"Realism," said Robert Herrick, "is not the celebration of sexuality." I
had not recalled to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation to go
a-Maying still echoes in the heart of every lover of poetry. The Robert
Herrick with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating critic of
poetry, but the world knows him chiefly for his novels--_The Common
Lot_, _Together_, _Clark's Field_, and other intimate studies of
American life and character. He is a realist, and not many years ago
there were critics who thought that his manner of dealing with sexual
themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the statement that he had just
made seemed to me particularly significant.
"It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term
Realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the
reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex
relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern
novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this
convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most
unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by
novelists and critics as well as by the public.
"This confusion of ideas was apparent in some of the criticisms of my
novel _Together_. In an early chapter of the book there was an incident
which was intended to show that the man and woman who were the chief
figures in the book were spiritually incompatible, that their relations
as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, in fact, the theme of the
book, and this incident in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow
the later events of their married life. Well, the critics who disliked
this chapter said that what they objected to was its 'gross realism.'
"Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the book was not realistic at
all. I was describing something unusual, abnormal, while realism has to
do with the normal. The critic had, of course, a perfect right to
believe that the subject ought not to be treated at all, but 'gross
realism' was the most inappropriate description possible.
"Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe that they are realists
because they write about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there are
many writers who are conscious of the commercial value of sex in
literature. Of course a writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse
in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. I wish our writers
would pay less attention to the direct manifestations of sex and more to
its indirect influence, to the ways in which it affects all phases of
activity."
"Who are some of the writers who seem to you to be especially ready to
avail themselves of the commercial value of sex?" I asked.
Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the writers I mean without my
mentioning their names," he said. "They write for widely circulated
magazines, and make a great deal of money, and their success is due
almost entirely to their industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You
know the sort of magazine for which they write--it always has on the
cover a highly colored picture of a pretty woman, never anything else.
That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying example, of the
commercializing of the sex appeal.
"I think that Zola, although he was a great artist, was often conscious
of the business value of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of thing
had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, much of his best work is marred by
his deliberate introduction of sex, with the purpose--which, of course,
he realized--of making a sensation and selling large editions of his
books. This sort of commercialism was not found in the great Russian
realists, the true realist--Dostoievski, for example. But it is found in
the work of some of the modern Russian writers who are incorrectly
termed realists."
"Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a realist?"
Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts strangely with his white
hair, took on a thoughtful expression.
"The distinction between realism and romanticism," he said, "is one of
spirit rather than of method. The realist has before him an aim which is
entirely different from that of the romanticist.
"The realist writes a novel with one purpose in view. And that purpose
is to render into written words the normal aspect of things.
"The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. He is concerned only
with things which are exciting, astonishing--in a word, abnormal.
"I do not like literary labels, and I think that the names 'realist' and
'romanticist' have been so much misused that they are now almost
meaningless. The significance of the term changes from year to year; the
realists of one generation are the romanticists of the next.
"Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his day. But we think of him
only as a sentimental and melodramatic romanticist whose work has no
connection with real life.
"Charles Dickens was considered a realist by the critics of his own
generation, and it is probable that he considered himself a realist. But
his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. He wrote chiefly
about simple people, it is true, and chiefly about his own land and
time. But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries as subjects
does not make him a realist. Dickens's people were unusual; they were
better or worse than most people, and they had extraordinary adventures;
they did not lead the sort of life which most people lead. Therefore,
Dickens cannot accurately be called a realist."
"You called Dostoievski a realist," I said. "What writers who use the
English language seem to you to deserve best the name of realist?"
"I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most thoroughgoing realist who
ever wrote in England was Anthony Trollope. _Barchester Towers_ and
_Framley Parsonage_ are masterpieces of realism; they give a faithful
and convincing picture of the every-day life of a section of English
society with which their author was thoroughly familiar. Trollope
reflected life as he saw it--normal life. He was a great realist.
"In the United States there has been only one writer who has as great a
right to the name realist as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William
Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been interested in the normal
aspect of things. He has taken for his subject a sort of life which he
knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary adventures for his
theme, nor has he depicted characters remote from our experience. His
novels are distinguished by such fidelity to life that he has an
indisputable claim to be called a realist.
"But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable to attempt to label
literary artists. Thackeray was a realist. Yet _Henry Esmond_ is classed
as a romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used the realistic method;
he spent a long time in studying the manners and customs of the time
about which he was writing; and all the details of the sort of life
which he describes are, I believe, historically accurate. And yet _Henry
Esmond_ is a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic novel
written by a realist, and written according to what is called the
realistic method.
"On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott was a romanticist. No one will deny
that. Yet in many of his early books he dealt with what may be called
realistic material; he described with close fidelity to detail a sort of
life and a sort of people with which he was well acquainted.
"Whether a writer is a realist or a romanticist is, after all, I think,
partly a matter of accident or culture. I happen to be a realist because
I was brought up on the great Russian realists like Gogol and the great
English realists from George Elliot down to Thomas Hardy. If I had been
brought up on romantic writers I suppose that I might now be writing an
entirely different sort of novel from that with which I am associated.
"There is a sounder distinction," said Mr. Herrick, "than that which
people try to draw between the realistic novel and the romantic novel.
This is the distinction between the novel of character and the novel of
events. Personally, I never have been able to see how the development of
character can be separated from the plot of a novel. A book in which the
characters exhibit exactly the same characteristics, moral and
intellectual, in the last chapter as in the first, seems to me to be
utterly worthless.
"I will, however, make one exception--that is, the novel of the Jules
Verne type. In this sort of book, and in romances of the Monte Cristo
kind, action is the only thing with which the author and the reader are
concerned, and any attempt to develop character would clog the wheels of
the story.
"But every other kind of novel depends on character. Even in the best
work of Dumas, in _The Three Musketeers_, for example, the characters of
the principal figures develop as the story progresses.
"The highest interest of a novel depends upon the development of its
characters. If the characters are static, then the book is feeble. I
have never been able to see how the plot and the development of the
characters can be separated.
"Of course, the novel of character is full of adventure. The adventures
of Henry James's characters are of absorbing interest, but they are
psychological adventures, internal adventures. If some kind person
wanted to give one of Henry James's novels what is commonly called 'a
bully plot' the novel would fail."
As to the probable effect on literature of the war, Mr. Herrick has a
theory different from that of any other writer with whom I have
discussed the subject.
"I think," he said, "that after the war we shall return to fatuous
romanticism and weak sentimentality in literature. The tendency will be
to read novels in order to forget life, instead of reading them to
realize life. There will be a revival of a deeper religious sense,
perhaps, but there will also be a revival of mere empty formalism in
religion. It has been so in the past after great convulsions. Men need
time to recover their spiritual pride, their interest in ideas."
But Mr. Herrick's own reaction to the war does not seem to justify his
pessimistic prophecy. Certainly the personal experience which he next
narrated to me does not indicate that Mr. Herrick is growing sentimental
and romantic.
"When I was in Rome recently," he said, "I was much impressed by
D'Annunzio. I was interested in him as a problem, as a picturesque
literary personality, as a decadent raffine type regenerated by the war.
I have not read any of his books for many years.
"I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on my voyage home. I read _Il
Piacere_. I realized its charm, I realized the highly aesthetic quality
of its author, a scholarly and exact aestheticism as well as an emotional
aestheticism. But, nevertheless, I had to force myself to read the book.
It was simply a description of a young man's amorous adventures. And I
could not see any reason for the existence of this carefully written
record of passional experiences.
"It seemed to me that the war had swept this sort of thing aside, or had
swept aside my interest in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as
dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate eighteenth-century
novel. And I wondered if we would ever again return to the time when
such a record of a young man's emotional and sensual experiences would
be worth while.
"I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio himself would not now write
such a novel. I think that it would seem to him to be too trivial a
report on life. I think that the war has so forced the essential things
of life upon the attention of young men."
_SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS_