The point was the question of literary finish, and the degree to
which it can or ought to be practised. Herries is of the school of
Flaubert, and holds that there may be several ways of saying a
thing, but only one best way, and that it is alike the duty and the
goal of the writer to find that way. This he enunciated with some
firmness.
"No," said Musgrave, "I think that is only a theory, and breaks
down, as all theories do, when it is put in practice: look at all
the really big writers: look at Shakespeare--to me his work gives
the impression of being both hasty and uncorrected. If he says a
thing in one way, and while he is doing it thinks of a more telling
form of expression, he doesn't erase the first statement; he merely
says it over again more effectively. He is full of lapses and
inappropriate passages--and it is that very thing which gives him
such an air of reality."
"Well, there is a good deal in that," said Herries, "but I do not
see how you are going to prove that it is not deliberate.
Shakespeare wrote like that in his plays, breathlessly and eagerly,
because that was the aim he had in view; if he makes one of his
people say a thing tamely, and then more pointedly, it is because
it is exactly what people do in real life, and Shakespeare was
thinking with their mind for the time being.
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