Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/19

 the outward story, or destroying its credibility, at the same time confers upon it dual quality and transcendence. The outer or written plot, which is the progress of the story and the history of the characters, must by its nature be direct and objective, and in precise proportion to the definiteness with which it is formulated, of limited significance. It acquires depth and universality from other, remotely hidden sources. Individual experience may properly be interpreted by the experience of the race, in whose generalizations it finds a corrective. Any act, moreover, in so far as it is at all intelligible, must look for explanation to the ultimate impulses and broad reactions of man's nature, to the faculties and processes of the mind which are most general, and so have come almost to have the force of personifications. This is the genesis of the type and universality of the idealist, which through the ages have by common consent constituted the hall-mark of great art. To draw upon these vast stores of experience, handed down immemorially through the ages as the gathered wisdom of the centuries, is the specific problem of the artist. Usually the task has been approached blindly, and the solution has been left more or less to chance, as a matter of accident or of temperament—the consequence of a happy stroke of what is vaguely called genius. The progress of science, however, has clarified our vision of the unconscious. Our insight into its mysteries is keener, more penetrating now than before. Casual knowledge has made way for system. In Benavente, the exploitation of this underworld replaces the banalities of the older playwrights, and is the result not only of genius but of method. From the common treasury of humanity, he conjures an inner, unwritten, suggested universal plot, which is not related to the outward story by any artificial means, and never itself definitely given form, yet which parallels and synchronizes with the outward course of events, underlying and interpreting them, always and under whatever conditions, containing within itself not only the motive and driving power, but also the criticism of the play. Without ever rising to the surface, never under any circumstances seeking expression in words, whether in dialogue or in stage directions, the under, buried