[The serious writer’s] goal is not to tell us a story, to entertain or to move us, but to make us think and make us understand the deep and hidden meaning of events. By virtue of having seen and meditated, he views the universe, objects, facts, and human beings in a certain way which is personal, the result of combining his observations and reflections. It is this personal view of the world that he tries to communicate to us by reproducing it in fiction. To move us, as he has been moved himself by the spectacle of life, he must reproduce it before our eyes with a scrupulous accuracy. He should compose his work so adroitly, and with such dissimulation and apparent simplicity, that it is impossible to uncover its plan or to perceive his intentions.
Instead of fabricating an adventure and spinning it out in a way that keeps it interesting until the end, the writer will pick up his characters at a certain point of their existence and carry them, by natural transitions, to the following period. He will show how minds are modified under the influence of environmental circumstances, and how sentiments and passions are developed. In this fashion, he will show our loves, our hates, our struggles, in all kinds of social conditions; and how social interests, financial interests, political interests, and personal interests all compete with each other.
The writer’s cleverness with his plot will thus consist not in the use of sentiment or charm, in an engaging beginning or an emotional catastrophe, but in the adroit grouping of small constant facts from which the reader will grasp a definitive sense of the work… [The author] should know how to eliminate, among the minute and innumerable daily occurrences, all those which are useless to him. He must emphasise those which would have escaped the notice of less clear-sighted observers, which give the story its effect and value as fiction…
Some selectivity is required – which is the first blow to the “entire truth” theory [of realistic literature].
Life, moreover, is composed of the most unpredictable, disparate, and contradictory elements. It is brutal, inconsequential, and disconnected, full of inexplicable, illogical catastrophes.
This is why the writer, having selected a theme, will take from this chaotic life, encumbered with hazards and trivialities, only the details useful to his subject and omit all the others.
One example out of a thousand: The number of people in the world who die every day in accidents is considerable. But can we drop a roof tile on a main character’s head, or throw him under the wheels of a car, in the middle of a narrative, under the pretext that it is necessary to have an accident?
Life can leave everything the same as it was. Or it can speed up some events and drag out others. Literature, on the other hand, presents cleverly orchestrated events and concealed transitions, essential incidents high-lighted by the writer’s skill alone. In giving every detail its exact degree of shading in accordance with its importance, the author produces the profound impression of the particular truth he wishes to point out.
To make things seem real on the page consists in giving the complete illusion of reality, following the logical order of facts, and not servilely transcribing the pen-mell succession of chronological events in life.
I conclude from this analysis that writers who call themselves realists should more accurately call themselves illusionists.
How childish, moreover, to believe in an absolute reality, since we each carry a personal one in our thoughts and in our senses. Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell and taste create as many truths as there are individuals. Our minds, diversely impressed by the reception of the senses’ information, comprehend, analyse, and judge as if each of us belonged to a separate race.
Thus each of us makes, individually, a personal illusion of the world. It may be poetic, sentimental, joyful, melancholy, sordid, or dismal one, according to our nature. The writer’s goal is to reproduce this illusion of life faithfully, using all the literary techniques at his disposal.
Kalampedia 