Many a story, from the large panoramic chronicle to the
small and single impression, postulates the story-teller, the
picture-maker, and by that method gives its best. Speaking in person
or reported obliquely, the narrator serves his turn. But where there
is no positive reason for him there is a reason, equally positive, for
a different method, one that assigns the point of view to the reader
himself. An undramatic subject, we find, can be treated dramatically,
so that the different method is at hand.
The story that is concerned, even entirely concerned, with the impact
of experience upon a mind (Strether's, say) can be enhanced to the
pitch of drama, because thought has its tell-tale gestures and its
speaking looks, just as much as an actor on the stage. Make use of
these looks and gestures, express the story through them, leave them
to enact it--and you have a story which in its manner is effectually
drama. Method upon method, the vision _of_ a vision, the process of
thinking and feeling and seeing exposed objectively to the view of the
reader--it is an ingenious art; criticism seems to have paid it less
attention than it deserves. But criticism has been hindered, perhaps,
by the fact that these books of Henry James's, in which the art is
written large, are so odd and so personal and so peculiar in all their
aspects. When the whole volume is full of a strongly-marked
idiosyncrasy, quite unlike that of anyone else, it is difficult to
distinguish between this, which is solely the author's, and his method
of treating a story, which is a general question, discussible apart.
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