyoccasions, and the power that collects them, the mind that containsthem, is always and openly Thackeray's; it could not be otherwise. Itis no question, for most of the time, of watching a scene at closequarters, where the simple, literal detail, such as anybody might seefor himself, would be sufficient. A stretch of time is to be shown inperspective, at a distance; the story-teller must be at hand to workit into a single impression. And thus the general panorama, such asThackeray displays, becomes the representation of the author'sexperience, and the author becomes a personal entity, about whom wemay begin to ask questions. Thackeray _cannot_ be the namelessabstraction that the dramatist (whether in the drama of the stage orin that of the novel) is naturally. I know that Thackeray, so far fromtrying to conceal himself, comes forward and attracts attention andnudges the reader a great deal more than he need; he likes thepersonal relation with the reader and insists on it. But do what hemight to disguise it, so long as he is ranging over his story at aheight, chronicling, summarizing, foreshortening, he _must_ be presentto the reader as a narrator and a showman. It is only when he descendsand approaches a certain occasion and sets a scene with duecircumspection--rarely and a trifle awkwardly, as we saw--that he canfor the time being efface the thought of his active part in theaffair.

  So much of a novel, therefore, as is not dramatic enactment, not_scenic_, inclines always to picture, to the reflection of somebody'smind. Confronted with a scene--like Becky's great scene, once more--weforget that other mind; but as soon as the story goes off again intonarrative a question at once arises. _Who_ is disposing the scatteredfacts, whose is this new point of view? It is the omniscient author,and the point of view is his--such would be the common answer, and itis the answer we get in Vanity Fair. By convention the author isallowed his universal knowledge of the story and the people in it. Butstill it is a convention, and a prudent novelist does not strain itunnecessarily. Thackeray in Vanity Fair is not at all prudent; hismethod, so seldom strictly dramatic, is one that of its nature is aptto force this question of the narrator's authority, and he goes out ofhis way to emphasize the question still further. He flourishes thefact that the point of view is his own, not to be confounded with thatof anybody in the book. And so his book, as one may say, is notcomplete in itself, not really self-contained; it does not meet andsatisfy all the issues it suggests. Over the whole of one side of itthere is an inconclusive look, something that draws the eye away fromthe book itself, into space. It is the question of the narrator'srelation to the story.

  However unconsciously--and I dare say the recognition is usuallyunconscious--the novelist is alive to this difficulty, no doubt; forwe may see him, we presently shall, taking vari
ous steps to circumventit. There is felt to be an unsatisfactory want of finish in leaving aquestion hanging out of the book, like a loose end, without some kindof attempt to pull it back and make it part of an integral design.After all, the book is torn away from its author and given out to theworld; the author is no longer a wandering _jongleur_ who enters thehall and utters his book to the company assembled, retaining his bookas his own inalienable possession, himself and his actual presence andhis real voice indivisibly a part of it. The book that we read has nosuch support; it must bring its own recognisances. And in thefictitious picture of life the effect of validity is all in all andthere can be no appeal to an external authority; and so there is aninherent weakness in it if the mind that knows the story and the eyethat sees it remain unaccountable. At any moment they may bequestioned, and the only way to silence the question is somehow tomake the mind and the eye objective, to make them facts in the story.When the point of view is definitely included in the book, when it canbe recognized and verified there, then every side of the book isequally wrought and fashioned. Otherwise it may seem like a thingmeant to stand against a wall, with one side left in the rough; andthere is no wall for a novel to stand against.

  That this is not a fanciful objection to a pictorial book like VanityFair, where the point of view is _not_ accounted for, is proved, Ithink, by the different means that a novelist will adopt toauthenticate his story--to dramatize the seeing eye, as I shouldprefer to put it. These I shall try to deal with in what seems to betheir logical order; illuminating examples of any of them are notwanting. I do not suggest that if I were criticizing Vanity Fair Ishould think twice about this aspect of it; to do so would be veryfutile criticism of such a book, such a store of life. But then I amnot considering it as Vanity Fair, I am considering it as a dominantcase of pictorial fiction; and here is the characteristic danger ofthe method, and a danger which all who practise the method are notlikely to encounter and over-ride with the genius of Thackeray. Andeven Thackeray--he chose to encounter it once again, it is true, inPendennis, but only once and no more, and after that he took his ownprecautions, and evidently found that he could move the more freelyfor doing so.

  But to revert yet again for a moment to Bovary--which seemed onscrutiny to be more of a picture than a drama--I think it is clear howFlaubert avoided the necessity of installing himself avowedly as thenarrator, in the sight of the reader. I mentioned how he constantlyblends his acuter vision with that of Emma, so that the weakness ofher gift of experience is helped out; and the help is mutual, for onthe other hand her vision is always active as far as it goes, andFlaubert's intervention is so unobtrusive that her point of view seemsto govern the story more than it does really. And therefore, thoughthe book is largely a picture, a review of many details and occasions,the question of the narrator is never insistent. The landscape thatThackeray controls is so much wider and fuller that even with all thetact of Flaubert--and little he has of it--he could scarcely followFlaubert's example. His book is not a portrait of character but apanorama of manners, and there is no disguising the need of somedetached spectator, who looks on from without.

  It is the method of picture-making that enables the novelist to coverhis great spaces of life and quantities of experience, so much greaterthan any that can be brought within the acts of a play. As forintensity of life, that is another matter; there, as we have seen, thenovelist has recourse to his other arm, the one that corresponds withthe single arm of the dramatist. Inevitably, as the plot thickens andthe climax approaches--inevitably, wherever an impression is to beemphasized and driven home--narration gives place to enactment, thetrain of events to the particular episode, the broad picture to thedramatic scene. But the limitation of drama is as obvious as itspeculiar power. It is clear that if we wish to see an abundance andmultitude of life we shall find it more readily and more summarily bylooking for an hour into a memory, a consciousness, than by merelywatching the present events of an hour, however crowded. Much mayhappen in that time, but in extent it will be nothing to the regionsthrown open by the other method. A novelist, with a large anddiscursive subject before him, could not hope to show it alldramatically; much of it, perhaps the greater part, must be somarshalled that it may be swept by a travelling glance. Thackerayshows how it is done and how a vista of many facts can be made to fallinto line; but he shows, too, how it needs a mind to create thatvista, and how the creative mind becomes more and more perceptible,more visibly active, as the prospect widens.

  Most novelists, I think, seem to betray, like Thackeray, a preferencefor one method or the other, for picture or for drama; one sees in amoment how Fielding, Balzac, George Eliot, incline to the first, intheir diverse manners, and Tolstoy (certainly Tolstoy, in spite of hisbig range) or Dostoevsky to the second, the scenic way. But of courseevery novelist uses both, and the quality of a novelist appears veryclearly in his management of the two, how he guides the story into thescene, how he picks it out of the scene, a richer and fuller storythan it was before, and proceeds with his narrative. On the whole, nodoubt, the possibilities of the scene are greatly abused in fiction,in the daily and familiar novel. They are doubly abused; for thetreatment of the scene is neglected, and yet it recurs again andagain, much too often, and its value is wasted. It has to beremembered that drama is the novelist's highest light, like the whitepaper or white paint of a draughtsman; to use it prodigally where itis not needed is to lessen its force where it is essential. And so theeconomical procedure would be to hoard it rather, reserving it forimportant occasions--as in Bovary, sure enough.

  But before I deal with the question of the novelist's drama I wouldfollow out the whole argument that is suggested by his reflectedpicture of life. This, after all, is the method which is his very own,which he commands as a story-teller pure and simple. And for abeginning I have tried to indicate its prime disadvantage, consistingof the fact that in its plain form it drags in the omniscient authorand may make him exceedingly conspicuous. Why is this a disadvantage,is it asked? It is none, of course, if the author has the power tomake us admire and welcome the apparition, or if his picture is sodazzling that a theoretic defect in it is forgotten. But a novel inwhich either of these feats is accomplished proves only the charm orgenius of the author; charm and genius do what they will, there isnothing new in that. And I believe that the defect, even though atfirst sight it may seem a trifle, is apt to become more and moretroublesome in a book as the book is re-read. It makes for a kind ofthinness in the general impression, wherever the personal force of thewriter is not remarkable. I should say that it may often contributetowards an air of ineffectiveness in a story, which it might otherwisebe difficult to explain.

  The fiction of Turgenev is on the whole a case in point, to my mind.Turgenev was never shy of appearing in his pages as the reflectivestory-teller, imparting the fruits of his observation to the reader.He will watch a character, let us say, cross a field and enter a woodand sit down under a tree; good, it is an opportunity for gaining afirst impression of the man or woman, it is a little scene, andTurgenev's touch is quick and light. But then with perfect candour hewill show his hand; he will draw the reader aside and pour into hisear a flow of information about the man or woman, information thatopenly comes straight from Turgenev himself, in good pictorial form,no doubt, but information which will never have its due weight withthe reader, because it reposes upon nothing that he can test forhimself. Who and what is this communicative participator in thebusiness, this vocal author? He does not belong to the book, and hisvoice has not that compelling tone and tune of its own (as Thackeray'shad) which makes a reader enjoy hearing it for its own sake. This is asmall matter, I admit, but Turgenev extends it and pursues the samekind of course in more important affairs. He remains the observantnarrator, to whom we are indebted for a share in his experience. Theresult is surely that his picture of life has less authority than itshighly finished design would seem to warrant. It is evidently not apicture in which the deeps of character are sounded, and in which theheights
of passion are touched, and in which a great breadth of thehuman world is contained; it is not a picture of such dimensions. Butit has so much neat and just and even exquisite work in it that itmight seem final of its kind, completely effective in what itattempts; and it falls short of this, I should say, and there issomething in that constant sense of Turgenev at one's elbow,_proffering_ the little picture, that may very well damage it. Thething ought to stand out by itself; it could easily be made to do so.But Turgenev was unsuspecting; he had not taken to heart the fullimportance of dramatizing the point of view--perhaps it was that.

  The narrative, then, the chronicle, the summary, which must representthe story-teller's ordered and arranged experience, and which mustaccordingly be of the nature of a picture, is to be strengthened, isto be raised to a power approaching that of drama, where theintervention of the story-teller is no longer felt. The freedom whichthe pictorial method gives to the novelist is unknown to theplaywright; but that freedom has to be paid for by some loss ofintensity, and the question is how to pay as little as possible. Inthe end, as I think it may be shown, the loss is made good and thereis nothing to pay at all, so far may the dramatizing process befollowed. Method, I have said, can be imposed upon method, one kindupon another; and in analyzing the manner of certain novelists onediscovers how ingeniously they will correct the weakness of one methodby the force of another and retain the advantages of both. It israther a complicated story, but the beginning is clear enough, and thedirection which it is to take is also clear. Everything in the novel,not only the scenic episodes but all the rest, is to be in some sensedramatized; that is where the argument tends. As for the beginning ofit, the first obvious step, the example of Thackeray is at hand and itcould not be bettered. I turn to Esmond.