cries Tennyson to the nightingale.
Nevertheless, must one not believe that there are distinct senses of the soul and mind which are called into action by the spoken or written word? It is trite to say there are moments when one is gripped by the throat by a mere phrase, not, mind you, because of its dramatic force, but rather from some inherent spell of beauty or sorrow. There are others when one seems to lay hold of a set of words; as it were, to be able to touch and feel them as though they had been modelled.
And again, who has not felt an actual pain, as of a delicate blade being thrust into the heart, by some phrase of scarcely analyzable pathos. Heine had that weapon. The art of it, we suppose, is that of extreme simplicity combined with selection, but the emotion is quite incommensurate with the importance of the theme, the value of the expressed idea.
To use another simile, it is like a wailing air on some primitive instrument, which by its very artlessness pierces to the marrow of the consciousness.
“Ces doux airs du pays, au doux rythme obsesseur,
Dont chaque note est comme une petite sœur,”
as Rostand has it.
Think of the effect in “Tristran” of the shepherd’s pipe at the beginning of the last act.
It comes to this after all, that however one may study, however perfect the technique of writing, however one may inspire oneself from the springs of genius, it is artlessness, not art, that reaches home. It might be truer to say that it takes a consummate art to touch the right note of artlessness; yet we all know how curiously we can sometimes be affected by the words that fall from childish lips.