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Europe (search for this): chapter 1
on should surely be allowed henceforth to wind up his story in his own way, without formal proclamation of his moral; or, better still, to leave the tale without technical and elaborate winding up, as nature leaves her stories. His work is a great one, to bring comedy and even tragedy down from the old traditions of kingliness to the vaster and more complex currents of modern democratic life. When the elder Scaliger wrote, in 1561, that work on Poetry which so long ruled the traditions of European literature, he defined the difference between tragedy and comedy to consist largely in this — that tragedy concerned itself only with kings, princes, cities, citadels, and camps; in tragoedia reges, principles, ex urbibus, arcibus, castris. All these things are now changed. Kings, princes, camps, citadels are passing away, and the cities that will soon alone survive them are filled with a democratic world, which awaits its chronicles of joy or pain. The writer of fiction must tell his tal
France (France) (search for this): chapter 1
and in the discontinuance of such aids there is doubtless a certain risk. Some of the most powerful works of modern fiction have apparently failed to impress their moral on the careless reader. All really strong novels involving illicit love are necessarily tragedies at last, not vaudevilles; and nowhere is this more true than in French literature. The clever woman who said that nothing was worse than French immorality except French morality, simply failed to go below the surface; for in France the family feeling is so potent that the actual destruction of the domestic tie is often punished with cruel severity, even by the most tolerant novelists. The retribution in Madame Bovary, for instance, is almost too merciless, since it wreaks itself even upon the body of the poor sinner after death, and pursues her unoffending child to the poorhouse. No one has painted a climax of unlawful passion more terrific than that portrayed in the closing pages of Monsieur de Camors, the guilty pa
America (Netherlands) (search for this): chapter 1
ssalle. The new generation, wrote Heine, means to enjoy itself and make the best of the visible; we of the older one bowed humbly before the invisible, yearned after shadow kisses and blue-flower fragrances, denied ourselves, wept and smiled and were perhaps happier than these fierce gladiators who walk so proudly to meet their death-struggle. The blue-flower allusion is to the favorite ideal symbol of the German Novalis; and certainly the young men who grew up fifty or sixty years ago in America obtained some of their very best tonic influences through such thoroughly ideal tales as that writer's Heinrich von Offerdingen, Fouque's Sintram, Hoffmann's Goldene Topf, and Richter's Titan, whether these were read in the original German or in the translations of Carlyle, Brooks, and others. All these books are now little sought, and rather alien to the present taste. To these were added, in English, such tales as Poe's William Wilson and Hawthorne's The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daug
William Wilson (search for this): chapter 1
y the young men who grew up fifty or sixty years ago in America obtained some of their very best tonic influences through such thoroughly ideal tales as that writer's Heinrich von Offerdingen, Fouque's Sintram, Hoffmann's Goldene Topf, and Richter's Titan, whether these were read in the original German or in the translations of Carlyle, Brooks, and others. All these books are now little sought, and rather alien to the present taste. To these were added, in English, such tales as Poe's William Wilson and Hawthorne's The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daughter,; and, in French, Balzac's Le Peau de Chagrin, which Professor Longfellow used warmly to recommend to his college pupils. Works like these represented the prevailing sentiment of a period; they exerted a distinct influence on the moulding of a generation. Their moral was irresistible for those who really cared enough for the books to read them; they needed no guide-boards; the guide-board was for the earlier efforts at realism, be
Hawthorne (search for this): chapter 1
rient scene or even a voluptuous passage, but its plot moves as inexorably and almost as visibly as a Greek fate. Even Hawthorne allows his guilty lovers, in The Scarlet Letter, a moment of delusive happiness; even Hawthorne recognizes the unquestiHawthorne recognizes the unquestionable truth that the foremost result of a broken law is sometimes an enchanting sense of freedom. Tolstoi tolerates no such enchantment; and he has written the only novel of illicit love, perhaps, in which the offenders-both being persons otherwiss now employed by careful writers almost wholly to indicate foreign words or book titles; a change in which Emerson and Hawthorne were conspicuous leaders. There is a feeling that only a very crude literary art will now depend on typography for shasought, and rather alien to the present taste. To these were added, in English, such tales as Poe's William Wilson and Hawthorne's The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daughter,; and, in French, Balzac's Le Peau de Chagrin, which Professor Longfellow use
Camors (search for this): chapter 1
the surface; for in France the family feeling is so potent that the actual destruction of the domestic tie is often punished with cruel severity, even by the most tolerant novelists. The retribution in Madame Bovary, for instance, is almost too merciless, since it wreaks itself even upon the body of the poor sinner after death, and pursues her unoffending child to the poorhouse. No one has painted a climax of unlawful passion more terrific than that portrayed in the closing pages of Monsieur de Camors, the guilty pair, false to every human obligation, successful in their wishes to their own destruction, numinibus vota exandita malignis, detached by their crime from all the world and finally from one another, wander like gloomy shadows amid an earthly paradise, meeting sometimes unwarily, but never exchanging a word. Yet both these novels are sometimes classed among the bad books, simply because the guide-board is omitted and the reader left to draw his own moral. The same misjud
Bulwer (search for this): chapter 1
B. This is a fact. The truth is, that in Miss Edgeworth's day they ordered the matter differently. Either the sinners and saints were called up by name in the closing chapter, and judgment rendered in detail, or else very explicit reasons were given why the obvious award was impracticable. The Lord Lilburnes of this hollow world are not to be pelted with the soft roses of poetical justice. He is alone with old age and in the sight of death. Thus stands the guide-board at the close of Bulwer's Night and Morning; and in the discontinuance of such aids there is doubtless a certain risk. Some of the most powerful works of modern fiction have apparently failed to impress their moral on the careless reader. All really strong novels involving illicit love are necessarily tragedies at last, not vaudevilles; and nowhere is this more true than in French literature. The clever woman who said that nothing was worse than French immorality except French morality, simply failed to go belo
French (search for this): chapter 1
of their very best tonic influences through such thoroughly ideal tales as that writer's Heinrich von Offerdingen, Fouque's Sintram, Hoffmann's Goldene Topf, and Richter's Titan, whether these were read in the original German or in the translations of Carlyle, Brooks, and others. All these books are now little sought, and rather alien to the present taste. To these were added, in English, such tales as Poe's William Wilson and Hawthorne's The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daughter,; and, in French, Balzac's Le Peau de Chagrin, which Professor Longfellow used warmly to recommend to his college pupils. Works like these represented the prevailing sentiment of a period; they exerted a distinct influence on the moulding of a generation. Their moral was irresistible for those who really cared enough for the books to read them; they needed no guide-boards; the guide-board was for the earlier efforts at realism, before it had proved its strength. Realism has since achieved its maturity,
Ferdinand Lassalle (search for this): chapter 1
t much fiction, at any rate, has a moral expressed or implied, it is to be observed that all fiction has changed its note in other respects within the last century, and must accept its own laws. Formerly conveying its moral often through a symbol, it now conveys it, if at all, by direct narrative. The distinction has never been better put than in a remarkable and little-known letter addressed by Heine on his death-bed (1856) to Varnhagen von Ense, in giving a personal introduction to Ferdinand Lassalle. The new generation, wrote Heine, means to enjoy itself and make the best of the visible; we of the older one bowed humbly before the invisible, yearned after shadow kisses and blue-flower fragrances, denied ourselves, wept and smiled and were perhaps happier than these fierce gladiators who walk so proudly to meet their death-struggle. The blue-flower allusion is to the favorite ideal symbol of the German Novalis; and certainly the young men who grew up fifty or sixty years ago in A
Marcellus (search for this): chapter 1
oclamation; and this change comes simply from the fact that fiction is drawing nearer to life. In real life, as we see it, the moral is usually implied and inferential, not painted on a board; you must often look twice, or look many times, in order to read it. The eminent sinner dies amid tears and plaudits, not in the state-prison, as he should; the seed of the righteous is often seen begging bread. We have to read very carefully between the lines if we would fully recognize the joy of Marcellus exiled, the secret ennui of Caesar with a senate at his heels. Thus it is in daily life — that is, in nature; and yet many still think it a defect in a story if it leaves a single moral influence to be worked out by the meditation of the reader. On my lending to an intelligent young woman, the other day, Mr. Hamlin Garland's remarkable volume, Main-travelled roads, she returned it with the remark that she greatly admired all the stories except the first, which seemed to her immoral. I
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