Читать книгу Composition-Rhetoric - Stratton D. Brooks - Страница 16

Notice the different mental images that come to you as you read each of the following selections. Distinguish words that cause images to arise from those that do not.

1. Before these fields were shorn and tilled,

Full to the brim our rivers flowed;

The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood;

And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,

And fountains spouted in the shade.

—Bryant: An Indian at the Burial Place of his Fathers.

2. At that moment the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the driftwood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of the scout and Uncas. When their foes, who leaped over the black rocks that divided them, with long bounds, uttering the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the rifle of Hawkeye slowly rose among the shrubs and poured out its fatal contents. The foremost Indian bounded like a stricken deer and fell headlong among the clefts of the island.

—Cooper: Last of the Mohicans.

3. The towering flames had now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies, one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the courtyard. The vanquished of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighboring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky red. The maniac figure of the Saxon Ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chosen, tossing her arms abroad with wild exaltation as if she reigned empress of the conflagration which she had raised. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gave way and she perished in the flames which had consumed her tyrant.

—Scott: Ivanhoe.

4. Under a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

—Longfellow: The Village Blacksmith.

5. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door;

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—

Only this, and nothing more."

—Edgar A. Poe: The Raven.

6. Where with black cliffs the torrents toil,

He watch'd the wheeling eddies boil,

Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes

Beheld the River Demon rise;

The mountain mist took form and limb

Of noontide hag or goblin grim.

—Scott: Lady of the Lake.

7. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick, bushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped around the waist—several pairs of breeches, the outer ones of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with his load.

—Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle.

+27. Complete and Incomplete Images.+—Some sentences have for their purpose the presentation of an image, but in order to form that image correctly and completely, we must be familiar with the words used. If an unfamiliar word is introduced, the mind may omit entirely the image represented, or may substitute some other for it. Notice the image presented by this sentence from Henry James: "Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls around her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand." If the meaning of rococo is unknown to you, the image which you form will not be exactly the one that Mr. James had in mind. The pearls and the dress may stand out clearly in your image, but the fan will be lacking or indistinct. The whole may be compared to a photograph of which a part is blurred. If your attention is directed to the fan, you may recall the word rococo, but not the image represented by it. If your attention is not called to the fan, the mind is satisfied with the indistinct image, or substitutes for it an image of some other fan. Such an image is therefore either incomplete or inaccurate.

An oath in court provides that we shall "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but, in forming images, it is not always possible to hold our minds to such exactness. We are prone to picture more or less than the words convey. In fact, in some forms of prose, and often in poetry, the author purposely takes advantage of this habit of the mind and wishes us to enlarge with creations of our own imagination the bare image that his words convey. Such writing, however, aims to give pleasure or to arouse our emotions. It calls out something in the reader even more strongly than it sets forth something in the writer. This suggestiveness in writing will be considered later, but for the present it will be well for you to bear in mind that most language has for its purpose the exact expression of a definite idea. Much of the failure in school work arises from the careless substitution of one image for another, and from the formation of incomplete and inaccurate images.