WRITERS OF REALISM

Evening Star, Issue 16092, 18 April 1916, Page 8

WRITERS OF REALISM

[]Jl- EJXIOTT SI'ANDriELD.]

Thero is something unconventional and spacious about literary men, generally living a detached life, not of tho madding crowd, and enjoying. more or less the companionship of solitude. This does not necessarily mean they are anti-social, or living in "world's beyond," but in order to got the golden fullness of life a certain amount of their own companionship is absolutely accessary, tho result x jeing that tho large leading public ore catered for and entertained under the head of that muchabused word " literature." Was it not Thomas Oarlyle who fittingly reminded us " That not till about 100 -years ago (this was written in 1840) was there jeen any figure of a great soul living apart in that anomalous manner endeavoring to speak forth the inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find place and subsistence by what the world would please give him for doing it." Since Carlvle delivered this series of lectures many literary men have made their appearance on the horizon, and tho "sage of Chelsea" rendered signal service to his country by pouring out his "vehement wisdom" and showing us why great men should be appreciated and understood, and not forgetting his pregnant utterance: "The noble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts, is not this essentially if wo will understand it of the nature of worship." Fortified, too, by the searching lines of Lowell: ";

God sends His teachers unto every age, To every clime and every race of men, With revelations'fitted for their growth And sliapes of mind,- nor gives the realms of truth

Into the selfish rule of one sole race

Literature is national, and lias no geographical boundaries. We .Britishers read Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky, whilst the people of Russia will revel in some of our literary men and poets. Genius cannot ho fettered, ■it must have room; aiid we owe much to the noble souls who have helped to inspire the race in prose, poetry, and song.

Ho who does this in verse or prose May be forgotten in his day : But surely shall bo crowned at last with thosa Who live auj speak for aye.

.Again, some of our men of letters have paid dearly for their experience. The pinnacle point of greatness and appreciation was not easily "reached. Much bad to be learnt, then mastered, and, remembering a sentence from Goethe : " Half a million of my own money, tho fortune .[ inherited, my salary, and the largo income derived from writing for 50 years back, has been expended to instruct me in what I know." Digression is, I think, a.foible of we dabblers in literature; keeping strictly to text seems a mechanical process. Are we suffering from a mental wanderlust? It would seem so! 1 have stated that literature is international. It's well it should be. Misunderstandings between nations are sometimes broken down by the interchange of books, idea-s, and the like, and the reader possessing cosmopolitan tastes, participating in the befit "mental sweets" of all countries, is a wiser and broader-minded person_ for so doing. Anyone who has dipped into Maxim Gorky's works must have been impressed with their intensity—one might sav " naked realism." It is nothing else. After reading we can't forget! It may leave a nasty taste in our mouth (this is a matter of temperament), but it helps us to realise the real Russia that is now evolving to a higher state of physical, mental, and moral well-being. Russia has her Realists in Gorky and others, and perhaps in a lesser degree wei may claim George Gissing as the Gorky of Britain. He (Gissing) "dipped hia pen into his own bitter experience, and if the outcome was of a realistic sort, picturing tho '.sordid lives of the poor in language solemn and terrible, his hooks had the merits of truth and personal knowledge-" In 'Children of the Dawn' we find the following realistic utterance:—"One could find matter for hour-long observation in tho infinite variety of vice and misery depicted in the faces around. It must, be confessed that tho majority did not seem unhappy. They jest with each other amid their squa'oi-. They have an evident pleasure in buying and selling. They would be surprised if they knew you pitied them, and the very fact that they are unconscious of their degradation affects one with all the keener pity. We suffer them to become brutes in our midst, and inhabit dens which clean animals would shun; to derive their joys from sources which a .cultivated mind sluinks as from a pestilential vapor. and can wo coasolo ourselves with tho reflection that they do not feel thenmisery." And this :" 0 what a hell could I depict in Whitecrcss street on Christmas live. Out of the very depths of human depravity bubbled up "the foullesfc miasmata wliich the iottenne<ss> of the human heart can breed, usurping tho dominion of the pure and of heaven, stifling a whole city with their infernal reek." Gissing knew the &eamy side of life, which is clearly: shown in the following passage from 'Henry Ryecrolt':—"What kindly joys have I lost, these simple forms of happiness to which every heart lias claim because of poverty. Meetings with those I ioved made impossible year after year, sadness, misunderstanding, nay, cruel alienation, arising, from inability to do the things I wished, and which I might have done haci a. little money helped me. And I think ib would scarce bo an exaggeration to say that there is no moral good which has not to be paid for in coin of the realm."

Certainly tho antecedents of Gorky and Gissing were very different. Tho Russian novelist was simply the voice of " his country's depths, and of them." Tho author of 'Children of the Dawn.' etc., was a scholar and_ a. man of culture. Howhe (C4issiug) would hardly tome within the scope of Lowell's verses ; Wh'o to tho Right'can feel himself the truer For being gently patient with the wrong, Who eees a brother in the evil doer. And finds in Love the heart blood of his song. Because ho was essentially an individualist. Nevertheless, his> works have in them tho spark of genius which George Meredith describes as "an extraordinary activity of mind an which all conscious and subconscious knowledge) mass themselves together without any effort of tho will and beoome effective. It manifests itself iiu three -ways— in production, in organising, and in rapidity of thought." And the "genius of Gissing is shown by the fact that anyone who"has read ' The Private Life of * Henry Maitland' (his real name) together with his several books can tee tho author " sticking out a mile" in many characters; ho protrudes not occasionally, but often. This is genius.