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boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious attentive face, an ear bent down, much jostled on
the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the epic, lest he should be examined
in it by-and-by and found deficient.
Exercise. Rewrite this little story, locating the scene in your own town and describing yourself in the place of
CHAPTER IX. 110
Barbox Bros. Make as few changes in the wording as possible.
CHAPTER X. 111
CHAPTER X.
THE EPIGRAMMATIC STYLE:
Stephen Crane.
A peculiarly modern style is that in which very short sentences are used for pungent effect. If to this
characteristic of short sentences we add a slightly unusual though perfectly obvious use of common words, we
have what has been called the "epigrammatic style," though it does not necessarily have any epigrams in it. It
is the modern newspaper and advertisement writer's method of emphasis; and if it could be used in
moderation, or on occasion, it would be extremely effective. But to use it at all times and for all subjects is a
vice distinctly to be avoided.
Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" is written almost wholly in this style. If we read three or four
chapters of this story we may see how tiring it is for the mind to be constantly jerked along. At the same time,
in a brief advertising booklet probably no other style that is sufficiently simple and direct would be as likely to
attract immediate attention and hold it for the short time usually required to read an advertisement.
Crane's style has a literary turn and quality which will not be found in the epigrammatic advertisement,
chiefly because Crane is descriptive, while the advertiser is merely argumentative. However, the
advertisement writer will learn the epigrammatic style most surely and quickly by studying the literary form
of it.
From "The Red Badge of Courage."
The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay
along the western sky partly smothering the red.
As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in
black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the
tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him,
he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in
the far air. At times he thought he could see heaving masses of men.
He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple
darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against
the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and
in the fields. . .
His thoughts as he walked fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool, liquid feeling about it and he
imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think
his neck to be inadequate.
The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out
from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed that he could
measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible
fingers that clutched into his brain.
Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past. He bethought him of certain
meals his mother had cooked at home, in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied
prominent positions. He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light
from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank
CHAPTER X. 112
of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the
fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of
youthful summer.
Exercise.
After reading this passage over a dozen times very slowly and carefully, and copying it phrase by phrase,
continue the narrative in Crane's style through two more paragraphs, bringing the story of this day's doing to
some natural conclusion.
CHAPTER XI. 113
CHAPTER XI.
THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY:
The Bible, Franklin, Lincoln.
We have all heard that the simplest style is the strongest; and no doubt most of us have wondered how this
could be, as we turned over in our minds examples of what seemed to us simplicity, comparing them with the
rhetorical, the lofty, and the sublime passages we could call to mind.
Precisely this wonder was in the minds of a number of very well educated people who gathered to attend the
dedicatory exercises of the Gettysburg monument, and Abraham Lincoln gave them one of the very finest
illustrations in the whole range of the world's history, of how simplicity can be stronger than rhetoric. Edward
Everett was the orator of the day, and he delivered a most polished and brilliant oration. When he sat down the
friends of Lincoln regretted that this homely countryman was to be asked to "say a few words," since they felt
that whatever he might say would be a decided anticlimax. The few words that he did utter are the immortal
"Gettysburg speech," by far the shortest great oration on record. Edward Everett afterward remarked, "I wish I
could have produced in two hours the effect that Lincoln produced in two minutes." The tremendous effect of
that speech could have been produced in no other way than by the power of simplicity, which permits the
compression of more thought into a few words than any other style-form. All rhetoric is more or less windy.
The quality of a simple style is that in order to be anything at all it must be solid metal all the way through.
The Bible, the greatest literary production in the world as atheists and Christians alike admit, is our supreme
example of the wonderful power of simplicity, and it more than any other one book has served to mould the
style of great writers. To take a purely literary passage, what could be more affecting, yet more simple, than
these words from Ecclesiastes?
From "Ecclesiastes." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]