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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1879)
NO. 10. THK 8T11UOOI.U8 OV THK AMKUIOAN NOVHM8T. 2i) public men to at last dostroy a creditable record, it is doubtful if his name would best promote a more national feeling bo. tween the North and the South. 0. V. M. THE STJtUOOLES OF THE AMUR. JOAN NOVELIST. JTfUlE struggles of the American novel Ks isl, tor existence, for popularity, and artistic attainment combined, render humiliating aspect to a sympathetic eye. Not for the lack of ambition, nor the want of suitable material docs he languish in mid-ocean. But battling Hie waves of a national tendency, he is forever tossed by contending billows. Humanity, restless with activity, lias ever striven to display its greatest powers. Civilization, though at intervals has been irregular, in its development, has, never, tho-lcss, been progressive. If it has been retarded, it has burst forth in redoubled fury. At one time, it has exulted in phil osophical development, again, in artistic culture. But yesterday a classical litem, lure gleamed and sparkled throughout Europe. To-day, Hie inventive genius of its authors has assumed the mechanic's garb. The laboratory lias become the modern library, the foundery, the haunts ol the imagination. Already are wo grop ing in the labyrinths of a scientific age. The imaginative element ol England and America has glided into an inquiry after the mysteries of nature. Elegance of die lion and dignity of romance find expres sion in the mechanism of machinery and the elements of inductive science. Faci nated by. research, wo find little time to muse upon fictitious probabilities. Real ity wo seek. To the golden end of utility we aspire. Upon the present turmoil of commor cial activity the American novelist, sur- rounded and enraptured by the relics of classic excellence, looks with troubled gaze. With lofty ambitior to improve upon the stylo of his predecessors, ho mar shalB to his command superior graces or character, and perfected symmetry of de sign. But ore his pen records a single thought, one glance at public taste, pre diets the fate of his most sanguine hopes and discloses the degenerated condition of his ideal art. Instead of the cultivated society thai nourished a Scott and a Dick, ens, ho finds to his regiet, only an un polished mind, bent upon the develop, ment of the factory and the mill. To such an one wholly destitute of apprecia tion for artistic beauty, the only attraction of the novel exists in the sensation of ad venture and novelty of plot. Eliminate from its pages the melodramatic and the sprightly, and you have made it a drug upon the market. Insert into it the as Miotic taste of the classic writer and you have immortalized it, by attaching an ov erlasting curse for its stupidity. Deprive it of its humor and garrulity and it re ceives a vindicative reception. But clothe the most repulsive dogma in its brilliant attire a.id it evades detection, facinates the undisciplined mind, and sways the destiny of civil society. Impelled by scientific: development, we have drifted far from the moorings of a literary criterion. Submerged in an at mosphere of mechanical genius the hum of machinery and the muttevings of social rivalry, furnish our sweetest music. The periodical teeming with sensational com incuts, enlists public applause. But fiction shaded with philosophy, or cast in a clas sic mould, engenders a lingering disgust. The American novelist, then, finds in his, public, a literary taste so eontamina ted as to set at defiance his worthier in ccntives. Unwilling to profi'er his no. blest conception to the provincial herd, to be trampled in the mire by unprinci pled critics, ho calmly resignes his fa vored project to a selfish enjoyment, Characterizing as he does, the peculiari ties of human nature, ha the more easily becomes a slave to her magic devices. Eager for wealth and intoxicated with a umvmwkwwi g m
