Growth and Structure of the English Language
Loan-words have been called the milestones of philology, because in a great many instances they permit us to fix approximately the dates of linguistic changes. But they might with just as much right1 be termed some of the milestones of general history, because they show us the course of civilization and the wanderings of intentions and institutions, and in many cases give us valuable information as
to the inner life of nations. When in two languages we find no trace of the exchange of loan-words one way or the other, we are safe to infer2 that the two nations have had nothing to do with each other. But if they have been in contact, the number of the loan- words and still more the quality of the loan-words, rightly in- terpreted, will inform us of their reciprocal relations, they will show us which of them has been the more fertile in ideas and on what domains of human activity each has been superior to the other. If all other sources of information were closed to us except such loan- words in our modem North-European languages as "piano,"
"soprano," "opera," "libretto," "tempo," "adagio" etc., we should still have no hesitation in drawing the conclusion that Italian music has played a great role all over Europe. Similar instances might easily be multiplied, and in many ways the study of language brings home to us the fact that when a nation produces something that its neighbours think worthy of imitation these will take over not only the thing but also the name. This will be the general rule, though exceptions may occur, especially when a language possesses a native word that will lend itself without any special effort to the new thing imported from abroad. But if a native word is not ready to handle it is easier to adopt the ready-made word used in the other country; this foreign word is very often imported even in cases where it would seem to offer no great difficulty to coin an adequate expression by means of native word-material. As, on the other hand,
'just as much right - по справедливости
2 we are safe to infer - мы вправе сделать вывод
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there is generally nothing to induce one to use words from foreign languages for things one has just as well at home, loan-words are nearly always "technical" words belonging to one special branch of knowledge or industry, and may be grouped so as to show what each nation has learnt from each of the others.
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9
Hamlin Garland
Local Color in Art
Local color in fiction is demonstrably the life of fiction. It is the native element, the differentiating element. It corresponds to the endless and vital charm of individual peculiarity. It is the differences which interest us1; the similarities do not please, do not forever stimulate and feed as do the differences. Literature would die of dry rot if it chronicled the similarities only, or even largely.
Historically, the local color of a poet or dramatist is of the greatest value. The charm of Horace is the side light he throws on the manners and customs of his time. The vital in Homer lies, after all, in his local color, not in his abstractions. The sagas of the North delineate more exactly how men and women lived and wrought in those days, therefore they have always appealed to me with infinitely greater power than Homer.
Similarly, it is the local color of Chaucer that interests us today. We yawn over his tales of chivalry which were in the manner of his contemporaries, but the Miller and the Priest interest us. Wherever the man of the past in literature shows us what he really lived and loved, he moves us. We understand him, and we really feel an interest in him.
Every great moving in literature today is full of local color. It is this element which puts the Norwegian and Russian almost at the very summit of modern novel writing, and it is the comparative lack of this distinctive flavor which makes the English and French take a lower place in truth and sincerity.
1 It is the differences which interest us - ведь нас интересуют именно раз- личия
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Everywhere all over the modern European world, men are writing novels and dramas as naturally as the grass or corn or flax grows. The Provencal, the Gatalonian, the Norwegian is getting a hearing. This literature is not the literature of scholars1; it is the literature of lovers and doers, of men who love the modern and who have not been educated to despise common things.
These men are speaking a new word. They are not hunting themes, they are struggling to express.
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10
Frank Norris
The Novel with a "Purpose"
After years of indoctrination and expostulation on the part of the artists, the people who read appear at last to have grasped this one precept2 — "the novel must not preach" but "the purpose of the story must be subordinate to the story itself." It took a very long time for them to understand this, but once it became apparent they fastened upon it with a tenacity comparable only to the tenacity of the American schoolboy to the date "1492." "The novel must
not preach," you hear them say.
As though it were possible to write a novel without a purpose, even if it is only the purpose to amuse. One is willing to admit that this savours a little of quibbling3, for "purpose" and purpose to amuse are two different purposes. But every novel, even the most frivolous, must have some reason for the writing of it, and in that sense must have a "purpose."
Every novel must do one of three things — it must (1) tell something, (2) show something, or (3) prove something. Some novels do all three of these; some do only two, all must do at least one.
The ordinary novel merely tells something, elaborates a compli- cation, devotes itself primarily to things. In this class comes the novel of adventure, such as "The Three Musketeers."
1 scholars - зд. теоретики
2 precept — заповедь
3 savours a little of quibbling - имеет некий привкус двусмысленности
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The second and better class of novel shows something, exposes the workings of a temperament, devotes itself primarily to the minds of human beings. In this class falls the novel of character, such as
"Romola."
The third, and what we hold to be the best class1, proves so- mething, draws conclusions from a whole congeries of forces, social tendencies, race impulses, devotes itself not to a study of men but of man. In this class falls the novel with the purpose, such as "Les
Miserables."
And the reason we decide upon this last as the highest form of the novel is because that, though setting a great purpose before it as its task, it nevertheless includes, and is forced to include, both the other classes. It must tell something, must narrate vigorous incidents and must show something, must penetrate deep into the motives and character of type-men, men who are composite pictures of a multitude of men. It must do this because of the nature of its subject, for it deals with elemental forces, motives that stir whole nations. These cannot be handled as abstractions
in fiction.
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