On the Art of Writing

at the beginning:⁠—

Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna.
Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city.

The forty-seven preserved the “falling close” so exquisite in the Latin; the emphasis, already secured by repetition, they accentuated by lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this, which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:⁠—

“Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this?” asked the man in the light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits round their broad Terai hats.

Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that interplay of vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner, mistaking our modesty, complains against God’s plenty. We alone, for example, sound by a natural vowel that noble I, which other nations can only compass by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:⁠—

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel “O,” and anon how expressively it reasserts itself to express re-arisen delight:⁠—

Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising.

Take another passage in which the first lift of this I vowel yields to its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the sense.

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”

“And am no more worthy to be called thy son.” Mark the deep O’s. “For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” “O my son, my son Absalom”⁠—observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:⁠—

O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son!

Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and toll.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in a bee-loud glade.8

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one various enough to last you though you live to a very old age.

All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do you not see how personal a thing it is⁠—how it cannot escape being personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the same way. As is a man’s imagination, as is his character, as is the harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great passage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:⁠—

If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named⁠—if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered nothing short of divine⁠—if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated⁠—if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other⁠—if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the prophets of the human family⁠—it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others⁠—be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life⁠—who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.

Lecture VIII

On the Lineage of English Literature (I)

Wednesday, October 22

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