Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 76.djvu/868

860 of all people, worship lucidity. Let us add, then, the testimony of one of the younger French writers, a man of our own day. "Humanity hardly attaches itself with passion to any works of poetry and art," says Anatole France, "unless some parts of them are obscure and susceptible of diverse interpretations." And in another place in the same volume (Le Jardin d'Épicure) we come upon this fine saying: "What life has of the best is the idea it gives us of an unknown something which is not in it." How true that is of literature, also! The best thing we derive from a book is something that the author never quite succeeded in putting into it. What good reader (and without good reading there is no good writing) has not found a glimpse, a momentary brightness as of something infinitely far off, more exciting and memorable than whole pages of crystalline description?

Vagueness like this is the noblest gift of a writer. Artifice cannot compass it. If a man would have it, let him pray for a soul, and refresh himself continually with dreams and high imaginings. Then if, in addition, he have genius, knowledge, and literary tact, there may be hope for him. But even then the page must find the reader.

Of vagueness of a lower order there is always plenty; some of it a matter of individual temperament, some of it a matter of art, and some a matter of a want of art. It is not to be despised, perhaps, since it has utility and a marketable value. It results in the formation of clubs, and so is promotive of social intercourse. It makes it worth men's while to read the same book twice, or even thrice, and so is of use in relieving the tedium of the world. It renders unspeakable service to worthy people who would fain have a fine taste in literature, but for whom, as yet, it is more absorbing to guess riddles than to read poems; and it is almost as good as a corruption of the text to the favored few who have an eye for invisible meanings,—men like the famous French philosopher who discovered extraordinary beauty in certain profundities of Pascal, which turned out to be simple errors of a copyist.

This inferior kind of obscurity, like most things of a secondary rank, is open to cultivation, although the greater number of those who profit by such husbandry are slow to acknowledge the obligation. A bright exception is found in Thoreau. He was one who believed in telling the truth. "I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity," he writes. But he was too modest by half. He did attain to it, and in both kinds: sometimes in willful paradox and exaggeration, a sort of "Come, now, good reader, no falling asleep!" and sometimes, but less often,—for such visitations are rare with the best of men,—in some quick, unstudied phrase that opens, as it were, an unsuspected door within us, and makes us forget for the time being the author and his book.

Perhaps it would be true to say that when men are most inspired their speech becomes most like Nature's own,—inarticulate, and so capable of expressing things inexpressible. What book, what line of verse, ever evoked those unutterable feelings—feelings beyond even the thought of utterance —that are wakened in us now and then, in divinely favorable moments, by the plash of waters or the sighing of winds? When an author does aught of this kind for us, we must love and praise him, let his shortcomings be what they will. If a man is great enough in himself, or serviceable enough to us, we need not insist upon all the minor perfections.

For the rest, these things remain true; language is the work of the people, and belongs to the people, however lexicographers and grammarians may codify, and possibly, in rare instances, improve it. Commonplaces are the staple of literature. The great books appeal to men as men, not as scholars. A fog is not a cloud, though a man with his feet in the mud may hug himself and say, "Look, how I soar!" Preciosity is good for those that like it; they have their reward; but to set up a conventicle, with passwords and a private creed, is not to found a religion. In the long run, nothing is supremely beautiful but genuine simplicity, which may be a perfection of nature or the perfection of art; and the only obscurity that suits with it and sets it off is occasional, unexpected, momentary,—a sudden excess of light that flashes and is gone, surprising the writer first, and afterward the reader.