CHAPTER VI
THE ARTISTIC GROUP: THE REAL SHORT-STORY
The short-story as a production of an artist conscious of rules and striving for definite effects within limitations is a thing of the nineteenth century. Only gradually have writers come to the feeling for singleness and unity. It would appear that before the days of Poe and Maupassant brief narratives were brief because of their source or their type, or because the author did not happen to have a rich vein of digression and incident. They were then rather what we think of as tales than what we have come to regard as the real short-story.
We have hitherto in our study been making little or no distinction in our use of the terms narrative, story, and tale, nor have we understood the adjective short with any but its usual significance. We shall from now on, however, understand the term short-story technically, and employ the hyphen, as Matthews has employed it, to suggest the significance.
A short-story is very perceptibly shorter than a romance or a novel. It is indeed about like a chapter of one of these. In no case must the reading require more than one sitting, says Poe. On the other hand, it may not be so short as an ordinary incident or anecdote, but far longer. It is more complex, more dignified, and has distinguishing essential elements.
It is not possible, of course, to make a hard and fast definition, but there are certain qualities we pretty generally expect to find. A short-story may be of any type from a myth to a realistic sketch; it may emphasize environment, plot, or character; but it must have unity, it must have directness, it must have climax, however slight. The effect should be single, not multiple. Hence anything like digression or episode is entirely out of place. The end should not be delayed, nor yet should it be precipitated. It should come just at the right time, and be as proper as the catastrophe of a tragedy. It should be but the beginning made special and concrete, the middle continued in harmony, the conclusion come upon both inevitably. "Make another end to it?" says Stevenson[7] in answering an objection to one of his stories. "Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect when I can help it unless it prepares the effects that are to follow; that's what a story consists in. To make another end; that is to make the beginning all wrong. The dénouement of a long story is nothing, it is just 'a full close,' which you may approach and accompany as you please—it is a coda, not an essential number in the rhythm; but the body and end of a short-story is bone-of-the-bone and blood-of-the-blood of the beginning."
Students of this type of narrative find Poe the first man to reveal a consciousness of any strictly limiting tenets. Poe worked to definite rules which he himself made. He saw intrinsic reasons why a short-story should be short. His predecessors, Irving and others, had not seen them. Even Hawthorne, who fulfilled them many times, said nothing about them. But Poe both formulated and preached them. He exemplified them, too, and other men followed.
The list of good short-story writers is so great that particular mention of any seems invidious. Some of our less known men have done as good work as our best. For names by countries, you may notice the bibliography at the end of this book. Kipling's stories for a large part emphasize place; Poe's, very often plot; and Hawthorne's and Stevenson's, mostly psychological phenomena—character and whimsical expressions of it; Miss Wilkins's altogether reveal temperament and characteristics; while Maupassant's generally record events which include a stab of fate.
On the basis of artistic purpose, the short-story divides itself into three types: the weird tale, stories that emphasize environment and typical personality, stories that emphasize events and character.
Every narrator whenever he sets his pen to paper must deal with place, plot, and people; but the artistic short-story writer, because of the limitation of his form, is forced to a selection of emphasis. He can not at will, as the biographer can, dilate upon the ancestry of his hero if he means to present the personage in action; if he wants to indulge in an environment analysis, the short-story writer has not time to wind up and unwind a mystery; if he has decided to give us the crisis event of a character, he must perforce touch but lightly on place. We shall find, then, that while each good short-story has the three elements present and skilfully managed, it has also one or the other more strongly emphasized—or at most two, in practical neglect of the third.