ON ZOLA AND OTHERS 1895
MelvinFullerton
Comclusion, MLFullerton
On Zola and Others 1895 William Dean Howells
Although Howell's was introduced to Turgenev
and wrote about him relatively early in his
career, his serious interest in the other foreign
masters--in particular;Tolstoi,Zola andIbsen
--was more or less coincident with his commit-
ment to CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM and,in literature,
to critical realism in the later eighties and nineties--
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Howells might not have put it exactly like
that,but he moved toward a compasrable insight
when,in another essay,he said about ZOLA,
whome he called "the greatest poet of his
da,." that Not Tolstoi,not Ibsen himself,has
more profoundly and indignantly felt the in-
justice of civilization,or more insistantly shown
the FALSETY of its FUNDAMENTAL pretensions.." And
there is no doubt that as a "critical realist," How-
ells sought to enlist his own work and that of
his fellow realists in the cause of resisting and
transforming a BAD Society and of achieving a NEW one.
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What follows is the last three sections of
five part review of a book called 'DEGENERATION'
in which the author, Max Nordau,cited Zola,
Tolstoi, and Ibsen among others as symptoms
of cultural decline.
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"The world,in its thinkinmg and feeling,was never
so sound and sane before. There is a great deal of
fevered and foolish thinking and feelong about
thinking and feeling,as there always has been and
will be, but there is no more of it than ever.It is
no part of my busddiness to defend the nineteenth
century,and if I thoght the noble mood of its
last years merely a death-bed repentance,and not
in effect of all the former events of the ages,I
should not rejoice in it. Dr.Nordau;himself is
able to see that there really is no such thing as a
'fin de siecle' spirit;but the race is in a certain
mood,and the centurt is near its end,and so the
phrase serves as well as another
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I believe it is extremely well to have the under-
pinning of sentiment and opinion examined,from
time to time,and this is what oir age above all
others has done.It is not a constructive or a recon-
structive age,as compared with some otjher epocjhs,
but it is eminently critical,and whatever is creative
in it,is critically creativer. It is very concious,it not
only knows,but it jeenly feels,what it is about----
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...and I see that life does not solve them,
and I see that life does not,the longer I live the
more I am persuaded that the problems of this
life are to be solved elsewhere,or never.It is not
by the solution of problems that the moralist
teaches,but by the question that his handling of
them suggests to us respecting ourselvres---
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........................You must not aim in art to
be less than perfectly faithful,and you must not
be about the fact any more than you can help,Go
to life,see what is life,and then tell it as hon-
estly as possible.Above all he has shown us what
rotten foundations the most of fiction rested on,
and how full of malaria the whole region was.He
did not escape the infection himself;he was born
in that region;the fever of romanticism was in his
blood,the taint is in his work,But he has written
great epics,and time will come when it will
be seen that Zola was the greatest poet of his day,
and perhaps France has prodyced.
(Our times are defind by our artists,and not by our politicians utterancers)
MLFullerton.
The Lonely Island
melvin WW 2 ETO Reg Army DAV VFW Amer Leg 54 years union age 82+ years.