Читать книгу Vocal Expression: A Class-book of Voice Training and Interpretation - Katherine Jewell Everts - Страница 9

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!—Curtis.

Mind your own business with your absolute will and soul, but see that it is a good business first.—Ruskin.

Back to the bridge and show your teeth again,

Back to the bridge and show to God your eyes!

—MacKaye.

What news, and quickly!—MacKaye.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.—Phillips Brooks.

Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a holiday?—Shakespeare.

And so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, we are not Democrats, we are Americans!—Curtis.

I shall not discuss the interpretation of these sentences with you. I shall not interpret them for you. Such discussion and interpretation is your part in this study. But you are not to discuss them with a pencil on paper; you are to interpret them with your voice to another mind.

Let us stop here and consider together for a few moments this act which we call Vocal Interpretation (which might be more simply designated as Reading Aloud), and with which these first studies are concerned. What does it mean to vocally interpret a piece of literature—a poem, a play, a bit of prose; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word? It means that you, the interpreter, must transfer the thought contained in that word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from the printed page to the mind of an auditor. It means that you must take the thought out of the safety vault and put it into circulation. That is your problem, and it presents three factors. You cannot slight any one of these factors and expect to successfully solve your problem. These factors are: your author's thought, your own voice, and your auditor's mind.

We shall concern ourselves in this first study with the last of these three factors—the mind of the auditor, or, to put it more definitely, your attitude toward the mind of your auditor. We shall make this our first concern, not because it is more essential to successful delivery than the other two elements of the problem, but because failure at this point is a fundamental failure. Such failure involves the whole structure in ruin.

Let me make this point explicit. Failure of the speaker to direct the thought toward a receiving mind—the mind of an auditor—results in blurred thought, robs the voice of all aim, and reduces the interpretation to a meaningless recital of words. Consider the first factor in the problem of interpretation—the thought of the author. Take these first two sentences:

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!

A wholly satisfying interpretation of these lines involves a knowledge of the speech from which they are taken, and a knowledge of the circumstances under which it was delivered. Complete possession of the thought, which alone insures perfect expression, requires a grasp of the situation out of which it was born and an appreciation of the mind which conceived it. But with no context and no knowledge of these conditions, and so only an approximate appreciation of the thought in all its fulness, the interpreter, under the stimulus of an intent to convince another of the truth contained in the detached sentence, may deliver the lines convincingly! And to carry conviction is the first and fundamental requisite of all good delivery.

So it is with the second factor in your problem. Your voice may fail at a dozen different points, but directed thought can employ so skilfully even an inefficient instrument that the resultant expression, while never satisfying, may still carry conviction.

But let the one who speaks these lines feel no responsibility toward another, let him fail to direct the idea toward another mind, and the most complete possession of the author's thought, plus the most perfect control of the voice, will fail to make the interpretation convincing. You must establish a relation with your auditor! You must have an aim. You must "have something to say," but you must also have some one "to say it at." You cannot hope to become an expert marksman by "shooting into the air."

Then once more I bid you approach the subject of Vocal Interpretation in a new spirit. Let your study of the thought in these sentences hold in its initial impulse this idea: "I have something I must tell you!" Try prefacing your interpretation with some such phrase as this: "Listen to me!" or, "I want to tell you something."

I would suggest as a preliminary exercise that you should try "shooting at a mark" these single words: "No!" "Yes!" "Come!" "Go!" "Aim!" "Fire!" "Help!" "What ho!"

Listen to me!

"You will find the gayest castles in the air far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people."—Emerson.

Let me tell you something!

"Might is right, say many, and so it is. Might is the right to bear the burdens of the weak, to cheer the faint, to uplift the fallen, to pour from one's own full store to the need of the famishing."—Napier.

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He who aims for perfection in a trifle is trying to do that trifle holily. The trier wears the halo, and, therefore, the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king.—Gannett.

Think twice before you speak, my son; and it will do no harm if you keep on thinking while you speak.—Anonymous.

Sweet friends

Man's love ascends,

To finer and diviner ends

Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.

—Lanier.