106 



DISCOVERY 



ventor. Agaiii, the late Jack London, by taking the 

 technique of Conrad and KipUng and trekking back to 

 the primitive, has written stories which exploit the 

 element of the unexpected in the mental as well as the 

 physical nature of his characters with a success that 

 here and there equals that of the early Wells. 



But these, although they are to be ranked among the 

 " re-discoverers," who have kept some of the older 

 traditions, cannot be regarded as of anything like 

 the importance they would gain if they were adven- 

 turers as well. There is another group of short-story 

 writers who have been profoundly impressed by the 

 researches of psychology, and who are now desiring 

 to exploit the possibilities which the literature of 

 Russia promised for the writer who takes those 

 researches into account. 



It must be confessed that the adventure which con- 

 fronts them as a consequence of this is rather foolish 

 and foolhardy. The battle, as they see it, is not 

 between the old type of story and the new ; but 

 between the intellectual and the imaginative. It is, 

 however, given to few authors to serve equably the two 

 masters, imagination and intellect ; and imagination 

 is certainly at a premium among those who are now 

 endeavouring to reconcile the demand of what is, after 

 all, an intensely imaginative art-form with the demand 

 of modem science. Whatever may be the faults of 

 the conventionalists in short-story writing, they did, 

 and do still, preserve some sort of proportion. Often 

 while reading the stories of Katherine Mansfield (and 

 to Miss Mansfield's credit, as to that of Miss May 

 Sinclair among the older writers, we place some of the 

 finest short stories of the episodic type written in recent 

 years), we are disturbed by the feeling that she has 

 absorbed the influence of the Russians not only in style 

 and method, but also in her own imaginative revela- 

 tion. We seem to be acquainting ourselves in this same 

 writer's work with Tchekov ' over again, severely in- 

 tellectuaUsed ; not with one who has sat at his feet 

 and come away something more than a disciple. 



' Anton Tchekov, the greatest and most original short- 

 story writer of modern times, was born in South Russia in i860, 

 and died in 1904. Just as he never tries to give the whole 

 history of his characters from their birth to the grave in a single 

 tale, so he never attempts the anecdote — he prefers to that the 

 kind of story in which nothing happens at all. The supreme 

 expression of his gift, however, is in those stories where light 

 has been focussed for a brief catastrophic moment upon one or 

 two main personages. In the hazy outlines which, as Kropot- 

 kin, a well-known Russian literary critic, has said, you 

 rather guess than see, a world of complicated human 

 relations gradually comes to focus. Take away either 

 the distinctness or the haziness, and the picture is spoiled. 

 Si.xty of these stories have been translated by Constance 

 Garnett and published in the Saint Martin's Library in a series 

 of volumes not yet completed (Chatto & Windus, 3s. 6d. net 

 each). 



As with Tchekov, everything she does is self- 

 revealing. In Bliss, and Other Stories, her recent volume, 

 there are some remarkable lines concerning a tree, 

 which may be quoted here to indicate the distance which 

 lies between the conventional and the newer expres- 

 sion in the short-story form ; they are lines which at 

 one time would have been considered outside the 

 province of an art that demands the sternest economy : — 



" It was then that he saw the tree, that he was con- 

 scious of its presence just inside a garden gate. It was 

 an immense tree, with a round, thick silver stem and a 

 great arc of copper leaves that gave back the light 

 and yet were sombre. There was something beyond 

 the tree — a whiteness, a softness, an opaque mass, 

 half-hidden — with delicate pillars. As he looked at 

 the tree he felt his breathing die away, and he became 

 part of the silence. It seemed to glow, it seemed to 

 expand in the quivering heat until the great carved 

 leaves hid the sky, and yet it was motionless. . . . 

 Deep, deep he sank into the silence, staring at the 

 trees and waiting for the voice that came floating, 

 falling, until he felt himself enfolded." 



This ability to extract new meaning and added 

 beauty from our life and our surroundings is one of 

 Katherine Mansfield's trimnphs. In the above passage 

 she is very near to her master, and yet very nearly 

 herself, very nearly an innovator. 



J. D. Beresford, whose Signs and Wonders and his 

 earlier collection contain stories entirely plotless and 

 passionless, and are of a mordant quality on the few 

 occasions when plot and passion are present, seems to 

 lack nothing that makes a good story of the episodic 

 type ; and yet, the kindling fire being absent, we do 

 not look with the same confidence for some new con- 

 tribution to the art as we may look to Katherine 

 Mansfield. Two other writers are working eagerly 

 towards that hidden future. A. E. Coppard exploits 

 in his first book, Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, a 

 clever technique and a sprightly and versatile humour 

 that make us unconcerned how much he owes to the 

 Russians and how much to the Irish revival — as a 

 matter of plain truth, he owes a good deal to both. 

 In him the intellectual quality never tips the scales 

 quite so decidedly against the imagination. Nor does 

 he take himself too seriously, like J. D. Beresford, nor 

 hold himself too cheaply, like the other of the two 

 young writers, Aldous Huxley, the author of Limbo. 

 In reading A. E. Coppard's stories we feel that he has 

 approached his work with an attitude almost as child- 

 like, as naive, as that of the late Padraic Pearse. And 

 this is to his advantage, let it be added, for Pearse's 

 untimely end, during the Dublin rebellion of 1916, will 

 not deprive him of our recognition for his charming 

 and original gifts as a short-story writer that rank 

 him, with Synge, among the leading artists of his land. 



