EXAMPLES

Adam Bede: story told by author's aunt, about 1840; retold to Lewes, and he suggests it is good material for fiction, December, 1856 ; writing begun, October 22, 1857; Chapter XIII finished, February 28, 1858; Vol. I finished in March; Vol. II begun about the middle of April; Chapter XVIII completed, May 15; Chapter XX, May 26; the fight "came to me as a necessity," May 30; Chapter XXI, June 10 ; Chapter XXV, July 7; Vol. II finished, September 7; Chapter LII finished, October 29; work finished, November 16; published (delayed on account of Bulwer's What will He do with It?), February, 1859.- Silas Marner: original conception, November, 1860; sixty pages, November 28; 230 pages, February 15, 1861; finished March 10. Wilhelm Meister - Lehrjahre: planned in 1775; begun and Book I finished, 1777; Books II and III, 1782; Book IV, 1783; Book V, 1784; Book VI, 1785; some work done, 1786; finished and published, after interval of no work, 1796.- Wanderjahre: short stories written or collected, 1794; work finished and published, after some years of labor, 1829.

Rasselas the evenings and nights of a single week. Castle of Otranto: about two months.-Pamela: three months. - Robinson Crusoe: April, 1719 to August, 1720 (planned long before). — Gulliver: "probable that the composition extended over a good many years" (Gosse). - Don Quixote: many years.—Waverley: begun and a third of first volume written, 1805; laid aside; last two volumes written in three weeks, 1814.- Gil Blas: 1715 to 1735.

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143. Technic of the Process.

Many of the great novel

ists from early times have had a lively interest in the technic of their art, but recently there has been unusual emphasis laid on the necessity of technical mastery. Such statements as the following are not exceptional: 1

Walter Besant: "For every art there is the corresponding science which may be taught."— Cody: "This foolish dictum . . . that 'the best writers believe that the art of fiction cannot be taught or analyzed.'” - Frank Norris: "Even a defective system is at any rate, in fiction

better than none."

1 These quotations are from works listed in the bibliography.

With the idea of technic is associated the idea of labor. Many novelists and critics would agree in the main with Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the "dignity of a work of art H depends on the amount and quality of mental labor employed in its production," 1 etc.

Balzac, Trollope, Spielhagen, and Howells are all exponents of the doctrine of labor, both in their theory and their practise. Trollope affirms, "there is no way of writing well, and also of writing easily." 2 Spielhagen says the germinal idea of a composition may be the gift of the gods, but after that, the rule is "diligence, diligence, diligence." 8

The labor of the novelist, roughly stated, consists in planning, executing, and revising. The relations of these three processes, in sequence and in amount, vary of course with every novel. In general, it is probable that the execution consumes more time than the other two tasks. The fact that there is no artistic physical process may be considered either an advantage or a disadvantage.

Spielhagen traces four steps in the composition of a novel.4

The attention to technical details is often larger than the average reader might suppose. Richardson was fully conscious of the problems of epistolary form. Scott gave thoughtful consideration to such matters as titles, mottos, and dialogic connectives. George Eliot was well aware of the "two plots" in Middlemarch. The treatment of the chapter as a perfectly distinct unit is carefully analyzed by Frank Norris. This last critic agrees substantially with Poe, in a general formula for the technical process — "in a phrase one could resume the whole system of fiction-mechanics preparation of effect."

The search for the mot propre on the part of certain French realistic "artists" is an exacting one. Manzoni spent considerable time in improving the dialect of I Promessi Sposi. The extensive revisions of

1 Opening of Fourth Discourse.

2 Barchester Towers, Vol I, Chapter XXX.

8 Technik des Romans, pp. 25, 33.

4 Ibid., p. 29.

Balzac after "copy was sent in, were a terror to the printers. Scott gave relatively little labor to revision. (See his general introduction to the Waverley Novels, 1829.)

The method of publication may be worthy of note in many cases. For some interesting details, see Cross' Life of George Eliot. Among long and notable fictions first appearing as periodical serials, are Anna Karénina and War and Peace.

Other literary undertakings are frequently on hand while a novel is being written. George Eliot writes of Silas Marner as "thrusting itself between me and the other book [Romola] I was meditating."

The practical phases of mechanical method - the time chosen for writing, the physical environment preferred, the use of stimulants, the preparation of copy, etc.— have their interest, and may at times be worth examination, in connection with the psychology of composition.

144. Psychology of the Process.-The writing of a novel may always be viewed as an artificial process, to some degree, and it may involve considerable change of consciousness in the author. Robiati1 distinguishes the "artistic personality" from the "human." It is said that professional humorists are often sedate or even melancholy persons when free from literary pressure; and Mackenzie, the author of one of the most lacrimose of English fictions, was known as a cheerfully social being in private life.

Some critics find in this transformation of the writer's mind a tendency toward the abnormal, or even the pathological. Nordau, in Degeneration, includes several novelists among his studies of literary degenerates. Rousseau had a theory that the novel in general was the product of degenerate conditions, and Carlyle at times held with more or less seriousness the idea that silence was an eminent characteristic of perfect sanity.

In such authors as Swift, Gogol, Maupassant, and Nietzsche, the question merges into the larger one of the general relations of genius 1 Il Romanzo Contemporaneo in Italia.

and insanity. There are many less tragic examples of abnormal condition associated with literary labor. Scott was seriously affected by the excitement and fatigue of composition. Beckford states that the labor on Vathek made him "very sick." Cross, in his Life of George Eliot, speaks of Romola as "ploughing into" the author, and her own summary is, “I began it a young woman— I finished it an old woman." In spirit if not in letter, some of the greater novelists might describe their masterpiece as

66 . . . il poema sacro,

Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,

Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro."1

Even the "cielo," broadly interpreted, is not always inappropriate to the novelist. Flaubert's "art was his religion." (Lanson; Gilbert.) Of the failure to combine the secular duty with the religious aspiration, George Eliot speaks bitterly, in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists: "as a general rule, the ability of a lady novelist to describe actual life and her fellow-men is in inverse proportion to her confident eloquence about God and the other world, and the means by which she usually chooses to conduct you to true ideas of the invisible is a totally false picture of the visible."

During composition, a novelist may be conscious of his material, form, or purpose; of the reader or of himself. He may concentrate his mind on one of these interests as a central point, or wander unsteadily from one to another. Completely developed realistic theory allows the author scarcely a standing-place, in his private personality. He must either lose himself in his characters and plot, or hold aloof from them, as impartial philosopher or pure "artist." These views of the relation of a novelist to his work suggest an interesting comparison with theories of histrionic

art.

The following notes may indicate the vast variety of data which could easily be collected on the matter of the author's center of consciousness (compare Section 129):

Compare the use of the word "puppet" for the dramatis personæ, with the statement that to Balzac his characters were 66 more real than persons of flesh and blood."

Scherer gives as the essence of George Eliot's method, "artistic inspiration, rapid work, and sense of compulsion." The last element is often mentioned as an essential in true artistic creation. Novelists also note that the unexpected is to be expected.

Zola's theory of plot-composition as a kind of scientific experiment. According to Spielhagen, the novelist should work in an atmosphere of "ruhige Objektivität."

Scott testified that he "repeatedly laid down . . . future work to scale, divided it into volumes and chapters," etc., but that when the creative fever developed, he abandoned conscious plan for spontaneous imagination.

Gilbert "Le grand dogme du réalisme c'est l'impersonnalité" (p. 161). "L'art pour l'art" is discussed in Gilbert (pp. 122, 162), and Lanson1 (p. 998).

George Eliot is severe on those novelists who embody personal experience in their work, without great transformation. (Lady Novelists.)

Cody: 1 "Self-consciousness during writing is most dangerous. No better way of escaping it than by a rigorous course of self-conscious preparation" (p. 40).

Frank Norris: 1 "The moment, however, that the writer becomes really and vitally interested in his purpose, his novel fails." But if the purpose is part of the general philosophy of the novelist, it is not easily escaped. Gilbert notes that the theme of Madame Bovary is almost an idée fixe - "toujours la disproportion entre le rêve et l'existence."

Trollope criticizes the Radcliffian habit of mystification, and gives his own doctrine, "that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other." (Barchester Towers, Vol. I, Chapter 15.)

The preceding paragraphs consider composition mainly from a statical point of view. It is much more complex when viewed as a continual though irregular development. It is doubtless impossible for any one not a novelist to

1 Reference is to works listed in the bibliography.