sonrisa

understatement

It was in high school that I read Joseph Conrad's short story "The Lagoon," but it is still burned into my mind as a masterpiece by virtue of one sentence. I don't remember all the details, but the story is set on a still, sultry jungle night. The way Conrad paints it, you can hear the heartbeat of the dark waters, feel the thickness of the air as the narrative unfolds.

I'm not going to set the whole story up. Go read it. Conrad does it better. But at one point the storyteller interrupts his tale to say to the white man,

"Tuan, I loved my brother."

With that statement, all the man's heartbreak and desolation roll out into the hot, oppressive space of the jungle night. But Conrad doesn't say that. If he had, he would have ruined the story. Had he attempted to describe the man's feelings, his anguish, his despair, they would have been cheapened. So he left them unsaid. He instead allowed the man to tell his story, line after line floating out into the night, emotionless but for those five words, which say so much because they suppress so much.

Again--go read the story yourself, and hopefully I didn't spoil it for you. That's just an illustration, but I began to notice the principle when I started writing, and I have seen it throughout literature, music, even conversation: Often things are best expressed not when they're described in detail, but when they're barely hinted at. The most significant detail is the least pompous. The most profound is left to be unsaid.

Understatement. Try it sometime.

posted by kathryn @ 3:29 PM