Picaresque novel

“ His book is not a direct imitation of any one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque style to French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewise in Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of other adumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest of originality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book to analyse, either in short or long measure. ”

“ The idea of combining low adventures into a series connected with one hero comes down from the days of Nero, when Petronius Arbiter wrote his "Satyricon." But the term picaresque romance refers to the Spanish popular tales of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the heroes of which are rascals, or picaros. As sharpers, they are the prototypes of our more modern Yankee in fiction who always "does" the other fellow before the other fellow "does" him. Some of them, like the "Yank," are not so much mean as just bold and resourceful when at a disadvantage. ”

“ Philosophers despised those things as vain and transitory; while picaros don't care for them because they bring along cares and work—something that goes against their profession. So the picaresque life is more leisurely than the life of kings, emperors, and popes. ”

“ Hector and Tippoo Sahib, Mahomet II., and Ninus II. (with scenes of Spanish history transported to Assyria) diversified the stage. The greatest success was that of Raynouard's Les Templiers (1805) ; the learned author wisely applied his talents in later years to romance philology. Among the writers of comedy—Andrieux, Étienne, Duval, and others—Picard has the merit of reproducing the life of the day, satirising social classes and conditions with vivacity and careless mirth. In melodrama, Pixérécourt contributed unconsciously to prepare the way for the romantic stage. ”

“ Sebastian Covarrubias y Orozco, the best of Spanish lexicographers, describes a picaro as a man of loose character engaged in menial work and-by extension-a rascal who attains his ends by skilful dissimulation; and the earliest application of the expression picaro to a Character in fiction occurs in Mateo Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache, the first part of which was published in 1599. But a genuine novola picaresca existed in Spain before the word picaro became generally current. ”

“ Yet, in respect to the progress of his own department, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than their equal. René [Pg 465] and Corinne contain great suggestions, but they are suggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper. Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, but that humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creating real character, decency almost always, sense very often. [431] But all the same, he made the novel march, as it had not marched, save in isolated instances of genius, before. ”

“ Sentiment, as well as a passion for literature, was at the bottom of these acts, for that very copy of 'Le Tartuffe' had been in Molière's coat-pocket, and Pixérécourt had a tale to tell of every scholarly volume he possessed. You cannot manufacture genuine sentiment, nor is the quality to be evolved from anything except genius.
Accordingly, we find that every book which excites the cupidity of the true bibliophile derives its magic power primarily from within, and that this power is often materially increased by reason of extraneous considerations. ”

“ Why are all dénouements more or less lame and unsatisfactory? The reason is simple enough: it is because in real life there never is a dénouement; that the novel goes on forever, melancholy or placid, poetic or commonplace, and that the purely conventional can never wear the truthful aspect which arouses interest.
But since, against my inclination, I have determined to elucidate everything, I realize that I have left Magnani on the seashore, Mila anxious, the Piccinino in flight, and the Marquis della Serra at the princess's feet. ”

“ If ever a man showed virtuous indignation at a sinner's confession, Mr. Pike showed it now. "That's how you were about in the stubble-field setting your traps, you young villain! I saw the coroner look at you. And now about Lord Hartledon. What did you see?"
Master Ripper rubbed the perspiration from his face as he went on with his tale. Pike listened with all the ears he possessed and said not a word, beyond sundry rough exclamations, until the tale was done. ”

“ If, as some say, the object of fiction is simply to amuse, no work of fiction has better attained that object than “Gil Blas.” It is the greatest and the most celebrated of that class of novels called the novela picaresca, or rogue story, and consists of a succession of the liveliest and merriest incidents, slenderly connected as parts of the autobiography of a Spanish lackey, and narrated in a style that is a model of luminous simplicity. The hero encounters every variety of good and evil fortune, each following the other like the figures of a kaleidoscope. ”

“ I am not sure now that she was not merely being nice to me, and that, anyhow, she is not all wrong, and that the heartier point of view is the courage which can front life unashamed, which sees the divinity of fact and of beauty in the utmost seeming tragedy. Picasso’s grim presentation of decay and degradation is beginning to teach me something—the marvelous perfection of the spirit which is concerned with neither perfection, nor decay, but with life. ”

“ AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, M.P.
p. 7PICKWICKIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
No English book has so materially increased the general gaiety of the country, or inspired the feeling of comedy to such a degree as, “The Pickwick Club.” It is now some “sixty years since” this book was published, and it is still heartily appreciated. What English novel or story is there which is made the subject of notes and commentaries on the most elaborate scale; whose very misprints and inconsistencies are counted up; whose earliest “states of the plates” are sought out and esteemed precious? ”

“ The Piccinino had never seen a beautiful woman without being disturbed and restless until he had examined her carefully, in order that he might cease to think of her if her beauty was imperfect, or cast his net over her if her style of beauty succeeded in inflaming his disdainful heart, a strange compound of love and indolence, energy and torpor. Few men of twenty-five have lived so chaste and self-restrained a life as the bandit of Ætna ”

“ The freshness and fun of Pickwick—a comic middle-class epic, so to speak—seem mainly due to high spirits; and perhaps that immortal book should be described as a first improvisation by a young man of genius not yet sure of either expression or ambition and with only vague and momentary ideas about the duties and necessities of art. ”

“ Mr Lawrence looks: Pippa passes. It is almost impossible to criticise The White Peacock, and the danger in an appreciation is that one should say too much good of it, for the book yields just the quality of illusion that a novel should give us, which does not of itself justify the critic in saying that it is a great book. For the novel, equally with the picture, can never reproduce life ”

“ Pickwick in complete repose loses some part of the whole point of his existence. The quality which makes the Pickwick Papers one of the greatest of human fairy tales is a quality which all the great fairy tales possess, and which marks them out from most modern writing. A modern novelist generally endeavours to make his story interesting, by making his hero odd. The most typical modern books are those in which the central figure is himself or herself an exception, a cripple, a courtesan, a lunatic, a swindler, or a person of the most perverse temperament. ”

“ As in the case of the society story, the best collections of humorous stories are the cheaper current magazines.
Fableaux—A. de Montaiglon et G. Raynaud, Receuil général et complet des fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe siecles, Paris, 1872-88, 6 vols. See Dunlop, History of Fiction, vol. II, p. 23 et seqq.
Picaresque romances—Romances of Roguery, by F. W. Chandler, 2 vols., 1899, is the standard book of criticism of the type. For the picaresque romances themselves, see Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, English translation (Bohn) ; Apuleius' Golden Ass, English translation (Bohn) . ”

“ Who was this Pike, he wondered as he went along; as he had wondered before now. When the man was off his guard, the roughness of his speech and demeanour was not so conspicuous; and the tone assumed a certain refinement that seemed to say he had some time been in civilized society. Again, how did he live? A tale was told in Calne of Pike's having been disturbed at supper one night by a parcel of rude boys, who had seen him seated at a luxurious table; hot steak and pudding before him. They were not believed, certainly; but still Pike must live ”

“ Pickwick, and Sam, and Jingle, and the rest of them are not clever reproductions of actual people, (is there any more foolish pursuit than that of disputing about [56] the "original" of Mr Pickwick?) ; the book is rather the suggestion of another life, beneath our own or beside our own, and the characters, those queer grotesque people, are queer for the same reason that the Cyclops is queer and the dwarfs and dragons of mediæval romance are queer. We are withdrawn from the common ways of life; and in that withdrawal is the beginning of ecstasy. ”

“ And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a material firmament ”

“ In all times, alas! the sparrow has yielded to the fascination of the vulture.
In all this the Piccinino gave way to an inborn passion for increasing the difficulties of an adventure to his profit, or simply for amusement. To be sure, he had no better way of enticing Abbé Ninfo to his house than by offering a bait to his lust. But he might well have chosen some other woman than the innocent Mila to play, with the aid of some slight resemblance or of a similar costume, the part of the person who was to appear in his garden. ”

“ The Piccinino had an impressionable brain and a fickle humor. His whole life was a constant alternation of meditation and curiosity. The simple and graceful conversation of Mila, her kindly thoughts, the generous outflow of her affections, and an indefinable touch of grandeur of soul, courage, and cheeriness of temperament, which she inherited from her father and uncle, gradually fascinated the brigand. ”

“ It does not matter if the adventures of these amiable and jovial beings are boisterously reckless at times, or if they indulge in impossible probabilities. Their high spirited gaiety and inexhaustible fun and humour and their overflow of good-nature stifles criticism.
Dickens's object in writing The Pickwick Papers he assured us in the preface was "to place before the reader a constant succession of characters and incidents; to paint them in as vivid colours as he could command, and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing." ”

“ And now, as a punishment, he works, they say, and must work until the day of judgment, living on insects only.
A poor and unmeaning explanation! I prefer the old Italian fable: Picus, son of Time or Saturn, was an austere hero, who scorned the deceitful love and illusions of Circe. To avoid her, he took to himself wings, and flew into the forest. If he bears no longer a human figure, he has—what is better—a foreseeing and prophetic genius; he knows that which is to come, he sees that which is to be.
A very grave opinion upon the woodpecker is pronounced by the Indians of North America. ”

“ This picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades, in Pico della Mirandola, an actual person, and that is why the figure of Pico is so attractive. He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of one's self, to turn again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as perhaps it satisfied him. ”

“ You know, it takes profound art and profound insight into nature to turn out stuff like Pickman's. Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or Witches' Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. ”

“ That, under certain conditions of light and shade, what is ugly in fact may in its effect become beautiful, is true; and this, indeed, is the real modernité of art: but these conditions are exactly what we cannot be always sure of, as we stroll down Piccadilly in the glaring vulgarity of the noonday, or lounge in the park with a foolish sunset as a background. ”

“ They would scarce believe that the boy Piccinino whom they had known, could be an artist great enough to be playing to all the nobles and gentry in the theatre in the town, which, to them, appeared the grandest building of the sort that any kingdom in the universe could hold. ”

“ He sees the wedding before the wooing; he sees the death before the duel. But most of all he sees the colour and character of the whole story prior to any possible events in it. This is the real argument for art and style, only that the artists and the stylists have not the sense to use it. In one very real sense style is far more important than either character or narrative. For a man knows what style of book he wants to write when he knows nothing else about it.
Pickwick is in Dickens's career the mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. ”