1. Analyze in tabular form passages in this book. (See especially the preceding chapter, The Build of Paragraphs, where the paragraphs are regular.) 2. Give a tabular analysis of the books in any library. 3. Write a tabular analysis, based on the model, for these subjects: Effects of history or other study. Harm of bad reading. Advantages of traveling. Reasons for some proposed measure. CHAPTER XI DEVELOPING THE IMAGINATION 66. The imagination is that faculty which stores up the perceptions of the senses and enables us to represent to ourselves sensible objects when the objects themselves are away. The imagination is a material faculty but works in close connection with the mind, which is a spiritual faculty. The imagination may simply reproduce sense impressions (reproductive) or may make new combinations of sense impressions (creative). 67. In dreams and in the reading of stories and poems, we are led through a train of images (passive imagination). In composition we cause the imagination to respond to our control and to furnish the images so necessary for forceful and interesting writing (active imagination). The difference between the two is like the difference between the large vocabulary we understand and the small vocabulary we have at disposal when we wish to write or speak. The passive imagi.. nation calls for no development, but the active imagination does, I. General Methods 68. Read good fiction and especially poetry. Fiction is helpful, especially for beginners, but it is diffuse and explicit and leaves the reader somewhat passive. Poetry is better because it is concise and suggestive and forces the reader to exercise his imagination if he would follow the poet's thought. only way to develop a faculty is to use it. 69. Reflect on what you read. The Enter into the visions presented by the writer and try to see fully what he suggests. 70. Realize what you read and what you think of by striving to see a particular instance or an exemplification of the words and thoughts. In translating from another language strive to picture the object while seeking for the English word. Words tend to become as unimaginative as numbers. All words were once pictures, but in many cases the pictures are now faded. It will develop the imagination to revive that image or at least to recall the object to the imagination when the word is before the mind. Conventional phrases, hackneyed ideas, and matter of fact statements, all marks of the uninteresting writer, will be discarded or be freshened and vivified in some new way from the practice of imagining. EXERCISE 35 1. Describe how you would picture as an artist, what you imagine in the following lines: a. The marble index of a mind forever WORDSWORTH, describing a bust of Newton. b. There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic root so high. C. I warmed both hands before the fire of life; GRAY: Elegy. -LANDOR: Seventy-fifth Birthday. d. I feel like one who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, e. Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, MOORE: Oft in the Stilly Night. Full many a glorious morning have I seen SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets. f. And if I should live to be Let them smile, as I do now, g. And bead by bead I tell The Rosary of my years; - HOLMES: The Last Leaf. From a cross to a cross they lead; 'tis well, Better a day of strife Than a century of sleep; Give me instead of a long stream of life RYAN: The Rosary of My Tears. h. That time of year thou mayst in me behold i. Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. j. I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. POE: The Raven. TENNYSON: The Brook. k. Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. 1. Comes a vapor from the margin blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. TENNYSON: Locksley Hall. m. Men whose lives ran on like rivers of woodland, Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven. -LONGFELLOW: Evangeline. 2. Look up and describe what were the pictures originally presented by the following words: tribulation, squirrel, candor, paregoric, dilapidated, cynosure, instill, rivalry, hypocrisy, dyspeptic, canopy, telephone, emolument, scrupulous, stenography, etc. 3. Talk to a farmer about his crops, to a huntsman about his horse, to a fisherman about his net, you have him in the palm of your hands. It is a kind of Christian diplomacy; but I would much rather it were not necessary. etc. SHEEHAN: My New Curate. What would you talk about to a lawyer, doctor, mason, astronomer, II. Particular Methods 71. Put the concrete for the abstract. The abstract is the quality conceived apart from its substance, as whiteness; the concrete is the quality and substance united, as a white object, snow. The abstract can be thought of but cannot be imagined. In the following passage the writer in order to show the general bearing of a Scripture passage has taken away all its concreteness. See how much you can imagine from this and then read the original, Luke XI. 5-10. "The main circumstances therefore are sudden, unthought of, sense of imperative need, obliging to make what seems an unseasonable and unreasonable request, which, on the face of it, offers difficulties and has no claim upon compliance. It points to continued importunity which would at last obtain what it needs." 1. EDERSHEIM: Life of Christ, II, 240. EXERCISE 36 The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, Await alike th' inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Imagine concrete instances for all the abstract terms. Imagine the concrete pomp of a concrete power in Greek history, in Roman history, in your native place, etc. |