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Controversial Aspects of Pater's "Style"

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 2004 by Coates, John

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The writer is rewarded for his care and conscience by acquiring a power of self-determination. This is a crucial point. Pater is keen to emphasize that, once he has "the science of the instrument he plays on," the prose-artist will possess the "freedom of a master." He will enjoy this liberty by "making a vocabulary, an entire system of composition for himself and by discovering "his own true manner" (Works 5: 14). More importantly, he will use the freedom he has earned to adapt his writing to new thought. Here Pater is strongest in his opposition to Saintsbury's assumptions and arguments: "None but pedants will regret" the great increases in the "resources" (Works 5: 16) of the English language during the nineteenth century. For a quarter of a century English has been "assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art," Earlier the "great German metaphysical movement of eighty years ago," and the "language of mystical theology" ( Works 5: 16), added to the range and expressiveness of its vocabulary. (Pater is referring to the philosophy of Hegel and Fichte and, presumably, to the Oxford Movement.) Pater strongly refuses to hark back to some notional standard of good taste. Instead, he proposes a role for the scholar-artist in dealing sensitively with the innovations in the structure of prose and the choice of words that are inevitable, given that language "must needs change with the changing thoughts of a living people" (Works 5: 15). He foresees as the next interesting development the "liberal naturalisation of the ideas of science" ( Works 5: 16). Pater took a robust and hopeful view of at least some of the new intellectual currents of the age and, unlike Saintsbury, did not see prose as a tasteful uniform designed to disguise men's perennially foolish statements.

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The writer's liberty confers further benefits on him. As long as he retains a "logical coherency" in "the lines of composition as a whole" he may (perhaps should) display "much variety" in sentence structure and manner moving, where appropriate, between the "argumentative, descriptive, discursive" (Works 5: 22). Rich and expressive literary architecture is often reared upon "many irregularities, surprises, and afterthoughts" ( Works 5: 23). One remembers here how critical Saintsbury was of the varieties of tone and vocabulary in Elizabethan and Jacobean prose. Instead, and probably deliberately, Pater emphasizes that surprise and variety are a necessary part of the writer's range of effects. Where Saintsbury values the "balancing of the sentence," Pater praises varied sentence structure. The "blithe crisp sentence, decisive as a child's" might alternate with the "longcontending, victoriously intricate sentence," A sentence full of "contrivance" may be relieved by one "born with the integrity of a single word" ( Works 5:23).

Interestingly, Pater points to two factors operating within prose upon the reader's mind. "Hard to ascertain philosophically" though they may be, "mind" and "soul" are "real enough practically." In fact, "mind" encompasses most of what Pater specifically says about style in his essay. All the features of "mind," the "static and objective indications of design" in apiece of writing are "legible" to everyone and are "approved where they are recognised" ( Works 5: 25) ("Static" suggests an equilibrium of forces within a perfectly cast piece of work.) "Soul," however, does not seek embodiment in form or in an equilibrium of forces. Instead, it reaches the reader "through a vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact" ( Works 5: 25). Where mind, working through the stylistic devices Pater has explored, is finite in its operations, the effect of soul, like "the influence of a living person," is impossible to limit. We are bound to admire the feats of "mind," its demonstrations of accomplished literary skill. On the contrary, "soul may repel us, not because we misunderstand it" (Works5: 27).

Controversial Aspects of Pater's "Style"

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 2004 by Coates, John

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