Vocal Expression: A Class-book of Voice Training and Interpretation

by Katherine Jewell Everts

So the imagination of the young shepherd boy had not only disregarded the limits of his actual environment and escaped in fancy to the great world beyond, but so vividly had he realized that world through his imagination that his sympathies had been made broad to comprehend a monarch's need and his song potent to meet it. Experience alone gives comprehension. We are prone to think that experience is limited by our actual horizon. We need to know that experience has no limit save that which is set by the limit of our imaginative insight. No door of life is closed to the imaginative mind and heart. The world is its playground to wander in at will. Experience, and thorough experience, comprehension of life is at the command of imagination.

Life can be intelligently apprehended on the material plane through trained senses. Life can be vividly realized on the spirit's plane only through a trained imagination. It is only vivid realization of life at every point which makes it worth living. You may see the lark long after he is lost to my duller eye in our common sky, you may hear the song when my less keen ear no longer catches a faintest thread of melody; but unless the eye and ear of your imagination match mine you shall not vividly realize flight or song, and so I shall follow both long after they are lost to you. Your skylark will pass with the moment of his rapturous song-flight, while mine shall remain forever a spirit of joy to be recalled at will for my spirit's refreshing.

Looking then upon imagination as a key to that comprehension of life which clarifies and constitutes its worth, let us eagerly enter upon the cultivation of such power. We have left this question of imaginative development as a definite exercise to a fifth place in our interpretative study, not because it is less vital to effective expression than the first four subjects we have considered, but because balanced expression is our aim, and imagination once given free play may easily impair that harmonious development of all our faculties which makes for balance in expression. Of course there is no phase of the study of interpretation which, when rightly conducted, does not indirectly or directly involve the training of the imagination. On the other hand, training of the imagination wisely conducted may comprehend and carry on development along all other lines of evolution in expression. A sensitive imagination trained and controlled to its highest power of apprehension must make for sympathy and intelligence in thought and feeling, keep humor sane, and give direction to purpose. But imaginative vigor set free to the uses of thought and emotion already disciplined, to conscious purpose and to good humor, becomes a safe master of expressive living.

The material through which we are to exercise the imagination and develop imaginative vigor is the narrative form of discourse. Narration is successful when it records or has the effect of recording actual experience. A story (according to the authority we so often invoke,—Mr. Gardiner), "whether it be as simple as those of the Book of Genesis or as complex as Mr. James or Mr. Meredith, must carry the effect of the concreteness, and, as it were, the solidity of life." The plot, the characters, the setting of a story which is to live, must have the vividness of real experience. This does not mean that the creator of the story must have actually experienced the plot, the people, and the pictures which together make up his tale—they may be the product of actual experience or of imagination—but it does mean that while he is putting these elements together and creating his narrative he must realize as though it were actual experience the incident of his plot with the characters and in the atmosphere of his creation. Such realization can only come through vivid imagination.

Exactly the same demand is made upon the imagination of the interpreter. When you retell the tale of a master creator of stories your interpretation will be convincing, exactly as was his creation,—through the lucid play of a vivid imagination. You must make me feel that I am in the presence of incidents, characters, pictures which you yourself have experienced. Nay, more, you must make me feel that I myself am actually meeting these people, seeing these pictures, taking part in these incidents, as you relive for me in imagination at the moment of your interpretation the tale you are retelling to me.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

We shall use for suggestive analysis in this study not a complete specimen of narration, but several examples illustrating two of the three elements necessary to the personnel of a good story. These three recognized elements are the setting or situation which the pictures compose, the atmosphere which the characters create, and the plot or the action in which the characters engage. We shall leave the question of the plot to class work upon the selections from epic poetry to be considered later in this study.

Suppose we test our imaginations in the analysis of a situation or setting before we attempt a character study. Remember the situation is to be realized through imagination as though it were actual experience. It is to be recreated. Give your imagination full play in this opening chapter of George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. Let us read the first sentence:

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.

Can you see and feel the elements of this picture! You have never experienced a tide river? Never mind! There is enough in the picture which is familiar to your actual senses through experience to brace your imagination for a grasp of the unfamiliar elements. The wide plain, the river hurrying between green banks—no apperceptive background fails thus far in the picture. What do we mean by apperceptive background? Let us investigate for a moment the psychology involved in the art of "making pictures." Let us get back of this word-picture. Rather let us stay this side of it. Look at the page before you not with the inner eye of your imagination, but with the outer eye—the eye which is merely the organ of the sense of sight. Use your eye as a physical sense only. What does your eye carry to your mind when you look at this page? "Black letters grouped into words on a white surface." Did you get all these qualities at once? Yes, because you have seen other printed pages. Can you wipe out of your mind your knowledge of paper, print, and words? Can you imagine looking on such a page as this for the first time—perceiving it for the first time? If you can do this you will arrive at an understanding of apperceptive background through its elimination. You will realize, that all that is in the back of your mind, stored there by its previous acquaintance with other printed pages, makes up the apperceptive background by which you get a conception of this page. That conception comes first through your physical sense of sight. You may perceive also through touch, through feeling, for instance, the quality of paper. But all that you perceive in this initial process,—the stimulus which comes through the physical senses, yields little to the complete conception as compared with the yield of your so-called mental senses. It is when you have fully apperceived the object that your conception is complete. It is when you have brought to bear upon this page (still looked upon, remember, merely as a printed page regardless of the matter behind the print) all your previous knowledge,—it is when you have observed that the paper is of good quality, that the page is closely set, that the print is excellent, that the margin is wide,—it is when you have compared it in memory with other pages in other books,—it is when you have not only perceived but apperceived it that you have really gained a conception of it. Of course, if you are a type-setter, or a proof-reader, or a printer, or an editor, or one connected with book-making in any least or last capacity, you will see a printed page quite lost to me, because your apperceptive background will outmatch mine as to paper, print, margin, and type. Good! I yield to you from type-setter to editor! But I challenge you to another contest over the same page. Match with me now conceptions gained from another view of this same printed matter. Forget now type, paper, margins, and words—yes, forget the words as printed words—look back of them with me. What do you see now on the page? Still words? Look behind them at the pictures! Now, what do you see? "A wide plain, a river, green banks, the sea!" Yes, but I see more than that! And you do, too? "The river flows between green banks?" You have missed a point. How does she flow? Ah, yes, "She hurries on." Where? "To the sea!" Yes! And what meets her? "The tide!" Yes, the loving tide meets her! But how? "Rushing, he checks her passage in an impetuous embrace!" "You see all this!" you say. Yes, but do you hear it, smell it, taste it, feel it? Are you, too, caught up in that impetuous embrace? No? Ah, then your imagination is only half awake. No, it is not a question of background or actual experience now. There are enough familiar elements, as I have said before, to rouse your senses to vividly realize the picture as a whole if you will not shut the door to such realization—that door is your imagination. Open it! Open it! Now I shall close the book and ask the class to do likewise, while you read once more to us these first sentences, paint for us this picture. Yes, now you are using your imagination to stimulate my senses and awake my imagination, but you must take heed. You must let me enjoy this picture as a whole. You must let me see, feel, taste, smell, all "in the same breath." Remember it is a picture. Don't disregard its perspective. Let all the elements rest in proper relation one to another and to the whole—as George Eliot placed them when she made the setting. The atmosphere is on the whole full of peace. The river "hurries," but the "plain is wide"; the tide "rushes," but it is a "loving tide," even though its embrace be "impetuous." Try it once more! Is there not the joy of creation in such interpretation? Let us read on! You read to us still.