Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-11-22
IDEALIsTS AND REALISTs.

- F- - ,S
IDEALIsTs AND REALIsTs.
Novelist Stevenson Has Decided Opin-
ions Regarding the Two Schools.
Mr.. Robert Louis Stevenson has been inter-
viewed on the subject OF "Idealism and Real
ism in Literature" by q representative of the
Melbourne Argus in Sydney. The following
are few OF that writer's views on this subject,
which, he observed, was 'large enough for q
magazine article" The correspondent first
asked Mr.. Stevenson If he were an idealist He
replied: 80 they tell me. At least there are
several gentlemen whom everybody agrees to
call realists whose talents admire extremely,
but whose works should not care to write,
even it were able. I do not know whether
they admire my talents, but some Of them are
kind enough to assure me that they would
rather die than write my works
II believe the realists. or rather some OF the
silller OF them, object to invention altogether
and must have everything a document rs they
call 1t, and taken out of a note book. This is .
question OF sentiment. L suspect most OF our
inventions are documentary enough and taken
out of the note book of the memory. will
give you couple Of examples from my own
case. Some five or six years after had writ
ten Treasure Island picked up Washington
lrvlng's Tales of a Traveller and there find
talk, his saber cut his sea chest and all that is
Billy Bales. had read it long ago and. if you
Will allow bull. l had forgot
ten, but my memory had remembered
Again, fondly supposed 1 had in
vented a scene when Alan Brock quarrels
with one OF the McGregors in a house in Bal
quldder. Here in Sydney, not two DAYS ago. a
gentleman informs me that l had read the out
lines OF that scene, even to the names of the
three principal characters engaged. i'll Pitcairns
Alrsy, 4
suppose there is a copy of Pitcairn in the col
onles. so that l cannot make sure, but have
not the least doubt that it is We ALL idealists
and reallsts alike, rearrango that matter of
observed life with which our memories are
charged. and the most we can mean by the word
invention is some happy congruity or surprise
in the method of arranging it,
1.-The realists will not let themselves enjoy
anything. The moment anything enjoyable
appears they must remind the reader that
there is a cesspool under the kitchen floor. q
corpse IN the back parlor cupboard and a vol
canO in the immediate vicinity. do not say it
is not in real life. 1 only say that in life
nobody cares. II he is meeting his sweetheart
or combating his enemy at the moment, cess
pool, corpse and volcano are ali blotted from
bis mind. He does not look out the window to
analyZe n smell and consider the miserable
fate OF humanity or the geological conditions
OF the earth. He does not care q farthing
candle if the whole thing is going to explode
tomorrow. At that moment he is all upon the
present passion and his being thrills. 1t is
this synthetic thrill Of emotions that / miss in
the so-called realists
writers appear to have become infected
With desire to initiate painters. Laborious
and minute description became the disease of
literature. We can make our hero speak. we
can make him move we can make him think,
We can make him travel, We can make him
grow old, we can let him die and even hear
what his survivors say of HIM. But one thing
We cannot do; we cannot tell what he looked
like. Observe the efforts of artists to realize
characters, even the most deliberately described
Every draughtsman makes a new thing OF them.
Or take scenery. Have yod ever seen Mr.
Hemerton's excellent analysis of the excellent
landscape in The Lady Of ShalotY Well, the
same objections are valid against any landscape
in literature, however infinitely reproduced.
One-sense literature can only serve by an occa-
sional and half-miraculous tour de force, and
that sense is the sense of sight.
II believe they are blinded on the one hand
by a technical preoccupatIon, by the supposed
necessity of perpetual minute and always orig
inal observations; while they are blinded on the
other by the habit of living in towns, in
mean, polky. hole-and-corner civilization,
where they live in clubs and restaurants, never
seeing people in the open air. in their working
clothes and undergoing healthy tolls and dam
gers. Pierre Lott and De Maupassant are the
two that are by far the most sympathetic to me
in their methods, and the only two of whom I
absolutely know that they have had some good
experience of the open air aud of a healthy
life.
II am like a Highland skipper Of whom I
once asked the meaning Of Gaelic name, and
who replied, seemingly in physical agony, A
Gamma say it, but feel it in ma breest.' ANY
way that could put it in words would sound
something far harsher than l mean. 1 will
deal perfectly frankly with you. l do not
know what idealism means and / do not
know what realism means. l try to represent
what seems to me conspicuous and represent
able in the world in which l live. l try
to do SO, SO on the whole to give
pleasure or to awaken interest see
the defects. I see the Inherent un-
truths. l see what seems to me the wanton
unpieasantnesses of the methods of the other
school. suppose they see ali these things in
mine. l suppose if you were Intervening a
realI.s he would point them out to you with
truth Isuppose even that he wouid go on
/ have done to connect them with what he
woull consider some technical error OF our
method for believe the question to be wholly
technical, and it Is because think my view of
the resources and defects of literature as an
art to be the more correct that hold the liter
allure of the so-called ldealists to be the more
moral