A Novelist on Novels. George Walter Lionel

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СКАЧАТЬ fail because their literary leaders go to sleep, or march them into bogs. No crude mind can jump into ancient literature; modern literature alone can help it, namely cleanse its nearest section, and prepare it for further strain. The limits of literary taste can, in each person, be carried as far as that person's intellectual capacity goes, but only by degrees. In other words, limit your objective instead of failing at a large operation.

      I am not prepared to lay down a complete list, but I am prepared to hint at one. If I had to help a crude but willing taste, I would handle its reading as follows: —

      First Period

      Reading made up exclusively of recent novels, good, well-written, thoughtful novels, not too startling in form or contents. I would begin on novels because anybody can read a novel, and because the first cleansing operation is to induce the subject to read good novels instead of bad ones. Here is a preliminary list: —

      Tony-Bungay (Wells)

      Kipps (Wells)

      The Custom of the Country (Wharton)

      The Old Wives' Tale (Bennett)

      The Man of Property (Galsworthy)

      Jude the Obscure (Hardy)

      Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Hardy)

      Sussex Gorse (Kaye-Smith)

      and say twenty or thirty more of this type, all published in the last dozen years. It is, of course, assumed that interest would be maintained by conversation.

      Second Period

      After the subject (victim, if you like) had read say thirty of the best solid novels of the twentieth century, I think I should draw him to the more abstruse modern novels and stories. In the first period he would come in contact with a general criticism of life. In the second period he would read novels of a more iconoclastic and constructive kind, such as: —

      The Island Pharisees (Galsworthy)

      The New Machiavelli (Wells)

      Sinister Street (Mackenzie)

      The Celestial Omnibus (Forster)

      The Longest Journey (Forster)

      Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)

      The White Peacock (Lawrence)

      Ethan Frome (Wharton)

      Round the Corner (Cannan)

      Briefly, the more ambitious kind of novel, say thirty or forty altogether. At that time, I should induce the subject to browse occasionally in the Oxford Book of English Verse.

      Third Period

      Now only would I come to the older novels, because, by then, the mind should be supple enough to stand their congestion of detail, their tendency to caricature, their stilted phrasing, and yet recognise their qualities. Here are some: —

      The Rise of Silas Lapham (Howells)

      Vanity Fair (Thackeray)

      The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith)

      The Way of All Flesh (Butler)

      Quentin Durward (Scott)

      Guy Mannering (Scott)

      Briefly, the bulk of the works of Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. 'Barry Lyndon' twice, and Trollope never. Here, at last, the solid curriculum, but only, you will observe, when a little of the mud of the magazines had been cleaned off. Rather more verse too, beginning with Tennyson and Henley, passing on to Rossetti and perhaps to Swinburne. Verse, however, should not be pressed. But I think I should propose modern plays of the lighter kind, Mr Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara and John Bull's Other Island, for instance. One could pass by degrees to the less obvious plays of Mr Shaw, certainly to those of St John Hankin, and perhaps to The Madras House. I think also a start might be made on foreign works, but these would develop mainly in the

      Fourth Period

      Good translations being available, I would suggest notably: —

      Madame Bovary (Flaubert)

      Resurrection (Tolstoi)

      Fathers and Children (Turgenev)

      Various short stories of Tchekoff.

      And then, if the subject seemed to enjoy these works,

      L'Education Sentimentale (Flaubert)

      Le Rouge et le Noir (Stendhal)

      The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoievsky)

      Mark this well, if the subject seemed to enjoy them. If there is any strain, any boredom, there is lack of continuity, and a chance of losing the subject's interest altogether. I think the motto should be 'Don't press'; that is accepted when it comes to golf; why has it never been accepted when it affects man? This period would, I think, end with the lighter plays of Shakespeare, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew, and perhaps Hamlet. I think modern essays should also come in via Mr E. V. Lucas, Mr Belloc, and Mr Street; also I would suggest Synge's travels in Wicklow, Connemara, and the Arran Islands; this would counteract the excessive fictional quality of the foregoing.

      Fifth Period

      I submit that, by that time, if the subject had a good average mind, he would be prepared by habit to read older works related with the best modern works. The essays of Mr Lucas would prepare him for the works of Lamb; those of Mr Belloc, for the essays of Carlyle and Bacon. Thus would I lead back to the heavier Victorian novels, to the older ones of Fielding and Sterne. If any taste for plays has been developed by Shakespeare, it might be turned to Marlowe, Congreve, and Sheridan. The drift of my argument is: read the easiest first; do not strain; do not try to 'improve your mind,' but try to enjoy yourself. Than books there is no better company, but it is no use approaching them as dour pedagogues. Proceed as a snob climbing the social ladder, namely, know the best people in the neighbourhood, then the best people they know. The end is not that of snobbery, but an eternal treasure.

      I think that my subject, if capable of developing taste, would find his way to the easier classic works, such as Carlyle's French Revolution, Boswell's Life of Johnson, perhaps even to Wesley's Journal. But at that stage the subject would have to be dismissed to live or die. Enough would have been done to lead him away from boredom, from dull solemnity and false training, to purify his taste and make it of some use. The day is light and the past is dark; all eyes can see the day and find it splendid, but eyes that would pierce the darkness of the past must grow familiar with lighter mists; to every man the life of the world about him is that man's youth, while old age is ill to apprehend.

      Litany of the Novelist

      There are times when one wearies of literature; when one reads over one's first book, reflects how good it was, and how greatly one was misunderstood; when one considers the perils and misadventures of so accidental a life and likens oneself to those dogs described by Pliny who run fast as they drink from the Nile for fear they should be seized by the crocodiles; СКАЧАТЬ