Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 48

I have said that style is the result of the writer -being himself. But every man is himself instinctively; he has not to take thought in order to be himself. Therefore the young writer should dismiss from his mind that abstract entity which he calls style. He should forget all about style. His sole aim should be to write down, accurately and lucidly and honestly, what he means, always trying to avoid positively ugliness, but not consciously aiming after positive beauty. Let him lose himself completely in the effort to express his meaning in the fewest and clearest words. Good style —beauty, charm, gaiety, splendour, stateliness —will come of itself, unasked and unperceived, so far as the natural distinction of his individuality permits. Good style is not a bird that can be brought down with a shot-gun.

Let me add that to be one's natural self is the most difficult thing in literature. To be one’s natural self in a drawing-room full of observant eyes is scarcely the gift of the simple debutant, but rather of the experienced diner-out So in literature: it is not the expert but the unpractised beginner who is guilty of artificiality. The chief end of the literary apprenticeship is to combine naturalness and sincerity with grace and force Hence the aspirant must familiarise himself with the fundamental idea, at first perhaps strange and alarming, that the process which lies before him is not one of acquiring, but of stripping off.

There are many treatises on style. I shall recommend none of them, for the same reason that I would not recommend a book of “household medicine” to a hypochondriac. Let the aspirant read good stuff, learn the rules, and try to say merely what he means.