BIRTH OF FICTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 204, 28 August 1926, Page 36

BIRTH OF FICTION.

" TRUTH'S ELDER SISTER."

MR. KIPLING AND THE STORY.

At the centenary banquet of the Royal Society of Literature, attended by, many famous litterateurs, Mr. Rudyard Kipling was awarded the gold medal in recogni- j tion of his great cervices to literature, I and afterwards delivered an interesting! speech on fiction writing. The first to receive the coveted medal was Sir Walter Scott, and the most recent recipients have been Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Thomas Hardy. I know with whom you have seen fit to brigade mc in the ranks of literature. The fiction that I am worthy of that honour be upon your heade. Yet, at least, the art that I follow is not an unworthy one. For fiction is truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till someone had told a story. So it is the oldest of the arts, the mother of history, biography, philosophy, dogmatic or doubtful, and, of course, of politics. Fiction began when some man invented a story about another man. It developed when another man told tales about a woman. This strenuous epoch begat the first school of destructive criticism, as well as the first critic, who spent his short but vivid life in trying to explain that a man need not be a hen to judge tlu> merits of an omelette. He died, but the question he raised its still at issue. It was inherited by the earliest writers from their unle'tteriMl ancestors, who also bequeathed to them the entire stock of primeval plots and situations —those fifty ultimate comedies and tragedies to which the gods mercifully limit human action and suffering. This changeless aggregate of material workers in fiction through the ages have run into fresh moulds, adorned and adapted to suit tlie facts and the fancies of their own generation. The Elizabethane, for instance, stood on the edge of a new and wonderful world filled with happy possibilities. Their descendants, 3.')0" years later, have been shot into a world as new and as wonderful, but not quite as happy. And, in both ages, you can ccc writers raking the dumps of the English language for words that shall range further, hit harder, and explode over a wider area, than the service-pattern words in common uee.

This merciless search, trial, and scrapping of material is one with the continuity of life, which, we all know, is as a tale that is told, and which writers feel should be well told. All men are interested in reflections of themselves and their surroundings, and whether in the pure heart of a crystal or in a muddy pool; and nearly erery writer who supplies a reflection eecretly desires a sharo of immortality for the pains he has been at in holding up the mirror which also reflects himself. He may get his desire. Quite a dozen writers have achieved immortality in the 2500 years. From a bookmaker's—a real bookmaker's —point of view, the odds are not attractive, but fiction is built on fiction.

The true nature and Intention, then, of a writer's work do not lie within his own knowledge. And we know that the world makes little allowance for any glory of workmanship which a writer spends on material that does not interest. So it would seem that fiction is one of the few unsheltered occupations, in that there ,is equal victimisation on both sides, and no connection between the writer'e standard of life, his output, or — his wages! Under these conditions has grown up in England a literature lavish in all aspects —lavish with the inveterate unthrift of the English, who are never happy unlese they are throwing things away.

It is not permitted to a generation to know what, or how much, of ite effort will be carried forward to the honour and grace of our literature. The utmost a writer can hope is that there may survive of his works a fraction good enough to "be drawn upon later, to uphold or embellish some ancient truth restated, or some old delight reborn.