The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-12-27
The Novelists of the Future.

New Orleans Picayune.
From time to time there breaks out dis
cussion as to whether there will be any more
great poets, painters, musical composers and
other such inspired brain workers like those
who have illustrated the greatest past periods
in art and letters. More recently the con ten
tion has been as to whether there would ever
be any more great novelists.
Any speculations on the subject will be
bootless unless we can discover the principle
upon which all art and literary development
depends, and If we know this we may with
some nope OF success, predicate as to the
future. Lord Macauay has declared the i'm
probability that another great epic poem
would ever be written, because there no
longer exist the conditions which could fur
n1sh the material or inspire the author An
epic age is necessarily an heroic age An
epic poem is the narrative of people emerp-
ing from barbarism, led by heroic chiefs and
engaged in work that eDlists the enthusiasm
and religious fervor of their followers A
race war like that between the Greeks aud
Trojans, holy war like the crusades, are the
themes of the epic muse. The Arthurian
fdyls and the heroic traditions of the Germanc
races are OF this nature. a rude age only is
favorable to poesy. People who worship
heroes, believe In the gods and indulge the
imagination to the neglect of the reason are
scientific examination, and all that disposes to
realism are the direct foes to poesy.
In pictorial art and music much the same
conditions obtain. The Greek painters and
ligion, and reached their highest achievements
In their statues and picture representations of
their gods. Religion was likewise the in
spiration of the great painters who gorifed
the best period of the Middle Ages. But
whether In pagan art or Christian art the
source and springs of inspiration were the
same 1t has been thus with music Religion
and romance were its begetters aud nurturers
Ii 1t were not for Wagner We would say that
the music era like the art period aud the epic
age, had eliminated and was moving rapidly
to its close. We do not risk much to say if.
anyway.
But the novelist-why should he pass away
ike his greater predecessors in art
III we allow that the novelist is largely in
debted to the same sources of inspiration, if
we submit that he is in his way poet, painter
and musician, who plays upon the passions of
men, then we must admit that he is subject to
much the same laws.
The tendency of extreme civilization is to
weaken the Imagination, to destroy faith, to
discount heroism and to debase men to the
low level OF materialism. We believe only
what we can weigh, measure, and compute.
Men sharpen their intelligence with scientific
investigation, and they strengthen their per-
ceptive faculties by means of lenses and cleo
troscopes, but all this mastering of the forces
of science is in order that we may increase
luxury and enlarge our bodily comfort.
The novelist then must keep pace with the
march of mind toward realism More than
any other, perhaps, Jules Verne has per-
ceiVed this movement and has made physi-
cal science his handmade to present his fic-
tions of fancy to the novel-readng public.
His is the highest department of realism The
other extreme of the school is represented by
lola and the other apostles of nakeduess and
moral nastiness. The age is moving away
from Walter Scott, from Alexander Dumas,
from Dickens, and Victor Hugo. Many other
names once great in fiction are all but forgot
ten. The age will march on until 1t brings
the nations to overwhelming wars and society
to decay and internal strife. After tremepd-
GUS revolutions, social and political, nations
will reorganize, society will gradually rehabil-
1tate itself, races will emerge from bar
harism and then there will be, as
there have been before, periods of new
progress and growth in art and letters. In
stead OF going on constantly unto perfection,
the human race goes its rounds of rise, culmi-
nation and fall only to rise again. This is
social and moral resurrection, just as rotten
ness and decomposition are the conditions
which are required to produce physical resur-
rection. The world, moral and physical, re-
wolves and brings us back to where we started
from, but withal there is progress.