Lay Morals, and Other PapersStevenson, Robert Louis
Philosophy
Lay Morals, and Other Papers
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Essays; Short stories
Yet perhaps it is in sequences that this artist best displays himself.
He loves to look at either side of a thing: as, for instance, when he
shows us both sides of the wall—‘Grace Inextinguishable’ on the one side,
with the devil vainly pouring buckets on the flame, and ‘The Oil of
Grace’ on the other, where the Holy Spirit, vessel in hand, still
secretly supplies the fire. He loves, also, to show us the same event
twice over, and to repeat his instantaneous photographs at the interval
of but a moment. So we have, first, the whole troop of pilgrims coming
up to Valiant, and Great-heart to the front, spear in hand and parleying;
and next, the same cross-roads, from a more distant view, the convoy now
scattered and looking safely and curiously on, and Valiant handing over
for inspection his ‘right Jerusalem blade.’ It is true that this
designer has no great care after consistency: Apollyon’s spear is laid
by, his quiver of darts will disappear, whenever they might hinder the
designer’s freedom; and the fiend’s tail is blobbed or forked at his good
pleasure. But this is not unsuitable to the illustration of the fervent
Bunyan, breathing hurry and momentary inspiration. He, with his hot
purpose, hunting sinners with a lasso, shall himself forget the things
that he has written yesterday. He shall first slay Heedless in the
Valley of the Shadow, and then take leave of him talking in his sleep, as
if nothing had happened, in an arbour on the Enchanted Ground. And
again, in his rhymed prologue, he shall assign some of the glory of the
siege of Doubting Castle to his favourite Valiant-for-the-Truth, who did
not meet with the besiegers till long after, at that dangerous corner by
Deadman’s Lane. And, with all inconsistencies and freedoms, there is a
power shown in these sequences of cuts: a power of joining on one action
or one humour to another; a power of following out the moods, even of the
dismal subterhuman fiends engendered by the artist’s fancy; a power of
sustained continuous realisation, step by step, in nature’s order, that
can tell a story, in all its ins and outs, its pauses and surprises,
fully and figuratively, like the art of words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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