REALISM IN LITERATURE.

Evening Star, Issue 10339, 12 June 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

REALISM IN LITERATURE.

The following is the eonolusipp #i Mr Bertram's paper read at the reoerji meeting of the University Debating Society- j—>

Of a very differentoharaoter is the Reeftiana. of George -Eliot; 'She has seen ami proheA to the bottom the selfishness and vanity, and greed that lie in evejfy.Jieart, but she Biver dreams of leaving thas as the final wofu to be said. There is a fine deHoacy Jiat shrinks from anything" like declaring fefinre to be the law of human life, or universaldistrust the right attitude 6f mind." V. r No writer has a wider range, and none has succeeded better in giving real preßentatiiaa in all departments of life. She Wed beslto; deal with humble.oharacters, in the ordinary round of commonplace life; "but she was equal to theereatJon of the high as well,as the low. Her sympathy is'equally with. (M kingly Savonarola, swaying the hearts of Florence from the pulpit of the Dnomo, and with the narrowed and cramped son! of Silas Marner as he bends over-his loom, or counts his shining treasures, or finds himself anew in the life of love that comes with the Coming of the littlechild*. She &hj present with equal faithfulness the tigo sisters. Dorothea and Celia; the one fnil pf noble ardor for the pursuit of larger aims and wi,th a passionate longing after the ideal that always seemed above and beyond ha|, the other so contented to be " proper," and do just what everybody considered the right thing to do. No author has introduced us to a more varied circle, and every member we hail as a living personality, a human brother.

Iu estimating the fiction of George Eliot as fiction we must realise fully the personality/'' of our author and the strange union in hffi of what are of ten opposites. " Every page of her life," says Dawson, " gives evidence of the intensity of her emotions, the space and energy of her intellect, and the strength? of her religious feeling. Much might bei written upon the enormous capacity for, work which she possessed, her splendid graspt of abstract sciences, her use of scientific illustrations in her prose and poetry, the delicacy, subtlety, and acumen of her mind; and these are the more remarkable not; merely because they existed in a woman with more than ordinary susceptibility of nature, and more than common tenderness of affection, but because.they were found ia a woman who had built up her culture ia lonely isolation from great centres of thought, and amid distressing physical conditions whioh made it often true that her address was 'Grief Castle, on the River of Gloom, in the Valley of Dolor.'" She came to her work matured by her thirtyseven years of thought and experience, and ', with a deep—too deep—sense of her responsibility as one who was bound to teach the truth she knew. The consequence is that her works, magnificent as they are, have too much of the didactic tone. She not only paints for us true and living pictures, but she puts into our hand a commentary upon them also. The inevitable result is that though she is a great name in literature, she will never be universally read. The reason is obvious. Moat of us, I suppose, remember with what delight we in our Knickerbocker dajs seized upon the first copy of TEiop's Fables. How eagerly we devoured the stories, and how intensely we abhorred the pointing of the moral. George Eliot's work is magnificent fiction, but it is more than fiction. Not even her commanding genius can hide the fact that there is too obvious a process of spiritual analysis, a too open demonstration of the currents of thought and feeling, a too manifest pointing of the moral. For my own part, it is this portion of her work that fascinates most; her moral and spiritual dissections are so thoroughly performed. But I cannot help feeling that it impairs her claim as a realistic writer, the aim of whom I conceive to be such a vivid painting of truths of life impersonated that no commentary is required to point the moral. George Eliot could not bring herself to do this. lb was evidently fully within her powers, as we can see in her striking pictures of minor characters. There is nothing more perfect in our literature than Mrs Poyaer, with her bustling ways, hersharpond neversilent tongue, her pride in her housekeeping and her family, her intense hatred of the meanness of the old squire. Or the genial and minly Vicar of St. Botolph's, Mr Farebrother, refusing to push his own claims, and generously helping his rival at the most critical point; a man- who would stint himself for the comforts of his mother and sister, and yet, against his principles, play whist.for the money to buy his scientific accessories. • Such pictures as these show the master hand, and they are scattered through every work. But the author could not bs content to do suoh business only ; she must preach her message. The world is the richer for her decision, but Realistic literature is surely the poorer. The true effect of the Realistic picture is confined more -to the lesser characters that are introduced in George Eliot's works than tothose.upon whom she lavishes her main strength. These latter she uses more as the vehicles by Which to convey what to her was the central truth in ail life's experience, the intimate connection there is between all the actions of life either for good or ill, so that on the one hand there must be ever-increasing deterioration, or on the other correspondent advance. This lends a solemn, even sad, tone to her work, taken as a whole. There is no conception of good rising out of il', but the harvest must be reaped in remorseful tears and bitter hours of anguish. Her constant text is that which she declares so emphatically in her greatest book: "Our deeds are like children that are born to us ; they live and aot<apart from our will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never ; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness." This presses bo strongly in the writer's mind that it is before us, in a sense, in front of the characters, aud not behind them. Not content with letting her philosophy mould her presentation merely and act as the light illuminating it, she announces her text with too emphatic a voiee. And so it is that for the choicest specimens of her work as a Realistic writer we must turn to her minor and not to her major characters. But since I am already so far advanced in my time I must hasten on to say, in as brief a manner as possible, that to me Thackeray stands as the completest and moat perfect exponent of Realistic literature. Without the wide scholarship of George Eliot, and, perhaps, inferior to her in mental breadth, he has yet in this matter achieved much greater success. His philosophy of life he has, but it is not presented iu a didactio way; it forms the medium in whioh his creations move. This seems to me to be as it should be. And with what a width of sympathy every shade of human personality is portrayed. Thackeray does not aim, like Hardy, to discipline ub by recoil from the hideous and evil; nor, like George Eliot, seek , to brace us to a higher purpose by emphatic enunciation of irreversible law. He opens to us the vthole possibilities of men, "showing their nobleness and their meanness, interesting us in their joys and sorrows and hopes, and winning us unconsciously to purer, ideals and more earnest purposes. And in all this there is no fotce nor strain whatever; the drama of life ia unfolded before us by a cunning artist, and the truth passes into us. Everyone, I suppose,, has his favorite character in fiction—that which seems to him to sum up the deepest realities. From all the countless portraits of fiction there is none to me so real and personal as Arthur Pendennis. I do not know that I could give very .good reasons in defence of my preference. My choice may seem a very strange one to many. t " De gii&tibut non dispUandum " is all thabean be said. But it always seemed to rile that in no presehta | tion of fiction is there sd vividly drawn the picture of a real man. . How marvellously are w.e shown the mingled qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, jostling one another. Ten the schoolboy; then, the lover, "sighing," indeed, " like furnace, with a wofi 1 ballad made to his mistress's eyebrow"; then the glorious Pen of Brasenose College fame, the leader of fashion and most thoughtless of .spendthrifts; then Pen the misanthrope, the flaw Student, the man of letters, the dandy, the haunter of the " Baok Kitchen" and like questionable resorts. Through all these scenes and on through his later life we hail him as a true man, loving him none the less because of his foolishness;and vanity. Nor is the picture left representing merely these outward things. There is no more beautiful chapter in the whole of the history than that in whieh mother and

son coma tortheir understanding after error, and l»en aud the repeat ia holy oommunion the f««3liar prayer. -Through it all there is no aim to preach an ideal Attn, merely one of ourselves, learning discipline of experience, raeftiog km same temptations, guided by the sameafght. This has always seemed to me <tne tpdmph of Realism. BuvJibave already exceeded my time, and rousts olusp. I do not know if, after all, I have made my purpose clear. The true Realism, it seems to me, consists in the vivid presentation of life shot through with the light of the idea). If the ideal is too predominant we lose individuality and force; bat if it be -entirely wanting we have no "light by which to view what is presented. lo the last analysis, of course, the influence of anything on us for good is the sumt test -of its truth. For true life idolaters to and feeds life. It is not, and cannot be, inimical to it. And Realism, if it be true, is that which, most surely sets forth the verities of life, thereby minister, iog to the life of men. We cannot grant the name of Realism to that which dopiots merely the gross, the outward, the profane. That is not the whole of life, nor even tho greater part. The spiritual must also have its place, since it is at the foundation of all. He who puts linger on what can be outwardly measured and olaims that only an j real bas gone very far astray. We cannot strike out those higher elements of life aa being vague and unsubstantial emanations' from man's mind. For behind the hand that feels, the tongue that tastes, and the eye that sees lies a deeper something greater than them all. These are but the channels of perception. There is the person, the living mind, behind them, the largest factor of all. Leave this out of account,-and the deeper purpose and significance fades away; the coarse and evil assume disproportionate size, and darkness takes the place of light. Suoh books as Hardy's certainly give one this impression. As we read iinem, » abadnw" seems lo fall on sill things; the very sunlight seems paler and duller, and somewhat of the joy and spring gone fepm life. At least such is my candid impression. And shall we be told that this is faithful to life, this is real ? Faithful to the low, the /base, and the ngly; but what of the beautiful and the pure. These are more truly the spheres of the artist. It is not life but poison that distils into us through the medium of such books. There are no bright impulses stirred, no higher hopes raised, no heroic desires kindled in us ; but, on the contrary, there falls a terrible depression, we conceive small thoughts of life, and seem to move among lower creatures and shadows of sin and lust, where Nature-is cold, and dark, and passionJess, emptied of life and purpose, A-i ' lien, the flies of latter spring, 'J ii.ti. i 1/ their eggs, and sting and sine, And \\ c.i <•« their petty cells and die. t Such ia uy. and oannot be truth. On the other hand, as I conceive it, Realism is "that whioh seta forth life in right proportions; not ignoring faults and j failures, but showing that they are faults and failures, and making full room for the manifestation of those higher and more enduring factors in human life. We would not ask for all sunshine, for that would be as utterly false as all shadow. Our world is infinitely varJed—softness' and grandeur, brilliance and quiet, suoceed one another. So too in life. And we do claim that if one is to reach the heights of literature his sympathy must embrace all that is iu man, viewing him, not from without, but from within. He must -see not only the ravages of moral disease, and-breathe the heavy air of the sick room, he must recoguise also the whole fresh world outsjde, filled with the sunlight and vocal with song. It is, not sufficient that h«4avish care upon the wrecks of humanity, and forget the strong and the pure. Each is real; but the true type is not the shattered, the whole. And we may well claim that what is needed most is not to ba shown every day the falling short of whioh we are only too well aware. What is needed is to be braced and strengthened by a contemplation of the more perfect results. For the author is, in a sense, our modern prophet, and must recognise tho earnestness of his office. It is surely a poor and a false thing to weaken strength already feeble, and extinguish hopes that are already, perchance, growing dim. The music he makes must not be that whioh lulls to a deceitful quiet, nor drives to settled pessimism and despair. It should bo that which stirs the heart to fresh courage, and the will to a more resolute effort—a music that thrills without enfeebling, that vivifies the whole world : Aud min walk in it), crying " Lo The world is wider, and we know The very heavens look brighter so; The stars move statelier round the edge Of th 6 silver spheres, and give in pledge Their light for nobler privilege ; No little flower but joys or grieves, Full life is rustling in the sheaves. Full spirit sweeps the forest leaves."