Los Angeles herald., 1891-04-19
LITERARY DECADENCE.

latVot "a tlllS KIM Is .tIl~
titled "Sardia." 1t is absolutely with
out merit of any kind or description,
and we therefore do not particularize its
publishers. 1t belongs to the 'fleshIyo
school of fiction. 1t is SO entirely with
out any conceivable attractiveness that
we are scarcely justified in noticing it
at all; and, like most Of the trash of the
kind. it is written by woman-a
lamentable but just summary.
The only class of novels OF this de-
scription that are worth moments
consideration are written by French
men. These artistic people, however,
succeed in imparting to conceptions
gross in fact an idealism that partakes
of certain kind of refinement. Ed
mund Burke, in his inimitable pamph-
let on the French revolution. spoke of
that s'vice which lost half it's evil by
losing all its grossness." This is of
course sophistication, but it is highly
ornate and fascinating dalliance with
the half truths both of letters and life.
The exemplars of this school of the
French fiction and drama are Dumas
fills and Octave Feuillet. As to most of
these writers, lax moralist would be
tempted to say that they are naughty
nice. Some of Octave's romances are
indescribably charming. Not only the
younger but the elder Dumas present
an indescribable charm for that discern
ing portion of the public who are bound
neither by the DEGREES OF the Vatican,
the Thirty-Nine Articles nor the West
minister Catechism.
Then comes the realistic school of
fiction, of which Emile Zola is facile
princeps. This is unspeakably disgust
ing, but it is art. In some instances
the grouping of persons and events is as
picturesque and as terribly interesting
as the pictorial horrors of Dore and the
earlier English etchers, like Hogarth.
AS to most of these efforts OF imagina-
ton and artistic instinct, it may be
truthfully said that they are as sensa-
tional as any aspect of painful human
ity can well be made.
When we come to the American class
of fleshly and realistic literature moth
ing could be more contemplate. In
every line the writers. who are generally
women, endeavor to make prurient sug
gestiveness the substitute for creative
impulse and artistic inspiration. The
dialogue is jejune beyond expression.
A multiplication of epithets and mis-
aro n 10 &c ,nvantior ora <ha ofo
pie of these works. The hero is gener
ally some fellow with a silken NOUS
tache, under which his tremulous lips
conceal their milksop mobility. He is
frequently played-out gambler, whose
morose discomfort with the eve r-vary
ing changes of draw-poker, and whose
inability to rake in the jack-pots, gives
him grand, gloomy and peculiar air.
He generally has cavernous eyes,
whose lambent CLEANS suggest to the
knowing visions of absinthe and
perhaps of morphine, administered
through injections, with syringe. The
heroine, on the other hand, in nine
cases out of ten, is a voluptuous, no ac-
count Sybarite, or an impossible crea-
ture OF visionary perfections. To the
uncorrupted the pictures drawn in these
dreamy, hasish pictures of depravity,
mean nothing; while, to the sophisti-
Gated, they only mean that prentice
hand is trying to do some fine writing
that really only eventuates in bathos. The
dreamy eyes, the languorous grace, the
two for cent ecstacies, simply suggest,
to an experienced and we'll read person,
the pitiful lack of invention and imagin-
alton of these abortive efforts to enlist
public interest and make for themselves
place in the literature OF the day.
How poor and wretched appear these
travesties on fiction as compared with
the novels of Walter Scott, Dickens,
Thaekeray and Bulwer, of the English
school of novels? How utterly con-
temptible are they when contrasted with
thesplendid efforts of Hawthorne, Irving,
Cooper and Paulding, of the noble Ameri-
can school of fiction In the worksof none
of those noble authors OF either the
American or the English schools, is there
the slightest attempt to dabble with
dreamy eyes, forms OF languorous grace,
palpitating bosoms, or any other of the
devices of prurient imaginations run
mad. They deal with sweet and pure
love, supply incidents calculated to carry
forward plot of ample attractions, and
they ignore the ''feshly" train of asso-
Citations so completely that. in the works
Of all of them put together, there can
not be found the slightest hint of the
modern "feshly" school.
1t is singular circumstance that, in
the most debased days OF the dramatic
literature OF Charles II, James II,
and of Queen Anne, when such dramat-
lists as Wycherly and Congreve were at
their height, the most immodest dramat-
ist OF all times, Mrs. Behn, wrote her
demoralizing works. At the same time,
a male censor was too precise to print
her indecencies to be enacted in public.
1t is curious and lamentable circum-
stance that, today, the really deadly and
disgusting works of fiction are written
by women, from Ouida to the author of
Sardia. 1t is not a pleasant thing to
know sthat women can exceed men in
immodesty, but it is true. Before
Madame do Stoa1 hanoyna tho i'm.