#JAMES WOOD, HOW FICTION WORKS#
The novel begins in the theatre, and novelistic characterisation begins when the soliloquy goes inward. The soliloquy, in turn, has its origins in prayer,
The actor comes to the front of the stage and speaks his mind to an audience, who is both God above and we spectators in the seats.

The novel has changed the art of characterisation partly by changing who a character is being seen by. Consider three men, cach permanently affected by a chance occurrence: King David in the Old Testament; Macbeth; and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

David remains a public character. In the modern sense, he has no privacy. He hardly ever speaks his inner thoughts to himself; he speaks to God, and his soliloquies are prayers. He is external to us because in some way he does not exist for us, but for the Lord. He is seen by the Lord, is transparent to the Lord, but remains opaque to us. This opacity allows for a lovely margin of surprise, to use E. M. Forster’s word.

David is opaque to us, one feels, precisely because he is transparent to God, who is his real audience.
In a sense, the storyteller is God, who is writing fate’s script. David does not have a mind, as we understand modern subjectivity. He has no past, to speak of, and no memory, for it is God’s memory that counts, which never forgets.
But for the writer of the David story, the mental state is precisely what is occluded; action is all:
David sees, and acts. As far as the narrative is concerned, he does not think.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 82,83
摘于07/03/2026 #分别善恶知识树上的果子#