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Show CHAPTER III FUNDAMENTAL VISUALIZATIONS INTERPRETATION OR IMPERSONATION "Few persons nowadays seem to feel how powerful an instrument of culture may be found in modest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The reciter and- the elocutionist of late have done much to rob us of this which is one oj the finest of fine arts. A mongrel something which, at least with inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet veritable acting, but which sets agape the half-educated with the wonder of its airs and attitudinizing, its pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the place of the true art of reading aloud, and has made the word "recitation" a terror to quiet folk who are content with intelligence and refinement. -EDWARD DOWDEN. Definition of Interpretation. A literary interpretation is a Interpretation means translation. translation from a dead printed form into a living, breathing, experience. It appeals to the imagination. Interpretation is the presentation of any form of literary material lyric or dramatic, humorous or burlesque, narrative or allegorical without the aid of dress, furniture, stage settings, or of literal char acterizations in voice, action, or make up. Such presentation is content with suggesting the real thing to the hearer's imagination. Impersonation, on the other hand, is an atteplpt to give, as far as possible, exact literary characterization in voice, action, and make up, by properties such as dress, furniture, and stage settings. It is the art of embodying a literary creation by giving it flesh and blood, and thereby making the figures which exist in the imagination of the author, visual. According to this differentiation, impersona tive presentation should be confined to the stage, while interpreta tive presentation will naturally, and of necessity, be limited to the platform but may deal with any of the forms of literature-even the drama. 'The good reader dominates the character, the good The actor, for the actor is always dominated by the character. time being adopts the character-feeling, thinking, moving, and breathing as that character. 19 |
