DESCRIPTION CONTINUED

Description by Suggestion is perhaps not to be called Description in the exact meaning of the word, but in so far as it is an attempt to call up an image it is proper to consider it so. Even if it seem but an attempt to induce in the mind the spirit of a scene, a character, or a thing, it may still be treated as Description, since the main purpose is to bring vividly to the thought of the reader the image of the thing spoken of.

It has already been said that words can add no material image to those in the mind, but must work by the rearrangement of what is already there. If I read the account of a little rustic pond I call to mind some sheet of water that I have seen. If I have lived in the South the picture is likely to be that of a lakelet bordered by moss-hung trees, while if my experiences have been confined to New England I shall involuntarily think of northern foliage and scenery. I shall in any case construct out of old images this new one. Now the mind is best able to do this for itself if simply properly aroused and guided instead of being too minutely directed. In direct description the author adds particular to particular, bidding the reader put one detail in place by the others. If a writer do this with sufficient skill, he may succeed in inducing the consciousness of the reader to follow him; but always he is leading and the other is being led. On the other hand, when a suggestion is used the reader is aroused to take, as it were, the initiative. When Dickens calls Mrs. Fezziwig “one vast, substantial smile,” he stimulates the reader to picture the woman for himself. Here the imagination of the one who reads takes the lead instead of following. It goes by the path pointed out by the author, but it goes by itself. The result is that freshness and clearness of impression which belong only to what the mind does or seems to do voluntarily.

This is perhaps making more of a show of psychology than the occasion calls for or than my knowledge of that difficult science warrants; but at least it may serve to emphasize once more the fact that whatever the writer can induce the reader to do for himself is sure to be greatly more effective than anything which the writer can do for him. Herein lies the value of suggestive description. It arouses the mind to be actively receptive. Another way of putting the same thing would perhaps be to say that avowed description appeals more to the understanding, while suggestion addresses itself more directly to the imagination.

The simplest form of any description is of course the epithet. This in literal description is apt to be ineffective from its meagreness. In suggestion it is often rich and satisfactory. When Homer speaks of the “swift-footed Achilles,” he has not pictured the hero, yet he conveys by the implication of the epithet an image which is not without distinctness. The same is true of such Homeric phrases as “far-darting Apollo,” “laughter-loving Aphrodite,” or “ox-eyed Juno.” In the same way into a single simile may be condensed a description by suggestion which could be given directly only by pages. To go to the “Iliad,” again, take this example:—

There is here no direct picture, yet the mind sees the confused and furious onslaught more clearly than if all its details were enumerated.

Lowell notes a happy instance of this sort of picturing by intimation when he says of Chaucer:

Another remark which Lowell makes in this connection I cannot pass without quoting:—

Notice the phrase, “those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so easy to miss.” Whatever we may learn later, we all begin by supposing that it is imperative for a writer to go far afield, and to discover traits, epithets, and thoughts that nobody has used before. Here as in all writing he succeeds best who most carefully confines himself to just those traits, epithets, and thoughts which people have used before, but who so uses them that they have new force. He must feel so keenly whatever he writes that his words shall seem new because of the conviction behind them; and the reader will find a continual charm in this discovery, as it were, of the meaning of familiar terms.

In common practice it is seldom that either of the two sorts of composition which I have named is used alone, and the most successful method is that which happily unites them. No literature can go far or effect much which does not call suggestion to its aid, and this is perhaps more emphatically true in Description than in any other division of composition. Description is really a kind of continued comparison of the image which is in the mind of the writer with things which the reader may be supposed to have seen. As in the use of comparison in simile, suggestion is the most effective tool at the hand of the craftsman. It might be added that the rules given for the use of figures will be found, by one who takes the trouble to examine them, to be practically and directly applicable to Description.

I have spoken carefully thus far as if Description had to do with nothing save the picturing of the physical. There was perhaps danger lest the word “picture” might seem forced if too soon applied to things mental and intangible. Description, however, has as one of its common and legitimate functions, perhaps as its highest office, the picturing of conditions of mind, of states of emotion, of all sorts of mental experiences. Its office is to call them up so vividly that the reader shall realize and share them. Not that he shall feel them as his own, but as if he saw them with the most intimate and sympathetic comprehension of them. If the reader received the sorrow of King Lear as his own, he would be in danger of going mad as King Lear went mad. If he shared as a personal experience the love of Romeo for Juliet, no other maid of actual flesh and blood would satisfy his devotion. It is not as a personal but as an imaginative experience that one is to enter into these passions. The description of an emotion is an endeavor to give a picture of it in much the same sense that a picture of a landscape is given. The reader does not in either case mistake the mental impression for the actual thing, but in both instances he is moved by the completeness and reality of the portrayal.

We come here very close to Narration, and to what has been said of the description of physical things there is not much which need be added to cover the case of immaterial things. The principles are much the same in one effort as in the other. In the bringing up of emotions and states of feeling it is more often wise to use the suggestive method. The question is moreover one of greater subtilty and delicacy. In the one case as in the other it is generally well to be governed by the order in which the details of the reality would present themselves to the inner sense. The natural is apt to be the most effective order. It is well, too, to go from the near to the remote, from the likely to the unlikely, from the simple to the complex.

It is perhaps not amiss to make here an especial point of the phrase which has been used two or three times already in other connections: Proceed generally from the physical to the mental. If without too evident artifice the physical can be made the introduction to the mental state, the impression is almost sure to be vivid. The picturing of sensations is at once the most surely effective and the most richly suggestive. Rudyard Kipling is a master of this. He constantly leads the mind of the reader to emotions through description of a physical sensation; and it is largely by his skill in this that he overcomes the difficulty of dealing with themes and emotions which are so far from the ordinary experience of an occidental audience. Stevenson is another author who understood well the use of the physical. His wonderful description of the flight through the heather in “Kidnapped” is one of the most brilliant examples of this sort of writing in modern—indeed, why should one not say in all?—literature.

In summing up, it seems to me just to say that he who would paint with words must have not only the power of writing well, but he must also possess three especial qualities. He must be able to perceive a general effect; he must be able to analyze this general effect into the details which produce it; and he must have the ability so to express these particulars that their relative values shall be preserved. The reader must first be given a broad idea of the thing, the scene, the person to be pictured. This is no less true in a case where the object is to fix the attention upon details than where the aim is to give a broad impression. The mind does not, I believe, grasp the details until after it has received the wider impression, and it is necessary to make the latter the background of the former. A remark which is made by Fuseli upon painting may be applied here. He observes that breadth is attained not by the omission of details, but by their submission. While it is idle to catalogue, it is not needful to omit anything which is of use in conveying the picture sought. As long as the details are made to submit to the central thought, are kept clear and subordinate, there is no call to suppress them.

Above everything must the writer of Description see clearly what he wishes to picture, feel genuinely what he desires to communicate, and confine himself to that which is seen and felt by him,—by him alone out of all the persons who walk this earth. If it is with vague sensations that he is dealing, they must yet be clear and real to him; if it is with the emotions of imaginary persons, it is with their emotions as these are felt by him. This is the most difficult task in literary art; it is, too, when properly accomplished, the most splendid triumph of literary skill.

---