Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1891-01-30
THE IDEAL in LITERATURE,
The Difference i'm Form and Style Betwee
the Ancient and the Modern Writers.

| The art instinct has never been wholly
absent from the realms of letters The
first literature of the world was, with
few exceptions, poetic in form as well
as in spirit. The feeling of the earliest
i writers, and of those who composed be-
fore the invention of alphabets, was
that there should be between meaning
and expression a correspondence more
intimate and complete than any that
could be convened in direct, unmeasured
speech. We call the feeling an instinct,
because it existed before the growth of
tradition and the formation of schools
1t was, therefore, natural and just,
meeting want of human nature as
music does. Homer was artistic and in
artificial. The rules which he followed
in the construction of his lines were i'm
posed upon him by his own sense of
their appropriateness to his subject mat
ter. They fashioned fit organ for epic
song, and it was his poetic genius that
he knew when he had caught the proper
pitch of his lofty theme.
A man may have poetic feeling, he
may share all the poets jCv in the pres
ence of beauty and sublimity, without
this fine aesthetic power, this subtle tact
in the selection of form; but, though in
that case he may enjoy the poetry of
others, he can never be himself poet.
1t is the sense of form, not mere emo
tional susceptibility, that distinguishes
the artist from other men. 1t is mani
fest that the ancient prose writers also
had this peculiar sense. They, too, We're
artists, though they exercised large
liberty in the matter of form. Ancient
orations were strictly literary compo-
90
measured periods and often with an I'M
mistakable rhythm.
Ancient historians avoided the evil
dence of passion which the orators be-
trayed in cadence, and which would
have been out of keeping in a judicial
review of public annals; but they never
theless recognized and availed them
selves of the advantage of artistic form.
The works of Thucydides, Livy and
Tacitus suggest in the charm of their
symmetry and in the majesty of their
mass the architectural effect of an old
Greek temple. Those authors had the
most lively appreciation of arrangement,
fitness and proportion-an ideal, always
i'm mind, determining the choice of every
word, the place of every detail, and the
order of the whole narrative.
! 1t is common to speak of poetic license,
but poetry is by nature thing under
restraint. 1t has no license to sacrifice
the form which is essential to the pres
ervation of its spirit. But the obliga-
ton of that observance was plainly felt
by all the ancient classical writer's of
prose as well as of poetry. 1t followed
that they We're especially devoted to the
cult of the ideal. The perfection of
their form limited their range of sub
| jects. They could not condescend to an
! intimate treatment of things below the
! level of lofty style. Consequently
they transmitted to us modern ira
ditions and conventions against which
we revolt in our desire to leave nothing
| intrenched by the point of the pen.
The war between the classical and
romantic schools was, however, not pre-
cisely along that line. 1t was not for
scientific accuracy and thoroughness
that the romanticists broke away from
the academic restraints of the old school.
1t was rather because they had con
ceived new and holder forms of artistic
expression, better adapted, as they
believed, to 'embody the thought and
feeling of their time Their ideal was
no longer the Greek temple, but the
Gothic cathedral. Realism, on the
other hand, is comparatively indifferent
to demands of art. 1t is concerned with
the actual, not with the ideal. 1t would
portray the truth, not as it exists for
| ever in the abstract, but as it is pre-
scented with an intermixture of error
and ugliness in the facts of life. The
Greeks were decent even in the nude;
! the modern realist is often scandalous
in full dress. This results sometimes,
perhaps, from mistaken conception of
the proper province of the literary art
| list, and sometimes from an ineXcuSab BILE
attempt to pander to prurient taste. A
work which is officially impure can not
be purely aesthetic.
Science, of course, has it's claims; but
the man of letters can not plead the ex-
actions of science in defense of a work
of literature. Let the realist, if he will
not or can not exercise the due modera-
! ton and reserve of fine art, say once
| for all, Il am not an artist; am only a
pathologist, and 1 have no subject but
disease" Then his books might be
| justly classified, and literature would
/ be under no compulsion to apologize for
their existence. But even the realists
affect style. They are not willing to
admit they write badly. On the con-
trary, they insist that they have intro
duced an improved style-familiar, but
not coarse-more fluent than the stately
march of classic prose, more natural
than the verbose rhetoric of the roman
ticists. There is, no doubt, a degree of
truth in this boast. The ancients did
not enjoy liberty enough. The realists
take too much. But we can not regret
that the modern ideal of form lends it.
self so easily to every shade of expires
sion, or that it accommodates itself so
exactly to the incest distinctions of
thought. Still, we would not have it
degraded until it has lost all semblance
of artististic distinction. Half the
charm of literature is in style.-N. o.
Picayune.