Realism

“ Preëstablished harmonies, illusory forms of unreal linkage, or assumptions of intermediating principles, — assumptions such as lead the philosopher into a hopeless, because unreasonable, complexity, — such are the devices whereby Realism has in such cases sought to join again the sundered fragments of its disintegrated universe, like a careless child tearfully trying to mend a shattered crystal. ”

“ And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it voice beyond singing. ”

“ How crude and shallow is the whole theory of modern realism: a theory of art by the average man for the average man! It makes art intelligible by simplifying or popularizing it; in short, as Nietzsche would say, by vulgarizing it. The average man perceives, for instance, that there is in great drama an element of representation. ”

“ Now the fact of the case is that the question of realism and idealism, which we calmly assume as already settled or easy to settle by our own sense of right and wrong, is one of the tangled questions of art-philosophy; and one, moreover, which no amount of theory, but only historic fact, can ever set right. For, to begin with, we find realism and idealism coming before us in different ways and with different meaning and importance. ”

“ Yet Realism often makes little of this given character of being, although some forms of realism dwell more upon it, especially when in controversy with sceptics and mystics. But secondly, Is the real, in our present sense, also deeper than what is merely immediate? Yes, in a sense it is, if you mean by the given, merely the felt, or the observed, facts of sense, or of other experience. ”

“ Reject realism in art if you please, and accept realism in conduct. For the first time in my life I am comfortable: my mind, having worn out its walking-shoes, is now enjoying the luxury of slippers. Who can deny the realism of comfort? ”

“ But literature is a progressive art, and soon the writers of the age developed two marked tendencies of their own,--the tendency to realism, and the tendency to that preciseness and elegance of expression which marks our literature for the next hundred years.
RealismIn realism--that is, the representation of men exactly as they are, the expression of the plain, unvarnished truth without regard to ideals or romance--the tendency was at first thoroughly bad. ”

“ This is realism; but it is the realism of texture, not of form and relation. It encourages our glance to be near-sighted instead of comprehensive. Above all, there is a misgiving that we do not touch the writer's true quality, and that these scenes of his, so elaborately and conscientiously prepared, have cost him much thought and pains, but not one throb of the heart or throe of the spirit. ”

“ So then, the disparity between the so-called idealist and the so-called realist is a matter, not of æsthetic philosophy, but of individual temperament. Each is at work, according to the especial bent of his genius, within precisely the same limits. Realism, as a creed, is as ridiculous as any other literary creed. ”

“ And so, in the end, we conceive these common objects, abstractly, as independent of all knowing processes whatever. When, to these social motives, we add that interest in escape from our private and finite disquietude of incomplete insight of which we before spoke, the special motives for the more abstract forms of Realism are in substance stated. It is true that there is a deeper and a very general motive at the heart of Realism, — a motive which we shall only later learn to appreciate. ”

“ What noble end is served by the reproduction of ordinary existence? Are you not simply superfluous—and vilely smelling at that? And realism could have given no reply, for the truth is that realism is superfluous. ”

“ Realism defines Real Being as a total Independence of any idea whose external object any given Being is. Mysticism defines Real Being as wholly within Immediate Feeling. These two concepts, both of them, as I must hold, false abstractions, are still both of them fragmentary views, as I also hold, of the truth, — hints towards a final definition of the Other, of that fulfilment which our finite thinking restlessly seeks. ”

“ Consequently the method of realism, which they soon began to apply to the life of the spirit, produced a literature that is mystic and symbolic in essential direction, but which finds its symbols in the life about it, a life in which there is a fusion of the romantic, enigmatic past and the industrial present to which the character inherited from the past is seeking to adjust itself. ”

“ Realists, on the other hand, as a rule, suppress the content, and maintain that a thought consists either of act and object alone, or of object alone. I have been in the past a realist, and I remain a realist as regards sensation, but not as regards memory or thought. I will try to explain what seem to me to be the reasons for and against various kinds of realism. ”

“ An awakened realist, then, can readily see, if he chooses, that his Realism can get no coherent expression without becoming at once transformed into the very formulas of this our present and Third Conception of Being. ”

“ When the beauty of realism shall be truly known, we shall read the book, or look upon the work of art, and in the light of all we know of life, shall ask our beings whether the picture that the author or the painter creates for us is like the image that 114is born of the consciousness that moves our soul, and the experiences that have made us know. ”

“ It is also true, that realism, in its abstract sundering of facts from desire, would seem often to have abandoned entirely any effort to win for our consciousness any final satisfaction in the presence of reality. ”

“ As itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. ”

“ Or, if you please so to interpret our discussion of Realism, we pointed out that our ideas, too, are realities; and that if Realism is true, they are therefore in their whole Being as independent of their supposed realistic objects as the latter are of the ideas. ”

“ He brings, not something which is more poetic than realism, not something which is more spiritual than realism, not something which is more right than realism, but something which is more real than realism. ”

“ But by a Classic Realism we will certainly understand that effort to obtain a form of expression which recognizes both the internal and the external reality of things, and is able to combine both in one ultimation like the soul and body that make the one man. ”

“ I take it, therefore, that realism in this sense is one essential characteristic of great imaginative power. I hold it to be more than ever necessary; more necessary because scientific methods of thought are more developed. ”

“ This question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest, you may chance upon a masterpiece. ”

“ Experience and Thought are upon our hands; and together they determine for us the problems regarding Being. Realism offered to us the first solution of this problem by attempting to define the Reality of the world as something wholly independent of our ideas. ”

“ The realism here is understood to be such as developed traditionally into the nineteenth century—the practical desire to exhibit objective realities—portraits, landscapes, historical paintings, etc., in the direct sense. ”

“ For I take it that an uncorrupted realism would accept such things as real events, and find in them no other problems than those attending the consideration of any real occurrence—namely, problems of structure, origin, and operation. ”

“ I want you to help me to get people to understand that realism is a method, and only methodic in its consequences; when the realist is an artist, that is, and supposing the idealist with whom you compare him to be anything but a farceur and a dilettante. ”

“ According to this conception, I repeat, to be real means to be independent of an idea or experience through which the real being is, from without, felt, or thought, or known. And this, I say, is the view best known as metaphysical Realism, the view which, recognizing independent beings as real, lays explicit stress upon their independence as the very essence of their reality. ”

“ The realism, which is called, either in praise or blame, the stamp of the present time, is in art, science, and faith, as in the State, nothing but the first step in the cultivation of the rising generation, which endeavours to spiritualise the details of present life in all directions, in order to give a new tendency to the spirit. ”

“ She knew exactly how artistic effects were obtained, how and why certain things were done, why realism, so-called, could never be anything but caricature, and why over-elaboration of small matters can never be otherwise than disproportionate. ”

“ But all this does not of necessity constitute realism, because its effect is not of necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, if we do not re-live its story as we read? ”

“ I do not know whether realists would recognise such a view as realism. All that I should claim for it is, that it avoids difficulties which seem to me to beset both realism and idealism as hitherto advocated, and that it avoids the appeal which they have made to ideas which logical analysis shows to be ambiguous. ”

“ Unlike Realism, it is from the beginning an essentially reflective and critical conception of Being. It attributes reality to objects only at the very moment of recognizing, as in some sense real, the ideas that relate to these objects. And, unlike Mysticism, it recognizes that to lose sight of the value and positive meaning of finite ideas, is to render naught the very objects which the ideas seek. ”

“ For Realism, the true meaning of our ideas is to be wholly external. Yet the internal meaning of the ideas stubbornly remains. The realist actually believes his doctrine because he finds it simple, or rational, or otherwise contenting to his inner interests. We never think without also acting, or tending to act. ”

“ We are widening the esthetic canvas to admit of the test of life, and are coming to realize that, obsessed for a time by the attraction of that lower truth which makes so much of external realities, realism lost sight of the larger demands of art which include selection, adaptation, and that enlargement of effect marking the distinction between art and so-called reality. ”

“ I will not pause to develope, at any length, the various well-known theories that have been held by modified Realism as to the causation of perception, or as to the evolution of knowledge and of knowing beings, or as to the rest of the natural history, both of ideas and of relations of ideas and “real external things.” ”

“ And the voices get louder and louder, as the disputants proceed to pick the character to pieces, speech by speech, and action by action, till, nothing being left, each finally subsides somehow, each confirmed in his own opinion, each convinced that the main purpose of literature—Realism—has either been served, or not served, by the author under discussion. ”

“ We call the two aims realism and decoration for our convenience. In literature it is possible to trace a similar double aim, separate from but analogous to the duality in speech that we shall have to examine in a later chapter. There are books subservient to what we call reality, and books for which reality is no more than an excuse, books that follow nature, and books that cast nature into their own mould, and, delighting in no accidental harmonies, bend nature to the patterns that please them, and heighten or lower her colours for their private [Pg 94] purposes of beautiful creation. ”

“ Realism is the proper and perfect instrument which it has employed, applied with equal success to material 268 and spiritual life. Although this realism may occasionally lack method and taste, and is at the same time both diffuse and subtile, it is invariably natural and sincere, ennobled by moral sentiments, aspirations toward the Divine, and sympathy for humanity. ”

“ Both those who advocate and those who combat realism seem to me to be far from clear as to the nature of the problem which they are discussing. If we ask: "Are our objects of perception real and are they independent of the percipient?" it must be supposed that we attach some meaning to the words "real" and "independent," and yet, if either side in the controversy of realism is asked to define these two words, their answer is pretty sure to embody confusions such as logical analysis will reveal. ”

“ It seems to me that the question of realism and the question of the dramatic short story's assumed unity of substance are the two pitfalls into which the feet of the writer of fiction who reads the mass of comment on his art are most apt to stray. ”

“ I thus merely indicate a general and a well-known popular view as to the relatively independent reality of things — a view which usually passes, in the ordinary speech of common sense, for Realism; although, historically speaking, the most thoroughgoing realists have avoided such concessions to popular opinion, just because they really ruin the independence of the Real. ”