The art of fiction: a guide for writers and readers - By Ayn Rand & Tore Boeckmann Page 0,63
child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes, the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground. The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn. And yet, he thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and gaiety of it were tinged with despair. It was the finale of the symphony.
This is one of the most beautiful descriptions I have read in the Romantic style. (Primarily a writer of fantastic stories, Isak Dinesen is hard to classify; but she is certainly nearer to being a Romanticist than a Naturalist.)
First the author gives a general idea of the setting: it is a winding road rising through pine forest. Then she begins to give particulars: “Now in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold.” By means of a few essentials, the reader gets an attractive generalized picture.
The author then does something unusual and difficult. To convey the mood of the landscape and to give the reader a wider, more essential impression of it than she could have done by describing more leaves or branches or grass, she introduces this peculiar device: “Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes.” Observe the connotations. That an old gardener at a convent tells something to a child has in itself a fantastic quality; and when he tells him that he has seen unicorns, this impossible fantasy projects the exact eerie quality of the afternoon. “A herd of horses” would not have produced the same effect, because the purpose is to suggest something supernatural, odd, almost decadently frightening, but very attractive. The words “about this time of the year and the day” skillfully show the author’s intention: it is not to indulge in a fantasy for its own sake, but to convey that at this time of year and day, the sunlight on these trees and this slope has the eerie, fantastic quality that could make one expect the supernatural.
As the author goes on to describe the unicorns, they are made specific in an unusually artistic way. The description is almost overdetailed, but by essentials: “the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground.” Observe how carefully the color scheme is projected: that the mares are “white and dappled” but “rosy in the sun” is another reminder of the late afternoon sunlight. That they are “treading daintily” connotes the steps of elegant racehorses; yet the mares are unicorns, which makes them even more dainty. This amount of detail gives reality to the fantastic; and by so doing, the author conveys the mood of the afternoon.
The next sentence is completely realistic: “The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn.” It is a brilliant sentence: with great economy of words, the very essentials are selected so that one can almost smell the forest.
“And yet, he thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and gaiety of it were tinged with despair.” Since the freshness is different from that of spring, one can infer that it is fall. But what would imply, without the author saying it, that this is fall, is all the eerie fantasy that has gone before: the air of something supernatural, in gold, pink, red shades—the air of something decadent. The last sentence sums up the whole effect: “It was the finale of the symphony.”
The author has given a specific description of this hillside and no other—at this time of year and day. To convey the mood, she gives specific images, such as the fir trees, the unicorns, their colors and gestures, and even the perspective, and the smell of the forest. These are concretes, as distinguished from: “It was an eerie, fantastic landscape; beautiful but tragic; lovely but heartbreaking.” Those would