For some time it signified and expressed a more
ample contemplation of the conditions of man's life; but it
has recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely
technical and decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still
too harsh to call survival. With a movement of alarm, the
wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back from these
extremities; they begin to aspire after a more naked,
narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified,
and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general
lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld
the starveling story - once, in the hands of Voltaire, as
abstract as a parable - begin to be pampered upon facts.
The introduction of these details developed a particular
ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has
led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A
man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on
technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract
the mob, he adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to
call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what
more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of
the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to
degenerate into mere FEUX-DE-JOIE of literary tricking. The
other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible
colours and visible sounds.
This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to
remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict
of the critics.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66