Walter Pater and Zola's Literary Reputation in England
1976; ELT Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1559-2715
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
Resumoterms like Liberty, Democracy, Atheism abstract propositions about them in whatever interest, make one think sometimes of those worn old screws which turn either way v/ith equal facility, and compact nothing. VJhat we mean night be illustrated by Mr. Lilly's chapter on 'The Revolution and Art;' telling as it really is as an attack on the 'naturalism' which he holds to be the fruit of the Revolution, especially in literature. But was 'naturalism,' even as he understands it, finding it at its height in M. Zola's Nana, really born in 1789? did it not exist, like the revolutionary temper itself, from of old? Is not a certain kind of an element in all living art? And then Nana is very far from being characteristic of the v/hole scope of M. Zola's v/ork. UaS not the Revolution, after all, a kind of vicious running to seed of that principle of Individualism so nobly vindicated by Mr. Lilly himself as a discovery of Christianity or Catholicism?18 In his questions lie Pater's own habit of thought, the symbiotic reference points that stem from Greek culture and reappear in mediaeval, Renaissance and mpdern culture the Apollonian/Classic and the Dionysian/Romantic.1^ For Pater, naturalism is an abiding, timeless element of art and Zola's work is a heightening of the permanent artistic ideal of realism, the directest use of imaginative skill. Pater discounts the pejorative overtones of naturalism and diffuses Lilly's criticism of Nana without the panache of the controversialist but v/ith the careful, casual reference implying, no doubt, everyone will know this,
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