But he, too, is at bottom a classic artist. The
modern problem--it has not yet been sufficiently solved for us to speak
of a modern method--arises from a sense that the classical method
produces over-simplification. It does not permit of a sufficient sense
of multiplicity. One can think of a dozen semi-treatments of the problem
from Balzac to Dostoevsky, but they were all on the old lines. They
might be called Shakespearean modifications of the classical method.
Tchehov, we believe, attempted a treatment radically new. To make use
again of our former image in his maturer writing, he chose a different
string to let down into the saturated solution of consciousness. In a
sense he began at the other end. He had decided on the quality of
aesthetic impression he wished to produce, not by an arbitrary decision,
but by one which followed naturally from the contemplative unity of life
which he had achieved. The essential quality he discerned and desired to
represent was his argument, his string. Everything that heightened and
completed this quality accumulated about it, quite independently of
whether it would have been repelled by the old criterion of plot and
argument.
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