In the drama of his mind
there is no personal voice, for there is no narrator; the point of
view becomes the reader's once more. The shapes of thought in the
man's mind tell their own story. And that is the art of picture-making
when it uses the dramatic method.
But it cannot always do so. Constantly it must be necessary to offer
the reader a summary of facts, an impression of a train of events,
that can only be given as somebody's narration. Suppose it were
required to render the general effect of a certain year in a man's
life, a year that has filled his mind with a swarm of many memories.
Looking into his consciousness after the year has gone, we might find
much there that would indicate the nature of the year's events without
any word on his part; the flickers and flashes of thought from moment
to moment might indeed tell us much. But we shall need an account from
him too, no doubt; too much has happened in a year to be wholly acted,
as I call it, in the movement of the man's thought. He must
narrate--he must make, that is to say, a picture of the events as he
sees them, glancing back. Now if he speaks in the first person there
can, of course, be no uncertainty in the point of view; he has his
fixed position, he cannot leave it. His description will represent the
face that the facts in their sequence turned towards _him_; the field
of vision is defined with perfect distinctness, and his story cannot
stray outside it.
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