The less enthusiastic are
content to be as full of gritty realistic facts as a fig of seeds;
but with all of them everything from end to beginning, from bottom
to top, must be said.
And just here lies the explanation of the whole matter. As one
considers the excessive naturalism of the young realists and asks
just why they find it necessary to be so excessively, so
effusively realistic, the conviction is inborn that they are not
realists at all as Hardy, Howells, even James were realists; they
are romanticists of a deep, if not the deepest, dye, even the
heartiest lover of sordid incident among them all.
I am aware, of course, that "romantic" is a dangerous word, more
overworked than any other in the vocabulary of criticism, and very
difficult to define. But in contrast with its opposites it can be
made to mean something definite. Now, the romanticism of the
juniors is not the opposite of realism; it sometimes embraces
realism too lovingly for the reader's comfort. But it is the
opposite of classicism. It is emotional expansiveness as
contrasted with the classic doctrine of measure and restraint. By
this, the older meaning of romanticism, we may put a tag upon the
new men that will help to identify them.
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