The daily morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1883-1899, 1895-11-24
THE MODERN NOVEL
Hall Caine Reads a Paper Be-
fore N. Y. Century Club.
"YoU ARE WHAT YOU ARE" I"
Moral Responsibility in the Novel
and the Drama-A Most Inter-
esting Discourse.
"You ARE WHAT you ARE "

At the recent meeting of the Century
Club in New York Hall Caine read pa
per on the Moral Responsibility in the
Novel and the Drama" in which are
some remarkable statements: The fol-
lowing synopsis appeared in one of the
New York papers:
There are always persons enough to
tell us that the best fiction and drama
are things of the past, and that the
novels and plays of the present are going
from bad to worse. Such grumblers are
always with us. There is only one thing
that the public demands. of a novelist,
and that Is human nature. 1t demands
amusement, sustenance and comfort, but
1t leaves him to please himself as to
the giving He can sing whatever pleases
him, only 1t must be good and he must
sing II we'll.
When l ask myself what is the value
Of the atmosphere in which the plays OF
Shakespeare or the novels of Walter
Scot live and move and have their being,
compared with the atmosphere which is
round about us in New York at this
present moment, find the early condition
prosaic and fiat, and the present condition
always full of surprise and wonder.
Depend upon it, the nineteenth century
is the most romantic period in the history
of the world. But by and by the great
imaginative writer will take hold of this
century of ours and find material for the
most thrilling, startling, and astounding
developments of the human story that
literature has yet kown.
Your work is what you are. 1t can
not help but carry with II the moral at
mosphere in which you live The worth
OF 1t will be precisely your own worth.
Tell me what manner of man you are and
1 will tell you what the moral effect OF
your work will be- Strip it of all moral
izings, all aphorisms, all texts, all moral
platitudes, but don't imagine that you
are therefore stripping it of all moral
effect. You cannot obliterate all trace of
yourself, you cannot disappear behind
your work.
The public is supposed by some authors
to be very stubborn patron. The Ian
guage of the advertisement, when 1t
asks for a thing 1t sees that 1t gets It,
l am not in the least of this opinion
There is only one thing the public de-
mands, and that is human nature.
For my part 1 have no complaint
against the novel and the drama that
love is its central theme. But 1 do COM
plain that love in the novel and the
drama is painted too much from one point
of view. Love has the tragedies, it's great
clashings of passion, its wrecks and ruins.
Surely these should have their place in
art.
Man is the spider, woman is the fly, and
the business of the novelist is to brush
down the cobwebs. It has been kown
that in actual life the dramatis persona
have been reversed. and the woman has
been the spider and the man the fly but
do fAw- No1n n1or.
art.
But moral responsibility in the choice
of a subject is, perhaps, not so great as
in the selection of scenes and the deliea-
tion of character.
Characters are composed not painted
or photographed, and authors are moral
ly responsible for the materials Of w ic'
they compose them. The world is made
UP of good and bad, and an autho; may
choose to describe either part or both.
Usually he dwells longest on that part
which he knows best.
To be a noble writer you must first Of
all be a noble man.
Motive is to the novel or drama what
the text is to the sermon. 1t is the idea
that should run through the work, giving
It intention and direction. Without this
novel is only a story book and play
is only a puppet show.
All authors in the end stand or fall by
their mastery of motive, and the value
OF novel or a drama depends on the
value of its motive.
Modern novelists and dramatists seem
to find It hard to combine unity of pur-
pose with freedom of invention. TIE
author of "Notre Dame shows mastery
over motive, and so does the autNor OF
Anna Karanina." These two. and these
alone, seem to me to realize George
Eliot's ideal of the "intensest realism OF
presen'a aticn with the highest idealism OF
conception" and by virtue OF this mas
terry, and not because Of any superiority
in delineating character or depicting
scene, claim for Victor Hugo and Count
Tolstoi that, with Walter Scott, they will
in the time to come, be recognized as the
three greatest novelists Of the nineteenth
| century