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Paper no-104
Topic-Walter Pater’s view on style
 Walter Pater’s view on style

In literature, style is the material articulation, in whatever genre and form, of an

author’s attempt to record their vision, sensibility, and apperception of the

world. The more fluid or less fixed the vision, sensibility and apperception, the

more fluid and less fixed the style. No style is solely the product of a given

author, but a conversation with and response to a vast network of styles that

preceded, parallel and follow that of the author. The author is not

dead, Pace Roland Barthes, but no author ever truly writes alone. Different

types of literature need different styles, and different style needs different

authors! Studies of the prose style of Walter Pater’s essays in literary and art

criticism have appeared irregularly during the past seventy years ; and for the

most part these examinations have been only cursory or ancillary, usually

appearing in longer discussions of his aesthetics or criticism. In fact, the most

pointedly analytic study of Pater as a prose stylist was an essay by Z. E.

Chandler of broader coverage than the restricted question of his style alone. Yet

while these brief investigations have appeared irregularly, a commonly heard

opinion is that Pater’s prose is for the most part musical or melodic in its flow

and harmony.

David de Laura has shown the degree to which Newman's "Literature"

influenced Pater's views in "Style"(334). Newman supposedly provided Pater

with a warrant for his emphasis on style as an expression of "soul," an inner

individual essence of the writer's personality. Newman's influence may be at

work, too, in Pater's demand for aesthetics, the constant self-denial involved in

the writer's craft. Some critics, however, seem as irritated by Pater's putative

relationship to Newman as others are by his supposed borrowings from

Flaubert. Apparently several critics do not feel that connections made between

"Style" and the work of Flaubert or Newman serve to explain Pater's essay or to

rescue it from charges of incoherency.

The 19th century was a period of intellectual activity in England. The scientific

development had a great effect on the literature of this period. They believed

that the modern civilization spoilt the beauty their art for artist sold their art for

money only. They wanted to preserve the beauty and purity of art. A regular

movement started in France and in England during the second half of the

nineteen century. ‘Art for Arts’ sake’ was the slogan of this movement. Flaubert

and Gautier originated it in France. James Whistler imported in to England and

Oscar While and Walter Pater followed it their works. In America Edgar Allan

Poe followed this esthetic moment. Pater was a great advocate of art for art’s

sake as Arnold was an advocate of ‘Art for life’s sake’. He gave more

importance to expression than to matter. He believed that delight is the chief, if

not the only aim of poetry. In his definition of style we find echo of Longinus.

He declared that

‘’ Style reveals the artist’s soul itself’’(Nathalie 9)

Thus style is the central problem of the literary art. The artist is a lover of

words. He put music on a much lighter pedestal than other fine arts. He found

fusion of soul and sense in poetry. Pater also showed difference between good

art and great art in his‘’essay on style”, he shows that good art is not necessarily

great art because great art has something impressive in the quality of the matter

it informs of control. It is related to great and note of revolt and largeness of

hope. As a stylist, Pater was wonderfully suggestive and original. Adapting the

rich and ornate cadences of Ruskin to his more subtle purpose, Pater evolved a

style that is the last word in delicacy, refinement, and understated eloquence.

His sentences are characterized by elaborate parentheses, delicately wrought

rhythms, and mannered circumlocutions annoying to some readers and his

malleable prose matches with minute accuracy the uncertainties, doubts, and

deliberations of a mind in debate with itself, a mind fastidiously alive to the full

complexity of human experience and scrupulously intent upon a verbal music

that, in its hesitant rhythms, remains faithful to that experience. In this regard,

he clearly anticipates Marcel Proust.

Pater is not a pedant. He uses proper words in proper place. He does not use two

words where one is enough. He has an architectural concept of art. He foresees

the end in the beginning. He creates a conscious artistic structure. He point out

that the writers’ means of expression are diction, design and personality. By

diction, he mans the choice of words , style is the manner of writing. It is

commonly construed with matter. Here matter means only raw material but of

which an artist makes something which is more interesting and beautiful for

example wood is the matter of material out of which cloth is made and the cloth

is matter out of which coats were made in this same way words are the poet.

The requirement of style is the combination of words into an organic whole.

Pater calls it ‘the necessity of mind in style’. The third requirement of the style

is ‘the soul in style’, with all the unity of design; style may lack warmth, cooler

and perfume. The writer’s personality gives this living touch. It is his breath in

his work. He communicates his personality through language. By mind, the

literary artist reaches us step by step, but by ‘soul’ he overcomes us. Here we

get the man in his style. Pater shows us that good art depends upon mind and

great art depends upon soul and mind.

Such art increases men’s happiness enlarges our sympathies, ennobles our soul

and takes us to the glory of God. Pater admires Lamb’s style for his touch of

friendship, warmth, love and care and also for his deep sympathy for the weak

and the oppressed. In the matter of style he considers Lamb next to Shakespeare
on account of the reflection of his personality. Here Pater shows the difference

between style and composition. Both the word means combination of words,

sentences and paragraphs in an order. But Composition depends upon mind

only. It is the mechanical side of writing and it requires mechanical correctness

only. But in style we find artist’s genuine expression of his personality.

According to Pater, style is not the product of external forces only which work

upon the artist’s personality. Though the artist’s personality is formed by the

external forces, there is no direct relation between the external forces and style.

We can conclude that Walter Pater’s achievement as a novelist and a critic is

central to the modern vision of art. Though he was not always edified by the

scandalous manner in which his disciples interpreted his message, nor gratified

by the distortion of his ideas by an entire generation of aesthetes and decadents,

Pater, when he is fully understood, emerges as a figure of incalculable

importance in the evolution of twentieth century literature. In the first place, he

did away with much of the fustian approach that obscured the appreciation of art

in his own day, and he left a critical legacy, which extended into the twentieth

century in the works of Bernard Berenson and Roger Fry. Moreover, as Harold

Bloom observes of Pater’s most memorable character, “Marius, more than any

fictional character of our age, is the representative modern poet as well as the

representative man of literary culture who remains the only audience for that

poet’’.(joseph14)
Work cited:

Dodd, Philip. Walter Pater an Imaginative sense of fact. England: FRANK CASS

AND COMPANY LIMITED, 2005. Print

Carroll, Joseph. Evolution and Literary Theory. England: University of Missouri

Press, 1995. Print

Walsh, Thomas. ‘’Review: Wright’s ‘’Life of Walter Pater’’. ‘’The North

American Review,158.618(1907):552-556. JSTOR. Web.

Gallienne, Richard Le. ’’On Re-Reading Walter Pater. ’’The North American

Review 195.675(1912):214-24.JSTOR. Web.