Charm of Mystery—Complication—Poetry and Humour compared—Exaggeration.
All who are accustomed to novel reading or writing, are aware of the fascinating power of mystery. They even consider it a principal test of a good story that the plot should be impenetrable, and the final result concealed up to the last page. Tension and excitement are agreeable, even when the subject itself is somewhat painful. We observe this in a tragedy, and it is a common saying some people are never happy except when they are miserable. Such is the constitution of the mind; and the fact that enjoyment can be obtained when we should expect the reverse, is noteworthy with reference to the ludicrous. All mystery causes a certain disquietude, but if the problem seems to us capable of being solved, it begets an agreeable curiosity. On its resolution the excitement ceases, and we only feel a kind of satisfaction, which, though more unalloyed, gives less enjoyment than mystery, inasmuch as it produces less mental and physical commotion. This tendency in the mind to find pleasure in complexity was observed even by Aristotle.
Experience teaches us that no literary style is attractive without a certain interlacing of thoughts and feelings. The sentiments which are most treasured and survive longest, are those which are conveyed rather in a complex than simple form—emotion is thus most quickened, and memory impressed. The beauty and charm of form lie greatly in its bringing ideas closer together, and succinctness implies fulness of thought. Thus a vast number of paradoxical expressions have been generated, which are far more agreeable than plain language. We speak of "blushing honours," "liquid music," "dry wine," "loud" or "tender colours," "round flavour," "cold hearts," "trembling stars," "storms in tea-cups," and a thousand similar combinations, putting the abstract for the concrete, transferring the perception of one sense to another, intermingling the nomenclature of arts, and using a great variety of metaphorical and even ungrammatical phrases. Poets owe much of their power to such combinations, and we find that allusions, which are confessedly the reverse of true, are often the most beautiful, touch the heart deepest, and live longest in the memory. Thus the lover delights to sing—
"Why does azure deck the sky?
'Tis to be like thine eyes of blue."
Poetry has been called "the conflict of the elements of our being," and it is a mark of genius to leave much to the imagination of the reader. The higher we soar in poetry and the nearer we approach the sublime, the more the distance between the intertwined ideas increases. But we are scarcely conscious of any contradiction or discordance, as there is always something to resolve and explain it. Thus in "Il Penseroso," when we read of "the rugged brow of Night," we think of emblematic representations of Nox, and of the dark contraction of the brow in frowning. There is no breach of harmony, and we always find in poetry stepping stones which enable us to pass over difficulties. Often, too, we are assisted in this direction by the intention or tone of the writer or speaker.
Athenæus exhibits well, in a story fictitious or traditional, the contradictory elements to be found in poetry, and shows how easily metaphorical language may become ludicrous when interpreted according to the letter rather than the spirit. He makes Sophocles say to an Erythræan schoolmaster who wanted to take poetical things literally,
"Then this of Simonides does not please you, I suppose, though it seems to the Greeks very well spoken—
"The maid sends her voice
From out her purple mouth!"
"Nor the poet speaking of the golden-haired Apollo, for if the painter had made the hair of the god golden and not black, the painting would be all the worse. Nor the poet speaking of the rosy-fingered Aurora, for if anyone were to dip his fingers into rose-coloured paint, he would make his hands like those of a purple dyer, not of a beautiful woman."
The praise of women is so common, and we so often compare them to everything beautiful, that the harsh lines in the above similes are coloured over and almost disappear. Such language seems as suitable in poetry, as commonplace information would be tedious, and being the scaffolding by which the ideal rises, the complexity is not prominent as in humour, though it adds to the pleasure afforded. But whenever the verge of harmony is not only reached, but transgressed, the connection of opposite ideas produces a different effect upon us, and we admit that from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. When we go beyond the natural we may, if, we heed not, enter the unnatural. In such cases we have an additional incentive to mirth—a double complication as it were, from the failure of the original intention.