Part 2

Chapter 23,947 wordsPublic domain

There are schools, and their patrons think them excellent, which out-herod Herod in their slaughter of the Innocents. Sad, indeed, is it that the young are so debarred, as they are, by the tasks imposed upon them, from all sweet and quickening 'impressions before the letter.' 'As in Hood's exquisite parody of George Robins's advertisement,' says George Henry Lewes in his novel, Ranthorpe, 'the pump is enumerated as having "a handle _within reach of the smallest child_," so do our illustrious educators wish to place the pump of knowledge within reach of the meanest capacity, that infants may forego the mother's milk to drink of its Pierian spring.' The time must come, it is no doubt in the very far future,--there are no indications, at present, of its being in the near future,--when it will be a pedagogical question how to induce a maximum amount of education with a minimum amount of brain-slaughter.

To get back, now, to the leading subject, vocal culture: a college student whose voice was neglected in early life, and, worst of all, whose sympathies were not then so attuned to good literature, by the influences and atmosphere of his home, that he came to have an inward impulsion to vocalize whatever he specially enjoyed in his reading, will not be much profited by a course in soulless elocutionary spouting. One may have an extraordinary natural gift of vocal expression which is superior to all adverse circumstances; but such an one is a _rara avis in terris_. Unless there be an early initiation into literature and its vocalization, in advance of the benumbing technical instruction of the schools, much cannot be expected from the great majority of students, in a literary or elocutionary direction. Truly 'illuminative reading,' to use Carlyle's phrase, is, apart from this condition, quite out of the question.

In the whole range of linguistic and literary studies, English, Latin, Greek, German, French, Italian, Spanish, or whatever be the language and literature studied, vocalization should be made of prime importance. So it should even in Anglo-Saxon and early English studies. When I conducted these studies, which I did, for more than twenty-five years, I pronounced to my classes all that was gone over. Beowulf I read to them entire. The interest of students in this Anglo-Saxon epic is much enhanced when it is fluently and _vigorously_ read. It is the only way by which the spirit of the poem can be brought home to them.

To know Chaucer as a poet, and not merely as a writer of fourteenth-century English, his verse, which, after a lapse of five hundred years, continues to rank with the best in the literature, _must_ be voiced; and to voice it, with the best knowledge of its pronunciation which has been attained to by Alexander J. Ellis, in his 'Early English Pronunciation,' and by other phonologists, requires a careful training of the voice and much practice. A susceptible reader comes, in time, to feel, to some extent, what the _intonation_, also, of the verse, must have been. To inspire students with a permanent interest in 'the morning star of song,' the teacher must be an accomplished reader of his verse, and must train his students to the best reading of it of which they are capable. Of course, a knowledge of the language in its historical development, previous to Chaucer, is desirable, though not indispensable, to appreciate his poetry; but the best vocalization, in the fullest sense of the word, which can be attained to, _is_ indispensable. To know of what earlier inflection any final _-e_ is the residual, is well enough; but I cannot think that any one would insist that such knowledge is indispensable to an appreciation of the poetry. Philology is not the handmaid to poetical cultivation. She can be dismissed altogether from service. There are no emergencies, even, where it is necessary to engage her temporarily.

In the study of Latin and Greek, even with our imperfect knowledge of the ancient pronunciation, and our no knowledge of the ancient intonation, of these languages, it is all important that the student should read Greek and Roman authors aloud. A student who has first been trained to read Greek and Latin prose with fluency and expression can then have considerable appreciation of verse in advance of any technical knowledge. And if he be trained to read in time, he will know what 'quantity' really means. As Latin and Greek verse is read in the schools (when it is read at all), it is accentual, not quantitative. I cannot think that there was any more quantity in Greek and Latin than there is in English, or in any other modern language, unless the Greeks and Romans _spoke_ more in time than we do, which is not likely. The Romans were probably more measured in their speech than the Greeks. Syllables, in Greek and Latin verse, must have been made long or short by an intoning of the verse.

When Vergil, or Ovid, or any hexameter poet, is read in the schools, his verse is the same as that of Longfellow's Evangeline, made up of _xa_, _ax_, and _axx_ feet. (Note 2.)

The following verse from Ovid, for example (Met. I. 143),

is read in the same way as the following from Longfellow's Evangeline:

and the first and second of the following verses from Ovid (Met. I. 148, 149),

are read in the same way as the following from Evangeline:

Ovid's Met. I. 22,

is read in the same way as Colossians iii. 19:

and Ovid's Met. I. 36,

is read in the same way as Psalm ii. 1:

_Rebus sic stantibus_, what's the use of talking about quantitative and accentual verse, as if they were really two kinds of verse? They are, to be sure, but they are not made so, in reading.

There is, in fact, no such thing as a spondee in ordinary speech. A true spondee must be made by voicing two syllables in equal time, and each without stress.

After having been trained in the 'scanning' of the schools (counting verses on the fingers), I threw aside and tried, and successfully tried, to forget all the scholarship of Latin verse, and began reading Vergil aloud and in time. I felt, at first, the movement of the verse backward, the ultimate and the penultimate foot came out first to my feelings; and in time, the movement of the entire verse became distinct.

Chaucer's verse must be read more in time than modern verse. (Note 3.) But all true verse must be read more in time than prose. And even impassioned prose, like some of De Quincey's, for example, must be read, more or less, in time. Perhaps it may be said that both prose and verse should be read in time according as the thought is spiritualized.

The choruses in Milton's Samson Agonistes can be properly appreciated only when read in time. The verse has been condemned by some critics, as if Milton, whose ear, as De Quincey says, was angelic, could not compose good verse when he dictated, in his blindness (to which the merit of the verse of the Paradise Lost and the Paradise Regained, was, no doubt, somewhat due), this last of his great poetic compositions!

Even in the study of modern languages, in the schools, there is not enough pronouncing of the original. It is mostly read off in English. If a teacher of a foreign language, whose pronunciation is correct (if it is not correct, he should not teach it), were simply to read aloud to his students, they having the text before their eyes, and were to require them to read, until they could pronounce correctly and fluently, the language studied, it would be a much better introduction to the language than the usual grammatical grind at the outset. A certain amount of grammatical grind is necessary, but a thorough training in pronunciation should come first of all. And then, if a student got nothing other than a good pronunciation, it would be certainly worth more to him than any amount of grammatical drill without it. A living language should not be studied scientifically until it is _known_. And the most important thing to know, at first, is its pronunciation.

Thomas Elwood, Milton's young Quaker friend, tells us, in his autobiography, of his reading Latin to the blind poet,--how he was required to get rid of his English pronunciation of the language, which his 'master' disliked, and to learn what he calls 'the foreign pronunciation,' his description thereof showing it to have been the Italian,--and then adds, 'Having a curious ear' (that is, a careful, accurate, nice, keenly susceptible ear), 'he understood by my tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open up the most difficult passages to me.'

This sentence suggests that much more might be done than is done, in the way of getting at students' appreciation of the Latin or Greek they may be reciting, by requiring them to voice the original in advance of translating. After having attained, by sufficient practice, an easy fluency of utterance, they could--or some could--bring out, through their voices, much which they could not reveal through translation or any amount of exegesis. All the members of the class might be on a par, so far as translation and exegesis go, in exhibiting their knowledge and appreciation of the original; but there would always be a few who could reveal through vocalization what is beyond translation and exegesis. And the professor would not necessarily need to have the 'curious ear' of a Milton to detect this kind of superiority of the few.

This brings me to say that, in literary examinations, whatever other means be employed, a sufficiently qualified teacher could arrive at a nicer and more certain estimate of what a student has appropriated, both intellectually and spiritually, of a literary product, or any portion of a literary product, by requiring him to read it, than he could arrive at through any amount of catechising. The requisite vocal cultivation on the part of the student is, of course, presumed.

But even an uncultivated voice would reveal appreciation, or the want of it, to some extent. For, after all, it is not so much the cultivated voice as spiritual appreciation, which tells in reading. I have heard 'poor, but honest' voices read some poems very effectively, and I have heard rich, but dishonest voices read very afflictingly. To adapt the French saying, _le style, c'est l'homme_, it may be said that _la lecture a haute voix c'est l'homme_. Reading reveals the reader's spiritual appreciation or the absence of it. And it is only to the extent that a reader assures his hearers that he has himself experienced the sentiments to which he gives utterance, that he impresses them. To one who has truly appreciated it, there is nothing more dreary than the usual elocutionary rendering of a poem.

Suppose a teacher were to examine a student on such a poem as Coleridge's Christabel by questioning him about it, and the student were to show that he was thoroughly acquainted with all the facts and details of the poem; there would still be no evidence of that student's susceptibility to what in the poem constitutes its mysterious charm,--none whatever. The student might be utterly destitute of such susceptibility, and yet he could just as well prepare himself to answer all the teacher's questions. A very small boy might do so, whose appreciation of poetry had not gone beyond 'How doth the little busy bee.' There might be a most susceptible literary genius in the class, who might fall below the other student in such an examination! It is quite likely that he would, for he would be chiefly occupied with the poem as a poem, and would assimilate its life without retaining a recollection of all the details, to which the other had given exclusive attention. Or suppose the poem were Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and the student were to pass a perfectly satisfactory examination thereupon, on the basis, say, of the valuable notes in Professor Hales's Longer English Poems; what would that signify, in comparison with the reading of the poem, which would unmistakably show whether he had responded, to any extent, or not, to its sweet evening pensiveness, to the general tenor of the theme, to the moulding spirit of the whole?

That he should understand the articulating thought, all the grammatical constructions (and there are several which need to be particularly looked into), and all points to which attention is called in Professor Hales's notes, is, to be sure, important; but an examination confined to these would not be any test of his literary capacity, of his susceptibility to the poem as a poem.

In these remarks, I assume, of course, that the prime object of a literary examination should be to test not so much a student's knowingness, as his literary capacity, which means a capacity to respond to the spiritual life of a poem, or any other form of literature, in the true sense of the word 'literature.' It is its spiritual life which makes a poem a poem, whatever the thought articulation may be. The student who is capable of such response should rank higher (nobody but a Dr. Dryasdust could deny this) than the student who could answer all questions which the most prolific questioner could ask him, but who could afford no evidence, through his reading of it, that the poem was anything more to him than was a primrose to Wordsworth's 'Peter Bell.'

As the student advances to the higher literature, he should be trained in the higher, more complex vocal functions demanded for its interpretation; he should understand, all along, in his vocal education, the relation of that education to the rendering of works of genius. He should always know what his vocal exercises are for, what relation they have to the interpreting and symbolizing of thought and feeling.

I remember a teacher who advised his scholars--I was one of them--to go out frequently into the open air and exercise their voices. And the poor fellows did go, and 'fright the isle from her propriety' with their bawling without having any conception of what they were bawling for. Their lungs were exercised thereby, but the bawling did nothing for their vocal training.

Vocal exercise must not only be physiologically intelligent, but there must always be some conception back of it which it is the aim of the exercise to realize in the voice. One may have a conception, more or less distinct, of how some very significant sentence in Shakespeare, for example, should be uttered, and yet his voice is not sufficiently obedient to his will and his feelings. He therefore has something to work after, and in time may vocally realize, to his full satisfaction, his conception; and in doing so, he has acquired some new and valuable control of his voice, which he can make use of, whenever required, in the rendering of other expressions.

A true poem is a piece of articulate music which may require to be long practised upon by the voice before all its possible significance and effectiveness be realized. But there must be an ideal back of the practice (merely to keep 'going over' the poem will not do); not, of course, an entirely distinct ideal, it may be more or less vague, but such an ideal as may be got in advance through a responsiveness to its informing life. This ideal will become more and more distinct in the course of the practice.

This is true of every form of art. The artist starts with an ideal more or less vague (but it is an ideal which motives all his work), and this ideal only gradually takes shape in the process of its realization in a picture or a statue. Composing continues to the end. The poet is still composing, still working after a fuller realization of his ideal, when he is making the last verbal change in his poem. (Note 4.) To quote from Browning's 'A Death in the Desert':

God's gift was that man should conceive of truth, And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake As midway help, till he reach fact indeed. The statuary ere he mould a shape Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next The aspiration to produce the same; So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, Cries ever, 'Now I have the thing I see': Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.

* * * * *

God only makes the live shape at a jet.

Interpretative reading goes on in the same way. After a reader's long familiarity with a poem, and when he thinks he has realized all its possibilities of vocal effectiveness, some new vocal movement on a single word, it may be, is suggested, which is a decided contribution to the effect before reached. The play of Hamlet abounds in little speeches, and single words, even, whose possibilities of expressiveness can hardly be exhausted. Every great poet writes, at times, more significantly than he knows.

In the creation of every great work of genius, a large degree of unconscious might enters; and this unconscious might the reader with the requisite degree of spiritual susceptibility may respond to. This is an activity of the highest order on the part of a reader. Melody, harmony, and every mode of form, are, to some extent, the product of an unconscious might. Deep feeling attracts to itself such elements of language as serve best to conduct it. Assonance, especially, is a manifestation of it. Paradise Lost abounds with the assonance which the dominant feeling of the poet induced.

When Hamlet is subjecting his friends to a searching examination in regard to the appearance of the ghost of his father, he asks 'His beard was grisly?' and then adds, 'no.' (The word is followed by a period, in the Folio.) What a varied expressiveness this little word 'no' admits of! When Macbeth says to his wife, when they are considering the murder of the king, 'If we should fail?' she replies 'We fail?' Though the interrogative is used in the Folio, the period would, perhaps, be the better pointing. However that be, the reading of 'we fail' involves much consideration; and so does the reading of thousands of single words in Shakespeare's Plays.

But, after all, it is not upon inflections and emphases and other vocal functions which pertain more especially to the interpretation of the articulating thought, that the true reader chiefly depends. The most important thing with him is the choral atmosphere in which a spiritualized composition requires to be presented. And it is in this respect that the art of reading particularly corresponds with the sister art of painting. The artist in form and color bathes his landscape in 'the light that never was, on sea or land,' or, if not that, in some light or other, some 'tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,' and which serves to reveal the feeling which he aimed to express through the landscape. The landscape itself corresponds in painting with the articulating thought in reading; but the spiritual attitude of the artist is exhibited through the light in which the landscape is bathed. And so the spiritual attitude of the reader is exhibited through his intonation, which corresponds with atmosphere in painting. A susceptible reader will, on the first reading of a poem or an impassioned prose composition, be more or less immediately responsive to the key-note of the composition. An increased familiarity will finally bring this key-note fully home to his feelings, or as fully as may be; and if he has made the articulating thought his own, he is now prepared to interpret the composition to the ears of others. A reader's success in interpreting such a poem as Tennyson's In Memoriam, for example, can be but partial if he has not adequately caught, and does not vocally reproduce, the key-note, however distinctly he may present the articulating thought. It is the tone which spiritualizes and quickens the thought; and it is the main object in reading, to spiritualize and quicken thought, to bring it into relation with the spiritual being of the hearer.

Vocal training, the most scientific and systematic, will not of itself make readers, that is, vocal interpreters of genius. Something more must be done than is at present done, in homes and schools, especially in homes, for the education of the spiritual nature; and this education must be begun early, must precede the education of the intellect. The premature forcing open of the bud of reason, which now prevails to a lamentable degree, must receive its due condemnation. It is a thing to be condemned from Christian pulpits. As George Henry Lewes says, in his novel, Ranthorpe, 'the child must _feel_ before it can _know_; and knowledge, great and glorious as it is, can never be the end of life: it is but one of the many means.'

It is quite superfluous to say that a reader should have a perfect articulation; that he should be able to command a wide range of pitch; all degrees of force, from _pianissimo_ to _fortissimo_; radical, median, vanishing, and compound stress; every variety of inflection, direct upward and direct downward inflection; equal and unequal, upward and downward, single and double waves; accelerated and retarded utterance; many qualities of voice; not to name numerous other vocal functions and attributes which are means to various kinds of interpretative ends. He should also have a complete knowledge of the language he is rendering, as a living organism,--an indispensable condition of his presenting the successive and involved groups of thought with the requisite distinctness of outline, and with the requisite perspective, determined by their relative value, of which he should have the nicest sense. A very important condition of perspective, I would say by the way, is the light touch which needs to be given to whatever is implied, has been anticipated, should be taken for granted, etc.,--the light touch which conveys the impression that the mind of the reader does not come down upon the parts receiving the same, those parts saying themselves, so to speak, but is occupied with the main current of thought. Any untrained voice can emphasize, but only a trained or a naturally unperverted voice can give the light touch successfully. Yet it is possible for the heaviest, clumsiest voice to be trained to the light touch, to delicacy of tint, just as one who is clay-fisted may, in time, attain to some delicacy of manipulation. The voice and the hand have wonderful possibilities, rarely realized; the former, when converted from the error of its ways, being, indeed, the most expressive organ of the soul; the latter being 'the consummation of all perfection as an instrument.'