CHARLES DICKENS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 58, 12 March 1929, Page 6

CHARLES DICKENS

W.E.A. SESSION

ESCXURE BY MR.,VON .ZEDLITZ

The 1929 session of the Workers' Educational Association openod on Saturday evening, when Mr. G. yon Zedlitl!, M.A., commenced a short course of four lectures on '' The Lifo and Works of. Charles Dickens" in the council chamber of the Trades Hall.

Tho president, Mr. A. T. Macalpin, occupied the chair, and there was a large attendance of members and their friends. The chairman gave a short outline of the work to be undertaken thii session, ■■ and. Professor D. M. Y. Sommerville, chairman of the Tutorial Classes Committee, expressed his pleasure at tho largo number present, and offered good wishes for a successful yoar's work. The director, Professor T.^ A. Hunter, also spoke. Mr. yon Zedlitz referred to the unique place which Charles Dickens occupies in the history of English literature, and to his unfailing popularity as a writer.' He was not influenced by either the romantic or realistic schools of thought, and his books have rotainod their intorest and charm long after the works of representatives of theee other movements have ceased to appeal. His hopeful cheeriness provided a striking contrast to the realistic miters, who introduced the language of their characters into their books. Dickens believed there was nothing wrong in teaching young people to abominate the sordid characters which fill his pages, providing the language used does not give offence. He set no faihion and founded no school, and tho style of his writing-is as far removed •from Sir Walter Scott as from Maeterttnek and the realists. The novels of thd eighteenth century were a true pictare of the life of the period, and they carried on tho picaresque tradition which took it for granted that the raider must be supplied with exciting adventures which were outside the law. fKEE FROM CLASSICAL TRAINING. • Charles Dickens was entirely free from the classical training of the men of letters of his day, and he made, cocsidertble fun rof that .type of education. His reading in the early years of his life was. very limited, and few really great men. have had so narrow an intellectual scope.' "No one will dispute the word" 'great' as applied to Charles Dickens," said the lecturer. "There were half-a-dozen other men of his time who shared that honour with him, and it is doubtful whether there is anyone in the world of letters as .great tod*y» yet the narrowness of his equipment is almost incredible. - That is why he broke" no new ground in his time and put his personal outlook into hit writings, but he introduced the spirit of the nineteenth century which nUkde the coarseness and crude situatio&l so frequently used intolerable to hii'taste and that of his readers."

Mr. yon Zedlitz touched upon Dickens's phenomenal success as a Novelist who had no difficulty in. securing a publisher, and who enjoyed a large income as the result of his recognition while still in the prime of life. Though Diclceni suffered from detractors and imitators, and his copyright in England did not protect him from the .dramatisation of his books aa soon as they appeared, he met with spontaneous appreciation everywhero, and tho halls where his retdings were given wero always filled to overflowing. _ ' ' ■ - The lecturer concluded his address" by aa interesting reference, to Charles Dickens's attitude towards time. The ancients'had primitive instruments for" recording time, though the devices used by? the Greeks were singularly crude owing to a lack of mechanical ability arid an indifference to time. Watches v and clocks began to be made in Ger : nt'iny at the end of the twelfth century, and in modern life we are always conscious of the exactitude of time. It gOM hand in hand with,a knowledge of sense, and the future and the past in time are never banished from our mind. Every author -and' work of art must be considered according to the way in which ho Or it accepts the,modern attitude towards timo values or. goes back to; the static Mine of the ancients. Dick : erit was as free from the influence of the; ancients as anyone could be, yet hi« «haracters represent an infinity 'of time. They retain a permanence from the first page to the last, and leave us with a feeling that although we lose them they still' go on. Dickens was a jriythologist rather than a novelist — he did not always make his characters mvh, tut he jnade them gods, and thoy lived in ft world that was untouched by the) paiasge of time. That is largely the secret of his popularity with old and young alike. : He wrote for the immortal youth in_ ea.ch succeeding generation. iThe speaker was accorded a hearty >»te of thanks, and his next lecture will !«•! with Dickens, the Man,