REALISM. Realism, as we are concerned with it, may be defined as the
literary effect produced by the marshaling of details in their exactitude
for the purpose of bringing out character. The fact that they may be
ugly and vulgar the reverse, makes not the slightest difference. The
modern realist contemplates the inanimate things which surround us with
peculiar complaisance, and it is right that he should as these things
exert upon us a constant and secret influence. The workings of the human
mind, in complex civilizations, are by no means simple; they are involved
and varied: our thoughts, our feelings, our wills, associate themselves
with an infinite number of sensations and images which play one upon the
other, and which individualize, in some measure, every action we commit,
and stamp it. The merit of our modern realists lies in the fact that
they have studied the things which surround us and our relations to them,
and thus have they been able to make their creations conform to human
experience. The ancients gave little attention to this; the man, with
them, was the important thing; the environment the unimportant. There
are, of course, exceptions; the interview between Ulysses and Nausiskaa
is probably the most striking. From the standpoint of environment,
Petronius, in the greater portion of his work, is an ancient; but one
exception there is, and it is as brilliant as it is important. The
entire episode, in which Trimalchio figures, offers an incredible
abundance of details. The descriptions are exhaustive and minute, but
the author's prime purpose was not description, it was to bring out the
characters, it was to pillory the Roman aristocracy, it was to amuse!
Cicero, in his prosecution of Verres, had shown up this aristocracy in
all its brutality and greed, it remained for the author of the Cena to
hold its absurdity up to the light of day, to lash an extravagance which,
though utterly unbridled, was yet unable to exhaust the looted
accumulations of years of political double dealing and malfeasance in
office. Trimalchio's introduction is a masterstroke, the porter at the
door is another, the effect of the wine upon the women, their jealousy
lest either's husband should seem more liberal, their appraisal of each
other's jewelry, Scintilla's remark anent the finesse of Habinnas'
servant in the mere matter of pandering, the blear-eyed and black-toothed
slave, teasing a little bitch disgustingly fat, offering her pieces of
bread and when, from sheer inability, she refuses to eat, cramming it
down her throat, the effect of the alcohol upon Trimalchio, the little
old lady girded round with a filthy apron, wearing clogs which were not
mates, dragging in a huge dog on a chain, the incomparable humor in the
passage in which Hesus, desperately seasick, sees that which makes him
believe that even worse misfortunes are in store for him: these details
are masterpieces of realism. The description of the night-prowling
shyster lawyer, whose forehead is covered with sebaceous wens, is the
very acme of propriety; our first meeting; with the poet Eumolpus is a
beautiful study in background and perspective. Nineteen centuries have
gone their way since this novel was written, but if we look about us we
will be able to recognize, under the veneer of civilization, the
originals of the Satyricon and we will find that here, in a little corner
of the Roman world, all humanity was held in miniature. Petronius must
be credited with the great merit of having introduced realism into the
novel. By an inspiration of genius, he saw that the framework of
frivolous and licentious novels could be enlarged until it took in
contemporary custom and environment. It is that which assures for him
an eminent place, not in Roman literature alone, but in the literature
of the world.
a--INFLUENCE OF THE SATYRICON UPON LITERATURE. The vagrant heroes of
Petronius are the originals from whom directly, or indirectly, later
authors drew that inspiration which resulted in the great mass of
picaresque fiction; but, great as this is, it is not to this that the
Satyricon owes its powerful influence upon the literature of the world.
It is to the author's recognition of the importance of environment,
of the vital role of inanimate surroundings as a means for bringing out
character and imbuing his episodes and the actions of his characters with
an air of reality and with those impulses and actions which are common to
human experience, that his influence is due. By this, the Roman created
a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of literature which was
without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in a lesser degree, of
Lucian. This class of literature, though modified essentially from age
to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity or bigotry, innocent
or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of which literary success in
fiction is made. One may write a successful book without a thread of
romance; one cannot write a successful romance without some knowledge of
realism; the more intimate the knowledge the better the book, and it is
frequently to this that the failure of a novel is due, although the
critic might be at a loss to explain it. Petronius lies behind Tristram
Shandy, his influence can be detected in Smollett, and even Fielding paid
tribute to him.