And again, who has not felt an actual pain, as of a delicate blade being thrust into the heart, by some phrase of scarcely analyzable pathos. Heine had that weapon. The art of it, we suppose, is that of extreme simplicity combined with selection, but the emotion is quite incommensurate with the importance of the theme, the value of the expressed idea.
To use another simile, it is like a wailing air on some primitive instrument, which by its very artlessness pierces to the marrow of the consciousness.
“Ces doux airs du pays, au doux rythme obsesseur, Dont chaque note est comme une petite sœur,”
Think of the effect in “Tristran” of the shepherd’s pipe at the beginning of the last act.
It comes to this after all, that however one may study, however perfect the technique of writing, however one may inspire oneself from the springs of genius, it is artlessness, not art, that reaches home. It might be truer to say that it takes a consummate art to touch the right note of artlessness; yet we all know how curiously we can sometimes be affected by the words that fall from childish lips.
A Belgian babe of two, a dimpled, radiant creature, seemingly untouched by the storm which had flung her from her own luxurious nurseries into a bare English lodging, was found, two days after her arrival in exile, kissing and talking to the little crucifix which hung round her neck. Her mother bent to listen.
“Dear Jesus,” the child was saying, “poor wounded soldier!”
The profound and mystic consolation of the link between the human agony and the Divine had somehow dawned upon the infant mind, and found this tender expression.
A little boy we knew said to his mother one evening as she tucked him up in his cot:
“Oh, mammie, I die a little every night, I love you so.” Here, with an exquisite directness, the inevitable pain of a deep tenderness is laid bare by the lips of innocence.
It is this quality of simplicity and directness--yes, we are not afraid to say it, of innocence--which makes the stories of our soldiers so infinitely touching.
“Tell daddie and mammie,” said a dying Irish lad to the comrade who bent over him to take his last message, “’twas against their will I ’listed; tell them I’m not sorry now I did it.”