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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1879)
sfijsaaras THK 8TUU00I,K9 OP T1IK AME1U0AN NOVKM8T. VOL. VIII, desire for popularity, lie, with many mis givings, .surrenders the talisman of his predecessors, assumes the costume of h's profession, and becomes an additional link in the mystic circle. Aware that the public will appreciate his work as he has ingenuity to thrill their souls, he, as a result, studies his patron rather than his novel. Controlled and helplessly led on by this impulse, he at length becomes as ignorant of the prov ince of fiction, as the dupes of his sensa tional vulgarity. Leaping from the sum- mit of a majestic art, he pursues his course to a sluggish bay. Torn from his intellectual models, he falls a prey to an uncultured criterion. Then has litcrarv taste becomes a bankrupt, and the novel a more whim in classical literature. We are told that the literary curse of this country exists in the fact that the novelist conceives such llippanl notions of his ideal art, that he depreciates the value of his oflice until he cannot sustain a lim ited degree of popularity. What incon live is there, I ask, to aspire to a higher plain of action? Where has the public in the last hundred years offered an in ducemenl for consumato execution ? Is poverty and humiliation an incentive? Is ridicule and literary ostracism an induce ment? When public taste becomes so perverted, when the national thought be comes so indifferent, can we wonder at the tone of contemporary fiction? Why, then, huil upon the novelist a censure for present abuses. Far better be it to (urn upon the public, and, in its own words o( stigma and reproach demand why it so rolishes this same llippanl notion and, if it itself carries not the deceitful curse to shoulder it upon the novelist. Witn a single impulse the classical tinge of the novel has failed, it seems nev. or to return. With it lias disappeared an illustrious standard of literary excel lence. Conscious of the degenerate state into which literary taste has fullen, the critic now oxh-ms the novelist to estal). lisli a more artistic standard for the con- trol of his imagination. But why the need of this exhortation ? lint the novel, ist in the last century produced nothing but inferior and insipid stories? lias he offered to the world no works of perfected art? Let classic literature bear witness. Time and again has he planted his stan dard in the midst of public ribaldiy; ami as often has the public, enraged at his au dacity, hurled it to tho ground and in. fumy upon its author. After such export, once, there remains little novelty and less pleasure in the repetition of the act; and ere the public is again lavished with novels of an artistic type, it must lirst give some proof of a returning admiration for studied execution and design. Tho unfortunate condition to which the novelist is subjected, renders success in the higher field of literary splendor, beyond profitable acquisition, to Ameri can genius. Not yet have we attained that regal wealth, which permits the ar list of fiction to adorn society with decor ations of the novel. Hence the workshop and the olllcc receive thousands of gems, that under other circumstances would flash in literary circles. With no inducement to ovor.coine the utilitarian spirit of the age, we cannot but feel that the consummation its sparkling genius, is only robbing the novel of its vitality. Some there are', who will attribute the decline of the novel to iiilu'ient vices and herald the sotting f its sun. But others, with more sympathy for art and the preservation of the highest menial faculty in its acquired perfection, will struggle to retain the last vestige of its relics. i. i.... I.... i ........ . . . iw ivuun uiai ma mi cuiminaicu in a highly intellectual state of society is a sense of satisfaction to the American nov ist If it be charged that through his no gleet it lost its lustre, the imperative de mands of public taste vindicato-hisfldelitv. If vices predominate to-day, they have been instituted at no other pleasure than that of the popular will. Not idly has the novelist stood w-lcoming calamity; but endeavoring to turn the stream of infec lion from his luxurious Holds, he lias, in turn, been swept along with the plunging current. Liko the drama and the forensic art, the artistic value of his work is sacri ficed to an impcric standard rather than to intellectual appreciation. C. E. S.