SHORT STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHORT STORIES.

ART AND MYSTERY. it ATMOSPHERE” IMPORTANT. (By M, H. HOLCROFT.) An authority on magazine stories recently laid down the present-day requirements of English editors. Farfetched tales are not required. Most acceptable is the competently-written story of people who still have money, who are able to travel a little and have time to fall in and out of love amid pleasant, or even exotic, surroundings. Drama must be straightforward and earthly; that is to say, it must be concerned with tangible situations and have the pungency of powder fumes. Occultism is not wanted.

This narrowing of categories may be merely the sign of a dwindling public. The old monthly magazine dies slowly; but it is dying nevertheless, and this would be a tragic thing for literature were it not that London dailies have at last discovered the feature values of the short story. In a sense, too, this may mean emancipation of method. The magazine tradition has not been helpful to writers who have been trying to develop the short story as an art-form. Massively opposed to innovation, its insistence on “story” has denied expression to rare and sensitive talents. And even now, of course, with the newspaper market suddenly made available in England, it would be unwise to rejoice prematurely. Newspapers with a circulation of millions will be looking chiefly for amusement values; the influence of Tchekhov may be baffled here as surely as in the heavy-weight monthlies. But something will be gained.

A shortage of space, for instance, willconstrain writers "to an economy of expression and a new subtlety in method. At present the surprise ending is popular; but this is really a revival and cannot be expected to last. It will be found that, although a story in the older manner—something in the nature of a novel in miniature—cannot be compressed into the shorter space a great deal can be done with the projection of a single situation or in the character study that evolves within a limited framework of action. Artists who use the vein of Tchekhov and Katherine Mansfield have been doing this sort of thing, without encouragement, for quite a number of years. The Mysterious Process. The importance of “atmosphere” . is quickly discovered by those. who write in a limited space. And this, perhaps, is the most elusive quality in fiction. In its purest form it belongs to poetry, where the limitation of metre and rhythm calls for words which must be chosen for their fitness and concentrated power. Coleridge could create an atmosphere of mystery and terror in a

few strong lines; his “Christabel,” even more than “The Ancient Mariner,” is a masterpiece of suggestion. For him, the unknown was always near, and sometimes impinging, sp that the forms of familiar things seen in daylight could seem to tremble and change, as if they contained, an effluent and other-worldly force .which was sometimes on the verge of breaking through into a visible reality. This power of excited - : fancy touches all Iris poetry.

A short story can hold something of the same mystery, and power because it is little more than a fragment .and depends for success on the strength and truth of its conception. Most writers have known the idea which comes unexpectedly, like a visitation from without. In a flash it is in the mind: a nucleus for thought and feeling which comes hastening from the inner unconscious darkness. The materials of the strange synthesis are our own, but who can say whence comes the impulse which first invades the mind and rouses it to the excitement of composition? Inadequacy of Words.

Sometimes the idea is a dramatic, situation, sometimes it is a character, not known to the. author as a person, but existing against the dimness of his mind with a strange urgency: as if this were all the life that could. *be granted to some human soul straying baffled on the edge of experience. Such moments of vision are not to be resisted, and if we strive to reach further into the darkness which surrounds them'we are simply thrust more quickly towards the inadequacy of words.

Nothing is more puzzling to a writer than the° incomplete nature of this experience. He is tempted to believe that in the act of expressing his idea he will be able to see the whole of it. But as he puts more of the scene on to paper its clearness fades from his mind; as the character who has strayed within the reach of his consciousness becomes fixed in word and gesture he finds that he knew Jess of liim than he expected. In this _ way the writing of short stories remains a mystery as much to the writer as to the reader. Poetic Values. But something survives. The afterglow of the creative mood is the intangible quality of a good story, and will exist according to the depth and force of the conception. That is why the short stories of Tchekhov come so near to poetry. He has a wonderful way of projecting his inner view of a situation so that although he may seem to use scanty materials in building his background we find it wavering before us in quiet colours, until in a crisis ot human passion it becomes suddenly distinct.

If we examine his stories closely we can find that part of his success is due to his use of all the senses. He not only makes us see; he also makes us hear and touch —and smell. The chill of a Russian twilight rises from the damp ground; the sound of bells is somehow involved with the dull glow of winter sunset. And if it ’ is summer we are made to smell the mown hay, to see the fallen leaves in the orchard and to feel the mist which comes wreathing up from the river. All this is the texture of his writing, and is a part of the thoughts and feelings of his characters. It comes

so strongly into his stories because it is the surviving force of an . impulse which has claimed the whole of him.

Tchekhov, however, was. able to create something more than an outer’ scene, or the influences of earth upon her sons. In a short story called “Terror” he describes tho spiritual state of one of his characters so clearly that the 'man’s strange bewilderment seems to escape into his natural background aiid become an influence there, brooding like an extra shadow in the dusk', oppressing the hearts of his wife and friend and becoming an active element in the climax. The theme is the old one of unfaithful wife and betraying friend, but the husband’s fears and great loneliness give it a dignity not to be found in a mere tale of wayward passion. It may, indeed, be nothing more than a disappointed love which works so strangely in Dmitri Petrovitch; ■ but Tchekhov shows its insidious effect upon a living mind in ‘its relationships with earth and people, and thus, with the instinct of genius, links the suffering of an individual to the unknown economy of the universe. This is poetry, and indicates the proud destiny of the short story. Its day is yet to come.