Library / Literature & Fiction
Nine Short Essays
- Pages
- about 64
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 70 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
Truthfulness is as essential in literature as it is in conduct, in
fiction as it is in the report of an actual occurrence. Falsehood
vitiates a poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. Truthfulness is a
quality like simplicity. Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter of
clear vision and lucid expression, however complex the subject-matter may
be; exactly as in life, simplicity does not so much depend upon external
conditions as upon the spirit in which one lives. It may be more
difficult to maintain simplicity of living with a great fortune than in
poverty, but simplicity of spirit--that is, superiority of soul to
circumstance--is possible in any condition. Unfortunately the common
expression that a certain person has wealth is not so true as it would be
to say that wealth has him. The life of one with great possessions and
corresponding responsibilities may be full of complexity; the subject of
literary art may be exceedingly complex; but we do not set complexity
over against simplicity. For simplicity is a quality essential to true
life as it is to literature of the first class; it is opposed to parade,
to artificiality, to obscurity.
The quality of truthfulness is not so easily defined. It also is a matter
of spirit and intuition. We have no difficulty in applying the rules of
common morality to certain functions of writers for the public, for
instance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, or the newspaper
correspondent, or the narrator of any event in life the relation of which
owes its value to its being absolutely true. The same may be said of
hoaxes, literary or scientific, however clear they may be. The person
indulging in them not only discredits his office in the eyes of the
public, but he injures his own moral fibre, and he contracts such a habit
of unveracity that he never can hope for genuine literary success. For
there never was yet any genuine success in letters without integrity.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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