Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Short Stories
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION
QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
THE FATHER[1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
THE PIECE OF STRING[1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
THE MAN WHO WAS[1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
THE BIRTHMARK[1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
ETHAN BRAND[1]
NOTES
THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]
NOTES
BIOGRAPHY
CRITICISMS
MARKHEIM[1]
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
HISTORY
OF THE SHORT-STORYJust
when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say. From
the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told stories of
war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower
animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all stories
lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions of a
higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is
extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable and
gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in the
crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually unfolded
to greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own time it is
a most flexible and moral literary form.The
first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as
other narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its
meaning was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was
experienced by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the
early centuries of story-telling there was only one purpose in
mind—that of narrating for the joy of the telling and hearing. The
story-tellers sacrificed unity and totality of effect as well as
originality for an entertaining method of reciting their incidents.The
story of Ruth
and the Prodigal Son
are excellent short tales, but they do not fulfill the requirements
of our modern short-story for the reason that they are not
constructed for one single impression, but are in reality parts of
possible longer stories. They are, as it were, parts of stories not
unlike Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde and
A Lear of the Steppes,
and lack those complete and concise artistic effects found in the
short-stories,
Markheim and
Mumu, by the same
authors. Both Ruth
and the Prodigal Son
are exceptionally well told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are
excellent prophecies of what the nineteenth century has developed for
us in the art of short-story writing.The
Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in
the paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.During
the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared everywhere.
The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the fable, and the
educated monks produced the simple, crude and disjointed tales. The
Gesta Romanorum is
a wonderful storehouse of these mediaeval stories. In the
Decameron Boccaccio
deals with traditional and contemporary materials. He is a born
story-teller and presents many interesting and well-told narratives,
but as Professor Baldwin[1] has said, more than half are merely
anecdotes, and the remaining stories are bare plots, ingeniously done
in a kind of scenario form. Three approach our modern idea of the
short-story, and two, the second story of the second day and the
sixth story of the ninth day, actually attain to our standard.
Boccaccio was not conscious of a standard in short-story telling, for
he had none in the sense that Poe and Maupassant defined and
practiced it. Chaucer in England told his stories in verse and added
the charm of humor and well defined characters to the development of
story-telling.In
the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
novel, Don Quixote.
Cervantes was careless in his work and did not write short-stories,
but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to the story a high
sense of chivalry and a richness of character that the Greek romance
and the Italian novella did not possess. France followed this loose
composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron and Le Sage, the two
French fiction writers of this period, contributed little or nothing
to the advancement of story-telling. Cervantes'
The Liberal Lover
is as near as this period came to producing a real short-story.The
story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
attention to the development of the thought of his message than to
the story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the
Spectator developed
some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
but even their best, like
Theodosius and Constantia,
fall far short of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack
the focusing of interest found in the nineteenth century stories.
Some of Lamb's
Essays of Elia,
especially the Dream
Children, introduce
a delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
literary thought and treatment.The
nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
Washington Irving, reverting to the
Spectator, produced
his sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to
a new form and wrote
The Spectre Bridegroom
and Rip Van Winkle.
It is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is
robbed of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story.
He loved to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a
leisurely manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively
followed and Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not
realize that terseness of statement and totality of impression were
the chief qualities he needed to make him the father of a new
literary form. Poe and Maupassant have reduced the form of the
short-story to an exact science; Hawthorne and Harte have done
successfully in the field of romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and
Hoffman, did not do so well; Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed
character psychologically in their short-stories; Kipling has used
the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of specific
knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the literary
possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has incorporated them
in his Markheim.France
with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the United
States with magazines calling incessantly for good short-stories, and
with every section of its conglomerate life clamoring to express
itself, lead in the production and rank of short-stories. Maupassant
and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the great names in the ranks
of short-story writers. The list of present day writers is
interminable, and high school students can best acquire a reasonable
appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by reading
regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.For
a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history
anddevelopment of
the short-story, students should have access to BranderMatthews'
The Short Story,
Jessup and Canby's
The Book of theShort-Story,
and Waite and Taylor's
Modern Masterpieces of ShortProse
Fiction.NOTE:
[1] American
Short-Stories, by
Charles Sears Baldwin, NewYork:
Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.
QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
It
was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject."The
right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a tree
to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made to
serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies at
work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of its
own kind, and not of another,"—W.D. Howells,
North American Review,
173:429."A
true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel
chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and
precise use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot
have it…. A short-story deals with a single character, a single
event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a
single situation.—Brander Matthews,
The Philosophy of the Short-Story."The
aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with the
greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
emphasis."—Clayton Hamilton,
Materials and Methods of Fiction.The
short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct simplicity.
In such stories as Björnson's
The Father and
Maupassant's The
Piece of String
this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote, but in no case can
an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of these simple
short-stories; for a short-story must always have that tensity of
emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life.The
short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the long
story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with
the glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is
caught as in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such
a manner that the impression of the whole is derived largely from
suggestion. The single incident may be the turning-point in life
history, as in The
Man Who Was; it may
be a mental surrender of habits fixed seemingly in indelible colors
in the soul and a sudden, inflexible decision to be a man, as in the
case of Markheim;
or it may be a gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts,
as Björnson has concisely presented it in his little story
The Father.The
aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of life
in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes
universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view
of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot.
The Cask of Amontillado
is all action in comparison with
The Masque of the Red Death. The Gold-Bug
sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and possesses action
from first to last. Other stories teach a moral.
Ethan Brand deals
with the unpardonable sin, and
The Great Stone Face
is our classic story in the field of ideals and their development.
Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in ethical laws and
moral development. Still other stories aim to portray character. Miss
Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the faded-put womanhood
in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the x-rays of
psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson follows with
the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in Markheim's mental
evolution.The
types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison, Lamb,
Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their sketches
and essays with wonderful effect.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in
The Great Stone Face
loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress.
No better type of detective story has been written than the two
short-stories, The
Murders in the Rue Morgue
and The Purloined
Letter. Every
emotion is subject to the call of the short-story. Humor with its
expansive free air is not so well adapted to the short-story as is
pathos. There is a sadness in the stories of Dickens, Garland, Page,
Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett, Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs
the whole gamut from pleasing tenderness in
A Child's Dream of a Star
to unutterable horror in
The Fall of the House of Usher.The
short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led Fielding,
Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in the
simplest manner to give unity and "totality" of impression
through strict unity of form. It is a concentrated piece of life
snatched from the ordinary and uneventful round of living and steeped
in fancy until it becomes the acme of literary art.
COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
Any
student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly, and
desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
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