VANITY FAIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 125, 30 May 1932, Page 2

VANITY FAIR

PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT. Realistic ail, on the other hand, depends on the interest of obscrr.il i, and rejects the luxury of dreaming. It is also less concerned until self, and the projection of the uilist’s own feelings into his characters. It generally) observes and depicts the outside world and other people. It may seem hard and cold, but all good observation implies understanding and sympathy. Even satire, if it is good satire, and not a mere outpouring of ill will, implies an effort Io understand. All good parodies try to catch the secret of the beauty of the original. And apart from satire, almost the whole effort of this type of art is an effort to understand others, and not merely to observe them from the outside, but to realize them by entering into their feelings. ... Thus, in the main, realistic drama is based on the interest of observing and understanding other people, as they are; and of course they cannot be understood without sympathy and imagination. In the main, romantic or ideal drama is based on the imaginative enjoyment of the highest moments and most thrilling possibilities of life; and these cannot be fully enjoyed—they will only be grossly caricatured—-with-out some real observation and understanding. Cons equently neither style can entirely neglect the otner. . . The average novel readers of to-day have the material for understanding people different from themselves which a century ago lay only in the'power of individuals of special imaginative sympathy. Even the most popular newspapers occasionally have articles or short stories of which the point is to explain and make sympathetic the behaviour of someone who seems at first sight remote or absurd or definitely repulsive. The effect is superficial, of course. It is swept away in a moment by any real personal feeling. But it does familiarize the great public with the notion, normally strange to them, that they ought to try to understand people different from themselves. And it is an added advantage that the understanding is achieved not by analysis and reason but by the force of sympathetic emotion.—From "The Classical Tradition in Poetry.” bv Gilbert Murray.