PESSIMISM IN FICTION

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1515, 10 August 1912, Page 9

PESSIMISM IN FICTION

• The condition to which tho. art of fiction has lately como and that to which it'has brought the majority of readers in England should be faced by tho historic fact that stories were once upon a time told for fun. The told was not ut first used for tho purposes of pity, terror, and purification, but. mainly for fun. Shall ■s°. make a great exception of the Book of Job, the inspired novel all occupied with ifer subject, the history of a single vainable soulr A family swept out cf life are of do moment to that novelist, sove as their fate'causes the affliction of Job. By and by ho shall be comforted with other eons and daughters. These, l-'ke the dead ones, are negligible except as sons and daughters to ono not negligible man. jNcver was art truer to a single intention. _The earlier family havo no j.anies named, but tho later receive names because they nro to go on living for the linal joy of a momentous man. If we may be permitted (or may' bo permitted as time goes on) to read Genesis,-too, as a divine and all-significant novel, hero is an even earlier example of the novel written with the gravest intention, and with simple and economic art. Hero tho "stars also" are swtpt into being as the sons of Job aro swept out of it, in a phrase that does not pause upon the universe that was to live, as the phraso did not pauso upon the beautiful young men ■who wore to die. The earth'is ctntral for that purpose, and Job for this.

THE HABIT.OF A PASTIME. .But leaving aside, as a digression, the case of these divine examples of grave fiction, and that of the parables cf the Gospel wifh them, v.e iiml an "art of story tolling, whether in Arabia or in Tuscany, devised chiefly or alto.i.'ther for pastime. It is an , art of childish origins —the pretending that such things .or such things came to pass, the making things eomo to pass at the speaker's whim. It 13 an arbitrary make-believe and ineeponsible, whereas the drama must, as it wore, make good its words by making a show. When the novel began in Italy it raised a. childish laugh by jests unchiklish. It emled happily, even though ininnitously.- A mere pastime, it tilled none but tho idlest hour, or the weariest hour of rest. It was proportionate. .There was little of it, and it did not encroach. Tt is a question whether the habit into which we in our time have slipped—fiction as a custom and a habit—is proportionate; and all our modern pastimes are in like manner questionable as to theirquantity. "Anfl when the pastimo of the greater m.mber —the reading of the novel—is charged hy 'the novelist with so many functions a3 it now carries, we cannot but wonder that irresponsible hands should claim, and into those hands should be given, purposes so various and purporting to bo so grave.

It is tho novelist, then, with lto one to whom he must answer, with no facts to.

which he must bo bound, and with only such trutlis as he sots in secret More'his eyes, in whose poweri is the suggestion that is followed by a million souls. Tho idle reader opens the novel for pleasure, and learns tu; find, that tleasuro in painful things. A'pessimist has Mm by tho ear, 'having, captured him at tho mischief of his /idleness and his desire for passive- pleasure. On the pessimist author's side also thtro is, soma spiritual sloth in his activities, for pessimism is Hie cosier way. If ho would confess himself he would' tell -us. that it .is so. Audono of his fruits is tho obvious 'destruction of contedy, but tho other, equally lamentable though less obvious, is the 'destruction of tragedy. • We have all been troubled by Dante's lack of pity, for the people of his infernal pilgrimage./ It is true that ho has compassion upon Francesca (for the dreadful fact is that he had known as "a little radiant girl" Hio very woman whom he saw in eternal woe), but ho witnesses unmoved tho wounded displaying before him their immortal wounds and the miserable-recounting to him their immedicable grief. Are we to understand that sonio misery is beneath' living compassion, and that pity and terror do not pass tho limits of life's known and intelligible ways, the ways of customary men, .where anguish is not cut off from good, ami hope, a banished angel, is not abolished? If so, it is easier to understand why tho literature of despair is indeed not tragic, why it denies tragedy as comedy itself does not. If pessimism robs us of laughter it has done 'worse by "beguiling us of our tears," not that for its sake they are, but that they are not, shed.

BROWNING'S GREAT REFUSAL. It is no wonder that tho proffer of Browning's optimism, half-heartedly made again on tho day of his centenary, did again fail. His "All's right' with the world" is as yain as the pessimist's "All's wrong with it." It is out of the range customary life. Intelligible joy and grief are in the midways, and in the midways there is cause for as much sadness as our human hearts can hold. One of thci most Iheart-piercing 'lines in our ■poetry, is Patmore's After exceeding ill a little good. But if tho ill had so exceeded that the little good was not, tho pierced heart would havo closed upon an insensible cicatrice.. Perhaps, by the way, another reason jvhy Browning's'remedies,are proffered in vain is his denial of fear. Browning re: fused to submit to fear, at once the penalty and the duty of mankind. .Pessimists, on the other hand, are afi-aid, and they and" Browning do not understand one another in thoii , opposition; they are not intelligible enemies. Our pessimists fear, not without cause, and Browninar is vociferously hopeful, without, full cause. The antagonists are not within touch. And yet that robustious poet is held, tor -was held by his own generation, to be a realist. In certain evil things he was, on the contrary, an idealist. Having never been such a Spanish friar, or such a Bishop Bloujrram, he made' them before ho detected them—and at such close quarters, so-point-blank! He was too, intimate with tho 'Kludge he made. But. the pessimist, though so partial and so imperfect, is V better realist than he. A..tragedy the noblest and most dreadful of our time—l refer to Monsieur Paul Claudel's drama, "L'Otago"—is the truer antithesis of pessimism in fiction, whether in tho story told or on the stage. It is a bile of exceeding ill and a little good, of a world wherewith all is not right. I have lately .read a novel in which everything went wrong, and what finnl solace, appears takes the. form of a lutle chatter about a swrant's photograph.. In Monsieur > Claudel's play the solace is in tho form of a momentary act death after.exceeding "ill.-1 _ TVOtago" should be ministered to pessimists, or rather to their readers, for tears, and Mr. Jacobs for laughter; The nje is not without, its remedies.—Mrs. Neynell, in London "News/"