indifference or slight importance in the mind will be represented by conspicuous and emphatic images in the dream, whereas a matter of genuine and serious import, if it appear in the dream at all, will be relegated to the background. The thought as it exists in the mind, in being formed into the dream pictures, suffers a shift or displacement of psychic emphasis so that what is central in the first becomes marginal in the second, and vice versa. This accounts for the deception of the dream; manifestly it is commonplace and innocent; only in its latent features is it significant. For example in the dream mentioned in Chapter X the feature of apparent importance is that I pick up numbers of golf balls with eagerness, but it is found on investigation that the secondary feature of the mushrooms is much more significant, has more associations, and is more highly emotionalized. Both features indeed carry some feeling in their origin, but the higher psychic intensity of the second is shifted in the dream to the first. The preceding is obviously only a more explicit statement of a process we have already observed in Chapter X, by which a feeling is transferred from an (older) significant experience to a (recent) trivial one, and by which, through a contiguity or a resemblance, one experience is made to stand as an emotional substitute for another. This process of displacement is also closely connected with that of condensation and multiple meanings which we have just noticed. That is, wherever there are two or more meanings, one obvious and apparent, the others latent, a shifting of psychic intensity has taken place. The obvious meaning is apparently central, the latent meaning is seen only out of the corner of the eye. But this appearance is deceptive, as in the dream; the apparently central meaning is relatively unimportant, while the marginal meaning as we have seen, is emotionally significant. I may ask the reader therefore to reconsider the examples given earlier in this chapter as illustrations of this new process, and content myself here with one or two further examples. The first, which may seem merely curious but is somewhat instructive, is from the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot in which Pope professes to rise above hostile attack and abuse,-above The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown, Rankling in Pope's mind as he wrote the last lines was probably the frontispiece of "Pope Alexander's " Supremacy and Infallibility Examined, which showed the poet in the likeness of an ape. What he ostensibly objected to was being pictured: what he really objected to was being pictured like an ape. The real meaning lurks and betrays itself in the choice of words and rhyme (scape-shape). Pope either witfully indicates the caricature he has in mind, or he unconsciously betrays the feeling of pique he professes he is superior to. In either case there is a curious condensation and displacement. Whenever any feeling in the mind requires repression-a feeling of pique as here, or of shame or delicacy or conscientious scruple, this process of displacement will tend to come into play. The subject of repression must be considered later by itself. Whenever in poetry or fiction an author puts himself into the story, he is apt also to include besides this character in certain aspects representative of himself, another character or other characters, not apparently to be identified with himself,-to whom, however, his most significant experiences and his deepest feelings are transferred. One character narrates the story, using the first personal "I," and in the outward incidents of his life and in his more superficial characteristics resembles the author; another character, referred to in the third person, not ostensibly autobiographical, will nevertheless represent the author's inner, deeper, and more unconscious life. This kind of transference is a variety of displacement. Often in Poe there is this mechanism-in the "Gold Bug," the "Assignation," or the "Fall of the House of Usher." In the last named story, for example, the narrator is the rational, hack-writing, work-a-day Poe: Roderick Usher is Poe the poet, the dreamer, the victim of fear, hyperaesthesia, and neurosis. For Poe's biographer the latter is the more instructive character; it has deeper roots in Poe's mind; it reveals psychic depths which Poe would have shown reluctantly, which therefore he strives, so to speak, to shift from himself in the story. Roderick Usher suffers while the narrator only looks on and sympathizes. For another example I may take "Julian and Maddalo." The picture of the two poets talking as they ride home in the evening on the Lido is of course delightful. The remainder of the poem is more puzzling but perhaps, as far as Shelley is concerned, more instructive if we can understand it. Who is the maniac? According to Shelley himself he is "also in some degree painting from nature, but with respect to time and place ideal." According to Dowden his confessions are probably "the idealized record of Shelley's days of misery with Harriet." If this be true we can understand why Shelley recounts trifling experiences under the thin disguise of Julian, but transfers his terrible confessions to a character much more heavily shrouded. The trifles are easily comprehensible, the confessions are confused and obscure. In poetry, as in dreams, the most confused portions doubtless often have the greatest emotional intensity. We shall return to this subject of displacement later. The last examples here bring up the subject of the formation of characters in poetry and fiction, and as this is one of the most common and most important functions of the imagination, and as it illustrates new features of the imaginative work, I shall take it up in a new chapter. CHAPTER XII THE FORMATION OF IMAGINARY CHARACTERS I THE HE subject of the formation of imaginary characters covers a very wide field-as wide as the whole field of literature and indeed wider, because, as we shall see, the imagination which forms characters for the purposes of literary fiction, forms them also for other quite non-literary purposes in much the same way. In fact the imagination in all its many employments is oftenest engaged in the imagining of persons. > In the following chapter dealing with this large subject I shall be able only to attempt some classification of the processes involved, and to make some few observations on each class with examples. The characters in poetry and prose fiction may be conceived and delineated in two ways, corresponding to the two modes of thought already explained, that is, they may be either intellectually constructed or imaginatively created. Doubtless in practice, particularly in the ordinary novel, there is often a combination of the two faculties or methods. The character is first seen in imagination and then elaborated, discussed, criticized by the intellect. But here as earlier, the imaginative conception is what demands attention. Furthermore the intellectually constructed character will always be inferior and will: betray its inferiority to the imaginatively created one-first in naturalness and truth to life, and secondly in originality and depth of significance. The imaginatively created character will delight and refresh us with its novelty; it will go on acting レ in our own imaginations after we have closed the book, or after we have left the theatre.1 The first requisite, then, for the writer of fiction, the requisite compared with which all the others are insignificant, is that he should see his characters in his imagination. As we have all so often used this expression of "seeing in the imagination" vaguely and thoughtlessly it may be better to say that the writer of fiction must see his characters appearing and acting before him with that "eye of the mind" I have referred to; or if his imagination is auditory, he must hear them speaking with his supersensory ear; see or hear them almost as distinctly as we see and hear through the bodily senses. He may see them realistically moving among scenes of ordinary life; or more dramatically, like Stevenson, who describes "dozing off in his box seat" and watching his "little people" acting their parts "upon their lighted theatre;" or like Sully-Prudhomme, who says that in writing his plays, "I seemed to be a spectator at the play; I gazed at what was passing on the scene in an eager passionate expectation of what was to follow." But in some sense they must have to him the reality of true persons. Scott, who dictated the Bride of Lammermoor from his couch in illness, and who strangely after the book was written did not "recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it contained," yet conceived it with such spirit that "he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and as it were acting the parts." And lest it may be thought that this kind of composition is out of date I may cite a recent American writer. Speaking of his "Minervy Anns" Joel Chandler Harris says, "I have been intensely absorbed in 'In other words the characters coming from true vision are best. This is why Mme. Rachilde preferred the characters of dream. "With one exception," she says, "all my books were first seen in dreams. . . and very often when I add chapters on my own account (de ma propre autorité) they do not turn out to be the best part of the book." Chabaneix, Le Subconscient, p. 57. 'Lockhart, Life, vol. vi, p. 67. |