NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM.
The novel of our times is susceptible of many definitions. The American
publishers of Railway libraries think that it is forty or fifty
double-column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers of the "New
York Ledger" suppose it to be a romance of angelic virtue at last
triumphant over satanic villany. The aristocracy of culture describe it
as a philosophic analysis of human character and motives, with an
agnostic bias on the analyst's part. Schoolboys are under the
impression that it is a tale of Western chivalry and Indian
outrage--price, ten cents. Most of us agree in the belief that it
should contain a brace or two of lovers, a suspense, and a solution.
To investigate the nature of the novel in the abstract would involve
going back to the very origin of things. It would imply the recognition
of a certain faculty of the mind, known as imagination; and of a
certain fact in history, called art. Art and imagination are
correlatives,--one implies the other. Together, they may be said to
constitute the characteristic badge and vindication of human nature;
imagination is the badge, and art is the vindication. Reason, which
gets so much vulgar glorification, is, after all, a secondary quality.
It is posterior to imagination,--it is one of the means by which
imagination seeks to realize its ends. Some animals reason, or seem to
do so: but the most cultivated ape or donkey has not yet composed a
sonnet, or a symphony, or "an arrangement in green and yellow." Man
still retains a few prerogatives, although, like Aesop's stag, which
despised the legs that bore it away from the hounds, and extolled the
antlers that entangled it in the thicket,--so man often magnifies those
elements of his nature that least deserve it.
But, before celebrating art and imagination, we should have a clear
idea what those handsome terms mean. In the broadest sense, imagination
is the cause of the effect we call progress. It marks all forms of
human effort towards a better state of things. It embraces a perception
of existing shortcomings, and an aspiration towards a loftier ideal. It
is, in fact, a truly divine force in man, reminding him of his heavenly
origin, and stimulating him to rise again to the level whence he fell.
For it has glimpses of the divine Image within or behind the material
veil; and its constant impulse is to tear aside the veil and grasp the
image. The world, let us say, is a gross and finite translation of an
infinite and perfect Word; and imagination is the intuition of that
perfection, born in the human heart, and destined forever to draw
mankind into closer harmony with it.
In common speech, however, imagination is deprived of this broader
significance, and is restricted to its relations with art. Art is not
progress, though progress implies art. It differs from progress chiefly
in disclaiming the practical element. You cannot apply a poem, a
picture, or a strain of music, to material necessities; they are not
food, clothing, or shelter. Only after these physical wants are
assuaged, does art supervene. Its sphere is exclusively mental and
moral. But this definition is not adequate; a further distinction is
needed. For such things as mathematics, moral philosophy, and political
economy also belong to the mental sphere, and yet they are not art. But
these, though not actually existing on the plane of material
necessities, yet do exist solely in order to relieve such necessities.
Unlike beauty, they are not their own excuse for being. Their
embodiment is utilitarian, that of art is aesthetic. Political economy,
for example, shows me how to buy two drinks for the same price I used
to pay for one; while art inspires me to transmute a pewter mug into a
Cellini goblet. My physical nature, perhaps, prefers two drinks to one;
but, if my taste be educated, and I be not too thirsty, I would rather
drink once from the Cellini goblet than twice from the mug. Political
economy gravitates towards the material level; art seeks incarnation
only in order to stimulate anew the same spiritual faculties that
generated it. Art is the production, by means of appearances, of the
illusion of a loftier reality; and imagination is the faculty which
holds that loftier reality up for imitation.
The disposition of these preliminaries brings us once more in sight of
the goal of our pilgrimage. The novel, despite its name, is no new
thing, but an old friend in a modern dress. Ever since the time of
Cadmus,--ever since language began to express thought as well as
emotion,--men have betrayed the impulse to utter in forms of literary
art,--in poetry and story,--their conceptions of the world around them.
According to many philologists, poetry was the original form of human
speech. Be that as it may, whatever flows into the mind, from the
spectacle of nature and of mankind, that influx the mind tends
instinctively to reproduce, in a shape accordant with its peculiar bias
and genius. And those minds in which imagination is predominant, impart
to their reproductions a balance and beauty which stamp them as art.
Art--and literary art especially--is the only evidence we have that
this universal frame of things has relation to our minds, and is a
universe and not a poliverse. Outside revelation, it is our best
assurance of an intelligent purpose in creation.
Novels, then, instead of being (as some persons have supposed) a wilful
and corrupt conspiracy on the part of the evilly disposed, against the
peace and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most ancient and
indefeasible right to existence. They, with their ancestors and near
relatives, constitute Literature,--without which the human race would
be little better than savages. For the effect of pure literature upon a
receptive mind is something more than can be definitely stated. Like
sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. It demands from its
disciple almost as much as it gives him, and is never revealed save to
the disinterested and loving eye. In our best moments, it touches us
most deeply; and when the sentiment of human brotherhood kindles most
warmly within us, we discover in literature an exquisite answering
ardor. When everything that can be, has been said about a true work of
art, its finest charm remains,--the charm derived from a source beyond
the conscious reach even of the artist.
The novel, then, must be pure literature; as much so as the poem. But
poetry--now that the day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or
temporarily eclipsed--appeals to a taste too exclusive and abstracted
for the demands of modern readers. Its most accommodating metre fails
to house our endless variety of mood and movement; it exacts from the
student an exaltation above the customary level of thought and
sentiment greater than he can readily afford. The poet of old used to
clothe in the garb of verse his every observation on life and nature;
but to-day he reserves for it only his most ideal and abstract
conceptions. The merit of Cervantes is not so much that he laughed
Spain's chivalry away, as that he heralded the modern novel of
character and manners. It is the latest, most pliable, most catholic
solution of the old problem,--how to unfold man to himself. It improves
on the old methods, while missing little of their excellence. No one
can read a great novel without feeling that, from its outwardly prosaic
pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and anon reached his ears.
It does not obtrude itself; it is not there for him who has not skill
to listen for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the music of a
bird, denning itself amidst the innumerable murmurs of the forest.
So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to the behests of the
imagination, should produce, by means of literary art, the illusion of
a loftier reality. This excludes the photographic method of
novel-writing. "That is a false effort in art," says Goethe, towards
the close of his long and splendid career, "which, in giving reality to
the appearance, goes so far as to leave in it nothing but the common,
every-day actual." It is neither the actual, nor Chinese copies of the
actual, that we demand of art. Were art merely the purveyor of such
things, she might yield her crown to the camera and the stenographer;
and divine imagination would degenerate into vulgar inventiveness.
Imagination is incompatible with inventiveness, or imitation. Imitation
is death, imagination is life. Imitation is servitude, imagination is
royalty. He who claims the name of artist must rise to that vision of a
loftier reality--a more true because a more beautiful world--which only
imagination can reveal. A truer world,--for the world of facts is not
and cannot be true. It is barren, incoherent, misleading. But behind
every fact there is a truth: and these truths are enlightening,
unifying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them, and facts will become
your servants instead of your tyrants. No charm of detail will be lost,
no homely picturesque circumstance, no touch of human pathos or humor;
but all hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story
will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels and thinks.
Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new gospel of
the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a pot. He
who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation and
distinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance
than any other; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a diamond. But
that is the philosophy of brute beasts and Digger Indians. A child,
digging on the beach, may shape a heap of sand into a similitude of
Vesuvius; but is it nothing that Vesuvius towers above the clouds, and
overwhelms Pompeii?
* * * * *
In proceeding from the general to the particular,--to the novel as it
actually exists in England and America,--attention will be confined
strictly to the contemporary outlook. The new generation of novelists
(by which is intended not those merely living in this age, but those
who actively belong to it) differ in at least one fundamental respect
from the later representatives of the generation preceding them.
Thackeray and Dickens did not deliberately concern themselves about a
philosophy of life. With more or less complacency, more or less
cynicism, they accepted the religious and social canons which had grown
to be the commonplace of the first half of this century. They pictured
men and women, not as affected by questions, but as affected by one
another. The morality and immorality of their personages were of the
old familiar Church-of-England sort; there was no speculation as to
whether what had been supposed to be wrong was really right, and _vice
versa_. Such speculations, in various forms and degrees of energy,
appear in the world periodically; but the public conscience during the
last thirty or forty years had been gradually making itself comfortable
after the disturbances consequent upon the French Revolution; the
theoretical rights of man had been settled for the moment; and interest
was directed no longer to the assertion and support of these rights,
but to the social condition and character which were their outcome.
Good people were those who climbed through reverses and sorrows towards
the conventional heaven; bad people were those who, in spite of worldly
and temporary successes and triumphs, gravitated towards the
conventional hell. Novels designed on this basis in so far filled the
bill, as the phrase is: their greater or less excellence depended
solely on the veracity with which the aspect, the temperament, and the
conduct of the _dramatis personae_ were reported, and upon the amount
of ingenuity wherewith the web of events and circumstances was woven,
and the conclusion reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in general,
little or nothing more was attempted. Little more, certainly, will be
found in the writings of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly
admitted, approach nearest to perfection of any novelists of their
time. There was nothing genuine or commanding in the metaphysical
dilettanteism of Bulwer: the philosophical speculations of Georges Sand
are the least permanently interesting feature of her writings; and the
same might in some measure be affirmed of George Eliot, whose gloomy
wisdom finally confesses its inability to do more than advise us rather
to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. As
to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot properly be instanced in this
connection; for he analyzed chiefly those parts of human nature which
remain substantially unaltered in the face of whatever changes of
opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that he brings to light
is not the sensational fact of a fashion or a period, but a verity of
the human heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected by,
anything which that heart may conceive. In other words, Hawthorne
belonged neither to this nor to any other generation of writers further
than that his productions may be used as a test of the inner veracity
of all the rest.
But of late years a new order of things has been coming into vogue, and
the new novelists have been among the first to reflect it; and of these
the Americans have shown themselves among the most susceptible.
Science, or the investigation of the phenomena of existence (in
opposition to philosophy, the investigation of the phenomena of being),
has proved nature to be so orderly and self-sufficient, and inquiry as
to the origin of the primordial atom so unproductive and quixotic, as
to make it convenient and indeed reasonable to accept nature as a
self-existing fact, and to let all the rest--if rest there be--go. From
this point of view, God and a future life retire into the background;
not as finally disproved,--because denial, like affirmation, must, in
order to be final, be logically supported; and spirit is, if not
illogical, at any rate outside the domain of logic,--but as being a
hopelessly vague and untrustworthy hypothesis. The Bible is a human
book; Christ was a gentleman, related to the Buddha and Plato families;
Joseph was an ill-used man; death, so far as we have any reason to
believe, is annihilation of personal existence; life is--the
predicament of the body previous to death; morality is the enlightened
selfishness of the greatest number; civilization is the compromises men
make with one another in order to get the most they can out of the
world; wisdom is acknowledgment of these propositions; folly is to
hanker after what may lie beyond the sphere of sense. The supporter of
these doctrines by no means permits himself to be regarded as a rampant
and dogmatic atheist; he is simply the modest and humble doubter of
what he cannot prove. He even recognizes the persistence of the
religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a new religion suited to
the times--the Religion of Humanity. Thus he is secure at all points:
for if the religion of the Bible turn out to be true, his
disappointment will be an agreeable one; and if it turns out false, he
will not be disappointed at all. He is an agnostic--a person bound to
be complacent whatever happens. He may indulge a gentle regret, a
musing sadness, a smiling pensiveness; but he will never refuse a
comfortable dinner, and always wear something soft next his skin, nor
can he altogether avoid the consciousness of his intellectual
superiority.
Agnosticism, which reaches forward into nihilism on one side, and
extends back into liberal Christianity on the other, marks, at all
events, a definite turning-point from what has been to what is to come.
The human mind, in the course of its long journey, is passing through a
dark place, and is, as it were, whistling to keep up its courage. It is
a period of doubt: what it will result in remains to be seen; but
analogy leads us to infer that this doubt, like all others, will be
succeeded by a comparatively definite belief in something--no matter
what. It is a transient state--the interval between one creed and
another. The agnostic no longer holds to what is behind him, nor knows
what lies before, so he contents himself with feeling the ground
beneath his feet. That, at least, though the heavens fall, is likely to
remain; meanwhile, let the heavens take care of themselves. It may be
the part of valor to champion divine revelation, but the better part of
valor is discretion, and if divine revelation prove true, discretion
will be none the worse off. On the other hand, to champion a myth is to
make one's self ridiculous, and of being ridiculous the agnostic has a
consuming fear. From the superhuman disinterestedness of the theory of
the Religion of Humanity, before which angels might quail, he flinches
not, but when it comes to the risk of being laughed at by certain
sagacious persons he confesses that bravery has its limits. He dares do
all that may become an agnostic,--who dares do more is none.
But, however open to criticism this phase of thought may be, it is a
genuine phase, and the proof is the alarm and the shifts that it has
brought about in the opposite camp. "Established" religion finds the
foundation of her establishment undermined, and, like the lady in
Hamlet's play, she doth protest too much. In another place, all manner
of odd superstitions and quasi-miracles are cropping up and gaining
credence, as if, since the immortality of the soul cannot be proved by
logic, it should be smuggled into belief by fraud and violence--that
is, by the testimony of the bodily senses themselves. Taking a
comprehensive view of the whole field, therefore, it seems to be
divided between discreet and supercilious skepticism on one side, and,
on the other, the clamorous jugglery of charlatanism. The case is not
really so bad as that: nihilists are not discreet and even the Bishop
of Rome is not necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the outlook may
fairly be described as confused and the issue uncertain. And--to come
without further preface to the subject of this paper--it is with this
material that the modern novelist, so far as he is a modern and not a
future novelist, or a novelist _temporis acti_, has to work. Unless a
man have the gift to forecast the years, or, at least, to catch the
first ray of the coming light, he can hardly do better than attend to
what is under his nose. He may hesitate to identify himself with
agnosticism, but he can scarcely avoid discussing it, either in itself
or in its effects. He must entertain its problems; and the personages
of his story, if they do not directly advocate or oppose agnostic
views, must show in their lives either confirmation or disproof of
agnostic principles. It is impossible, save at the cost of affectation
or of ignorance, to escape from the spirit of the age. It is in the air
we breathe, and, whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, our
lives and thoughts must needs be tinctured by it.
Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the spirit that denies, is
destructive. A negative attitude of mind is not favorable for the
production of works of art. The best periods of art have also been
periods of spiritual or philosophical convictions. The more a man
doubts, the more he disintegrates and the less he constructs. He has in
him no central initial certainty round which all other matters of
knowledge or investigation may group themselves in symmetrical
relation. He may analyze to his heart's content, but must be wary of
organizing. If creation is not of God, if nature is not the expression
of the contact between an infinite and a finite being, then the
universe and everything in it are accidents, which might have been
otherwise or might have not been at all; there is no design in them nor
purpose, no divine and eternal significance. This being conceded, what
meaning would there be in designing works of art? If art has not its
prototype in creation, if all that we see and do is chance, uninspired
by a controlling and forming intelligence behind or within it, then to
construct a work of art would be to make something arbitrary and
grotesque, something unreal and fugitive, something out of accord with
the general sense (or nonsense) of things, something with no further
basis or warrant than is supplied by the maker's idle and irresponsible
fancy. But since no man cares to expend the trained energies of his
mind upon the manufacture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the
accidental hypothesis of creation) that artists will become shy of
justifying their own title. They will adopt the scientific method of
merely collecting and describing phenomena; but the phenomena will no
longer be arranged as parts or developments of a central controlling
idea, because such an arrangement would no longer seem to be founded on
the truth: the gratification which it gives to the mind would be deemed
illusory, the result of tradition and prejudice; or, in other words,
what is true being found no longer consistent with what we have been
accustomed to call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object of
desire, though something widely alien to it might usurp its name. If
beauty be devoid of independent right to be, and definable only as an
attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to-day may be the
scarecrow of to-morrow, and _vice versâ_, according to our varying
conception of what truth is.
And, as a matter of fact, art already shows the effects of the agnostic
influence. Artists have begun to doubt whether their old conceptions of
beauty be not fanciful and silly. They betray a tendency to eschew the
loftier flights of the imagination, and confine themselves to what they
call facts. Critics deprecate idealism as something fit only for
children, and extol the courage of seeing and representing things as
they are. Sculpture is either a stern student of modern trousers and
coat-tails or a vapid imitator of classic prototypes. Painters try all
manner of experiments, and shrink from painting beneath the surface of
their canvas. Much of recent effort in the different branches of art
comes to us in the form of "studies," but the complete work still
delays to be born. We would not so much mind having our old idols and
criterions done away with were something new and better, or as good,
substituted for them. But apparently nothing definite has yet been
decided on. Doubt still reigns, and, once more, doubt is not creative.
One of two things must presently happen. The time will come when we
must stop saying that we do not know whether or not God, and all that
God implies, exists, and affirm definitely and finally either that he
does not exist or that he does. That settled, we shall soon see what
will become of art. If there is a God, he will be understood and
worshipped, not superstitiously and literally as heretofore, but in a
new and enlightened spirit; and an art will arise commensurate with
this new and loftier revelation. If there is no God, it is difficult to
see how art can have the face to show herself any more. There is no
place for her in the Religion of Humanity; to be true and living she
can be nothing which it has thus far entered into the heart of man to
call beautiful; and she could only serve to remind us of certain vague
longings and aspirations now proved to be as false as they were vain.
Art is not an orchid: it cannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be
traced as deep down as Yggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be
forgotten as it ought to be; and as for the cowslip by the river's
brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and nothing more; and the light
that never was on sea or land shall be permanently extinguished, in the
interests of common sense and economy, and (what is least inviting of
all to the unregenerate mind) we shall speedily get rid of the notion
that we have lost anything worth preserving.
This, however, is only what may be, and our concern at present is with
things as they are. It has been observed that American writers have
shown themselves more susceptible of the new influences than most
others, partly no doubt from a natural sensitiveness of organization,
but in some measure also because there are with us no ruts and fetters
of old tradition from which we must emancipate ourselves before
adopting anything new. We have no past, in the European sense, and so
are ready for whatever the present or the future may have to suggest.
Nevertheless, the novelist who, in a larger degree than any other,
seems to be the literary parent of our own best men of fiction, is
himself not an American, nor even an Englishman, but a
Russian--Turguénieff. His series of extraordinary novels, translated
into English and French, is altogether the most important fact in the
literature of fiction of the last twelve years. To read his books you
would scarcely imagine that their author could have had any knowledge
of the work of his predecessors in the same field. Originality is a
term indiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling significance,
but so far as any writer may be original, Turguénieff is so. He is no
less original in the general scheme and treatment of his stories than
in their details. Whatever he produces has the air of being the outcome
of his personal experience and observation. He even describes his
characters, their aspect, features, and ruling traits, in a novel and
memorable manner. He seizes on them from a new point of vantage, and
uses scarcely any of the hackneyed and conventional devices for
bringing his portraits before our minds; yet no writer, not even
Carlyle, has been more vivid, graphic, and illuminating than he. Here
are eyes that owe nothing to other eyes, but examine and record for
themselves. Having once taken up a character he never loses his grasp
on it: on the contrary, he masters it more and more, and only lets go
of it when the last recesses of its organism have been explored. In the
quality and conduct of his plots he is equally unprecedented. His
scenes are modern, and embody characteristic events and problems in the
recent history of Russia. There is in their arrangement no attempt at
symmetry, nor poetic justice. Temperament and circumstances are made to
rule, and against their merciless fiat no appeal is allowed. Evil does
evil to the end; weakness never gathers strength; even goodness never
varies from its level: it suffers, but is not corrupted; it is the
goodness of instinct, not of struggle and aspiration; it happens to
belong to this or that person, just as his hair happens to be black or
brown. Everything in the surroundings and the action is to the last
degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable; there are no
picturesque coincidences, no providential interferences, no desperate
victories over fate; the tale, like the world of the materialist, moves
onward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close.
And yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent
fascination than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and
steady dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy
of motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none.
This earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no
likeness to the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism of the
enthusiast. It is the concentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind,
devoting its unstinted energies to depicting certain aspects of society
and civilization, which are powerfully representative of the tendencies
of the day. "Here is the unvarnished fact--give heed to it!" is the
unwritten motto. The author avoids betraying, either explicitly or
implicitly, the tendency of his own sympathies; not because he fears to
have them known, but because he holds it to be his office simply to
portray, and to leave judgment thereupon where, in any case, it must
ultimately rest--with the world of his readers. He tells us what is; it
is for us to consider whether it also must be and shall be. Turguénieff
is an artist by nature, yet his books are not intentionally works of
art; they are fragments of history, differing from real life only in
presenting such persons and events as are commandingly and exhaustively
typical, and excluding all others. This faculty of selection is one of
the highest artistic faculties, and it appears as much in the minor as
in the major features of the narrative. It indicates that Turguénieff
might, if he chose, produce a story as faultlessly symmetrical as was
ever framed. Why, then, does he not so choose? The reason can only be
that he deems the truth-seeming of his narrative would thereby be
impaired. "He is only telling a story," the reader would say, "and he
shapes the events and persons so as to fit the plot." But is this
reason reasonable? To those who believe that God has no hand in the
ordering of human affairs, it undoubtedly is reasonable. To those who
believe the contrary, however, it appears as if the story of no human
life or complex of lives could be otherwise than a rounded and perfect
work of art--provided only that the spectator takes note, not merely of
the superficial accidents and appearances, but also of the underlying
divine purpose and significance. The absence of this recognition in
Turguénieff's novels is the explanation of them: holding the creed
their author does, he could not have written them otherwise; and, on
the other hand, had his creed been different, he very likely would not
have written novels at all.
The pioneer, in whatever field of thought or activity, is apt to be
also the most distinguished figure therein. The consciousness of being
the first augments the keenness of his impressions, and a mind that can
see and report in advance of others a new order of things may claim a
finer organization than the ordinary. The vitality of nature animates
him who has insight to discern her at first hand, whereas his followers
miss the freshness of the morning, because, instead of discovering,
they must be content to illustrate and refine. Those of our writers who
betray Turguénieff's influence are possibly his superiors in finish and
culture, but their faculty of convincing and presenting is less. Their
interest in their own work seems less serious than his; they may
entertain us more, but they do not move and magnetize so much. The
persons and events of their stories are conscientiously studied, and
are nothing if not natural; but they lack distinction. In an epitome of
life so concise as the longest novel must needs be, to use any but
types is waste of time and space. A typical character is one who
combines the traits or beliefs of a certain class to which he is
affiliated--who is, practically, all of them and himself besides; and,
when we know him, there is nothing left worth knowing about the others.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet and Enobarbus, in Fielding's Squire Western, in
Walter Scott's Edie Ochiltree and Meg Merrilies, in Balzac's Père
Goriot and Madame Marneff, in Thackeray's Colonel Newcome and Becky
Sharp, in Turguénieff's Bazarof and Dimitri Roudine, we meet persons
who exhaust for us the groups to which they severally belong. Bazarof,
the nihilist, for instance, reveals to us the motives and influences
that have made nihilism, so that we feel that nothing essential on that
score remains to be learnt.
The ability to recognize and select types is a test of a novelist's
talent and experience. It implies energy to rise above the blind walls
of one's private circle of acquaintance; the power to perceive what
phases of thought and existence are to be represented as well as who
represents them; the sagacity to analyze the age or the moment and
reproduce its dominant features. The feat is difficult, and, when done,
by no means blows its own trumpet. On the contrary, the reader must
open his eyes to be aware of it. He finds the story clear and easy of
comprehension; the characters come home to him familiarly and remain
distinctly in his memory; he understands something which was, till now,
vague to him: but he is as likely to ascribe this to an exceptional
lucidity in his own mental condition as to any special merit in the
author. Indeed, it often happens that the author who puts
out-of-the-way personages into his stories--characters that represent
nothing but themselves, or possibly some eccentricity of invention on
their author's part, will gain the latter a reputation for cleverness
higher than his fellow's who portrays mankind in its masses as well as
in its details. But the finest imagination is not that which evolves
strange images, but that which explains seeming contradictions, and
reveals the unity within the difference and the harmony beneath the
discord.
Were we to compare our fictitious literature, as a whole, with that of
England, the balance must be immeasurably on the English side. Even
confining ourselves to to-day, and to the prospect of to-morrow, it
must be conceded that, in settled method, in guiding tradition, in
training and associations both personal and inherited, the average
English novelist is better circumstanced than the American.
Nevertheless, the English novelist is not at present writing better
novels than the American. The reason seems to be that he uses no
material which has not been in use for hundreds of years; and to say
that such material begins to lose its freshness is not putting the case
too strongly. He has not been able to detach himself from the
paralyzing background of English conventionality. The vein was rich,
but it is worn out; and the half-dozen pioneers had all the luck.
There is no commanding individual imagination in England--nor, to say
the truth, does there seem to be any in America. But we have what they
have not--a national imaginative tendency. There are no fetters upon
our fancy; and, however deeply our real estate may be mortgaged, there
is freedom for our ideas. England has not yet appreciated the true
inwardness of a favorite phrase of ours,--a new deal. And yet she is
tired to death of her own stale stories; and when, by chance, any one
of her writers happens to chirp out a note a shade different from the
prevailing key, the whole nation pounces down upon him, with a shriek
of half-incredulous joy, and buys him up, at the rate of a million
copies a year. Our own best writers are more read in England, or, at
any rate, more talked about, than their native crop; not so much,
perhaps, because they are different as because their difference is felt
to be of a significant and typical kind. It has in it a gleam of the
new day. They are realistic; but realism, so far as it involves a
faithful study of nature, is useful. The illusion of a loftier reality,
at which we should aim, must be evolved from adequate knowledge of
reality itself. The spontaneous and assured faith, which is the
mainspring of sane imagination, must be preceded by the doubt and
rejection of what is lifeless and insincere. We desire no resurrection
of the Ann Radclyffe type of romance: but the true alternative to this
is not such a mixture of the police gazette and the medical reporter as
Emile Zola offers us. So far as Zola is conscientious, let him live;
but, in so far as he is revolting, let him die. Many things in the
world seem ugly and purposeless; but to a deeper intelligence than
ours, they are a part of beauty and design. What is ugly and
irrelevant, can never enter, as such, into a work of art; because the
artist is bound, by a sacred obligation, to show us the complete curve
only,--never the undeveloped fragments.
But were the firmament of England still illuminated with her Dickenses,
her Thackerays, and her Brontës, I should still hold our state to be
fuller of promise than hers. It may be admitted that almost everything
was against our producing anything good in literature. Our men, in the
first place, had to write for nothing; because the publisher, who can
steal a readable English novel, will not pay for an American novel, for
the mere patriotic gratification of enabling its American author to
write it. In the second place, they had nothing to write about, for the
national life was too crude and heterogeneous for ordinary artistic
purposes. Thirdly, they had no one to write for: because, although, in
one sense, there might be readers enough, in a higher sense there were
scarcely any,--that is to say, there was no organized critical body of
literary opinion, from which an author could confidently look to
receive his just meed of encouragement and praise. Yet, in spite of all
this, and not to mention honored names that have ceased or are ceasing
to cast their living weight into the scale, we are contributing much
that is fresh and original, and something, it may be, that is of
permanent value, to literature. We have accepted the situation; and,
since no straw has been vouchsafed us to make our bricks with, we are
trying manfully to make them without.
It will not be necessary, however, to call the roll of all the able and
popular gentlemen who are contending in the forlorn hope against
disheartening odds; and as for the ladies who have honored our
literature by their contributions, it will perhaps be well to adopt
regarding them a course analogous to that which Napoleon is said to
have pursued with the letters sent to him while in Italy. He left them
unread until a certain time had elapsed, and then found that most of
them no longer needed attention. We are thus brought face to face with
the two men with whom every critic of American novelists has to reckon;
who represent what is carefullest and newest in American fiction; and
it remains to inquire how far their work has been moulded by the
skeptical or radical spirit of which Turguénieff is the chief exemplar.
The author of "Daisy Miller" had been writing for several years before
the bearings of his course could be confidently calculated. Some of his
earlier tales,--as, for example, "The Madonna of the Future,"--while
keeping near reality on one side, are on the other eminently fanciful
and ideal. He seemed to feel the attraction of fairyland, but to lack
resolution to swallow it whole; so, instead of idealizing both persons
and plot, as Hawthorne had ventured to do, he tried to persuade real
persons to work out an ideal destiny. But the tact, delicacy, and
reticence with which these attempts were made did not blind him to the
essential incongruity; either realism or idealism had to go, and step
by step he dismissed the latter, until at length Turguénieff's current
caught him. By this time, however, his culture had become too wide, and
his independent views too confirmed, to admit of his yielding
unconditionally to the great Russian. Especially his critical
familiarity with French literature operated to broaden, if at the same
time to render less trenchant, his method and expression. His
characters are drawn with fastidious care, and closely follow the tones
and fashions of real life. Each utterance is so exactly like what it
ought to be that the reader feels the same sort of pleased surprise as
is afforded by a phonograph which repeats, with all the accidental
pauses and inflections, the speech spoken into it. Yet the words come
through a medium; they are not quite spontaneous; these figures have
not the sad, human inevitableness of Turguénieff's people. The reason
seems to be (leaving the difference between the genius of the two
writers out of account) that the American, unlike the Russian,
recognizes no tragic importance in the situation. To the latter, the
vision of life is so ominous that his voice waxes sonorous and
terrible; his eyes, made keen by foreboding, see the leading elements
of the conflict, and them only; he is no idle singer of an empty day,
but he speaks because speech springs out of him. To his mind, the
foundations of human welfare are in jeopardy, and it is full time to
decide what means may avert the danger. But the American does not think
any cataclysm is impending, or if any there be, nobody can help it. The
subjects that best repay attention are the minor ones of civilization,
culture, behavior; how to avoid certain vulgarities and follies, how to
inculcate certain principles: and to illustrate these points heroic
types are not needed. In other words, the situation being unheroic, so
must the actors be; for, apart from the inspirations of circumstances,
Napoleon no more than John Smith is recognizable as a hero.
Now, in adopting this view, a writer places himself under several
manifest disadvantages. If you are to be an agnostic, it is better (for
novel-writing purposes) not to be a complacent or resigned one.
Otherwise your characters will find it difficult to show what is in
them. A man reveals and classifies himself in proportion to the
severity of the condition or action required of him, hence the American
novelist's people are in considerable straits to make themselves
adequately known to us. They cannot lay bare their inmost soul over a
cup of tea or a picture by Corôt; so, in order to explain themselves,
they must not only submit to dissection at the author's hands, but must
also devote no little time and ingenuity to dissecting themselves and
one another. But dissection is one thing, and the living word rank from
the heart and absolutely reeking of the human creature that uttered
it--the word that Turguénieff's people are constantly uttering--is
another. Moreover, in the dearth of commanding traits and stirring
events, there is a continual temptation to magnify those which are
petty and insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweep the heavens,
we are furnished with a microscope to detect infusoria. We want a
description of a mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline, naked
and severe, perhaps, but true and impressive, we are introduced to a
tiny field on its immeasurable side, and we go botanizing and
insect-hunting there. This is realism; but it is the realism of
texture, not of form and relation. It encourages our glance to be
near-sighted instead of comprehensive. Above all, there is a misgiving
that we do not touch the writer's true quality, and that these scenes
of his, so elaborately and conscientiously prepared, have cost him much
thought and pains, but not one throb of the heart or throe of the
spirit. The experiences that he depicts have not, one fancies, marked
wrinkles on his forehead or turned his hair gray. There are two kinds
of reserve--the reserve which feels that its message is too mighty for
it, and the reserve which feels that it is too mighty for its message.
Our new school of writers is reserved, but its reserve does not strike
one as being of the former kind. It cannot be said of any one of Mr.
James's stories, "This is his best," or "This is his worst," because no
one of them is all one way. They have their phases of strength and
veracity, and, also, phases that are neither veracious nor strong. The
cause may either lie in a lack of experience in a certain direction on
the writer's part; or else in his reluctance to write up to the
experience he has. The experience in question is not of the ways of the
world,--concerning which Mr. James has every sign of being politely
familiar,--nor of men and women in their every-day aspect; still less
of literary ways and means, for of these, in his own line, he is a
master. The experience referred to is experience of passion. If Mr.
James be not incapable of describing passion, at all events he has
still to show that he is capable of it. He has introduced us to many
characters that seem to have in them capacity for the highest
passion,--as witness Christina Light,--and yet he has never allowed
them an opportunity to develop it. He seems to evade the situation; but
the evasion is managed with so much plausibility that, although we may
be disappointed, or even irritated, and feel, more or less vaguely,
that we have been unfairly dealt with, we are unable to show exactly
where or how the unfairness comes in. Thus his novels might be compared
to a beautiful face, full of culture and good breeding, but lacking
that fire of the eye and fashion of the lip that betray a living human
soul.
The other one of the two writers whose names are so often mentioned
together, seems to have taken up the subject of our domestic and social
pathology; and the minute care and conscientious veracity which he has
brought to bear upon his work has not been surpassed, even by
Shakespeare. But, if I could venture a criticism upon his productions,
it would be to the effect that there is not enough fiction in them.
They are elaborate and amiable reports of what we see around us. They
are not exactly imaginative,--in the sense in which I have attempted to
define the word. There are two ways of warning a man against
unwholesome life--one is, to show him a picture of disease; the other
is, to show him a picture of health. The former is the negative, the
latter the positive treatment. Both have their merits; but the latter
is, perhaps, the better adapted to novels, the former to essays. A
novelist should not only know what he has got; he should also know what
he wants. His mind should have an active, or theorizing, as well as a
passive, or contemplative, side. He should have energy to discount the
people he personally knows; the power to perceive what phases of
thought are to be represented, as well as to describe the persons who
happen to be their least inadequate representatives; the sagacity to
analyze the age or the moment, and to reveal its tendency and meaning.
Mr. Howells has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapestry; but
does not seem, as yet, to have found a hall fit to adorn it with.
And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done more than all the rest of
us to make our literature respectable during the last ten years. If
texture be the object, they have brought texture to a fineness never
surpassed anywhere. They have discovered charm and grace in much that
was only blank before. They have detected and described points of human
nature hitherto unnoticed, which, if not intrinsically important, will
one day be made auxiliary to the production of pictures of broader as
well as minuter veracity than have heretofore been produced. All that
seems wanting thus far is a direction, an aim, a belief. Agnosticism
has brought about a pause for a while, and no doubt a pause is
preferable to some kinds of activity. It may enable us, when the time
comes to set forward again, to do so with better equipment and more
intelligent purpose. It will not do to be always at a prophetic heat of
enthusiasm, sympathy, denunciation: the coolly critical mood is also
useful to prune extravagance and promote a sense of responsibility. The
novels of Mr. James and of Mr. Howells have taught us that men and
women are creatures of infinitely complicated structure, and that even
the least of these complications, if it is portrayed at all, is worth
portraying truthfully. But we cannot forget, on the other hand, that
honest emotion and hearty action are necessary to the wholesomeness of
society, because in their absence society is afflicted with a
lamentable sameness and triviality; the old primitive impulses remain,
but the food on which they are compelled to feed is insipid and
unsustaining; our eyes are turned inward instead of outward, and each
one of us becomes himself the Rome towards which all his roads lead.
Such books as these authors have written are not the Great American
Novel, because they take life and humanity not in their loftier, but in
their lesser manifestations. They are the side scenes and the
background of a story that has yet to be written. That story will have
the interest not only of the collision of private passions and efforts,
but of the great ideas and principles which characterize and animate a
nation. It will discriminate between what is accidental and what is
permanent, between what is realistic and what is real, between what is
sentimental and what is sentiment. It will show us not only what we
are, but what we are to be; not only what to avoid, but what to do. It
will rest neither in the tragic gloom of Turguénieff, nor in the
critical composure of James, nor in the gentle deprecation of Howells,
but will demonstrate that the weakness of man is the motive and
condition of his strength. It will not shrink from romance, nor from
ideality, nor from artistic completeness, because it will know at what
depths and heights of life these elements are truly operative. It will
be American, not because its scene is laid or its characters born in
the United States, but because its burden will be reaction against old
tyrannies and exposure of new hypocrisies; a refutation of respectable
falsehoods, and a proclamation of unsophisticated truths. Indeed, let
us take heed and diligently improve our native talent, lest a day come
when the Great American Novel make its appearance, but written in a
foreign language, and by some author who--however purely American at
heart--never set foot on the shores of the Republic.