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different content
are some of the ancient stories that they remain models to-day.
Chiefly, then, the short fiction of the eighteenth century showed
progress over that of earlier centuries in that it was much more
consistently produced by a much greater number of writers—so far
as our records show.
Separately interesting studies of the eighteenth-century essay-
stories of Addison, Steele, Johnson and others in the English
periodicals, the Spectator, Tatler, Rambler, Idler, and Guardian might
well be made, for these forms lead us directly to Hawthorne and
Irving in America. Of almost equal value would be a study of Defoe’s
ghost stories (1727) and Voltaire’s development of the protean
French detective-story, in his “Zadig,” twenty years later.
With the opening of the nineteenth century the marks of progress are
more decided. The first thirty years brought out a score of the most
brilliant story-tellers imaginable, who differ from Poe and his
followers only in this particular—they were still perfecting the tale,
the sketch, the expanded anecdote, the episode, and the scenario,
for they had neither for themselves nor for their literary posterity set
up a new standard, as Poe was to do so very soon.
Of this fecund era were born the German weird tales of Ernst
Amadeus Hoffmann and J. L. Tieck; the Moral Tales of Maria
Edgeworth, and the fictional episodes of Sir Walter Scott in Scotland;
the anecdotal tales and the novelettes of Prosper Mérimée and
Charles Nodier in France; the tales of Pushkin, the father of Russian
literature; and the tale-short-stories of Washington Irving and
Nathaniel Hawthorne in America. Here too lies a fascinating field of
study, over which to trace the approach towards that final form, so to
call it, which was both demonstrated and expounded by Poe. It must
suffice here to observe that Irving preferred the easy-flowing essay-
sketch, and the delightful, leisurely tale (with certain well-marked
tendencies toward a compact plot), rather than the closely organized
plot which we nowadays recognize as the special possession of the
short-story.
In France, from 1830 to 1832, Honoré de Balzac produced a series
of notable short-stories which, while marvels of narration, tend to be
condensed novels in plot, novelettes in length, or expanded
anecdotes. However, together with the stories of Prosper Mérimée,
they furnish evidence for a tolerably strong claim that the modern
short-story was developed as a fixed form in France before it was
discovered in America—a claim, however, which lacks the elements
of entire solidity, as a more critical study would show.
From 1830 on, it would require a catalogue to name, and volumes to
discuss, the array of European and American writers who have
produced fictional narratives which have more or less closely
approached the short-story form. Until 1835, when Edgar Allan Poe
wrote “Berenice” and “The Assignation,” the approaches to the
present form were sporadic and unsustained and even unconscious,
so far as we may argue from the absence of any critical standard.
After that year both Poe and others seemed to strive more definitely
for the close plot, the repression of detail, the measurable unity of
action, and the singleness of effect which Poe clearly defined and
expounded in 1842.
Since Poe’s notable pronouncement, the place of the short-story as
a distinctive literary form has been attested by the rise and growth of
a body of criticism, in the form of newspaper and magazine articles,
volumes given broadly to the consideration of fiction, and books
devoted entirely to the short-story. Many of these contributions to the
literature of criticism are particularly important because their authors
were the first to announce conclusions regarding the form which
have since been accepted as standard; others have traced with a
nice sense of comparison the origin and development of those
earlier forms of story-telling which marked the more or less definite
stages of progress toward the short-story type as at present
recognized; while still others are valuable as characterizing
effectively the stories of well-known writers and comparing the
progress which each showed as the short-story moved on toward its
present high place.
Some detailed mention of these writings, among other critical and
historical productions, may be of value here, without at all attempting
a bibliography, but merely naming chronologically the work of those
critics who have developed one or more phases of the subject with
particular effectiveness.[10]
Interesting and informing as all such historical and comparative
research work certainly is, it must prove to be of greater value to the
student than to the fiction writer. True, the latter may profit by a
profound knowledge of critical distinctions, but he is more likely, for a
time at least, to find his freedom embarrassed by attempting to
adhere too closely to form, whereas in fiction a chief virtue is that
spontaneity which expresses itself.
But there would seem to be some safe middle-ground between a
flouting of all canons of art, arising from an utter ignorance and
contempt of the history of any artistic form, and a timid and tied-up
unwillingness to do anything in fiction without first inquiring, “Am I
obeying the laws as set forth by the critics?” The short-story writer
should be no less unhampered because he has learned the origin
and traced the growth of the ancient fiction-forms and learned to say
of his own work, or that of others, “Here is a fictional sketch, here a
tale, and here a short-story”—if, indeed, he does not recognize in it a
delightful hybrid.
By far the most important contribution to the subject of short-story
criticism was made by Edgar Allan Poe, when in May, 1842, he
published in Graham’s Magazine a review of Hawthorne’s Tales, in
which he announced his theory of the short-story—a theory which is
regarded to-day as the soundest of any yet laid down.
In 1876, Friedrich Spielhagen pointed out in his Novelle oder Roman
the essential distinction between the novel and the short-story.[11]
In 1884, Professor Brander Matthews published in the Saturday
Review, London, and in 1885 published in Lippincott’s Magazine,
“The Philosophy of the Short-story,” in which, independently of
Spielhagen, he announced the essential distinction between the
novel and the short-story, and pointed out its peculiarly individual
characteristics. In a later book-edition, he added greatly to the
original essay by a series of quotations from other critics and
essayists, and many original comparisons between the writings of
master short-story tellers.
In March 11, 1892, T. W. Higginson contributed to The Independent
an article on “The Local Short-Story,” which was the first known
discussion of that important type.
In 1895, Sherwin Cody published anonymously in London the first
technical treatise on the rhetoric of the short-story, “The Art of Story
Writing.”
In 1896, Professor E. H. Lewis instituted in Chicago University the
first course of instruction in the art of story-writing.
In 1898, Charles Raymond Barrett published the first large work on
Short Story Writing, with a complete analysis of Hawthorne’s “The
Ambitious Guest,” and many important suggestions for writers.
In the same year Charity Dye first applied pedagogical principles to
the study of the short story, in The Story-Teller’s Art.
In 1902, Professor Lewis W. Smith published a brochure, The
Writing of the Short Story, in which psychological principles were for
the first time applied to the study and the writing of the short-story.
In 1902, Professor H. S. Canby issued The Short Story, in which the
theory of impressionism was for the first time developed. In 1903,
this essay was included in The Book of the Short Story, Alexander
Jessup collaborating, together with specimens of stories from the
earliest times and lists of tales and short-stories arranged by periods.
In 1904, Professor Charles S. Baldwin developed a criticism of
American Short Stories which has been largely followed by later
writers.
In 1909, Professor H. S. Canby produced The Short Story in English,
the first voluminous historical and critical study of the origins, forms,
and content of the short-story.
I have dwelt upon the history of the short-story thus in outline
because we often meet the inquiry—sometimes put ignorantly,
sometimes skeptically—What is a short-story? Is it anything more
than a story that is short?
The passion for naming and classifying all classes of literature may
easily run to extreme, and yet there are some very great values to be
secured by both the reader and the writer in arriving at some
understanding of what literary terms mean. To establish distinctions
among short fictive forms is by no means to assert that types which
differ from the technical short-story are therefore of a lower order of
merit. Many specimens of cognate forms possess an interest which
surpasses that of short-stories typically perfect.
Ever since Poe differentiated the short-story from the mere short
narrative we have come to a clearer apprehension of what this form
really means. I suppose that no one would insist upon the standards
of the short-story as being the criterion of merit for short fiction—
certainly I should commit no such folly in attempting to establish an
understanding, not to say a definition, of the form. More than that:
some short-stories which in one or more points come short of
technical perfection doubtless possess a human interest and a
charm quite lacking in others which are technically perfect—just as
may be the case with pictures.
Some things, however, the little fiction must contain to come
technically within the class of perfect short-stories. It must be
centralized about one predominating incident—which may be
supported by various minor incidents. This incident must intimately
concern one central character—and other supporting characters, it
may be. The story must move with a certain degree of directness—
that is, there must be a thorough exclusion of such detail as is
needless. This central situation or episode or incident constitutes, in
its working out, the plot; for the plot must not only have a crisis
growing out of a tie-up or crossroads or complication, but the very
essence of the plot will consist in the resolution or untying or
denouement of the complication.
Naturally, the word plot will suggest to many a high degree of
complexity; but this is by no means necessary in order to establish
the claims of a fictitious narrative to being a short-story. Indeed,
some of the best short-stories are based upon a very slender
complication; in other words, their plots are not complex.
Elsewhere[12] I have defined the short-story, and this statement may
serve to crystallize the foregoing. “A short-story is a brief,
imaginative narrative, unfolding a single predominating incident and
a single chief character; it contains a plot, the details of which are so
compressed, and the whole treatment so organized, as to produce a
single impression.”
But some of these points need to be amplified.
A short-story is brief not merely from the fact that it contains
comparatively few words, but in that it is so compressed as to omit
non-essential elements. It must be the narration of a single incident,
supported, it may be, by other incidents, but none of these minor
incidents must rival the central incident in the interest of the reader.
A single character must be preëminent, but a pair of characters
coördinate in importance may enjoy this single preëminence in the
story, yet no minor characters must come to overshadow the central
figure. The story will be imaginative, not in the sense that it must be
imaginary, or that the facts in the story may not be real facts, but
they must be handled and organized in an imaginative way, else it
would be plain fact and not fiction. The story must contain a plot; that
is to say, it must exhibit a character or several characters in crisis—
for in plot the important word is crisis—and the denouement is the
resolution of this crisis. Finally, the whole must be so organized as to
leave a unified impression upon the mind of the reader—it must
concentrate and not diffuse attention and interest.
All of the same qualities that inhere in the short-story may also be
found in the novelette, except that the novelette lacks the
compression, unity and simplicity of the short-story and is therefore
really a short novel. Both the novel and the novelette admit of sub-
plots, a large number of minor incidents, and even of digressions,
whereas these are denied to the short-story, which throws a white
light on a single crucial instance of life, some character in its hour of
crisis, some soul at the crossroads of destiny.
There is a tendency nowadays to give a mere outline of a story—so
to condense it, so to make it swift, that the narration amounts to
merely an outline without the flesh and blood of the true short-story.
In other words, there is a tendency to call a scenario of a much
longer story—for instance the outline of a novelette—a short-story.
This extreme is as remote from the well-rounded short-story form as
the leisurely novelette, padded out with infinite attention to detail.
The tale differs from the short-story in that it is merely a succession
of incidents without any real sense of climax other, for example, than
might be given by the close of a man’s life, the ending of a journey,
or the closing of the day. The tale is a chain; the short-story is a tree.
The links of the chain may be extended indefinitely, but there comes
a time when the tree can grow no longer and still remain a perfect
tree. The tale is practically without organization and without plot—
there is little crisis, and the result of the crisis, if any there be, would
be of no vital importance to the characters, for no special change in
their relations to each other grows out of the crisis in the tale.
A sketch is a lighter, shorter, and more simple form of fiction than the
short-story. It exhibits character in a certain stationary situation, but
has no plot, nor does it disclose anything like a crisis from which a
resolution or denouement is demanded. It might almost be called a
picture in still life were it not that the characters are likely to live and
to move.
In these introductory pages I have emphasized and reëmphasized
these distinctions in various ways, because to me they seem to be
important. But after all they are merely historical and technical. A
man may be a charming fellow and altogether admirable even if his
complexion quarrels with his hair and his hands do not match his
feet in relative size.
The present tendency of the British and American short-story is a
matter of moment because no other literary form commands the
interest of so many writers and readers. All literature is feeling the
hand of commerce, but the short-story is chiefly threatened. The
magazine is its forum, and the magazine must make money or
suspend. Hence the chief inquiry of the editor is, What stories will
make my magazine sell? And this is his attitude because his
publisher will no longer pay a salary to an editor whose magazine
must be endowed, having no visible means of support.
These conditions force new standards to be set up. The story must
have literary merit, it must be true to life, it must deal sincerely with
great principles—up to the limit of popularity. Beyond that it must not
be literary, truthful, or sincere. Popularity first, then the rest—if
possible.
All this is a serious indictment of the average magazine, but it is true.
Only a few magazines regard their fiction as literature and not as
merely so much merchandise, to be cut to suit the length of pages,
furnish situations for pictures, and create subscriptions by readers.
Yet somehow this very commercialized standard is working much
good in spite of itself. It is demanding the best workmanship, and is
paying bright men and women to abandon other pursuits in order to
master a good story-telling method. It is directing the attention of our
ablest literators to a teeming life all about them when otherwise they
might lose themselves in abstractions “up in the air.” It is, for
business reasons, insisting upon that very compression to which
Maupassant attained in the pursuit of art. It is building up a standard
of precise English which has already advanced beyond the best
work of seventy years ago—though it has lost much of its elegance
and dignity.
In a word, the commercialized short-story is a mirror of the times—it
compasses movement, often at the expense of fineness, crowds
incidents so rapidly that the skeleton has no space in which to wear
its flesh, and prints stories mediocre and worse because better ones
will not be received with sufficient applause.
But while the journalized short-story adopts the hasty standards of
the newspaper because the public is too busy to be critical, in some
other respects it mirrors the times more happily. The lessons of
seriousness it utters with the lips of fun. Its favorite implement is a
rake, but it does uncover evils that ought not to remain hidden.
Finally, it concerns itself with human things, and tosses speculations
aside; it carefully records our myriad-form local life as the novel
cannot; and it has wonderfully developed in all classes the sense of
what is a good story, and that is a question more fundamental to all
literature than some critics might admit.
Here then is a new-old form abundantly worth study, for its
understanding, its appreciation, and its practise. If there is on one
side a danger that form may become too prominent and spirit too
little, there are balancing forces to hold things to a level. The
problems, projects and sports of the day are, after all, the life of the
day, and as such they furnish rightful themes. Really, signs are not
wanting that point to the truth of this optimistic assertion: The mass
of the people will eventually do the right, and they will at length bring
out of the commercialized short-story a vital literary form too human
to be dull and too artistic to be bad.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES FOR
CLASS
OR INDIVIDUAL STUDY OF A SHORT-STORY
1. Estimating from an average page, how many words has this
story?
2. What type of story is it chiefly?
3. Does it subordinately illustrate any other types also? If so, which?
4. Is the title adequate?
5. What is its theme?
6. Write out a brief scenario of the plot.
7. Are the incidents arranged in effective order?
8. How many characters (a) speak, (b) are present but do not speak,
(c) are referred to but are not present?
9. Are the characters idealized, or are they quite true to life?
10. Are the characters individualized? Point out how the author
accomplishes this result.
11. What is the author’s attitude toward his characters?
12. What is the proportion of dialogue to description and comment?
13. What do you think of the dialogue?
14. Do you regard this story as being realistic, romantic, idealistic, or
composite?
15. Is the author’s purpose apparent? If so, what is it?
16. Are there any weak points in the plot?
17. Is the introduction interesting and clear?
18. Does the story end satisfactorily?
19. Is the conclusion either too long or too short?
20. Would any parts of the story be improved either by shortening or
by expanding? Be specific.
21. Does the story arouse in you any particular feeling, or mood?
22. What are the especially strong points of the story?
23. Write a general appreciation, using about two hundred words.
24. What is the final impression the story makes upon you?
NOTE
Nine distinct methods for the study of a novel are outlined in the
appendix to The Study of a Novel, by Selden L. Whitcomb. Some of
these may be applied to the short-story. Some excellent study
methods and questions are given in The Writing of the Short Story,
by Lewis Worthington Smith.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Excellent and comprehensive works, dealing more especially
with the English novel, are: The English Novel, Sidney Lanier
(Scribners, 1883, 1897); The Development of the English Novel,
Wilbur L. Cross (Macmillan, 1899); The Evolution of the English
Novel, Francis Hovey Stoddard (Macmillan, 1900); A Study of
Prose Fiction, Bliss Perry (Houghton-Mifflin, 1902); The Study of
A Novel, Selden L. Whitcomb (Heath, 1905); The Technique of
the Novel, Charles F. Horne (Harpers, 1908); Materials and
Methods of Fiction, Clayton Hamilton (Baker-Taylor, 1908).
[2] Good collections arranged historically are, The Book of the
Short Story, Alexander Jessup and Henry Seidel Canby; and The
Short-story, Brander Matthews. The former contains lists of
stories short and long grouped by periods.
[3] A full study of this character has been attempted in the present
author’s Writing The Short-Story, Hinds, Hayden and Eldredge.
New York, 1909.
[4] Egyptian Tales, W. M. Flinders Petrie.
[5] Stories from Homer, Church.
[6] The Bible as English Literature, J. H. Gardiner.
[7] A History of Latin Literature, George A. Simcox.
[8] The fabliau, a French form adopted by the English, is an
amusing story told in verse, generally of eight-syllable line.
Another poetic form of the period is the lai, a short metrical
romance.
[9] The Italian novella was popular in England down to the late
Elizabethan period. It is a diverting little story of human interest
but told with no moral purpose, even when it is reflective. In
purpose it is the direct opposite of the exemplum, which is a
moral tale told to teach a lesson, and may be compared to the
“illustration” which the exhorter repeats in the pulpit to-day.
[10] For a fuller examination of the bibliography of the subject
refer to the bibliographical notes in the books by Matthews,
Baldwin, Perry, Jessup and Canby, Canby, Dye, C. A. Smith, and
the editor of this volume—all referred to in detail elsewhere
herein. A supplementary bibliographical note will also be found on
p. 433.
[11] For this important record of the discriminations of a critic little
known in America, we are indebted to Professor C. Alphonso
Smith’s work on The American Short Story.
[12] Writing the Short-Story, p. 30.
I
STORIES OF ACTION AND
ADVENTURE
Mateo Falcone.—Prosper Mérimée.
A Lodging for the Night.—Robert Louis
Stevenson.
But the great majority of novels and plays represent
human life in nothing more faithfully than in their
insistence upon deeds. It is through action—tangible,
visible action upon the stage, or, in the novel, action
suggested by the medium of words—that the characters of
the play and the novel are ordinarily revealed. In
proportion as high art is attained in either medium of
expression this action is marked by adequacy of motive,
by conformity to the character, by progression and unity.—
Bliss Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction.
Studying The Short-Story
STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE
Few words are needed to set forth the meaning of this caption, for
the designation is sufficiently explicit. One point, however, it will be
well to emphasize: In fiction all action worthy of the name is the
outward manifestation of an inward condition. There is a sense,
therefore, in which all stories that are not mere pictures of internal
states are stories of action; just as it may be said that all stories are
stories of thought, feeling, and resolve. The point of distinction lies
here: in which direction does the story tend?
In one class, outward action is seen to work profoundly upon the
inward life, and the story shows us the workings of this influence in
its final effect upon the inward man and his character. In another, an
inward state is the basis, the premise, the initial force, in the story,
and from that beginning the story goes on to show by a series of
outward movements just how this great inward force operates in and
upon conduct. In a third class, outward and inward action balance.
Now when the outward or visible action, prominently displaying
physical movement, becomes paramount, whether shown as cause
or as effect, we have the action-story, and sometimes the adventure-
story. And in proportion as the interest of the reader centers in what
the characters do instead of in what they are, the story departs from
the subtler forms, such as the character-study and the psychological-
study, and action or adventure becomes the type. Reverse these
conditions, and another sort is the result.
Naturally, many variations are possible with these two chief
ingredients ready for use. One story may begin with soul action, then
proceed to show us bodily action with great vividness, and end by
taking us back into the man’s inner life. Another may progress on
contrary lines; and so on, in wide variety. The final test as to what is
the predominating type lies in the appeal to the interest of the reader:
is it based chiefly on what the characters are or on what they do? Is
it the why, or the how, the motive or the happening, that is most
absorbing? The best stories, even the best action and adventure
yarns, are likely to show a fair proportion of both.
MÉRIMÉE AND HIS WRITINGS
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris, September 28, 1803. His father,
a Norman, was a professor in the École des Beaux-Arts, and his
mother, Anne Moreau, who had English blood in her veins, was also
an artist. Prosper attended the Collège Henri IV, and in the home of
his parents met the literati of the day. He undertook the study of law,
but soon abandoned it, and spent some years in observing life while
journeying abroad. He made much of ancient and modern
languages, becoming especially proficient in Spanish. Upon his
return to Paris he served in public office, and held the post of
Inspector General of Public Monuments until declining health
compelled him to retire. He was elected to several learned societies
and became a commander of the Legion of Honor, and, in 1844, a
member of the French Academy. Nine years later he was made a
Senator of France, an honor he owed to the friendship of the
Empress Eugénie. He died at Cannes on the 23rd of September,
1870, at the age of sixty-seven.
Prosper Mérimée was a successful poet, translator, novelist, and
short-story writer. His translations of the Russian novelists have
been pronounced excellent. “Colomba” is a romantic novelette of
singular power and charm. His most famous short-stories are “The
Taking of the Redoubt,” “Tamango,” “Federigo,” “The Etruscan Vase,”
“The Vision of Charles XI,” “The Venus of Ille,” “The Pearl of Toledo,”
“Carmen” (on which Bizet’s opera is founded), “Arsène Guillot,” and
“Mateo Falcone”; which follows, in a translation by the editor of this
volume. It was first published in the Revue de Paris, May, 1829.
Among French masters of the short-story, Mérimée easily holds
place in the first rank. Both personality and genius are his, and both
well repay careful study. He was an alert student of history, to whom
its anecdotal side made strongest appeal. The detached,
impersonal, unprejudiced attitude of the historian is seen in his short-
stories, for he tells his narrative impartially, with a sort of take-it-or-
leave-it air, allowing the story to make its own appeal without any
special pleading on his part. His story-telling manner is, therefore,
one of ironical coldness. He delighted to tell his tales in the matter-
of-fact manner of the casual traveller who has picked up a good yarn
and passes it on just as it was told him. And this literary attitude was
a reflex of his personality. To him, to love deeply was to endure pain,
to follow impulse was to court trouble, to cherish enthusiasms was to
delude the mind, so he schooled himself to appear impassive. Yet
now and then in his lucid and clear-cut stories, as in his urbane life, a
certain sweetness is revealed which speaks alluringly of the tender
spirit within.
All my life I have sought to free myself from prejudices, to
be a citizen of the world before being a Frenchman, but
now all these garments of philosophy are nothing to me.
To-day I bleed for the wounds of the foolish French, I
mourn for their humiliations, and, however ungrateful and
absurd they may be, I love them still.—Prosper
Mérimée, letter to Madame de Beaulaincourt (Marquise
de Castellane), written, ten days before his death, on
hearing from his friend Thiers that the disaster of Sedan
was irreparable and that the Empire was a thing of the
past.
A gallant man and a gentleman, he has had the reward he
would have wished. He has been discreetly and intimately
enjoyed by delicate tastes.... It was his rare talent to give
us those limpid, rapid, full tales, that one reads in an hour,
re-reads in a day, which fill the memory and occupy the
thoughts forever.—Émile Faguet, quoted by Grace King,
in C. D. Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature.
Colomba, Mateo Falcone, La Double Méprise, La Vénus
d’Ille, L’Enlèvement de la Redoute, Lokis, have equals, but
no superiors, either in French prose fiction or in French
prose. Grasp of human character, reserved but masterly
description of scenery, delicate analysis of motive, ability
to represent the supernatural, pathos, grandeur, simple
narrative excellence, appear turn by turn in these
wonderful pieces, as they appear hardly anywhere else.—
George Saintsbury, A Short History of French
Literature.
While inferior to Stendhal as a psychologist,
notwithstanding the keenness of his analysis, he excels
him in opening out and developing action, and in
composing a work whose parts hang well together. In
addition he possesses a “literary” style,—not the style of
an algebraist, but that of an exact, self-sustained writer.
He attains the perfection of form in his particular line.
Nearly all his stories are masterpieces of that rather dry
and hard, though forceful, nervous, and pressing style,
which constitutes him one of the most original and most
characteristic novelists of the century.—Georges
Pellissier, The Literary Movement in France.
I do not scruple to apply the word great to Mérimée, a
word which is not to be used lightly, but of which he is
thoroughly deserving. His style is the purest and clearest
of our century; no better model could possibly be found for
our present generation. His prose, to my mind, together
with that of Musset, Fromentin, and Renan, is the most
beautiful modern prose which has ever been written in the
French language. Like the great classics of the 17th
century, he never wrote a passage merely to please the
eye or the ear; his sole aim was to express thought, and
the colour of his language, which is so pre-eminently true
to nature, is of a rare sobriety; he never studies effect,
and, nevertheless, invariably attains it.—Edouard
Grenier, Literary Reminiscences.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON
MÉRIMÉE
Miscellaneous Studies, Walter Pater (1895); Modern French
Literature, Benjamin W. Wells (1896); Contes et Nouvelles, by
Prosper Mérimée, edited by J. E. Michell (1907); A Century of
French Fiction, Benjamin W. Wells (1898); Prosper Mérimée, Arthur
Symonds, in A Century of French Romance, edited by Edmund W.
Gosse (1901); Six Masters in Disillusion, Algar Therold (1909).
MATEO FALCONE
BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
Translation by The Editor
Note: The technical terms used in the marginal notes
explanatory of the short-stories throughout this work follow
the terminology used and treated fully in the present author’s
Writing the Short-Story.
As one comes out of Porto-Vecchio, and A story of local-color
turns northwest toward the center of the because the
Corsican customs
island, the ground is seen to rise quite determine the
rapidly, and after three hours’ walk by destinies of the
tortuous paths, blocked by large masses of characters. It is
equally a character-
rocks, and sometimes cut by ravines, the study and a
traveler finds himself on the edge of a very psychological study.
extensive maquis. This bush is the home of Note how
characters
the Corsican shepherds, and of harmonize with
whomsoever has come into conflict with the setting, throughout.
law. It is well known that the Corsican
laborer, to spare himself the trouble of fertilizing his lands,
sets fire to a certain stretch of forest; so much the worse if the
flames spread further than is needed; Setting is minutely
whatever happens, he is sure to have a given, yet not
diffusely.
