The Objective Point of View

The first requisites to literary success are style, knowledge of language, the inherent or acquired power to handle words, and the insight necessary to see clearer than others the things that others also see. Above all, however, if the success is to be permanent, one must have an objective point of view.

Writers are in this world to see and record, and not to do. This is why the average literary life seems monotonous to the outsider. In reality, it is far from being so; for the writer lives and acts out of himself. If he sees his own personality at all, it is with the critical eye of an impartial bystander. His thought are not at home, but out with the world.

This bias of mind accompanies all but lyrical genius, which is primarily analytical; not of abstractions, but of the singer's own feelings. Any other great writer lives in the lives of others.

He studies everything and everybody that passes under his eyes. He can not help himself; it is his nature. There may be sympathy for others, or there may not, but there is always a clear, searching inspection and analysis. A Balzac follows men and women through the Paris streets, greedily absorbing their petty conversations; a Goethe mingles with the common people, and is not unknown in the beer-gardens.

In his "Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon," Fielding gives us a striking example of this trait of character. He pictures the people whom he meets, with the same fidelity and minuteness that so characterizes the men and women of his novels. If his skipper had appeared in a romance, the name of Captain Veal would be quotable to-day.

Even in the preliminary works of genius, we see the same unmistakable point of view, and this, more than knowledge or power, is the inherent strength which underlays the immature writings that refuse to die. "Even when the bird walks, we see that he has wings."

Without the objective point of view, a writer must fail of any worthy achievement. You must stop studying yourself; you must project your personality into the world, and incorporate it with whomever you meet or see. You must not turn from one because his face repulses you, nor over-appreciate another because his nature is like your own. You must try to realize how others look at the world; you must see through their eyes, and think with their minds. In short, you must look out at the world, and not in at your own soul.