The
difference is in the fact that we now see the very sources of the
activity within them; we not only share their vision, we watch them
absorbing it. Strether in particular, with a mind working so
diligently upon every grain of his experience, is a most luminous
painter of the world in which he moves--a small circle, but nothing in
it escapes him, and he imparts his summary of a thousand matters to
the reader; the view that he opens is as panoramic, often enough, as
any of Thackeray's sweeping surveys, only the scale is different, with
a word barely breathed in place of a dialogue, minutes for months, a
turn of a head or an intercepted glance for a chronicle of crime or
adulterous intrigue. That liberty, therefore, of standing above the
story and taking a broad view of many things, of transcending the
limits of the immediate scene--nothing of this is sacrificed by the
author's steady advance in the direction of drama. The man's mind has
become visible, phenomenal, dramatic; but in acting its part it still
lends us eyes, is still an opportunity of extended vision.
It thus becomes clear why the prudent novelist tends to prefer an
indirect to a direct method. The simple story-teller begins by
addressing himself openly to the reader, and then exchanges this
method for another and another, and with each modification he reaches
the reader from a further remove.
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