In Marius probably, if it is
to be called a novel, the art of drama is renounced as thoroughly as
it has ever occurred to a novelist to dispense with it. I scarcely
think that Marius ever speaks or is spoken to audibly in the whole
course of the book; such at least is the impression that it leaves.
The scenes of the story reach the reader by refraction, as it were,
through the medium of Pater's harmonious murmur. But scenes they must
be; not even Pater at his dreamiest can tell a story without incident
particularized and caught in the act. When Marius takes a journey,
visits a philosopher or enters a church, the event stands out of the
past and makes an appeal to the eye, is presented as it takes place;
and this is a movement in the direction of drama, even if it goes no
further. Pater, musing over the life of his hero, all but lost in the
general sentiment of its grace and virtue, is arrested by the definite
images of certain hours and occasions; the flow of his rumination is
interrupted while he pauses upon these, to make them visible; they
must be given a kind of objectivity, some slight relief against the
dim background. No story-teller, in short, can use a manner as
strictly subjective, as purely personal, as the manner of The Awkward
Age is the reverse.
But as for this book, it not only ends one argument, it is also a
turning-point that begins another.
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