in vocabulary, and can on occasion carry a good weight of poetry without burden.' NOTE. How prose may take elements of poetic diction, and on what occasion, will come up for more detailed discussion in the next chapter; see under Poetic Diction and its Interactions with Prose, pp. 163-170, below. II. Prose Arrangement of Words. This same principle of utility, or practical effect, pushed forward into the arrangement of words, identifies itself with the truth, already stated, that prose as straightforward discourse does not depart from the natural order of words. Liberties of arrangement, of course, are open to it, as great perhaps as to poetry; but they are taken only for a reason which makes the new order, however unusual, for the time being the natural order. The Rationale: Directness and Emphasis. The practical object that dominates the order of a sentence is to steer its thought directly and without dislocation to its goal, and at the same time to put each word and clause in the position where they will emphasize themselves in the degree commensurate with their intrinsic importance. If in any sentence this reason for a particular arrangement is not fairly traceable, the effect is either crude or artificial; either the writer does not know better, or he is indulging some fantastic whim. NOTE. In the following sentence the inverted order of the verbs (the auxiliary before the subject) is not called for by any specially impassioned character of the thought; and the effect is simply crudeness: "Indeed, in nearly all of George Eliot's novels can we trace in some character a likeness to their creator; in Gwendolen even has the writer infused, perhaps unconsciously, something of her own personality." The slang exclamation "Right you are!" current a few years ago, owed its vogue to its fantastic change of order; there is no other reason for it. 1 "Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose."— LAndor. In poetry the exigencies of metre often necessitate arbitrary changes in the order of words. Objects are put before verbs and even before prepositions, verbs march freely before their subjects, and many other inversions equally violent pass unchallenged, the reader mentally translating the order of expression to the order of thought. But in the finest poetic artistry even this amount of license is a suspect; and the problem is either to keep it down to its lowest limits or to justify it by emphasis as well as by metre. The poems whose phrasing seems most monumental and inevitable move most nearly in the natural order. In prose such license does not weigh at all; it is simply turning the thought without reason out of its direct line. Inversions are, indeed, frequent in prose; it is perfectly natural to transpose words and clauses into almost any desired position; but the change is made for one or both of two ends: to throw an element into a desired stress or emphasis; or to group related ideas together, thus securing greater continuity in the movement of the thought to its goal. NOTE. In the well-known hymn of Cowper's, "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform," the second line has to be inverted for no other reason than the demands of accent and metre; such inversion would not be admissible in prose. To show, however, that such inversion is a necessity, by no means a requisite, of poetry, we might quote Wordsworth's "She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there was none to praise in the three stanzas of which there is not a single violation of what would be quite admissible prose order. For the Rationale of Inversion, see below, p. 276. How Euphony ranks in Prose. Euphony or smoothness of word and structure, dependent as it is on sound, is more generally associated with poetry than with prose; the latter, on its standard of utility, relying for all its processes on the requirements of the idea. The question of agreeable sound, then, cannot well come to the front until the claims of directness and force, with all their practical problems of unambiguousness and stress, are satisfied. Just here a caution is needed, especially on the part of young writers. Passages that in the ardor of creation they compose with great though perhaps uneven vigor are apt to seem intolerably rough when they look them over in a more critical mood; and so in revising they are liable to smooth all the life out of them. Here is a case where smoothness gets the whip hand; and the problem of rhetorical art is to retain the life and vigor, which are essential to the proper interpretative mood, and at the same time remove so much of the roughness as imports crude lack of skill. There is a phase of euphony, however, which plays a large part in prose. It is that conformity of sound to some descriptive picture, or more inwardly to some sphere of ideas, which is shown in the key of words. More striking still in poetry, this plays a part in prose all the more artistic because it has to be hidden and to a degree unsuspected. As soon as such subtle manipulation of phrase sets up for itself, the immediate effect is disenchantment; the passage seems to have become effeminate. Let the idea dominate: its intrinsic vigor, its trenchancy, its rudeness, even its imaginative beauty; and the resulting smoothness or ruggedness of the passage justifies itself. This is giving euphony its proper ancillary place. III. Prose Connection of Words. - As the quality of impressiveness or force, whether of passion or imagination, dominates in 1 See above, p. 104 sq. poetry, so the dominant and indispensable quality of prose, whatever else is secured or sacrificed, is clearness; and to this end its texture must be a continuity, wherein all the relations of part to part are plainly recognized and marked. It is in the maintenance of this clear continuity of texture that the connection of words assumes an importance in prose, and a fine delicacy, beyond what it has in poetry. Joints and Bridges in the Structure. What poetry would often be free to omit, or leave the reader to supply, prose must be more scrupulous to express, namely the subordinate parts, the particles and phrases of relation which define the turningpoints of the thought and which make the transitions from one stage or phase of the thought to another. There are thus : at every step both a distinction and a continuity to be looked out for the successive assertions both to be set apart from each other in parallel or subordinate or contrasted relation, and at the same time joined with each other as parts of one tissue and movement. If at any point these relations are not obvious, or not natural, the effect is that of a jolt or dislocation, and not infrequently some part may appear in false light or prominence. NOTE. To illustrate how much and what kind of material that may be absent from poetry must be present in prose, let us endeavor to express the thought of the following stanza from Browning, a stanza characterized by great condensation, in such prose as by the ordinary standard will be adequate to give the idea its requisite fulness : "Why from the world,' Ferishtah smiled, 'should thanks Go to this work of mine? If worthy praise, Praised let it be and welcome: as verse ranks, So rate my verse: if good therein outweighs Aught faulty judged, judge justly! Justice says: Be just to fact, or blaming or approving: But generous? No, nor loving!'" 1 In changing this to prose, we must occasionally substitute a prose word or idiom, or a prose order, for the poetic. The added matter is put in 1 BROWNING, Ferishtah's Fancies, xii. brackets. "Why," [said] Ferishtah [with a] smile, “should thanks be rendered by the world for this work of mine? If [it is] worthy [of] praise, let it be praised, and [the praise will be] welcome. [Let men simply] rate my verse as verse ranks. If [what is] good in it outweighs [what is ad-] judged [to be] faulty, [let them at all costs] judge justly. Justice demands [merely] that they honestly acknowledge [whatever is] fact, whether [in] blame or [in] approval; but [that they should be] generous? No; [it does not demand that], — nor [that they should be] loving [either]." Here it will be seen that the words to be supplied are almost exclusively particles, that is, words and phrases of subordinate rank whose business it is to supply the joints and shadings and bridgings of the thought. The Symbolic Element. — Apart from this distinction between prose diction and poetic diction, it is important here to take note of the two classes of words that make up the vocabulary of every language, - called by Professor Earle PRESENTIVE and SYMBOLIC words. The presentive are those which by themselves present a definite conception to the mind; such are nouns, verbs, and in lower degree adjectives and adverbs. On these we depend for the body and substance of the thought. The symbolic words are those which by themselves contribute nothing to the thought, except as symbols of some presentive idea or of some relation between ideas; such are pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions. On these we depend for well-nigh all that makes the thought over from a loose accretion of words to an organism. It is evident, then, that the masterly management of the symbolic element is of unspeakable importance in the literary art. In the skilful use of this element lies the secret of fineness and flexibility of language. Symbolic words, in their endlessly varied offices of modifying, repeating, connecting, coloring the thought, are what make provision "for the lighter touches of expression, the vague tints, the vanishing points." Hence it is mostly by these that we estimate the efficiency of 1 EARLE, Philology of the English Tongue, pp. 218 sqq.; English Prose, p. 60. |