To satisfy
these demands there exists an intermediate class of artists who are
able and willing to confuse the planes, to piece together a
realistic-romantic compound out of the inventions of greater men, and,
as Miss Patterson advises, give "what real life so rarely does-the
triumphant resolution of a set of difficulties; the anguish of virtue
and the triumph of sin... changed to the glorifications of virtue and
the eternal punishment of its enemy." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p.
46. "The hero and heroine must in general possess youth, beauty,
goodness, exalted self-sacrifice, and unalterable constancy."]
4
The ideologies of politics obey these rules. The foothold of realism
is always there. The picture of some real evil, such as the German
threat or class conflict, is recognizable in the argument. There is a
description of some aspect of the world which is convincing because it
agrees with familiar ideas. But as the ideology deals with an unseen
future, as well as with a tangible present, it soon crosses
imperceptibly the frontier of verification. In describing the present
you are more or less tied down to common experience. In describing
what nobody has experienced you are bound to let go. You stand at
Armageddon, more or less, but you battle for the Lord, perhaps.... A
true beginning, true according to the standards prevailing, and a
happy ending. Every Marxist is hard as nails about the brutalities of
the present, and mostly sunshine about the day after the dictatorship.
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