CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN FICTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11756, 21 July 1916, Page 4

CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN FICTION.

" Germany's contribution to music is not only greater ttian tuat of any other navion," iri-oiessor William Lyon inclpa says in his ''Assays on iVlouern i\oyeiisis," " it is praoaoiy greater than that of ail the other coumnes of tuo earth put together, and multiplied several times, in many forms of literary an—especially perhaps in drama and in lyrical poetry —Germany has been eminent; and sue has- produced the greatest literary genius since Shakespeare. To-day the latheriand remains the intellectual workshop of the world; men and women iiock thither to study subjects as varied as theology, chemistry, mathematics and music. All this splendid achievement/' Professor Phelps says. " makes poverty in the field of pros© fiction all the more remarkable. For the fact is that the total number of truly great world novels written in the German language throughout its entire history can bo counted on the fingers of one hand. " In the making of fiction, from the point of view solely of quality, Germany oannot stand an instant's comparison with Russia, whose four great novelists have immensely enriched the world; nor with Great Britain, where masterpieces have been produced for nearly 200 years; nor .with France, where the names of notable novels crowd into the memory; and even America . . . ; can show at least one romance that stands higher than anything which has come from beyond the Rhine. Germany has not reason to feel ashamed of her barrenness in fiction, so prominent is she in many other and perhaps nobler forms of art. But it is interesting to inquire for a moment into possible causes of this phenomenon, and to see if we can discover why Teutonic fiction is, relatively speaking, so bad. " One dominant fault in most German novels is a lack of true proportion. The principle of selection, which differentiates a painting from a photograph, and makes the artist an inter?>reter instead of a recorder, has been orgotten and overlooked. The high and holy virtue of omission should be cultivated more sedulously. The art of leaving out is the art that produces the real illusion—where by the omission of unessential details things that are salient can be properly emphasised. And what German novels lack is emphasis. This cannot be obtained by merely spacing the letters in descriptions and in conversations; it can be reached only by remembering that prose fiction is as truly an art form as a sonata. Instead of novels the weary reader gets long and tiresome biographies of rather unimportant persons; people whom we should not in tlia least care to know in reail life.

" Another great fault is an excess of sentimentality. . . . This excess of soft material appears, in a variety of forms, but to take one common manifestation of it, I should say that the only single object that has done more than anything else to weaken and to destroy German fiction is tho moon. . , . The moon is

overworked and needs a long rest'. An immense number of pages are illuminated by its chasto beams, for this sattelite is both active and übiquitous. It behaves, it must be confessed, in a dramatic manner, but in a wnv hopelessly at variance "with its methodical and orderly self. In other words, the moon in German fiction is not astronomical but decorative."