It might be said of a good style that it is one that cannot be parodied. An examination of Machen’s style would indicate that it is, in his case at least, quite true. For Machen’s style is a blend of many things; of words with magic connotation, of sentences that create moods, of passages that suggest, subtly and almost unconsciously, the exact atmosphere for which they were intended. Mr. Machen is a master at evoking the willing suspension of disbelief, and he does it without employing any of the stock properties listed by Coleridge and other authorities as having the proper connotative value for the creation of a “Gothic” mood or atmosphere.
When all is said and done, however, it must be admitted that Machen’s style is merely a reflection of his faith in the credo of a literary man as set forth by the admirable Dyson. And here, of course, we come to the crux of the matter, and as close as we may to an explanation of Machen’s magic which cannot, after all, be appraised in rational terms. In that wonderful book called Hieroglyphics Machen poses a series of questions:
“Explain, in rational terms, The Quest of the Holy Graal. State whether in your opinion such a vessel ever existed, and if you think it did not, justify your pleasure in reading an account of the search for it.”
“Explain, logically, your delight in color.”
“Estimate the value of Westminster Abbey in the avoirdupois measure.”
“Faery lands forlorn. Draw a map of the district in question, putting in principal towns and naming exports.”
Machen agrees that one cannot express art of any kind in the terms of rationalism, and that “If literature be a kind of dignified reporting, in which the reporter is at liberty to invent new incidents and leave out others, and to arrange all in the order that pleases him best; then, let us have as much “common sense” and “rationalism” as you please ... but if literature is a mysterious ecstasy, the withdrawal from all common and ordinary conditions ... [we had better] confess that with its first principles logic has nothing to do.... For if Rationalism be the truth, then all literature ... is simply lunacy.”
4
There are, sometimes, certain superficial resemblances between the works of imaginative writers that are outside the province and beyond the charge of plagiarism. An age produces a culture, a culture produces works of art, and all the while the individual consciousness, or sub-consciousness, feeds upon and is nourished by the raw materials and the basic elements of the culture. For in any age there are bound to exist certain individuals in whom combinations of common experience develop along certain lines and who may be expected to react in almost predictable patterns to identical stimulae ... just as certain identical combinations of chemical elements may be expected to react in identical manner under identical circumstances. Which is, after all, no major discovery but merely a restatement of the obvious fact that lies behind the continuity of any culture, or even, on a smaller scale, of any literary movement, or on occasion, of something less significant than a literary movement.