The overvaluation of form is not confined to the boundaries of any one epoch or any one philosophy. It is not confined to existentialism; neither is it limited to any one century, though the overreach came into its own in the twentieth. The temptation to use style and the atmosphere produced by it as the end was keenly and fearfully felt by certain 17th and 18th century Christians. From a thick dictionary on poetry that I have retained a photocopied page of, I read this on the right hand column: “The Puritan plain style—in lit. as in architecture, dress, and worship—bespoke a deeply ambivalent suspicion of art as false, deceptive, seductive: an appeal to the carnal and the irrational, a portrayal of a fiction as a truth. In Of Poetry and Style, Cotton Mather could still inveigh in 1726: ‘Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather than food for you, engross all your application…Let not the Circean cup intoxicate you. But esp. preserve the chastity of your soul from the dangers you may incur, by a conversation with muses that are no better than harlots.’ The ‘food’ was the nourishing meat of Scripture and nature, the ‘sauce’ the steamy smothering of style and artifice, meter and metaphor. What the Circe-muse fed you could turn you into a swine.” No one familiar with Puritan literature can have failed to notice that the Puritans—these holy geniuses—were the masters of metaphor and rhythm. It is well-known that because of their giftedness they were often admonished by their professors and peers to crucify their style on the cross of content. This did not mean that they were to shun the use of art. It is obvious from their sermons and treatises that they did not do so. What they did was subject every artistic device to the purpose of showing up Scripture Truth. They did not suspect art ‘as false,’ but guarded against a false use of art. To fulfill their commitment to God, they molded each figure of speech into a homely dialect that even the milkmaid and the chimney sweep could understand. Every bit of composition was drafted for the sole purpose of illuminating objective truth. Form was allowed its part, just as color is permitted by the painter to beautify the subject on the canvas. Color alone should not be suffered to stand for content, as in works of modern art. Unless a literary work is made to serve a noble cause, which can only be done by making form the handmaiden of content, the author commits a form of idolatry.
Some authors even confess their idolatry of literature. Katherine Mansfield’s (1888-1923) avowal of her pursuit after perfect composition is the spookiest that I have ever read: “Lord! Lord! It’s my only desire—my one happy issue…Work. Shall I be able to express, one day, my love of work—my desire to be a better writer—my longing to take greater pains. And the passion I feel. It takes the place of religion—it is my religion—of people—I create my people: of ‘life’—it is Life. The temptation is to kneel before it, to adore, to prostrate myself, to stay too long in a state of ecstasy before the idea of it. I must be more busy about my master’s business” (Gary Geddes, The Art of Short Fiction, p. 226.) This is idolatry to a self-made world; more particularly, it is idolatry to the act of creating: it is idolatry to form. And since she is the former of the form that she speaks too highly of, then her idol, really, is herself. ‘My master’s business’ is just her turn of phrase for ‘my Father’s business,’ which is borrowed from the life of Jesus; and her Father is Art, the Artist, and Herself. Her master is herself as artist, though on a deeper level she is the devil’s child. And, as might be expected, her use of the word ‘Lord’ is a vain use. Biographical information reveals that this woman was elated at the increasing decadence of modern society at the advent of the 20th century. In the spirit of the ‘new morality’—which movement means ‘anti-traditional immorality’—she became pregnant by the man she cheated on her husband with, was comfortable as a lesbian; and, according to a site called Spartacus International, referred to herself as ‘very much a female of the underworld.’ I cannot find this last reference anywhere else but on that site. Whether she described herself as an agent of the underworld or not, it is an apt description of her, considering her illicit conduct. The stories that I have read by her are not cheap or vulgar. She wrote, however, during a time when England was still on the moral leash of Queen Victoria, which held on for many years past the queen’s death in 1901. The few stories that I have by Mansfield are not much more than relationship scenes or sad vignettes, which doesn’t say much in defense of content. Her overemphasis on tone and form is ahead of its time. It does not exemplify the 19th century that spawned her. Writers born near the close of that century usually carry into the next a moral burden. Her stories do not manifest this, though it should be conceded that Her First Ball can give rise to an awakening on the brevity of youth and that her craft surpasses that of writers who are being celebrated almost a century after her death.
Many writers who are not as forward and honest as Katherine Mansfield are as guilty of worshipping their own works as Mansfield was of worshipping hers. Like her, their number one priority and chief end is to discover the how-to of transmitting the perfect delivery, which Mansfield calls, ‘my Eternal Question.’
