Livingstone, On the Ancient Greek Literature

Page 22

Egotism is a minor defect in English literature. To some it may even seem to be a virtue. A more serious weakness, which our literature shares with other modern literatures, is one-sidedness or incompleteness of view, which reveals itself by a series of reactions, and in England has taken the form of an oscillation between sentimentalism and a rather cruel realism, the latter being dominant at the present time. These two schools represent excesses of temperament, the one of generosity and kindliness, the other of truth; and among our writers of genius Dickens and Hardy typify them well. The one school desire in fiction to reward their good characters and punish the bad, just as they would wish that life should do; and truth is not allowed to thwart their benevolence or their indignation. In defiance of all probability Micawber and Mr. Mell make a success of life in Australia, though truth cries out that they were born to be failures; while the foot of punishment moves more swiftly and visibly in the pages of Dickens than it does in fact. Then comes the veracious person, who, growing indignant at a travesty of life that misleads the reader and insults truth, gives us the opposite extreme in an imagined world where the shadows are deepened and the high lights carefully blocked out. Scott and Dickens picture a world in which at the end vice finds itself in the gutter while virtue marries the heroine. Later, Thomas Hardy has given us Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.[121] Here is a protest, a redressing of the balance, by an advocate who rises to supply a side of the case which has been ignored. Yet once again Truth is violated, and by her sworn servant; for the world that Hardy portrays is not the world as it is. When Dickens makes Mr. Micawber the District Magistrate of Port Middlebay, he is not representing life, but saying what he and his audience would like to believe in order to feel comfortable when they close the book. As a protest therefore against him in the next generation comes Thomas Hardy, who after recording the miserable end of Tess, writes 'The President of the immortals had ended his sport with Tess'. In so writing he is no true recorder any more than was Dickens, but the self-appointed Judge of a universe which he conceives to be cruel.

[121] In these novels and in The Dynasts Mr. Hardy allows his personal views to depress one side of the scales: in his lesser novels he has often shown that he can hold the balance even. This distinction should be borne in mind in all the criticisms of his work, which I have ventured to make.

Previous Page / First / Next

R. W. Livingstone
On the Ancient Greek Literature

Learned Freeware

R. W. Livingstone On the Ancient Greek Literature

Learned Freeware

R. W. Livingstone
On the Ancient Greek Literature