We only truly know what we have, or what we have
lost and regret, as, for example, childish innocence, virginal purity,
or stainless honor. The truest and best judge, then, is Infinite
Goodness, and next to it, the regenerated sinner or the saint, the man
tried by experience or the sage. Naturally, the touchstone in us becomes
finer and truer the better we are.
November 3, 1880.--What impression has the story I have just read made
upon me? A mixed one. The imagination gets no pleasure out of it,
although the intellect is amused. Why? Because the author's mood is one
of incessant irony and _persiflage_. The Voltairean tradition has been
his guide--a great deal of wit and satire, very little feeling, no
simplicity. It is a combination of qualities which serves eminently well
for satire, for journalism, and for paper warfare of all kinds, but
which is much less suitable to the novel or short story, for cleverness
is not poetry, and the novel is still within the domain of poetry,
although on the frontier. The vague discomfort aroused in one by these
epigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds.
Ambiguity of style keeps one in a perpetual state of tension and
self-defense; we ought not to be left in doubt whether the speaker is
jesting or serious, mocking or tender.
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