But then literature would give only the perfect moments of
existence, would ignore the tragedies, ironies, pettiness of
life! Such an interpretation is a quite mistaken one. As
the great painting uses the vivid reproduction of an ugly
face, a squalid hovel, to create a beautiful picture, beautiful
because all the conditions of seeing are made to contribute to
our being made whole in seeing; so great literature can attain
through any given set of facts to the deeper harmony of life,
can touch the one poised, unconquerable soul, and can reinforce
the moment of self-completeness by every parallel device of
stimulation and concentration. And because it is most often
in the tragedies that the conditions of our being are laid
bare, and the strings which reverberate to the emotions most
easily played upon, it is likely that the greatest books of all
will be the tragedies themselves. The art of experience needs
contrasts no less than does the visual or auditory art.
This beauty of literature, because it is a hierarchy of beauties
more and less essential, exists in all varieties and in all
shades. If the old comparison and contrast of idealism and
realism is referred to here, it is because that ancient
controversy seems not even yet entirely outworn. If realism
means close observation of facts and neglect of ideas, and
idealism, neglect of prosaic facts and devotion to ideas, then
we must admit that realism and idealism are the names of two
defective types. Strictly speaking, whatever goes deep enough
to the truth of things, gets nearer reality, is realism; yet
to get nearer reality is to attain true ideas, and that is
idealism too. The great work of literature is realistic
because it does not lose sight of the ideal. Our popular use
of idealistic refers, indeed, to the world seen through rose-
colored glasses; but for that possible variety of literary
effort it is better to use the word Romance. Romance is the
world of our youthful dreams of things, not as they do happen,
but as, without any special deeper meaning, we should wish them
to happen. That is the world of the gold-haired maiden, "the
lover with the red-roan steed of steeds," the purse of
Fortunatus, the treasure-trove, the villain confronted with
his guilt. "Never the time and the place and the loved one
all together!" But in Romance they come together. The total
depravity of inanimate things has become the stars in their
courses fighting for us. Stevenson calls it the poetry of
circumstance--for the dreams of youth are properly healthy
and material. The salvage from the wreck in "Robinson Crusoe,"
he tells us, satisfies the mind like things to eat. Romance
gives us the perfect moment of the material and human--with
the divine left out.
It has sometimes been made a reproach to critics--more often,
I fear, by those who hold, like myself, that beauty and
excellence in art are identical--that they discourse too little
of form in literature, and too much of content. But all our
taking thought will have been vain, if it is not now patent
that the first beauty of literature is, and must be, its
identity with the central flame of life,--the primal conditions
of our being. Thus it is that the critic is justified in
asking first of all, How does this man look on life? Has he
revealed a new--or better--the eternal old meaning? The
Weltanschauung is the critic's first consideration, and after
that he may properly take up that secondary grasp of the
conditions of our being in mental processes, revealed in the
structure, march of incidents, suspense, and climaxes, and the
beauty or idiosyncracy of style. It is then literally false
that it does not matter what a man says, but only how he says
it. What he says is all that matters, for it will not be great
thought without some greatness in the saying. Art for art's
sake in literature is then art for life's sake, and the
"informing purpose," in so far as that means the vision of our
deepest selves, is its first condition.
And because the Beauty of Literature is constituted by its
quality as life itself, we may defer detailed consideration
of the species and varieties of literature. Prose and poetry,
drama and novel, have each their own special excellences
springing from the respective situations they had, and have,
to meet. Yet these but add elements to the one great power
they all must have as literature,--the power to give the
perfect experience of life in its fullness and vividness, and
in its identity with the central meanings of existence,--unity
and self-completeness together,--in a form which offers to our
mental functions the perfect moment of stimulation and repose.