Show 4 4 Art of the By Phrase Maker Mak t fH J Henri ri Peri bu PU Boise Boie BoiseS i t t y yS C writers assail a ass U J They say ta their ideas are S enough to dISpense se with dress that new tad and brilliant images Ima s sare are re veils of vanity that the spirit and not the time letter leti the thought and not net t Ute the e form are important h They h have a pack ot of commonplaces at their service What Whitt may one reply to 10 I That there are writers writ r who write and writers who do not t write twite that there are ar two kinds of literature and that the writers that do d not write are in the I king Disdain of style is a novelty The Greeks thought that writers should know how to write the tile Romans took so 80 much pains to write well wen that sometimes they titer wrote badly St Ambro regarded reg eloquence as a gift of the Holy ghost J Si of Poitiers says that a bad style is a sin It U is not Roman Christianity that could rould have inspired the indulgence of Or the present hour for tor ft formless literature England and France agreed in hi til the eighteenth cen con I tury tu to prepare minds for that indulgence The agreement a was kept by France until Chateaubriand came to America and by England until Robert Louis Stevenson came to America Since Cha Cba In France and an Stevenson n in England there is Is only one way of having talent in writing That way is to know bow how to write A literature without style is a highway without grass grase sra without trees without fountains The art of writing is an art it may be studied but style ft II inviolate style is personal as the color of the eyes sad and the sound of ot the I voice velee One may not learn a style one may not dye ones ODeS style Lyle To write is very ver different from painting or modeling To write is to make use of a faculty common to all aU men inca One may not analyze it without making an anatomical study of oC all aU intelligence To write is 13 to be different To have a style is to t speak k a particular dia I lect leet in the common cornmon tongue a language which is 18 at a once ORee the one on spoken by all and a d by It one only It is useless to try to teach a style What one may obtain by mixing the products of a styles st les distillation resembles a style a as a paper rose resembles re a rose And no work has any value the style tyle of which is not beautiful No nothing lives Ues that has not beauty of ot form in literature The subject in literature is as insignificant cant as in painting in sculpture in music Shakes peare nears invented only phrases invented themes theme Boccacio greater than invented only phrases What is the use of trying to invent new themes new plots They are easily summarized into four Man may be regarded with the Idea of his rela reia rei a thins to himself to other men to the other sex ex to the infinite A work of literature is necessarily in these four modes modee mod But if literature had bad only one theme and this theme were and Chloe ChISO it be sufficient It is style that makes themes varied in works that are literature The writers that do not know how to write say that certain forms of literature require a 8 certain style and certain others another They T ey say that one must not write a novel as one writes a a poem This M s 5 true tree but it does not nOl deliver them from the accusation of oC being writers who do not know how ho to write who have h ve no style Absence of tone makes absence b ence of style When a book k JB lacks ks art of writing it lacks everything It is invisible it passes To say ay that one may acquire a style is to imagine that Monet by study might have be come de Chavannes and Howells might have continued Poe Foe One mv m v learn the art of writing correctly One may learn earn how to write badly that is conventionally One may even learn Je rn how to write well vell Oh how sad are the books that are written well welland and that te Is all The art of ot writing is the art of feeling the art of seeing the art of using all the toe senses really or imaginatively Zola says Form in jn literary work w rk passes quickly one may gain immortality only by making living crea cres tune tures tur appear He means that what is known as life in art is independent of form ZOi Perhaps F he means nothing at all aU If he should apply the theory that life is ig 1 independent of form to the certainly it may be said that the interest of oC the poem is archaeological It may my be suggested surge ted also that we e like Uke the Iliad mad immensely in imitation of the ages but Why are not Beowulf the Chanson de Roland and the epics of other nations of nations close cl e to us interesting in the same degree e r as 55 the Iliad r Because the Iliad mad has the advantage of beauty of form forth Certainly form fades The frescoes of Fra Frn Angelico Angelice fade fad They fade not oot because Ump timo has hag made them less haS 1 beautiful l hut ut be b au aue e dampness has hag caused to sr awed H the cement cem wherein the frescoes fr coes are imbedded I s swell like cement et ment or rather they are as the plane trees that shed the bark in which lovers wrote their names sames with a X I f Everything is ephemeral But must write f fur fr r men meR as aft If one wrote for tor angels and realize thus according to ones art and ones nature as much beauty ephemeral and perishable beauty as possible How Hou Ho is one to have originality and be individual A writer rIter of Paris whom the th literary ers P English En a as well as French praise pral highly Albalat says myS that to be individual one must work Incessantly What an illusion To fa be individual in literature to be a writer one oae must Blust have naturally fine t ie talent eDt to write and then one must exercise e that ut talent with wilh persever p ance anos One must feel the sensations that are human HENRI DU BOIS I |