IMPORTANCE OF REAL FICTION

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1491, 13 July 1912, Page 3

IMPORTANCE OF REAL FICTION

"Imaginative writers in these later lays have begun to perceive that life tself is far more wonderful and abunlant than any arbitrary reconstruction if: it; that .the: interest of life lies in :he very, fact that we cannot, as the wet says, 'remould it nearer to our heart's lesire'i—but that it is an infinitely, mysierious and complex thing, which we can mly criticise by. studying; and that we nustnot be afraid,of looking closely at to ..baser'sides, its'failures, its contralietions; because it is in them that the, ?ery secret of life lies," says Mr. A. C. Senson in the "Cornhill Magazine" for May. "The imaginative spirit has grown a perceive that truth is a far more interesting thing than any' private fancy, md; it has learnt, too, • that ho maginatire faculty can bo just as nobly is'ed- in selection and firm representation is it was used in discarding and remodeling. ■ - "It is this then that : we call RealUrn; a determination, not necessarily vith any scientific purpose, to present ifo as it is, and to recognise that so riowed it has a higher sort of beauty in i than any vague imported beauty won 3y the suppression and contempt or what ippears ■to> be commonplace. "Now it ie. first necessary ,to say that ;his- method,' the realistic method, must 30 n spontaneous and authentic one. It wholly fails of its aim if. it is a merely rritable protest against the old eweetless and .solemnity. It must include romance and not defy it. It must realso that the world does produce heroic spirits of inspired quality. There is in humanity a deep spring of nobility, which leaps into the air at times of crisis and revolt; and there is also a lofty equanimity, a high. and silent patience, which Manifests itself, though it sometimes jludes observation, in the dreariest and lullest of surroundings' "Realism must frankly recognise this, ind must not forbid the heroic subject. [t may be' as minute as possible ,but it aoed not therefore be mean; all that it 3nn do is to abstain from the accumulation of melodramatic elements, froni overfortunate coincidences, from caricatures jf heroism, from absurd elongation and Fantastic emphasis'; '• it. is, of course, a much more difficult business.to .indicate lieroic qualities subject to all the shadows }f circumstance,, the! unpleasant obstacles, the feeble lapses. the-.jlanguors and fatigues of life. ' There'ynust be no deus bx machina, no magic -weapons which no human armour can withstand, no ravenleague boots, none of the miraculous- apparatus ■ lavished .by old romance upon its central figures. . "But the'main business of the realist will be this, , t not simply to invent situations in which all his characters will be enabled to display their .salient qualities," says ,Mi\ Benson,-- convincingly, "but .to,observe the- sort.of situations which actually'do'occur in' life, and to face the-fact that most people-are very strangely compounded of excellence and meanness, that the processes of improvement and disintegration are .alike slow and gradual, with many an ebb and flow; and that there;is in all human life i-strange chemical'power of assimilation and combination, so that' good', and evil are - aliko delicately • evoked and _ fostered and obliterated by human relations and admixtures/ .--.' ■■■■'■'. ' . ' "He must!realise that' the main interests'of Mankind do not now risido in combat, or even in love-making; thatthe old romances deal largely in such things because it .'is'in-these Tegions that the most ardent and, eager excitements 0: humanity are experienced,.but that apart from these sublimated moments, property, work, health, ■Social'intercourse, religion, politics, education,.'and 'many other things,, thoughtlessly, and trivially held to bo uurbinfoitic arid unpoetical, do really make up for crowds of intelligent am vigorous people, the- solid substance of life; quite apart from any idealisation or sentimentality. ■'-.-"■. . , ',-.'., "Indeed, , "it is of sentiment that the realist must mainly beware, because the great danger of the romancer is sentiment. It is a- thing which most people value highly, and none the less because it ismoro Tare than is supposed. Long tracts of life have to be lived-without-it, and it is a special gift like all other gifts. -But just because it\ has an-in-effable sweetness' and fTagranco and because it. is evoked very. 'emphatically at certain periods.and crises of life, there is a great demand for its importation; a writer who can evoke the appropriate sentiment for an occasion is warmly wel-.| oomed by people whose desire is greater than their emotion; and so the temptation of the romancer is to load every rift with sentiment, to make persons thrill responsively to every, possibility of it. "Yet what is the,case.inTeal I'fe? Iβ it not everyone'si experience to look forward with intense ■ anticipation, to the visit of a "friend, and then instead of a luxury of emotion, to find the friend dull or preoccupied, or oneself cold amd tongue-tied? One revisits some old and familiar 6cene, and expects a perfect symphony of memory and haunted echoes; and some dreary fact of life intervenes, some discomfort,- the presence of a port and unsympathetic person, some prosaic anxiety; and the scene is\ as hollow and meaningless as the painted background of the stage eeen in leaden daylight. The pleasure which most of us feel in. romance 15 in the deliberate suppression of intrusive flatness, in the rehabilitation of lifo on a sublime plane, in the concentration of ideal effects. And if this is the case with the deep and- luxurious emotions' of life,' it is equally bo -when the romancer is dealing with tragic' passions', .with' vices, with harsh and trenchant faults. "How common it is in real life to find tlio fierce and-. malevolent person acting with unexpected mildness and generosity! How poignant sit nations collapse! How unexpectedly reasonable the impatient and aggressive show themselves! In a word, how unexpected life is in,its transformations and its developments! How entirely normal it is for two perfectly incongruous faults to be found- side by side in the same person-4airg« generosity with petty meanness; fiery irascibilitv with maudlin tenderness! The realist hae to grasp and express the fact that many people are Wholly inconsistent, amd that it is next to impossible to.generalise."