The short story is a very modern thing. What brought it into being has not been discovered, though the subject has been discussed at great length. It may or may not last. Another confused, eager, and creative time, the Renaissance, produced the essay and the essay (though perhaps it is dying to-day) has had a good three hundred years╒ run for its money. Perhaps, in spite of prophecies, the short story will survive. Anyhow it is here now, and probably the best writer of it in English (at this moment) is Mr. Masefield. The examples which this one presents are familiar to readers of the Manchester Guardian, the greater part of them having first been printed in these columns; but I will venture to quote a little that I may prove this judgment not to be extravagant. It is in the very essence of a good short story that its metaphors should be clean and sharp, doing a lot of work in a very little space. Now read this from ╘The Devil and the Old Man╒:
It was still dead calm ╤ water all oily blue ╤ with shark╒s fins astern cutting up black and pointed like the fingers on them things call sundials.
There is an error in realism, for no old sailorman would ever have thought of such a comparison ╤ it is the metaphor of a highly educated and observant man; but errors in realism are, if anything, an advantage. As a metaphor it is quite of the best, and no one who has seen a sundial, or the triangular dorsal fin of a shark cutting above a calm sea will ever forget it. Again, of a strong man struggling with several adversaries (in ╘A Monthly Allowance╒):-
Sometimes he was like a sail being furled, or a rope being tautened, or a cart being driven to market.
All these three are very good, especially the first.
There is another element in Mr. Masefield╒s manner of writing which is admirably suited to the short story ╤ the very short ╤ story.
It is the trick of saying a thing once and no more. In most literary work such terseness is an affectation. In much ╤ in lyrics, for instance ╤ it is a vice. But in the short story it is a necessity, and one which a very great many writers forget.
But there is something else. The short story demands poignancy, and there is a great temptation to take short cuts to poignancy ╤ to bring in violent emotions which, precisely because they are violent, are not ╘matter of art.╒ When men are jaded in their emotions they demand things monstrous to arouse them. Perhaps this demand has created the modern supply of the monstrous in letters, but also largely the facility which is thus afforded to the writer of producing an effect. I repeat, it is not ╘matter of art.╒ Violent dread, violent cruelty, violent lust ╤ all these things are outside the drama within which humanity is permitted to draw. There is no power of development about them; no recurrent fruitfulness, which in letters as in agriculture, follows upon wisdom and restraint. If I may draw a metaphor from my little farm, they ╘pull the land.╒ They lead to nothing. You soon reach the end of them, and beyond there is a blank. But you never reach an end of true tragedy, of sublime awe, of pain that is sacrificial and majestic; such ╘matter of art╒ is capable of an indefinite extension. There is an endless competition in it between the great masters of the pen.
Mr. Masefield is not blameless in this regard. He has done nothing so paltry as Kipling╒s worst in the same field; there are no tortures, and you never smell the coward. But there is an occasional hint of bullying as a subject to arouse the reader, of ecstasies of terror. It is a pity, for in such a rhythm as ╘The Port of Many Ships╒ one sees that it is not native to Mr. Masefield but only to the time he lives in; one sees that he could without anguish have omitted such sentences as ╘a mass of bloody bodies lay horrible on each side of the hatch╒ or ╘there was a foul smell of blood.╒ I wish he had been the first to do so. He is strong enough to start a new fashion.
