A certain degree of artistic proportion may sometimes be found in the alternation of dialogic and non-dialogic form. (See Section 28.) Often, in the novel, better examples of proportion are found in the relation of small parts to a large part, than in the relation of parts to the whole composition. In a well-constructed episode there is often a satisfactory proportion between the incidents and the event, and between events and episode. In any scene which would be called finely artistic, there is a true distribution of values between the characters, the action and the settings. In the novel as a whole, common sense or moral sense may demand a reasonable proportion between mass and artistic meaning, between exhibition and interpretation, and between the tragic and the comic. As an example from Silas Marner, study the value of proportion in the relation of the Lantern Yard and the Raveloe life - in number of incidents and characters, in space given to exhibition and interpretation, in the massing at important turning points, etc. 204. The Comic and the Tragic. An initial idea of these qualities may be gained by a suggestive contrast of their characteristics. The following analysis may not prove very accurate, but it leads the way to an examination of the contrast in concrete examples. It is not to be assumed that any one item is sufficient to distinguish the two qualities, but a combination of several may be a fairly accurate test. THE COMIC (2) The pleasurable. (4) The intelligible. THE TRAGIC The abnormal. The unintelligible. These characteristics may be examined in the experience of life itself, as well as in art. In both life and art, among common conceptions of tragic condition are social ostracism (compare the treatment of exile in the epic and the drama), disease, insanity, crime, sin, and death. Pseudo-madness is a favorite motif through which to suggest the tragic without fully entering its domain, as in The Comedy of Errors. Temporary madness may also be introduced with comic effect, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Compare the treatment of madness in Don Quixote and in Sir Launcelot Greaves. Smollett had the power and the tendency to treat insanity both in a spirit of Gothic horror, and in a spirit of Shakespearian burlesque. Compare the treatment of death in the beginning of Sense and Sensibility and in Silas Marner. In the former example, death is scarcely tragic, because it is considered as a normal event, and looked at from a social point of view the view of comparatively happy living persons, who dominate the interest of the author and the reader. The responses of Miss Austen and George Eliot to Queen Gertrude's truism, "Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity," are curiously unlike. Very famous tragic conceptions of death are found in Werther and in Clarissa. Analyze the manner in which Richardson gives to the death of his heroine an unusually tragic effect. Any element of the comic or the tragic may be noted in the physical, mental, or moral world. Each world has its own comic and tragic aspects, and a combination of these aspects, or a contrast between them, offers a rich opportunity to the artist. Moral tragedy is sure to be found in all the greatest novels, in some form or other; but the treatment of what might be called intellectual tragedy the tragedy of the thinker is a specially favorite motif with many modern writers. The comic or the tragic may be found in either character or incident; and even the settings incline in the one direction or the other, by way of association. Other analyses may follow the contrast into the human and the superhuman, and into the exhibition and interpretation. In connection with plot, a very important phase of the relation of the comic to the tragic is found in movements from one to the other. There are some situations without apparent tendency in either direction-in equilibrium; but most important situations tend decidedly in one direction or the other. The four main movements are, (1) from the comic to the more comic; (2) from the comic to the tragic; (3) from the tragic to the more tragic; and (4) from the tragic to the comic. These four movements are not of equal frequency in plot-formation, or of equal value for artistic effect. They may be traced not only in the plot as a whole, but in single actions, in episodes, single events, etc. The "avoidance" of comic or tragic result when it seems inevitable, produces some striking effects. A point or situation of "final suspense," suggesting possible tragedy or possible comedy, before a catastrophe of opposite character, is found in perhaps the majority of well-formed plots, The novel 205. The Beautiful and the Unbeautiful. cannot rival several of the other arts in the presentation of absolute beauty. If the analysis of novelistic style in Chapter VIII was correct, the novel is not by nature devoted to the purely beautiful. One must turn to painting, music, sculpture, or lyric poetry for the embodiment of untroubled beauty; and the short story is better adapted to its expression than is the novel. The unbeautiful in a work of art may be justified — or explained in various ways, of which these are among the more important: it may be introduced for the sake of increasing the effect of the beautiful; or for the sake of truth, conceived as a nobler reality than beauty; or it may be allowed because it is presented with so much imagination the ideal rather than the beautiful being considered the supreme test of art. (See Moulton's study of Richard Third as the "ideal villain.") Struggle is commonly supposed to be an important element of the dramatic, and the great novels are usually characterized by a large dramatic element. Note the bearing on this conception of the following statement of a philosopher: "When we regard morality as involving a struggle of the will, it can scarcely impress us as beautiful." 1 As in the other analyses of this chapter, the beautiful and the unbeautiful may be traced in details, or in the whole work; in characters, sentiments, or incidents; in the physical, mental, or moral domain. Akin to the beautiful, if not considered as phases of it, are the sublime, the picturesque, the graceful, etc. Related to the conception of the unbeautiful in somewhat the same manner, are caricature and the grotesque. 206. Artistic Truth. - Truth may be conceived as fidelity to something outside the mind of the author-fidelity to individual facts; to the typical elements in those facts; to the goal toward which life seems to be moving, or to the purpose which seems to direct it. Another view of truth in art, more subjective, locates it in the mind of the artist. It may then take the form of faithful record of his impressions of the outer world; or the form of perfect allegiance to the ideal of his own inner world. In either of these views, artistic truth is substantially equivalent to sincerity. These various conceptions are obviously connected in part with some of the familiar "isms" in fiction. The large scope of the novel offers abundant opportunity for violation of truth, as in life itself it is more difficult to speak truth through a long career of various circumstances than through the commonplace events of an average day. In the difficulties due to the large array of miscellaneous 1 Mackenzie: Manual of Ethics; 3d ed. p. 30. data which he reviews, to the effort of attaining verisimilitude and unity of thought, the novelist is often tempted from the straight and narrow way, when the disciple of a simpler form of art might escape the danger. Truth is sometimes spoken of as either negative or positive. Reticence may give a false impression, and then arises the question, how far is the artist to be blamed for the erroneous result? It has been previously noticed that the biblical Book of Esther is, so far as the text is concerned, absolutely atheistic, in a negative way; but this fact does not imply that the work contains any positive atheism, or that the author was aware that he might produce a non-religious impression. Perhaps the artist cannot be placed upon the witness-stand to give "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," so help him God; though to the great artists, the situation is fully as serious as that of a court of justice. Sidney's Defense attempts to answer the old complaint that poetry is a lie. He declares, “Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth. This statement may be in some respects no more than sophism; but in another view, it seems to note clearly an important fact in the nature of artistic fiction. 207. Artistic Illusion. The artist finds, to a certain degree, a model for the æsthetic effects of illusion in nature herself. No one who has admired the marvelous mirages of seacoast or lakeshore could fail to see, imaginatively, the resemblance between them and the dream-pictures of human fancy. The student of psychology could make an interesting comparison between the development and effects of artistic illusion, and those of insanity, hallucination, and kindred forms of morbid mental condition. In the reception of art, "conviction" of the imagination is one matter; of the judgment, another. Probably a few weak minds here and |