An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times Part 4

B. HEGEL ON THE NOVEL

Among the mongrel forms of epic should be included the half descriptive, half lyric poems which were popular among the English, dealing chiefly with nature, the seasons of the year, etc. There belong also to this division numerous didactic poems in which a prosaic content is dressed up in poetic form, such as compendiums of physics, astronomy, and medicine, and treatises on chess, fishing, hunting, and the conduct of life. Poems of this sort were most artfully elaborated by the later Greeks, by the Romans, and, in modern times, especially by the French.

Despite their general epic tone, they lend themselves readily to lyric treatment.

More poetical, but still without the characteristics necessary for definite cla.s.sification, are romances and ballads. Being epic in content but lyric in treatment, these products of the Middle Ages and of modern times may be a.s.signed to either cla.s.s indifferently.

The case of the novel, the modern popular epic, is very different. Here we find the same wealth and variety of interests, circ.u.mstances, characters, and human relationships, the same world-background, and the same handling of events, that characterize the true epic. But there is lacking to it the primitive poetic state of the world, in which the true epic took its rise. The novel, in the modern acceptation of the term, presupposes a prosaically ordered reality. But working from the basis of this reality, and moving within its own circle, the novel, both as regards picturesqueness of incident and as regards characters and their fate, retrieves for poetry (so far as the above presupposition permits) her lost prerogatives.[23]

Thus it happens that the struggle between the poetry of the heart and the opposing prose of outward circ.u.mstances is for the novel one of the commonest and most suitable conflicts. This struggle may end comically, or tragically, or in a reconciliation of the opposing forces. In the last case the characters who at first oppose the ordinary world-order may, by learning to recognize the true and abiding elements in it, become reconciled to the existing circ.u.mstances, and take an active part in them; or, on the other hand, they may strip off the prosaic hull from deed and accomplishment, and thus put in the place of the original prose a reality which is on intimate and friendly terms with beauty and art.

As far as the range of representation is concerned, the true novel, like the epic, requires a complete world and a complete view of life, the many-sided materials and relationships of which exhibit themselves in the particular action that is the nucleus of the whole. As to details of conception and development, however, the author must be allowed great liberty, for it is difficult to bring the prose of real life into the representation without sticking fast in the prosaic and commonplace.--Hegel, 'Aesthetik.' 3. Thl., Kap. III. Abt. 3., S.

394-396.

FOOTNOTE:

[23] In simpler terms: The novel, being a form of epic, should have all the characteristics of poetry. But this is impossible because it is compelled to work in the humble field of prose. Nevertheless, by a skilful use of description, narration, and dramatic situation, it causes a poetic oasis to spring up in the desert of prose, and so wins back some of its poetical rights.