Criticism and Fiction Read online

  Bad criticism is mischievous enough, however; and I think that much ifnot most current criticism as practised among the English and Americansis bad, is falsely principled, and is conditioned in evil. It is falselyprincipled because it is unprincipled, or without principles; and it isconditioned in evil because it is almost wholly anonymous. At the bestits opinions are not conclusions from certain easily verifiableprinciples, but are effects from the worship of certain models. They arein so far quite worthless, for it is the very nature of things that theoriginal mind cannot conform to models; it has its norm within itself; itcan work only in its own way, and by its self-given laws. Criticism doesnot inquire whether a work is true to life, but tacitly or explicitlycompares it with models, and tests it by them. If literary art travelledby any such road as criticism would have it go, it would travel in avicious circle, and would arrive only at the point of departure. Yetthis is the course that criticism must always prescribe when it attemptsto give laws. Being itself artificial, it cannot conceive of theoriginal except as the abnormal. It must altogether reconceive itsoffice before it can be of use to literature. It must reduce this to thebusiness of observing, recording, and comparing; to analyzing thematerial before it, and then synthetizing its impressions. Even then, itis not too much to say that literature as an art could get on perfectlywell without it. Just as many good novels, poems, plays, essays,sketches, would be written if there were no such thing as criticism inthe literary world, and no more bad ones.

  But it will be long before criticism ceases to imagine itself acontrolling force, to give itself airs of sovereignty, and to issuedecrees. As it exists it is mostly a mischief, though not the greatestmischief; but it may be greatly ameliorated in character and softened inmanner by the total abolition of anonymity.

  I think it would be safe to say that in no other relation of life is somuch brutality permitted by civilized society as in the criticism ofliterature and the arts. Canon Farrar is quite right in reproachingliterary criticism with the uncandor of judging an author withoutreference to his aims; with pursuing certain writers from spite andprejudice, and mere habit; with misrepresenting a book by quoting aphrase or passage apart from the context; with magnifying misprints andcareless expressions into important faults; with abusing an author forhis opinions; with base and personal motives.

  Every writer of experience knows that certain critical journals willcondemn his work without regard to its quality, even if it has never beenhis fortune to learn, as one author did from a repentent reviewer, thatin a journal pretending to literary taste his books were given out forreview with the caution, "Remember that the Clarion is opposed to Mr.Blank's books."

  The final conclusion appears to be that the man, or even the young lady,who is given a gun, and told to shoot at some passer from behind a hedge,is placed in circumstances of temptation almost too strong for humannature.

  XII.

  As I have already intimated, I doubt the more lasting effects of unjustcriticism. It is no part of my belief that Keats's fame was long delayedby it, or Wordsworth's, or Browning's. Something unwonted, unexpected,in the quality of each delayed his recognition; each was not only a poet,he was a revolution, a new order of things, to which the criticalperceptions and habitudes had painfully to adjust themselves: But I haveno question of the gross and stupid injustice with which these great menwere used, and of the barbarization of the public mind by the sight ofthe wrong inflicted on them with impunity. This savage condition stillpersists in the toleration of anonymous criticism, an abuse that ought tobe as extinct as the torture of witnesses. It is hard enough to treat afellow-author with respect even when one has to address him, name toname, upon the same level, in plain day; swooping down upon him in thedark, panoplied in the authority of a great journal, it is impossible.Every now and then some idealist comes forward and declares that youshould say nothing in criticism of a man's book which you would not sayof it to his face. But I am afraid this is asking too much. I am afraidit would put an end to all criticism; and that if it were practisedliterature would be left to purify itself. I have no doubt literaturewould do this; but in such a state of things there would be no provisionfor the critics. We ought not to destroy critics, we ought to reformthem, or rather transform them, or turn them from the assumption ofauthority to a realization of their true function in the civilized state.They are no worse at heart, probably, than many others, and there areprobably good husbands and tender fathers, loving daughters and carefulmothers, among them.

  It is evident to any student of human nature that the critic who isobliged to sign his review will be more careful of an author's feelingsthan he would if he could intangibly and invisibly deal with him as therepresentative of a great journal. He will be loath to have his nameconnected with those perversions and misstatements of an author's meaningin which the critic now indulges without danger of being turned out ofhonest company. He will be in some degree forced to be fair and justwith a book he dislikes; he will not wish to misrepresent it when his sincan be traced directly to him in person; he will not be willing to voicethe prejudice of a journal which is "opposed to the books" of this orthat author; and the journal itself, when it is no longer responsible forthe behavior of its critic, may find it interesting and profitable togive to an author his innings when he feels wronged by a reviewer anddesires to right himself; it may even be eager to offer him theopportunity. We shall then, perhaps, frequently witness the spectacle ofauthors turning upon their reviewers, and improving their manners andmorals by confronting them in public with the errors they may now commitwith impunity. Many an author smarts under injuries and indignitieswhich he might resent to the advantage of literature and civilization,if he were not afraid of being browbeaten by the journal whose namelesscritic has outraged him.

  The public is now of opinion that it involves loss of dignity to creativetalent to try to right itself if wronged, but here we are without therequisite statistics. Creative talent may come off with all the dignityit went in with, and it may accomplish a very good work in demolishingcriticism.

  In any other relation of life the man who thinks himself wronged tries toright himself, violently, if he is a mistaken man, and lawfully if he isa wise man or a rich one, which is practically the same thing. But theauthor, dramatist, painter, sculptor, whose book, play, picture, statue,has been unfairly dealt with, as he believes, must make no effort toright himself with the public; he must bear his wrong in silence; he iseven expected to grin and bear it, as if it were funny. Every bodyunderstands that it is not funny to him, not in the least funny, buteverybody says that he cannot make an effort to get the public to takehis point of view without loss of dignity. This is very odd, but it isthe fact, and I suppose that it comes from the feeling that the author,dramatist, painter, sculptor, has already said the best he can for hisside in his book, play, picture, statue. This is partly true, and yet ifhe wishes to add something more to prove the critic wrong, I do not seehow his attempt to do so should involve loss of dignity. The public,which is so jealous for his dignity, does not otherwise use him as if hewere a very great and invaluable creature; if he fails, it lets himstarve like any one else. I should say that he lost dignity or not as hebehaved, in his effort to right himself, with petulance or withprinciple. If he betrayed a wounded vanity, if he impugned the motivesand accused the lives of his critics, I should certainly feel that he waslosing dignity; but if he temperately examined their theories, and triedto show where they were mistaken, I think he would not only gain dignity,but would perform a very useful work.

  XIII.

  I would beseech the literary critics of our country to disabusethemselves of the mischievous notion that they are essential to theprogress of literature in the way critics have imagined. Canon Farrarconfesses that with the best will in the world to profit by the manycriticisms of his books, he has never profited in the least by any ofthem; and this is almost the universal experience of authors. It is notalways the fault of the critics. They sometimes deal honestly and fairlyby
a book, and not so often they deal adequately. But in making a book,if it is at all a good book, the author has learned all that is knowableabout it, and every strong point and every weak point in it, far moreaccurately than any one else can possibly learn them. He has learned todo better than well for the future; but if his book is bad, he cannot betaught anything about it from the outside. It will perish; and if he hasnot the root of literature in him, he will perish as an author with it.But what is it that gives tendency in art, then? What is it makes peoplelike this at one time, and that at another? Above all, what makes abetter fashion change for a worse; how can the ugly come to be preferredto the beautiful; in other words, how can an art decay?

  This question came up in my mind lately with regard to English fictionand its form, or rather its formlessness. How, for instance, couldpeople who had once known the simple verity, the refined perfection ofMiss Austere, enjoy, anything less refined and less perfect?

  With her example before them, why should not English novelists have goneon writing simply, honestly, artistically, ever after? One would thinkit must have been impossible for them to do otherwise, if one did notremember, say, the lamentable behavior of the actors who support Mr.Jefferson, and their theatricality in the very presence of his beautifulnaturalness. It is very difficult, that simplicity, and nothing is sohard as to be honest, as the reader, if he has ever happened to try it,must know. "The big bow-wow I can do myself, like anyone going," saidScott, but he owned that the exquisite touch of Miss Austere was deniedhim; and it seems certainly to have been denied in greater or lessmeasure to all her successors. But though reading and writing come bynature, as Dogberry justly said, a taste in them may be cultivated, oronce cultivated, it may be preserved; and why was it not so among thosepoor islanders? One does not ask such things in order to be at the painsof answering them one's self, but with the hope that some one else willtake the trouble to do so, and I propose to be rather a silent partner inthe enterprise, which I shall leave mainly to Senor Armando PalacioValdes. This delightful author will, however, only be able to answer myquestion indirectly from the essay on fiction with which he prefaces oneof his novels, the charming story of 'The Sister of San Sulpizio,' and Ishall have some little labor in fitting his saws to my instances. It isan essay which I wish every one intending to read, or even to write, anovel, might acquaint himself with; for it contains some of the best andclearest things which have been said of the art of fiction in a time whennearly all who practise it have turned to talk about it.

  Senor Valdes is a realist, but a realist according to his own conceptionof realism; and he has some words of just censure for the Frenchnaturalists, whom he finds unnecessarily, and suspects of being sometimeseven mercenarily, nasty. He sees the wide difference that passes betweenthis naturalism and the realism of the English and Spanish; and he goessomewhat further than I should go in condemning it. "The Frenchnaturalism represents only a moment, and an insignificant part of life.". . . It is characterized by sadness and narrowness. The prototype ofthis literature is the 'Madame Bovary' of Flaubert. I am an admirer ofthis novelist, and especially of this novel; but often in thinking of itI have said, How dreary would literature be if it were no more than this!There is something antipathetic and gloomy and limited in it, as there isin modern French life; but this seems to me exactly the best possiblereason for its being. I believe with Senor Valdes that "no literaturecan live long without joy," not because of its mistaken aesthetics,however, but because no civilization can live long without joy. Theexpression of French life will change when French life changes; andFrench naturalism is better at its worst than French unnaturalism at itsbest. "No one," as Senor Valdes truly says, "can rise from the perusalof a naturalistic book . . . without a vivid desire to escape" fromthe wretched world depicted in it, "and a purpose, more or less vague,of helping to better the lot and morally elevate the abject beings whofigure in it. Naturalistic art, then, is not immoral in itself, for thenit would not merit the name of art; for though it is not the business ofart to preach morality, still I think that, resting on a divine andspiritual principle, like the idea of the beautiful, it is perforcemoral. I hold much more immoral other books which, under a glamour ofsomething spiritual and beautiful and sublime, portray the vices in whichwe are allied to the beasts. Such, for example, are the works of OctaveFeuillet, Arsene Houssaye, Georges Ohnet, and other contemporarynovelists much in vogue among the higher classes of society."

  But what is this idea of the beautiful which art rests upon, and sobecomes moral? "The man of our time," says Senor Valdes, "wishes to knoweverything and enjoy everything: he turns the objective of a powerfulequatorial towards the heavenly spaces where gravitates the infinitude ofthe stars, just as he applies the microscope to the infinitude of thesmallest insects; for their laws are identical. His experience, unitedwith intuition, has convinced him that in nature there is neither greatnor small; all is equal. All is equally grand, all is equally just, allis equally beautiful, because all is equally divine." But beauty, SenorValdes explains, exists in the human spirit, and is the beautiful effectwhich it receives from the true meaning of things; it does not matterwhat the things are, and it is the function of the artist who feels thiseffect to impart it to others. I may add that there is no joy in artexcept this perception of the meaning of things and its communication;when you have felt it, and portrayed it in a poem, a symphony, a novel,a statue, a picture, an edifice, you have fulfilled the purpose for whichyou were born an artist.

  The reflection of exterior nature in the individual spirit, Senor Valdesbelieves to be the fundamental of art. "To say, then, that the artistmust not copy but create is nonsense, because he can in no wise copy, andin no wise create. He who sets deliberately about modifying nature,shows that he has not felt her beauty, and therefore cannot make othersfeel it. The puerile desire which some artists without genius manifestto go about selecting in nature, not what seems to them beautiful, butwhat they think will seem beautiful to others, and rejecting what maydisplease them, ordinarily produces cold and insipid works. For, insteadof exploring the illimitable fields of reality, they cling to the formsinvented by other artists who have succeeded, and they make statues ofstatues, poems of poems, novels of novels. It is entirely false that thegreat romantic, symbolic, or classic poets modified nature; such as theyhave expressed her they felt her; and in this view they are as muchrealists as ourselves. In like manner if in the realistic tide that nowbears us on there are some spirits who feel nature in another way, in theromantic way, or the classic way, they would not falsify her inexpressing her so. Only those falsify her who, without feeling classicwise or romantic wise, set about being classic or romantic, wearisomelyreproducing the models of former ages; and equally those who, withoutsharing the sentiment of realism, which now prevails, force themselves tobe realists merely to follow the fashion."

  The pseudo-realists, in fact, are the worse offenders, to my thinking,for they sin against the living; whereas those who continue to celebratethe heroic adventures of "Puss-in-Boots" and the hair-breadth escapes of"Tom Thumb," under various aliases, only cast disrespect upon theimmortals who have passed beyond these noises.

  XIV.

  "The principal cause," our Spaniard says, "of the decadence ofcontemporary literature is found, to my thinking, in the vice which hasbeen very graphically called effectism, or the itch of awaking at allcost in the reader vivid and violent emotions, which shall do credit tothe invention and originality of the writer. This vice has its roots inhuman nature itself, and more particularly in that of the artist; he hasalways some thing feminine in him, which tempts him to coquet with thereader, and display qualities that he thinks will astonish him, as womenlaugh for no reason, to show their teeth when they have them white andsmall and even, or lift their dresses to show their feet when there is nomud in the street . . . . What many writers nowadays wish, is toproduce an effect, grand and immediate, to play the part of geniuses.For this they have learned that it is only necessary to write exaggeratedworks in any
sort, since the vulgar do not ask that they shall be quietlymade to think and feel, but that they shall be startled; and among thevulgar, of course, I include the great part of those who write literarycriticism, and who constitute the worst vulgar, since they teach whatthey do not know .. . . There are many persons who suppose that thehighest proof an artist can give of his fantasy is the invention of acomplicated plot, spiced with perils, surprises, and suspenses; and thatanything else is the sign of a poor and tepid imagination. And not onlypeople who seem cultivated, but are not so, suppose this, but there aresensible persons, and even sagacious and intelligent critics, whosometimes allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the dramatic mystery andthe surprising and fantastic scenes of a novel. They own it is allfalse; but they admire the imagination, what they call the 'power' of theauthor. Very well; all I have to say is that the 'power' to dazzle withstrange incidents, to entertain with complicated plots and impossiblecharacters, now belongs to some hundreds of writers in Europe; whilethere are not much above a dozen who know how to interest with theordinary events of life, and by the portrayal of characters truly human.If the former is a talent, it must be owned that it is much commoner thanthe latter . . . . If we are to rate novelists according to theirfecundity, or the riches of their invention, we must put Alexander Dumasabove Cervantes. Cervantes wrote a novel with the simplest plot, withoutbelying much or little the natural and logical course of events. Thisnovel which was called 'Don Quixote,' is perhaps the greatest work ofhuman wit. Very well; the same Cervantes, mischievously influencedafterwards by the ideas of the vulgar, who were then what they are nowand always will be, attempted to please them by a work giving a livelyproof of his inventive talent, and wrote the 'Persiles and Sigismunda,'where the strange incidents, the vivid complications, the surprises, thepathetic scenes, succeed one another so rapidly and constantly that itreally fatigues you . . . . But in spite of this flood of invention,imagine," says Seflor Valdes, "the place that Cervantes would now occupyin the heaven of art, if he had never written 'Don Quixote,'" but only'Persiles and Sigismund!'