A century ago, American essayist Agnes Repplier wrote about books and their authors in a manner that would later be described as impressionistic--a critical approach that focuses more on the subjective response of the reader than on the formal qualities of the text. Repplier borrowed the method from two of the major British critics mentioned in "Words," Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold. But unlike these British academics, Repplier wrote without the benefit of a university education:
[H]er formal education ended when her rebelliousness got her expelled from convent school at the age of 15. The many allusions and quotations in her essays testify to the fact that she read voraciously and always with a pencil in hand. Her essays flow from the tradition of the commonplace book. An early (1894) and anonymous reviewer in the Atlantic cited them as examples of 'the bookish essay,' a 'harvest of book-browsings' that makes 'no attempt at criticism beyond the report of the effect of a volume upon the personality of the essayist.'As you read the essay "Words" (originally published in 1896), consider what Repplier reveals about her own tastes in literary subject matter and style.
(Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier. Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997)
Words
by Agnes Repplier
"Do you read the dictionary?" asked M. Théophile Gautier of a young and ardent disciple who had come to him for counsel. "It is the most fruitful and interesting of books. Words have an individual and a relative value. They should be chosen before being placed in position. This word is a mere pebble; that a fine pearl or an amethyst. In art the handicraft is everything, and the absolute distinction of the artist lies, not so much in his capacity to feel nature, as in his power to render it."
We are always pleased to have a wholesome truth presented to us with such genial vivacity, so that we may feel ourselves less edified than diverted, and learn our lesson without the mortifying consciousness of ignorance. He is a wise preceptor who conceals from us his awful rod of office, and grafts his knowledge dexterously upon our self-esteem.
"Men must be taught as if you taught them not,An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice. Musicians know the value of chords; painters know the value of colors; writers are often so blind to the value of words that they are content with a bare expression of their thoughts, disdaining the "labor of the file," and confident that the phrase first seized is for them the phrase of inspiration. They exaggerate the importance of what they have to say--lacking which we should be none the poorer--and underrate the importance of saying it in such fashion that we may welcome its very moderate significance. It is in the habitual and summary recognition of the laws of language that scholarship delights, says Mr. [Walter] Pater; and while the impatient thinker, eager only to impart his views, regards these laws as a restriction, the true artist finds in them an opportunity, and rejoices, as Goethe rejoiced, to work within conditions and limits.
And things unknown proposed as things forgot."
For every sentence that may be penned or spoken the right words exist. They lie concealed in the inexhaustible wealth of a vocabulary enriched by centuries of noble thought and delicate manipulation. He who does not find them and fit them into place, who accepts the first term which presents itself rather than search for the expression which accurately and beautifully embodies his meaning, aspires to mediocrity, and is content with failure. The exquisite adjustment of a word to its significance, which was the instrument of Flaubert's daily martyrdom and daily triumph; the generous sympathy of a word with its surroundings, which was the secret wrung by Sir Thomas Browne from the mysteries of language--these are the twin perfections which constitute style, and substantiate genius. Cardinal Newman also possesses in an extraordinary degree Flaubert's art of fitting his words to the exact thoughts they are designed to convey. Such a brief sentence as "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt" reveals with pregnant simplicity the mental attitude of the writer. Sir Thomas Browne, working under fewer restraints, and without the severity of intellectual discipline, harmonizes each musical syllable into a prose of leisurely sweetness and sonorous strength. "Court not felicity too far, and weary not the favorable hand of fortune." "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." "The race of delight is short, and pleasures have mutable faces." Such sentences, woven with curious skill from the rich fabric of seventeenth-century English, defy the wreckage of time. In them a gentle dignity of thought finds its appropriate expression, and the restfulness of an unvexed mind breathes its quiet beauty into each cadenced line. Here are no "boisterous metaphors," such as [John] Dryden scorned, to give undue emphasis at every turn, and amaze the careless reader with the cheap delights of turbulence. Here is no trace of that "full habit of speech," hateful to Mr. [Matthew] Arnold's soul, and which, in the years to come, was to be the gift of journalism to literature.
Continued on page two
