That must suffice on the subject of easy rhythm in fiction: which may be defined as repetition plus variation, and which can be illustrated by examples. Now for the more difficult question. Is there any effect in novels comparable to the effect of the Fifth Symphony as a whole, where, when the orchestra stops, we hear something that has never actually been played? The opening movement, the andante, and the trio-scherzo-trio-finale-trio-finale that composes the third block, all enter the mind at once, and extend one another into a common entity. This common entity, this new thing, is the symphony as a whole, and it has been achieved mainly (though not entirely) by the relation between the three big blocks of sound which the orchestra has been playing. I am calling this relation “rhythmic.” If the correct musical term is something else, that does not matter; what we have now to ask ourselves is whether there is any analogy to it in fiction.
I cannot find any analogy. Yet there may be one; in music fiction is likely to find its nearest parallel.
The position of the drama is different. The drama may look towards the pictorial arts, it may allow Aristotle to discipline it, for it is not so deeply committed to the claims of human beings. Human beings have their great chance in the novel. They say to the novelist: “Recreate us if you like, but we must come in,” and the novelist’s problem, as we have seen all along, is to give them a good run and to achieve something else at the same time. Whither shall he turn? not indeed for help but for analogy. Music, though it does not employ human beings, though it is governed by intricate laws, nevertheless does offer in its final expression a type of beauty which fiction might achieve in its own way. Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out. When the symphony is over we feel that the notes and tunes composing it have been liberated, they have found in the rhythm of the whole their individual freedom. Cannot the novel be like that? Is not there something of it in War and Peace?-—the book with which we began and in which we must end. Such an untidy book. Yet, as we read it, do not great chords begin to sound behind us, and when we have finished does not every item—even the catalogue of strategies—lead a larger existence than was possible at the time?
* There is a masterly analysis of The Ambassadors from another standpoint in The Craft of Fiction.
* See the Letters of H. James, Vol. II.
* The first three books of A la recherche du temps perdu have been excellently translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff under the title of Remembrance of Things Past. (A. & C. Boni.)
IX
CONCLUSION
IT is tempting to conclude by speculations as to the future of the novel, will it become more or less realistic, will it be killed by the cinema, and so on. Speculations, whether sad or lively, always have a large air about them, they are a very convenient way of being helpful or impressive. But we have no right to entertain them. We have refused to be hampered by the past, so we must not profit by the future. We have visualized the novelists of the last two hundred years all writing together in one room, subject to the same emotions and putting the accidents of their age into the crucible of inspiration, and whatever our results, our method has been sound—sound for an assemblage of pseudo-scholars like ourselves. But we must visualize the novelists of the next two hundred years as also writing in the room. The change in their subject matter will be enormous; they will not change. We may harness the atom, we may land on the moon, we may abolish or intensify warfare, the mental processes of animals may be understood; but all these are trifles, they belong to history not to art. History develops; art stands still. The novelist of the future will have to pass all the new facts through the old if variable mechanism of the creative mind.
There is however one question which touches our subject, and which only a psychologist could answer. But let us ask it. Will the creative process itself alter? Will the mirror get a new coat of quicksilver? In other words, can human nature change? Let us consider this possibility for a moment—we are entitled to that much relaxation.
It is amusing to listen to elderly people on this subject. Sometimes a man says in confident tones: “Human nature’s the same in all ages. The primitive cave man lies deep in us all. Civilization—pooh! a mere veneer. You can’t alter facts.” He speaks like this when he is feeling prosperous and fat. When he is feeling depressed and is worried by the young, or is being sentimental about them on the ground that they will succeed in life when he has failed, then he will take the opposite view and say mysteriously, “Human nature is not the same. I have seen fundamental changes in my own time. You must face facts.” And he goes on like this day after day, alternately facing facts and refusing to alter them.
All I will do is to state a possibility. If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people—a very few people, but a few novelists are among them—are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the State, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. Perhaps the searchers will fail, perhaps it is impossible for the instrument of contemplation to contemplate itself, perhaps if it is possible it means the end of imaginative literature—which if I understand him rightly is the view of that acute enquirer, Mr. I. A. Richards. Anyhow—that way lies movement and even combustion for the novel, for if the novelist sees himself differently he will see his characters differently and a new system of lighting will result.
I do not know on the verge of which philosophy or what rival philosophies the above remarks are wavering, but as I look back at my own scraps of knowledge and into my own heart, I see these two movements of the human mind: the great tedious onrush known as history, and a shy crablike sideways movement. Both movements have been neglected in these lectures: history because it only carries people on, it is just a train full of passengers; and the crablike movement because it is too slow and cautious to be visible over our tiny period of two hundred years. So we laid it down as an axiom when we started that human nature is unchangeable, and that it produces in rapid succession prose fictions, which fictions, when they contain 50,000 words or more, are called novels. If we had the power or license to take a wider view, and survey all human and pre-human activity, we might not conclude like this; the crablike movement, the shiftings of the passengers, might be visible, and the phrase “the development of the novel” might cease to be a pseudo-scholarly tag or a technical triviality, and become important, because it implied the development of humanity.
INDEX OF MAIN REFERENCES
Alain
Aristotle
Asquith, Mr.
Austen, Jane
Beerbohm, Max
Bennett, Arnold
Birth, treatment of
Blake, William
Brontë, Emily
C. P. S.
Chevalley, Abel
Clark, W. G.
Death, treatment of
Defoe, Daniel
Dickens, Charles
Dickinson, Lowes
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Douglas, Norman
Eliot, George
Eliot, T. S.
Fantasy defined
Fielding, Henry
“Flat” characters
Food, treatment of
France, Anatole
Freeman, John
Garnett, David
Gide, André
Goldsmith, Oliver
Inspiration, nature of
James, Henry
Joyce, James
Lawrence, D. H.
Literary tradition
Love, treatment of
Lubbock, Percy
Matson, Norman
Melville, Herman
Meredith George
Novel defined
“Novelist’s touch,” the
One Thousand and One Nights
Pattern defined
Plot defined
Point of view
Prophecy defined
Proust, Marcel
Provincialism
Pseudo-scholarship
Raleigh, Walter
Rhythm, two kinds of
Richards, I. A.
Richardson, Samuel
“Round” characters
Scott, Walter
Sleep, treatment of
Stein, Gertrude
Sterne, Laurence
Story, definition of
Swiss Family Robinson
Thackeray, W. M.
Tolstoy, Leo
Trollope, Anthony
Victoria, Queen
Wells, H. G.
Woolf, Virginia