An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph PulitzerIreland, Alleyne
General
An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer
Ireland, Alleyne
Pulitzer, Joseph, 1847-1911
It is no exaggeration to say that the editorial page of The World was to
J. P. what a child is to a parent. He had watched it daily for a quarter
of a century. During that time, I am told, he had read to him seventy-
five per cent. of all the editorials which were printed on it, and had
every cartoon described. Those who are interested in the editorial page
of The World should read Mr. John L. Heaton's admirable History of a
Page, published last year.
J. P.'s theory of editorial writing, which I heard him propound a dozen
times, called for three cardinal qualities--brevity, directness and
style--and, as these could not be expected to adorn hasty writing, he
employed a large staff of editorial writers and tried to limit each man
to an average of half a column a day, unless exceptional circumstances
called for a lengthy treatment of some important question.
He watched the style of each man with the closest attention, examining
the length of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the words, the
variety of the vocabulary, the choice of adjectives and adverbs, the
employment of superlatives, the selection of a heading, the nicety of
adjustment between the thought to be expressed and the language employed
for its expression.
If he chanced in the course of his reading to run across any apt phrase
in regard to literary style he would get one of us to type a number of
copies and send one to each of the editorial writers on The World. The
following were sent from Wiesbaden:
"Thiers compares a perfect style to glass through which we look without
being conscious of its presence between the object and the eye." (From
Abraham Hayward's "Essay on Thiers.")
"Lessing, Lichtenberger, and Schopenhauer agreed in saying that it is
difficult to write well, that no man naturally writes well, and that one
must, in order to acquire a style, work STRENUOUSLY ... I have tried to
write well."(Nietzsche.)
J. P. was never tired of discussing literary style, of making
comparisons between one language and another from the point of view of
an exact expression of an idea, or of the different SOUND of the same
idea expressed in different languages. For instance, he asked us once
during an argument about translations of Shakespeare to compare the
lines:
"You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart."
with the German:
"Ihr seid mein echtes, ehrenwertes Weib,
So teuer mir, als wie die Purpurtropfen
Die um mein trauernd Herz sich drangen."
and the opening words of Hamlet's soliloquy with the German:
"Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage."
Of the former pair he greatly preferred the English, of the latter the
German.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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