By Joyce Kilmer.
(1886-1918)

REALISM," said Robert Herrick, "is not the celebration of sexuality." I had not recalled to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation to go a-Maying still echoes in the heart of every lover of poetry. The Robert Herrick with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating critic of poetry, but the world knows him chiefly for his novels — "The Common Lot," "Together," "Clark's Field," and other intimate studies of American life and character. He is a realist, and not many years ago there were critics who thought that his manner of dealing with sexual themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the statement that he had just made seemed to me particularly significant.

      "It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by novelists and critics as well as by the public.

      "This confusion of ideas was apparent in some of the criticism of my novel 'Together.' In an early chapter of the book there was an incident which was intended to show that the man and woman who were the chief figures in the book were spiritually incompatible, that their relations as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, in fact, the theme of the book, and this incident in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow the later events of their married life. Well, the critics who disliked this chapter said that they objected to was its 'gross realism.'

      "Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the book was not realistic at all. I was describing something unusual, abnormal, while realism has to do with the normal. The critics had, of course, a perfect right to believe that the subject ought not to be treated at all, but 'gross realism' was the most inappropriate description possible.

      "Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe that they are realists because they write about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there are many writers who are conscious of the commercial value of sex in literature. Of course a writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. I wish our writers would pay less attention to the direct manifestations of sex and more to its indirect influence, to the ways in which it affects all phases of activity."

      "Who are some of the writers who seem to you to be especially ready to avail themselves of the commercial value of sex?" I asked.

      Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the writers I mean without my mentioning their names," he said. "They write for widely circulated magazines, and make a great deal of money, and their success is due almost entirely to their industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You know the sort of magazine for which they write — it always has on the cover a highly colored picture of a pretty woman, never anything else. That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying example, of the commercializing of the sex appeal.

Robert Herrick

      "I think that Zola, although he was a great artist, was often conscious of the business value of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of thing had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, much of his best work is marred by his deliberate introduction of sex, with the purpose — which, of course, he realized — of making a sensation and selling large editions of his books. This sort of commercialism was not found in the great Russian realists, the true realist — Dostoevski, for example. But it is found in the work of some of the modern Russian writers who are incorrectly termed realists."

      "Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a realist?"

      Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts strangely with his white hair, took on a thoughtful expression.

      "The distinction between realism and romanticism," he said, "is one of spirit rather than of method. The realist has before him an aim which is entirely different from that of the romanticist.

      "The realist writes a novel with one purpose in view. And that purpose is to render into written words the normal aspect of things.

      "The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. Be is concerned only with things which are exciting, astonishing — in a word, abnormal.

      "I do not like literary labels, and I think that the names 'realist' and 'romanticist' have been so much misused that they are now almost meaningless. The significance of the terms changes from year to year; the realists of one generation are the romanticists of the next.

      "Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his day. But we think of him only as a sentimental and melodramatic romanticist whose work has no perceptible connection with real life.

      "Charles Dickens was considered a realist by the critics of his own generation, and it is probable that he considered himself a realist. But his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. He wrote chiefly about simple people, it is true, and chiefly about his own land and time. But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries as subjects does not make him a realist. Dickens's people were unusual; they were better or worse than most people, and they had extraordinary adventures; they did not lead the sort of life which most people lead. Therefore, Dickens cannot accurately be called a realist."

      "You called Dostoevski a realist," I said. "What writers who use the English language seem to you to deserve best the name of realist?"

      "I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most thoroughgoing realist who ever wrote in England was Anthony Trollope. 'Barchester Towers' and 'Framley Parsonage' are masterpieces of realism; they give a faithful and convincing picture of the everyday life of a section of English society with which their author was thoroughly familiar. Trollope reflected life as he saw it — normal life. He was a great realist.

      "In the United States there has been only one writer who has as great a right to the name realist as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been interested in the normal aspect of things. He has taken for his subject a sort of life which he knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary adventures for his theme, nor has he depicted characters remote from our experience. His novels are distinguished by such fidelity to life that he has an indisputable claim to be called a realist.

      "But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable to attempt to label literary artists. Thackeray was a realist. Yet 'Henry Esmond' is classed as a romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used the realistic method; he spent a long time in studying the manners and customs of the time about which he was writing; and all the details of the sort of life which he describes are, I believe, historically accurate. And yet 'Henry Esmond' is a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic novel written by a realist, and written according to what is called the realistic method.

      "On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott was a romanticist. No one will deny that. Yet in many of his early books he dealt with what may be called realistic material; he described with close fidelity to detail a sort of life and a sort of people with which he was well acquainted.

      "Whether a writer is a realist or a romanticist is, after all, I think, partly a matter of accident or culture. I happen to be a realist because I was brought up on the great Russian realists like Gogol and the great English realists from George Eliot down to Thomas Hardy. If I had been brought up on romantic writers I suppose that. I might now be writing an entirely different sort of novel from that with which I am associated.

      "There is a sounder distinction," said Mr. Herrick, "than that which people try to draw between the realistic novel and the romantic novel. This is the distinction between the novel of character and the novel of events. Personally, I never have been able to see how the development of character can be separated from the plot of a novel. A book in which the characters exhibit exactly the same characteristics, moral and intellectual, in the last chapter as in the first, seems to me to be utterly worthless.

      "I will, however, make one exception — that is, the novel of the Jules Verne type. In this sort of book, and in romances of the Monte Cristo kind, action is the only thing with which the author and the reader are concerned, and any attempt to develop character would clog the wheels of the story.

      "But every other kind of novel depends on character. Even in the best work of Dumas, in 'The Three Musketeers,' for example, the characters of the principal figures develop as the story progresses.

      "The highest interest of a novel depends upon the development of its characters. If the characters are static, then the book is feeble. I have never been able to see how the plot and the development of the characters can be separated.

      "Of course, the novel of character is full of adventure. The adventures of Henry James's characters are of absorbing interest, but they are psychological adventures, internal adventures. If some kind person wanted to give one of Henry James's novels what is commonly called 'a bully plot' the novel would fail."

      As to the probable effect on literature of the war, Mr. Herrick has a theory different from that of any other writer with whom I have discussed the subject.

      "I think," he said, "that after the war we shall return to fatuous romanticism and weak sentimentality in literature. The tendency will be to read novels in order to forget life, instead of reading them to realize life. There will be a revival of a deeper religious sense perhaps, but there will also be a revival of mere empty formalism in religion. It has been so in the past after great convulsions. Men need tune to recover their spiritual pride, their interest in ideas."

      But Mr. Herrick's own reaction to the war does not seem to justify his pessimistic prophecy. Certainly the personal experience which he next narrated to me does not indicate that Mr. Herrick is growing sentimental and romantic.

      "When I was in Rome recently," he said, "I was much impressed by D'Annunzio. I was interested in him as a problem, as a picturesque literary personality, as a decadent raffiné type regenerated by the war. I have not read any of his books for many years.

      "I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on my voyage home. I read 'Il Piacere.' I realized its charm, I realized the highly aesthetic quality of its author, a scholarly and exact aestheticism as well as an emotional aestheticism. But, nevertheless, I had to force myself to read the book. It was simply a description of a young man's amorous adventures. And I could not see any reason for the existence of this carefully written record of passional experiences.

      "It seemed to me that the war had swept this sort of thing aside, or had swept aside my interest in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate eighteenth century novel. And I wondered if we would ever again return to the time when such a record of a young man's emotional and sensual experiences would be worth while.

      "I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio himself would not now write such a novel. I think that it would seem to him to be too trivial a report on life. I think that the war has so forced the essential things of life upon the attention of young men."