12. "I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to
get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a raft, after
all. Other places do seem so clamped up and smothery, but a raft don't.
You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft"(88). Discuss
the paradox. Furthermore, this excerpt from the final paragraph of
Chapter XVIII is significant in that it pertains to the major themes of
the novel. Explain.
13. Huck and Jim's manner of dress on the raft is symbolic. What do clothes represent?
14. Why doesn't Huck expose the Duke and the King (Dauphin) as frauds?
15. Who is the most shrewd, the King and the Duke or Huck? Why? Give some examples.
16. What does Twain satirize in the plan to present Romeo and Juliet? Discuss Romeo and Juliet as a motif.
17. Discuss the significance of the pirate and the revival meeting. What is Twain satirizing?
18. Is Twain making a statement about society through the antics of the King and Duke? Explain.
Homework for TRIP:- Read to chapter 20 and answer study questions. Your
final will be on the book (chapter 1-20) and come from your list of
literary terms, study questions, episodes and themes.
1.
Compare and contrast the lies Huck gives to Mrs. Judith Lotus to the
lies he tells the watchman? (chap 11 and 13). Think about purpose and
results. Remember lies and inventing (or reinventing) personas is a
motif. What theme do you think these lies reinforce?
2. Make a list of names Huck uses or invent.
3.
Contrast the gang on the Walter Scott to Tom’s Gang (you might even
look at some of the rules of Tom’s Gang). What is the significance of
these two gangs? What idea is Twain trying to reinforce?
4. Look up
Walter Scott on the internet. Why would Twain name the sinking boat
Walter Scott? What is he making fun of? (Hint: Research the name and
read about who Walter Scott was).
5. Look up the dimensions of the
Mississippi. Write them down. Look up the Mississippi in Illinois and
Missouri. What does the internet say about the river in these two
states? Find a picture of the Mississippi. Why do you think Twain used
the Mississippi as a symbol?
6. What are Huck’s descriptions of the
river when he and Jim first leave Jackson Island (before the storm)?
What theme does this reinforce?
7. Why does Huck want to save the gang of murders? What is funny about this? What does it say about Huck?
8.
What is the significance of the following quote: “Do you reckon Tom
Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d
call it an adventure—that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that
wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn’t he throw style into
it?—wouldn’t he spread himself, nor nothing? Why you’d think it was
Christopher Columbus discovering Kingdom-Come.”
9. What is funny about the discussion between borrowing and stealing? Discuss what you think the significance of this is.
10. Make a list of references to death so far in the novel.
11. List the allusions so far.
What was your favorite event that happened in chapters 11-13? Why?
Huck Discussion Questions: XV - XX
1.
Discuss the significance of the fog incident and Jim's interpretation
of it. "The lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with
quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our
business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through
and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free
states, and wouldn't have no more trouble" (64). Consider the major
themes as well as foreshadowing.
2. How does Huck feel about
playing the trick on Jim? Comment: "It was fifteen minutes before I
could work myself up and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I
warn't sorry for it afterwards, neither" (65). How does this statement
contribute to the overall meaning of the novel?
3. Discuss the significance of the following quotes from Chapter XVI:
"Jim
said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to
freedom. Well, it made me all trembly and feverish, too, to hear him
because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free -- and
who was to blame for it? Why me. I couldn't get it out of my conscience,
no how nor no way." (66).
"Here was this nigger which I as good
as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would
steal his children -- children that belonged to a man I didn't even
know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm." (67). Explain the irony
in this quote as well as the significance.
"Well, then, says I,
what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do
right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?"
(69).
"Doan' less' talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have
no luck. I awluz 'spected dat rattle-snake skin warn't done wid its
work." (70).
4. Why do the bounty hunters give Huck money? What is ironic about their reaction to Huck's story?
5. What does the destruction of the "naturally" created raft by the "industrially" created steamboat symbolize?
6. Speculate on why Twain put Huckleberry Finn aside for a few years at the end of XVI?
7.
Describe the Grangerford house. What is satirical about the
furnishings, art, and poetry? What does this description say about the
Grangerfords?
8. The first part of Chapter XVII reveals an
example of the theme of Huck playing on Buck's gullibility. Discuss this
example as well as other examples of the novel's major themes evident
in Chapters XVI & XVII.
9. What does Huck's reaction to "Moses and the candle" indicate? Discuss the meaning of "Moses" as a motif in the novel.
10. What does Twain satirize in his description of the church service and the hogs that sleep under the floor?
11.
What does the feud symbolize? Does this remind you of another famous
piece of literature? Explain. Through the feud incident, Twain satirizes
human traits and behaviors. Discuss.
12. "I was powerful glad
to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp.
We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do
seem so clamped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free
and easy and comfortable on a raft"(88). Discuss the paradox.
Furthermore, this excerpt from the final paragraph of Chapter XVIII is
significant in that it pertains to the major themes of the novel.
Explain.
13. Huck and Jim's manner of dress on the raft is symbolic. What do clothes represent?
14. Why doesn't Huck expose the Duke and the King (Dauphin) as frauds?
15. Who is the most shrewd, the King and the Duke or Huck? Why? Give some examples.
16. What does Twain satirize in the plan to present Romeo and Juliet? Discuss Romeo and Juliet as a motif.
17. Discuss the significance of the pirate and the revival meeting. What is Twain satirizing?
18. Is Twain making a statement about society through the antics of the King and Duke? Explain.
If you wish to read this essay on another site or print it out please go
HERE Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offensesby Mark Twain
"The
Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" stand at the head of Cooper's novels
as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts
as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling.
Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. The
defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure
works of art.
--Professor Lounsbury
The five tales reveal an
extraordinary fullness of invention. ... One of the very greatest
characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo... The craft of the woodsman, the
tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest were familiar
to Cooper from his youth up.
--Professor Matthews
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America.
--Wilkie Collins
It
seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without
having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep
silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper's art
has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted
space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against
literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There
are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction
-- some say twenty-two. In "Deerslayer," Cooper violated eighteen of
them. These eighteen require:
1. That a tale shall accomplish
something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes
nothing and arrives in air.
2. They require that the episodes in a
tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop
it. But as the "Deerslayer" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing
and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work,
since there was nothing for them to develop.
3. They require that
the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses,
and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the
others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer"
tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead
and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this
detail also has been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.
5. The
require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the
talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would
be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable
meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and
remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to
the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot
think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored
from the beginning of the "Deerslayer" tale to the end of it.
6.
They require that when the author describes the character of a personage
in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall
justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in
the "Deerslayer" tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
7.
They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering
in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel
in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the
"Deerslayer" tale.
8. They require that crass stupidities shall
not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the
delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the
tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the "Deerslayer" tale.
9.
They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to
possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the
author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and
reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the "Deerslayer" tale.
10.
They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest
in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make
the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But
the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is
indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned
together.
11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be
so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will
do in a given emergency. But in the "Deerslayer" tale, this rule is
vacated.
In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:
12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.
Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the "Deerslayer" tale.
Cooper's
gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it
was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he
did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of
stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices
for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with,
and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things
and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread
in the tracks of a moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail.
Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.
Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently
was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his
effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book
of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds
and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is
in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is
sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things
to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to
turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one.
In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken
Twig Series.
I am sorry that there is not room to put in a few
dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practiced by Natty
Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture
two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor -- a naval officer; yet he
gravely tells us how a vessel, driving toward a lee shore in a gale, is
steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an
undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her.
For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that
neat? For several years, Cooper was daily in the society of artillery,
and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground
it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a
hundred feet or so -- and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls.
Now in one place he loses some "females" -- as he always calls women --
in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give
Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the
reader. These mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a
cannon-blast, and a cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood
and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case
is very different with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know
peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of
that cannon-ball across the plain in the dense fog and find the fort.
Isn't it a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of
doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For
instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced
Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through
the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I
could ever have guessed the way to find it. It was very different with
Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream
out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were that
person's moccasin tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it
would have done in all other like cases -- no, even the eternal laws of
Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of
woodcraft on the reader.
We must be a little wary when Brander
Matthews tells us that Cooper's books "reveal an extraordinary fullness
of invention." As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander
Matthews's literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful
phrasing of them; but that particular statement needs to be taken with a
few tons of salt. Bless you heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention
than a horse; and don't mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a
clothes- horse. It would be very difficult to find a really clever
"situation" in Cooper's books, and still more difficult to find one of
any kind which has failed to render absurd by his handling of it. Look
at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the celebrated scuffle between
Maqua and those others on the table-land a few days later; and at Hurry
Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to the ark; and at
Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the quarrel between
Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at -- but choose for yourself;
you can't go amiss.
If Cooper had been an observer his inventive
faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more
rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of
"situations" suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's
protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom
saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye,
darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day
matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a
"situation." In the "Deerslayer" tale Cooper has a stream which is
fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to
twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream
acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages
later the width of the brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk
thirty feet, and become "the narrowest part of the stream." This
shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a sure
indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet these bends are
only thirty and fifty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice and
punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were often
nine hundred feet long than short of it.
Cooper made the exit of
that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place, for no particular
reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less than twenty to
accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to form an arch over this
narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are
"laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming up the stream on
its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the stiff current by
rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its rate of progress
cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes the ark, but pretty
obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was little more than a
modern canal boat." Let us guess, then, that it was about one hundred
and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than common." Let us
guess then that it was about sixteen feet wide. This leviathan had been
prowling down bends which were but a third as long as itself, and
scraping between banks where it only had two feet of space to spare on
each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. A low- roofed
dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length" -- a dwelling ninety
feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say -- a kind of vestibule
train. The dwelling has two rooms -- each forty- five feet long and
sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
accommodate the Indians -- say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on
each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be
a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by
climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
but Cooper's Indian's never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
The
ark is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety-foot dwelling a
minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would
take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it
up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their
chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,
warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he
had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he
judge, he let go and dropped. And missed the boat! That is actually what
he did. He missed the house, and landed in he stern of the scow. It was
not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious.
If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the
trip. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no
architect.
There still remained in the roost five Indians. The
boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what
the five did -- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2
jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it.
Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then
No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even
No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that
matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious. The scow
episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill,
because the inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air of fictitiousness
and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as
observer.
The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high
talent for inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match
in "The Pathfinder."
A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been first touched with paint.
The
color of the paint is not stated -- an important omission, but Cooper
deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an
important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
marksmen, and could not be seen at that distance, no matter what its
color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common housefly? A
hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a
house-fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail-head
at that distance, for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes
a keen eye to see a fly or a nail-head at fifty yards -- one hundred
and fifty-feet. Can the reader do it?
The nail was lightly driven,
its head painted, and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The
bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge of the nail-head; the next
man's bullet drove the nail a little way into the target -- and removed
all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit
Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy,
Deerslayer-Hawkeye-Long-Rifle-Leatherstocking-Pathfinder-Bumppo before
the ladies.
"Be all ready to clench it, boys!" cried out
Pathfinder, stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were
vacant. "Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is
gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were
only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!"
The rifle cracked, the
bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was buried in the wood,
covered by the piece of flattened lead.
There, you see, is a man who
could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a ducal salary in a Wild West
show to-day if we had him back with us.
The recorded feat is
certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is not surprising enough
for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made Pathfinder do this miracle
with another man's rife; and not only that, but Pathfinder did not have
even the advantage of loading it himself. He had everything against him,
and yet he made that impossible shot; and not only made it, but did it
with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to clench." Now a person
like that would have undertaken that same feat with a brickbat, and with
Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.
Pathfinder showed
off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very first feat a thing
which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with the group of
marksmen, observing -- a hundred yards from the target, mind; one Jasper
rasper raised his rifle and drove the center of the bull's-eye. Then
the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no result this time. There
was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major Lundie. Pathfinder waited
an impressive moment or two; then said, in that calm, indifferent,
know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has covered Jasper's bullet, as
will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the target."
Wasn't
it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through the air
and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for nothing
is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have any
deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply sanity,
and these were all Cooper people.
The respect for Pathfinder's
skill and for his quickness and accuracy of sight [the italics are mine]
was so profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration
the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a dozen rushed
to the target in order to ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was
found that the Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the hole made by
Jasper's, and that, too, so accurately as to require a minute
examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon
clearly established by discovering one bullet over the other in the
stump against which the target was placed.
They made a "minute"
examination; but never mind, how could they know that there were two
bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out? for neither
probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet.
Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the Pathfinder's turn now; he
steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and fires.
But, alas! here is
a disappointment; in incredible, an unimaginable disappointment -- for
the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing there but that same
old bullet hole!
"If one dared to hint at such a thing," cried Major Duncan, "I should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target."
As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
"No,
no, Major," said he, confidently, "that would be a risky declaration. I
didn't load the piece, and can't say what was in it; but if it was
lead, you will find the bullet driving down those of the Quartermaster
and Jasper, else is not my name Pathfinder."
A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion.
Is
the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder
speaks again, as he "now slowly advances toward the stage occupied by
the females":
"That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the
target touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the
wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger."
The
miracle is at last complete. He knew -- doubtless saw -- at the distance
of a hundred yards -- this his bullet had passed into the hole without
fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole --
three bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of
the target. Everybody knew this -- somehow or other -- and yet nobody
had dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer,
but he is interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what
happens. And he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is
about than when he is. This is a considerable merit.
The
conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern
ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths
would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a
person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to
spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a
rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs
of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by
attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk
wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted
mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy
with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.
Cooper
was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate
observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other
enterprises of his life. He even failed to notice that the man who talks
corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on seventh,
and can't help himself. In the "Deerslayer" story, he lets Deerslayer
talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other times the
basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he has a
sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic answer:
"She's
in the forest -- hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain
-- in the dew on the open grass -- the clouds that float about in the
blue heavens -- the birds that sing in the woods -- the sweet springs
where I slake my thirst -- and in all the other glorious gifts that come
from God's Providence!"
And he preceded that, a little before, with this:
"It consarns me as all things that touches a friend consarns a friend."
And this is another of his remarks:
"If
I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp and
boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; of if my inimy had only
been a bear" -- [and so on]
We cannot imagine such a thing as a
veteran Scotch Commander-in- Chief comporting himself like a windy
melodramatic actor, but Cooper could. On one occasion, Alice and Cora
were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of
their father's fort:
"Point de quartier aux coquins!" cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.
"Stand
firm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!" suddenly exclaimed a voice above
them; "wait to see the enemy, fire low, and sweep the glacis."
"Father! father" exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist. "It is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!"
"Hold!"
shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental agony, the
sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in a solemn echo.
"'Tis she! God has restored me my children! Throw open the sally- port;
to the field, 60ths, to the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my
lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel!"
Cooper's
word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music
he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the
tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the
result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is
intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is
Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the
approximate words. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in
support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen
pages of the tale called "Deerslayer." He uses "Verbal" for "oral";
"precision" for "facility"; "phenomena" for "marvels"; "necessary" for
"predetermined"; "unsophisticated" for "primitive"; "preparation" for
"expectancy"; "rebuked" for "subdued"; "dependent on" for "resulting
from"; "fact" for "condition"; "fact" for "conjecture"; "precaution" for
"caution"; "explain" for "determine"; "mortified" for "disappointed";
"meretricious" for "factitious"; "materially" for "considerably";
"decreasing" for "deepening"; "increasing" for "disappearing";
"embedded" for "inclosed"; "treacherous" for "hostile"; "stood" for
"stooped"; "softened" for "replaced"; "rejoined" for "remarked";
"situation" for "condition"; "different" for "differing"; "insensible"
for "unsentient"; "brevity" for "celerity"; "distrusted" for
"suspicious"; "mental imbecility" for "imbecility"; "eyes" for "sight";
"counteracting" for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies" for "obsequies."
There
have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could
write English, but they are all dead now -- all dead but Lounsbury. I
don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he
makes it, for he says that "Deerslayer" is a "pure work of art." Pure,
in that connection, means faultless -- faultless in all details -- and
language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's
English with the English he writes himself -- but it is plain that he
didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that
Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down
in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in
our language, and that the English of "Deerslayer" is the very worst
that even Cooper ever wrote.
I may be mistaken, but it does seem
to me that "Deerslayer" is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem
to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a
work of art; in truth, it seems to me that "Deerslayer" is just simply a
literary delirium tremens.
A work of art? It has no invention;
it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no
thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly
drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort
of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its
pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh! indescribable; its
love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.
Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
